Get Me Rewrite!

It’s a cliché scene in movies set in the Thirties. A reporter dashes to a phone booth—you can tell he’s a reporter because a card with PRESS printed on it is stuck in his hatband—and calls his newspaper. As soon as he’s connected, he barks, “Hello, sweetheart, get me rewrite!”

Rewrite, or the rewrite desk, was essentially a steno pool. The reporter would dictate his story into the phone and the rewrite desk would type it for use in the paper. Then he would close his notebook, hang up the phone, and dash off to the next story or the nearest bar.

Get me rewrite! No matter what I’m writing, at some point or another I hit a spot where I want to grab a phone and get connected to Rewrite. No, I’m not looking to dictate a news story; I’m needing help revising and/or rewriting. Unfortunately, the Rewrite desk is just not there. It’s like the time I mispronounced automatic transmission and it came out as automatic transition, and I realized immediately that having access to automatic transitions would make writing so much easier.

Having a Rewrite desk available by phone would be sweet indeed.

What I know about rewriting I learned the hard way. After a few years on a small weekly newspaper where I rewrote nothing, I got a job in the marketing department of a small company. One of my first assignments was writing something for the CEO; no, I don’t even remember what it was. What I remember is arriving at work the day after I turned it in to find the document on top of my desk.

Scrawled across the top were the words, “I thought we had hired a professional.”

Devastated, I went to my boss for an explanation. After admonishing me for not showing him my work before taking it to the CEO, he began patiently teaching me how to rewrite. He showed me how my document didn’t really say what I thought it said and advised me to concentrate on the message I’m trying to communicate.

He made me rewrite that document. Then he sat with me and marked up that version and made me rewrite it again. He worked with me to polish that document. I wish I could remember what that thing was about. What I do remember was the amount of effort we put into the rewriting. I also remember my boss telling me that I should never show anyone my actual first draft.

That first rewriting lesson was a hard lesson. Rewriting is a skill I’m still struggling to master. If I ever nail it, I’m writing a book on how to do it.

Until then, I’ll keep dreaming of the day I can pick up the phone and bark, “Hello sweetheart, get me rewrite!”