“Yep, I’m early … deal with it” by Jim Stasiowski
Dear editors,
(NOTE: This column is early. An editor, who shall remain nameless except to his family and close friends, implored me to send one right away, and because I fortuitously had finished my column for May, I reluctantly acceded to his request. However — and this is a huge “however” — in June, I shall resume my usual schedule of sending the column by the 27th of the month. I know all of you wish I would send it sooner, but the truth is, no matter when I send it, you always want it sooner. And if I sent you one column per day, someone would ask, “If it’s not too much trouble, could you send two per day?”)
Have I ever told you the story about of the poet I met on an airplane?
He looked more like a salesman than a poet, and son of a gun, a salesman is what he was.
I struck up a conversation with him because … because … well, honestly, because he was sitting next to me, and (in case you didn’t know this about me) I talk to everybody. I talk to longshoremen and shepherds and kayakers (not sure that’s a legitimate word, as my computer just gave me the finger for using it) and even my close relatives.
So I was on this plane, and we were sitting on the runway in Detroit, waiting behind a dozen other Northwest Airlines flights that were delayed because (so the story goes) a computer was broken in Memphis, and without that computer, no mere mortal could figure out whether the airplanes’ loads were balanced. (When I mentioned to the flight attendant the folly of having a dozen or more flights delayed because of a balky computer 1,000 miles away, he sneered and said, “I used to figure out the load balance with a pencil and piece of paper.”)
Anyway, I was sitting next to this very well-dressed guy (except for the cowboy boots), and I asked what he did for a living, and he said he sold heavy-construction equipment, and I said that sounded interesting, and he sneered and said, “Then you don’t know much about heavy-construction equipment.”
Apparently unwilling to unlock for me the mysteries of heavy-construction equipment, he asked me what I did for a living, and I told him, “Writing coach,” and then the sneering began in earnest. He couldn’t believe I could make a living teaching writing, as he was 100% certain he knew more about writing than I did, when all he really knew about me was that I wasn’t dressed as well as he was (except for the cowboy boots).
At that point, he revealed to me that he was a poet. Now, until that moment, I had never been in an actual emergency inside the fuselage of an airliner, but when I realized I was buckled into a seat next to a poet, and our flight was still on the ground, at least an hour late, and our flight was going to last at least another hour even after we took off, I swiftly asked the flight attendant if he could activate the oxygen masks that (according to airline legend) will drop from the ceiling, should we experience a sudden loss in cabin pressure.
After the flight attendant (rudely, I think) ordered me to cease acting like a child, I reluctantly resumed talking to the poet. He explained to me (in iambic pentameter, I think) how coarse and misguided modern printing and publishing executives are, to which I said, “Let me guess: You’re an unpublished poet.”
In a voice loud enough to activate hotel sprinkler systems, he responded, “At the moment, sir, yes,” which I took to mean he was unhappy.
Then he went to great pains to recite for me his favorite poems, all of which were by the same author, coincidentally, himself. At about No. 17, a sonnet dedicated to farm machinery, I think, he was interrupted by the pilot who announced we were next in line for takeoff, and I used that opportunity to ask the flight attendant if the pilot could grant my fondest wish, which was that he crash the plane.
No such luck. We took off without incident, and I heard plenty of poetry for the next hour or so, until we landed in Baltimore, at which point I lost track of the poet. I think he went to the bathroom, which is something I never envisioned Keats doing.
In a way, I wish I could have kept in touch with the poet, as I’ve been working on a rhyme myself. It starts, “There once was a bulldozer from Nantucket …”
Happy May, and I’ll be back in touch soon … jim
•••
As I was wrestling with the three lawn chairs that my wife, Sharon, and I had just bought, as I was twisting and turning them, trying to force them into the car trunk, a stranger strolled past.
“From my engineering background,” the grinning guy, dressed in shorts, a white T-shirt and a ball cap, said, “that ain’t going to work.” He looked as much like an engineer as I look like an NBA power forward.
