Writing life
Won’t you be my neighbor?
An e-mail arrives: “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” I ask if we know each other.
She writes: “In response to your question, no. In fact, I’m not quite sure how your name came up on my list of invitees that I generated yesterday. Nonetheless, I’m glad that I have serendipitously discovered you and your work (yes, I just enjoyed reading a few blogs).
“I recently retired (no, withdrew my services) from teaching high school English and am in the awkward stage, once again, of reinventing myself,” she says. “Like you, words will always be the anchors that keep me afloat in between and during these stages.” May I edit that dangling modifier, please?
“I wish you continued success, Susan. Should you choose not to accept my invitation to LinkedIn, I understand completely. Have a happy-go-lucky Labor Day weekend.”
My turn: “LinkedIn and others recommend not connecting with strangers. Even though you don’t sound very strange, I think I’ll pass for now. Thanks. Susan.”
The floodgates open. The stranger rants: “Sad, not angry, is the feeling I described. I’m so glad because I find it sad when a woman feels she must hide her age to get empoyment (sic). People must be shocked when they meet you, a woman at least 66 yrs old, after viewing and expecting to meet the much, much younger version of you on the LinkedIn profile. No, we are not the same type at all. Good riddance!” So much for happy going lucky.
Just following LinkedIn’s advice – and my own good sense. For amusement, I reply: “Not hiding anything. I love that photo of myself, taken by a college roommate who became a Ford fashion model. My website has a newer picture, if you’d like to count my wrinkles.”
En garde. “Why are you telling me about a roommate from nearly half a century ago . . . .and did she really need to go to Penn to model? I was taken aback that you cared so much. I find it extremely pitiful that a women who purports to be educated, and you certainly seem to do that, could indulge her vanity so. Such behavior sends a very negative message.
“No, we are not rhe same type at all. Good riddance!”
Moral: Don’t connect with every kook who e-mails you.
Case study
Here’s a case study in writing coaching.
“Shirley” has a public relations job at a big nonprofit. She writes news releases, newsletters and internet copy, all poorly. She doesn’t know the active voice from apple cider, she confuses their and there and she can’t differentiate a good lead on a story from a bargain on a new set of dishes.
Her supervisors provide little guidance and no feedback on her writing. Shirley hires me to teach her to write better.
Shirley is a good student. She e-mails me pieces she’s working on, and we talk about improving this sentence or that organizational structure. For a few months, she pays attention. She never emits that satisfying “Aha!” sound that teachers love to hear, never indicates that she’s actually learning. But she continues seeking help.
Soon Shirley grows “too busy” to write the news releases on her desk. She e-mails me facts and hires me to ghostwrite her assignments. Sometimes she misses essential pieces of information. Often I need to ask what the story should be about. She passes off my writing as her own.
I don’t have an ethical problem with this situation, because many people hire ghost-writers. As long as she submits the required manuscripts to her manager on time, no one is the wiser. Nor, of course, does Shirley learn to write better.
For a year, Shirley is out of my life. Suddenly she reappears in my inbox with a résumé – again, many people pay for help here – and a gimmicky letter about herself to follow a job interview.
She is applying to manage internal communications at another big nonprofit. Her still-poor writing astonishes. If I edit her prose, I promote an inept candidate. If I don’t, she falls flat.
What’s a writing coach to do?
My first writing job
My first job involved purchasing cheese sandwiches with mayo.
A journalism professor at the University of Pennsylvania was a night city editor at the late, great Philadelphia Bulletin. When I asked him about jobs, he sent me to the Bulletin’s features editor, who asked what I wanted to write. “Anything but women’s,” I said. “I have an opening on the society page,” he said. “I’ll take it.” And the writing life began.
I served as a gofer for columnist Ruth Seltzer, who covered Philadelphia’s high society for 32 years. She documented the people listed in the Social Register, a black-leather-bound volume, smaller but no less imposing than the Bible.
The Register contained the names and addresses of the powerful, wealthy socially elite – “polite society,” not the political or corporate elite – in eight cities, including Philadelphia.
Sundays I detailed weddings, copying hand-written notes that brides’ mothers submitted in advance. If either spouse failed to appear in the Register, I named only the key members of the bridal party. Higher rankings allowed more details, including “dressing the bride” in Alençon lace. If one party was “very registered,” which meant parentage in the upper echelons of the over-privileged, I dressed bridesmaids, too.
Midweek I wrote about luncheons at the homes of registered women. I reported on their travels after they returned so as not to inform the thieving public about unoccupied Main Line mansions filled with silver service for 36.
Daily I rode two escalators to the basement cafeteria, where I ordered Ruth a double-American-cheese-on-white-bread-with-mayo and a glass of milk. After I left, Ruth joined the Inquirer. I’ve been writing ever since.
If I bought the Inquirer
In the 1970s and 1980s the Inquirer won 16 Pulitzer prizes for reporting, writing, photography and editorial cartoons. We all want that regime, those writers and those heady days back again.
To get there, the paper should write more about news and issues and less about what people say they think they want to read. Dailies do not earn Pulitzers by publishing the results of fantasy sports games.
The nameplate of the paper belongs at the top of the page, not below a banner praising or chiding the Phillies. You give sports its own private section every day. Isn’t that enough?
Please click here to read more.
After you read, please post a comment indicating your hopes and fears about the future of the Inquirer under its new leadership?
Tell truth. Kill story.
It has happened twice: I interview an executive. He shares his personal story, as his handlers wish. Then he realizes he has spoken too freely – and nixes publication. Has this happened to you?
First came Mr. S., a laborer who built a company that supported three generations and a few hundred employees. His grandson wanted to devote an issue of the e-newsletter to The Old Man, as they called him. Mr. S. recalled the difficult early years, when labor was cheap but honesty was valued.
With misty eyes and a quiet voice, Mr. S. revealed that, during the Great Depression, he had actually sold apples on the street in North Philadelphia. That his wife and sons depended upon him. And that he continued to ply his craft for free when his customers had no way to pay.
He loved my story. At first. Then he decided that his yarn was, uh, not exactly true. He struggled during the Depression but never sold Golden Delicious. Seeing in print the tall tales that he had enhanced, Mr. S. squelched the piece.
Second was Mr. N., born with silver spoon and golden slippers. He owned nine Philadelphia-area companies when his publicist hired me to write a personality profile, not a business analysis. Mr. N. opened up. He grinned as he pointed to framed portraits of his children and grandchildren, who, due to several marriages, were the same age.
He told stories about playing with the kiddies on the deck of his ocean-front second home. Family was paramount, he said. Well, Mr. N., too, had second thoughts about speaking honestly about matrimony. That story never ran, either.
The course of freelance writing never does run smooth. Have you had a similar experience? Please share.
