Joel Mathis

Any time I finish the next day's column for THE WEEK before 10 pm, I feel pretty good about life. Except when I think of a better line at 1 am.

Donald Trump is leaving office tomorrow, and I'll admit to some personal nervousness. What's it going to be like to write opinion pieces in the post-Trump age?  Over the last four years, there has been a certain clarity to writing left-of-center opinion. It's not that I wanted to reduce everything to "orange man bad" (as conservative commentators like to say) but the truth is that Trump wasn't just bad, but that he provided a prodigious supply of outrages. There was often fresh material, something new to illustrate his badness.  But he is moving away from the very center of politics, and I fear that the muscles I use when NOT writing from a place of deserved moral outrage have grown atrophied over the last few years. I have criticized Trump for being a purveyor of "pure, refined grievance" but now I worry that I, too, am an addict.  I'm sure that there will still be things to be mad about. Hunting for those things, seeking out the high of angry r

After 25-plus years in journalism, I can pretty easily write 700-1,000 words in one sitting -- sometimes, depending on the topic and how much reporting and research have been done ahead of time, I can hit 1,000 words in about an hour. And they're usually coherent! It's one skill I know I have. The last few years, though, I've done a few more reported magazine-style pieces. Not terribly lengthy -- usually in the 2,500-word range -- and, hoo boy. It's a whole different process. It's not just longer. I have to think my way through the structure of a piece more. And I have to be willing not to do it in one setting -- the attempt can nearly destroy me.  Instead, I have to break the work up -- writing for an hour here, an hour there, until I get my draft. I'm accustomed to a "see the assignment, write the assignment" kind of process, so slowing down and taking chunks is unfamiliar to me. It requires me to stretch my skills and even learn new ones. It is not

One thing about quarantine: It has given me time to think about how I practice the craft of writing. I'm lucky: I've been able to make a living at writing -- both reporting and opinion writing. For most of the last decade or more, I've had a regular outlet (newspaper syndication, PhillyMag, and The Week) to express my opinions before large audiences. I don't take it for granted. But I always know I could do better. And I sometimes suspect I'm doing a two-dimensional version of something that might better contribute to the public conversation if I could somehow express it in three dimensions. I want to point to three pieces of writing done in recent years that I take as a model -- not just for writing, but for thinking, and maybe even doing this job in a way I consider to be moral. And here are the lessons I've learned from them:

In his review of Freewrite's "Smart Typewriter," Ian Bogost offers praise for the pre-Internet era of writing, when one could set one's fingers to the keyboard and simply write, without all the distractions and bells and whistles that a wifi connection bring to the process. There's more than a hint of protesting too much. No one would reasonably dispute that writing tools affect the shape and content of both writing and the thought that goes into writing, but it's mistaken to suggest — as Bogost seems to — the the older, slower way was necessarily deeper. Here's an odd passage: For Nietzsche, the typewriter offered a way to write despite his deteriorating vision (and sanity). He knew that tools changed their users; “Our writing tools are also working on our thoughts,” Nietzsche aphorized. These are facts I happen to know just because they were memorable, not because I remember facts like these regularly anymore. I’ve long since outsourced such easil