The first thing that the professors in the broadcast journalism classes that I took in college hammered into my brain, was the lesson of writing tight. If you need ten words to express an idea, use them. If you can express it in seven, use seven.
Let’s take a look at an example: Read the first […]
A week ago, a magazine editor called out of the blue (I love it when they do that!) and assigned me a docu-drama.
Befuddled, I asked, “Uh…what’s a docu-drama?”
She explained that it is a dramatic, first-person, as-told-to story – similar to those “drama in real life” features in Reader’s Digest. “It’s written like fiction, […]
When the students at Middletown Area High School in Pennsylvania picked up their yearbooks, they were in for a surprise. On four of the yearbook’s 176 pages, last names of students were changed to creative new monikers:
Max Zupanovic became “Max Supernova”
Kathy Carbaugh became “Kathy Airbag”
William Givler became “William Giver”
Cameron Bendgen became “Cameron Bandage”
Kayla Hrobak became […]
I just finished reading Home to Holly Springs, the latest installment in the best-selling Mitford Series. Jan Karon has a rare gift for creating characters so real, you feel as if you’ve known them your whole life. She’s one of the few authors who can—in the course of one page—elicit both laughter and tears from […]
Whenever people learn that I’ve written a couple of books, they respond, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book about ________.” (fill in the blank with the topic you’ve dreamed of writing a book about)
I’ve heard that:
81 percent of Americans feel they have a book in them.
10 percent of that 81 percent actually write […]
