After hemming and hawing about this for a long time, I’ve decided to abandon (for now) any attempts to market my Documenting America newspaper column. The amount of work required each week is the main factor: fear of commitment.

I may still do some of the activities related to the column. I love reading and analyzing those old documents, and so will continue to do so. I enjoy developing a 700-800 word column from those, so I may continue to write them, and accumulate them in anticipation of a future date when I might change my mind. More likely some day in the future, when I assume room temperature, my executor will find these in a file/folder/box, have a good laugh at the stupidity of it all, and discard/recycle them. If I don’t do it first.

Last night I went to work polishing the Documenting America files I will need to do the marketing. I took another look at the query letter–probably the 50th time–and couldn’t find a word to change. Then I pulled out the critique group comments for #0006, and went through them. I had already gone through the critique group comments for the query letter and #0001.

Some of the comments required that I double check the original document quoted in the column, to check for errors, and to make a better reference in two places. So I pulled the volume off the shelf at home and re-read it. The subject matter of this particular column was a Supreme Court decision in 1866. Designated “Ex parte Milligan”, it was a decision that determined that trial by military court was inappropriate where civilian courts were functioning and where war was not present nor anticipated.

I hesitated, a couple of years ago, to choose this as a topic. Who am I to examine, extract, and comment on legal issues before our highest court? But I found the issue fascinating, studied it, and determined I could give a “layman’s” view of it, and did. Today I decided to do just a little more research, and so Googled “ex parte Milligan”. To my surprise this resulted in 28,800 hits. Yikes! This may be an obscure court decision for the layman, but obviously not for the legal professional. This once again caused fear of error to rear up. Layman or not, I’d better be sure I know what I’m talking about for the limited commentary in the column.

As I did this work last night, I skimmed through the table of contents of the volume and found other documents that appear good items for future columns. I read one of them, marking with pencil the parts I will likely quote. Two or three others I marked for columns based on the topic and a very quick scanning of the text.

All of this, between yesterday and today, took about two hours. Two very enjoyable hours. Two hours where I felt I was in my element. Two hours where I was able to stick to business, not including some time dreaming of success in this endeavor.

Ever closer, ever closer.

Yes, who am I to think I can be a writer of an op-ed column? I have no credentials. I never took a political science course in college; never worked on a political campaign after some high school volunteering; never ran for office or even contemplated doing so; never covered government or political-economic-cultural issues for a media outlet. Well, I did function as a contract city engineer for eight years, but it was for a small city, with limited staff although with booming development. And, during that time, I did work on writing city ordinances (i.e. laws and regulations) and then worked to enforce them in my limited capacity. I did get to observe the roles of mayors, councilmen, planning commissioners, and city staff up close.

But, that is a far cry from national issues. So why should I think I can write the column “Documenting America” and self-syndicate it to newspapers? I’ve been thinking of this for almost five years, more recently as a platform-building activity for launching a writing career. But is this possible? Could I sell the column, and myself as the best person to write this?

The status is this:
1. I have developed the concept for the column: taking some document from America’s past; excerpting it; explaining it; showing its importance in America’s growth and development; and tying it to a current issue, if possible.

2. I have completed eighteen columns, and have a good handle on where the sources of documents are; what the copyright issues are; and how long it will take me to research, write, and polish a column. I’m sure I can produce it weekly.

3. I have to some extent researched the market, and have developed a marketing plan for selling it to newspapers, most likely smaller, weekly or daily papers, but never the big national ones. The actual marketing of the column awaits, so I don’t actually know if it will sell or not.

4. I have taken a number of the columns to two different writers critique groups, and received good feedback and suggestions for improvement. I’ve also workshopped one of the prototype columns at an on-line workshop, again with good feedback. To the same two real-life crit groups I have submitted a query letter to newspapers, and received help on how to make it better.

5. I have shown a few of the columns to people I would describe as my target audience, and received positive feedback: without exception they would like their newspaper to carry it and would read it.

It’s ready to go, and has been for close to a year. All that remains is to pick some newspapers, send them a query and some samples, and see if they will buy it.

So why haven’t I done it? Why haven’t I pulled the trigger? Fear, as I blogged about before, but also the thought that I have no standing on which to sell this column. Why would any newspaper buy it from me, hire me to fill ten to twelve column-inches every week?

This post is long enough right now. Possibly I’ll expand on this over the next couple of days. I’m off to find a couple more beta readers for the column.