Beautiful and courageous writing

This week looked a dream parade of literary invites and turned out more of a devastation row. A woman at the first party said “Is it George Monaghan? Oh, I’ve said some very rude things about you on Twitter!” At the second I was informed that two of the editors I most admire had met up and discussed that I am too enthusiastic in copy correspondence, and conversation. Tonight I suppose I can expect the host to bake up a literal ginormous custard pie for smashing into my face.

I didn’t feel too bad though, and not only because I was stronger/better looking than the implicated villains (even though I was). There was a life-literary cause for high spirits. Three of them, in fact, cases of beautiful and courageous writing that I felt honoured to read this week, let alone commission and edit in two cases. Thanks to them, I knew what mattered in life.

In the first place, my girlfriend wrote the cover story of the Observer magazine, and a story about a clothing legal battle, and a hilarious notebook. Once I send you this I’ll rush out for my issue of that and for my issue of the Planet Organic “PB Powerhouse” smoothie – nourishing and delightful products both!

In the UK this week, a former minister published his report into NEETs: young people not in education, employment or training. There are around a million of them now.

But one million Neets is a statistic, and every Neet is a tragedy. The writer Joseph Williams honoured one of art’s most noble truths: that the universal is contained in the particular. Joe’s emotional honesty about his own unemployment lit up the matter more than a report ever could. It was a pleasure to edit: packed with emotion as filed, I just asked “I feel like there’s a strong feeling behind this?” in certain margins.

Honestly, the highest-utility aspect of the editing process were the random delays we encountered; that minister putting the subject in the headlines the day before we were going to publish made for a tremendous readership and my tweet about it going absolutely badonkadonk, with a thousand likes in the first day. Read Joe here.

It was a privilege yesterday to publish a writer called Steven McCann on the death of his daughter. She had lived for two and a half years, mostly in Great Ormond Street hospital. It was an extraordinary article of impossibly moving writing. McCann has this power for observing gently heartbreaking details that leave you in a total flood of feeling. Here is an example.

I cried at my desk editing it and then the second reader and subeditor on it both started crying. The design team did a bespoke illustration. There was no news buzz for the topic but the article, on its own strength, was the biggest hit of the week.

This kind of thing means everything. All the best for the weekend folks.
GM