Born into 1940s hot type; flat-bed, hand fed; AP stringer when it meant something; NPPA; daily obit writer to news editor in a few years; editor (which meant I did everything -- write, typeset, pasteup, darkroom, photos, printer's devil, address, take to post office then sweep the floors) of weekly where a war was waged, and won, against a crooked politician.

Woke up one morning and realized I had been doing that for 40 years. Moved to the mountains the next week. Write for my own amusement. The term "hack" was used when I was coming up, but usually meant an itenerant reporter, or one who could churn out volumes of trite phrasing -- hackneyed writing. Don't know which came first, hack or hackneyed.

"It was a bright and sunny day when the elderly man with snow-white hair pulled his aging sedan into the path of the speeding teenagers, and the sun was still shining when two of the children lost their lives..."

He was fired, but rehired two hours later because there was no one else to cover the city council meeting.

Editing puts a crimp in song writing for me, I'm too damn picky about phrasing, syntax, etc. Can't just let it flow, although I've written a couple that aren't too bad.