One remarkable thing about everything

At emdash, I obsess about doing “great work”, “remarkable content”, “work we’re proud of” etc. One intern earnestly asked:

You don’t expect us to make every piece of content we write remarkable, do you?

Well, I do. But I also understand that it’s not feasible. We’re professional writers, we don’t have the luxury of tinkering with something till we’re entirely happy. We need to finish and ship things. Some of these are words that we have no control over after it’s gone — as in, there is no fixing it later.

So, how do we still make our work great?

Make one thing about everything remarkable: A captivating lead. An ingenious insight. A rare piece of information. A thought-provoking argument. A creative alliteration. A clever turn of phrase. A naughty quote.

There always needs to be something that makes me look at it six months later and go, “ah! That’s me!” 

This for me is the pleasure of being the writer — a remarkable piece of me on everything I’ve touched, ok typed.