I faked a smile, said, “Let me see your diploma,” and he laughed, which was the first thing that had gone the way I planned since Sharon and I had carried the chairs from the store.
Before we had left home, Sharon asked me if the three chairs would fit in the car. I told her I had done rigorous calculations (which I had not), and I assured her we’d have no problem getting them home (which I had no justification for saying).
We already owned one of that type of chair, and we both liked it so much, we routinely tried to outmaneuver each other to determine who would sit in it.
So when we saw that a local store had the same chair on sale ($5 off the regular price), we talked about buying another. Then we realized that if friends ever dropped over, we’d need extras, so we set out to buy three.
Before we went, I took the one chair we already owned out to our Mazda Protege, manhandled it into the trunk, looked warily at the overhang, got some rope for tying the trunk lid shut, then proclaimed myself ready for the modern-day suburban equivalent of combat: shopping.
That’s how I do things. I don’t measure and calculate and plan and make sure I can accomplish what I set out to do. First, I set out; then, when things go wrong, I improvise.
That’s the writer’s personality, and I think it’s what makes us special. Hey, before I got into the car to drive to the store, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I knew exactly how the chairs should fit in the trunk. I had thought a lot about it.
Such thinking is the key. I saw those chairs in the trunk long before I tried to place them there. (Besides, I had rope. I once read that rope will solve just about any problem.)
Before reporters go out on a story, they should know what story they want to get.
They should prepare, but not be so rigid as to adhere blindly to their pre-set plan.
Things will go wrong. Show me a reporter who got precisely the story he or she expected, and got it in precisely the way he or she envisioned, and I almost always will show you a mediocre story, one born of simplistic questions asked of the usual suspects, who then responded with predictable answers.
As we were paying for the chairs, Sharon whispered, “Should we see if the store will deliver them?”
With my characteristic empty but convincing bravado, I said, “Nah. Getting them home will be an adventure.”
Every story should be just that: an adventure, a stepping into the unknown. If we reporters know exactly how things will turn out, why do we think readers will not also know it? Why do we think readers want only the routine stuff they see in every edition?
I recently read a story about the clubs at local high schools. One of the clubs is for break dancing. Break dancing. Can you imagine? No, neither could I, and neither could other readers, and, I’ll bet, neither could the reporter, who probably started out thinking a story about high-school clubs would turn into a predictable list: the French club, the chess club, the debate club.
When Sharon and I got the chairs to the car, she asked how I wanted her to help load them. I said, “Why don’t you walk over to the grocery store and get some bananas?”
No, I didn’t have some secret plan for using bananas to help me load the chairs into the car. But we needed bananas, and I don’t like anyone lurking over my shoulder when I’m creating, whether I’m doing cargo sculpture or writing a story.
I think the best writers are loners, individuals. Some of them are the tortured-genius types, although I personally love writing too much ever to think of it as torture. I think most writers who need constant guidance will struggle to step forward and write something bold, something that goes against the grain and thus reveals.
By the time Sharon got back with the bananas, I was tying the rope holding down the trunk lid. Yes, I had succeeded. Protruding from the trunk were lawn chairs. Two of them.
That’s right, two. The third was in the front passenger seat. You reporters and editors instantly will recognize what had happened.
The original plan wouldn’t work, so I went with a main story and a sidebar.
THE FINAL WORD: I ordered a beer from the list on the menu, and the waitress said, “That’s non-alcoholic. It says ‘NA.’” I looked at the menu, and sure enough, there was “NA.”
Just as “NA” was foreign to me, some of the terms we use in newspapers are not familiar to our readers. One I’ve never cared for is “K-12,” our shorthand way of referring to schooling from kindergarten through high school. Spell out “kindergarten through 12th grade.”
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Writing coach Jim Stasiowski welcomes your questions and comments. Call him at 410 247-4600 or write to 5812 Heron Drive, Baltimore, Md. 21227.