Letter to an aspiring writer

“Hi Michael!  I would love to talk to you about your experiences in Journalism as a whole. As a young journalist starting out, I find myself covering things that I sometimes do not understand. I'd also like to talk to you about freelance work and things like that. My cell is 908-XXX-XXXX. Please reach"

Dear writer:

First a poem/song about writing or singing:

There's a kid out on my corner hear him strumming like a fool


Shivering in his dungarees but still he's going to school


His cheeks are made of peach fuzz, his hopes may be the same


But he's signed up as a soldier out to play the music game

There are fake patches on his jacket


He's used bleach to fade his jeans


With a brand new stay-pressed shirt


And some creased and wrinkled dreams


His face a blemish garden but his eyes are virgin clear


His voice is Chicken Little's, but he's hearing Paul Revere

When he catches himself giggling


He forces up a sneer

Though he'd rather have a milk shake

He keeps forcing down the beer


Just another folkie, late in coming down the pike


Riding his guitar, he left Kid brother with his bike

And he's got Guthrie running in his bones


He's the hobo kid who's left his home


And his Beatles records and the Rolling Stones


This boy is staying acoustic

There's Seeger singing in his heart


He hopes his songs will somehow start


To heal the cracks that split apart


America gone plastic

And now there's Dylan dripping from his mouth


He's hitching himself way down south


To learn a little black and blues


From old street men who paid their dues


’Cause they knew they had nothing to lose


They knew it, so they just got to it

With cracked old Gibsons and red clay shoes


Playing 1 4 5 chords like good news


And cursed with skin that calls for blood


They put their face and feet in mud

But oh, they learned the music from way down there

The real ones learn it somewhere

Strum your guitar, sing it kid


Just write about your feelings, not the things you never did


Inexperience, it once had cursed me


But your youth is no handicap, it's what makes you thirsty.

-- Harry Chapin - There Only Was One Choice

What Harry is telling us about this kid is he wants to be a folk singer. He can't sing very well, bur he tells the kid to do it anyhow. He sees a passion in the kid and wants to encourage it.

And so I have to ask you, is writing your passion?

Here's what my favorite author, Robert Heinlien, says about writing: "Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."

But just in case you still want to write, I will tell you a secret : WRITE. Write like it was your full-time job. Research like it is your full-time job. Edit like it's your full-time job. Because writing is your full-time passion.

You must write. You can't talk about wanting to be a writer. You won't become one by taking courses. You have to put your hands on a keyboard and start typing. And finish what you start. You'll never sell a damn thing if you don't. And as soon as you submit it for publication, write something else.

So let's talk about journalism. If you want to be in print media such as newspapers and magazines. There is little chance you will be able to do so. After all, there are thousands of unemployed journalists out there because print is dying and everything is electronic. That doesn't mean a damn thing. Do it anyhow because you'll become a far better writer. 

Newspapers don't pay very much. I started writing for the Morris County (NJ) Daily Record in 1968 when I was a college freshman. They paid a magnificent sum of $12.50 to be a "stringer" -- a freelance writer hired to cover a town meeting. My first assignment was to cover the Victory Gardens town council. Victory Gardens is the smallest town in the state. But the mayor was getting very worried because the Borough had seen it's very first drug bust earlier in the week. He made a quick statement about it at the beginning of the meeting and gave me the copy. There were probably a dozen more important things going on.  There were zoning approvals, budget issues, master planning and the cost of utilities. But that little statement was what I grabbed.

I got back to the office and sat at a typewriter in complete panic. "How would this read in the  Record?" I asked myself at least a dozen times before I just wrote about what I had. Who?--the mayor; What? drug abuse: Where? Victory Gardens (the dateline); Why? Because the mayor said drugs were spreading; How? The mayor thought pushers from the town next door were moving in on town.

I took those basic questions and managed to spit our eight paragraphs. The desk cut it down to four 'graphs and used it as a filler on page 5. No byline.

But I had published something and I kept on getting assignments. I learned to know what the issues of town government was. Or so I thought. And I just kept writing the stories, about four nights a week. Copy began to flow much easier. I remember I went to a very controversial board of education meeting which was attended by more than 100 people. I immediately called the news desk to get a photographer and I wrote 8 takes (pages) about the meeting. They published every word and I had a front-page byline.

