Guest Post: Big Data, or B.S.?

By David Murray

We got wind of it last week, through a splashy article on Stanford Business School’s website titled excitingly, “A Big Data Approach to Public Speaking.”

An Austin, Texas-based consultancy called Quantified Communications “analyzed more than 100,000 presentations from corporate executives, politicians and keynote speakers,” according to the Stanford piece. “They examined behaviors ranging from word choices and vocal cues to facial expressions and gesture frequency. They then used this data to rate and rank important communication variables such as persuasiveness, confidence, warmth, and clarity.”

Let’s set aside the fact that the above paragraph reads like a suicide note.

The insights the “big data” yielded are at once completely commonplace—strong and clear language matters, vocal qualities matter, gestures matter, authenticity is good—and comically specific.

For instance, the company claims that “the language used in corporate earnings calls affects up to 2.5% of stock price improvement,” according to the Stanford piece. “Up to” 2.5%? How on earth could they come up with that?

We also learn that “a 10% increase in vocal variety can have a highly significant impact on your audience's attention to and retention of your message.” How do you measure a 10% increase in variety, and how do you NOT measure the size of the impact beyond saying, “highly significant.”

And finally—get your mind ready for this one—we learn that “the top 10% of authentic speakers were considered to be 1.3 times more trustworthy and 1.3 times more persuasive than the average communicator.” The Stanford piece adds, “Authenticity is made up of the passion and warmth that people have when presenting.”

The folks at Quantified Communications have some explaining to do, to natively skeptical speechwriters everywhere: About how they actually “analyzed” 100,000 presentations, how they came to the figures they came to, and most importantly, to what imaginable use might this big data be put by working leadership communicators who already know that compelling communication is the combined result of what the speaker says and how the speaker says it.

They have explaining to do, and they should have a platform to do it.

So Vital Speeches of the Day is sending this article to Quantified Communications’ executive communications practice lead Briar Goldberg, and they’ll publish her response.

David Murray is executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association. He's also editor of Vital Speeches of the Day magazine.

This piece was originally posted on Vital Speeches of the Day.

Guest Post: Speechwriter, Write

By Michael Long

Those of us who like Americana or alt-country music—country music with rock sensibilities—can be obsessive and last year, boy, were we. All through 2015, the golden boy of Americana, Ryan Adams, teased out the delivery of his new album, except it wasn’t quite a new album. It was going to be a song-for-song remake of one of the biggest records of the decade, Taylor Swift’s pop confection 1989. And Adams wasn’t going to do it ironically. He would sincerely reinterpret Swift’s songs by playing and arranging and singing them as he would his own.

This seemed an odd plan, recasting the dance-pop of Ms. Swift as the grungy guitar-in-the-garage roar of Mr. Adams. Her well-polished pop gems—huge hits such as “Shake It Off” and “Bad Blood”—were hard to imagine as anything but summertime soundtracks and club workouts. Yet when Ryan Adams’ 1989 was released in September 2015, it was clear he had produced something intriguing, very good, and completely his own.

If you somehow hadn’t heard of 1989 by Taylor Swift by the time you heard the Adams version, you would assume this new recording was, as usual, written by Mr. Adams. It sounds like a typical Ryan Adams record. But it wasn't even Mr. Adams' songs. It was written by Taylor Swift—nearly word for word, melody for melody, and chord for chord.

The feelings you get when you hear one of these albums versus the other are absolutely different. How can these recordings be so dissonant in effect when their foundations are the same?

The answer tells us something basic about art that speechwriters ought to remember about their craft. Presentation is, as the old line goes, all about the singer, not the song.

I tell speechwriters to stop writing for the speaker’s “voice.” Get the facts right. Get the organization down. Fuss over the structure. Know the topic. Learn the priorities of the audience and write to them. But don’t spend a second trying to find the so-called voice of the speaker, because personality and style—the fundamental aspects of voice—come out in delivery far more than in words.

Every speaker is unique, and he cannot hide his true nature—the singer, not the song. Give the same speech to two different people and you’ll hear two different speeches, even though the words are the same.

(I did stand-up comedy years ago. When we were starting out and my friends and I would see a comic who was better than we were, we'd say something like, "He could headline even with my act." We were being only a little hyperbolic. The material matters, but great delivery can elevate anything.)

Thus when the cheerleader’s Saturday night of “Shake It Off” is channeled through Ryan Adams, it comes out as the brooding, creepy obsession of a full-grown man. The pop queen’s naïve romantic poses in “Blank Space” emerge as a lonely last hope when Adams turns his delivery down to a whisper and pulls the simple melody through fingerpicked, arpeggiated chords.

As the writer, your best move is to get the content right and to find an effective structure. That’s a matter of intellect, not of following around your client for days making notes about how she uses prepositions. You’re not going to turn a buttoned-down CEO into a bouncing motivational speaker by capturing his “voice” in words. Don't imagine that the qualities of performance arise from filigree on the page. Coaches and writers have very different jobs.


Michael Long is a professional speechwriter, playwright, and writing teacher.
This piece was originally posted on Vital Speeches of the Day.

Guest Post: Interview with a Heckler

Originally posted on Vital Speeches of the Day.
By David Murray

"Hecklers are vandals" was the headline of yesterday's post on my personal blog, Writing Boots.

I was taking on Zoe Nicholson, a lifelong political activist who had objected on her Facebook page to the Bernie Sanders campaign's anti-heckling tactics. When Sanders is giving a speech and hecklers start chanting, "Black Lives Matter," Sanders backers are instructed to overwhelm the hecklers by chanting, "We Stand Together."

"Maddening," said Nicholson on Facebook. "All hecklers want is a voice and the issues prioritized. Shouting down is making them voiceless. That is the real message."

Aside from questioning a heckler's right to complain about being heckled back, I questioned—partly in defense of my fine-feathered speechwriting friends who work too hard on speeches to have them shouted down!—the effectiveness of heckling, and whether it's worth the social cost:

At best, it may alert some people to the idea that there are people who think, for instance, that George W. Bush or Barack Obama is a baby killer. But if you didn't know in the first place that people felt that way, you're probably not inclined to read further, because you never were a big reader in the first place. 

Mostly, heckling just makes everyone embarrassed and sad, that people feel desperate or disrespectful enough to vandalize a community gathering, and destroy an attempt at communication.

Happily, the heckler Nicholson responded in defense of heckling, writing, in part:

I am pleased that you quoted me and perfectly too. I am a real fan of heckling, personally. I began it with George Wallace in regards to civil rights and the Vietnam War. My teacher is Alice Paul, who learned it from Emmeline Pankhurst. 

To really understand the organic effect of heckling you have to have the mission of pointing out to those in power that they need to prioritize the issues. For example, Senator Sanders was talking about the distribution of wealth and the hecklers wanted him to update his position on Black Lives Matter. It was not, 1) that he is a racist, 2) that his work in the 60s was ignored, or 3) redistribution of wealth is not important. And, the fact is—within 2 days his campaign did put out a NEW set of positions on the issues of the day. No matter how it appears—the fact is that it works. 

I heckled POTUS on the repeal of DADT. I was chanted down and escorted out by the Secret Service. BUT President Obama prioritized and set a committee in place to investigate the effects on the armed forces should they allow LGB to openly serve. Obviously it was repealed. 

It is the work of the militants to break convention. Heckling is a tried and true tool. But if you measure it on how the moderates react—it looks like rude immature shouting. However, the approval of the moderates is not the goal.... 

BTW—I just read that "Bernie rally tonight in LA opened with a woman giving a speech about Black Lives Matter. The cheers from the crowd were insane." Well done!

