On Wednesday, I talked about speechwriters' need to keep a lid on natural feelings about their boss and their job that may be perfectly natural but, I argued, are also unproductive.

Today, I'm going to talk about good feelings to have庸eelings that should be nurtured (and even faked!):

� Pity. A speechwriter who feels a little sorry for the CEO庸or workaholism, lack of a literary imagination, a life lived from meeting to meeting擁s a speechwriter who can talk straight to the boss. Since they don't normally aspire to be the boss, a speechwriter can and should talk to the CEO man (or woman)-to woman (or man). All honest relationships include areas of sympathy. So should yours, with the CEO.

� Admiration. If you can't admire the CEO as a family person, as a leader, or as a communicator, than at least sit back and marvel that the bastard must be a pretty damned good engineer to have climbed so high with so few skills. Find something to admire in your speaker that you have to admit: you could never do yourself.

� A connection between your company's work and your soul. If you died today and the minister who had to conduct the service asked your spouse why you happened to work in the pharmaceutical industry, could your spouse say anything more than, "It was a living"? Look for the barest spiritual link between your work as a speechwriter and what you consider to be the meaning of your life. It will help you through the lean times.

� Arrogance. Not over your colleagues or over your speaker, but over all other speechwriters. You don't have to think you're the best at everything, but every successful speechwriter I've known has fancied him- or herself as the best speaker-interviewer, writer-for-the-ear, or researcher, or organizational politics player in the speechwriting world. They can't all be right; they can't all be the greatest. But thinking they're great is more than half the battle.

� Humility. For all the arrogance required to write great speeches, great humility is simultaneously required to feel okay as a speechwriter. One must feel that one is doing one's small part預nd one must feel okay with having done so. Ted Sorenson must feel that, in order to sleep at night預nd he's the best-known speechwriter this side of that braggart Peggy Noonan (who, if she does sleep at night, probably does so upside down).

Speechwriters, what are your common feelings about your work葉he ones you allow yourself, the ones you encourage, and the ones you do your best to banish.