After writing for about six months, I went into the Army Reserves. When I returned, I began working for the competition, The Daily Advance.

And I had a beat. I started writing about Hackettstown, Mount Olive and Allamuchy. Two of those towns were the only ones in Warren County we covered so I covered the county freeholders and occasionally the county court. 

I got to know a lot of politicians and civic leaders, as well as just plain people. This was the time when young Christians were becoming known as "Jesus Freaks." and that stirred a bit of controversy. And I looked for controversy throughout the town. And I found the most at the Hackettstown Council meeting. There always seemed to be problems. And I wrote about them. My editors loved it and gave me pretty much free rein on my articles.

And then came election night. The Republicans had a five-to-one majority on the council but lost the two seats that were up that year. After getting a couple of quotes from the Mayor, I went over to the Democrats party. Suddenly all the people who had been complaining about the "problems" were there. I felt I had been sucker punched. 

I spent the next year trying to be more balanced. And we endorsed the Republicans the next year.

I also managed to get a number of feature stories. Google Paula Grossman. She was a transexual music teacher who lost his job when he became a she. This was happening in Bernards Township, well out of our circulation area. I mentioned to my editor that he/she was my music teacher for three years. He got that manic grin on his face and insisted I go to Plainfield and interview her. 

And so I wrote my first major feature story. It was more than 1,000 words and it started on the front page and jumped to page three, tying up nearly half the page. 

The lead was like this: "

PLAINFIELD -- "My, you've changed," said Paula Grossman as she welcomed me to her modest Tudor home. "But then, who am I to talk?"  Paula has indeed changed. When she taught me in the Bernards Township schools, she was a he named Paul.

The story was one of the hardest I ever had to write. I had to do research on sex changes, and it wasn't available in our local libraries, nor in the newly-opened library at the local community college. I had to do my research at Rutgers University's main campus and also had to talk with the Board of Education members and their lawyer. I also did phone interviews with doctors. 

It took about 20 hours to do the story. I did the interview on a Monday morning and turned it in on Tuesday close to midnight. That story was a turning point for me. While I did a lot of town meetings, I also began to search out human interest stories. And I was trusted with more assignments. I became the reporter on the Presidential election, following candidates as they stumped the state. I was very tight with our convention delegates and had on-the-scene accounts of what was happening at the national conventions. 

I finally ended my days as a beat reporter and covered the courthouse, which included the prosecutor's office. I had a solid relationship with then Judge Brendan Byrne and managed to get him to pose for a photo by his office door (photos were banned in the courthouse in those days) as he left to run for New Jersey governor. The photo made the state AP wire.

There were a lot of good times with my fellow reporters. Most of us were single (It's kind of tough to find someone when we worked every night until 1 a.m.). And so we went to a local diner to solve all the problems of the world, staying until about 3 a.m. One night, we spotted a man wanted for murder and called the cops from the pay phone. Within minutes there were at least 20 cops there. Our Photographer was hanging with us and he got a photo that went national. We made the new guy go back to the newsroom and write the story, but we also phoned it in to back up. It's the only time I've ever seen six bylines. 

Four years after that Victory Gardens story, I had it with writing about the same things. I took an opening with a weekly newspaper. I wanted to do more than just write. I wanted to learn layout, editing and general newspaper management. Those days we had type set and pasted up our weekly 20 pages. In addition to doing some reporting, I wrote a weekly column and one about off-road motorcycles won a New Jersey Press Association award,

It was a great run, but Journalism never paid enough to support a family. I hated to stop it, but a pregnant wife forced me to take a job pushing photographic products as a technical writer. After a couple of years, I had a reputation and was offered a job editing a trade magazine for professional photographers. After that, five years working for Canon USA’s ad agency writing technical materials, press releases, price lists, and more.

The career went on. I wrote stuff for the inventor of the MRI scanner, countless articles for business trade magazines and more until I developed carpal tunnel syndrome after an auto accident. And so I had a second career as a school teacher, making kids write about history.

These days, I don’t write for anyone but myself. I don’t care who reads it. I’m retired. But I still have a passion for it. I’ve travelled cross country four times and have gone up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. I’ve been in 112 degree heat in the Badlands, and under four feet of blizzard in the same place.

So kid, if you want to be a writer. Just write.