Always in Love With Amy

You know how there are people in your life who quietly inspire you every day just by their presence, but you don't take the opportunity to tell them so? I'm going to correct that oversight for myself right now.

Or should it be, "correct that oversight for me"? Amy Lynn Smith would know. This is my dear friend Amy:

Several years ago we worked together (or to be perfectly accurate, she worked for me) at the Campbell-Ewald ad agency where I was an editorial supervisor and she was the publishing division's No. 1 freelance writer. I was constantly impressed by her work, and her work ethic. 

Her versatility was surpassed only by her productivity. Whether she was writing about automobile batteries or skillfully constructing a CEO profile, her finished product was always thorough, interesting and perhaps most important for an editor, on deadline. As punctuality and I never have been bosom companions, her ability to take on and juggle multiple assignments at once and get them all done on time remains her most amazing attribute in my eyes.

Writers, like most creative people I know, are insecure, jealous little creatures. (If you disagree, I invite you to watch any televised awards show.) Whenever a writer I know completes a major, well-received project or earns a prize for their work, a little surge of "Why can't I be that good?" of "It should have been me!" wells up in my throat. I never once remember feeling that way about Amy. My admiration for her talents – and they are myriad, on the page and on the stage – is genuine and absolute.

I'm a full-time professional writer, but I have the backstop of a wonderful wife who pulls down a management salary at the University of Illinois should my energy wane or my assignments dwindle. Writing is Amy's total livelihood: If she's not stringing words  together, there's no food on the table and the banker's at the door. That's called pressure to produce in my book, yet she performs every day with consummate grace and skill.

Yet through it all, she has found time to create and launch a very beautiful and informative business website (take a peek around it here) – please don't look at mine; it's still in bits and shambles after a year, because I keep convincing myself I don't have a spare moment to work on it. 

Yeah, suuuure. Amy, please try not to laugh and point.

And now, the ultimate: Amy has accepted the challenge of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) to deliver a fresh blog post every single day in November. Thirty consecutive new blogs, on top of her daily workload.

Hokey mokey.

Well, Amy, m'dear, I treasure you, but I'm going to admire you from afar on this one. That's not going to happen here at Little Jimmy's Just Kidneying outpost. It doesn't help my enthusiasm that I get paid to write about television and your recent blog about House is as good as anything I've written lately.

Is there nothing you can't do? You big showoff.

But you do inspire me, Amy Lynn Smith, to be a better, more productive, more trustworthy scribe every day. Hey, this is my second blog posting this week! See how I'm influenced by you?