Christmas Musing: Why I Write

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It is early on Christmas morning, and I am awake, but it isn't like it was when I was a kid. I'm not up because I want to find out what is under the tree. I have no tree in my apartment.

Actually, I am up because I have had a touch of some sort of virus lately that has me congested, unable to breathe. So I am awake before sunrise on Christmas morning, like when I was a boy — although, clearly, not for the same reason.

It is cold and clear this morning. The forecasters have said it will be warmer today (but very windy), which would make it one of the milder Christmases I have experienced in Dallas. I didn't grow up here, but I spent most of my Christmases here visiting my grandparents and my parents' old friends, and I have spent most of the Christmases of my adult years here, too.

That doesn't make me an authority on Christmas in Dallas, but it's close! And, more often than not, Christmas in Dallas is cool — even cold at times. I remember a few warm ones when I was growing up, Christmases when my brother and I could go outside and play in shorts and T–shirts. We could climb the pecan trees in my grandmother's yard unencumbered by winter coats.

A couple of times when I was growing up, my family drove to South Padre Island near the U.S.–Mexico border to spend Christmas there, and it was always nice and warm (today, for example, the temperature is supposed to be 71° in Brownsville, close to 80° tomorrow and Saturday).

Anyway, this morning I have been listening to Mannheim Steamroller. I don't know how long they've been putting out Christmas albums — decades, I suppose — but I have one that came out nearly 20 years ago. It is the only purely Christmas album in my collection. I have Christmas songs that various artists have recorded, but they are always part of more general albums.

I remember when I got this album. It was about six months after my mother was killed in a flash flood. I was teaching journalism in Oklahoma and commuting to Dallas on weekends to see about my father. On one of my weekend trips, I heard "Pat a Pan" on the car radio and decided I had to have it. It has been in my collection ever since.

Listening to it really can be an exercise in free association. When I hear it, I think of those days after my mother died, and then I think about her (although I am sure that she never heard this album) — and that leads me to thoughts of my childhood. Mom was my biggest booster, and I am sure she must have encouraged me to take the path I took in life — writing. I have worked at other kinds of jobs, but writing has always been at the core of who I am.

It is a path that has led me to the job I have today as editorial manager for a stock–trading oriented website. I am very happy to have that job on Christmas 2014. Of course, I guess an argument can be made that, after slogging my way through the last six years following the economic implosion, I would be very happy to have any job. And I suppose there is an element of that. But the truth is that I like the people with whom and for whom I work.

Not everyone can say that, and I really am thankful for my job. It allows me to write for a living. I know some professional writers who fret about a lot of things, including writer's block, and writing becomes work for them.

Not me. Writing has always been fun for me. When I have some spare time, I would just about always prefer to write about something. I write three blogs (one of which is this one) so I always have an outlet for any inspiration I may have.

That's what it is. Inspiration. That must have been what my mother encouraged in me when I was little. Mom was about creativity, which has a symbiotic relationship with inspiration. She taught first grade, and I think most of the people who came through her classroom and their parents would tell you she was the most creative teacher they ever knew.

After she died, my family received hundreds of letters from old friends scattered across the country, a few even halfway around the world. One friend who knew her when she was a teenager sent us a letter with some photos of Mom participating in a play in junior high or high school. In the photos, she was clearly hamming it up in her usual way, and the friend remarked in his letter, "I always thought that, if Mary had not gone into teaching, she would have gravitated to the stage."

A career on the stage might have satisfied her yearning for creative outlets. She found other outlets, one of which was encouraging me to write. I had other influences along the way, but I am quite sure she was my earliest. When I was in elementary school, she arranged for me to take piano lessons, which I did for many years. I haven't kept up with it, but all that practice made my fingers quite nimble, and I am sure it contributed to my typing ability, which has been valuable to me all these years. I have certainly found it to be an advantage since personal computers took over the workplace. Many of my colleagues still hunt and peck, but I took typing in junior high and I already had the advantage of several years of piano lessons under my belt.