I thanked Nicholson for her thoughtful response and added that "even if I don't necessarily buy your implied direct connection between your heckling and the repeal of DADT," her points were well taken.

Speechwriter—O megaphone for power!—how do you respond?

David Murray is executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association. He's also editor of Vital Speeches of the Day magazine.

"Lincoln Speaks": A Review

By Dana Rubin

“Public sentiment is everything,” declared Abraham Lincoln in 1858 during his first senatorial debate with Stephen Douglas. “He who molds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statues or pronounces decisions.”

Lincoln thought public speaking was a more profound tool for influence and persuasion than the legislative or executive arenas. And his tool of choice was language. The development of his linguistic and rhetorical skills is the subject of "Lincoln Speaks: Words that Transformed a Nation" at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York.

Reflecting on his use of language, Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer—himself a onetime speechwriter for Mario Cuomo—calls Lincoln “an aspirational model for the modern politician.”

But was Lincoln truly a modern writer? In notes, letters, poems, pamphlets, scribbles, and speeches, the exhibit traces the growth of his literary and persuasive skills. It was language that helped him win his senatorial seat and the Republican nomination and presidency, sway public opinion during the prosecution of the Civil War, and pave the way for post-war reconciliation.

Growing up poor in a frontier town, the son of an illiterate and abusive father, Lincoln found refuge in books and poetry. With limited access, his reading was broad but not deep. He read the same works over and over—the King James Bible, Dickens, Aesop’s Fables, Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories, and Edgar Allan Poe. It’s the exact opposite of our reading habits today.

In an age without television, radio, or internet, the public had a tolerance for a certain windbaggery. Speakers at debates, rallies, and conferences would routinely drone on for two hours or more. Their words were then printed as a pamphlet or broadside and quoted in the newspapers.

Lincoln broke with convention by using language more sparingly. His speeches, which he wrote himself, were tighter than his contemporaries, his word choices simpler, his arguments more direct.

Prominent in the exhibit are copies of the three speeches now considered his greatest: the Second Inaugural, his Cooper Union speech, and the Gettysburg Address.

The Cooper Union address, which won him national attention and helped him gain the Republican nomination, was printed as a pamphlet in 1860. In it Lincoln anchored his anti-slavery argument in the thinking of the nation’s founders and predicted the ultimate end of slavery.

The Second Inaugural was published not long after the inauguration itself on March 4, 1865 as a large broadside in blue ink. With the Confederacy weakening, he used conciliatory language to reach out to his enemies and heal the wounded nation. He ended with the vision of “binding up the nation’s wounds”—borrowed from the Hebrew psalms.

Many today consider it Lincoln’s finest speech, but at the time Southerners detested his message and bitterly fought his nomination and election. After the assassination on April 15, it was reprinted—this time in black ink.

Then there’s the Gettysburg Address. Only 272 words, it memorializes the sacrifices of those who gave their lives on the battlefield in now iconic language. Tony Kushner calls it “a spectacular prose poem.”

For those of us who might want to learn from Lincoln’s craftsmanship, there are no original drafts in the exhibit, no notepads filled with scratched-out lines and ink blotches. We know Lincoln revised his speeches over and over, up until the last minute. But once the speech had been delivered, proofread, and typeset, he threw the drafts away. He wasn’t thinking of the archives.

So what kind of model was Lincoln for wordsmiths like us? To contemporary audiences, his spare and direct language is clearly more modern than his contemporaries. Yet there’s a quality of restraint that still sounds antique. I think that’s because Lincoln believed that to win public sentiment, a speaker must appeal to reason, not emotion. As a speechwriter he relied on principles and rational argument to do the heavy lifting.

Today we do the opposite. We enthusiastically use raw emotion to sway our listeners. We whip tension into frothy peaks and sloughs of despair like the most heavy-handed and manipulative Hollywood scriptwriters. Our professional gurus tell us a good speech has to play to our audiences’ emotions. Make them feel it in the kishkes.

We also worship at the altar of happiness. As professionals, that’s the state we’re all striving toward, right? But Lincoln was a gloomy guy. He suffered nervous breakdowns, bouts of melancholia, a dark and macabre dream life.

So how was he able to summon the language that would define so profoundly those turbulent times? How did he carry on despite so much suffering? Despite the wealth of documents, this exhibit can’t explain it—except to suggest he prevailed through language.

See it quick! The exhibit ends June 7.

This post originally appeared on Vital Speeches of the Day.

Guest Post: Patrick Sweeney, on the three audiences

by Neil Hrab

Speechwriters, don’t let your eyes deceive you. When writing a speech, you’re typically trying to help a speaker connect with not one, but three distinct audiences. Patrick Sweeney, an author, speechwriter and corporate executive, explains the three audiences as follows:

“There’s the audience who requested you to speak, a separate audience whose job is to interpret your message, and then there is the audience of your audience. What I mean is that, first, there’s the audience who invited you because they are interested in your perspective. They are looking for you to engage, inform and inspire them. The second audience comprises journalists who are covering the event. Journalists are listening for content and style, substance and memorable phrases. They have an appreciation for words and language, so through your speech, you are also seeking to give them a place to take their story, realizing that your phrases can suggest possible headlines and lead paragraphs.”

“And then there’s the third audience—the people whom your listeners will interact with following the speech. You need to consider what they will remember about the speech and share with family and friends at the dinner table, for example. When drafting a speech for New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne, my goal was to keep these three audiences in mind, and write something that would, hopefully, resonate on all three of those levels.”

A talent for connecting with audiences is, in some ways, the thread that binds together Sweeney’s multi-faceted career. After graduating from college in 1974, Sweeney worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor and assistant to the producer of a current events TV program. He also wrote feature articles for the New York Times.

In 1978, Sweeney left journalism to become the primary speechwriter to Brendan Byrne, who had just been re-elected as Governor of New Jersey. Being new to speechwriting, Sweeney particularly appreciated how generously Byrne shared his time, thought process and guidance on draft speeches. 

“In all honesty, it took a while to learn how to emulate the Governor’s style of speaking. I remember spending the first few weeks getting a sense of his cadence, his timing, and the way he liked to tell stories and make his points. He was very good at sharing with me what was working in a draft, and what I still needed to refine,” Sweeney recalled.

Sweeney would also research the subject matter for each speech, drawing on his experiences in journalism. “I would make sure the information in the draft was accurate, and then work with the Governor to create a message that clearly reflected his intent in a manner that was compelling.” 

Sweeney observed some similarities between his journalism and his speechwriting: “To me, speechwriting is a unique combination of the typical news story format, with elements of feature writing. These are two completely different ways of telling a story. A news story is all about facts, with the important information up front, in case it needs to be edited for length. A feature story, on the other hand, usually starts with some intriguing observation or story up front to pull readers in and grasp their attention. By putting these two approaches together, you can capture feelings and facts, thoughts and emotions – which is what I found myself doing for the Governor as a speechwriter.” 

While Sweeney was a journalist by background, and Byrne was a lawyer and former judge, the two shared a keen interest in ensuring that all speeches would connect in a moving way with their intended audiences.

“When he agreed to a speaking engagement, the Governor always had a very clear perspective on what message he wanted to communicate and how he would convey it. As we were developing a draft, he did not have to talk very long before I would often hear him say something that was very quotable. It was a very collaborative process, and the more time we spent with each other, the more effective I became as a speechwriter,” Sweeney said.

