Mike Royko, the Genesis of My Writing Life

The time was the late eighties, the place Chicago, and the event the collapse of the commercial real estate market. The circumstances were both simple and predictable. There was a need for five million square feet of commercial office space and a half dozen developers independently built it out. Voila! Thirty million square feet, an oversaturated market, a crash, and my small landscape architectural firm destroyed as well.

Lesson learned, but I’d been there before.

I knew the market for my services would return, but I also knew it would take ten years, and I was in my late fifties at the time. Did I really want to hang in until my late sixties? The answer was a hesitant no.

Hesitancy is the parent of creative thinking, and what I really wanted to do was live out my remaining years in Europe and test my skills as a writer.

Thus, a plan was hatched.

The office across the hall from mine was occupied by David Haid, an architect of some renown. He hadn’t much work either, and so we spent many pleasant afternoons playing gin rummy, as well as hunting ducks on fall weekends. What David did have, was a contract for the remodeling of two Chicago schools and he needed an on-site supervisor. Thus was arranged my employment for the next two years. And Mike Royko enters the scene…I know you were waiting for Mike.

Supervising was pretty light duty, but it did require being there, so I had time on my hands. Time, it turns out, was not only the Devil’s playmate, but the opportunity to hone my writing skills. Royko, over his 30-year career, wrote more than 7,500 daily columns for the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune.

I was a great fan of Mike’s work, and set my task to emulate him.

I counted the words in his average column, and wrote one a day on my little Apple computer, as if I had his job. It was great training, hitting his 90-100 word length, and soon I had a beginning, middle and an end that came more and more easily. I had two writerly friends in Chicago at the time, one who wrote a monthly ‘men’s’ column at Playboy Magazine, and the other with a talk-show on WGN radio.

As I gathered my resolve to make the move, I showed my couple years of columns to them and asked if they thought I had a chance as a writer.

I got the same advice from both. “Yeah, you have the skills, but don’t give up your day job.”

Of course I didn’t have a day job, but I had four reasons to grab a plane; $10,000 from selling my car, a bit of Roykoesque practice under my belt, the support of two Chicago friends I respected, and permission to fail and come home, tail between my legs.

That last, was probably the most important…I would be on my own, out of sight of friends, and under no pressure but the rules of the game…knowing in my heart that the writing was good, and acceptance by readers.

Prague was my choice, although I’d never actually been there. It was one of the most beautiful and least damaged of Europe’s great cities, centrally located, and cheap enough back then to hang out for a while. All that held true, but it was so smoky in winter in 1993 that you could taste the air, and it’s magnificent architecture was dim and gray. Since then, after 32 years of restoration, it’s been like watching a beautiful old lady grow young again.

I’ll have the rest of the story for you tomorrow, if you’re interested…