Writing Boots

One might lament that modern communicators are bereft of journalism backgrounds and don’t know how to write a lead. But evidence shows me lately that communicators are bereft of conversational backgrounds.

At least the ones promoting themselves on LinkedIn, with opening gambits like these, the likes of which I’ve read just in the last couple days:

“Early in my career, I had a job that made me miserable …”

“Nonfiction readers, I have a question for you. Why do you read nonfiction?”

“If I had a dollar for every time a speechwriting client asked me for an opening joke …”

A busy reader—and every reader feels busy—has to know right away why she or he is reading this right now. Has to know that at the very least.

I mean, even a companion on a car ride wants to know why you’re bringing something up, and if you’re compelled to introduce something off topic, you apologize: “This is apropos of nothing, but …”

For half the LinkedIn posts I read, that ought to be the headline.

The problem is, the writer knows why the reader is reading this right now. It’s because the writer privately committed to publishing a blog post at nine a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and it is Wednesday at nine a.m. But your need to put some more wood into the content chipper doesn’t equal my need to read.

Your lead doesn’t have to tell the reader, If you don’t read this right now you’ll be totally out of the loop on a matter of great national importance.

But it’s bare minimum—even if you have regular readers who are in the routine of bagging what you’re mowing—to say: Hey, here’s why I’m writing this today.

Here are the last three rather un-earth-shattering leads on Writing Boots that nevertheless anchor us in the moment:

“On Thursday, I’m recording an interview about Soccer Dad with former soccer dad and now prominent sports parenting podcaster Todd Merkow …” (I went on to give my reaction to an interview Merkow did with his daughter awhile back.)

“In response to my Thursday piece about Axios, CEOs and AI, my friend, the Des Moines bar impresario Jeff Bruning wrote: ‘AI is like the electric wheelchair for the mind. It’s good to use when you really need one, but if you use one because you’re lazy you’re heading down the road of atrophy.'”

“They had an eclipse in Europe this week. Legendary Chicago weatherman and Chicago treasure Tom Skilling … had a powerful emotional reaction to a similar event a few years ago, in the Midwest …”

Unless you are Robin Williams reincarnate, here are the only three situations I know of that you can get someone to listen to you gas on about something just because it popped into your head: on Hour Twelve of a road trip, on Day Seven of a night watch on an ocean crossing in a sailboat, and in Year 32 of a marriage.

Once, my wife and I were sitting quietly in the family room.

“Hey,” she said. “I went to a powwow once. Did I ever tell you that?”

“Huh. No, I don’t think you ever did.”

“Yeah. My grandma took me.”

“Huh.”

Silence.

(But come to think of it? We were watching a documentary about a Native American tribe at the time.)

On Thursday, I’m recording an interview about Soccer Dad with former soccer dad and now prominent sports parenting podcaster Todd Merkow. In preparation, I listened to the second of two of Merkow’s interviews—and if you’re interested you should start with the first—with his daughter Sydney. She had a promising but troubled youth soccer career that ended before college and led to a harrowing period that she almost didn’t make it through. She sounds astonished to even be telling the tale—and astonished that she was once the person she’s telling it about.

Along with her father, I listened to her testimony with a pounding heart and watery eyes.

What are we doing? What have we done?

When I was a kid my little sister was in ballet from a very young age. Rehearsals two towns over four nights a week, performances on the weekends, summers away at ballet camps at places like the North Carolina School of the Arts and Saratoga Springs Performing Arts Center and the New York City Ballet.

Watching that madness for my whole childhood, I thought my mother was crazy for getting my sister wrapped up in that. Chronic injuries to growing young bodies, overzealous stage moms, abusive ballet masters, rampant eating disorders, an insane time commitment, a myopic dance-world focus and a Total Identity Takeover—no way was I going to get any daughter of mine involved in a thing like that. It just wasn’t healthy.

So when I had a daughter, I enrolled her three-year-old precious self in soccer. By the time she went D1, 14 years later … what of those terrible ballet perils had I actually saved her from?

My generation of sports parents had no idea what we were getting ourselves or our kids into. We thought it was Little League, and it turned out to be big league. And Scout emerged from her college soccer career intact, but facing a transition that our whole family deals with and talks about all the time. And we all still hope and expect that the experience will provide a foundation for the rest of her life. (And with sisters.)

But knowing what I know now—and having talked to hundreds of parents and youth sports-involved folks in the wake of Soccer Dad‘s publication?—where would I steer another child of mine for whom I wanted a balanced, rich and well-rounded upbringing, and a healthy transition from youth to adulthood?

In the podcast with his daughter, Merkow almost offhandedly makes the point that—you know how we understand that professional athletes often go through a terrible time when they retire, and “the cheering stops”? After living the formative decades of their lives as a big star, who are they now? We always knew that was terribly dangerous, and felt sorry for these folks as they inevitably thrashed around, reinventing themselves to contend with a future they must see as blank—and a mirror they must see as empty. Well, that now must happen to thousands and thousands and thousands of kids when their all-absorbing youth sports careers end: whether at 15, 17, 19 or 22.

I repeat: What are we doing? What have we done?

And: What are we going to do about it?

I wonder if sadder and wiser ballet people have something to teach us. A quick search reveals an article from the Royal Ballet School: “The Evolution of Ballet Training: Considering What’s Beyond Early Specialisation.”

Sounds familiar.