Writing Wednesday: How NOT to Write a Column
It turns out that being a columnist isn’t quite as glamorous as one would hope. Not that I’m complaining—I am, after all, a bone fide member of Sex and the City Generation and landing my own column is a dream come true—but writing for City’s Best: Philadelphia has reminded me that writing only very rarely involves any actual writing.
For example, on Sunday, I spent all afternoon dragging my poor brother across the entire city of Philadelphia in order to produce a “headshot in front of a recognizable Philadelphia landmark” for my online bio. Three hours and 143 snapshots later, I had half a dozen which I deemed not-too-ugly-to-send-to-my-editor. (Not that I’m highly self critical or anything…)
Then there was that time, earlier this week, when I was late for a meeting at my own desk. My editor set up a conference call in order to walk me through the new Content Management System I’ll be using to submit my columns. She arranged for our meeting to begin at 2:00 and emailed me all of the necessary documents beforehand: the conference call number, the meeting code, a website that allowed me view her computer screen during the demo, another log in code, the CMS manual, my CMS log in and finally (at ten minutes after two on the day of our scheduled meeting) an email that read, “Did you forget to call in for our meeting at 2:00?”
I had not. I had plastered myself to my chair at 1:30 just to be sure that I was on time. I had noted our virtual appointment in my Google calendar, I had all the login details and meeting codes ready to go on my browser but, as fate would have it, Monday was one of those days when everything (and I do mean everything) took longer than it should have.
As such, I ended up ten minutes late for a meeting that required nothing more than my making a phone call from my desk and punching in a few passwords.
Brilliant, eh?
Fieldwork in Stilettos 
5 Responses to “Writing Wednesday: How NOT to Write a Column”
Nice start….
I know, right? Fortunately my editor didn’t seem too upset (probably because I spent the next ten minutes apologizing all over myself…)
Hey!! I just read your article in Research in Dance Education- interesting! You mentioned having an MA thesis (unpublished?) that’s related? Can you email me (please?)- I’d like to ask questions!
Funny you wrote about this today… I just had a 2nd round interview via skype – a conference call involving 3 other candidates actually sitting in a meeting room as well as the hiring manager. I managed to call in on time, but talk about awkward… !
I’m jealous you can say ‘my editor’ 🙂 keep up the good work!
I’ve been having that day all week…plus I sent a snarky email about someone to two colleagues and accidentally copied said person. Oooof!