“With Governor Byrne, speaking engagements were opportunities to make a statement. So, he took the preparation very seriously. In the case of major addresses, for example, I would meet with him several months beforehand to discuss the speech. The Governor would explain the points he wanted to make and the impression he wanted to leave, as well as why he was doing the speech in front of this particular audience. I’d then craft the initial draft, and show it to him, and he’d say what he liked, where he wanted more details, where he might want the phrasing to be stronger, etc., and I would go back to work.”

For Sweeney, the most memorable speech that emerged from his work with Governor Byrne involved a March 4, 1981 speech in Philadelphia, PA. The Governor informed Sweeney he would use the speech to comment directly on then recently-elected President Reagan’s agenda. Byrne, a liberal Democrat, explained that he was not terribly impressed by Reagan’s claim that he could simultaneously balance the federal budget and increase military spending. “The math just doesn’t work,” Byrne told Sweeney. “There’s been a grace period for the new President, but I want to say that I feel like I am in the fairy tale where everyone seems to be admiring the new President’s clothes…but you can actually see right through them,” Byrne said.

Byrne further shared that, for this particular speech, he wanted Sweeney to confer via telephone with the renowned journalist and former editor of Saturday Review Norman Cousins. As a long-time admirer of Cousins’ work, Sweeney was thrilled to have the chance to collaborate with this legendary figure.

The speech delivered by Byrne to an audience of tri-state business leaders was a respectful but hard-hitting and carefully reasoned take-down of Reagan’s political program. It received extensive media coverage.

“I agree with the President that nothing is more important than our ability to defend ourselves,” Byrne said during the speech, “[but] the central question is: ‘What does our security depend upon?’ We cannot defend ourselves with 1890 ideas, any more than we can with 1890 weapons.”

On the President’s proposed military build-up, Byrne said: “We have human needs far more pressing than the foolish desire to continue building our stockpile of nuclear weapons…[For] if there was security in the arms race…we would certainly be secure by now….What are we doing [by building more nuclear weapons] except overloading our boats with life preservers to the point where there is no room for people?”

On the President’s plans to reduce the federal budget, Byrne adroitly observed Reagan wanted to “cut spending at every corner, unless those corners happen to be on the sites of military installations.” 

Sweeney subsequently left the Governor’s office in 1981 to begin working at Caliper, an international management consulting company based in Princeton, NJ. His accomplishments at Caliper include: serving as the company’s president; co-authoring two books with the company’s founder; and acting as one of the company’s key spokespeople. Sweeney recently decided to venture on his own, taking a page from a New York Times bestselling book he co-authored called Succeed on Your Own Terms. He is currently hard at work on a new book to be published by McGraw-Hill.

In his own speaking engagements, Sweeney has carried with him several lessons from his speechwriting days. One of them is that, as a speaker, Governor Byrne “was always true to himself. He had his own style of speaking, which he honed. My style of speaking is different from the Governor’s. Still, I carry with me his advice about being true to myself, being clear about my message, and seeking memorable ways to truly connect.”

Another lesson is to practice for speaking appearances, just as Governor Byrne would do: “It’s about honoring your audience, and showing that you’ve given the appearance your full dedication, commitment and enthusiasm.”

For Sweeney, pulling this all together is about ensuring that the perspective he is sharing, the points he is making, the humorous anecdotes, the poignant accounts, and all of the final touches he adds to his speeches are not just there to be amusing or interesting in and of themselves. “Stories enrich speeches, certainly. They can touch us in ways that are very deep and meaningful. What matters is that they come authentically from the speaker’s experience, interest and heart. That is when they truly connect and become much more powerful,” Sweeney said.

***

Sweeney shared one more piece of advice about connecting with an audience – inspired by a brief conversation he had with João Carlos Martins, the pianist known for his passionate interpretations of Bach. In 2007, just before Sweeney was about to go on stage to address a huge crowd at a leadership conference in São Paulo, he turned to Martins, an internationally-renowned performer, for some advice on connecting with such an enormous audience. Martins, who was featured in a book Sweeney co-authored, was scheduled to perform immediately after him.

Martins replied: “What I do beforehand is connect with my heart, and then I imagine the hearts of everyone in the audience. In this mediation, our hearts connect, and float up together. And, after that, I know everything will be fine.”

Sweeney cited Martins suggestion as an excellent way to sooth one’s pre-speech nerves. It’s one that other speechwriters-turned-speakers may want to file away for future reference. As Sweeney has learned, it is all about connecting.

This article originally appeared on Vital Speeches of the Day.

Guest Post: Speechwriting never goes out of style

by David Murray

Tonight's the State of the Union Address, and today is the one day of the year when professional speechwriters emerge into the sunlight of cable news punditry, to bask for a day in their own importance as shapers of policy, articulators of arguments and supporters of leaders. And everyone vaguely wonders, "What kind of people are these, anyway?"

Today I'm here to answer that question, perhaps as authoritatively as it's ever been answered, with the results of the first survey of the global speechwriting profession.

First, I should say: I go back with these people. The very first business conference I ever attended in my first job out of college was a conference of speechwriters. I was assigned to work in the cloakroom.

So now, as the founder and executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association, I can reliably interpret the findings of our first membership survey (co-conducted with Gotham Ghostwriters): Although the set and costumes have been rearranged—speechwriters no longer smoke pipes, nor research their speeches by leafing through quotation books, nor wear cloaks—the players remain and the script is unchanged.

See for yourself. According to the PSA survey:

• Speechwriters are older than their colleagues in public relations, more likely to be male, better educated—and better paid. 
The typical speechwriter is a 51-year-old man with a master's degree. More than half of the speechwriters surveyed make more than $100K, with 23 percent pulling in more than $150K (and half of those making over $200K).

• Speechwriters found their way into their work through serendipity.
Some speechwriters claimed a method to their professional madness, with one saying he joined the business "to fuse my love of writing with my love of policy/politics."

In a more typical answer to the question, "Why did you become a speechwriter in the first place?" one PSA member wrote that he "stumbled into the job—CEO needed a speech."

• Speechwriters love their work, and hate their work.
Asked what they like most about speechwriting, speechwriters said, "shaping public debates," "finding and telling stories," "intellectual and creative challenge and reward," "the variety of topics and amazing people that I get to work with," and "the silent hours when I through writing try to understand and share something important."

What do speechwriters like least about the job? Solitude, short deadlines, slow workflow, lawyers, leaders' indifference. Speechwriters resent clients who "don't care about content" and bureaucrats who care too much.

"I have to contend with constant micro-managing by people who see risk lurking in every corner and are afraid of letting the CEO take any kind of position," one speechwriter said. "They also have no feel for what constitutes good writing yet exert a huge influence over the process."

• Speechwriters fear for the future… 
Speechwriters feel threatened by new challenges, such as the increasing use of the Q-and-A format and other informal presentation techniques to replace formal speeches. And they face timeless ones, such as quantifying the strategic value of their work and "the everlasting suspicion of rhetoric."

• …and speechwriters envision a brighter future. 
Now that they're getting organized for the first time in a global association, they have very specific requests of their new Professional Speechwriters Association: They told us they don't want another rigid structure in their lives, nor an elaborate guild or union, but straight-up professional development and an expanded network through online and in-person networking programs.

Speechwriters are a joy and a pleasure to serve, because they're the most erudite, intense, joyful people in the communication profession. They're also the most frustrated. Now that they have a platform to organize, I hope they'll realize their potential as powerful actors in their organizations and in society.

Yes, I go back with these people. Now we'll go forward together.

David Murray is executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association. He's also editor of Vital Speeches of the Day magazine.

The Most Reliable Source of Grist for the Speechwriter's Mill? The Obits

by David Murray

As I like to say, the obits are a great place to meet people. They're also a great source of ideas for speechmakers, speechwriters, and speech editors.

