What Hallmark Taught Me

On the very first day that I “cared enough to send the very best” for a living, I sat down with the Editorial Director of Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. As someone who routinely wrote book reviews for The Sunday New York Times, Web Schott was the most serious and erudite person I’d ever met. I admit I felt intimidated.

After welcoming me to the Writers Room and telling me how things got done, he asked if I had any questions. I did, and he said, “Let me guess—what if you come in one morning and have no ideas?”

“YES!!”

“Well,” he said, “sharpen some pencils, go to the cafeteria and have a Coke, take a walk around the building, or sit in our little library room over there and read a magazine.”

I was twenty-one. I had been an Executive Secretary at American Oil Company on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Trust me, if I had gone into work one morning and told my boss that I wasn’t quite up to things today, I’d be taking a walk out of the building. This was different.

“You’re not a machine,” Web Schott said. “All of your work is going to come from here.” He tapped his head. “It will come from nowhere else, from no one else. So, it’s going to be important to respect and care for your creative process, and ultimately draw upon the world around you.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. It took that meeting with Web Schott to teach me my first lesson about writing—it is an altogether different creature. It would need special feeding and nurturing. But how? I once heard Depak Chopra say, “We have sixty thousand thoughts a day, and most of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday.” Hmm. That would never do. Where’s the creativity? Where do new thoughts come from?

“You pay attention to everything.” That’s what the legendary comedian, Henny Youngman, said when asked where he got his ideas. I figured that meant the woman’s hat, the man’s mustache, the look of a child’s eyes when there’s mischief in the works, the smell of the attic, the sound that the drape cord makes when the curtains are pulled back. The feel of the porch boards under bare feet.

But then what? What does it look like, sound like, feel like? How do we turn it into compelling words that people want to read. Little by little, we train the mind. We teach it to find similarities, for example—how is this like this? We put things together, make odd connections?

…angels finger-painting in the sky…

…birds apartment-hunting in the trees…

These lines appear in something I wrote for Hallmark that stayed in the line for over thirty years; the mindset has stayed with me even longer. From greeting cards to novels, it is essential for the writer. This is powerfully exemplified in Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning story, All the Light We Cannot See:

“He breathes nervously out of pursed lips, as if blowing on a spoonful of hot soup.”

“A trio of moths swim against the ceiling.”

Of a pretentious German officer: “He upholsters himself in his uniform.”

On growing sleepy: “His eyelids slip to half-mast.”

I, like most writers, have been asked, “Do you write every day?” For me, the answer is “yes,” but that doesn’t mean that the writing takes place at the computer or by putting pen to paper. Writing doesn’t literally mean writing. I still go read a magazine, have a Coke, take a walk, observe the people and things around me. “It’s a process,” Web Schott said. “Respect it, enjoy it. Pay attention to everything.”

And this is what worries me when I imagine the novels of the future. Who will write those beguiling details that set the scene or help bring unforgettable characters to life? What can generations of cell-phone junkies create when they are completely unaware of their surroundings? They do not see the man’s mustache, the changing of the light, the shapes of clouds. They do not notice the scent of the boxwoods. How will they describe things that capture our imaginations and drive us deep into a story right along with the characters? What are they training their brains to do that can enrich the world by reading?

Is the writer of tomorrow the person who trips over the dog he is walking because his cell phone blocks his vision? Is he the person who strolls into the fountain, falls off the sidewalk, or reads his email during the movie. What captivating setting can he create, what details can he use to pull the reader into the scene when the very concept of “the world around him” no longer exists?

Well, I plan to remain optimistic. I pray that people will begin to skip the text, trade the emoji for a clever turn of phrase, and notice that they are in the midst of something, whatever that may be. Readers love our stories because we are the writers who first see and feel them. That can only happen if we look up, look around, pay attention, and prevail. Oh, yes—and maybe just take a walk around the building.