Of course, typing alone is not the same as writing. Simply stringing words together in grammatically correct sentences is not the same as writing unless you explore related ideas and themes. That is something I have worked on for years, and I really think it has paid off. I have people who read my blogs all over the world. Some sign up as followers who are notified whenever I post something new; others just pop in from time to time to catch up on what I've written.

Occasionally, they write to me. One wrote, "I can't wait to see what you will write about next."

I suppose that sums up how I feel about writing. I often know what I want to write about; I just don't know what I will say about it until I sit down and write.

That is the pleasure I get from writing — discovering what I think or how I feel as a result of writing about it. Sometimes I honestly do not know how I feel about something until I start writing about it. Sometimes, I am as surprised as my readers at what I think.

And it is appropriate to think about that on Christmas — because that is a gift my mother gave me.

Thanks, Mom.

The Anniversary of the 'In Cold Blood' Killings

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"Now, on this final day of her life, Mrs. Clutter hung in the closet the calico house dress she had been wearing and put on one of her trailing nightgowns and a fresh set of white socks. Then, before retiring, she exchanged her ordinary glasses for a pair of reading spectacles. Though she subscribed to several periodicals (the Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, Reader's Digest and Together: Midmonth Magazine for Methodist Families), none of these rested on the bedside table — only a Bible. A bookmark lay between its pages, a stiff piece of watered silk upon which an admonition had been embroidered: 'Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.'"

Truman Capote
In Cold Blood

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They happened before I was born, but the murders of the Clutter family 55 years ago today in Holcomb, Kansas, still have the power to grip people.

I re–read Truman Capote's riveting account of those murders, "In Cold Blood," about a year ago. I was just as engrossed by it as I was when I first read it in college. As a reading experience, it reminded me of Vincent Bugliosi's account of the Manson Family murders, "Helter Skelter."

Capote did a lot of writing in his life, but "In Cold Blood" was the book he was born to write. It seems almost like the kind of book that would write itself, that all it needed was a person to be the go–between. But writers are a funny sort, and my understanding is that Capote agonized over aspects of his book. Some writers are like that. The creative process makes impossible demands on them.

So writing "In Cold Blood" may have been a very emotionally trying experience for Capote. It may have been unimaginably wrenching to try to put everything on paper. I know it took awhile for him to finish it. Some writers find it very difficult to achieve the level of detachment that is necessary to write about unpleasant things. It is often essential, I have observed, to be detached in the news business. You must express in print the shock and revulsion people feel upon hearing about such things — without letting those things affect you personally. It is why many talented writers don't make it as news writers.

Such a level of detachment must have been necessary for the local officials who investigated the murders. In a small town like Holcomb (which, more than half a century later, has a population that barely exceeds 2,000), everyone knows everyone else, and Herb Clutter, the family patriarch, was a pillar of the community. He was a farmer, he hired people to work on his farm, and, by all accounts, he treated them well. He was rumored to be very wealthy — after all, he didn't drink or smoke. Had no vices of any kind, as far as anyone could tell. He was also rumored to keep all his money in a safe in his home.

At least, that is what one fellow in particular had heard. This fellow had worked for Clutter about 10 years earlier and told a jailhouse cellmate about him and the money he supposedly had in his remote country farmhouse. Truth was, Herb Clutter didn't have a fortune in his home. He didn't have a safe, either. This cellmate didn't know that, though, and he started planning to rob this farmer as soon as he and another buddy of his were released.

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Fifty–five years ago, they were both free, and they made their way to Holcomb, where they intended to rob the Clutters. When they discovered that there was no safe and no fortune, they could have left and, in all probability, never been charged with a crime. Instead, they killed each member of the family so there would be no witnesses and left with $42 in cash, a radio and a pair of binoculars.

The crime shocked America, which was a more innocent place (at least, it seems so in hindsight) in the 1950s than many people today realize — even with all the jokes that are made about the simplicity of that decade. It's my opinion, though, that the difference between that time and today is the level of technology. I doubt that shocking crimes happened any less frequently then than they do today; people just didn't hear about them as much.

