A Singular Profession - The Strange Life of a Freelance Speech Writer

Some years ago I read a startling statistic. It suggested that every 24 hours in the United States 100,000 speeches are given. It seemed an unlikely number. Surely not that many. Not every day. Yet when you think about it - in every town, city, and village, in every office and government building, and in thousands of hotel conference rooms, speeches are being given. Seven days a week. 365 days a year. From that perspective perhaps 100,000 is on the low side.

The other thing I knew about the speech game was that very few people write their own speeches. In fact, I knew no one in either business or politics that did so. They had neither the time nor the inclination. And perhaps not the talent.

Aha, I thought. There may be a niche here.

So I flung my fully medically insured/index pensioned/well paid job to the winds, and hung up my shingle "Speech Writer." My similarly fully medically insured/indexed pensioned/well paid friends took no such flight of fancy and emailed me from across the country, and said how "brave" I was. I took that to be a code word for "stupid".

What made me think I could write speeches you may well ask? Is there a course you can take in speech writing? (Well yes, from me, but that's another story.) The fact is I had worked in communications in one form or another for many years. I had written a number of speeches, vetted others, and read hundreds. I knew I could do a better job.

Others in the communications biz rolled their eyes, and somewhat incredulously opined that perhaps I had taken leave of my senses. How could I choose the most boring form of writing they said - reflecting I suppose all the boring speeches they had heard or written?

Boring? Let's see - as a speech writer I get to put words in the mouths of others. Some are captains of industry. Other senior officers of government. The movers and shakers, if you will. Some I get to rub shoulders with, and others don't even know I am writing for them. Those I get to talk to in person become professional intimates as I get to share their concerns and metaphorically hold their hands. And if they like the first speech I write for them, I have them for life. This in corporate time - somewhat akin to dog time - is about seven years.

I get to write about every subject under the sun. And I can be interested in just about anything - at least for the two to three to four days it takes me to complete a speech. This incidentally has a side benefit of making me a hit at cocktail parties. I am broad but shallow. I can pontificate on just about anything - for a little while at least.

As a species, speech writers are looked upon with a combination of envy and disdain. The envy part is sort of "West Wing" envy - with the assumption that we live the life of Sam Seaborne, the President's speech writer. Surely we travel the world with very important people in private jets. Ha! The only thing that travels the world is our speech copy as we press the send button. For my part I am hunched by the light of a computer monitor - on call seven days a week - being asked to meet impossible deadlines. The adrenaline flows and I love it.

The disdain part comes at the same aforementioned cocktail parties at which - when you confess to your speech writing affliction - you are asked if you wrote that dreck for "that so and so politician" they hate so much. Such are the hazards of the trade.

Now speech writers won't admit to making policy, but sometimes a speech is the first articulation of a policy, and so as a result you certainly "nuance" it. And you take a certain perverse pride as you hear "your" words being repeated in a 15 second clip on the 10 o'clock television news. Unless of course your carefully chosen prose, fully of cadence and care, gets mangled by the speaker who only looked at the text a few minutes before the camera lights came on.

And lest, dear reader, you think that speech writers have only the exciting challenge of speaking to the hot topics of the day - and how hard could it be to make those topics interesting anyway, think again. They are just as likely to be writing speeches with such scintillating titles as "The Actuarial Implications of Musculo-Skeletal Injuries for the Insurance Sector at the Dawn of the Millennium." You make that one a heart grabber and you have the right stuff. (I did and I do, he says somewhat immodestly.)

So with a thousand speeches under my belt - ranging from one minute (yes - I am asked to write one minute speeches) to three hours (don't ask), I am still excited as ever about the speech just around the corner. Perhaps I am just a frustrated script writer. Regarded as too ancient to write dialogue for the mass culture, I am in demand to write monologues for the business and political culture. That's fine with me.

In fact, I only have one complaint. I call it my beached whale complaint. Speeches represent only a fraction of the tasks that fall to corporate executives. They are not something they have a lot of time to consider. But as the date of their presentation approaches, the more anxious they get. After all, they are likely going to be on television and on the spot. The closer the date of delivery, the more they woo and court me - to write the speech, to coach them on delivery, to reassure them they are going to do just fine.

I always ask them to let me know how the speech went if I am unable to attend. (They don't usually take me to Australia, the Bahamas, or Paris.) They promise to do so. Sadly, just like the one night stand, they rarely do. They roll over like the proverbial beached whale and get on with their other lives.

But you know what? I tell them that "they'll be back." And they always are.

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Copyright© 2002 Colin Moorhouse. All rights reserved.