And the winner is . . .
(heeheehee. I so seldom get to say that in real life.)
Lovely Contestant #1, the slightly creepy vinyl surgeon.
Fifteen people participated in my little dueling leads poll. Thanks very much--especially the people with added commentary about their choices, which seemed to build as the comment section grew. I learned a lot from this about what clicks with readers and what doesn’t. Maybe I’ll have to try this with a rejected Salon lead one day. That could be a lot of fun, those are surely too old to interest anyone now.
I kind of expected a more mixed reaction, but #1 ran away with it. The totals were:
#1: 13 votes, with extreme dissent from one corner: "Almost stopped reading before I discovered what the article is about," dws said. ht
#2: 1 lonely vote. Cary Tennis described it as a "New Yorker style lead," which I had no idea I was capable of writing.
#3: 1 vote and a fair amount of derision. "#3 sounds like a convention press release," RuthAlice Anderson sneered. (And I mean "sneer" in a good way, Alice. Hope you’re OK with that characterization.) It was roundly seen as the most conventional.
*******
I meant to set up a separate predictions competition to determine just how predictable the Times is in their selection. But I got distracted, and never moved the post in from Word. A few of you read my mind, though, and that competition was more or less unanimous. Of three votes, two people predicted the Times would go straight for #3, and Scott Rosenberg suggested merely that the Times would be "highly unlikely" to appreciate #1--"Too graphic and ucky for them I think." You people do know your Times.
*******
I was relieved to read the commentary, because on my own private favorites list of words I was most happy about stringing together, that was one of my all-time favorite openings. But I’m naïve enough that it never occurred to me that the Times would have a different opinion of it. I could barely wait to write up the rest of the piece--I wanted to just email the lead right off so they could shower me in gratitude. I did not foresee the short, straightforward "no in medias res" response to the lead. They were actually really complimentary about the writing style in general, but they just don’t open op-ed pieces that way around there.
Maybe they don’t open op-eds that way anywhere these days, which is probably why I gave up reading them--at the Times or anywhere else. Just too damn boring and uninspiring. I guess I thought op-ed editors were bored with them, too, just waiting for a writer to show up handing them something different. Never occurred to me that they wanted their pages to be so dull. (And by "them" I mean op-ed pages around the country. In my mind, this isn’t really about the Times--it’s not like the op-eds in any of the other big papers have gotten my juices flowing, though someone might have jumped in to fill the void since I lost interest. I do remember a New Republic piece that grabbed my attention a few years ago. I think it began, "I’d like to start with a picture." I loved that. Something refreshingly authentic about it--I could almost picture the author standing there talking to me. Words from a real human being.
The other bone-headed assumption I made came a few weeks earlier, when the Times editor emailed me four recently-published "Notes from . . ." pieces. I had a few weeks from assignment to convention, and the style of this series sounded interesting, but extremely non-op-edish, so I asked for a few examples, to see if I was understanding what he wanted. And I kind of hated them. Hate’s a strong word, but I sure thought they were lame. But reality often evades me. Instead of thinking, "I guess I better dull it down," I thought, "Boy are they going to be thrilled if I come up with something interesting."
Actually both thoughts did occur to me, but I brushed off the first one. And a friend--unprompted by any of this--emailed me when he heard about the assignment to say, "Don’t write it any differently because it’s the new york times." Which I thought was good advice. They said they hired me because they liked my voice in my Salon clips, so I’ll give them my voice, and if they don’t like it, they’ll tell me. And then I forgot all about the possibility that they might not like it.
YIKES! I’m late for an allergist appointment. Am I supposed to be babbling this long in a blog anyway? I STILL don’t know the freaking rules here. Why has no one yet apprised me of the blasted rules. (Like "fuck." Why do I subconsciously keep censoring the word fucking and changing it to freaking or blasted? I do use both those words in real life, but not to the extent I do here.)
More in a few hours. (Or maybe tomorrow.) I have oh so much more to tell.
12:15:27 PM 
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