Nearly two years earlier, the nation was transfixed by the murder spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the inspiration for "Natural Born Killers." It must have taken a lot to transfix the nation in those days. TVs were not fixtures in every American home in those days — maybe 60% would be my guess. Cable didn't exist, nor did the internet. The primary sources for news and information probably were newspapers and radio.

Those same news sources must have been the primary sources for most Americans when the Clutter family was killed, and the word spread so far that it reached Truman Capote via the New York Times — and he and his lifelong friend, Harper Lee (author of "To Kill a Mockingbird"), traveled to Holcomb to do research for a book on the case.

What is often lost in the telling of the murders is the fear that the victims must have experienced in those early morning hours. They did what people are usually told to do if they are abducted — cooperate with your abductor, do whatever you must to stay alive. Yet, they did not live through the night.

Their deaths led to Capote's book and at least two movies of which I am aware. For Capote, of course, it was a career–defining book — which has been criticized frequently since its publication for fabricating conversations and scenes it described. Sometimes that was obviously necessary, given that it described conversations and/or scenes that no living person could verify. But sometimes Capote appears to have deliberately misquoted some people whose versions of events did not support his narrative.

Sometimes that wasn't terribly important to the story; other times, though, it was. That seems to be how it is with the new journalism, the nonfiction novel.

One fact cannot be changed or fabricated. The Clutter family has been dead for 55 years.

The State of Press Freedom in America

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I'm a writer.

It is fashionable these days to say that one is predisposed to be something — that such a person was born a certain way. Usually, that applies to one's sexuality; in my case, I think it means I was born to be a writer. It is what I do. It isn't something I can change.

That has meant different things at different times, I guess, but most of the time in my life it has involved journalism. Journalism was my major in college. I worked for newspapers. I have taught news writing and news editing, and currently I advise journalism students producing a college newspaper.

Perhaps that makes me overly sensitive to issues involving press freedom. I've always believed that a press that is free to report the news is the pillar of a democracy. Without a free press, nothing else means anything.

I am a strong believer in the Bill of Rights, but I am especially partial, I guess, to the First Amendment. I always believed it set the United States apart from the other countries in the world. Maybe I believed it meant the press would have more freedom here than anywhere else.

If that is what I believed — and I'm not really sure if I did or did not, to be candid — Reporters Without Borders disabuses me of that notion in its World Press Freedom Index 2014. In it, the United States is ranked 46th in the world in press freedom.

Maybe that doesn't seem so bad to you, but look at it this way. The United States ranked 32nd in press freedom a year ago. That's a decline of nearly 44%.

I don't think that is an encouraging trend — especially since places like South Africa, El Salvador, Romania, Papua New Guinea, Trinidad and Tobago, Botswana, Samoa, France, Latvia, Spain, Slovenia and Lithuania all pulled ahead of the United States in a single year.

Samoa was 16 places behind the U.S. last year; it is now six spots ahead. That is probably the most dramatic change, but the other shifts were dramatic, too. Trinidad and Tobago trailed the United States by 12 spots, now ahead by three. Papua New Guinea was nine spots behind the U.S. and now leads by two. Spain was behind by four spots, now leads by 11. Slovenia trailed the U.S. by three spots last year but now leads by 12. Lithuania trailed by a single spot and now leads by 14.

How is this possible?

I'm inclined to think the NSA surveillance scandal has had a lot to do with it. I also think the Justice Department's uncalled–for seizure of Associated Press phone records is to blame as well.

These were not "phony scandals," as the president blithely dismissed them. These were blatant assaults on freedom of the press in this country — and they should concern anyone who values freedom.

On Writing

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I read an interesting column today by Megan McArdle in The Atlantic.

Its headline tells you just about everything you need to know about the topic — except the details: "Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators."

I'm not sure how I feel about that. I consider myself a writer — I have written and edited professionally, and currently I teach writing at the local community college — and I also grudgingly admit that I am a bit of a procrastinator, but I don't think I procrastinate about writing — at least, not in the way McArdle suggests.

