Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Going down the road feeling glad

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You hear all the time about people who are good to be with—in small doses.

But most of the people I know—me included, I think—are actually better in large doses. Less noisy. More reflective. More relaxed. More honest. More focused on the few things that matter, and less distracted by the avalanches of shit that doesn't. More liable to laugh like a little kid.

I'm back this week from a road trip with my old writer pal Paul Engelman. In a four-day round trip from Chicago, we saw my boyhood home in Ohio, his boyhood home in New Jersey, the Wall Street protest and McSorley's Wonderful Saloon in New York and a wedding at an opulent but rainwashed horse farm in Connecticut.

I've had more than my share of road trips in my life, but they've been on motorcycles lately, and it's been awhile since I did this in a car. All that time to talk. Dozens and dozens of hours, to talk.

I'd forgotten what happens on a car trip that long.

The adrenaline wears off by the second day and your conversations take on an unfamiliar rhythm. Their properties change. Their purpose changes, and then sheds all purposes, except for passing the time. Long stories short? No, short stories long!

You stop trying to justify the stories you are telling as being apropos of something. It's "Hey, this just popped into my head, so I'm gonna tell it to you."

Should we get something to eat here, or wait until we have to get gas? There are too many of these decisions, so you dispense with chivalry and you settle on a reliable system: You impose your will when it is strong. And you do what the other guy thinks until you decide he's gravely wrong.

As you cruise the last few hours in gathering quiet, you begin to realize that a four-day conversation between two friends amounts to a kind of Constitution As Far As We're Concerned. Nothing that you'd ever try to get anyone else to sign—but written, and stored where you can get at it. You know, in case of any future dispute.

Do you have a good friend you've never had a road trip with?

Find a reason. I'm glad I did.

Coffee doesn’t communicate

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And while we're at it, how on earth did those temperance women expect men to tell one another the stinkingabsurdsadhilarioushumiliating truth when they put an end to taverns?

At Starfuckinbuck's?

Naw. I once proposed to a friend with whom I'd had a falling out that we have a heart-to-heart at a coffee shop. He really wanted to honor my request. Know how I know? He took two days before he e-mailed me back saying he just couldn't imagine having such a conversation sober. He passed my test. (And called my bluff.)

Drinking—like smoking: bad for physical health, good for communication.*

* To a point. As in bowling and drinking, the Three-And-Nine rule applies: You're at your best when you've had three, but the value begins to seep out when you've had more than nine.

Cigarettes: Bad for the humans, good for humanity

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Yesterday we talked about the importance of ceremonies, because they give people an excuse to communicate.

You know what else is good for communication?

Cigarettes.

Shel Holtz remembered in a recent blog post that the smoking clatch outside his long-ago corporate workplace was a gaggle of ever-rotating strangers who had nothing in common but work, so they wound up learning a lot about the company by talking to one another.

When you think of the potential for employees to communicate with one another in that organic way—you wonder how people learn about anything in these days when the only smokers left are either old or crazy or both.

Cigarettes are good management tools, too.

When I was editorial director at Ragan Communications, I used to practice a management technique I called Managing By Smoking Around. If I had something to tell one of my writers, or if she had something to ask me—about story structure or salary structure—the idea was always just, "Let's go have a smoke."

We'd go down the back stairs and outside, I'd light a butt, and we'd have five or 10 minutes to hammer the issue out. If we needed longer, fine—I had a whole pack—but we tried to wrap it up quick.

And the point is, it was no big deal. I wanted a smoke anyway and it was a nice private way to chat without having a private chat with the boss in the ominous conference room. I think a lot of little issues were kept from becoming big issues because they were snuffed out as quick as the cigarette itself.

It's funny to say, but now that I don't smoke, I honestly wonder if I could manage people at all.