Shortly after I had joined the reelection campaign of a very famous United States Senator as a coordinator of grassroots campaign activities, I was asked to assist the media director in writing the Senator's blogs - both the campaign blog and official one.

While I was instructed on what I was supposed to write in a general sense (the issue, the Senator's position and why the other side was wrong), very little by way of specifics was given to me in terms of how I was to go about my ghostwriting, so I wrote with the same tone with which all of my political blogs, articles and columns over the years have been written. It's well refined, and reads like the work of a very articulate professional columnist (or so I'm told).

Anyway, after I'd published my first two or three posts, I was called in to the media director's office. He informed me that the work I had been doing on the blog was insufficient, and he encouraged me to make a more concerted effort to capture the "voice" invoked by this particular Senator in his public addresses and previous blog posts, some of which he wrote himself.

When questioned on the specific problems with my work (I'm always eager to learn of potential ways to improve myself as a writer and author), I was essentially told that my writing was too good, and that it was obvious that someone besides the person whose name appeared in the byline was doing the actual writing.

While it meant more work for me, I admit I was in quite a good mood when I walked out of his office, essentially having been told to dumb down my writing as it was too good to be published in the name of the very prestigious gentleman for whom I was employed at the time.

I don't know that I've ever received such a sincere compliment as a writer. Perhaps being hired to write professionally --- for pay --- while still in high school was among the more flattering moments I've experienced. However given the publication's small market, I'd have to say this latter incident was by far a more humbling moment for me as a writer.

For what it's worth, our guy won his campaign in blowout fashion, and is now serving the second of a six year term that begin in January of 2011.