She says procrastination is an occupational hazard for writers. And that reminded me of something that Murray Slaughter said once on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Murray was the news writer on that show, and I recall that he was asked something like, "What do you like the most (or perhaps it was the least) about writing?"

Murray replied that he liked talking about his writing, and he liked being paid for his writing, and he liked reading his writing. "The only thing I don't like about my writing," he said, "is writing!"

Now, I will admit that I do procrastinate about a lot of things. I procrastinate about doing my taxes. I procrastinate about checking the job listings on a daily basis. I procrastinate about going to the grocery store. I procrastinate about taking out the trash and doing the laundry and other household chores.

But that is because those activities are generally low–reward activities for me. Writing, on the other hand, is usually very satisfying. Most days, the thing I feel excited about when I get up in the morning is the idea that I can do some more writing that day. Lots of times, I can hardly wait to get to it — although sometimes it is delayed by other things.

So I don't really feel that I fit McArdle's definition of a procrastinating writer.

On the other hand ...

She makes an intriguing observation when she explains the evolution of her theory about writers — "We were too good in English class."

This thought has crossed my mind. When I was a boy, I seldom studied for spelling or English tests, but I always did well. When I took my college entrance exam, I scored in the top 5% nationally in English.

I don't know why it came so easy to me.

I mean, how'd that happen?

All I've been able to figure is this:

I've always believed my paternal grandmother had a lot to do with it. She was an English teacher before my father and my aunt were born — and I think she more or less retired from teaching to be a full–time stay–at–home mother — but she proved that, while you might take the girl out of the classroom, you couldn't take the classroom out of the girl.

My grandparents lived in Dallas. My family lived in central Arkansas. It was a six–hour drive after the interstate linked us, but when I was little, a trip to Dallas required going through a lot of small towns with all that stop–and–go driving you experience in populated areas. In those days, the trip probably took eight or nine hours.

Anyway, we didn't always see my grandparents on my birthday or even on Christmas so their gifts were often mailed to me. Mom made sure that I sat down and wrote thank–you notes immediately — she made my younger brother do the same thing after he learned to write.

My paternal grandmother always wrote back thanking me for my thank–you note. She also included the note with her letter — with my mistakes marked. It wasn't like a paper that has been graded by a teacher. The notes that she wrote on my thank–you letters were very loving, very grandmotherly, but they still pointed out that I probably meant to use a different word or a different tense or a different spelling. Or perhaps I used a plural pronoun in reference to a singular noun.

I still remember many of the lessons she taught me. As I say, I always figured that she had a lot to do with my ease in English.

And, sometimes, especially in recent years when I have reconnected with so many old friends via social media like Facebook, I wonder why I didn't get caught in the quicksand of communication mediocrity.

Then again, maybe I didn't dodge that bullet as neatly as I thought. Every day, I see examples of misspellings and atrocious grammar that I assure myself I would never allow into something I wrote.

Sure enough, something just as egregious — if not worse — pops up in something I write in one of my blogs! Usually, it doesn't take too long, either. That knowledge usually keeps my ego in check, regardless of what I have written.

Anyway, let's get back to McArdle's article.

As I say, McArdle writes about how easy English was for some people, how they got by on "natural talents" — only to advance to college or perhaps the professional level where they found themselves "competing with all the other kids who were at the top of their English classes."

This encourages procrastination.

"If you've spent most of your life cruising ahead on natural ability, doing what came easily and quickly, every word you write becomes a test of just how much ability you have, every article a referendum on how good a writer you are," McArdle writes.

She's probably writing tongue in cheek, but I think there is a certain amount of truth in her observation that "[a]s long as you have not written that article, that speech, that novel, it could still be good. Before you take to the keys, you are Proust and Oscar Wilde and George Orwell all rolled up into one delicious package. By the time you're finished, you're more like one of those 1940s pulp hacks who strung hundred–page paragraphs together with semicolons because it was too much effort to figure out where the sentence should end."