In one week late last month, I got to know the Chicago theater kingpin Sheldon Patinkin, got reacqauinted with Ohio politician Jim Traficant, and met the writer Alastair Reid.

From Patinkin—or actually, his friend, the actor Jeff Perry—I learned the true size of the job of criticizing a creative product. Directors and actors would beg Patinkin to give them notes on their work, because he was a "world champion note giver," according to Perry. "His process is gorgeous; like movements in a symphony or rules of comedy, it comes in threes."

First are the Socratic questions that lead you to this pleasantly shocked re-understanding of your intent. Then he continues with a great, blunt, nonjudgmental articulation of what he saw compared to what you intended. And finally, as you launch into a spin cycle of anxiety and self-justification about all the obstacles sabotaging your genius, he has the knack of being able to steer you, like a shrink, bartender and rabbi rolled into one, into the belief that the fixes are easy, they are absolutely in your reach, and there’s plenty of time to work them in.

U.S. Rep. Jim Traficant liked to make references to Star Trek, often ending speeches with a request: "Beam me up." Traficant wore an outrageous hairpiece, spent time in jail and had a lot of crazy ideas. But he got heard, with soundbites like this one, from a 1998 speech:

Mr. Speaker, the Lord’s Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, the Declaration of Independence is 1,322 words. U.S. regulations on the sale of cabbage—that is right, cabbage—is 27,000 words. Regulatory red tape in America costs taxpayers $400 billion every year, over $4,000 each year, every year, year in, year out, for every family.

Beam me up.

And then there was Alastair Reid, who only occasionally returned from reporting trips around the world to visit his office at the New Yorker (where the dope smoke often curled out from under his office door). What drove him him to travel all his life? Same thing that drives everyone to travel, to whatever extent they do. Here's Reid's poem, "Curiosity":

Curiosity

may have killed the cat. More likely

the cat was just unlucky, or else curious

to see what death was like, having no cause

to go on licking paws, or fathering

litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious

is dangerous enough. To distrust

what is always said, what seems,

to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,

smell rats, leave home, have hunches

does not endear cats to those doggy circles

where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches

are the order of things, and where prevails

much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

—DM

(This post originally appeared on Vital Speeches.)

Learning Off the Job by David Murray

This post originally appeared on Vital Speeches of the Day.

Just back from the Ragan Speechwriters and Executive Communicators Conference in Washington, where 180 full-time, part-time, or would-be speechwriters gathered to express indignation to one another and to the leading lights in the field, about how their speakers aren’t pulling their weight.

Oh, that’s not the only reason they came. They attended sessions and led bull sessions of their own, about the need for storytelling in speeches, the desirability of injecting authentic emotion and intellect into speeches, and they even called for their leaders to allow themselves to connect with audiences by being vulnerable.

But mostly, it was about their lack of access to the speaker and their speaker's unwillingness to participate in the speech-creation process. While everybody ought to have the right once a year to cry in their beer about how dumb the bosses are, this year—22 years after attending my first Ragan speechwriting show—I feel compelled to call bullshit.

Not that I disagree for a moment with speechwriters’ lament: that the CEOs, university presidents, and nonprofit directors who employ most speechwriters refuse to contribute more than a quarter of the thinking, work and time that would be required to create meaningful and memorable oral interactions with the audiences before they appear.

Speechwriters are dead right: Many leaders, as the warm, witty, and earnest former President Obama chief speechwriter Jon Favreau put it here, have no inkling about what they want to say—only an idea of the flattering light in which they want the audience to regard them afterward.

President Obama thinks it is worth his time to agonize over the ideas and the words in the speeches he gives, Favreau said. So if the leader of the free world feels that way, Favreau reasoned to this receptive crowd, then leaders of lesser institutions—the people he’s working for now as he runs his own firm, Fenway Strategies—should certainly deign to collaborate with their speechwriter too.

Here, young Favs betrayed the naivete he honestly earned by spending his whole twenties writing for a politician much more like himself than like any of the Fortune 500 CEOs and other public sector clients who are flocking to him now.

Why do CEOs want to hire Favreau? Is it because they remember those great speeches President Obama delivered after losing in New Hampshire, after winning in Chicago, on his historic trip to Cairo? And because they think that the wunderkind who wrote those persuasive speeches will help them convince their constituencies that yes, they also can?

Speechwriter, please.

These folks want Favreau because Favreau is—as I introduced him in my role as conference emcee—the Jennifer Lawrence of the speechwriting business.

A corporate leader who can abide a Democratic scribe and who wants everyone to know he or she has hired the best—this leader has only one choice in a speechwriter: Jon Favreau, the one and only It Boy.

I say none of this to disparage him. As I said on a conference call from the Mayflower, I think Jon Favreau is as fine a representative of this profession as I’ve ever met. He’s humble, he’s smart, he’s sincerely committed to the ideas his rhetoric has attempted to advance—and despite his young years, he’s probably as skilled a speechwriter as anyone else in the Mayflower Hotel ballroom last week.

It’s just that this isn’t why he’s got more clients than he wants—just as your professional skills and deficiencies have little to do with why your clients leave you to invent their ideas out of whole cloth, refuse to help you put their stamp on them and then read them for the first time in the Town Car on the way to the event. (Imagine the opposite scenario: Bill Maher telling his writers he doesn't have time to look at their jokes, he's sure they're fine, just plug 'em into the teleprompter and he'll read them when he walks out on stage.... No, you know he's all up in their faces all week long, rejecting this joke for being too obvious, rejecting that one for not being obvious enough, accepting this joke but honing it for half a day until his writers are ready to scream.)

It’s not that your leaders don’t believe in you. It’s that they don’t believe in speeches. Unlike politicians and comics, your leaders do not believe that words will help them achieve their goals.

Judging beliefs by actions, we must already know that our leaders believe their time and money is much better spent speaking with their lieutenants, mobilizing their lobbyists, and cultivating analysts and donors to raise money to grow their organizations and thus their power.

Speeches? By and large, they see these as symbolic events where they flatter the audience by showing up… where they sound intelligent and look confident… before returning home having taken one for the team and done nothing to undermine their real power: the size, the visibility and the prestige of the organization they lead.

Ideas? Stories? Authenticity? Vulnerability? These are things that speechwriters talk about (and talked about ad infinitum at the Ragan show). Power is the only thing that most leaders know.

So the challenge we face is bigger than we think. It’s not merely to convince our bosses that a speech will be improved by spending 15 minutes with you on the front end, exchanging a few emails with you during the writing, and rehearsing the speech once or twice before the audience hears it.

The challenge is to convince your leaders of something much more fundamental: that it is possible to find or to gather a group of human beings either so important or so large that telling them the truth as compellingly as possible can change the course of their organization—and their own career—for the better. (And without unduly risking the opposite result.)

Feverish speechwriter, chances are that whether you’re Joe Blow or Jon Favreau, your client doesn’t believe that right now.

How will you convince her?

I’ll be back with some ideas next week. But I’d like to read yours in the meantime. —DM

Announcing the first conference just for speechwriters!

We are excited to announce that we're joining with the newly formed Professional Speechwriters Association to sponsor the first dedicated conference for professional speechwriters.

The PSA's inaugural World Conference will be held on May 22–23 in New York and hosted by NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies Department of Strategic Communication, Media, and Management.

Working in partnership with our friends at Vital Speeches of the Day, we conceived this gathering to be a barn-raising for a professional home for people who call themselves speechwriters and leadership communicators.

We invite speech pros to learn about the conference and the PSA here: http://vsotd.com/psa-world-conference.

