By Christina Capatides

Monica Hesse is known for finding unique angles in stories.  So, in late October when her editor asked her to write a story about people watching the presidential debates, she replied, “Can I do a story about people not watching the presidential debates instead?”  Hesse had developed the assumption that there are many people in the District of Columbia who, like her, play “political pretend” because they feel as if they should know more than they actually do.  While her editor seemed skeptical, Hesse insisted that she could find plenty of pretenders.

“A story that was supposed to be about watching the presidential debates turned into a story about the insecurity and the weirdness of living in Washington when everyone seems smarter than you and you end up feigning recognition, pretending that you know politics which are obscure and you would have no reason of knowing,” says Hesse.  “My favorite stories are always the ones where when you first tell people, their reaction is, ‘That’s stupid,’ because then you get to prove that it’s not stupid and it’s kind of funny actually.” 
Just as Hesse believes that there is no one proper way to approach a story, she does not think there is any one right way to get into journalism.  “I think that the weird thing about journalism is that every person you ask to describe their career path is going to say, ‘It was a little unusual.’”
Hesse never planned on going into journalism, but hadn’t planned on going into anything else either. Hesse got her start by writing a column for the student paper at Bryn Mawr College.  

The summer before her senior year, Hesse participated in an American Society of Magazine Editors internship at AARP magazine.  After graduating in 2003, Hesse planned on taking a year off before pursuing a PhD “in comparative literature or in cultural studies or something else that’s thoroughly useless.”  However, her plans changed when her boss from AARP called unexpectedly and offered her a job as a researcher and fact-checker. 

Hesse stayed at AARP for four years and became an associate editor.  She left because she realized that what she wanted was not to edit, but to write, and AARP did not offer staff writer positions.  “So, I decided to chuck my job and take a summer internship and just kind of see what would happen if I switched gears,” she said.  Hesse also went to graduate school part-time and got a master’s in nonfiction writing from Johns Hopkins to ease this transition.

That summer internship was at the Style section of The Washington Post, where Hesse has now worked for two years.  “After three months, you know, two days before my internship was up, when I thought that I was going to have to sell my cat or something, they asked if I wanted a full-time position.”  And so, with the same comical and accidental ease with which she frames her stories, Monica Hesse became a staff writer at one of the most respected newspapers in the world.  Hesse, 27, lives in Columbia Heights with her new husband and a plant that does its best to die on a daily basis.

In the following Question and Answer, Hesse discusses her craft:

Q: Did going to graduate school improve your writing? 
A: It forced you to write and have a lot of output.  It gave you the space to develop your own tone.  I don’t know that any classes I had particularly focused on helping me do anything different than I would have done anyway, but it forced me to do it more which I think helped.  The more you write the more you find your own way and the less afraid of it you become.

Q: Do you think any writers you’ve read have influenced your tone?
A: I can name a dozen writers that I would love to write like.  I think that Dave Barry and Gene Weingarten are hilarious.  I think that poets and fiction writers like Anne Tyler and Margaret Atwood are beautiful.  I think that you can’t help but be a little influenced by what you like, but everyone is going to figure out their own voice.  I do find that after I’ve been reading a book by someone, for example, the next piece that I write, I’ll end up using shorter sentences than I normally would have, or I’ll end up using a different word pattern or something.  And I think that that probably seeps into your writing a bit whether you realize it or not.

Q: Do you usually come up with your own ideas?
A: I come up with ideas or my editor comes up with ideas.  Or it’s a collaborative effort.  I wish other people would give me ideas more of the time.  I think that ideas are the worst part of any writing.  Once you know what you’re going to write about, you’re done with the really hard part. 

Q: What was your favorite piece you ever wrote and why?
A: I could name a couple for a couple of different reasons.  I like pieces where you start off with a big idea and transform it and turn it into a story like I did with the presidential debates.  I got the idea for that piece at a party that I was assigned to cover at the Kennedy Center last year.  I was talking to a man for 10 minutes before he introduced himself.  He was like, “What do you do?” And I was like, “I work for the Washington Post! What do you do?”  And he was like, “I’m the governor of Mississippi.”  And I was like, “I’m a total idiot.”  So, I had this feeling that people in DC play a lot of political pretend.  We do all of this posing and phasing and stuff.  That’s one of my favorite stories because it’s a story that you wouldn’t think would be a story.   

Another favorite story that I’ve done: I really like stories where I get to be dropped into scenarios where you get a chance to spend time with people that I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to spend time with.  Last February I covered a polygamy convention.  So, for two days I hung out with people who believe in having multiple partners at once and I went to workshops on how to run a successful orgy and workshops on, you know, couples counseling when there are five of you in a relationship.  And I just met amazing people.  So, that was a fun story also because you get to take a group of people that seem really foreign and you get to talk about how they’re really just like you. 

