S2E6 Use Your Words

This podcast, it's a Costard and Touchstone production.

Have I always been a writer? Yes and no, I suppose.

I wanted to be a writer from a young age.

I wanted to be able to convey an interesting story.

During my senior year of college, my best friend from college, Tom Fitzpatrick, and I took a creative writing course.

I got a B.

He got an A.

We had to read our final submissions to the class, and his was laugh-out-loud funny.

It was just so well done, so well thought out, and mine wasn't.

It was very average.

I did write one horror short story that I thought was great.

Frankly, the rest of the class thought it was great, and the teacher hated it so much he made me redo the entire assignment.

So I got to thinking, maybe writing is just not for me.

Well, I get hired by the CIA as an analyst, and all you do is write.

All day, every day, just writing, writing, writing.

And you're writing in a way that is so concise and so punchy.

I remember my first boss specifically telling me that the president doesn't give a shit about your opinion.

The president wants the facts in as few words as you can convey them and a paragraph on what it means.

That's it.

And so I very quickly learned the CIA writing style.

So everybody in the CIA writes in exactly the same style so that when the president's daily brief is written, it looks like one person wrote it, when in fact 50 people contributed to it on any given night.

I have always been told that I was a good storyteller.

When I left the CIA, a couple of my friends said that I should write a book and tell these stories.