Or, if we had you at hello, you can go directly to the registration page.

We look forward to seeing you in May!

Guest Post: How to Get Your Speakers to Sing

by David Murray

Last month in Europe I got asked the same question I get asked in the States: How do I animate and effervesce my wooden, flat speaker?

Bring in a speaking coach, is the easy answer.

Too easy, in many cases. Coaches can polish a rough speaker, but teaching a stiff speaker to act animated is like tying ropes to the arms and legs of a corpse.

Speakers are stiff because they are scared. And they are scared because they should be scared. For they have permanently stolen an hour from the lives of many human souls, and they know full well they don’t have anything to say that is of real importance even to themselves, let alone to this innocent crowd.

Fear and public speaking have gone together since the first fourth-grade teacher forced the first fourth-grader to choose from a list of five weary topics on which to give a speech to the class. And the fourth-grader felt like a fraud because he was made to be a fraud, forced to pretend he had a genuine, studied, heartfelt, unique, and useful opinion about “How does pollution affect society?” Or was it, “Are zoos good for animals?”

And so the fourth-grader stood, shame-faced but brave, in front of classmates with whom he or she had exchanged fart jokes that very morning and pretended to be an authority on the benefits and drawbacks of cloning (while the classmates, with mixed success, pretended to care). And said the expected things for the required amount of time and sat down and hoped that the next such assignment would be proceeded by death.

And that’s pretty much exactly how public speaking went down for the fourth-grader, as he or she passed through junior high, high school, and college, where the phony passion was applied to mouthing rote arguments for or against euthanasia, raising the drinking age, and the legalization of drugs, exactly in that order.

Then a merciful decade or two passed—during the fourth-grader’s early work life, when most of the speeches were being given by the elders—and the fourth-grader’s oratorical participation consisted mostly of pretending to be interested in other speakers who were pretending to be interesting.

But then one day the fourth-grader became a manager. And soon an executive. And then a senior executive. And finally the call came: Would the fourth-grader honor a faceless audience by appearing at a random leadership forum and delivering a speech on an unspecified topic? 

That’s when the fourth-grader became your client. And you wonder why your client is elusive and would appear to prefer to focus on any aspect of her work rather than the speech that’s coming up. Don’t be surprised! Your client is a fourth-grader! And do you know who you are? In the fourth-grader’s mind, you are the teacher who is trying to get the fourth-grader to choose one of the five weary topics that you have suggested!

Long before the fourth-grader understood his or her own mind well enough to have anything genuine to say that could be sustained over more than a single minute of oratory, he or she had utterly disassociated public speaking from true candor and intimate communication. So if you are to recouple these two concepts in your fourth-grader’s fully grown (and thus half-ossified) mind, you will have a hell of a job ahead of you.

You have to ascertain something true and deep about what motivated the speaker to climb all the way from the fourth grade to the position of CEO of your company. Are we dealing here with a brilliant or dogged engineer? A passionate financial analyst? A natural motivator of people? An idealistic believer in the industry? Or just a gasoline-driven ambitious maniac? Whatever the qualities that got the fourth-grader all the way to this exalted position (far ahead of all of the fourth-grader’s classmates)—well, you’ve got to understand something about where those qualities came from, and how they connect today with the fourth-grader who’s still inside.

And now you’re threatening to write a speech that’s outside of the five suggested topics. A speech that feels like something only your fourth-grader could give—because it’s about his grandpa, it’s about what she did over the summer, it’s about why he doesn’t like to get a haircut, or why she thinks it’s better to be a tomboy than a girly-girl. And suddenly, the fourth-grader isn’t so focused on the PowerPoint deck. Suddenly the fourth-grader is up for trying it without a lectern. Suddenly the fourth-grader is laughing on stage, and wondering aloud whether you should maybe be videotaping this speech, to send to all the employees.

Because she suddenly realizes: Shc can’t remember giving a speech that sounds so much like herself.

Actually, this doesn’t happen suddenly at all. A speaker for a Danish government minister came up to me after my talk in Copenhagen last week. “He doesn’t like to tell personal stories,” she said about her client. “But I’ve gotten him to do it, and he knows they love it when he talks about the old car he bought and loves. And he knows that’s always the part they remember.”

Could she have a straight-up conversation with him about beginning to choose the topics he speaks on based on the issues he feels most personally connected to? So that, to whatever extent strategically advisable, every speech he gives is about his beloved old car—or his mother, or his freshman history professor, or his political mentor, or an intellectual revelation or a personal turning point or anything that’s as as true to the fourth-grader as it is to the man?

Yes, she said. She actually thought she could have that conversation.

I told her to keep me posted. She looked at me skeptically but could see that I meant it. The speeches they generate together will all be in Danish. But if she succeeds, the communication they achieve will speak to us all.

I’ll keep you posted on her work with her fourth-grader, if you keep me posted on your work with yours.

David Murray is the editor of premier online speechwriting magazine Vital Speeches of the Day. This article was first published on VSOTD here.

Why a CEO Should Never Deliver a TED-Style Talk

By David Murray 

CEOs don’t want to look too polished, because they think they’ll be branded as shallow.

A speechwriter friend of mine at a Fortune 100 company complained that CEOs all recognize that the TED Talk is The Way to Communicate. But then they refuse to do TED-style delivery. He recognized that part of the reason is because TED Talks take a ton of time and energy to prepare for.

“Practice when you feel like it,” advises recent TED Talker Nilofer Merchant.

And, even when you don’t feel like it. At least two weeks out from a big talk, start to deliver the talk with notes and ultimately without them. Memorize where possible. I say it to myself 15 minutes every day. And once right before bed. Then I get a full night of restful sleep so that some part of my brain commits it to memory. At one week out, I’ve moved to keywords on Post-it notes. By five days out, I am no longer looking at any notes. I usually wake up the full week before a talk with it playing in my mind. You want it in there, even though it won’t actually be the talk that’ll come out that day. There is the talk you plan on giving and the talk that you give. If you are great at performance and memorization, it’s quite possible for those to be one and the same. But the more important thing to happen is for you to know what you came to say and know it well.

Now, what CEO is going to sweat a speech like that?

But a more fundamental problem is: What CEO wants to be thought of—by investors, employees and maybe most importantly, by CEO peers—as someone so focused on public performance? And thus not focused on analysis, deal-making and decision-making that we expect CEOs to be thoroughly absorbed in at all times?

And that self-conscious CEO has a point. Aside from Steve Jobs, whose performances we saw as the spearhead of the company’s new product sales, wouldn’t you harbor some suspicion about the vanity and greater ambition of a CEO who delivered a perfect TED Talk?

Not that there isn’t a mile of middle ground between TED perfection and the typical CEO speech. And not that TED Talks don’t model many of the tools—economy, focus, storytelling, personalization—that we urge our clients to use. But if TED is actually not the ideal in executive communication, then let’s not punish ourselves and our clients by pretending it is.

David Murray, who has covered speechwriting and executive communication for nearly two decades, is editor of Vital Speeches of the Day. This post originally appeared on the VSOTD blog.

Guest Post: For Writers—and Men—This Is What Collaboration Looks Like

by David Murray

This piece first ran in Huffington Post. Click here for the original.

I am the editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, a monthly magazine that collects the best speeches in the world. Many of its subscribers are speechwriters for CEOs and political leaders. Speechwriters usually complain about one of two things: clients who won't work on the speech, and clients who work the speech to death.

Truly collaborative writing? Until this year, it had eluded me so thoroughly that I nearly rejected the suggestion of a onetime Pentagon speechwriter that I read the journals of Lt. Col. Mark Weber, who needed help to write a memoir for his three young sons, who would soon be without a father.

