Writing Boots

Friday Happy Hour Video: "And so we beat on"

We talked this week about the difficulty of writers speaking. But writers are pretty good at reading and reciting. When was the last time you heard the last lines of The Great Gatsby, read by a smart writer? Here's Chicago writer Bill Nack.

The world is a happy place, too

In my continuing effort to counter my own pat negativity, allow me to pass on the observation of a new acquantance, who excused his own workaholism by pointing out that a workplace offers "a relatively stable environment to go to every day."

We individualists and self-made islands may have a hard time admitting, even to ourselves, that we rely on work—and the various goofballs we deal with every day—as a social comfort and as a reassuring physical and mental routine.

But just because we don't like to admit it doesn't mean it's not true.

Leo and Shelly, Wolf and Friedman

My mom always told my dad he needed to gain weight. "No, Leo says 180 is enough," my dad would say, about his doctor, Leo Wolf. My mother didn't like Dr. Wolf—thought he was old-fashioned and complacent—and referred to him as just, "Wolf." Wolf also thought it was okay that my dad smoked three cigarettes per day. And it probably was. But find a doctor to tell you that today.

Mom didn't go to Leo, she went to Shelly—whose full name was Sheldon, but who my dad called by his last name, "Friedman"—and she took my sister and me to him, too. Shelly was more liberal than Leo. He was more liberal than my mother, actually. Once, he suggested that, in order to cure her manic depression, she try cocaine. "I'm telling you, Carol, it's fantastic."

But Leo and Shelly were family advisors; they were the human embodiment of a vast and mysterious medical realm. They were people whose genius and foibles we knew. And they were doctors, too.

My parents sometimes followed their advice, sometimes ignored it, but always seeked it, because these men were friends, and why wouldn't you tell a friend your troubles? (As opposed to a stranger; once, a heavy-drinking pal of mine was asked by a doctor he'd just met, how much alcohol he consumed; he cracked under the persistent inquisition, bellowing: "More than everybody else!")

Sometimes doctors settled family arguments that didn't really have everything to do with medicine. For two years I begged my mom to let me try out for the junior high football team. I was too small, she said, and would get hurt. Finally, she made an appointment for the two of us to see Shelly Friedman, who she hoped would somehow break our loggerheads. "Oh Carol, let him play," Friedman said. "The worst that can happen is he'll break a leg."

Relieved, she looked at me, shook her head, and shrugged, OK. I looked back at her, pretending an I-told-you-so face, but meanwhile thinking, "Break a leg?"

I never tried out. Thanks to Shelly.

We'll live without family doctors, of course. But not as long, I'll bet. And not as well.

How a writer ought to prepare for a speech

Yesterday we talked about why writers don't necessarily make good speakers. Nevertheless writers, more frequently than florists or fire fighters, are asked to speak in public. And the more successful the writer, generally, the more he or she is invited to speak—and thus, make an ass of him or herself.

We can't have that.

At the risk of offering something for free something useful (and hard-earned), here are a few tips specifically for writers who would like to stand before people and appear to be at least half as wise and a third as witty as their prose promises:

1. You are not Christopher Hitchens or Fran Lebowitz. Get it through your head.

2. Eight is enough. That's my rule of rehearsal. Eight times through is the right number, whether you'll be reading from a text and want to appear semi-sponteneous, or speaking extemporaneously and want to appear somewhat coherent. These eight rehearsals don't just take time; they take energy. During the first sessions all by yourself, your hands will sweat, and you will gasp for breath.

3. If you think you can't practice an improvised speech, you are incorrect. You simply improvise the rehearsal. Over and over again. Sometimes your second rehearsal goes better than the third. But generally, the thing keeps getting better—until it starts getting gradually worse, at which time you know you have rehearsed it enough. Now, it'll actually be much better when you have real eyeballs to look at instead of your microwave oven.

