By Elizabeth Dunn
For some people, telling stories just comes naturally. “I guess I was one of the lucky ones,” says Craig Wilson, a USA Today feature writer and columnist. “I always knew what I wanted to do.” His dry humor, attention to detail and personable writing style have made his “Final Word” column one of the most recommended reads on the newspaper’s online Life Section. He started the column in 1996.
Wilson’s desire to be a writer stemmed back to Lyndonville High School, outside of Rochester, in upstate New York. He was editor of the school newspaper as well as photo editor of the yearbook. “I had an English teacher who kind of encouraged me, and that was just reinforced when I got to college,” he recalls.
In 1967, he entered Syracuse University and enrolled in its Newhouse School of Journalism at the end of his sophomore year.
Although he studied all aspects of journalism, he was drawn to feature writing, especially when given the chance to reflect on his childhood spent on his family’s orchard farm. For one class assignment, Wilson wrote about the apple harvests and was highly commended by the professor. “He just nodded and told me that I was really, really good. So that was when I was, like, ‘Oh, OK, maybe I could earn a living doing this.’”
After graduating in 1971, Wilson traveled for a year before settling down at his first job at The Saratogian, a small daily newspaper in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. There, Wilson says he “did my time” covering city school boards, city hall meetings, obituaries and profiles.
The paper was owned by the Gannett Co. In 1981, a friend encouraged him to take part in its “loaner” program for the launch of USA Today. The company moved some of its employees from smaller subsidiaries to Washington, D.C. Wilson moved in 1981 and never went back.
At USA Today, he started in the Life Section as an assistant entertainment editor, then moved to feature writing, where he wrote profiles and reviewed books. After eight years, he got his big break when he wrote a feature about his dad playing Santa Claus every Christmas. His boss saw it and liked it. Wilson describes it as “one thing leading to another,” and “The Final Word” was born. The weekly column celebrates the simple pleasures in life: Wilson reminisces about childhood experiences and remarks on current trends and events with fondness and infectious humor.
“I have a confession,” he writes in one column. “When I was a kid, I named my dog Lassie. I'm embarrassed just to think about it now. There's really no excuse for such a lack of imagination on a young boy's part.”
His musings draw hundreds of letters and e-mails from readers grateful for his nostalgia and warm observations on daily life.
In 2002, Random House approached him, offering to publish a selection of his columns in a book. Its title – “It’s the Little Things: An Appreciation of Life’s Simple Pleasures” – sums up Craig Wilson’s unique talents.
Q: How do you keep finding new ideas?
A: That becoming a real problem. I only write one column a week, but after 13 years… what’s that? Six hundred and fifty some columns. Especially after the holidays start to roll in. What do you say about this Thanksgiving? This Mother’s Day? Everything could be a column. Like this little thing (he points to the digital recorder), and how I am not good at it, could be a column. Once I get the idea, I’m pretty OK. I have a pad upstairs beside the bed. And if I get a little idea, I’ll write it down.
I have a list of column ideas, and some have been on there forever. I keep looking at them and thinking, why can’t that turn into a column? The best columns I write in like 20 minutes. The ones I have to labor over are the ones that [are] really not working.
Q: Where do you write best?
A: At home [a small townhouse on the other side of Georgetown]. My office is up here (he points to the office above us). There is a desk. I look out the window. I’m here with Maggie [their 6-year-old Wheaton terrier] and when we are alone that is the best. I’ve been home now for six years. But for 19 years, I was across the [Potomac] river in the [former USA Today] newsroom and I didn’t pay any attention to everyone coming and going. Now when I’m in the office [in a commercial section of McLean, where he only goes on Tuesdays], I find everything a little distracting.
Q: Sometimes do you just write the column out in one go? Or do you come back to it?
A: Well, I always – even if I like it and I do it in one go and I think I’m done – I close it out and let it sit and let myself sit and then the next day I will go back to it and slowly go through it again. Changing words and, like last night for next week’s column, for instance, I didn’t have the kicker, the ending, and the kicker came to me as I was reading in bed last night at 11 o’clock. So I wrote it down and walked it in and laid it down on the computer. And it’s much better. You have to walk away from them. I would never just write a column and send it off to my boss.
Q: Do you ever have to do research? Interviews?
A: Sometimes, but not often. It’s not that kind of column. Kathleen Parker – who is a conservative columnist, very, very good – lives next door. She puts a lot of work into [political reporting]. Whereas mine is: Hey, this guy is just off musing about ... I just did one [column] about Michelle Obama and the opening of the garden on the South Lawn, and I wrote about my dad’s garden and how he always sat in a tin chair, and he would work and then sit in it and watch the garden. So, no, you don’t have to interview people about that.
Q: How often are you writing cover stories?
A: A couple a month. Now that I’m in the book world, they are off a book. I went to Louisiana last month. It was the 50th anniversary of Bonnie and Clyde, the gangsters, and so I went with the author of this new book [“Go Down Together” by Jeff Guinn] to where they were killed. And then Tuesday, I am going up to Vermont for a gardening book [“Our Life in Gardens”]. These two guys [Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd] have this famous garden on this hillside. So I’m going to go there and spend the day with them. That kind of thing.
Q: Who, besides your editor, is your sounding board?
A: Actually, Dan [Bear, a friend who lives in D.C.] is a very good ideas person. We’ll be sitting here talking and then all of a sudden he’ll say to me, “That’s a column,” and I’ll go, “Oh, it is.” I have a lot of friends who do that. And then I have a lot of friends and neighbors, like Molly who lives on the corner from me, and they’ll say, “This is not a column.” And I’ll go, “OK.”
