Percolating...

I am, apparently, still brewing some sharp words through my poor, poor keyboard. My run-in with swastika-boy last week seemed to throw my writer's sense of balance in a very defiant direction. Almost from the moment I saw the offensive symbol, my brain went into underdog mode and started shaping some very hard-edged thoughts on how the intolerance of this world has impacted my thinking as a journalist who happens to be Jewish, and who happens to write within a broadly non-Jewish world.

As my head tumbles through this process, I find myself crafting this week's column - for Wednesday publication - using a very powerful and personal voice. Anyone who reads this piece will know, point blank, who I am, why I do what I do, and why my thoughts on hatred and intolerance really do matter. I just have to stay out of too-hot-for-the-breakfast-table territory, so it may need a bit of a sleep-on-it approach before I do my final edits before submission tomorrow.

Incidentally, the title of this message refers to the process by which I initiate ideas and gradually evolve them through the various stages of creation, writing, and polishing before I have a final, submission-ready opinion piece. This process often takes months while I toss various treatments and focii around my head. Interestingly, it almost never gets written down. While the idea itself may exist on a storyboard list that I maintain on my PalmPilot, the actual evolution of the idea is not documented. It simply grows in my head until one day I wake up and feel that it's time to turn it into a concrete piece of writing.

In many respects, I don't control it. Rather, it tends to control me. If I try to force an idea before my head has had a chance to thoroughly churn it into something worthwhile, it almost inevitably comes out substandard. I cringe when I read some of my improperly-churned work, as it jumps out at me like a taunting child in an elementary school playground.

Please note that this process applies only to opinion pieces and other more personal forms of writing. The usual newsy or tech stuff doesn't tend to come from the same place. It's much more factual, direct, and impersonal. I don't feel like I give birth to those as I do my opinion pieces. I don't leave traces of myself embedded in those phrases and paragraphs. As a result, blasting out reams of copy is fairly straightforward once I've got a good handle on the voice of the publication in question.

But something changes when I use my opinions as the basis for my writing. Things slow down and each word becomes immensely more powerful. People are moved. Hopefully, to do good.

Tonight, the anger and fear of being a member of a minority group that is being repeatedly singled out by hate-mongers on a national scale is weighing heavily on my writer's voice. I feel accountable to deliver a message from deep inside that reflects that fear, and uses it as a catalyst to move us all beyond the here and now and into a somewhat more enlightened future. Who knows, maybe the power of the pen will prevail after all.

I'll head back to the process now, but not before I thank everyone who took the time to comment on my swastika post. I wish I could articulate how your words have helped me shape my thoughts and my writer's response in the days since this first occurred. You have once again reinforced and validated the wickedly subversive power of this rapidly-evolving medium of ours. I can't wait to see what happens as this audience of greats continues to expand.

Onward, with my thanks...