Chip's Writing Lessons #74

NEWSLETTER

• Writers Speak | Lewis Lapham on Journalists and Vagabond Poets

• Interview | 4 Questions with Frank Bruni

• Craft Lesson | The Power of Omission

• Writing to Savor | “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind,” by Jennifer Senior, The Atlantic, Sept. 2021

• Book World | Big Blurb

• Tip of the week | Craft a Two-Pronged Magazine Pitch

  WRITERS SPEAK | LEWIS LAPHAM ON JOURNALISTS AND VAGABOND POETS

“Journalists, as well as novelists, have less in common with diplomats and soothsayers than they do with vagabond poets. Stories move from truth to fact, not the other way around. The tellers of tales endeavor to convey the essence of the thing, but to do so they must give it a name, an age, and an address.”

- Lewis Lapham

INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH FRANK BRUNI

Frank Bruni has been a prominent journalist for more than three decades, including more than twenty-five years at The New York Times, the last ten of them as a nationally renowned op-ed columnist who appeared frequently as a television commentator. (His archive of columns, starting with the most recent, can be found here.) He was also a White House correspondent for the Times, its Rome bureau chief and, for five years, its chief restaurant critic. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including The Beauty of Dusk, which reached #5 on both the hardcover nonfiction and the combined print and e-book nonfiction lists. In July 2021, he became a professor at Duke University, teaching media-oriented classes in the Sanford School of Public Policy. He continues to write his popular weekly newsletter for the Times (you can sign up here) and to produce occasional essays as one of the newspaper’s Contributing Opinion Writers. He lives in Chapel Hill, N.C.

What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned as a writer? 

That your first draft is often precisely that, and it can be terrible without being a signal that you should jump ship. Keep sailing. Or rowing. And bailing water. Just don’t overwork a metaphor the way I just did. 

What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life? 

The unpredictability of how much time something will take me and how easy or hard it will be. I’ll zip through two pieces of writing that turn out really well and take minimal effort, and I’ll think: “I’ve cracked the code! I’ve turned the corner!” And then the next piece will be the most sluggishly produced horror show of my career. You just never know. And should never assume. 

If you had to choose a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be?

I’m a pasta machine. I can pump out nothing edible unless I’ve put in lots of flour, eggs and water, by which I mean reporting, reading, thinking. I make only noodles – no rice – and only so many kinds of those. I can’t do David Remnick’s erudite agnolotti or David Sedaris’s inimitable farfalle. But my orecchiette aren’t bad. 

What is the single best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you? 

When you hit a wall, when you’re feeling blocked, step away from the computer. Take a run. Rub the dog’s belly. Read 50 pages of a novel. Watch a stupid situation comedy. Let your brain relax. Let it reboot. No one ever got anywhere by banging on the backspace key for hours on end. 

CRAFT LESSON | THE POWER OF OMISSION

When a lookout on the Titanic sounded the alarm, “Iceberg right ahead,” on April 14, 1912, what he feared was not the jagged tops of ice that broke the surface of the North Atlantic, but the mountain beneath. That’s because only about one-tenth of an iceberg pierces the water’s surface.

The same principle—the theory of omission, or what Ernest Hemingway called ”the iceberg” theory—holds true in news writing. 

Effective journalists always gather more information than they need. By the time you’ve finished a 15-inch story or a 60-second broadcast package, you may have interviewed half a dozen people and pored over a stack of background materials, including sheaves of reports, press releases, statements, and internet research. 

Too often, we sink our stories with information we can’t bear to part with, even if it’s not relevant. “But I spent two hours interviewing the Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Non-Essential Information,” we wail. “I need four paragraphs to describe that room.”

When our editor says, “keep it short,” or the copy desk sends word to “trim by a third,” we moan. “I don’t know what to cut. It’s all great stuff.” 

Stephen Buckley, who shone as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, told me, “I always worry that I don’t have enough material for a story, so I overreport. Of course, then I have so much to wade through.”

“You can’t ever overdo it,” I replied. “You can’t overreport or research too much. But you can under think. You can under plan. You can under revise.”

WHAT LIES BENEATH

What makes a powerful story is all the work that lies beneath. It isn’t wasted effort, as many journalists fear, but instead constitutes the essential ingredient that gives writing its greatest power: making every word count.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Writers write best with an overabundance of material, as my mentor, Don Murray, taught me.

Alix Freedman always kept in mind her Wall Street Journal editor’s description of journalism’s essential challenge: “Distill a beer keg’s worth of information into a perfume bottle.”

That’s why the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter cataloged her reporting on a legal pad where she listed quotes, examples, statistics and themes she uncovered in her reporting.

Each got a grade. Only those marked “A” made it into print. Freedman’s aim was to “maximize impact,” to use “not just an example but a telling example,” she said. Not just a quote but “a quote on point.”

