Here’s the secret: They actually don’t want you to please them.
In my twenties and for too many years of my thirties I made the mistake of young writers. I tried to please my editors. I tried to write the sort of pieces they wanted to publish. This worked well. I got bigger and better assignments at the alt-weeklies and city magazines where I was on staff and came to the attention of national outlets, where I freelanced. Pleasing my editors is how I financed my wedding, and then our honeymoon. Pleasing my editors is how I bought a home for our kids. It was how I led a happy life.
Just not a meaningful one. Far too many of those stories carried no intrinsic interest to me. They didn’t reflect my passions, my obsessions, what worried me at any one moment in time. The stories listed my byline but weren’t particular in any way to my experience.
I’ve mentioned this before but the great Tom Junod once said you could write a biography of him based solely on the stories he published. Meaning: Tom wrote stories that reflected his motivations, his vulnerabilities. This was the case even when his pieces lacked the first-person I. Tom found people to profile who embodied the same ideas and struggles present in his own life.
Hearing this had a profound impact on me. At first, honestly, it worried me: Pleasing…
