Ear­li­er this week, Roger Cohen wrote about World Zion­ism and Paris’s per­son­al and polit­i­cal prob­lems. His newest book, The Girl from Human Street: Ghosts of Mem­o­ry in a Jew­ish Fam­i­ly, is now avail­able. He has been blog­ging here this week for the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

I write a col­umn for The New York Times. Eight hun­dred words, twice a week. When I describe that as a full-time job, some peo­ple are uncon­vinced. That’s noth­ing! Believe me, it’s some­thing, accu­rate­ly com­pared by a col­league to life under a wind­mill. Avoid one blade and the next one is com­ing to get you. A col­umn done, it’s hard not to start think­ing imme­di­ate­ly about what the next one might be. Two ideas a week is a lot to ask of anybody.

Nobody ever sug­gests a col­umn to you, even at times of over­whelm­ing news devel­op­ments. The phone nev­er rings with a request (order) to go some­where, as it would dur­ing the many years I spent as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent. The col­umn is yours, alone. For as long as you have it.

This free­dom is an immense priv­i­lege. I can trav­el any­where with­out explain­ing to any­one what I have it in mind to do. But of course this unfet­tered exis­tence leaves the colum­nist with a list of poten­tial sub­ject mat­ter that is lim­it­less. Not every­one responds well to lim­it­less­ness. Not every­one responds well to such a soli­tary line of work.

I’m not expect­ing any­one to shed a tear. It’s an amaz­ing job.

I men­tioned two ideas a week. Per­haps that’s a con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate. A good col­umn often needs one-and-a-half ideas, the first to get you down to about 500 words, and the half-idea for a twist car­ry­ing the read­er through to the end. That would be three ideas a week. A strong col­umn often writes itself fast. A col­umn that is look­ing for its core, its cen­tral idea, takes longer. You can’t hit the ball out the park every time. You just have to get used to that. Nor is the way a col­umn idea takes shape con­sis­tent. Some­times I know well ahead of time what I will write. More often, it’s a last-minute deci­sion. Occa­sion­al­ly an idea will come in a flash: the cry of eure­ka in the show­er. Then all pre­vi­ous plans get shredded.

There’s a book-writ­ing side to my mind and a journalist’s side. I tried for a while to write one col­umn a week and push for­ward with The Girl from Human Street in my spare time. This set-up did not work well. I need­ed to leave that wind­mill behind, com­plete­ly. Hav­ing the blades com­ing at me more slow­ly still locked me in the columnist’s mind­set. Only when I went on leave for some months did the book begin to take form.

A col­umn, in gen­er­al, relies on pithi­ness, brevi­ty, syn­the­sis. There is lit­tle room for nar­ra­tive or char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. Its form could not be at a greater remove from a book. I like both forms but can­not flit from one to the oth­er. I admire friends who rise ear­ly to write and then go to their day jobs. I am not made like that.

Book writ­ing is a form of com­plete immer­sion. Begin the next morn­ing where you left off the pre­vi­ous evening with no dis­trac­tion, prefer­ably hav­ing dreamed of how the next few pages will be writ­ten. There are good moments and bad. In gen­er­al writ­ing is a form of exquis­ite suf­fer­ing. You learn to hate that ques­tion: ​“How’s the book going?” Mum­bling inevitably ensues. But when it’s done there is no sat­is­fac­tion like it. A part of the psy­che is sat­is­fied that jour­nal­ism, even at its best, is unlike­ly to reach.

Roger Cohen is a colum­nist for The New York Times, where he has worked since 1990: as a cor­re­spon­dent in Paris and Berlin, and as bureau chief in the Balka­ns cov­er­ing the Bosn­ian war (for which he received an Over­seas Press Club prize). He was named a colum­nist in 2009. He became for­eign edi­tor on 9/11, over­see­ing Pulitzer Prize-win­ning cov­er­age in the after­math of the attack. His columns appear twice a week, on Tues­days and Fri­days. His pre­vi­ous books include Sol­diers and Slaves and Hearts Grown Bru­tal. He lives in Lon­don, and will move back to New York in June.

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