Joy Pennock asked Dave Cullen:

What was the hardest thing about writing Columbine? What advice would you give writers who are attempting to write about a tragedy?

Dave Cullen The hardest thing was definitely the depression. (See previous question about that.) For me, it turned out it was rooted in covering the victims so much, especially that first week with the kids in Clement Park all week. In retrospect, it feels like each kid was radiating trauma and I was absorbing it all, oblivious.

I would really caution anyone who covers tragedy to get educated by it, and I would start with the great website and resources of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. I became a fellow there, and they helped me a great deal. Step one, of course, was discovering I had a problem.

Definitely don't delay in seeing a therapist, either, especially when you're feeling not right. I had to learn to set boundaries. Key is that when these other shooting happen (or really any tragedies), I'm not allowed to watch or read more than a few seconds of coverage focused on the victims. I'm not allowed to read their personal stories or get to know them. Occasionally I make exceptions, but I have to watch those closely. Those are my triggers. They bring me in way too close. I can only cover these things from a bit of a distance now--or I start spiraling down to the dark place, and once that starts, it's very hard to stop the slide.

I also discovered that while I could do lots of things to minimize the trauma, if you're going to immerse in a topic like this, you're going to take a lot of the darkness in. That just comes with the territory. But I slowly discovered that a big part of the answer, for me, was accepting that, and being really active about offsetting it.

That meant I had to ID the positive things I really enjoyed, and that perked me up, and make sure I got enough of them. PRIORITIZE them! If you let them slide, they will. (Or if you never stop to identify the positives that are going to get you through it, they'll frequently get squeezed out. I didn't feel like I deserved them, or like I could/should be working harder instead of "playing." It was only when my agent, of all people, yelled at me and said, "No! You have to give yourself a break. This is a marathon, not a sprint."

(That's if you're doing a long project. If you're covering it just for a week, go ahead and sprint.)

For me, it was two key things: working out, and dancing. So no matter what my day was like, four days a week, by 7p I quit working and went to the gym. I could work after, but I had to go--and to go then, when my friends would be there. And I was on 6-day weeks for several years, but Sunday was always guilt-free no-work, so that Saturday night I could go out dancing and get as wild as I wanted and drunk as I wanted and stay up till dawn if I wanted.

Those were my joys and rejuvenated me. Without them, letting the darkness in without something to bring in the light, I would have been lost.

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