Practice Management

Writing Well: Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.*

By Dan Hull

Writing is difficult. Even if you can't be perfect--and often you can't--please put your heart into it.

Writing--any kind of writing--is hard work. The most inspired "work moments" I've had are in this category: watching someone struggle with getting to the right word or phrase under pressure and when they are tired. The first time I saw it was watching a college daily editor--my roommate both in college and in DC for a while--struggle at 4:00 AM over a few words in the final sentences of a student reporter's story covering a public figure's on-campus speech.

He was also a student stringer for a well-known newspaper, and knew his bosses far away would see his article on the event. He had already phoned in the facts to an editor in Manhattan--and he had been careful to get those facts right.

The public figure had screwed the pooch; he had said some goofy and impolitic things that, given his government job, he should not have said, or said differently. The event was likely to draw attention from mainstream media around the country the next day.

Full post as published by What About Clients? on May 01, 2010 (boomark / email).