A weblog devoted to spurring a conversation among those who use words to varying degrees in their daily work. Hosted by John Ettorre, a Cleveland-based writer and editor. Please email me at: john.ettorre@gmail.com. "There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real." --James Salter
ChannelingI'm a Cleveland, Ohio-based writer, editor and writing coach, with more than 25 years of experience, including stints in Chicago and Washington, D.C. My work has appeared in more than 100 print and online publications, from the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor to local and regional publications. My work has been recognized by awards (including an Emmy) from four journalism groups.
7 Comments:
Maybe Weasal, or Ferret. Not Rat, for me, anyway. And not Mouse. All of those have good characteristics, of course.
Select your favorite rodent, by all means.
I once tracked down a school superintendent (by phone) on a golf course when I needed to talk to him about a story. Does that qualify?
Cunning, perhaps, but hardly ratlike. He probably welcomed your call, doubly so if he was having a bad day on the course.
I once bluffed my way past a high end real estate agent who would only show then-Browns owner Art Modell's mansion in exclusive Waite Hill to qualified buyers. It was near the height of the uproar following Modell's decision to move the team to Baltimore, and he was the most hated man in town at the time. I tried not to lie, but certainly did leave the misleading impression that I was an agent of a wealthy potential buyer, and got a tour of the mansion, with some juicy tidbits about how the family used the house. When the alternative weekly paper The Free Times published the resulting story, it prompted the embarrassed agent to castigate me in a subsequent Plain Dealer story as a sleazy reporter. I'm guessing that's the kind of thing he's talking about in that quote.
As the editor Michael Keaton famously said in the movie The Paper, "a clipboard and a confident nod will get you in just about any door." Not always true, but I love the line anyway.
That is a great line!
Do packrats count?
Nearly every writer I've ever known is at least a modest packrat, Maria. Just tends to come with the territory.
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