I was living in Washington DC and had been a free-lance writer for quite a few years when I became interested in speechwriting. I took Joan Detz's training seminars (www.joandetz.com) and began to get referrals and assignments.
A senior speechwriter at a big company in New York asked me to come up for a half-day to get acquainted with the company and talk about taking writing assignments when he was overloaded. I went to the Pentagon City Nordstrom and invested in a stylish navy blue suit, accessorized with a colorful, flowing silk scarf. I made the trip and had a truly enjoyable day, touring the offices and getting to know the speechwriter. He even complimented my fabulous new outfit as just the right combination of corporate and creative. I did a power woman's version of "oh, shucks." Things couldn't have gone better.
Shortly after, he asked me to write a graduation speech for the CEO, and that went well. Then he asked me to write a speech for the CEO to deliver at an awards dinner, with an audience of middle-aged and older couples.
There was one snag: the speechwriter was taking personal leave for a while and my direct contact would be another free-lancer - a guy who'd started with the company at roughly the time of the Spanish-American War, had retired years and years before, and continued to get writing assignments. I'd met this retiree during my visit, and the senior speechwriter had told me quietly that he was given the occasional speech to write in deference to his long company service.
Well, this was awkward to say the least, but I really wanted the job.
I got the details of the assignment: the CEO would speak after a sumptuous dinner, and he wanted to deliver some solid content but in a way that wouldn't put a stuffed, slightly inebriated, older audience right to sleep. I did my homework and felt good about the draft I turned in.
Then I got the response from the "substitute" client. First, he wanted to insert an opening joke, which he'd written himself. I'll spare you the details - just think ba-da-bing! Then he took a hatchet to the rest of the draft, chopping out original writing and cramming in time-worn clichés (even worse than "time-worn cliché"), and faxed the bleeding corpse to me. As we went over the changes by phone, he kept saying, "Don't you think that's better?"
I had a phone number for the senior speechwriter on leave, which I was to use only in emergencies. Was this an emergency? My business partner (also my husband) advised me that it was, that the senior speechwriter had put me in an impossible position. There was no way of working with this relic, and I should ask to be relieved of the assignment and cut my losses.
In fact, that's what I did. Later, after the senior speechwriter was back on the job, I contacted him on several occasions, but never got another assignment.
To this day, I wonder what would have happened if I had slowed down, brought my diplomatic skills to bear on the situation, and worked out a compromise with my nemesis. Would I have gotten more assignments? No matter what the answer, this experience was a reminder that while writing a good speech is the number one priority, a close second is helping clients solve problems in the speechwriting situation.
In this case, the problem was internal politics: a retiree who was out of touch with the times but was kept as part of the corporate family out of sentimentality. The senior speechwriter needed a good speech written, but he also needed somebody to deal effectively with Mr. Cliché in his absence.
In every speech assignment, we focus, and properly so, on writing the best speech we can for this particular speaker and setting. Yet, that focused activity takes place within an entire landscape of office politics, conflicting personalities, and rival agendas. For free-lancers especially, who must continually court new assignments, our writing ability is key. But so is our ability to work effectively with different types of people, make reasonable compromises over our golden prose, and get the job done with minimum anguish.
Our tangible, deliverable product is the speech. Yet, for the harried client, process counts, too, and we can set ourselves apart as professionals by smoothing the process as much as we reasonably can. We need to write well, and we need to play well with others. Every so often, I pull out that fancy scarf and wear it for a while, just to remind myself!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Susan Bury is a principal of Stauffer Bury Inc., offering speechwriting and other communications services (www.staufferbury.com).
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