They don't procrastinate because they are lazy, she argues. "Rather, they seem to be paralyzed by the prospect of writing something that isn't very good."

I can't say that I have ever felt that way. There have been many times when I had to write about a topic with which I wasn't very familiar, but I worried more on those occasions about inaccuracy than I did about the quality of my writing. I have always been confident in my ability to write.

McArdle talks about the need to learn the lesson that comes from failing with grace, and I agree.

Perhaps I have been luckier than most — although I would be inclined to say I have had my share of practice at failing with grace!

The important thing is to learn from your mistakes and apply the lessons to future situations. That's all anyone can do in any endeavor. Writers are not special in that regard.

Maybe she is right. Maybe some writers do put off writing because they fear that they aren't good enough — so they set themselves up for failure by putting off their writing until they are faced with an absolute choice of writing something (that may be good or may be bad) or writing nothing. The relentless pressure of deadlines makes the choice inevitable.

And then, the rushed final result is usually inadequate in one way or another.

That is a very different thing from the tendency of some writers to write, then get up and walk around for a few minutes while they consider different ways of expressing something. I do that when I get stuck on which word or phrase I want to use.

When I smoked, I would light a cigarette. Smoking was part of my creative process. It helped me break through whatever obstacle was in my way.

Since I no longer smoke, other things have become part of my creative process. It's a different thing each time now, I suppose.

But I don't leave my keyboard for hours to mop the kitchen floor, vacuum in the living room, play with the PlayStation and do whatever else I can do until the clock forces me to write something.

For me, writing is fun. It is a challenge to express things in just the right way. Sometimes I do manage to do that, and it's quite a rush.

The ongoing challenge of writing, though, is making that happen every time.

Tilting at Windmills

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"There's not the least thing can be said or done, but people will talk and find fault."

Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote de la Mancha

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I'm not privy to the conversations that take place in the halls of power in Washington so I have no idea what motivated Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to launch his filibuster against funding Obamacare.

I've heard a lot of smug and snide comments today about Cruz's use of Dr. Seuss and Star Wars in his filibuster. And I'll admit that I don't know everything that he said in his speech. I've seen video clips, and I've read articles about it, but I didn't sit and watch the whole thing — which ended after about 21 hours.

But, as long as he was quoting things, he should have quoted Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote de la Mancha," which is, of course, about a retired nobleman who set out on a quest to revive chivalry.

Then, as now, I guess that's a lost cause, and I couldn't help thinking, as I watched him speak — for I did watch some parts of it as it was happening — that he must have known this was a lost cause, too. Even those who supported him seemed to know it. How could he not know it?

And that, in turn, made me think of something Jimmy Stewart said in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" when he was delivering his own filibuster. It was about lost causes and how they were the only causes worth fighting for, worth dying for.

When a person is motivated by principle, everything else is secondary.

Don Quixote was known for tilting at windmills — admittedly a futile gesture. In his own way, I guess Cruz was tilting against a system he didn't like — and perhaps serving notice that this fight isn't finished yet — but he acknowledged defeat in this particular battle, voting for cloture when it was clear no one in the Senate would side with him.

Predictably, the New York Times said Cruz was an "embarrassment." GQ called him a "Wacko Bird." He was greeted with scorn and derision from others in the media who, just a few months ago, were praising the filibuster of another Texan, Wendy Davis, in the state legislature.

(To the credit of the Times, I must point out that what it published was clearly labeled opinion. And GQ doesn't pretend to be a legitimate deliverer of news. But, like The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, GQ and other publications that are not news deliverers are mistaken for such by the uninformed.)

The difference between the two filibusters was the fact that the media liked Davis' politics and didn't like Cruz's — and because news writing these days means opinion to too many writers and does not mean objective reporting to enough.

A free press means a free nation — but a press that panders to power is no longer free, and neither is the nation it pretends to serve.

When I was starting out as a reporter, I remember conducting an interview with a local political candidate who made some statements that sounded pretty farfetched to me. Upon returning to the newsroom, I asked the managing editor about those statements. How should I write about them? I asked.

