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. …
I saved Werner Herzog’s memoir for a year, until I would have time on vacation to thoroughly enjoy the madness, humor, weird asides, extraordinary feats, the complete, willful lack of self-examination, and, ultimately, the graceful intensity of the writing. Herzog broke one of my cardinal rules of memoir writing. Lying on the beach, I had …
Now we find out if the gamble paid off. When I began working with Senator Lisa Murkowski on her new book, Far From Home, I told her I would be her writer and literary advisor—not her political advisor. I knew the authentic story of her fears and struggles would make a great book, but I …
My collaboration with Senator Lisa Murkowski began in her office in the Hart Senate Office Building on October 31, 2019. In the coming week, the book we wrote will be released to the world. I’m proud of the book and how it captures her voice and her perspective. But the greater accomplishment, for both of …