Weber, in his early 40s like me, was dying of cancer.

"I probably ain't the guy to do this," I emailed Weber after reading the manuscript.

"I am not a ghostwriter," I lectured Weber (who hadn't asked for a ghostwriter). "I believe in the deep connection between thoughts and words. Your thoughts must start with your own words."

Furthermore, I told him the book contained clichés that an editor would have to cut out "like tumors, painfully" and familiar phrases that would have to be "lanced, like benign polyps."

Finally, I told him I doubted he had the energy or the time left to do the kind of rewrite I was demanding.

Now that, my friends, is how you treat a terminal cancer patient.

"I love it, David," Weber replied.

He continued: "I absolutely have the time and energy to rewrite. In fact, I insist on it. I've been holding off on doing so until I can get someone to provide the kind of candor I need to hear, and it's been killing me. You're absolutely right about the ghostwriting thing. I do not want that. I want someone to beat the shit out of me so I can rewrite what needs to be rewritten in the right way... Iron sharpens iron... and all I've got so far is bread (cheerleaders)."

What was I supposed to do at that point? We quickly came to financial terms and set to work. After we agreed on an eight-chapter thematic structure—I suggested stories from the manuscript that fit into each chapter's theme—Weber went to work.

Work.

Despite a sepsis attack that hospitalized him, an emotional retirement ceremony attended by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey and a dangerous surgery, he produced a chapter per week. Meaning, he wrote a chapter of several thousand words, sent it to me for feedback, rewrote, rearranged and cut parts based on my advice and sent it back to me for a line edit, which he then incorporated into a final version. He did all that every week. For eight straight weeks. Cheerfully.

Our correspondence was at once fun and sarcastic, candid and concise. And it wasn't only about the language or the story structure. Sometimes we differed on philosophy. I'd say, You don't want to say this. And Weber would say, But this is what I believe. And I would say, Well, then let's find a way to say it that's more convincing to someone who doesn't agree with you. Someone like me.

At one of those rare loggerheads, I told him, "It's your book." He replied by telling me I didn't need to tell him that; he was well aware.

This project was what I never thought a collaboration could ever quite be: two people, on equal footing, with a proper sense of urgency—whatever else it is, death is a useful deadline—trying to express a philosophy, and in the process, making each other think and feel. At one point Weber told me that getting my chapter critiques, however harsh, was "like getting a Christmas present." I showed that to my wife and she put her hand on my back and her eyes filled with tears. Which was like getting a Christmas present.

What made this collaboration perfect?

It helped that we were both the same age, both husbands and dads. It probably helped that we were both men, with a few communication norms in common. And we simply liked each other.

But it was equally crucial that I didn't know the first thing about being a military officer and found myself unimpressed by many of his proudest career accomplishments, up to and including his having been hand-picked for war zone assignment by Gen. David Petraeus. Conversely, my leisurely writer's life allowed me to sit sufficiently in awe of Weber's other exploits. (Frustrated by his inability to communicate with Iraq's top military officer, Weber casually learned Kurdish in three months.)

And it was probably also good that I was playing golf between rounds of edits, while he commuted between the hospital bed and the computer. Sympathy, in an editor, is more useful than empathy.

As Weber said, iron sharpens iron.

But I'm glad there were only eight chapters in our outline, because as we neared the Afterword, I felt my iron softening considerably. Weber had gone from my literary partner to my pen pal. I found myself in some denial that, as I told my wife, "God is going to take my new buddy."

When Mark asked me if I'd be interested in a U.S. Army backpack, I told him I'd wear it on every journey I took for the rest of my life.

But I doubt there'll be another journey quite like this.

Tell My Sons is available in hardcover, and it makes an excellent holiday present.

Around the Word

Ready, Set, Read. Only have five minutes while you wait for the next train to come? Ten minutes as you wait for your significant other to finish getting ready? A trio of Dutch publishers have released the Delay App, which lets readers enter how much time they have and then spits out a selection of stories and novel excerpts that can be read in said timeframe. The selections are a mix between classic and modern, and the app has become extremely popular, introducing readers to a variety of writing they might not have seen otherwise.

To My Speechwriter, With Love. Over at Vital Speeches of the Day, David Murray has a moving piece about JFK's speechwriter Ted Sorenson, and the incredibly strong bond he had with the president. The same love is being shown for “Chelsea punk” turned political speechwriter Joe Resnek, who went from stealing candy to writing speeches for White House chiefs of staff, thanks to his dedication and headstrong attitude. He’s even become a regular at the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue basketball court.

The eBible. Starting July 16, the Hotel Indigo in Newcastle, England, will replace all 148 nightstand copies of the Bible with a Kindle—one that has the good book already downloaded. Any other religious book can be downloaded on the house, but commercial novels will be charged to the guest’s bill. You’ll have to read fast, because the books you download will stay with the Kindle when you check out.

A Desk With a View. Janet Groth, who worked as a receptionist on the eighteenth floor of The New Yorker for twenty-one years, has published a memoir: The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker. The tell-all details all her years spent with a bird’s-eye view of the office, a few sordid affairs with some of the magazine’s contributors, and why she never made the jump from secretary to writer. Although at times she certainly felt mistreated, the perks definitely made up for it. As Groth says, “It is not clear to me who was exploiting whom.”

Around the Word

Because You’re Worth It. If you haven’t already checked out our writeup of the recent presentation by Michael Levin—aka the Business Ghost—here at Gotham headquarters, read it now. And when you're done, check out David Murrary’s article over on Vital Speeches of the Day about not giving yourself away for free. As he says, tryouts are for Little Leaguers, so get your head in the game and don’t sell yourself short—although don’t pull a Linda Evangelista and tell everyone you won’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.

Sweet Dreams, Missouri. After publishing about 2,000 titles in fifty-four years, the University of Missouri Press is set to close its doors. Known for publishing great works within the historical, journalism, political, and creative nonfiction fields, the company has been struggling since the recession began and faced difficulties with the technological changes within the publishing industry. An exact date for the close is still unknown.

Throw Like a Girl and Still Score. With women still making 60 cents to a man’s dollar, women’s organization Her Girl Friday recently met with a panel of experienced journalists and editors for a discussion about how female journalists should pitch their stories to stand out in a sea of male bylines. The bottom line of the discussion was that when pitching, journalists need to show a supreme level of confidence. Be prepared for rejection, but never back down. “There’s not a lot of support for women in this industry,” said Ally Millar, 31, an early member of the group. “We thought it would be great to have this event to help women connect. If we band together, maybe we can move forward together.”

Like A Million Little Pieces, Without Making Oprah Angry. Clark Kent has Superman, David Bowie has Ziggy Stardust, and many famous authors have their own alter egos that they inject into their stories as sort of a faux autobiography within their works. Flavorwire has compiled a list of some of the best known, including Kurt Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout and Sylvia Plath’s Esther Greenwood. Is it a cheap ploy for character development, or is there a benefit to hiding behind someone else’s name? Who would your alter ego be? Let us know in the comments.

Money for Nothing (And Your Speech for Free)

We know as well as anyone that speechwriting has been traditionally undervalued in the marketplace, but a new service, brought to our attention by Vital Speeches guru David Murray, has literally taken it to a new low. Speeches4less claims they'll write your entire speech in 5 days and only charge you $5 per 500 words.

art from clipartheaven

David Murray went right to the source, and penned a two-part article (here and here) on the company, explaining why what they're doing isn't just bad for speechwriters, it's bad for everyone. This is a must-read for our friends in the speechwriting community. "Speechwriting isn’t expensive because clients are stupid enough to pay. It’s expensive because it (ostensibly) involves talented writers spending real time getting to know clients who really want to communicate something specific to a particular group of people." Hear, hear!