"I think they speak for themselves," he replied. "You should be like a fly on the wall. The reader shouldn't even know you're there."

That has been my yardstick as a writer throughout my professional life.

I understand the roles that opinion and news writing play in journalism, and it distresses me that far too many journalists — and I see this in my journalism students, too — cannot or will not differentiate between the two.

When I write my blogs, they are largely my opinion. I don't pretend to be writing news stories. Mostly, I comment on the news.

But there is an obvious bias in far too much of what is labeled news these days. It is evident in the media's different responses to the two filibusters.

I don't know. Maybe, like Cruz, I am tilting at windmills when I seek change in the news culture. Maybe it is a lost cause.

Like the implementation of Obamacare. Whether one thinks it will be a great thing or a disaster, it was passed by Congress and signed into law. One may have issues with how it was passed and signed. One may have issues with whether the money charged for non–compliance is really a tax or a fine. One may or may not believe the law will deliver what was promised.

Most of those who oppose it now seem resigned to waiting and seeing what happens. But a few are not content to do that.

A few insist on fighting for the lost cause.

On tilting at windmills.

The Passing of a 'Giant' Among Journalists

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"Before politics was fed into computers and moveable maps came out, Jack Germond had it all in his head."

Walter Mears
Former Associated Press reporter

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Journalist Jack Germond, who died last week, was, in the words of colleague Jules Witcover, "a giant" of American journalism.

Many years ago, I read — for the first time — "Marathon," the book Witcover and Germond co–authored on the 1976 presidential campaign. I have read it several times since, each time with greater admiration.

The task was something of a marathon itself. The campaign was legendary at the time because the eventual winner, Jimmy Carter, had been running for a couple of years and, in that time, had risen from virtual obscurity to the presidency.

But you couldn't really tell the story of that campaign without going into a certain amount of detail on the Watergate scandal and the resignation of the man who won the previous presidential election, Richard Nixon.

So, whereas historian Theodore White had the luxury of writing about a single year — and, perhaps, a portion of another — in his groundbreaking accounts of presidential elections from 1960 to 1972, Witcover and Germond had to write about virtually the entire four–year period between the 1972 and 1976 elections.

They also had to write about something that was new in presidential politics at that time. Carter rose to prominence in large part because, unlike previous presidential hopefuls who chose to enter some primaries but not others, Carter ran everywhere. Germond and Witcover chronicled that development meticulously.

Nixon probably was the last president to take the traditional route to the White House. His campaigns in 1968 and 1972 were the transition from old–style presidential politics, in which nominations were decided by delegates who were handpicked by party elites, to modern presidential politics, in which the popular vote in primary elections tends to determine how a state's delegation will vote at the national convention.

And Witcover and Germond were there to report on it — for their contemporaries and the generations to follow.

"Jack was a truly dedicated reporter and had an old–fashioned relationship with politicians," Witcover told the Baltimore Sun. "He liked them, but that did not prevent him from being critical when they did bad things and behaved badly."

Journalists like Germond achieved a new influence on American politics during the transition of which Germond wrote. He was, in the words of NPR's David Folkenflik, "one of the reporters who helped to determine presidential winners and losers."

Howard Kurtz echoed Witcover's sentiment.

"Germond ... was a throwback in more ways than one," Kurtz wrote for Fox News, "a poker–playing, racetrack–dwelling, Falstaffian figure who would close down the bar at New Hampshire's Wayfarer Inn, then be up at 7 the next morning interviewing county chairmen."

Ah, yes, the horse racing thing. That is another passion I shared with Germond. I don't know how Germond came by it.

I've always enjoyed horse racing, but I discovered a true passion for it when I worked as a copy editor for the Arkansas Gazette's sports department.

I don't know if Germond ever did any better than I did at the track. I hope he did.

I do know that he achieved things in journalism I probably will never achieve. And I'm all right with that.

