Everyone is Going to Read This
Sunday, December 28th, 2008
Writers, being especially selective of the words they put to paper, can be surprisingly loose-lipped in conversation. One reason so many of them decide to communicate in written format in the first place is to put the words straight that might ordinarily come recklessly foaming about the enormous feet in their mouths. No one, then, should better understand the tendency to mispeak than writers. Counting myself in with this lot, I can tell you, we somehow still happen to be especially critical of the words said about us.
Urban Times publisher Christina Boveri didn’t mean to betray any lack of faith in me during our brief conversation this afternoon. In actuality, her words were intended as guidance – to clarify the direction I should take in writing the feature story for the February edition of UT. We’d just finished a long discussion about a potentially controversial feature story subject and her parting words on the issue were, “Remember … everyone is going to read this.”
Christina and I have worked on a number of stories together in the last two years. This wasn’t the first time we’d come down to the wire on a deadline before determining what direction to go. What she meant was to clarify that we should be fair to the person we are writing about, as usual. I didn’t take her remarks any other way. In fact, several hours later, I laughed when it occured to me that another writer might believe her to have betrayed her true thought that maybe the writer was somehow reckless.
Another point she was making with the same comment was that people actually read Urban Times. They don’t take if from the rack, pin it under their arm and intend to read it at some later point. They read it. They save them. They learn from the stories.
But as I think about it now, just a small part of me wonders if what she said was exactly what she intended and I’m just blowing off the pressure of needing to turn in another 1,000-word feauture story with high marks. I guess it could be seen as a blessing that some writers’ memories are just as poor as their verbal communication.
