Every journalist I know has faced the dreaded annual assignment: holidays, anniversaries, recurring events. These come down to writers not as sharp story ideas, but as topics: Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, the annual spelling bee, Daylight’s Saving Time and so on.
There are usually three ways to carry out this task:
1. Write it straight and keep it short.
2. Strive for the first level of creativity — a kind of quick ingenuity that descends over time to cliche (spend Valentine’s Day at the divorce court).
3. I prefer the third: Shoot for something fresh, surprising and original. (Spend Mother’s Day with Mother Superior at a convent. Spend Valentine’s Day with a heart surgeon.)
If you want to achieve escape velocity from the gravitational pull of narrative tedium, replay the chat below. I offered practical tips and ideas, and answered related questions.
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