Because there aren't many Jack Germonds — maybe one or two — in a lifetime.

The Quest for Inspiration

I was chatting online last night with an old friend of mine. At one point, she misunderstood something I wrote, and I tried to clarify it for her.

I pointed out to her that it can be difficult to communicate in writing. So many things that people rely on to correctly interpret what someone is saying are missing — tone of voice, facial expression, body language. It's got to be the main reason why "emoticons" were created.

"Emoticon" is the fancy word for those smiley faces people make with the parentheses and the colons and the semicolons to indicate that they were smiling or winking (or whatever they were doing) when they wrote the sentence that preceded. And if they're used appropriately — and sparingly — they really can help the reader better understand what was written.

But they seldom are used sparingly. Many people use them excessively, like internet acronyms (i.e., "LOL"). And anything that is used excessively tends to lose its value.

Things like emoticons and acronyms strike me as lazy devices that are used by people who either have nothing to say or no clue how to express what they want to say. When I receive an e–mail from someone who punctuates every sentence with an emoticon or an "LOL," I don't think that person is smiling or laughing constantly. If I did, I would probably think that person was an airhead.

I've had the misfortune of crossing paths too often with people who believe — mistakenly — that anyone can write. It's all just stringing a bunch of words together.

Well, I studied writing in journalism school, I've written for newspapers and a trade magazine and I've taught writing to undergraduates. And I can tell you that there is a whole lot more to it than that.

And sometimes, even people who have been writing for years and years fall victim to what is known as "writer's block." When you're stuck in "writer's block," you might as well be mired in quicksand — and freeing yourself can be hard. A skilled writer can make it look effortless, but it isn't.

That reminds me of a story.

When Johnny Carson was the host of "The Tonight Show," the show continued to have original programs in his absence because he arranged for someone to fill in for him. Today's late–night hosts don't do that, but in Carson's day, getting a gig as the guest host was quite a coup for a rising comedian. In fact, Carson's successor, Jay Leno, was a guest host on several occasions.

The guest hosts often came through when given their moments in the spotlight, but sometimes they bombed out. I don't remember if I read about this in a book or an article or if I saw someone talking about it in an interview, but once, when the guest host really bombed, Carson called him when the show was over and said, "It ain't as easy as it looks, is it, kid?"

That's the deceptive thing about writing. It looks easy, but it really isn't.

Take this blog, for example. I've been writing it for more than two years now. Three weeks ago, I wrote my 1,000th post, and I shared that milestone with my readers.

My objective, when I started writing this blog, was to write at least one item every day. You don't have to be a math major to figure out that 1,000 posts in two years averages out to about 1½ posts per day so, on the surface, I have met my objective, but, in reality, there have been days when I posted two or three items, and there have been other days when I posted nothing.

Sometimes, I just can't think of something to say. But lately, my problem hasn't been thinking of something to say. My problem has been that I find myself writing about the same topic — unemployment — too much. I guess that's what you might call an occupational hazard, except that, at the moment, I have no occupation. I'm one of the millions of jobless Americans, and, the longer this drags on, the more I find myself fixating on job creation.

Joblessness seems to be the only thing that really matters to me these days. That's not really true, of course. I care about many things. I'm interested in many things. But they seem to get blocked by this void in my life.

I know this guy who lives in North Carolina and writes a blog. (Well, I say that I "know" him, but we have only communicated online.) He does a lot of things with his blog that I would like to do. We were chatting one evening, and I mentioned that I'd like to write some humorous posts or flex my storytelling muscles more than I do, but I can't seem to get into it mentally right now.

I hope to do something like that later on, I told him. I'd like to write some light–hearted things.

"When you get a job?" he asked.

Yes, I replied.

We said no more about it, but I think he understood. And I hope you do, too.

Don't get me wrong. I want to write about serious topics, and it doesn't get any more serious than feeling that you are self–sufficient and that you have a purpose.

This experience has shown me the toll that joblessness can take on someone's self–esteem so I've learned something I would like to apply to my work when I become a productive member of the economy again.

