Writer Cat Fight

While I actually took more out of your above post than the sum total of everything else you have ever posted, YF, that line right there means you don't get it, and never will. Nothing wrong with that, either. You'll probably be happier for it.

 

If the moon tells you to use "fuck" 42 times, you do it.

 

You gotta win to get love. Everyone knows that. It's just life. -- Ricky Bobby

 

I'd like to speak to the generalization that competition fuels our lives. In a sense, it's true. But I think it's competition with oneself. I'm a copy editor, so I'm always trying to find a new twist on an adage for a hedline, or to be sure I wrote a hed that won't have me thinking of a better one on the way home. Or to want to improve how I deal with writers. And now I have to also have to work to get better at raising the performance of others. No mailing in here.

I could give a crap about headline awards; they're so random and so bound up in personal taste. And I hope I am recognized for my efforts, but I can't control what other people have on their plate or what distractions they have, or how my personality is taken.

As to the typefitter, if he felt he could have done better to make it an award-worthy piece, and he thinks of how he could have, cool. But if it's a matter of, in a sense, slagging the competition as not as worthy as you, not good.

 

Great point. I was talking to a copy editor after a shift one night, and he said he knew he had written no award-winners. But it was a hectic shift, and he felt like he had handled his post well. (Don't read that literally.) So he considered it one of his better nights.

Not too many weeks later, the staff cuts started. He kept his job, but there was a lot more crap flowing his way. A month later, he says, "Remember that night back in the fall? It'll never happen again the way we're going. Now we just try to avoid hitting the iceberg."

 

Um, thanks, I guess.

I understand that Jones uses awards as motivation and wants to be the best at what he does. And I get that in his soul, he is a writer.

None of that bothers me. I think it's normal to want your work to be validated by your peers and understandable to be disappointed when it's not. (Though judging anything artistic is so subjective.)

I even think it's fine for him to vent about it in the setting of a blog. I like that he's willing to be so open and honest.

And, I don't want him to just mail it in. I just wish -- for his sake -- that he didn't let the criticisms bother his so much. For one thing, they're just as subjective as the praise, and in some instances there are other motives behind it.

Now, why do I say he shouldn't let his writing define him? Well, because the most moving piece Jones has written, in my eyes, wasn't about Ebert. It was this one, about Charley:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/chris-jones/autism-support-090310

Reading about Charley seeing the ocean for the first time or standing in Lake Ontario, watching the train go by, moved me much more.

Jones is a great writer. There's no doubt about that.

What makes me admire him is that he's Charley's dad. And Sam's dad. And Lee's husband.

And, if I'm lucky, maybe I'll be able to define myself in those terms one day.

 

great post. sums up my take perfectly. i never, EVER wrote a piece thinking, 'this is an award-winner.' i could not have care less. i lived for acknowledgment from my bosses and immediate peers. to each his own.

i was always driven simply to become the best me i could be. hey, maybe it's different for the brilliant magazine writers like smith, price, jones, etc. perhaps when you reach that level, awards become the driving force that keeps your typing fresh.

strange, though, how i never recall seeing smith talk about being driven by chasing all the awards he's garnered over the years. but in fairness, obviously we're not all wired the same. i have little doubt that i'd have a blast with jones as we kicked back and talked about how he does what he does. this doesn't mean i can't wish he felt a wee bit better about himself and not be so open about his neuroses.

but if venting and competing and purging himself of whatever demons drive him to continue to do what he does, well, i'm sure he's relieved to know i'm cool with that. fortunately for me i only read his brilliant, long-form pieces; i'd be 100 percent unware of his insecurities if not for SportsJournalists.com. when made aware, i'll happily chime in with my .02, then eagerly wait to read whatever his next project might be. and i certainly won't be thinking as i read, 'man, i wish the guy that wrote this prize felt a little more sure of himself.'

i'll be thinking, as i do when reading smith or price or deford (back in the day), 'man, i could never do this as well,' and then go on trying to be the best mucker-and-grinder i can be....

 

Yes, Autism's First Child. I like it for personal reasons, obviously, but I really think it's a great story.

And this is an important point, that dooley kind of raised. I never once said that the other work wasn't worthy, never once said the panel was wrong, never once said the awards are a crock or a crapshoot or anything of the sort.

All I said was, I was hoping to get nominated, and I was disappointed I wasn't. That puts it all on me.

As for the adversity line, daemon, yes, Charley's birth was tremendously difficult on us. Watching his heart get shocked was the longest twenty minutes of my life. But now that he's a big boy, I don't really think about it very much. It seems like some distant bad dream. It's like that was just part of the necessary process for us to get Charley, so it doesn't seem like adversity so much as something we had to do for the great reward that is our weird, beautiful little dude.

I can't remember what else you wrote, except that I didn't finish that story and think it was an award-winner. I worried that I hadn't done justice to the material. I began to think it might be an award winner when a million people read it online, and a bunch of people told me it was a good story. I believed them.

Oh, the moon line. I'm pretty sure I was listening to Pink Floyd.

 

Well, it has been mentioned you have a dark side.

 

Trying to imagine what this thread would look like if either of those guys had written the blog posts. :-X

 

If I'm reading this correctly (and there's a good chance I'm not), Alma makes a great point about the talent pool becoming smaller and smaller as you move up the ranks; the elite writers named in this discussion know the difference between good and great, they know how hard it is to be considered among the latter, and those awards, reserved for the greatest work of the greatest writers, really do mean something. They do. When Jones says he knows which writers have won which awards, and how many, I get that. Those are his peers, and his way of assessing how his work is received in comparison. The best actors know when they've turned in an Oscar-worthy performance, and none of them would be criticized for hoping/expecting to be nominated. To me, this is the same thing.

But when every dissenting or critical response here or on that blog is initially met with some sarcastic version of 'you're an idiot, you don't get it, you can't read,' you can't be surprised when people figure this is about defensive insecurity instead of the reality of being at the top of the game.

And just to be clear, given SJ history, all of that was meant in the best possible way.

 

daemon, there is a pretty bit difference between this post, above, which is what originally annoyed me and what I responded flippantly too (and thus earned a scolding from Mr. Why-So-Serious, Tsk-Tsk-Rasputin) and your second post, where you were name-checking Mencken, Kafka, Ginsberg, Wolff and Flaubert. There are some interesting, reasoned points in the second one, even if I still think much of it is your own b.s. projections, at least it merits an actual worthwhile debate instead of calling someone "pathetic" and "a sad case."