Readers think of the blurbs on books jackets as recommendations from influential people about the quality of what is inside. Publishers think of blurbs as licenses to make money. Writers think of them as markers of personal worth, like signatures in a middle-schooler’s yearbook. I blurb when asked. I’m an easy blurber. Not promiscuous, because …
The resignations last week of four small-town journalists in Alaska made me proud and sad. Proud because these vulnerable, low-paid workers, at the paper where I started my own career decades ago, had the courage to stand up for press freedom—courage the rich and mighty have lacked. Sad because we really are losing—have nearly lost—an …
AI is accelerating the decline of literacy and impoverishing the English language, but as concerning as these changes are, they are but one component of society’s slide toward irreversible dependence on a technology owned by a few huge companies. Dependency surely is their strategy. Immense capital is being invested in AI. Short of broad human …
A friend was shocked when young associates didn’t know the meaning of ‘teetotaler,’ a once-common word that has largely disappeared from the language (replaced by ‘nondrinker’). There are many others like it, and not only slang. Shall, bestow, sublimity—all nearly gone. Some words have not been replaced, and their meanings are harder to express now, …
There are tricks to explaining complex ideas in prose, but the most important skill is holistic: adopting a mindset for evaluating the cognitive load of your sentences and the mental capacity of your audience. Good writers get out of their own heads and think about how their words land. You need a mental model of …
America’s Founders recognized a problem for representative democracy: average voters might not understand the skills needed for administration and leadership. A person good at winning popular votes might not be good at governing. Today, we live the nightmare of the demagogic politics the Founders feared. For political copy writers and comms consultants, figuring out how …
Marc Salgado was tough. As a soccer referee, he once threw a red card, ejecting a player from a game, when the player used vulgar language about him—in the parking lot before the game had even started. Salgado was also one of my first editors as a newspaper reporter, and he taught me to spell. …
The extraordinary poet Stanley Kunitz wrote that the essence of creativity is the erotic spirit, a point he made at age 100. The life force powered by lust—or sorrow at its loss—alone vivifies great work, he said. Lest anyone take this as a metaphor, he added that poets with low libidos produce second-class verse. I’ve …
Polar bears came into George Divoky’s camp on a barren Arctic Island last summer and devoured a colony of black guillemots he had studied there for 50 years. He didn’t try to deter them. The bears were hungry. He had watched their world melting. I had known Divoky for half his career he spent on …
All the cliched images of writers have something in common—the tough guy with a manual typewriter and a glass of whiskey, the willowy girl perched at a window with a notebook, the misunderstood genius in a garret—they’re always alone. But writing a book is a team effort. Every writer needs an editor, and other help. …
