My return to journalism
November 16th, 2011 § 1 Comment
I should have posted this earlier, but I’ve been traveling for much of the last 10 days. (I’ll be writing about that in a future post.)
My first article after a pretty long break from reporting came out last week. In it, I detail the situation of the Colombia office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, and what the office’s significant funding shortfall in 2011 means for the country’s millions of internally displaced persons. Read the article here.
All up in the interweb
June 1st, 2011 § 1 Comment
In May, I got…
1. Interviewed.
2. Featured. (If you don’t see me, click here.)
3. Work: I have begun working as a freelance writer (er, I guess the word is blogger) for ESL Library and Expatistan. I’ll post links when my pieces go live.
Update 6/8/11: As promised, links: ESL Library post and Expatistan article.
I’m a (re-)published author
May 15th, 2011 § 3 Comments
Beginning my sophomore year in college, I thought I would do some new things. I liked the idea of getting involved with the Yale Daily News, but I didn’t have specific ambitions. I wanted to do some photography with “real” cameras, so it made sense to start working as a photographer. And I had written a sports column for The Observer, my high school newspaper, so I figured I would try the same in college.
Getting involved was easy enough. I contacted some people at the paper, was introduced to the photography editors, and was handed a camera the first time I entered the newspaper’s building. To start writing, I emailed the sports editors. They told me to write a sample column; if it was good, the paper would run it.
I worked hard on that column. After all, it was my one shot, I thought, to start writing for the paper. I spent a day or two on it, and sent it to the sports editors. They called me into the building that night to edit it. It would run the next day.
Everything went from there. I made staff as a photographer, wrote a weekly sports column for the rest of the year, and found myself unexpectedly the paper’s opinion editor a year later. By the time I became an editor, I didn’t look back at my old columns or even think about them often.
So an email I received last January came out of deep left field:
Hi Pete,
Bedford/St. Martin’s, a textbook publisher in Boston, Mass., is hoping to reprint your piece, “Even More Than the Game, Drugs Destroy Athletes,” (Yale Daily News 9/25/2007) in our new edition of The Bedford Reader. The Bedford Reader is a collection of excellent writing by both student and well-known writers and includes such names as Maya Angelou, David Sedaris, and John Updike. “Even More Than the Game” would go in the argument and persuasion chapter of this book.
We’ll send you an official permissions request to use this piece soon, but assuming you’d be willing to grant us permission to use the piece, I was wondering if I could bother you for a couple of things:
1) Some biographical information for the headnote (nothing fancy, just where you were born, where you grew up, what you do/study at Yale, any writing accomplishments)
2) A paragraph or two for our “writers on writing” feature. These run the gamut, but basically we’re looking for something about your writing process, what inspired you to write this particular piece, what frustrates you about writing, anything. I can send you some example pieces by other authors if you’d like. We’re looking for probably 200-600 words.
Let me know if you’d be willing to do those for us! And feel free to e-mail or call if you have any questions at all. My contact info is below.
Thanks,
Allie [X]
Of course, more than anything, I was flattered and excited. But I was also confused. Not only was this entirely unsolicited; I also didn’t remember the column they asked about. It took a quick search back through my YDN author page to remind me which column they wanted to include: my very first, my “sample” column.
Permission wasn’t mine to give, but I knew who to ask. The editor-in-chief at the time sent me the YDN’s permission form. In exchange for $75, the YDN would happily let Bedford-St. Martin reprint the column. It was a go.
The Bedford Reader is a composition textbook used in college writing classes, and in many high schools. I was excited to be published, sure, but I was doubly excited because of a coincidence: The Bedford Reader was the textbook I used in my Advanced Placement Logic and Composition class in high school, which I took my senior year with the incomparable Dr. Herbert. Along with the possibility that a piece of mine would be published in that book came visions of future generations of Hunter students flipping through their Bedford Readers to the piece written by the alum—and prefaced with an author bio prominently mentioning Hunter College High School.
Allie and I exchanged emails over a few months. (I never found out whether she was an intern or a senior editor.) I wrote that author bio, she edited it down, I approved it. I also wrote my “writers on writing” essay, which she returned comments on. She asked to change the title of the piece, shortening the eight-word headline to a one-word title: “Destroyed.” It was a bit dramatic for my taste, but I didn’t mind. Who was I to complain?
Then eight months went by. I hadn’t been in a hurry, since I knew that publishing a book takes time. But I remembered The Bedford Reader this January, a year after Allie first contacted me, and I thought it made sense to get in touch again. So I shot her a quick email asking about the status of the book and, as politely as I could, requesting a free “author’s” copy when the book came out. Two days later she wrote back to say the book should be released that month, and that of course she’s send me a copy.
