Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

To whom it may deeply concern

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A few days ago I wrote to former President Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson asking him if he'd be up for doing a podcast interview about his Washington Post column declaring President Obama's rhetorical reputation in decline.

I got an auto reply in return:

"Thank you for your email. It is not possible for me to respond to each note, but I attempt to review them all, and I deeply appreciate your input. Sincerely, Michael J. Gerson."

Am I being peevish to ask: How is it possible to deeply appreciate something you're only going to attempt to review?

And the torch is passed …

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Scout likes to watch reruns of "Supernanny" while we eat dinner—"I like to see kids being bad"—and God forgive us, some evenings we acquiesce.

Last night's Hapless Mother was failing at playing diplomat between her Out of Control Kids.

"That woman needs to add two words to her vocabulary," I muttered into my wine glass, thinking the word "vocabulary" would throw the six-year-old.

"Tough gazotts?" Scout said.*

* Tough gazotts was my mother's term (it sounds Hebrew but it isn't) for—well, you know what it was for. And it's my term, too; in fact, I'm not sure that, without it, I'd be able to handle parenting at all. (Another good thing Mom used to say when we complained of some unfairness: "It all works out in the Great Cosmic Wash.")

The hack’s motto: “Everybody needs an editor”

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A bracing yarn comes at the end of "Ghost Writers," an essay by Cynthia Ozick, included in the 2009 edition of The Best American Essays (my annual writing seminar).

After spending seven years on a first novel that went unpublished, she spent another seven on Novel Two and sent 800 pages to a publisher:

Back came the manuscript in the mail, with one hundred pages all marked up in red pencil, and a note. The note said, "If you do everything my red pencil suggests, and of course there will be more in this vein, we will accept your novel for publication. But if you decline to follow my red pencil's indispensable advice, then we will decline to publish." Fourteen years gone! Outrun by the cohort of my generation, I lusted for print as Jacob had panted after Rachel. To the editor I wrote: "Seven years I have labored for those words, and yet another seven years; so I say unto you, Nay, not one jot or tittle will I alter or undo." To which the editor replied, "O.K., we'll take it anyway."

Contrary to the huffy mantra, "everybody needs an editor," that we hear from workaday writers like corporate communicators and journalists, a writer who has tried to make something perfect ought to bristle at heavy editing.

Often those edits do turn out to be useful, but the only reason a writer necessarily needs an editor is if he or she hasn't enough talent for the job, hasn't put forth the effort, hasn't spent enough time at it, or is writing to please someone else and not him- or herself.

Which is a lot of us, a lot of the time.

But let's not be self-righteous about it, shall we?