Work gush

So, I set this goal for myself of writing X pieces a year of which I can be proud.  Not perfect pieces because that would be like locking handcuffs around my hands and I would never ever finish them (cf. My Novel) but pieces where I could say “I wanted to learn about this topic, and I wanted to write this kind of piece using this kind of research.” And then I could take them out of the pile of “things I have to write quickly and I just use the skills I have” and even if, say, they did suck at this or that I could say “well THIS was the experiment and THIS is what I learned.”

It’s sort of my way of mentoring myself, which is stupid ’cause the whole point of a mentor is that you have someone, you know, better guiding you, but I haven’t had a mentor around for a few years now and it shows.

Anyways so today I did the final, phone interview for my ladder piece for this month and although I have a ton of work to do on it (I think I might even see if I can be late with this one and blame it on interview woes) I already know I learned quite a bit.  It’s a profile piece and I haven’t written too many of those, although I’ve read a lot voraciously, which helps. Getting people to talk about topics (like say, dog acupuncture, or TOFU AND YOGA hee) is a very related skill to getting them to talk about themselves. But it is not quite the same art, and so this is my first really serious run at “oh my god, how do I take what I can find out about this person and turn it into questions that will lead to something coherent and interesting and fresh.” About themselves. That will be worth reading.  

As opposed to information that’s useful, which to me anyway is much easier, because it’s more straightforward.

Anyways, I’m not sure I’m going to make it to “a really great profile piece” here but I think I’m going to get quite a decent one and I think I found a few tricks. And that was not skill but sheer luck (okay and a bit of sneaky) ’cause I interviewed this media person and she was generous enough to be using her knowledge of what I would need to shape her answers. (And say what she wants to say, which is always the deal.)

So. Anyways, I’m just squeeing.

I feel old for this; this is the work that I should have been doing in my 20s instead of fucking my life up, then getting married and renovating and all that shit.  I also should have gone to journalism school rather than run away from my parents to go to Mt. A. because it was far away (and damned if there wasn’t a good journalism school even a bit further, but that was too scary).  Well and also because at that time there was this idea (TERESA) that she/I should be an elementary school  teacher, a notion that thankfully my 20s working in an elementary school also disabused me of.

The point is, I’m happy today, this moment. And felt like sharing.

And now I have a shitload of work to do. Whee!