The book arrived at my parents’ apartment in March. I didn’t get to see the physical product until my mom came to visit me last month. But to let me enjoy it before then, my dad scanned some pages and sent them to me.
I’m happy now to share those with everyone (at risk of violating Bedford-St. Martin’s copyright; I hope they won’t mind my reproducing my contribution to “friends and family”). By clicking here, you can download a medium-quality PDF of my piece, including the column, my bio, my “writers on writing” essay, and the endlessly amusing response questions the Bedford-St. Martin’s editors wrote about the column. And by clicking here, you can see the book’s table of contents, which proves what I still can’t believe: I’ve now been published in a collection with such giants of journalism, literature, and history as David Sedaris, Joan Didion, John Updike, Maya Angelou, David Foster Wallace, Dave Barry, Joyce Carol Oates, Amy Tan, Annie Dillard, Anna Quindlen, Michael Pollan, Barbara Ehrenreich, Francine Prose, Barbara Kingsolver, Katha Pollitt, Shirley Jackson, George Orwell, Edward Said, Martin Luther King, E.B. White, and Jonathan Swift.
To all my past writing teachers (including friends and family members), to all the authors I have read, to my editors at the YDN and the Globalist and elsewhere, and to Allie at Bedford-St. Martin, thanks for making this small pleasure a reality. It truly is small, but it is still a delightful first step on the road to, I hope, more such pleasures.
Foma
June 25th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Several times in the last four months, I’ve begun posts, and then found myself unable to finish them. The problem, in short, has been that I don’t believe what I’ve written.
Obviously I’ve haven’t been writing lies. I’ve believed the veracity of the words I’ve written (which have, of course, come directly from thoughts in my head). But when I’ve looked at those words on the screen, they’ve looked hollow. They’ve looked like they’re not worth reading. Not worth sharing.
Those of you who know me know this is not like me. I can’t remember any time when I regularly held my tongue, and until recently I had never had trouble sharing my thoughts, experiences, or opinions in writing either. Nor have I even recently been reluctant to share these thoughts with friends, or to share them more widely, publicly, in short doses. I’ve been emailing as furiously as I ever have, giving my friends, as always, as many words as I have in my head. And I’ve been using Twitter and Google Buzz more than before. I’ve not gone dark. Except on this site.
I don’t know what this is all about. I have some theories. For whatever reason, the first person, when it refers to me and is shared more widely than I can know, turns me off. In emails, I choose the recipients; on Twitter and Buzz, I know who is following me. Therefore I don’t seem to mind writing “I” there. But here, where anyone can read—even though few currently do, fewer by far than follow me on those sites—”I” scares me, even sickens me. It’s a wonder I got through this paragraph.
At the end of April, on the Yale Daily News‘ final publication date of the year, a friend emailed to me to say how much she loved the opinion page that day. I found her in the coffee shop where she said she was reading. I read the page there with her. I agreed that its columns were quite good. And I told her, sheepishly, that I didn’t regularly read the YDN, or its opinion page, this year. My disinterest was bad, I felt, because I had invested a whole year into making that page good, and all I had wanted at that time was for people to read it. This year even I didn’t do that. So it goes.
Later that day, I had more thoughts than whatever I had shared with her at the coffee shop. So I wrote back to her:
I’m reading this today and I realized earlier that I think part of why I don’t read the opinion page much anymore is that I’m really burned out on the first person. I don’t know whether that’s a result of editing four first-person pieces a night every night last year, or whether it’s from things I’ve been exposed to this year (or both), but I just find it really hard to get into first-person accounts, stories people tell about themselves, anymore, even in books. Maybe (hopefully) that’ll change.
I won’t explain here and now all the “things I’ve been exposed to this year” in a coherent way. Maybe soon I’ll try to get into that. I’ll end this post less ambitiously, hinting at the point of all this with with a few experience that may seem connected to no one but me.
My best friend spent five months fighting cancer—and, as much, fighting the drugs and surgeries that were fighting his cancer too. Meanwhile, he wrote “a collection of musings on life.” He wrote beautifully and powerfully and spoke meaningfully to hundreds of people. For some reason, his blog was a definite exception to my resistance to the first person.
In the fall I took a course on J.M. Coetzee, in which we read each of his novels. Coetzee’s books repeatedly challenge common notions of authorial control, suggesting that for an author to create characters, to ascribe thoughts and emotions and actions to other people—even fictional people, even himself, in writing—may be a form of abuse, a violation. Coetzee’s most recent installment of his memoirs, Summertime, treats the author’s life in the third person, and re-imagines the years 1972 to 1975 in high fiction: as if Coetzee weren’t married; as if he didn’t have young children; as if he lived with his father; as if his mother were dead.
I graduated college. Applied to a few jobs. Moved back home for the summer. Began thinking about the future.
