The writing life (3)

Two snippets today:

1. I wrote a column for tomorrow’s paper on Sen. John McCain’s town meeting at the Gilford fire station yesterday. As editor, I never got out much. As a reporter and writer, I will. I am eager to use all my senses in reporting and writing (only eyes and ears for the McCain piece).

But one of the cool bonuses yesterday was a chance to say hi to Dan Balz, a Washington Post political reporter with whom I reconnect every four years. He comes to the Monitor, often with David Broder, to talk politics and reporting with our staff.

Yesterday, we caught up on mutual colleagues, mostly Monitor alums who now work for the Post: Alec MacGillis, Ann E. Marimow, Craig Timberg. Alec is writing politics, and I told Dan I hoped he’d make it to New Hampshire during the campaign. Ann, who covered the McCain campaign for the Monitor in 1999-2000, recently had a baby. Craig is in South Africa. Another Monitor alum, Andrea Bruce, is an ace photographer at the Post. I learned from Dan that Jo Becker, who was here in the late 1990s, had just been hired away from the Post by the New York Times.

It will be fun catching up with other old friends on the campaign trail this year.

2: I wrote two deadline debate analyses this week, and I was dissatisfied with both. I’m most comfortable writing columns because I've done it so long, and I feel confident in reporting and writing news stories and features. But I’ve never done much analysis. An analysis is different from a column: Because it runs on a news page, you don’t have quite as much freedom to say what you think, but you’re allowed – and expected – to make judgments.

But the main reason I struggled was the tight deadlines. I wound up with too many notes and no organizing principle for either analysis. When at last I figured out where I wanted to go, I didn’t have time to shape a piece to my standards. The second went better than the first, so that seemed like progress. But I still found myself – just after filing it – thinking of exactly the connection that would have strengthened it. I woke up this morning thinking about it, too.

It also occurred to me that I hadn’t done any real deadline reporting and writing since the early 1970s.

O rusty me.