In an article recently for The New Yorker, the writer John McPhee describes some of his experiences over the course of more than 50 years of interviewing people, including Special Agent Ronald Rawalt, a mineralogist from the FBI whose work in Mexico solved the murder of an American drug agent there; the actor Richard Burton, who “interviewed himself,” according to McPhee; and Alan Hume, M.D., a surgeon in Maine who “talked clearly, rapidly, volubly, and technically.”
McPhee has some advice for anyone who makes a living that involves recording what other people say. “Whatever you do, don’t rely on memory,” he writes. “Don’t imagine that you will be able to remember in the evening what people said during the day.” Good point, in my experience, as limited as it may be compared with McPhee’s. Even when I’m not on deadline, I make it a practice to read my notes the same day I’ve interviewed someone, as a way to reflect on what he or she told me, to identify gaps in my understanding and to decipher the scrawl that I tend to produce when I’m scribbling.
Lots of people take notes but journalists may be the only ones for whom writing down what other people tell us is the work itself. In December I met Bohlale Ratefane, a woman who works the lost luggage counter for South African Airways at Johannesburg’s Tambo airport. Ratefane wrote notes to herself in a black notebook with a worn cover while juggling both a BlackBerry and a smartphone. She wrote in the notebook seemingly at random, back and forth among the pages, but the system must have made sense to her because she found the entry she needed every time. She worked the notebooks and phones to perfection in pursuit of her prey, which included suitcases and passports that had become separated from their owners.
Recently I came across a story that I wrote two autumns go, during a football game between Columbia and Dartmouth that I had gone to cover for a class at journalism school. The draft had been piled among a series of notes that I’ve carried with me since then as I’ve traveled from New York City to South Africa and back.
About midway through the fourth quarter on that Saturday in October, I wandered over to the Big Green’s side of the stands, where I met Elliott Olshansky. I had sought out Olshansky because he and a cluster of fans cheered for Dartmouth on nearly every play. As it happened, Olshansky graduated from Dartmouth in 2004 and aspired to be a writer and an entrepreneur. “I’m in this weird limbo between where I am and where I want to be,” he told me.
I liked his comment and used it in my first draft of the story. My professor also liked the comment but suggested that I discard it nonetheless. “It doesn’t really advance your central point,” he wrote in tracked changes through the middle of the paragraph. My professor was right about the quote. The story was tighter without it.
Still, I’m glad I’ve preserved that first draft of the story long enough to read Olshansky’s comment anew. That’s because the in-between state that Olshansky described himself as occupying has become a home of sorts to me. I’ve recently returned to New York from South Africa to work on a project that combines my training in law and journalism. But I also look forward in August to returning to South Africa, where there are stories that I want to report and write, and where my partner lives and works.
When I met Olshansky he had recently published an e-book about the rules of dating from a guy’s perspective. “Guy-lit,” according to Olshansky, who also was pursuing an MBA at Fordham. Aspiring entrepreneur and writer – that was where Olshansky stood as we parted on that sunny afternoon, when I did not yet realize his observation might one day resonate with me.
Writing in my notebook what Olshansky said and discovering the quote anew 18 months later underscores for me another reason one writes things down in the first place. Mostly we take notes to remember, but the notes that we take also help us to see things in new ways. Our drafts may be a means to an end, but they become a part of us too.