Category: On Writing

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The Most Important Question I Ask

I often find the best rules of thumb for life go hand-in-hand with the best rules for writing and editing. In this case, a parenting tactic is one of the strategies that has wide-reaching applications at the end of an interview.

“Do you have anything else you want to tell me?”

While this may have been used as a shame tactic on teens forming lies of omission (not saying it was used on me, not saying it wasn’t), in an interview with a source I use it as a catchall. Usually the answer amounts to not much–“No, I think we’ve pretty much covered it”–or a PR pitch that I didn’t need. But the few times it’s come in handy it doesn’t just serve as a CYA policy, but given the story the most important facets and details. When a longer interview goes well, a source warms up and might be willing to share something they hadn’t thought of or been willing to at the beginning of the conversation, particularly for cold calls.

For Pearl Harbor survivor Will Lehner’s story, the most important piece of the puzzle didn’t appear until I asked that question, thinking the conversation was wrapping up–not only starting. His ship sank a Japanese submarine about an hour before the attack, and for years, it wasn’t on record. Few would believe him or his fellow sailors. It wasn’t until 2000 he went with a team led by Bob Ballard (the guy who found the Titanic) to search for the sub, and not until 2002 with another research team that it was uncovered and his story “checked out,” gumshoes. Little old me? I didn’t know any of that until after we had talked about Indiana, driving (the next time he’ll need to renew his license he’ll be 103) and his post-military career.

Click here to read how Lehner’s incredible story was stitched neatly into a full circle over six decades.

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Berryman on how to know if your writing’s any good

A relatively well-kempt John Berryman

Today my friend Allison sent me a fantastic poem by W.S. Merwin called “Berryman.” John Berryman is one of my favorite poets, so I took maybe special delight in reading a young writer deal with Berryman, who was “much older. . . in his thirties.”

But it’s the ending of this poem, in which the speaker, presumably Merwin, asks Berryman how to judge the quality of his own work, that moves me most. Replace writing with any verb you have a kinship with.

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t

you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write

To read the full poem, click here.

To read a poem by my friend Allison, click here.

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My beef with all those “Best of 2013” lists of books, music and movies

It’s that time of year again: Time for us all to reflect and quickly post to the Internet our favorite books, writers, Tweeps and tweets of 2013. But before we do that, I’d like to offer up these thoughts on what list-making, trash-talking and reading have to do with one another. In “How Lists Feed My Inner Trash-Talker, But Not My Inner-Nerd,” I make peace with being both a Kentuckian, and therefore a big-talking trash-talker, and a little shy nerd who likes to read.

Highlights from Sycamore Review:

“Which brings me to lists. And how everyone says they hate lists but secretly loves lists or at least clicks on them. As writers yourselves, I’m sure you know what I mean. They help us know what to like, who to envy, and what’s “good.” Because how would we know otherwise? They give us some good starting grounds for fisticuffs (especially if you’re a college basketball fan this year). And of course, because, as the mysterious they has told us for many moons, a kabillion books are published each and every year and no one reads books anymore.

“So maybe, for lit blogs, the reasoning is to shepherd people toward the “good” books in an effort to make them love literature like when they were babies and their mothers served them warmed milk and beautiful Golden Books each night as they drifted to sleep under their Pottery Barn down comforters.”

“When I read a list, I’m not shoving my nose into a book. And that would make the list-makers of the world quite sad, I think. Because while the intention of a list seems to be pure, and often a celebration of Things to Love, it really just lights up the parts of my brain that are argumentative and like to play beer pong. Yes, lists are fun in the way beer pong is fun: yes, but you always go one too many rounds, say something silly, and live to regret it. This kind of fun is not at all fun in the way that actual reading is fun and singular and has nothing to do with a party. What is fun (for me) about reading is that it charges the parts of my brain that are shy and warm and say please and drink Ovaltine before lugging a precious hardback up the hill home from the library. I imagine sometimes this fun involves crying into one’s Ovaltine and trash talking Raskolnikov.”

“Lists like these generally make us explain the purpose or urgency of art—like good art has some utilitarian function. And if so, that function applies directly to people trolling BuzzFeed: Top Ten Books to Read in the Recession! Top Twelve Lit Magazines with Kittehz! POETRY MAGAZINE CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER?”

Want more? Click here to read the rest. (Spoiler alert: It features Madonna, Mitch McConnell, the Louisville Cardinals, and other such trash-talkers.)