4. It's okay to read it from a script too. But the message should be this close to explosive, the delivery must be animated and the writing had better be good enough to justify your insistence on sticking to the script. Being read something dull by a dullard—that wasn't fun in any century.

5. Above all, you must believe you are the only person to be delivering this particular message. While most of the above advice is applies to anyone trying for success in public speaking, I believe writers in particular need to be connected, on an almost spiritual basis, with their message. When I have spoken on communication technology, strategy and management, I have sucked. Why? Because I knew that 500 or 1,000 other people could give that talk just as well or better. It's when I've been talking about the purpose of communication, about writing, about how people connect with other people—these are the times my eyes have welled up with tears as I've stood with one foot on my mother's shoulder and one foot on my dad's. Uh, yeah. More like that.

All this sounds like a tremendous, time-consuming pain in the ass, doesn't it? It is a tremendous pain. But no more a pain than writing a long feature story would be for a certified electrician. You are a writer! You are not a speaker! You must work hard to convince your audience otherwise!

Do it anyway. Spend the time. It's the difference between communicating a message that's important to you and memorable to an audience, and communicating another, equally important and memorable message: You are a bumbling, arrogant fool who neither knows him- or herself nor values the hundreds of human hours being wasted listening to your jumbled, empty words.

Writers: We're natural lunatics, but to be better public speakers, we have to rehearse

I rely on the Sunday New York Times to bring me up to speed on all the important news I missed during the week, while I was working. And, if I find myself next to a pool as I did last week in Ft. Myers, Fla., I read the annual collection of the Best American Essays to see what great things were written while I was busy trying to write great things myself.

Reading the paperback anthology, I feel like a lucky thief, stealing the best work out of magazines—from the American Scholar to The Wilson Quarterly—that I don't subscribe to. Sometimes, though, I feel like a befuddled goalie, such as when I ran across a short piece titled "When Writers Speak," which appeared last year in a publication I do read—The New York Times book review.

"Like most writers, I seem to be smarter in print than in person," writes Aurthur Krystal.

In fact, I am smarter when I'm writing. I don't claim this merely because there is usually no one around to observe the false starts and groan-inducing sentences that make a mockery of my presumed intelligence, but because when the work is going well, I'm expressing opinions I've never utterd in conversation and that otherwise might never occur to me. Nor am I the first to have this thought, which naturally occurred to me while composing. according to Edgar Allen Poe, writing in Graham's Magazine, "Some Frenchman—possibly Montaigne—says: 'People talk about thinking, but for my part I never think except when I sit down to write.'" I can't find these words in my copy of Montaigne, but I agree with the thought, whoever might have formed it. And it's not because writing helps me to organize my ideas or reveals how I feel about something, but because it actually creates thought, or at least supplies a petri dish for its genesis.

My dad, who enjoyed a small but rabid following among readers of a an automobile magazine he wrote for, did not enjoy the occasional invitations to give speeches to his fans, because he knew, as he dreadingly put it, "I can't give them what they want."

For the entire first decade of my career, I staggered through most of my public-speaking appearances because I considered public speaking an inferior art to writing, and unworthy of a writer's rehearsal time. It only took a couple dozen minor debacles to learn that if I don't rehearse a lot, I make an ass of myself.

I've put hundreds of writers in front of big audiences at communication conferences. I've heard many of them brag in the bar the night before, about having put the presentation together on the airplane. And I've watched them bomb. You know what kinds of writers generally don't make that mistake? Speechwriters, who know better.

People like Mark Twain were lucky enough to have two separate skills—writing, and speaking—that go nicely together. And by "people like Mark Twain," I mean "Garrison Keillor."

As for the rest of us—well, I'll let Arthur Krystal finish my point:

... when the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt told a friend, a Parisian doctor, that he wanted to meet a certifiable lunatic, he was invited to the doctor's home for supper. A few days later, Humboldt found himself placed at the dinner table between the two men. One was polite, somewhat reserved, and didn't go in for small talk. The other, dressed in ill-matched clothes, chattered away on every subject under the sun, gesticulating wildly, while making horrible faces. When the meal was over, Humboldt turned to his host. "I like your lunatic," he whispered, indicating the talkative man. The host frowned. "But it's the other one who's the lunatic. The man you're pointing to is Monsieur Honoré de Balzac."

