Confessions of a professional letter-writer

Maybe this will be part of my Hill memoirs someday. Who knows...

Having been thirteen months on the job, I can speak with some confidence on the fact that there are three types of letters out there. The first are those folks who agree with my boss’ stance, so I can write a response as long or short as I want, because either way they are glad to know their representative agrees. Even makes some folks feel like they made a difference. Maybe they did.

Secondly, you have the informational letters. These are the ones I could write in my sleep (and usually do – I warm up with these in the morning, before I am fully aware of my surroundings). Whether it’s a particular bill, issue, or obscure thing that happened (like NASA temporarily handing over operations of a mission to Russians during Katrina – one guy got really upset about that), just give me Goggle and an open Word document and I’ll give you a passable letter in five to ten minutes.

The final category, my personal favorites, are those rabidly antithetical to everything my boss believes. Since he isn’t the world’s most reserved, softspoken person, he isn’t afraid to say someone else is wrong and why. So writing those letters is like being the 1N AND 2N at the same time, in writing. (For the three of you reading this blog who are not familiar with debate terminology, that’s both members of a policy or value team arguing the negative side.) You can take advantage of every weakness of the letter writer’s argument and build your own scenarios to demonstrate how that wouldn’t work in reality – or, at best, why this idea is not ideal.

I received a letter the other day that did not fit into any of my categories.

It started something to the effect of, “I know you’re against the legalization of same-sex marriage, but…” I instantly sighed for not having recognized this letter before and plugged into my computer the code for our anti-Federal Marriage Amendment letter. I could’ve had this out the door weeks ago.

But then I looked closer. This was not a form; it wasn’t someone saying how bigoted and heartless we conservatives are. It was a very heartfelt letter from a woman who has been with her partner for some years. “They” (though only biologically, the letter writer) have two children. Her concern was not getting “married” for the sake of the term; her full page letter revealed very real worries that any parent would have. What would happen to her children if something happened to her? They would probably be put into foster care since her partner is not her daughters’ parent. How could that be best for them? And what if one of them were in an accident? Should the hospital not let the other in just because they weren’t married, weren’t technically family? “We are a family, just like other families,” she wrote, “And love is love is love, right?”

Oh, dear soul, no. It’s not. But I can’t say that in my response to you. I can’t tell you that in spite of all the feelings in the world, they cannot save you, they cannot free you. If I met you on the street, I could; but as a ghostwriter for a policymaker, such lifestyle discussions are off the table.

But that really is her question here. We’ve received our share of letters on this issue from a pure policy perspective, and I am well versed in those arguments. But it was clear upon reading this letter that she wasn’t looking for a policy solution – though it’s what she thought she needed. In that question – “love is love is love” – she’s looking for someone, anyone who will say yes to her query. And even though she knows though some means that her representative does not agree with same-sex marriage, she wonders if maybe he could lend some validation to what she calls her family. But the fact that she is writing, and reaching, for an answer from someone she probably doesn’t even think will write back… it makes me thinks she wonders sometimes, too. Is this right? Is this best for her daughters? She knows it’s too late to turn back, so she has to reach forward and seize anything with a semblance of stability.

And so I throw together words, paragraphs, sentences and phrases that seem wholly insufficient. It sounds flat in my own ears, and, disgusted with myself, I take it over to my editor and tell him to tear it up. He comes back and makes a couple suggestions but says I did quite well with a very hard letter overall. As I look at the black ink smudged on congressional letterhead, it still doesn’t seem like enough.

But what else could I have done?

So I pray for her.

***

In my more thin-skinned days, I would’ve fallen apart at the sight of such an email from a superior:

“The three of you need to pick a time to come into my office. We need to discuss the timeline of outgoing constituent letters.”

Gulp.

The laurels on which I had rested for the last week dissolved instantly. I must admit, I was a little gleeful when my coworker informed me I’d broken his record for most letters written in the office. Well, at first it was utter shock and surprise that anyone would have taken the time to notice, and a little embarrassment that it was made so much of; then it was glee. I felt, for once, irreplaceable in a position I loved, and who could ask for more than that in a job? Four thousand four hundred and twenty-three. It was a beautiful number.

But fast forward nary a week, and now I’m being called into my Chief of Staff’s office. I stare despondently at my inbox; of course it’s full. It’s appropriations season, we just finished sending out a hundred thousand unsolicited mass mailing that were being inevitably replied to, gas prices are up, the immigration issue just got finished coming to a head, the telecommunications rewrite is this week, and, that’s right, it’s the end of April and we don’t have a budget resolution yet. Of course my inbox is full. But I’d just done in thirteen months what it took my predecessor sixteen months to do. Didn’t that count for anything?

The answer was no. “I don’t care what’s gone on in the past, I don’t want to talk about it,” the dissapointed-father voice rings in my ears.

I resent it just a little, because I’m writing at a three week turnaround right now. I was at two for quite some time, but getting about two hundred contacts a day for a months’ time will do that to you. Then, it takes a week to go through editing and to the final stage where I hand it off to the staff assistant who outprocesses my letters. That takes anywhere from one to two weeks because he’s so busy with his other duties, and our interns’ schedule has not been as consistent as our office is used to. March and April; this is the season we are busy.

As I walked into the meeting, an old prayer came unbidden to my mind, as if I learned it so many years ago for this precise moment. It means something now. God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I can’t change the fact that one of my editors sits on my letters, or that my staff assistant is as overwhelmed as I am. So as I sit there being told some letters should have no more than a four or five day turnaround, I have to combat a bit of incredulity. But when I get back to my desk, I just get perturbed and plop the seven-pound stack of paper in front of me and divide it into two piles; the low-hanging fruit and the tough nuts to crack. If I can copy and paste a response into existence, it went on the left; if it would take much more than that, to the right.

I only get about halfway through the pile before I realize I’ve pretty much divided this first part equally, and my “easy” pile has scattered across my keyboard. Before I sort more, I decide, it’s time to tackle them.

Sixty newly composed and fifty final edited letters later, I had to run to discipleship training. Volume-wise, that’s twice as many as I’ve been able to do on a really good day – mostly because I got angry. And maybe it’s a deserved anger with myself, because my accomplishment revealed what I am capable of but have not been doing. Somehow I get motivated when someone tells me I can’t do something or am not good at what I’m doing. (That’s how I ended up with most of my resume.) I am bent on proving people wrong about me.

The bad news is today didn’t go at all like I planned. The good news is, my stack is at least one-third of what it was when I went to work this morning. And the best news is, tomorrow is another letter-writing day.