Guest post: Furious George

BY DAVID MURRAY

This article originally appeared on the Atlantic website

"I never saw myself being like my Dad," Mitt Romney told The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn in 2007. "Now that I'm older, I see a tape of myself giving a speech, I say, 'Holy cow, I'm turning in to my Dad.' I look like him a lot. I talk like him a lot. The things I value are very much the things he valued."

It's a nice sentiment for a son to have.

Described by a reporter for Detroit magazine in 1968 as "a man who says in private what he says in public—and in much the same way," George Romney's pronouncements were as memorable as his son's are forgettable, a fact dramatized by a sampling of some of the old man's early speeches, housed in the National Automotive History Collection at the Detroit Public Library.

In the 1950s and 1960s, at the very height of American automobile dominance, and at a moment when when his American Motors Corporation teetered on the edge of insolvency, Romney was calling out the Big Three automakers for a lack of engineering innovation—"most present-day automobiles are the lineal descendents of the ox-cart," he said—and for pandering to consumers' egos.

"Cars 19 feet long, weighing two tons, are used to run a 118-pound housewife three blocks to the drug store for a two-ounce package of bobby pins and lipstick," Romney told the Motor City Traffic Club of Detroit in a 1955 speech titled, "The Dinosaur in the Driveway."

He showed cartoon illustrations of huge cars bulging through garages comically redesigned, with elastic walls and "bustle style" doors, to contain them.

Then he challenged the audience directly.

"Do you have an inferiority complex that makes you buy much more car and bulk than you need just to make you look successful? Pierre Martineau, research expert of the Chicago Tribune, says the desire to look successful is a top car buying motive. Of course it's true. But why not have others think you're smart as well as successful? And certainly smart car buyers buy today what others are going to think is smart tomorrow.... Satisfying inferiority complexes through buying oversize, overweight cars is becoming obvious and therefore pointless."

Now try to imagine Mitt Romney delivering a message like that to a hostile crowd.

By 1959 the elder Romney, in the midst of pulling off a great turnaround at AMC, was being celebrated with a cover article in Time and many other articles and awards. He was being drafted to work on important committees in Detroit and statewide. And there were lots of high-profile speaking opportunities, where Romney switched from salesman to provocative statesman. In a speaking style described by his 1960 biographer as having "a certain awkward quality of innocent, unsophisticated sincerity that strikes a friendly chord with listeners," Romney championed candor as a virtue of democracy.

"As far as I am concerned, one of the greatest deficiencies we have in this country is the unwillingness of people to say what they think," he said in his first speech of that busy year, to the Executives Club of Chicago. "Too many people limit their expressions to those things that they think their groups think they ought to say. I believe this is one of the real problems in America. We are too concerned about what it will do to our business, what it will do to us socially or politically, and we are mouthing things we don't really believe, or not saying them at all."

Not George.

"We have corporate executives and white-collar employees," he told a crowd of that very makeup in Chicago, "who have become political eunuchs and who have substituted corporate citizenship and hope of economic advancement for their priceless heritage of independent political action."

In this speech, Romney claimed that the nation was in only the "early stages" of the American Revolution: "We have been too proud of our partially established political freedom. Political freedom for all was not established except as a concept and a goal when our country was founded. Indeed, the idea that the country should be governed by those who owned it was the basis of voter qualification in early elections. It took decades to broaden the right of political consent to include males without property. It took until 1920 to establish voting rights for women. Millions of American citizens are still denied their God-given political rights because of race."

He declared the biggest problem in the United States was too much concentration of power—in government, in unions, and in corporations alike.

"By the labor people I'm considered anti-union; by the big corporations I'm considered anti-big business. That's because any time you raise the question of power in this country, the immediate answer they give to knock you down is that 'you're against bigness and we've got to have bigness because only through bigness can you get efficiency and get all these goods.' That's the stock answer and that seems to satisfy everybody," he said.

"The hard facts are that any power, if it is excessive, is dangerous because somebody is going to abuse that power, sooner or later...."

Romney called for the abolition of cross-industry coalitions of unions and he called for the breakups of some big companies, to reach some minimum number of companies required for each industry to be truly competitive.

"It is all very well to speak smugly of the virtues of competition and assume that all you have to do is applaud it and be in favor of it," he told the business executives at the Economic Club of Chicago. "If we believe in competition, we must give it more than lip-service, and actively seek to keep it vigorous and fight the forces that restrain it."

Romney harped in 1959—and for the rest of his life—on the need to expand what he called "voluntary cooperation," or independent citizens gathering to solve problems. "I believe that participation in politics by unions and corporations as organizations is morally, politically, and economically wrong," Romney said. "We need to create a means by which people can express their concerns about these problems as citizens and consumers ...."

Romney concluded his last speech of 1959 by predicting that the "sixties will be a decade of basic decision" and challenging his listeners to be better human beings: "In the world, we need to decide just how deeply we believe in human brotherhood, and just how much of our comfort and time we are willing to give up in its behalf to help others help themselves, and how much energy and courage we want to put into that effort. I believe America is assigned the great world mission in brotherhood and that its pursuit can gain for us as a people inexpressibly more happiness than the materialism that is threatening to possess our hearts."

Again: It's hard to imagine Mitt making such an appeal.

Of course the father and son, no matter how close and how mutually admiring, had divergent upbringings. The comparatively hardscrabble, farm-raised, self-made father and the prep-schooled auto-industry scion were bound to be two different men. And maybe George was destined to be the more vivid.

But what is a safety-minded son to do?

"Every time I go to a debate, I write my dad's name at the top of the piece of paper on the stand," he said recently, "just reminding myself of his great character, his integrity, the vision he had for America."

Maybe he should take more than George Romney's name to the stage. Maybe he should take a whole speech.


David Murray is editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, a monthly collection of the best speeches in the world. He also blogs about the writing life at Writing Boots.

The State of the State of the Union (Part II)

By Dan Gerstein

After taking note on Tuesday of the near total absence of pre–State of the Union hype this year, we canvassed a number of our fellow speech pros to get a bead on what was behind this unusual lack of buzz. In particular, we wanted to know whether the ho-humness of the 2012 edition was an indication that our Super Bowl was losing its mojo—or whether it was just a matter of today's political moment.

The consensus take: it was the circumstances, not the pomp.

Most of the pros we consulted pointed first to the circus attraction/distraction of the Republican presidential campaign. Or, as Vital Speeches guru David Murray explained: "Because Newt Gingrich isn’t going to have the chance to stand next to the president smirking, and he doesn’t get to punch the president in the face. The politics-consuming public is addicted to the violence of these twice-weekly Republican brawls, and the prospect of watching the president shadowbox for an hour—meh. And then a thoughtful, articulate televised response by Mitch Daniels? Please."

Former Clinton speechwriter Heather Hurlburt said she wasn't surprised that this SOTU did not generate much heat, pointing to the all the political and policy news that was breaking in the run-up to speech night and sucking up most of the commentariat's attention. "Consider that this week you had the South Carolina primary Saturday, the GOP debate Monday, the SOTU Tuesday, a GOP debate Thursday, and the rollout of the first Pentagon budget cut in a decade Thursday. Oh, and a carrier sailing through the Straits of Hormuz," Hurlburt added. "It’s like holding the Super Bowl during the Olympics."

