
Writers write, but this one couldn’t about the most important person in his life - NaOH
https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2019/12/02/littwin-susie-wife-alzheimers-memorial
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DoreenMichele
Under the best of circumstances, it's tough to talk about very long
relationships. So much of it has its own private context and meaning. It's far
too easy for others to filter it through their own experiences and draw the
wrong conclusions.

Most people reading this simply will not have had a close relationship to
anyone for five decades. Can you really extrapolate from a two-decade long
marriage what five decades should mean?

I doubt it.

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rajatsharma91
Writing isn't an exact science, even the best of them fail to pen a single
sentence occasionally, and even the worst of them have enough inspiration
flowing sometimes to create mind-blowing literature (if only they'd care to
write). We can't predict when someone can churn out a bestseller and when he
cannot.

~~~
Archit3ch
It doesn't help that the link between mind-blowing literature and bestsellers
is tenuous.

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Dylan16807
While it's a nice story, am I missing something about the title? The part
about not being able to write is only briefly referenced a couple times. It's
not a subject of the article.

~~~
jmcgough
He's referencing the fact that he wasn't the one to write his wife's obit for
the same paper, months earlier:
[https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2019/06/14/the-
indy-500-...](https://www.coloradoindependent.com/2019/06/14/the-
indy-500-susie-mike-littwin-love-story/).

FTA:

"When Mike is ready he will tell you himself of the love of his life, his
college sweetheart, who would become his partner for more than half a century,
a woman of grace and beauty and intelligence."

~~~
Dylan16807
And he did tell of the love of his life.

But he didn't tell of his trouble writing that story. He left that as a quick
mention of a story, to be told another time or never at all.

It would be equally unfitting to title this article "I talked to my grandson
about death" even though it's a poignant emotional moment and it's clear what
he means. It's not what the article is actually about.

~~~
jmcgough
Article titles, especially for creative or personal stories, aren't always
summaries of the article's contents.

It serves as an introduction, and frequent readers of his column will know
that his wife died several months ago and that it was too painful for him to
write the obituary himself at the time. Mike Littwin is one of the more well-
known journalists in Colorado, and has been publishing a regular opinion
column for years.

This is like complaining that the clockwork orange is only briefly mentioned
in A Clockwork Orange.

~~~
Dylan16807
It's not a book title, it's a headline that forms a complete sentence and
describes a topic.

It's a bad introduction to hand you a plot thread that's never properly woven
in to the work that follows.

~~~
jmcgough
You are not the primary target audience for the article. The many colorodoans
who have read his column for years have the context to understand what his
title is referencing.

I think it's a way more compelling than a more straightforward alternative. It
hooks you from the start, because you want to know why he couldn't write about
her, and the explanation doesn't need to be explicitly stated. Reading the
article makes it clear how much he loved her and how painful this has been.
Spelling it out explicitly would just detract from the story - he wants to
focus on her, not his own pain.

~~~
Dylan16807
> You are not the primary target audience for the article. The many
> colorodoans who have read his column for years have the context to
> understand what his title is referencing.

Again, I knew _what_ it was referencing. That's not sufficient for a good
title.

> It hooks you from the start, because you want to know why he couldn't write
> about her, and the explanation doesn't need to be explicitly stated. Reading
> the article makes it clear how much he loved her and how painful this has
> been. Spelling it out explicitly would just detract from the story - he
> wants to focus on her, not his own pain.

That was obvious from the very start! The article doesn't slowly and
implicitly build an understanding of that. It's something you know from the
very first sentence, static and unchanging.

It's not a bad article. It does slowly build a detailed and emotional
understanding of the relationship. But none of that development gives any more
insight into why he couldn't write. It's just a broad stroke of a background
detail as far as the article itself is concerned. The details of that personal
journey are left untold.

> Spelling it out explicitly would just detract from the story - he wants to
> focus on her, not his own pain.

I'm definitely not saying he should be spelling it out in the article devoted
to the story of his wife. I'm saying that the title is wrong. He could write
about his own pain later, if he wanted to. And the title would be appropriate
for that article, not this one.

