Front Porch: When deadline looms, an old friend is there to help

Sometimes a deadline sneaks up and surprises me. My deadline for the Front Porch column remains constant, but my list of activities doesn’t, so – occasionally – I find myself standing right on top of a deadline, with no story written.

And with no ideas for one flowing from my brain. Sometimes staring at a blank screen produces, in addition to drops of perspiration and rising panic, something that passes for an idea, and, lo, a story is born. And from time to time, those have been among my best.

And, of course, sometimes not.

So here I am in desert-dry inspiration land once again, and the clock is ticking. Loudly.

I am turning to my friend, the late great writer-humorist-journalist-outdoorsman-professor Pat McManus to save me. I know, I know, it’s not exactly classy to name-drop when in a deep well of creative blankness, but a deadline is a deadline. Desperate times, desperate measures.

New York Times bestselling author Patrick F. McManus, who grew up near Sandpoint and later resided in Spokane, published a couple dozen books, selling some millions of copies, was a columnist for Outdoor Life and Field & Stream magazines and has credentials to blow your socks off. When he died in 2018, his small private funeral had us laughing, as one of his great humor stories was read aloud, which was such a McManus-perfect send off.

I knew him initially as a journalist and also through Eastern Washington University, where he had been a faculty member and generous with his time and talents for the university after he retired to write full time. I’ve got funny stories of my own about him and some great conversations we had. And later I was pleased to be his occasional Uber driver to various events when he stopped driving at night.

A year or so before I left the university myself, I moved from the role of public information officer to editor of the alumni magazine, which we were transitioning in name and content, from Perspective to Eastern. One of the initiatives I was instituting was featuring short pieces of writing by graduates of Eastern who’d gone on to careers as writers – and also others involved with the university, like faculty, who were authors as well.

I thought I’d start by asking my friend Pat if he’d be the first to contribute. My thinking – why not start with the best-of-the-best? Go big or go home. Besides, as a friend, I was hoping he’d agree. All I needed was 500 words, I told him.

For those not in the writing business, let me tell you that 500 words can be a hard ask. For some stories and some writers, it takes at minimum 150 words just to say hello before getting rolling into the plot and then out the door at the end. So much easier to write long than to write short (even Winston Churchill, no slouch with words, admitted as much).

We had a good laugh, Pat and I, but he agreed. OK, OK, I did lean in a little, but, nice guy that he was, he gave in. And what he wrote about was how to put his Field & Stream editor off when the man called from New York to ask where in the heck Pat’s monthly column was and what was it about.

What you do, Pat observed, particularly when you haven’t even started on the piece, not to mention have an idea yet what to write about … is stall, fudge, divert, make it up on the fly.

There was still time to get a story done, some story, somewhere in the neighborhood the deadline. He was a professional, after all. And he did actually manage to write a story on the subject he was bluffing with on that particular phone call with his editor. What he said wasn’t a fib, exactly, it was just prematurely accurate.

And so, in the inaugural issue of Eastern Magazine (Fall 2005), Pat wrote a 500-word story for me about the experience of no story when a story was due. And made it funny. And got it to me on deadline

Thanks, old friend, for bailing me out yet a second time.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net.