In the Spring of 1994, I was a senior in high school when I responded to an ad in the NYPress seeking new writers in a variety of areas, including the "First Person" section, a column that featured a different writer each week relaying a personal experience or a lengthy rant.
At the time, the NYPress was a wilder, more freewheeling, yet more intelligent, competitor to the The Village Voice. The Press was on the cutting edge of at least a few media trends, notably for their practice of publishing (and occasionally responding to) every single letter-to-the-editor. This created the sort of open dialogue between media and reader that would soon become the norm in the era of message boards and blog comments and micro-blogging.
The editors were also ahead of the curve for printing the sort of life-on-your-sleeve oversharing that has become a hallmark of pop culture in the meantime. They realized that writers could produce extraordinary results if given enough freedom, or enough rope to hang themselves. The most memorable example of this was a cover story by William Monahan, which I remember as a sprawling tribute to the virtues of casual heroin use.
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| New York Press founder and publisher Russ Smith. |
For my part, I had actually taken my father's only two pieces of advice before high school started--study Latin and write for the school newspaper. Our high school had a top notch weekly newspaper, The Record, and I enjoyed a role there from ninth grade until I graduated. Over the first couple of years, I learned the basics of high school journalism writing generic news and feature stories. By the time I was a junior I had begun to develop my style a bit and to write a regular column about music called "Shane's Addiction."
During my senior year, I was a member of the paper's Executive Board but, as a reflection of my generic teen rebellion phase, I was most proud of writing articles that challenged the boundaries of a high school paper's typical editorial mandate. The highlight of my high school publishing career might have been something I wrote about skipping school in the middle of a wintery day, when my friend and I went to Central Park to eat lunch and smoke a joint. I think my message in the piece was that there are other things in life besides school, and I was going to enjoy those other things.
It seems goofy to remember that as being "edgy," but it was not standard for the paper to print an editorial celebrating cutting class, and I had to fight with the faculty advisor to get the piece published. It was also probably the writing sample most grabbed the attention of the Press editors.
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I remember that very rare feeling I had when I saw the Press ad looking for writers, a sense that it might be a perfect fit, or at least a good spot for me to fake my way into something bigger than the HS paper. My confidence was only bolstered when I met with the editors--Russ Smith, John Strausbaugh and Sam Sifton--at the Press' gorgeous office loft space in the Puck Building.
We all sat in Smith's office, smoking cigarettes. I was especially into smoking at the time, so I felt very comfortable. They were straightforward New Yorkers, open to many aspects of culture, personality and politics. They liked my samples, and the conversation was lively and smooth. I don't think they were entirely sure that I could produce anything worthwhile for the paper, but in what might have been my lifetime peak in confidence, I definitely was.
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| John Strausbaugh, my editor at the NYPress. |
I recall Russ Smith giving me some sort of editorial suggestion, but mostly I remember the continued sensation of, "I can do this." I probably had my first piece outlined in my head by the time the Puck elevator reached the ground floor, and I probably submitted the writing a few days later. I also recall my elation as I listened to the message Sam Sifton left on my answering machine, saying, "you hit a home run" and asking for my Social Security Number so I could get paid.
That first article was a 1500-word declaration of my frustration and anger at life, a screed against the NYC prep school system, and a detailed justification on why I thought higher education would be a waste of my time. It appeared a week or two after our meeting and received a lot of strong reactions from readers, mostly negative, all preserved in clippings I still have from the paper's "Mail" section.
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After high school ended, I sporadically published about a dozen pieces over the course of a few years. Mostly they appeared in the "First Person" section, with a couple of things about music and one about how the movie Kids didn't really reflect the character of "real city kids." But I never truly figured out how to put in the work to be a professional writer, and there was no one who held my hand and taught me either. The last piece I wrote for the paper is the only one that's archived online, and it was published after a long stretch of writing inactivity.
Part of my false start as a writer can be attributed to the lack of experience and perspective needed to churn out volumes of compelling material. That stuff isn't necessarily available to an angst-ridden teenager, or it wasn't to me, despite my thinking at the time that I had a unique and omniscient take on everything.
My friend Peter told me, "you're either living or you're writing," and I agree with that, but I also I know I could have paid more attention, worked harder and smarter. I could have continued to expand my horizons in life while also training myself to become a professional writer, and I wish I had. I failed to find the discipline necessary to maximize my talent. It also turned out that most of my ideas from the time--especially my idea that college was a frivolous waste of time--were rooted in a fairly ignorant level of teenage hubris.
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Not long after I started writing for the paper in '94, another high school student, Ned Vizzini, came to the Press. I remember being in the offices one day after Vizzini had published a few articles, and Sifton got my attention to give me a good ribbing, "boy, he really trumped you, didn't he?" It was funny, and at least a little painful, because it was true.
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| Sam Sifton, NYPress alum, currently the Tines food critic. |
Ned was a classmate of my brother's at Stuyvesant, four years younger than me, and he went on to have a prolific stint at the Press and then to publish three books, the third of which became the movie It's Kind of a Funny Story. I think he's working on a fourth now. Then there's aforementioned author of the heroin article, William Monahan, who won an Academy Award in 2006 for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Departed.
There are numerous other successful writers with origins at the NYPress, and when I think about their collective accomplishments, I am not envious, rather angry at myself for what amounts to squandered potential. We were all at the same Christmas parties, and I saw how other writers were getting it done, yet I never managed to do it for myself.
I guess for me it's a lesson in how rarely great opportunities come along and how difficult they are to nurture. I don't think I have the talent or skillset to write screenplays for Ridley Scott like Monahan does (or write food criticism for the New York Times like Sifton); I'm not even sure what I should have tried accomplished as a writer, but I know if I had focused my energies better during my time at the Press, I could have done more.