The power of a story comes from what’s not in it.

 It’s a paradox, one of many contradictions that lie in the journalist’s path.

But you ignore it at your peril.

WRITING TO SAVOR | “What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind,” by Jennifer Senior, The Atlantic, Sept. 2021

When I heard that Jennifer Senior won the Pulitzer for feature writing last week, I got the chills and unbidden tears sprung to my eyes.

I’m happy for Senior, an Atlantic staff writer, but I don’t know her.

No, it was sadness sparked by the memory of her story about Bobby McIlvane, killed two decades ago on 9/11 when terrorists flew planes into the pair of Manhattan skyscrapers known as the World Trade Center.

I first read the story when it appeared on The Atlantic’s September 2021 cover and clearly, it sunk deep into my subconscious. It’s an unforgettable narrative about the people and the things—a wallet and journals and legal pads filled with the private thoughts, philosophical inquiries and romantic dreams—left behind by Bobby, who was 26 and had gone there that morning for a conference. The Pulitzer Board called it an “unflinching portrait of a family’s reckoning with loss in the 20 years since 9/11, masterfully braiding the author’s personal connection to the story with sensitive reporting that reveals the long reach of grief.”

This morning I began to read it again and was struck anew by its power. Meticulously rendered with unforgettable details and a poetic prose style like this description:  “And Bobby: My God. The boy was incandescent. When he smiled it looked for all the world like he’d swallowed the moon.” It’s writing worth savoring and learning from, even if it makes you cry.

THE BOOK WORLD | BIG BLURB

I got an exciting gift this week —a blurb —for my forthcoming book, “33 Ways Not To Screw Up Your Journalism.” Blurbs are those brief encomiums that appear on the back cover of books.

Readers considering a purchase will usually scan them, consider the sentiment expressed and, more important. who wrote them. The more prominent or relevant the blurber, the better. There’s a debate whether they actually sell books; even so, the book biz requires them.

“While they don’t sell books,” marketing guru Seth Gordin says, “they do a lot for an author, particularly one who is leaning out of the boat, doing brave work.” I don’t feel brave, but I consider my new book strong and important, a vital survival manual when the news industry is in free fall. My mission, admittedly ambitious, is to get it in the hands of every reporter and editor, student, j-prof and coach. Like I said, ambitious.

Casting about for someone to praise my book, I thought of Dan Rather, the TV journalism legend, author and awesome Twitter presence @DanRather.

We’ve never met, but I decided to make a cold call, er, email. Al Tompkins, my former colleague, provided me with his email and suggested I mention my connection with The Poynter Institute, where I taught reporting and writing for 15 years, because Rather was a fan of the school’s work. I told him about my dream for the book.

Amazingly, in less than three hours, he responded. “Believe in long shots,” he wrote. “Especially with people who have a driving dream such as yourself. I will try to help.  I’ll try to order the book. Meantime, maybe send me electronically some samples. Good luck with the book. Godspeed with your important work. dr.”

I know this seems like bragging, (okay, I am a little) but there’s an important lesson here for every journalist: Decent people, even stars, or ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, can be enormously generous. If you’d like something—an interview, a contact, a blurb—there’s no risk in asking. Always ask. As with any interview, be unfailingly polite. Make sure your request is clear. And don’t be crushed if the answer is an outright no or radio silence. Ask someone else.

Three days later this pithy, but extremely helpful line appeared in my inbox.

“Excellent for journalists of all ages and experience.”

- Dan Rather

In eight words, Dan, if I may be so bold, succinctly delivered a central message about my book’s appeal. “Godspeed as you go” he ended the message. “I hope the book does well and has a long life.”

“You, sir,” I wrote back, “are a gentleman in the truest sense of the word.” Another lesson, inculcated by my dear mother: always write a thank you note.

TIP OF THE WEEK | CRAFT A TWO-PRONGED MAGAZINE PITCH

The first time that Rachel Aviv, a New Yorker staff writer, pitched the magazine, she received a sound piece of advice for anyone trying to win the chance to publish serious narrative nonfiction. “Magazines actually don't get that many really good pitches,” she told me in an interview for a Nieman Storyboard annotation. One that succeeds is a pitch that clearly describes a story with a compelling protagonist underlaid by layers of social significance. “It’s not like editors are being flooded with amazing pitches. If you have all that, that’s very exciting to an editor,” she said.  Aviv’s work exemplifies this approach. In “The Shadow Penal System for Struggling Kids,” published in October 2021, Aviv exposed a profitable and abusive troubled teen industry told through the tragic tale of Emma Burris, who was a high school freshman when at the request of her adoptive parents, she was hustled away from home in the middle of the night and placed in a Christian institution where treatment bore many of the hallmarks of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Look for other New Yorker stories and examples published by ProPublica that exemplify this approach to stories that can be distilled into magazine pitches that succeed. 

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