I wrote a senior essay. I spent several months researching before writing the paper, which at the end comprised 40 pages of text, several pages of graphs, and a dozen pages of bibliographic citations.
I read a number of books that immediately struck me as significant parts of my coming of age, my growth into adulthood. Most recently from this list I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I learned that Malcolm read up to 15 hours a day, every day, for the years he was in prison. He just read and read books. Then he got out and became Malcolm X.
I’ve thought some about reading and writing in a directed way. Now that I’m done with my schooling, I’ve thought, I can begin my education. It’s a corny play on words, but the idea is seriously truthful. I can now read what I want and write what I want, and it’s on me to make it happen. At the beginning of the school year, I told some friends I had a new motto for the year: Whatever happens happens, but it’s gotta happen. They laughed at me.
I’ve had some thoughts about what I’d want to write. On my more creative, ambitious days, I’ve thought through ideas for fictional stories. The rest of the time I’ve tried to figure out what I might try to say that falls under non-fiction and doesn’t use the first person, since, after all, I now hate the first person, at least when “I” means me. (It really is astonishing that this post is still going, that I’m going to click “Publish” in a moment. I haven’t been able to do this in months.)
I went to the toilet the other day, and grabbed one of my favorite books, just to skim and smile at and be entertained by for a few minutes. I opened the book. There, on the page following the dedication and preceding the table of contents, I read, for maybe the eighth or tenth time, a few sentences that might as well be all the books in the world:
Nothing in this book is true.
“Live by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”
The Books of Bokonon. I: 5
*Harmless untruths
If I wrap this up by saying, “Everything I could ever say, Kurt Vonnegut has already said in Cat’s Cradle (or maybe in one of his other books),” it would seem like the point of all this is to say that Kurt Vonnegut is the man. He is, and more. But that’s not the point. (I only read the sentences above a few days ago. I’ve had most of these thoughts in my head for months.)
I’m not sure how to end this, then. I have to tell whoever is reading to read Cat’s Cradle. If there’s one thing to take away from this post, that’s it. The real wisdom is in there.
But also re-read the quote above. Before the book’s story, before everything else I wrote here, I think the words in that quote are the point. Did I need to write all this other stuff to draw attention to that? Maybe not. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been writing in recent months. Whenever I write, I found that Kurt Vonnegut has said my thoughts already. That’s funny, and heartening. And a challenge.
But I can’t just quote Kurt Vonnegut. So next time I won’t. But keep the foma in mind. Nothing in this post is true. More from me later.
I could not be more proud
February 11th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Than I am to promote two of my best friends, and two phenomenal pieces of writing.
David wrote this great article, one of the most fun and awesome articles I’ve ever read—without limiting the field to articles by friends, articles in college papers, or even sports articles. The one assist he was given was a great story to cover. But anyone could have covered the story; he told it masterfully. For those not yet racing to read the piece, here’s a brief excerpt that shows how graceful and fun David’s narrative is:
Indeed, the commentators from WIP 610, the sponsor of Wing Bowl, decried his audacity. If he puked, he would lose everything — his breakfast (oatmeal, downed circa 3 a.m.), his crown and the Ford F150 that he had all but secured.
But at an event that embodies the seven deadly sins, pride lurks dangerously in the wings. And Squibb, who got his start in competitive eating after a bet with a friend, was on the precipice of history.
And Raf has entered the blogosphere, writing deep thoughts, brief remarks, jokes, and about his experience undergoing chemotherapy. If you’re looking for new blogs to follow, this should make your list.
I love these guys, and I love their writing. I am very proud of them.
Deathlines
July 22nd, 2009 § Leave a Comment
I’ve worked really hard in the last year, far more than I had ever worked before, more and more intensely than I had previously believed I could. I met a lot of deadlines, many daily, some hourly. I can do it, I showed myself.
Now I’ve got a break for the next month. I went to the Met with my dad this weekend, just to walk around and chat. Since then I’ve been seeing friends, reading, trying to write. I’ve got no schedule, no deadlines or timelines until late August. I used to live like this all the time; now I’m recapturing something quaint–free time–holding on to it and treating it almost like a guilty pleasure
I know this feeling, if not the specifics:
I can’t go to the Met without getting this overpowering feeling that I’ve wiled away too much of my brief life. You look at the Burghers and wonder how much care that took. How hard he must have worked. And you wonder if you’ll ever be so fortunate as to work that hard at anything. I got up at three this morning and worked on some writing about DOOM. I have been up ever since.
I don’t plan on wiling away any more of my life. Really, that period is over. I once regretted not pushing myself harder. Now laziness and boredom are in the permanent past. But when and where does happiness–calm, spontaneous, unexpected–fit in to life led under gun or deadline? Maybe question is what this month is about.
