I never knew what I was going to write from one week to the next. Once I was managing editor, I was like "fuck, fuck, fuck, I have to write a column" while herding cats.
You run a college newsroom sometime and tell me how it goes.
But back to the topic at hand, I had a very simple process that lasted my whole career. That title? It's why I'm writing right now.
So as not to bury the lede, the formula is this:
- Have a headline.
- Have a thesis.
- Know where the fuck I'm going.
I'm only posting this because I know where I'm going.
Being a columnist is one of the easiest jobs in the world. Even with a few interviews here and there, you get to spout off about current events. One of the nice things about student journalism is no one has already worked in, say, the White House press office.
So we just wing it. Not the East Wing at this point, I'd imagine.
There were several Tuesday evenings where I was concerned I'd not fill the left of A4. On Tuesday nights, as such, I became far more interested in what reporters were working on.
Here's the bar: "Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me!"
And then, usually about 25 minutes later, my column was headed to the copy desk, after which the edited copy was discarded, and I ran the original, because, oh, yes, I was also the designer.
Look ... I'm a copyeditor by trade over the decades, but in college, the desk may as well have been the error-introduction desk. The chiefs were all solid, but under them? Yeah, I'll keep my original copy, let you play editor and then run what I wrote. (This is, incidentally, a very bad idea, as everyone needs an editor.)
It has been the same every time since I settled into column writing in the late '90s: Once I have a hed, the whole thing flows out so fast I'm not even thinking about it. Maybe that's an odd writing process, but until I've seen the whole thing writ large, I can't even start. Once I know, then it's a simple matter of getting from Point A to Point B.
Unlike the rest of my life.