On a Deadline

There is no time to waste. It is just past 6 a.m.  I have to be in Boerne at 9, which means I have to leave the house by eight. That gives me two hours, less now, to write this, publish, eat breakfast and dress. In my younger days as a journalist working on a deadline, I would occasionally be faced with this same sort of situation. Sit down, write, get it out, let’s go. It was made doubly hard if I had no real interest in the story; when it was just a job to do.

It was doubly difficult because I was not, nor am I now, a facile writer. I liked to mull over my words. Pick them up, turn them over in my hand, look at them in the light and in the shadow, read them aloud, choose them carefully. And the pressure of the deadline made that well nigh impossible, especially when the deadline was a close one. There were others at the paper, however, who could toss off a story as though it were pre-written, sitting there in their head, just waiting to be used, as if they were born with a library of stories. I will be honest. I envied them.

At the newspaper, it was the beginning of the story that counted, the lede. A straight news story was always who, what, why, when, and where. The features, where I worked, required a bit more artistry. You were looking for the best of times, the worst of times, that sort of lede, the words that made the reader say, oh, my, I want to go further. For me, now, it is the end, in the vein of Chaucer, the last words, the wrap up that counts, and god, that sounds vain. But here we are, the job is done, and it seems a suitable place to stop. Maybe therein lies the goodness. The job is done and on the way the reader was entertained, and that’s what counts. And perhaps my inability to start was a fear of failing once I did. There’s a thought. It’s 6:38.