Installment+30

South of Denver - Chapter 30

February 21, 2006

It had to happen eventually.

Despite having two months between issues, despite having a pretty good run of interesting, provocative topics over the last year, and despite having plenty of writing talent, our two regular columnists came up empty in Issue forced.
 * 1) 5. Oh, they ran columns, all right, but they were lackluster and felt

I have no idea where I once read this, but I repeat it often to students wanting to write a regular column: "Writing a (readable) column is like standing naked on stage." I always hasten to mention that this is a simile, but they get the difficulty level in letting hundreds of strangers know things about you that can leave you vulnerable, embarrassed, open to second guessing.

We're not talking about the occasional commentary here. We're talking about the hard slog of cranking out 400 plus words every issue, issue after issue.

It sort of came apart last week. As Susie said three days before we went to press, "I just can't find the trigger this time."

I tried to help, doing all those things writing coaches do. I had her sum up her thesis in 25 words. I told her to tell me about her column like she would tell her mom at the kitchen table. I asked dozens of questions. I pointed out all sorts of possibilities in her drafts that might lead her to something anecdotal, personal, meaningful. Nothing seemed to really click.

Susie ended up writing three different columns and discarding them all when she found she was not comfortable with being as open as she needed to be to make her points. She wrote about what she sees as a chasm between love and commitment, for instance, but since she just couldn't bring herself to "stand naked on stage" and tell any of her own anecdotes about love and commitment, she ended up tossing that idea about 24 hours before we went to press.

She was at a loss, and so was I, but I remembered her telling me how much she loved two movies last year: "Rent," and "Brokeback Mountain."

"Why don't you write about those movies and their themes, since you care passionately about them?" I asked. "You rarely go wrong when you write with passion. And the Oscar nominees were just announced."

"But I don't want to be a movie reviewer," Susie responded. "I want to write about bigger issues, about life beyond high school."

"Movie reviews can do that," I said. "And it's not like you have to write reviews every issue."

She gave me the look.

"Susie, you have 24 hours," I said. "We can pull the column if you want. But you have to go with something."

She went with her personal reactions to the movies. Solid work. But not her voice. Not her issues. She was not a happy 16-year-old.

Meanwhile, 17-year-old Natasha was slogging through a column about registering for her senior year classes, and how she felt paralyzed by all the pressure. In a sense, that paralysis pervades her column. If Susie wasn't interested in taking that disrobed walk on stage, Natasha was feeling even more modest about truly opening up.

Both columns were fine. There were no comments. No one felt uncomfortable. No one was challenged.

Susie anxiously asked me what I thought of her piece just before we went to press.

"It's fine," I said.

"Ugh! Not that. I don't want to be 'fine.' "

"Susie," I said, "sometimes 'fine' is all you're going to get from me."

"But I don't want to be satisfied with that," she said, with another look, the one she gets when she expects something from me that will save the day.

It was too late to do anything at that point but just go with what we had. But this week we have talked about writing from an "abundance of information," as writing coach Donald Murray would say. I gave both girls two long pieces of narrative by Tom French - "South of Heaven" and "Angels & Demons" - to get them thinking about language and story telling and inspiration. Today in class we talked about the amazing amount of research French did to produce such riveting stories.

Our columnists had been living on borrowed time, with, in Susie's case, exactly eight good columns that came from her life, from her travels, from her dreams.

My job in the next two weeks will be to challenge Susie and Natasha to dig into interesting topics, report the heck out of them, and only then bring their unique voices and perspectives to the writing.

The pressure is on the writers and their coach. But the girls don't want to repeat those blah February columns in March, and that motivation should get them back on track.

Jack Kennedy

Rock Canyon High School

Highlands Ranch CO 80124

 jkkennedy@comcast.net

 jack.kennedy@dcsdk12.org

Note: Happy Scholastic Journalism Week! This is the latest chapter in a series of columns on working with a young staff in a young school (this semester we are up to 22 staff members and we have no senior class). It is cryptotherapy for me. It may occasionally provide something positive for you. Please go to the JEAHELP archives to read the previous chapters if you missed them and have absolutely nothing else to do.