Lecture: Robin Marantz Henig
Robin Marantz Henig at NYU. Photo: Mary Kearl.
RELATED:
Writing about death can be down right gloomy.
Or, as science journalist Robin Marantz Henig put it, describing the weeks she spent immersed in the subject for an assignment, "All that I was thinking about was dying. Apparently I was not the most fun person to live with." Eight thousand, seven hundred and four words later, her article,"Will We Ever Arrive at the Good Death?," appeared in the Aug. 7, 2005, issue of The New York Times Magazine, which Henig esteems as "the Mecca" of publications.
At a wine-and-cheese soiree hosted by the NYU Department of Journalism's graduate program in Science and Environmental Reporting (SERP), Henig explained how she got the assignment and how she crafted a lengthy, research-rich article.
When The New York Times Magazine approached Henig with an assignment about death, around March 2005, the Terry Schiavo trials were in the news. Henig is a contract writer for the magazine, which means she must write at least three 5000-word articles and one cover story a year. In this case, the story idea was generated in-house, and boiled down, in Henig's words, to an editor wondering, "Gee what's going on when someone's dying? It sure would be interesting to know what's going on..."
That vague idea led to five months of research and rewriting (the story went through 18 drafts and one 19th and final version, Henig said). In the process, the article evolved into a story about whatHenig described as a "death-denying culture" whose health-care system prolongs our lives even as it diminishes their quality.
Henig's narrative follows a hospice nurse who, as the article explains helps "people get ready to die." Through the prism of this caregiver's working life, Henig reveals a society that hopes "we can avoid death indefinitely if only we're quick enough or smart enough or prepared enough" and "a medical system for the dying that is as ambivalent [about death] as we are."
Since the open forum nature of Henig's lecture allowed for questioning throughout her discussions, an audience member asked about the way Henig chose to tell the story: "Did inspiration just strike?"
"All that I was thinking about was dying. Apparently I was not the most fun person to live with."
Henig answered by paraphrasing from Annie LaMott's advice from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life: "You have to give yourself permission to write a shitty first draft." From that point, she had the help of her husband, daughter (and her boyfriend, the top three editors of The New York Times Magazine and her story editor.
Her initial writing for the assignment was about her father's death, which she intended to be a "good writing exercise...about the moment of death." In the end, she decided to include it in the final draft, because she felt that in criticizing "Americans [who] think about death as an option...[that] we can just lick this thing," she had to include her personal story.
Of her writing process, she says she "tries out these [longform magazine] articles as book ideas," and many of them have morphed into books. However, she noted, she tries not juggle too many projects at once though because, "the real pleasure is to try to give yourself the luxury to focus on one thing."
In response to a question about how she became so successful as a freelance writer, Henig said she queried The New York Times Magazine with an idea for a feature on the Gray Panthers, which she defined as "an activist group of old people." Naturally, she attached clips. The Times Magazine editor wasn't interested in her story idea, but liked one of her clips, a New Physician article whose conclusion noted that concluded "young doctors have a duty to learn how to treat old patients". ("Editors, it turns out, read the clips," said Henig. "I hadn't realized this." He gave her an assignment that yielded "The Myth of Senility," her first Times Magazine story, published at age 28. The day after this article came out in print, she got a book deal which she said is "an implication of what the power of The New York Times Magazine is." After this, she became one of four regular contributors to the "Body and Mind" section and published about six articles there while she was in her 30s. Then, as happens in freelance journalism, the editorship changed and for 10-15 years "no one wanted articles" from Henig. "[I] worried I was getting too old." After this "dark period," she said, the editorial staff changed yet again andshe found herself in demand, again, at The New York Times Magazine.
When asked why she persisted at pitching stories to The New York Times Magazine, she laughed and said, "Yeah, I'm real stubborn."
As for her query-idea brainstorming technique, Henig said she keeps a "running collection of things that are interesting to me." After the publication of her recent article on the good death, Henig admits, "I was exhausted; I was exhausted. But I was exhilarated."