The whole post excerpted and linked above is A-plus. I trust I’m not the only one it speaks to. Day in, day out, TNC is great, but that post is the best of the man. It’s the best of blogging.
Update 7/30/09: Walking along the Mall in D.C. earlier this week, I spotted hands that looked familiar. They were the Burghers’, displayed at at the Hirshhorn Museum’s sculpture garden. I entered the garden and walked around the statue a couple times, not moved the way TNC had been by the cast at the Met, but still very impressed, captivated even for a couple minutes before I had to move on.
‘Your style’ is crap
July 22nd, 2009 § 1 Comment
At dinner two night ago, a friend reminded me that I had told him he had made me a better writer with a single piece of advice a few years ago. He had read a paper I had written for school and ridiculed me: “Do you ever write a sentence with fewer than seven clauses?” Point taken. Now I try to write shorter sentences and think about sentence rhythm, and I make sure no sentence has seven clauses.
A few other, similarly pithy and equally valuable lessons have come my way via my peers. One of the three great editors I have worked under at The Yale Globalist once educated me: “Most of what people call ‘their style’ is actually just bad writing.” When Sean told me that, early in my sophomore year, it both gave me confidence to be a forceful editor and the humility to let others modify my manuscripts. My “style,” I quickly internalized, was not special, nor so clever it should override established rules of clear and concise writing. I’ve since shared that lesson with other Globalist editors, and I’ve applied it to many writers. No writer successful defends against my editing pen by saying something is “her style.”
But the lesson is not as dramatic as Sean conveyed it, or as I once understood it. Some elements of personal style do little but obscure clarity or add unnecessary length. Many others, however, add flair and capture readers, even if the unorthodox additions are objectively unnecessary or even against the rules. I came this see this middle ground over my year of daily editing at the Yale Daily News, and I tried to reach a balance between style and objectively “good” writing in most of the pieces I edited in the spring.
It became easy for me to edit by default: I’d strip unnecessary words (“in order to” became “to” every time, etc.), tighten up meandering sentences, bring arguments to the front, and encourage writers to make their points with as much force as comfort allowed. A lot of editing, especially when I didn’t slow down to think, was almost mathematical. I did a lot of subtraction, and I cut out nuance that didn’t have an obvious point. Most of the time, I think I improved pieces. But I was concerned that sometimes I was not improving pieces as much as I was making them uniform, just more like each other, and more like how I would have written them.
My struggle (which has to be a common struggle among editors) is illustrated colorfully, though not purposefully, in this feature in Vanity Fair. The magazine’s editors have taken their pens to Sarah Palin’s disastrous resignation speech, correcting errors of grammar, punctuation, and fact. But they’ve also done a lot of what I did to columns I edited: They’ve stripped sentences down to the fewest words necessary, and they’ve removed all the personal quirks of Palin’s speech that lend it character, that make it her speech and not anybody else’s. The nonsense she spews is painful to listen to and more so to read, but need it be removed entirely? I’m not sure. Only now that I see the speech edited do I think maybe there was a reason to give it in original form.
Update 8/4/09: This Slate piece by a grammarian, which I just refound in my bookmarks, shows how Sarah Palin’s sentences are complete, nearly indecipherable nonsense. Here’s a taste: “To me, [her speech is] not English—it’s a collection of words strung together to elicit a reaction, floating ands and prepositional phrases (“with that vote of the American people”) be damned. It requires not a diagram but a selection of push buttons.”
Talking to the Memo
May 5th, 2008 Comments Off
Download this article in a Word document here.
The first things I see are two half-eaten pizzas on card tables next to a sink. The sink and pizzas occupy a corner of the room, a studio apartment on the third floor of a walk-up. Filling the rest of the room are eight people at desks and three flat-screen TVs mounted on the long wall. There’s a couch and a rug and nothing else, not even on the walls. There’s no extra space; in fact, there’s barely an aisle between the desks. The room is bright enough thanks to rows of ceiling lights; only two small windows let natural light in at one end of the room. The door isn’t marked, but I can tell I’m in the right place. This is one of the best newsrooms in America.
Talking Points Memo didn’t exist ten years ago, and it is barely known around the country today. But in this 800-square-foot former apartment, a team of fewer than a dozen people has built up a unique news organization that has become a leader in investigative reporting. In the last three years, TPM has discovered stories that have made headlines and influenced politics across the nation, but which traditional media outfits couldn’t see before TPM shined light in the right places. What was once a personal blog has grown into an admired news source thanks to its visionary founder, its hard-working reporters, and, perhaps most important, its devoted readers. TPM and its readers have worked together to compete with bigger and more established competitors, and the site won recognition by beating others to a story that changed the country. From the beginning, TPM has relied on its readers to be not only consumers, but also invaluable support for this small and young news organization that accepts help from all sources.
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