During the second half of my year in journalism school, as my classmates and I went on job interviews, professors advised us that editors would likely pose the following question: “Are you a reporter or a writer?” The correct answer, we were told, was to say “reporter.” The critical difference was that a reporter was focused on content, on asking the tough questions, on being relentless in pursuit of the facts, while a writer would focus more on the style of writing, on being a wordsmith, a master of prose. Hard-boiled editors need reporters who can be aggressive in pursuit of the facts and smart on their feet. No flouncy prose for them.

The problem for me was that the writing part was my strength, and the reporting was where I struggled. Toward the end of my year in journalism school I participated in a small group discussion about the newspaper business (now almost an anachronism) with Clifford Teutsch, then the managing editor of The Hartford Courant. He said that when he made hiring decisions, he was looking for strong writers, because you have to be really smart to write well, and it’s much easier for a good writer to learn about a particular subject or field (a beat, if you will), than to take someone with loads of expertise but no writing talent, and teach that person to write.

Armed with these somewhat conflicting snippets of advice, on an interview, when I was actually asked if I was a reporter or a writer, I said writer. I still got the job.

That, however, was just the beginning of the journey. Reporting and writing are both broad categories of skills. In my brief years of newspaper reporting, I was mostly assigned to cover community features, and usually had two to seven days to develop each story before the deadline. However, a handful of times, I had to track down a source on a very tight deadline (less than two hours), extract the necessary information through brief phone calls, and then write up the story very quickly for an impatient editor. I struggled mightily with this, especially on one occasion in which the television news was already reporting the same story and the person I reached was not interested in repeating what they had just told the people with the fancy cameras and lights. Not my finest moment. But, as my experience grew, my general reporting skills improved, and I especially thrived in the sort of situation where I could sit down with a subject for an unhurried hour and have a fully developed conversation. I learned over time to be more critical, to ask probing questions and to react to what was said with follow-up questions, not just to stick to a prepared list of questions.

Still I was, and am, a writer at heart. The thrill for me is not just in delivering the facts, but in the crafting of the phrases, of enhancing the copy to be more than a straightforward recitation of information, but also a pleasant, and sometimes memorable, reading experience.

There is, of course, a time and place for everything. I laugh when I think back on my attempts at writing fiction in high school and college, and how very wordy and saccharine my prose was at that time. Good writing, according to the advice of Strunk and White in the iconic “Elements of Style,” is straightforward and spare – no superfluous words, no unnecessary flourishes of language. And yet, good writing is not merely utilitarian. Language is beautiful and fluid. Writing well is a careful architecture, not merely a cobbling together of words. It is placing the decorative cornice just so, not overshadowing it with a mawkish gargoyle, but also not leaving the cornice out altogether because it is not essential to the function of the building.

For a bit of fun, and to exercise my writing skills, below are two examples of styles that are incongruous – purple prose that obfuscates meaning where facts are needed, and spare copy that misses essential nuances. Yes, folks, I wrote badly on purpose.

Victorian novelist wannabe reports on a fire for a newspaper

The conflagration overtook the first and second floors of the edifice, sweeping through with fiery wrath. Sirens tore through the night as firefighters raced from their quarters to the scene. They stormed the charred doors and drenched the home with torrents of water. The unharmed inhabitants stood trembling beneath dim street lights, watching as dancing flames gave way to billows of smoke. Clutching blankets around themselves, they were overcome with emotion – relief that they had not been harmed, despair that their home was lost, fear of what was to come. Quickly, neighbors gathered around to offer comfort and assistance. By morning’s light, the family had found temporary shelter. (In other words: Home destroyed by fire: family placed in temporary shelter)

In deference to the late Robin Williams, a terse summary of “Dead Poets Society” (my favorite of his movies)

Private boarding school hires unconventional English teacher, who leads students on a series of antics, including standing on desks, while invoking a phrase in Latin. The teacher is fired due to disapproval from administrators and parents. (Totally misses the emotional nuances and deeper meaning of the film)

Today is Tisha B’Av, a day of sadness in the Hebrew calendar, so I have chosen to reflect on somber matters.

