Putting one note after another

It’s not that I have nothing to write. I have a list of things to write. An essay nearly finished,  interesting exercises that I could run through, the writer’s equivalent to playing scales. Tonight an invented one: I found a website that generates random photos. When I asked for one, this is what it sent me.

I can do something with this picture. I can invent a story about it. That might be fun. For awhile I noodled around with it, but other than riffing on themes of (first) abandonment and (second) longing I didn’t get anywhere. One of the toughest things about writing fiction is keeping out of the cliches that riddle our psyches like land mines. Maybe I’ll write a story about this photo, but I have to think on it awhile.

Years ago, a man disappeared on a jet ski in a local lake. It’s a man-made lake, and it lays like a little dimple on the Ohio landscape. You could sit in a canoe in the middle and see every shoreline and everyone on the shoreline could see you. They found the body of the man, may he rest in peace, and by then I’d already spun the story — in my head, of course– complete with Maury Povich, Belize, and the underbelly of Dayton’s east side. I need to get that stuff down on a page.

Non-fiction is so much easier– you just tell the facts. Or try to. Journalists are human, so bias creeps in, even if it’s just in the choices of adjectives we make, or which quotes to include. Most of us try to stay objective, but occasionally agenda and prejudice come stampeding in right along with the lede.

Yesterday, the Register Guard newspaper of Eugene, Oregon ran a story about an elderly dog who was removed, nay, stolen out of her yard by “rescuers.” Not “thieves”, not even the neutral women but “rescuers”, by God.

The story, by Chelsea Gorrow, was hot stuff on social media, so many singing along with her chorus, enumerating the praises of the thieves, oops, women.

Then the dog turned out to be 17, and under the palliative care of her life-long owner.

But Chelsea Gorrow, in her news story called the dog “Hope” (the name the “rescuers” had bestowed on the dog) and quoted them generously, framing their beliefs like gospel.

Even though the dog’s name was Zena and all of them– “journalist” and “rescuers” alike knew that.

Eventually the thieves were made to return the dog to her owner, who felt his hand was forced and took her to be euthanized the day she returned.

I was moved by this example of bright yellow journalism to do something I rarely do anymore–  to correct the story and send it back to the writer and all four of her editors. They all ought to be ashamed. Of course, I didn’t hear anything back, they probably chalked up the email to “some crackpot old woman.”

But aside from those kinds of egregious lapses in judgment, writing non-fiction is just answering these challenges: make it plain, make it engaging, make the reader stick with it. Who, what, when, where and why is also helpful.

[February 27, 2015]