Q: What’s your least favorite kind of story to do?
A:  There aren’t very many stories that I hate.  I love and I hate every story for different reasons.  I was going to say that I hate doing stories where you cover the Kennedy Center Honors because, what do you do beyond say this is what happened?  So, I dislike stories where it seems like there’s not a lot of flexibility and there aren’t a lot of interesting takes; but, in the same respect, when I’ve done stories like that, you get other highs.  For example, I like having to run back to the press room and write a story in thirty minutes while wearing a ball gown.  I mean that part’s exciting.  Terrifying and exciting.

Q: How would you characterize your writing style?
A: I think the best way to describe it is that, in nearly every story that I write, what’s running through my head the entire time is, “I can’t believe this is happening or that you are saying this!”  The way that I’m able to write stories is to act like a child who’s seeing something for the first time every time and just to be shocked and amazed at everything that’s happening.  Even if what’s happening is a normal person doing normal things, just the idea of finding things absurd that happen every day I think is probably what contributes most to how my stories come across or how people perceive my tone.

Q: How much research do you generally do after you come up with an idea?
A: It depends.  A lot of research is research that I won’t even realize is research until I find the story that that research fits.  I did a story about people who have had their cell phones stolen and then the thief isn’t aware that the cell phone is linked to a software that automatically uploads pictures online.  It’s like hysterical stupidity.  That story started almost a year ago when I read about one incident of that happening on a blog.  I do less research than I think I do kind of filing things away in the back of my brain.  And then, when I have enough instances, I’m like, “Alright, I’m going to find all of the people that this has happened to,” and now it’s a trend story.  If I’m doing a profile, obviously I would read everything that has been written on a person.  If I’m doing a story about a common subject, I would do a lot of research to make sure that the same thing hasn’t already been written.  But it really varies from story to story.

Q: How do you decide which people you want to interview for a story?
A: I always feel like it’s better to have more than you need than less than you need.  If I’m at an event, I’m kind of just running around, literally talking to everyone I can talk to and scribbling it all down and sorting it out later.  If I overhear somebody saying something funny, then I’ll go over and talk to them.  Some of it is whether they look like they’d be approachable or not.  I don’t think that there’s an exact science, except that the more people you can talk to the better because then you can figure out later what the thread is. 

Q: Do you always identify yourself as a journalist?
A: Yeah, the Post has really strict policies on that.  We don’t have any undercover-type journalism. 

Q: Do you ever make an outline before you start writing?
A: No and, in fact, I also never start writing at the top.  I know a lot of people say that they need to have structure.  I usually start by writing down the most interesting quote that I’ve gotten or maybe what I know the kicker is going to be.  Usually, it’s a paragraph somewhere in the middle and then I kind of spiral out from it.  I wish I could do outlines. They would probably be helpful, but I never do.  I don’t even know how you’d do an outline.  I think if you do an outline, then you run the risk of your story being contrived instead of figuring out that it could go in a direction that you didn’t expect it to, but which is actually a really funny direction. 

Q: Do you always write a piece straight through or do you stop and revise along the way?
A: By the time I file something to my editors, I’ve probably read certain portions of a story 50 times because I basically write a sentence and then I read it.  And then I add another sentence and then I read those two sentences.  I add another sentence and then I read those three.  It all builds on each other.  So, I don’t really have a formal revision process, but I think because I’m reading it so often that I do revise it as I go along.

Q: Do you only show your editor a piece once it’s done?
A: It depends.  I work primarily with the same editor.  It’s really important to build a trusting relationship.  So, when I’m working with my primary editor, she and I have worked together enough that I feel comfortable sending her something when it’s at maybe 85 percent.  That way, I’m not so wedded to it that when she says, “This lead is terrible” or something, that I’m depressed and I can’t go on.  If I’m working with someone new, then I’m more likely to try to get it as perfect as possible just because I know that we don’t have that trust or relationship yet. 

Q: How many revisions do you usually go through with your editor?
A: With a shorter piece, like 30 inches or under, it’s not really a series of revisions.  I mean it’s more like: I’ll turn something in, she’ll call me over to her desk and we’ll kind of go over things sentence by sentence.  And she’ll say, you know, “This word stopped me.  Do you have a better word?” or, “How many people are doing this?”  So, it’s not a revision as much as it’s kind of an ironing out of the wrinkles.  With bigger pieces, I might do a revision.  I don’t think I’ve ever done more than two revisions on a piece, but that was for a pretty big one that I worked on for a couple of weeks.