A few months ago one of my toddler son’s day care teachers was murdered. I didn’t know her well. She had moved to Pittsburgh just a few months before, and only cared for my son for a period of a few weeks before being assigned to a different classroom. Like many people we interact with in a superficial way, I had a fondness for her without really knowing her at all. She was kind, upbeat, and a little bit quirky. One day I came to pick up my son and found her holding him and dancing with him, both of them smiling.

After she was assigned to work with a different group of kids, I still saw her periodically at the school, and always exchanged warm greetings. She was a private person, and I didn’t know much about her life. I knew that she moved to town to be close to a sister, and that she had a pet cat that had been sick, but that was about the extent of it. I don’t recall the last time I saw her, but it probably was a couple of weeks before her murder.

On a Friday in February she didn’t come to work or answer her phone. It was unlike her either to be late, or to be unresponsive, so the school notified police. A couple of hours later, police found the murdered bodies of the teacher and her younger sister in the basement of the home they shared. A few weeks later, the sisters’ next door neighbor was arrested.

I first learned of her death more than 24 hours after the bodies were discovered. The school sent out an e-mail notifying parents that the teacher had died tragically. At first I couldn’t comprehend what I had read, and then the questions began. “Was she in an accident?” I wondered. “Had she been ill?” I searched her name online and turned up news reports about her murder. I was shocked.

Wrapped up in the disbelief that I would never see her again was the haunting thought that while those of us who knew her were going about our lives as usual, just a couple of miles away, she was in the midst of a horrible assault that would claim her life. I imagined her terror, her panicked efforts to call out for help.

In a weird case of misplaced emotion, on the day that no one knew would be her last, I had an odd pang of sadness after picking up my kids from school. First I had stopped in the toddler room for my son, and then went down the hall to pick up my daughter before taking them both out to the car. My son was not usually the last kid in his class to be picked up, but he had been that day, so his teacher, another lovely young woman who is alive and well, must have closed her classroom right after we left. As I strapped the kids into their car seats, I noticed her walking down the block, and I had a moment of melancholy as I realized she had been in the school one moment, and was gone the next. Later that night the early childhood director sent an e-mail that this particular teacher was leaving her job to go to graduate school, and I realized I would never see her again.

But it was the other teacher, the one with the quirky sense of humor — who danced with my son to calm him down — who faced a bleaker fate that night. The sadness I felt for one person passing out of my life to pursue her career paled in comparison to the horror of someone I knew being brutally murdered.

One month before the teacher’s murder, our community had been saddened by another tragic loss – the death of a young woman to cancer. In the many months of her illness, community members had signed up to recite chapters of Tehillim (Psalms) each day to pray for her recovery. Following her death, I decided to continue saying “my” chapters daily, and after learning of the teacher’s horrible death, I changed my focus slightly. More than just reciting Tehillim, I decided to direct my thoughts to whomever might be experiencing distress at the moment I was praying. To be a voice in solidarity with whoever was alone in their pain, or terror. To pray for an end to their suffering.

The news of war in Israel in recent weeks has caused me to reflect even more about young, vibrant individuals facing horrifying experiences, especially those who are terribly injured or killed. I think of their families, many of whom live so close to the warfare that envelops their sons and brothers, daughters and sisters, but have no knowledge about their movements from hour to hour, and are powerless to help them. I have relatives and friends serving in the Israel Defense Forces, so my thoughts are foremost with them, and with my other friends and relatives who are at risk of being hit by shrapnel, or worse, from Hamas rockets.

But I also think about the people of Gaza, and the fear and loss they are experiencing as they are ruled by a ruthless terrorist regime, and I think about the atrocities in Syria, and the 219 girls kidnapped from Nigeria, and I think about people in my own community who live in fear from domestic violence or gang activity.

Every day, somewhere, at every moment, there is someone calling out to G-d, asking to be saved from the horror that envelops them. I dedicate my prayers to those who call out alone, letting them know that others wish to protect and comfort them, to neutralize the dangers that threaten them.

Before I chose the slightly more pragmatic career of being a journalist, I had dreams of being a novelist. Early in my college days I realized that since I am not independently wealthy, and because I enjoy eating, every day, I was not prepared for the difficult life of a novelist, and at the time, journalism held the promise of somewhat steady income. I still dream of writing fiction, but after years of training myself to report facts and attribute quotes, I wonder sometimes if I have the capacity to fabricate, and let my fancy take flight.

