This is the start of an occasional series I’m going to do about craft. I’ll have another installment in a few weeks, after I send a few other newsletters. As with any series I do, you don’t have to read each part. I know that simply subscribing to a newsletter is all the commitment some people can handle.
I never leave home without two pencils. Why pencils? Because they don’t spill ink if they break, go dry from disuse, run in the heat, or freeze in the cold. Why two? One might break or get dull. Why do this at all? Because I learned it in school.
I don’t know where I learned it. Was it in William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, which was assigned in my introduction to journalism class? Was it from the professor of that class, a gruff newspaperman whose mustache was striped with a permanent nicotine stain? Was it from my beloved advisor whose lessons and advice went beyond journalism and into all parts of life? (She taught me how to pick out gifts for people, how to navigate bureaucracy, and how to effectively cut a VOSOT on a tight deadline.)
These teachers, even the ones like Zinsser who I only knew through prose, took my enthusiasm for writing and gave it form. I came to them with jars of Play-Doh and they showed me the press that squeezes it into different shapes. They taught me how to turn the unruly globs of ideas and information into something another person can recognize and understand.
This is craft.
I am not an artist. “The least talented talk about Art,” Janet Malcolm wrote of the motivations of journalists. I’m a crafstman. And I love craft. I love thinking about craft. Practicing it. Reading about it. Fine-tuning it. Unlearning it. Relearning it.
There is no amount of study that makes craft easier. Studying and practicing make the end result better, but they don’t make the work less taxing. There is no best with craft. There is only better. There’s no perfect form.
With journalism, a work is done when it runs. Its quality can be judged in any number of ways—clicks, compliments, complaints, et cetera. What’s consistent is that the work could always be a little better, at least to the person who wrote it. It’s finished, but the craft can be honed.
I use the word expansively. Craft, for me, covers all the ways of doing the work.
On one side are best practices—the inverted pyramid, five Ws, and ways not to get yourself sued. These rest on immutable facts like the meaning of words, the rules of grammar, and local laws.
The text is free, but the audio edition is available as a podcast at any level. If you upgrade, you get audio, archives, and the warm feeling of supporting my work.
On the other side, nestled around the nearly invisible line that separates standards from superstition are the habits of the trade. These are the personal tics that have calcified into codes. They sound sage to outsiders and newcomers, they inspire aspirants and imitators. These are ideas like “Carry two pencils” and “put 30 at the end of your story when you file.” These are passed down by bosses, cool colleagues, professors, and other idols.
I once saw a reporter in a documentary using a tall, thin reporter’s notebook with the wires pointed down. I realized he was flipping it over with each page. The advantage is that the notebook could later be laid flat on a desk with two pages visible to a writer typing up their notes. The next day, I started flipping my notebooks like this. Seeing former interns do this gives me the same sort of pride I feel when I see them make big career moves or win awards.
The best legacy of craft is to see it deployed by a new talent—for it to be adapted and spread without your name attached. Craft is not about fame. It’s about making the work better.
Craft shouldn’t be confused with imitation. Over and over in newsrooms, after seeing someone lose their temper at a colleague, trot out an outdated phrase, or otherwise hurt or humiliate, I’ve thought, “I bet an editor of his did it that way.”
Craft isn’t as rigid as it can seem. Craft gives rules to break. It gives limits to test under an editor’s conservative eye.
One day, the editor won’t be there. The teachers aren’t around. You’re the editor. You’re the supervisor, the role model, the instructor. The title won’t fit. It won’t hang comfortably on your ego. You will feel alone. This is where you need craft. It’s where you assemble the best pieces of inspiration into your own way of doing things. Craft is the cornerstone you build on and around. And you build something better. You will make mistakes, but they will be your own mistakes, not mistakes of the past you carry forward to a new generation. You’ll get better, make the work better, make the craft itself better.
The best craft advice I’ve ever learned is simple. Avoid cliches. Don’t write them. Don’t become one.
