A supermarket checkout line. Cheesy holiday music is playing overhead. Not the fun kind of cheesy music, but the kind once heard in Kmart á la 1973.
There is an old man at the head of our long checkout line, standing at the register. He digs through his pockets, but keeps coming up empty handed.
“I’m sorry, miss,” he says to the cashier. “I must’ve left my wallet at home.”
He is embarrassed, and the young cashier is unsure about what to do.
I am watching this entire exchange closely because I am a columnist who writes human interest stories.
We columnists must keep our observational reflexes honed as sharp as wiffle-ball bats. We have to stay ready because we are not real writers.
Writers are inspired artists and poets. Columnists are factory-line workers who take whatever stories they can get.
Your big-time writer is a person with incredibly poignant things to say about life and the profundity of the human condition; they have grand ambitions of someday winning a major literary award,
and possibly having a “New York Times” best-smeller.
A columnist’s highest aspiration is for someone to cut his or her column out of the paper and hang it on the refrigerator.
So columnists have to work harder than true writers because we can’t rely on inspiration. Besides, our job is not to be inspired, but to constantly find new stories. This is not simple work. Therefore, most of the time you find me writing about key social issues such as, say, my dogs.
But the beauty of all this is, every once in a while a column will actually fall into your lap.
This is a rare thing indeed, and one of the most precious things that can happen to a stringer of words. Your task as a columnist is to be mindful enough to notice this pivotal moment is occurring, then to ignore it and keep…