Of course, writing is writing. The ability to construct fluid prose is at the heart of both fact and fiction, and the capacity to be imaginative and original is also central to both, though in different ways. Perhaps most importantly, both genres require keen observational skills and the ability to “show, not tell” (the aspect of writing that I probably struggle with most). I know deep down that I have the potential to write fiction, so writing a novel is really a matter of having the discipline to put in the work to do so.

Several years ago, my sister told me about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), a project to inspire people to write a novel in the month of November. The idea is to write between 1,500 and 2,000 words a day, every day, from November 1 to 30 – not worrying if it is good or not – so that by the end of the month, you have produced a 50,000-word novel.

When I first heard of this, I scoffed a bit, because in a month’s time, one would almost certainly have 50,000 words that were spectacularly awful to read. However, the book The Happiness Project made me think differently about this. Author Gretchen Rubin talks about the importance of having the courage to try something new and challenging. She also writes about how engaging in a creative activity inspires further creativity.

And, of course, forcing oneself to write every day, even if the initial product is not so great, helps one to refine the craft, since the only way to write better is to do it all the time. I read Rubin’s book last year and it inspired me to delve into a writing project I’d been mulling over for quite some time. I took some time to jot down some notes about the story I’ve been contemplating. And then I got distracted with other responsibilities.

I hadn’t thought about my “novel” in months, until my friend Mordechai Luchins, in a Facebook status update, reminded me about NaNoWriMo. “I should do this!” I told myself. I didn’t actually sit down to start writing until November 4, and that day I wrote about 500 words, which you will note, is far less than the daily minimum required for NaNoWriMo. All the rest of the month I kept thinking that I would get back to writing, but I never did.

A pessimist would probably say this was a failure, but we all know that writing is a process (sometimes an extremely long one!). Taking the advice I gleaned from The Happiness Project (I will probably mention the book again on this blog because it really helped “unstick” me in various ways.), the way to succeed at any massive and imposing task is simply to start and then work in small increments, ideally every day, to reach the goal.

I’m not there yet. I’m still summoning the power to be disciplined enough to truly embark on this task. However, I have started the process, ever so slightly.

I’m not sure if it’s just because I am naturally shy or if perhaps I was subjected to some particularly stern librarians as a child (certainly not the school librarian at my elementary school, Mrs. Shramm, who reminded me of the title character in the 1982  HBO movie “The Electric Grandmother,” played by Maureen Stapleton), but I have long harbored a strong resistance to actually going to the library.

I am fortunate to live in the digital age, in which I can obtain most of the information I need for every day life and basic research from the comfort of my home computer. However, as we all know, the Internet has its limitations. I am told I should not believe everything I read online. Who knew? Therefore, from time to time, it is important to do *real* research in an *actual* library.

This past winter I screwed up my courage and finally got myself a library card (it is embarrassing how long it took me to do this) and have actually started checking out and returning books on a somewhat regular basis. It was a bit of a revelation to me that, aside from the pressure of returning a book by the due date, using the library is actually great when you are not sure if you want to commit to a book. If you don’t like it, it cost you nothing to read it and it doesn’t even take up space on your shelf!

Anyway, this morning I was faced with a research issue that Google just would not solve. So, I took a deep breath, found the phone number online and called a research librarian at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. I stammered a bit when asking my question, but the woman on the other end of the line was patient, cheerful, helpful and immensely knowledgeable. She didn’t make me feel the least bit stupid or out of line. (Here’s where the haunted memory of being chastised by a librarian comes to mind, though I’m not sure if that ever actually happened.)

I was so pleased with her help that I decided to “like” the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh on Facebook. I logged on post-haste to do so (because it had been at least 20 minutes since I had last checked my newsfeed), and in doing so I found a link to this fascinating blog, which is written by librarians who have some cool and quirky ideas.

Altogether, my encounter with the library was great, and that was just from the comfort of home. I have a book that is due back soon, so I will have to actually go back to the library. In person. No problem.