But, at the same time, I would like to write about things I see that amuse me or intrigue me.

It ain't as easy as it looks.

William Safire is Dead

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In my life, I have had a variety of jobs and a variety of titles. But, no matter what kind of work I happened to be doing or what my title happened to be, I always considered myself a journalist.

Journalism was my major in college and graduate school. For many years, I worked for newspapers as a reporter and as an editor. I can't say the work ever paid very well, but it was probably the most satisfying work I have ever done.

As I have said many times in this blog, I have been writing as long as I can remember. I can't say how old I was when I started writing. I know my mother always encouraged me so perhaps she deserves most of the credit or blame, but I really don't know if any particular writers inspired me from an early age — other than the ones whose works my parents read to me, like Dr. Seuss. As I got older, various authors and journalists were added to my mental list of people I wanted to emulate.

One of those had to be William Safire. When I was a boy, he wrote speeches for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. In fact, Safire was responsible for the phrase for which Agnew may be most widely remembered — "nattering nabobs of negativism."

In 1973, he became a columnist for the New York Times, which seems like an odd pairing, given the fact that Safire regarded himself as a "libertarian conservative" and the Times is known for its progressive editorial policy. Safire retired from the Times in 2005, having penned essays for its Op–Ed page for more than 30 years, but apparently he continued to contribute to the "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine until recently.

And, today, he died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 79.

Safire and I did not share the same political philosophy. But we did share an appreciation of language. Consequently, I was pleased to see that Robert McFadden's obituary for Safire that was posted at the Times' website earlier today referred to Safire's "rules for writers."

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Remember to never split an infinitive.

Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.

Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

Avoid cliches like the plague.

And don’t overuse exclamation marks!!

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I never lived in New York so I didn't read his columns very often until the internet gave me access to them. But when I was growing up, I read his books. I read "Before the Fall," an insider's look at the Nixon White House, when I was in high school, and I read his political novel, "Full Disclosure," when I was in college.

It's been a few years since I last worked on a copy desk, but I read two of Safire's books on language, "No Uncertain Terms" and "The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time," both of which were published while George W. Bush was president.

I would have recommended either book to Bush, who was linguistically challenged, to say the least. We might have been spared some of the more egregious — although, admittedly, colorful — Bushisms that were imposed upon us (speaking of which, the word strategery was created by Saturday Night Live writers in a memorable satire of real Bushspeak, like misunderestimate).

Maybe not, though. Judging from how quickly Bush was distracted from his pursuit of Osama bin Laden (which lasted only slightly longer than O.J.'s pursuit of the "real killer" of his ex–wife and her friend), I'm inclined to think that Bush suffers from attention deficit disorder — and, as a result, he might not have absorbed much of the useful information contained in those books.

But I digress.

I'm sorry to see Safire go. But it does give me an opportunity to direct my readers' attention to a site Safire undoubtedly would have liked — Funny Typos, Misspellings, Bad Grammar & Engrish. (Yes, that is right — "Engrish.")

In honor of someone who cared about language — a breed that is vanishing far too rapidly — I urge you to look at it and enjoy it.

And raise your glass in Safire's memory.

May I Suggest ... ?

I've been writing all my life.

When I say that, I'm not joking. I started learning the written alphabet and writing, under my mother's supervision, before I entered kindergarten. No one appreciates a well–turned phrase more than I do, and it's always pleasing when it appears in something I have written.

In fact, there are many satisfying aspects about writing. But there's one really big drawback. For me, anyway.

And that is when I see something that someone else has written and I find myself thinking — if not actually saying — "I wish I had written that!"

I had such a moment this evening.

Readers of this blog should be familiar with the name of John McIntyre. He is a former editor for the Baltimore Sun, and he writes a wonderful blog about language called "You Don't Say."

I thoroughly enjoyed reading his latest post, "How could this have happened?" and I commend it to you, hoping you will read it.

Gotta say I agree with him on just about every point, especially his observation that "Mistakes were made."

Damn! Wish I had written that!