Another significant factor, our pros noted, was the White House's conscious strategy of downplaying this year's speech and not leaking out new policy tidbits to pump up the Beltway hype machine. Again, D.C.-based pro Michael Freeman said, this was predictable, given the current budgetary and political environment, which is not exactly hospitable to buzz-worthy ideas. "Obama cannot, no matter how determined he may be, get an initiative of any meaningful scope through this Congress," Freeman explained. "If he offers ideas of magnitude, the words are hollow because the proposals can't go anywhere. If he sticks to things he can get done, we're in Bill Clinton V-Chip territory. Yawn."

But our experts did see one troubling larger trend at work: the corrosive effect of the widespread anger at and frustration with Washington. "Cynicism is carrying the day," said Freeman, who served as chief speechwriter at the Social Security Administration. "Congress's approval ratings are nearing single digits. Obama's are mired below 50. There's no confidence that anything said in the SOTU is going to dramatically change the state of play in America." Added Hurlburt: "Not just the SOTU, but do all the performance rituals of Washington matter less to a country and media that sees them all as equally compromised, empty, and meaningless?  Maybe."

Gerstein is President of Gotham Ghostwriters and a regular political analyst on Fox News.

The State of the State of the Union (Part I)

By Dan Gerstein

Over the last few years we have had much fun partaking in the pre-game chatter around the State of the Union with our fellow speech junkies, and we had every expectation of doing the same with the 2012 edition. But a funny thing happened on the way to Statuary Hall this month—instead of pundits, we heard crickets.

Indeed, this has to be the least hyped or talked about SOTU I can remember since the dawn of the digital age. We have been tracking the commentariat pretty closely the last two weeks, and outside of a few scattered obligatory preview pieces in the political press in the last few days, there has been none of the usual build-up of buzz. No splashy front-page curtain-raisers on the President's big new proposals, no political Page 6 gossip about who will be sitting in the First Lady's box, no profiles of the speechwriters toiling in the shadows.

One telling barometer of this year's snooze-a-palooza is how Politico's Playbook, the political insider's bible, has played the speech Monday and today. Normally, in the last two days before the SOTU, it's the topic of conversation in Washington, but in Monday's Playbook there was not one item devoted to the event; today's edition led with an announcement from Bill Gates and several items related to the Republican debate in Florida last night and Mitt Romney's tax returns, before getting to a post-speech preview from a White House official and a couple small speech tidbits.

Even more notable, though, has been the lack of interest in and engagement by the speechwriting community. Unlike past years, when speech blogs were offering a steady stream of pre-SOTU analysis and viewing tips, those sites have been relatively silent on the subject over the past two years. Vital Speeches, Pundit Wire—not one post on either industry-leading blog about the SOTU in the last week (and we are just as guilty here). What was once seen as our Super Bowl has been greeted like a preseason scrimmage.

That's got us more than a little curious. Is this a temporary reflection of the moment and this particular contextual combination—Obama's tenuous political standing, the White House's low-key approach to the speech, the riveting circus of the Republican presidential campaign (can tax reform really compete with open marriage revelations)? Or, or as savvy Politico columnist Roger Simon recently suggested, is it part of a larger pattern/trend around the SOTU as an institution itself?

We invite our fellow speech pros to weigh in with their thoughts—in particular about the long-term implications for our profession. We'll share those insights and judgments in a post-mortem piece later this week.

Gerstein is President of Gotham Ghostwriters and a regular political analyst on Fox News.

Around the Word

A Writer's Life. Over on Thought Catalogue, video-game journalist Leigh Alexander has a comprehensively sardonic explication of the joys and horrors of being a freelance writer. Covering things like how much to drink, how long to wear that pair of sweatpants before shudderingly tossing them in the hamper, and which things conspire against you to make you miss yet another deadline (hint: Facebook), "How to Be a Freelance Writer" lays out all the aspects of the writing life that most of us don't really want to admit to.

iNovel? According to MediaBistro (who heard it from Good E-Reader), next month Apple is probably going to unveil new self-publishing software, which will compete with Barnes & Noble's PubIt and Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform. No real details are known yet, but this could be a big deal for aspiring authors, offering yet another way to get your book out into the world.

Worst Line of the Year. Our friend David Murray has selected his contender for the "clunkiest, clankiest, junkiest, stankiest" line from a speech in all of 2011. Want to know what it is? Click over to Vital Speeches of the Day.

Out With the Old. One more end-of-year wrap-up: Kirkus presents their choices for best book covers of 2011. But lest we dwell too much in the past, here's Flavorwire's ten most anticipated books of 2012. The list includes yet another Bolaño, Adam Levin's first short story collection, and Chip Kidd's graphic novel about Batman (!). What books are you looking forward to this year? Tell us in the comments.

Book Spotlight: 10 Steps to Writing a Vital Speech by Fletcher Dean

We're doing another new feature here on the BloGG: book spotlights! Our inaugural title is 10 Steps to Writing a Vital Speech by Fletcher Dean, one of the most seasoned and successful speechwriters in the world. This detailed, comprehensive, definitive guide was published by Vital Speeches of the Day, the most respected brand in the field. It's a fantastically thorough resource, and of course would make a terrific gift for any public speaker or communications pro on your holiday shopping list. 

Gotham Ghostwriters asked Fletcher Dean a few questions about his speechwriting life and his writing process. 
How did you get your start as a speechwriter?

It was entirely unplanned. I was an English major who turned to journalism to make a living, then I traded that for a better-paying job in corporate America doing mostly internal communications work. They thought I was a good writer and offered me a chance to do speechwriting, a position I hadn't even known existed in the company. Obviously, that was a career-changer for me, and I’ve never really looked back. I've been speechwriting for almost twenty years.

Do you have a favorite speech you've written? 

One of my favorites was written for Earnie Deavenport, the former CEO of Eastman Chemical Company and true Southern gentleman. He was scheduled to give a speech in New York almost exactly a year after 9/11, just blocks away from Ground Zero. For many attendees, this was their first time in New York since 9/11, so terrorism was front and center in their thoughts. We used that mind-set to our advantage, crafting a speech titled “Terrorism Is Not Our Greatest Threat.” It captured attention from the very beginning because it begged the question: if not terrorism, what is our greatest threat? This was a rare case where the first words I wrote of the speech were the title.

Putting the mechanics of the speech aside, what makes up your routine when you sit down to write? 

I divide my process into several steps. Sometimes they overlap, but I make sure to hit all of these at some point and in this order: 

• Learn as much as possible about the audience and its concerns. 
• Learn as much as possible about the topic. 
• Discover the common problem or concern. 
• Determine what we want the audience to do or believe about that problem.

Once I've accomplished all of that, I begin to craft some key messages and put that into a format that engages the audience. Then I write. Then I edit. And re-edit and re-edit and re-edit some more. I edit more than I write. Sometimes I think the job should be called “speech editor” instead of “speechwriter.”

Your book is very comprehensive, but can you suggest any other resources for speechwriters or aspiring speechwriters?

The Internet has not only revolutionized the way speechwriters do their jobs but also the way they interact with and learn from one another. There are several good blogs out there—from Jeff Porro, Nick Morgan, and Vital Speeches, just to name a few—that showcase real writers doing real work. There are many, many more, and the Internet is facilitating the development of a real community of speechwriters. That’s the easy way to learn about the profession. Then think seriously about some training. I started going to the Ragan Speechwriters Conference years ago and highly recommended it. (Full disclosure: I’m speaking there again in 2012.) There are also some good speechwriting coaches out there, like Joan Detz in Philadelphia and Wendy Cherwinski in Ottawa. Finally, though it may seem cliché, you learn by doing. There is no better way to learn to write than by sitting down and writing.