I often tell new writers they should be prepared to summarize their story in a few short sentences. And so, I need to take my own advice and describe my new memoir, Morning At Wellington Square.
Morning at Wellington Square is the story of a modern woman
who is daughter, wife, mother, widow and reporter for a major city newspaper. Searching
for herself beyond these roles, she
journeys from Kentucky countryside to the Arizona desert and finally back home
to a bookstore called Wellington Square to find passion, renewal and magic in
her life.
And so I offer up for your reading pleasure an excerpt . . . my last day at The Philadelphia Inquirer. Endings are always worth writing about because inevitably they lead to new beginnings.
My book comes out September 1 as a trade paperback and eBook published by Amazon. I will be scheduling signings and talks on memoir throughout the Philadelphia region. Stay tuned . . . Susan
My book comes out September 1 as a trade paperback and eBook published by Amazon. I will be scheduling signings and talks on memoir throughout the Philadelphia region. Stay tuned . . . Susan
"In
the summer of 2006, I left The
Philadelphia Inquirer. Circumstances and events had come together;
perhaps I should say they had collided.
For me, it was time to move on.
No
one was in the newsroom the day I packed up to leave. It was a Saturday. The paper no longer kept a
police reporter in the bureau on weekends to listen to the scanner. I had done that, working many Saturdays, covering
a fire or, in one memorable instance, a police stake-out of an escaped
convict hiding in the cornfields of southern Chester County.
As
I was clearing off my desk, I remembered the excitement of that day in August
1999. Suddenly, I was back in that town,
waiting for the police to make a statement as they closed in on the escapee, a
convicted murderer. Reporters from
newspapers, radio and television gathered with notebooks and microphones in the
town near the Maryland-Pennsylvania border as a cool, steady drizzle fell.
I
ran into a family-run restaurant and hastily dropped coins into the pay phone
booth to call my editor in downtown Philly. As I phoned in details and updates
– giving “color” to the story - I could hear my editor at the other end rapidly
typing. In my mind’s eye, I could see
him turning my descriptions of the rain and cornfields, the helicopters and
tracking dogs, into professional prose that would be read by thousands of
people the next day.
I
came back to the present. I looked
around the newsroom, wanting to indelibly print on my mind the countless
memories and scenes that had been my daily routine . . . my woman’s career . .
. of so many days of my life.
The
gigantic black and white map of Chester County with its 73 townships and
boroughs . . . “almost as big as Texas”
. . . tacked above the gray stainless steel filing cabinets. The unadorned floor-to-ceiling
windows providing an unfettered view of sky and the tulip poplar trees; the
ladies dress shop on the street below.
I
cleared off my desk, packed up cartons, photographs of the boys, old spiral
reporter’s notebooks penciled with scrawled notes from interviews. So many
reminders of my spent energy and the concentration I had devoted to every
minute of this journalist’s business. Hard
work, yes, and I had loved every minute and every personality I had met along
the way. Sadly, the last year of my career
there, things became muddled, fragmented.
That’s when I could no longer ignore the disagreements and frictions,
the feeling of being discarded.
Manila
file folders bulging with “clips” – those stories I had written which successfully
ran in all of the paper’s sections from suburban centerpieces and front page
stories, to features in the real estate and lifestyle sections. I heaved, pitched, tossed . . . threw some in
the cartons.
One
last time . . . after sixteen years, I looked around at the room that had been
my home-away-from-home. And I heard the voices of the editors I had
worked with. I listened to myself interviewing
and questioning township supervisors, high-stakes developers; taking calls from
the copy desk with last-minute questions; grumbling with the other reporters
about anything and everything because that’s what reporters do – we complain
about deadlines and unrealistic expectations of editors, of sources who dry up,
of people who give you a long interview and then at the end tell you the whole
thing was off the record.
For most of my career I wore “reporter” as a badge of honor. Whether
it was uncovering scandal or helping law enforcement apprehend a criminal, the
mission, the assignment, carried with it the expected deadline, but always the
hope, the optimism for a scoop.
I
never regretted a day of being in the “media,” as it has sadly and scornfully
started to be called. I learned the
economy of words and how to tell a story. I had been paid to do what I loved most –
write. As John once said, “We had a good
ride.” He was talking about our
marriage. Somehow, it also applied to my
career.
Leaving
the newspaper felt like a divorce, like a death. It had been a bumpy ride, for
sure, but mostly a good ride. I was
determined to move forward and to make a new start. I struggled not to look
back."
3 comments:
I like the sound and sense of your prose. It echoes a bit of the "hard-boiled reporter" somehow as you tell of your departure.
I am looking forward to reading "Memoir"
Many thanks, "Writing Coach" and Jacquie for reading this excerpt. I'm glad to hear you like the sound of it and want to read more.
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