Tomorrow, I'll share here what I learned about how a writer ought to prepare for a speaking engagement. Meanwhile, dear writer: Can you spiel thyself?

Friday Happy Hour Video: All the cute ones at once, and let's get it over with

Look, I'm on vacation next week, not going to be blogging, not going to be doing much of anything, actually, that doesn't involve heavy sand and sun and Cristie and Scout.

So let me leave you with these three adorable videos so that if I'm eaten by an alligator, you remember me as a curmudgeon—but a cuddly curmudgeon. Cheers, Boots Brigade.

Why I like politicians

In a democracy, how do patriots reconcile the fact that they hate politicians? Those they have elected, and those they will elect in the future?

I happen to like politicians. Sometimes I like them more as campaigners than office holders. Other times I actually like them better in office.

But the truth is, I like them in general. As people. As in, gal sits down next to me at a dinner party, I ask her what she does, she says she's an elected official, I say, Great!

I've covered a number of politicians as a writer, and I recently interviewed seven, for the cover story in this week's Chicago Reader.* Also, I had a close friend who became an elected official, and I watched him work—in parades, at fundraisers, at Greek restaurants in small towns.

Here's what I like about politicians:

• They are willing to meet with people—dozens every day, hundreds every month and thousands every year—and hear about their troubles, from all their stupifyingly various points of view. Go ahead and chalk up the motive to getting reelected, but not before you ask yourself how many interviews you'd be willing to have to get a job.

• They don't think a lot about what they think—they think about what you think. This is what it means to be "political"; and the better the politician, the more political, not the less.

• They ask for what they want. A politician is used to looking right into your eye and asking for your support, for your money, for your vote. As Steve Goodman sang: That's not an easy thing to do. When was the last time you did it?

• They stand up and make speeches and try to figure out which words people like best. How can a communicator not like that?

• They work very, very hard. Just about every one of the ex-pols I spoke with for the Reader story said that life after politics is a breeze; and one of these guys is a CEO.

• They don't spend a lot of time thinking about what the perfect job for them would be. Politicians live a wild and unpredictable existence—at the mercy of mad electoral mood swings, at the center of constantly shifting power dynamics, always either in a spotlight or in range of a searchlight. If this makes them less introspective (or suits a less bookish type of person), well, what of it?

I don't wish everybody was a politician. I'm just glad some people are. Because somebody needs to be.

Right?

*Illustration by Ray Noland.

People who talk too much

Tonight my man Crescenzo calls bullshit on the old you-can-never-communicate-too-much bromide. 
And when Crescenzo calls bullshit, he calls bullshit.

Are you fully alive every moment?

"In every moment, the quality of your life is on the line. In each, you are either fully alive or relatively dead."

So says a Dan Millman, who for all I know could be relatively alive for fully dead.

He's quoted by my normally sensible pal Suzanne, on Facebook.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," I commented. "Why do people say things like that? Doesn't Dan Millman, whoever he is, ever surf the Internet or watch the last third of a Sanford & Son episode?"

I can tease Suzanne because I too am more than capable of manic giddiness. Just last week I sent this bubbling bunch of babble to my best pal and my sister, and 20 minutes later thought: What was I thinking?

Fully alive is good for writing, but relatively dead is what an editor ought to be.

What are they going to do next, close up the Internet?

So Cisco is shitcanning the Flip video camera. Great. The camera and its editing software are the only electronic geegaws that I know how to use competently (as I used them last weekend, to showcase the cartoonish skills of the baddest player in the short history of women's tackle football).

I'm used to technology roaring ahead of me and having to catch up. But I'm not used to being dropped off of the technology I finally managed to master.

Gee, our old Lasalle ran great.