Related series: Patrick Kennedy finds sailing now more enjoyable

By John E. Mulligan
Journal Staff Writer

This column was, in football terms, a broken play.

With time running out, my initial idea for the column had fallen through. I scrambled the backup out of a hunch and a half-formed image.

The hunch, from at an off-the-record lunch with one of Rhode Island's congressmen, Patrick Kennedy, was that he was happier than I had seen him. Not giddy or elated (faces I had often seen him wear) but perhaps building some real contentment in his life and work.

The hazy image that went with my intuition -- Kennedy at the tiller -- was potentially powerful for me (and maybe, therefore, for some readers) because it might evoke glimpses of other boats associated with his famous Kennedy clan.

My routine for the column is unlike my habits for other stories. I brood about it more or less continually between assignments on my day job. I test-write competing ideas for the monthly bake-off. I lavish time on the final writing and rewriting -- usually at least a day.

When the crunch loomed on this column, I seized on the wispy Kennedy thoughts because they were pretty fresh in my rainy-day file. But they presented more problems than the usual scissors-and-paste job: I had promised not to write about the conversation in question; I was uncertain of my impressions; I hadn't any notes to cut and paste.

So I buttonholed Kennedy, outlined my idea and asked to get the raw material on the record. He agreed, and I drew him out on the concrete details: Was he happy? Why? Was the boat a proper symbol for his personal overhaul? What did it look like? Where was it moored? Did he have a favorite sailing route? What about his legislation on mental health? How did it connect to his own experience? Et cetera.

This ate up an awful lot of time -- two or three hallway interviews.

The reporting was awkward and less efficient than a thorough, on-the-record interview would have been. Kennedy hedged on some stuff, unwilling to go on the record. On the other hand, the OTR conversation was a doorway to insights that I might not have gained any other way.

And the back-and-fill method was, in a sense, "editing.'' I was hard on deadline, so I guessed at what material would be useful for the story and quizzed Kennedy only on that stuff.

Things tended to fall into place. For example, when Kennedy explained the play on words in his boat's name (``D-Triple-Sea''), that was the obvious tag line.

But there was another, fundamental problem. To this point, most of my material was writer's quicksand: clips, faded snapshots, opinions, second-hand recountings. I prefer to stand upon at least a couple of solid rocks of my own reporting. It's how I find the confidence to pontificate.

In desperation I attended Sen. Ted Kennedy's cameo appearance with Patrick -- his son -- a dog-and-pony show that I would not ordinarily have covered as breaking news. The scene became the top of the story.

I made a point of joining in the small talk before the press event and salting it with a mention of the new boat. That led to a wisecrack by the senator that helped (in the subsequent writing of the column) to set the tone for the congressman's wisecrack about his father's girth.

This live footage was doubly useful. First, it was live -- a fresh scene from our longest-running national drama. Second, it rang the notes of humor and pathos that I considered essential softening agents for the column's basic (though unannounced) topic.

This was after all, another installment in the public apprenticeship of the son of a famous family -- famously gifted and famously troubled. I wanted to introduce all these notes without banging on them too hard.

My hope was to arrange the notes and let another force -- the reader's own memory -- strike the mystic chords. I remain ambivalent about the results because I think subtlety is usually a bad idea for a newspaper columnist, at least this one. Extended metaphors -- especially those involving sea voyages -- are equally risky.

But my strongest feeling about this column was relief. I'm glad I followed the impulse that launched it and grateful that my editor, Jean Plunkett, gave me the latitude of some extra writing time to get it done on deadline.

The arrival of the Kennedy-Kennedy press conference -- right on time with the fresh-caught color that the column so badly needed -- confirmed my belief that a decent idea creates its own momentum and good luck.

Providing you chase it hard.