Writing Boots

Lately I'm reading Sin and the Second City, a book about prostitution and its enemies in Chicago around the turn of the last century. What's interesting is that the most sympathetic characters–indeed, the most contemporary ones–are Minna and Ada Everleigh, owners of the most notorious brothel of the era. What's to like about these sisters: They know their own minds, they're not hypocrites, they have a fixed idea of what quality is in their business and, unlike the legal beagles and religious reformers who dog them, they have a sense of humor.

In response to a government inquiry into how her conscience allowed her to be a madam, Minna laughed. "I am writing," she said, "what I will call The Biography of A Lost Soul."

As for those dead, failed reformers, I'm reminded of them as I sit in a hospital in Ohio accompanying my dad as he takes some medical tests. I'm on the computer in his room, playing games with the silly minds of the hospital's IT programmers, who let me read news, but don't let me read sports, let me read endless "opinion columns" about pigs and lipstick but not a "lifestyle" essay by a friend whose wife is dying of Alzheimer's.

I realize I'm playing the Internet hide-and-seek game corporate employees andexecutives play all day long with IT programs designed to limit Internet access in the name of "productivity."

What a universal humiliation. How silly this will all look someday.

When I went to work for Larry Ragan in 1992, I read one of his columns and then sat down to read all the rest. This is from one of my favorites, republished today on Ragan.com:

 

When a prolific New York writer was once asked if he spent much time in revising his work, he gave a reply that has become famous:

“Rewrite it? I don’t even reread it.”

To attain such confidence in one’s craft is perhaps the goal of many writers, but I have often felt that an anecdote about Robert Benchley comes closer to the true writer’s attitude toward his work.

Benchley confessed that he closeted himself away from people when he reread his stuff because it would have been embarrassing if others were to see him laughing at his own humor.

These two stories could neatly summarize two conflicting attitudes editors hold toward their work. Some grow blasé—they don’t even bother to reread their material. Others never tire of doing so. Not only do they reread it, but they study it, admire it (with many, many misgivings), try to improve it, and never fail to be awestricken at the wonder of their thoughts going out into the world, naked, defenseless, but unashamed.

 

That column reminds me how lucky I am, to have worked for Larry Ragan before he died in '95, and to reread my own writing, on occasion, with Benchley's embarrassed glee.

Do you like to reread your own writing sometimes? If not, why on earth do you do write?

 

It's best not to trust people who:

 

• Say “frankly.”

 

• Use your name a lot. "David, as I'm sure you'll agree, David."

 

• Attribute their every fuckup to “a perfect storm.”

 

• Respond to criticism by saying they’ve been “thrown under the bus.” (What bus?)

 

• Describe their strategy (or their coffee or wine or anything else) as “robust.”

 

• Tell you, “I’m being perfectly transparent with you.”

 

• Tell you how “passionate” they are about branding, roofing tile or whatever else it is they’re selling.

 

• Say they want your feedback.