As I mailed my last Christmas card of the season, I basked in a treasured emotion: feeling virtuous about something I actually enjoy doing. With each friendly message scribbled on bright cardboard I thought of old, distant friends touching that same paper, connecting with me in a way screens cannot do. Escaping the alienation of …
The chaos and fakery of social media are stress-testing democracy and its most important component, free speech. So far, the test isn’t going well, but I don’t think technology is entirely to blame. We are not threatened by too much free speech, but by too little responsibility for what is said. And that is not …
A reader reached out with a perceptive appreciation of one of my books, the kind of message any writer craves, reflecting careful reading and emotional connection. In the next paragraph, she said she wanted to help me publicize the book with a video, for free. And then my warm feeling passed, as I realized my …
Working with Senator Lisa Murkowski for years on her recent book, I came to know her two ways: through headlines about major events, and in long, private interviews, often a day or two later, when she would tell me how those moments had felt, describe where they happened, and recall the words and images falling …
When we were working on his book more than 15 years ago, Vic Fischer told me some stories that he asked me to keep confidential until everyone involved had died. As a collaborative writer, I’ve been the surrogate memory for half a dozen people who told me things they didn’t want anyone else to know. …
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 …