Q: But do you actually take their advice?
A: (Shakes his head and smiles.) I ignore it. I mean, she is very sensitive; she is a very private person. And so I want to go, “Molly, no one would know this was you, so what’s this big deal?” But some people I have to be a little more careful about.
Q: How would you characterize your writing style?
A: I would like to think that it’s personal, intimate. I like to think my columns are postcards – that I’m just writing a little postcard back home to a friend. And it’s just a little snippet of something that happened in the course of that day. And it’s very much my own voice. And people who know me well, they say, “I read this and I hear your voice, and I know that that’s you.”
Q: Is that why you think you have such a strong fan base?
A: That helps. I have thousands and thousands of readers who have never met me, and yet they’ll send me e-mails and they’ll say, “Dear Craig,” and then I couldn’t even tell you how many thousands of times they’ll say, “I just couldn’t feel that I could call you Mr. Wilson because I feel like I know you over the years too well. And I know Maggie, and I know Jack and I wish I lived on your street.”
It’s a little strange. Jack [Wilson’s partner] finds it a little weird. In fact, these flowers (he points to a vase of roses) came from a reader who lives down in North Carolina. She’s been a pretty good e-mailer over the years and she was in town with her husband for a convention and she finally just said, “You know, we could meet.” I have to adjust myself and think, why does this woman know so much about my life? As Jack says, “Well, you tell everybody everything.” There are some mailers about the gay stuff that are unpleasant and aggressive, and my editors have their names and e-mails, and I don’t think that anything would ever happen.
Q: Do you think readers like you so much because they can relate to your life?
A: A few readers for a couple years thought that I was in a law firm and that my partner was Jack, and I said, “No, no, no, no, he’s my partner and we live together.” But sometimes I get these e-mails from people saying, “I’m so %&* sick of you shoving your partner Jack down our throat.” But I’ll e-mail them back [to say]: “What I’m doing as a gay man is trying to write an honest column and an honest depiction of my life. If that bothers you, I suggest you move on to another columnist.”
Q: But now you have the online column and people leave comments. How do you feel about that?
A: The thing is if you hit “Most popular” on the Life section, my column will always come up in “most recommended” and “most e-mailed.” But my readers are older, they are not the type who leave a message. They’re going to e-mail me personally. I have a basket on my desk at work that is just filled [with letters]. I got two today: hand-written notes from people who enjoy my column. Granted, these are all retired people in Florida who have been following me for 20 years, who one day, I guess, had nothing better to do. But they usually have lovely handwriting!
Q: What are you most proud of?
A: I’m kind of proud that I’ve written a column as a gay man, talking about my life. I wrote a column about it once, about how everyone on the street calls us “the boys.” And GLAAD [Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] gave me an award for the column. So I’m just trying to lead an honest life.
Q: What has been the hardest column to write?
A: When our other dog, Murphy, died. I wrote a column on that one. It’s now on the bathroom wall. Because I cried. Because I talked about sitting on the dining room floor with her when she died. God, this is a terrible thing to say, a dog column is always popular. Because the dog wackos will all turn up, but a dead dog is sadder. That column was off the charts. I’m kind of good with the emotional things. They are the hardest and the most worthwhile.
Q: Who are some of your favorite writers?
A: My all-time favorite is David Sedaris. He is a humorist and he writes a lot for The New Yorker and he has written a number of books. I mean, I read him and I just want to close up my computer; I am almost ashamed at what I turn out. He makes me laugh out loud. He is very quirky and he comes from this odd little family in North Carolina, and he is brilliant.
Other that that, Joyce Maynard. I think Cheever is brilliant, but these are all suburban-type alcoholics, American angst writers. But from what I do, David Sedaris is No. 1 in the envy world.
Q: If you weren’t a journalist, what would you have liked to have been?
A: Well, I always wanted to be an architect. I liked the design. But then I realized you had to build things that stayed up, and you’re back to the science and the physics, and so I don’t think that was my future. And the other thing I was interested in was hotel management, mainly because I grew up in Ithaca and Cornell; Cornell has a big hotel management program. I always thought that it would be fun to own a hotel – having people come and stay and you take care of them and you hope they leave happy. I’m sure it’s actually a horrible job and you are dealing with peevish people. Or somebody up in Room 603 isn’t happy because they didn’t have turn down service.
[With] journalism, you know that unless you go into TV you are not going to make that much money. In journalism school, they have a newspaper division and PR and advertising division, and initially you take classes from both. I took advertising and I was good at that. Coming up with the slogans – and I just had an epiphany one night and I thought I probably could make a lot of money , but [did] I want to spend the rest of my life writing ads for pretzels? I’d probably drink more than I do now!
I love newsrooms, love newspapers and the people in them; they’re all a little crazy. It’s a joke that we laugh about – that newsrooms are filled with people who couldn’t work in mainstream society. Academia might be like that. Newsrooms are filled with quirky, eccentric people. It’s kind of sad that that is going away.
Q: Why is that?
A: Because it’s becoming a real business and everything is bottom line. In Saratoga, we had drunks, alcoholics with the old cliché of the scotch bottle in the bottom drawer. Landon, who was almost blind and he covered the horse races. It all worked. I sat next to a guy who threw his typewriter out of the window, and the window was down. He had a bit of a temper. That wouldn’t be tolerated now, nor should it be. I’m just romanticizing…But I miss that.
Interviewed, condensed and edited by Elizabeth Dunn
Read samples of Craig Wilson’s USA Today columns:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/finalword/2009-03-31-vegetable-gardens_N.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/finalword/2006-02-28-final-word_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/finalword/2005-03-22-final-word_x.htm
