Obit? Oh, My Gosh

Elizabeth Taylor passed away this week and I heard a strange writing-related story connected to her death.

The New York Times actually wrote her obituary 10 years ago and put in on file. Seems like that is common practice at many U.S. newspapers, to have staffers write the future obituaries of aging high-profile celebrities.

What makes the Taylor obit story even odder is that the guy who wrote it actually died himself in 2005.

Almost My Biggest Error Ever

My first paid writing job was at a newspaper, and only two weeks into my employment I was told to write obituaries. I had to compile one about a 19-year-old who gruesomely died while working on a wood chipper truck, when his protective glove got caught on a tree limb he was chipping. The razor sharp, fast-spinning blades of the chipper pulled his entire body through the machine. No need to expound on the goriness.

I had no idea who the guy was and put together a respectful obit, but was feeling rascally that day because the mood in the entire newsroom was caustically sarcastic and jovial. So I jokingly ended the obit by writing, “The family has not yet determined whether the body will be buried, cremated or mulched,” then sent it to my good-natured editor for her to marvel at my cleverness.

But she was actually out sick that day, so all copy for the next day's paper skipped about five steps and pushed right through to the print setters. Luckily, one of the print workers was scanning the paper prior to running the press and called me at home at 11 p.m., questioning the final sentence.

Thank goodness I was able to correct my foolishness. If that obit had published, I'd still be feeling bad to this day.

Pause for the Cause

My hope chest still has rusty keys with regard to acquiring an agent, but I'm not going to make my next major push until my website launches. So query letter mailings, e-mailings and all of their subsequent rejections are at a brief pause because I want future query letters to close with links to the Crazy Lucky Dead Facebook page, the Twitter account and website.

Once everything is in place, I will continue this whole process with the utmost delicacy – like a charging rhinoceros.