Writing Boots

Was on a Zoom the other day with a woman who runs conferences for the Aspen Institute. I was telling her that crunch time is upon me and my crew for the World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association this month—hey, registration deadline is this Friday, folks—and she asked me how many participants we usually have.

“It sells out every year at a little over 100 participants,” I told her, having no idea how big the conferences she plans are, but wanting her to understand that this was no piddling palaver I was putting together. So I heard myself add, “But it feels like a thousand.”

She cocked her head, and so I had to explain.

I said the speechwriters who come, come from their far-flung locales and thus cultures and sensibilities. At this very conference, a speechwriter from the Federal Reserve of Atlanta might find himself sharing a drink with speechwriter who was once the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Poland, and a Canadian expat based in Switzerland who has written hundreds of speeches for the United Nations, and the most steadily successful independent speechwriter anyone has ever heard of, from Dayton, Ohio.

I said speechwriters also served widely different industries. The speechwriter to the president of Williams College can find common ground with the speechwriter to a senior executive Exxon, who can empathize with a speechwriter at Planned Parenthood, who will be surprised to see how much professional angst he shares with the speechwriter to the Pentagon’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (But it would be handy if the well-meaning but bumbling emcee could help them make these connections. Especially because speechwriters are introverts, as a rule.)

Sometimes, spelling and pronunciation is the problem. I’m looking at the great British speechwriter Lech Mintowt-Czyz, otherwise known as the Human Eye Chart.

And each one of these folks contains multitudes. Like the longtime speechwriter to Peyton Manning, who is holding a special luncheon session at the conference to discuss the rhetoric of war and peace, in order to prep for some consultation she’s doing with the Vatican this fall. And the stand-up comic, who is teaching speechwriters how to help their speakers be better. And the former Facebook speechwriter, who is gathering a group of independent speechwriters who want to build a big exec comms business. Oh, and of course the roughly half of these 100 who I don’t yet know, but whose jangled career stories—”speechwriting” is an abbreviation of “jangled career story”—I will hear in amazement over these days.

Viewpoint diversity? Got that covered. Libertarians and liberals, capitalists and communists, union boosters and union busters. On AI alone, we have the most enthusiastic proponent of using AI for writing who I have encountered on the earth—and also the lustiest opponent. I’m calling that session “the donnybrook.”

We’ll have undergrad visitors on one hand (for a mentoring session)—and on the other, a legendary scribe who recently retired after 33 years writing speeches for the CEO of … wait for it … AARP.

Oh, and I just learned there’s a chance a former White House speechwriter who was John Hughes’ inspiration for Ferris Bueller might be making an appearance? On a panel with speechwriters to Richard Nixon and Barack Obama and most of ’em in between. I’ll keep you posted.

So yeah, it’s about a hundred, but it feels like a thousand.

So, why don’t you join us? You’ll fit right in.

I’m starting a new series here called, “I don’t have time to play tiddlywinks with your ego.”

(I once had a funny colleague who said that, jokingly. I’m not saying it jokingly.)

To wit:

If you are an important enough person to hire a professional speechwriter, you are important enough to listen to that speechwriter’s advice.

Which usually boils down to: Please use every speaking opportunity to reveal yourself to all the people who have traveled and disrupted their schedules and sat quietly and still to watch you step up on a stage and say things. If they have done all that, it’s because they see this occasion as a chance to learn what’s so great about you, and also that you’re a decent human being. All the speechwriter wants to do is help you get those two things across.

So:

If your speechwriter wants to sit down and talk to you about what you want to say, then sit the down and talk to them—if necessary, at length. (Because how can you justify the expense of paying a professional speechwriter but not investing the time to talk to that person?)

If your speechwriter wants you to tell a story about yourself, tell the story, or come up with another one that you do want to tell. Oh, you don’t like to talk about yourself because you’re too humble? Sorry, Honey, you’re the CEO of Chevron. We don’t pay you $26 million to be humble. We pay you that much to lead. Which requires letting people know who you are and what you think (at minimum).

If your speechwriter wants you to share your vision for the future of the organization, industry, society that is affording you an amazingly good income, share your vision (in the most imaginative and compelling terms). And if you don’t have a vision? Your speechwriter can help you with that too, but it’s going to cost more.

If your speechwriter suggests that you utter language that the audience might actually remember, or make an argument that someone could potentially disagree with, or issue marching orders that might actually make a difference in the world? Assume that’s good advice and if you quibble, do so in a collaborative and not contumacious way. Yes, contumacious. Look it up.

And finally, when you and your speechwriter finally agree on what you are going to say, say it! With the same language both of you worked hard to come up with. Don’t shamble off the script to tell an aside. This isn’t happy hour. It’s a speech, which is Latin for: the robbery of the precious time of dozens or hundreds or thousands of other people, who have consented to this out of a belief that something civically useful might occur.

Your speechwriter only wants to honor those people by making that thing occur. Help your speechwriter, and help yourself.

Gen X-and-older colleagues will remember a series of old Miller High Life commercials, that taught us all what life was about: hard work all day and hard drinking right after. These commercials showed train engineers, lobstermen, farmers, loggers—clocking out and repairing to a warm tavern to chug beer and yuk it up with the boys.

Voice Over: “You dance on a river of wood, and the spinning shapes and the cold dark water … and you keep on dancing, until the last log is in place and you can head for Miller time. Time for the best-tasting beer you can find …”

Problem is, fewer and fewer beer drinkers actually do that kind of work anymore. But even us office geeks like to drink beer at the end of the day and feel great about it. So I took it on myself to create a Miller time commercial, for our times.

Voice Over: “You send more passive-aggressive emails in a day than most men send in a week. You’ve got carpal tunnel syndrome, impostor syndrome, and a strong sense that you’re wasting your one wild and precious life. But by God, you’re authentic, and resilient and vulnerable. So now’s the time to slam that laptop shut and head for the best-tasting beer you can find.” And the old song comes in: “If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer … “

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P.S. Speaking of drinking (since it is Friday after all), I feel like I’ve read everything there is to say on that rich subject. And then the author of a new book comparing her addiction to alcohol to her relationship with Catholicism writes that alcoholism “is little more than the belief that the ecstasy and joy that life doles out so sparingly and unpredictably can be had on demand, whenever you want it. It is an attempt to bottle grace.”

I’m not sure alcoholism is a “belief” in all cases … but that is how drinkers think (and why we struggle to imagine how anyone else could ever think another way). As Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin or Jack Lemmon famously maybe said, “I feel sorry for people that don’t drink because when they wake up in the morning, that is the best they’re going to feel all day.”

And of course it was the great Norm Macdonald who said, “I remember a psychiatrist once telling me that I gamble in order to escape the reality of life, and I told him that’s why everyone does everything.”

Where was I going with this? Should we get one more round, just in case?