The Art of the nag note
In which an editor gently asks, Where’s the story?
An editor who sees a writer he is working with blossoming and blooming in other outlets is an editor with mixed emotions in his heart: joy that the writer he cares about, and wants to succeed, is flourishing. And at the same time, a nagging kernel of jealousy, too: Where’s my story?, he says, in the darker corners of his mind.
Thus it was great to see Noah Sneider’s fantastic piece in The New York Times—on page one, yet—on July 11: “Shadowy Rebel Wields Iron Fist in Ukraine Fight.” The piece is about a man who, with or without authorization from Moscow, is attempting to unite the fractious separatist militias that are battling the Ukraine government. This man, Igor Strelkov, is doing so with a brutal iron hand.
So good. And then came Noah’s excellent online piece in The Economist, which started this way:
VLADIMIR PISKUNOV once had roses in his garden, red and white ones lining the patio. He once had tomatoes, ripening alongside the cherry trees. He once had a roof over his house. He once had a wife. All of that was wiped out late in the afternoon of July 12th, when three Grad rockets hit 15 Lyubovich Street on the western edge of Donetsk…
It was a moving, stirring piece. And in its wake, I wrote a brief piece of my own, an e-mail to Noah:
Hi Noah, I can see from my local newspaper that you are a busy man. Really good story. Meanwhile I am getting a little nervous that Open Rehearsal is on the verge of losing momentum; we told the Medium folks we’d wrap it up around June 30, and, well, things change, but still… Are you still planning the brief How I Write piece? And can we schedule a deadline for Part III? Let us know how it’s going. I don’t think the project has lost any energy yet, but it is so terrific I hate to risk it. Let me know the schedule if you can. looking forward, and thanks, Mike
Noah, to his great credit, wrote back right away:
Hi Mike, Nice to hear from you, and apologies for falling off the map. This place sucks up all attention/energy — it’s full mind/body immersion being here. Anyhow, I agree that we’re in danger of losing momentum, and would be good to wrap it up soon. How about I do a short post today or tomorrow explaining where I am, linking to pieces I’ve written, etc. and we shoot for part 3 a week from today? We can follow the same weekly sched as part 2 — file Monday, edit tuesday, talk Wednesday. Would that work for you?
It would, I said.
And if all goes according to plan, readers who have been following the progress of our story, “The Empire Strikes Back”—about the deep history driving events in Ukraine—will be able to see the edit of the final installment by July 22, and to listen to Noah and I talk about that edit, and the piece as a whole, some time after July 23.
A final piece will be published on Medium soon after that, and we are certain it will be worth the wait.
