Editor's Notebook
In writing, the struggle is just part of the process
Kansas City Business Journal - by Paul Wenske
Bear with me while I talk a little bit about this craft of writing -- before I get back to business.
I'm referring to the struggle to string words into sentences and perhaps into paragraphs that end in an intended destination, usually a period.
Writing, in my case newswriting, comes from a primal need to understand and be understood, by telling stories that share thoughts, events and memories that hopefully coax a spark of recognition in a reader, if a writer is lucky enough to have one.
Words are like leaves shaken loose, and then raked into a semblance of organization that result in columns, short stories, songs and books, office memos, job applications, sticky notes and love letters. They briefly create order in a world as cluttered as a teenager's room.
I love this craft as much as I would think a lawyer embraces the anxiety of walking into a trial or a surgeon reaches beyond self-doubt to calmly hold the beating heart of another human.
On those rare occasions when the wily words link easily, my exhilaration, I would guess, is not unlike that of a sprinter breaking a world record or a skilled negotiator closing the deal of his or her life.
This reverie was provoked by a writers' seminar I attended this week in Oklahoma City. Listening to men and women at the top of their profession describe how they struggle each day to tame their own fears before touching their keyboards was affirming.
"Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is," wrote Kansas City native and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes in his book simply titled, "How to Write."
Writing is a daily chore for most of us. Some people are driven to practice their craft in the wee hours of the morning before work or late at night, long after Jay Leno's last lame joke dies in the darkness. Then there are those wretches who have the chutzpah to think they can pay their way through life wrestling words into place.
Reporting is a singularly personal profession.
For the most part, it pays pitifully and parcels out its rewards like a drug. Most good reporters are willing to slog through the painful process of putting words on paper for that brief high, that sweet feeling of accomplishment that comes that rare night when, as Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts notes, "God says `I'll dictate, you type.'"
The rest of the time writing is, as Associated Press reporter Hugh Mulligan recounts, recalling the legendary Red Smith: Not difficult. Just sit down and "open a vein."
Anyone who has battled with syntax in a letter to a good friend or in a memo to the staff understands the courage needed to express a clear idea that someone will take to heart.
It is emboldening for me to learn that newspaper folks more experienced than me also struggle to hold the wiggly words on the page, confessing that their vibrant prose happened only after eight or nine rewrites.
I talked to a friend who covered the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building four years ago. He described how reporters struggled to write through their own tears, how they compartmentalized their horror long enough to finish their copy. I know this is true for reporters in Yugoslavia. That's how it should be. How can you trust a writer who is not personally touched by the events he or she covers?
Passion nurtures those who persevere -- what Betty Baye of the Louisville Courier calls "the soul of story."
As a business journalist, I have found that some of the most likable and inventive people are those entrepreneurs who do what they do not for the money but out of passion. Their creative bent can't be tamed. Their fire and motivation comes from within.
They understand this sweet feeling of accomplishment -- what the bean counters will never understand.
I would like to believe the creativity they show in building their business is akin to that of telling a story. After all, writes Rhodes, "We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story."
Latest News |
Most Viewed Stories |
Most Emailed Stories |
