My brother, David Hajdu, is a world renowned author and educator (Google him if you don’t believe this). His entire life has been devoted to creative writing and he is a magnificent success. His incredible body of work is finite proof of his ability. He is, quite frankly, my hero. My baby brother is the greatest writer I have ever known.
Many years ago he and I did a family video for fun that came to mind recently. In the video he played a “hack writer” from another planet who came to Earth. The reason we shot the video was to show how easy “weird” techniques were to capture. We did all kinds of strange effects and it was a joy.
The reason it came up was a term he used in one of the shots: Hack Writer. When he was a hack writer for Video Review I had a totally different line of work. I was, at the time, an Air Traffic Controller for the FAA, Now, many years later, he’s a serious educator and I have become a “hack writer’!!
We chatted about this recently and agreed there that there is a certain simplicity to being a hack. You have an assignment, do your research and write your piece. It’s not rocket science, it’s not something the Pulitzer Committee will be looking at, it’s just reporting.
At this point in my life I don’t expect to be nominated for any prestigious awards but that’s not why I write. I hope our readers enjoy my news and views and continue to read me every month.
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Well, here's the proof that two people can have each other as heroes. The difference between Chuck and me, in this case, is that he was a hero to me at a formative age, when I was a little kid growing up in the bleak New Jersey factory town we lived in. In later years, Bruce Springsteen would make a career out of romanticizing places like our grim little home town, but Chuck never found much romance there, and he taught me early on, through his example, that a strong person can defy his surrounding and make a life of his own. Chuck found the life of the mind. When he was a kid, he would spend every free minute reading -- mostly book on flying, aviation technology, and military aircraft. He already had the tech bug. He embodied to me a kind of heroism that I saw nowhere else when I was a young, a kind of intellectual heroism.
ReplyDeleteDon't let the humility in his talk about hack writing fool you. He's no hack.
Besides, there's no shame in hackery if it means working with no pretense and with pride in the value of work itself.
I love my big brother.
David Hajdu