Will Write (talking points) For Food

My first job in the Senate was answering constituent mail. Not just letters, but emails and (often irate) phone calls. There were about six of us covering our large Midwestern state, most in our early twenties, divided into issue areas. I was in charge of health care, abortion, and numerous “children and family” issues.

Our supervisor was a sweater-vested, mustachioed man who really would have been better off being a junior high algebra teacher. He developed a packet for the Legislative Correspondents that included a number of sample letters, tips and pitfalls to avoid. It opened with a quote from his own father (who I think actually was an algebra teacher), “Do not write to be understood. Write so that you cannot be misunderstood.”

Bullshit.

I worked on Capitol Hill for almost ten years. I graduated from writing letters to writing speeches and op-eds and press releases. And trust me – there are plenty of times in politics where you just want to hit that sweet spot between saying what you mean and meaning what you say. Ambiguity rules most of the time.

When I left government for the private sector, it was way, way worse. Absolute garbage like “suboptimal efficiencies” and “leveraging key stakeholders” seem to be of far more value to the corporate and non-profit world than real English. There is this limited universe of jargon and if you aren’t borrowing heavily from it, then you are regarded with suspicion. I have seen clients visibly relax when I finally break down and throw out something about “target audiences” or “messaging.”

I’m not naïve. I know that different professions come with different cultures and languages and norms. But as I try to make the transition to some “real” writing, I feel sort of like a Replicant going against her programming.

Ideas and phrases tumble around in my brain, but by the time I go to write them down, they’re all clenched up and scrubbed down. 

And I don't trust my own voice. Even up there, when I wrote "should have been a junior high algebra teacher" my brain immediately started scolding:  Well, that's just what you think.  Who are you to say what another human being should or should not have done with his or her life?  Just because he wore a lot of sweater vests doesn't devalue his work...

“Resist the urge to be fair,” said Stephen Elliott when I went to his workshop earlier this month.

I’m adding to that – “Resist the urge to write talking points.”