With this column, I begin my fifth year as a weekly columnist for the Deseret News. I am closing in on my 200th op-ed, and over the past few days have been pondering the lessons I have learned through this marathon endeavor. For any aspiring columnists out there, here are a few things you should know about writing a weekly column:
First, you will need to always be on the lookout for column topics. The toughest part of the job is coming up with something to write about each week. After your first few columns, you are going to discover that you have exhausted all of your fully fleshed out ideas. That’s when the writer’s block — and associated panic — sets in. To survive as a columnist, you’ve got to be a continual learner. You’ve got to constantly be on the lookout for new ideas, new angles, new causes, new connections that spark your imagination and that might have the seeds of a decent column. The seed for this particular column came from reading “Thank You for Being Late: An Optimists Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerants” by famed New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman (it is well worth the read).
Second, write through your writer’s block. I can’t recall how many times I have stared at a blank screen on Tuesday night, trying to come up with something to say before my Wednesday morning deadline. The only way around this problem is through it. It sometimes takes brute force to pound out a column, but I have found that just one well-crafted sentence can release a torrent of ideas and expression. Just start writing, and don’t give up until you are done.
Third, if you have an opinion about the future, you are going to get things wrong, and when you get things wrong everybody who reads your column is going to know about it. Over the past four years, I have predicted that oil prices will remain above $100 per barrel, that the Ebola virus would break out of Africa to disastrous effect, and that Congress would finally close the Ex-Im Bank. To make matters worse, I could not have been more wrong about presidential politics. Just three weeks before Trump’s election night victory, I declared his candidacy dead in the water, even writing somewhat of a Trump campaign post-mortem. Boy have I gotten some things wrong, to the absolute delight of the handful of “fan club members” that are as dedicated to offering negative comments about my columns as I am about writing them (yes, I am talking to you, IronyGuy).
Which leads me to my third lesson; if you are going to have an opinion, you are going to have detractors. There is no way around this, especially in the age of anonymous comments. Early on, the negative comments on my columns bothered me. I would read every one, and stew about them. Then I just stopped reading them altogether. Now I am reading the comments again, and they usually bring a smile to my face. My loyal cadre of critics is now like a club old grumpy friends; when they don’t comment, I worry that they might have died of excessive curmudgeon-ness.
Finally, writing a weekly column is worth it. To all of the aspiring columnists out there, you have a unique voice, and can make a unique contribution to our community and public discourse.
On a personal note, I love writing a column each week for the Deseret News, and am grateful to have a voice on its pages.