Q: How many pieces do you usually work on at any one time?
A: One.  I kind of like to get something out of the way before I start up something new.  Even if I’m thinking about other things, I’m only writing one piece at a time.  Some people are much better than me and they are able to gather ideas while they’re working on stories.  I think that that would be smarter, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.  Right now, I kind of just throw myself into whatever I’m working on and then, when the well is dry, then it’s time to like walk around the city and find something new and amusing to write about. 

Q: How does working at The Post compare to the other places you’ve worked at?
A: It’s an amazing place to work.  It really is humbling.  I mean to walk in and be like, “Hello Ben Bradlee riding on the elevator next to me! I don’t deserve to be here at all!”  And I’ve never been at a place where there are so many smart people in the same room, or a place where you can have a 10 minute debate over whether it is more proper to use ‘a’ or ‘the’ in a certain sentence when both would be correct, you’re just concerned about the rhythm of the sentence.  So, that’s really amazing.  The Post is an amazing place.  It’s a scary time to work in journalism now.  I mean it’s stressful and it’s tension-filled, but as far as the people you get to work with, it’s pretty unbeatable.

Q: How do you feel about the future of print journalism?
A: It doesn’t have a future.  It won’t be long.  Certainly in our lifetimes, it will be replaced by something.  I don’t know how it can continue to make money remaining the way that it is.  I retain more and I enjoy it more when I read things in print.  However, even as a person working for a newspaper who believes that, I still get most of my information from online, and I think that that’s true of most people under thirty.  And so, I think that we’re all hoping that people smarter than us figure out what that’s going to mean and how we’re going to combat that.

Q: Do you think that’s the consensus among journalists?
A: I think it’s the consensus among most of the younger journalists that I know.  I know some older journalists who say, you know, “No. Print media will never die.”  And that could either mean that that’s how they and their friends get the news, so they can’t comprehend that a younger generation might behave differently.  Or maybe it’s because they’ve been in the business through so much turmoil that they’re just a lot smarter than us and they have more faith and more trust that it will all turn out okay.  And it all will turn out okay, but I think that most of the younger journalists I know don’t anticipate print media being around forever.

Q: What kind of news industry outlet do you think is going to prove the most successful in the future?
A: I don’t know.  If you believe that people develop their news gathering habits when they’re young and keep them, which a lot of people do, the immediate future looks like it could be on mobile devices or cell phones because that’s what people under 20 are using now as their primary means of communication.  And if they want that to stay their primary means of communication, then they’ll expect things to be delivered to them.

Q: To the Internet?
A: To the Internet, but even more on like personal devices, like the Internet that you carry around with you.

Q: Right.  It’s scary.
A: I know.  I’d prefer not, but I think that you can either hide under your bed and fear that coming or you can kind of accept that it’s coming and figure out what role you’re going to play in that. 

Q: Do you think that your writing will translate well to another medium?
A: I don’t know.  I mean people want information faster and I think that people want information shorter than ever before.  I don’t know if there will be room for 80-inch or even 40-inch feature stories.  I don’t know if people will have the patience for that.  Or maybe they’ll have the patience for it in certain venues and they’ll subscribe to The New Yorker, but they won’t have time for anything else.  So, anyone who doesn’t write for The New Yorker will be out of luck.  But, I think that people do want information.  The people who only read blogs or who only read two-bit news bites, don’t realize now that that information is coming from somewhere else.  You know, that the two-inch news bite that you read about a tech crunch is only possible because someone has already done the reporting for it at The Washington Post or at the Charlotte Observer or something.  I hope that it adapts and I hope that people realize that, while you can get a lot from blogs or from sound bites, there really is a place and a need for longer forms of feature writing.

(Interviewed, condensed and edited by Christina Capatides)

READ MONICA HESSE’S QUIRKY STORIES
1. In this article, “A Vampire’s Life? It’s really draining,” inspired by the premiere of the movie Twilight, Hesse seeks to shatter negative preconceptions about vampires.  In reality, they are just like us, she says.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/23/AR2008112302158.html
2. In this article, “Fairly Satisfied Customers,” Hesse investigates the LGBTQ’s reaction to the passing of California’s Proposition 8 at a holiday Crate & Barrel event for charity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110703665.html
3. In this article, “Remember me? The one with the ‘O’ button?,” Hesse investigates the euphoria spurred by Obama’s election to the presidency by looking at romantic “hook-ups” that occurred on election night.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/11/AR2008111102958.html
4. In this article, “Caught Snapping: That cell may be a steal, but don’t shoot yourself in the face,” Hesse exposes the hysterical stupidity of cell phone thieves who facilitate their own arrests by snapping photos of themselves on the stolen devices.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/21/AR2008112103612.html
5. In this article, “The High-Heels Make a Run for It, Decked out in Halloween Fabulous,” Hesse covers the 23rd annual High Heel (cross-dressing) Race in NW DC.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102804241.html