On Writing Good

By BEN OLSON/for The Herald  —  I’m sure that a lot of my regular readers assume that I have a Masters or Doctorate in English from some prestigious Ivy League school. How else could I get a regular column in a renowned daily news platform like the Highway 58 Herald? It’s true, I spent some time in college, however, I was there pursuing a non-traditional education, and that’s what I got. I would have to print up my own degree and hand it to myself. 

After my formal education ended, not much got written by me for the next 30 years. Grocery lists, song lyrics and the occasional postcard back home. Somewhere around the age of 50, I began to develop a social consciousness and an emerging political awareness. My outlet was “Letters to the Editor” of the local and state papers that I regularly read. Bad or incomplete reporting by the reporters working for those papers were often my targets. I’m sure the editor was chagrined to print a letter criticizing his esteemed paper and its employees. 

There was a very fine line in calling to task the work of a newspaper, and then expecting them to print your letter. I learned very early on to be concise and to get to my point. Self-editing was necessary. You didn’t want some uncaring assistant editor deciding which points to lop off in the name of brevity. I learned to be a writer this way. I haven’t written a letter to the editor in 10 years now. I don’t read a proper newspaper with my coffee in the morning anymore. Blame it on the internet. Blame it on the greedy syndicates. Whatever the reasons for the demise of paper newspapers with an editorial page, it’s all history now. I am thankful that I got in at the tail end and learned how to write something that someone would want to read.

I have it easy. I’m not a reporter and I don’t get sent out on “assignments”. 

I write about whatever is interesting to me at the time, and not surprisingly, I find an awful lot of things to be interesting. My criteria for writing a story are to make it entertaining, edifying, or amusing. My best work generally checks all 3 boxes. I am humbled when someone takes the time to tell me they enjoyed one of my stories that they recently read. Yes, I tend to write about myself and my experiences, but I am an expert on that subject. I’m hoping that by relating my stories to you, it will jog a memory or thought about your own world.

The hardest thing for me is always biting my tongue and not passing judgment or criticizing my fellow human beings for the sometimes silly, sometimes stupid choices that they make and proclaim. Despite the fact that I began to write by expressing my opinions on political matters, that’s not what I do now. Here’s hoping that you will continue to enjoy my columns. In this perfect world, I like writing them as much as you like reading them.