Add Skloot to the 'Excellent Examples' List of Debut Authors

"Debut author" sounds a little bit like "overnight success." It's a label, and it doesn't say much. We must know there's a unique story behind each person we slap that label on, but slap we do.

So with due respect and admittedly not knowing her story, the label's been slapped on Rebecca Skloot. Skloot uncovered the story of Henrietta Lacks and wrote about her with integrity, determination, (a grant) and a hell of a lot of sacrifice and hard work. She ignored lots of labels along the way and cared enough to discover the unique story behind many of those labels. While reading the book, I marveled at Skloot's work at the same time I realized it paled in comparison to the amount of work Lacks did in her life. But that's just me seeing the world through my own lenses. My focus and perspective leave a lot to be desired.

Let me try again. From my writer's perspective, Skloot's account is a stellar work; it exemplifies (very) long form  journalism and historical nonfiction storytelling. Journalists, nonfiction writers, and students, please add this to your "excellent examples" list.

From my reader's perspective: damn! what a story!

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Skloot earns a spot next to Michael Lewis 

on my list of non-fiction, 

journalist/storytellers worth reading  -

and Henrietta Lacks' story was worth telling. 

G, Are You Promoting Yourself?

If you're not using your Google+ signature to link together all your articles and other written material, it's time to start.

In fact, it's past time. Not quite Google+-literate enough to figure it out?

My friend Audrey provided easy-to-follow instructions in a short and sweet blog post last month. Follow her advice, and soon all of your work will be found all over.


  

~Diane Stresing

If You Write it, it's Right Enough

I have some very unprofessional advice for you. (My friend Sherry's gonna love it.)

Write something to someone for Christmas. Don't wait for inspiration to strike, and don't sit on it until it's perfect. Just write it. 

This year has been too full of reminders that we’re all going to die someday. I have a strong suspicion that most people leave things unsaid. Undone. Unwritten.

Don’t be that guy.

I don’t mean to suggest that you hide behind your keyboard for the next three years typing the next great American novel. This "assignment" is different. If you’ve ever thought about writing something nice to a child, spouse, parent, teacher, dear friend, or cousin, but stopped because you weren’t exactly sure what to say or how to say it, just say (or write) it. Now. 

Perfect - even if it isn't perfect. 

I know it sounds really simple, but you can’t do it until you get out of your way. Here’s how: Give yourself permission to do it less than perfectly.

When you’re gone, and – let’s not be morose! – long before that, the recipient of your words will appreciate your thoughts and that you cared enough to write them down. And while I can’t offer a money-back guarantee on this, I’m pretty sure they won’t even think about correcting your grammar or punctuation.

See, sometimes it really is the thought that counts. Sherry Richert Belul, my aforementioned friend and the author of Simply Celebrate, encourages her clients to create Love Lists for all occasions. Sure, Christmastime seems like a good one; but in fact Tuesday is good enough, too. Any occasion is a good time to make a Love List, or just write a few nice words to someone you love. 

Photos courtesy of www.simplycelebrate.net

For several years, I let nearly a ton of pictures gather dust in the “craft room,” all the while promising myself I was going to make Beautiful Keepsake Scrapbooks for my daughter. I’m not crafty, though, and I’m reallllly good at procrastinating, so a few more years went by before I finally gave myself permission to make Just OK scrapbooks. Being a writer, I added a few notes along the way. Being a writer, I should've done a better job on those notes. I could've crafted them into a story format, or at least made them neater, nicer, and more organized. 

But when I gave the books to my daughter, she didn’t say, “Wow mom, you could use some practice on scrapbooking, huh?” 

Instead she cried and hugged me. She said she loved the scrapbooks - and I’m not even dead yet. They might mean more then. But I digress. The point is, it’s easy to use “I’m not sure what… or how…” as an excuse.

Look, this time, you’re not preparing a manuscript for publication. You’re not sending a report to the boss. You’re writing a few loving words to another person. Your words don’t have to be perfect, but they do have to be written (or at least spoken) to be given away.

If you die with the words inside you, don’t blame me. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some very mediocre scrapbooks to finish for my son.

~Diane Stresing

Ohio's Best Journalism: the SPJ Awards

This isn't news; the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Awards I'm referring to were presented last year. This is love letter, to SPJ and all the journalists that are, really and truly, professionals.

Each year when it's time to renew my SPJ membership, I have some qualms. They're fueled by feelings of inadequacy. Oh, on paper, I look pretty good. I have a journalism degree in my hip pocket, 20+ years of professional writing experience and clips a-plenty. But dare I stand shoulder to shoulder with REAL JOURNALISTS? When was the last time I made some muckety–muck quake because of one of my investigative reports? (sigh - never) And the last time I sweated a daily deadline in a newsroom? (same answer - repeat sigh.) 


I renew anyway. The real journalists who produce Ohio's Best Journalism, according to Ohio SPJ, deserve my support. Plus, I get to sit back and read their winning pieces, and bask in the glow of their excellent work. 

Links to a few samples of the most recently winning work are below. A complete list can be found here. 

The winners' circle wasn't full of just the usual suspects, by the way. Columbus CEO picked up three awards, Angie's List was honored for its consumer reporting, and the capital's entertainment publication, The Other Paper, garnered investigative honors for Lyndsey Teter's Tarmac Transgressions. (No wonder John Kasich doesn't like pesky newspaper reporters - he's surrounded. Thank goodness.)

Best Healthcare Reporting, first place:
How Valuable is Your Child's Brain. Tom Groeschen of The Cincinnati Enquirer delves into new laws designed to protect young athletes from additional concussive injuries.


Best Investigative Reporting, first place:
A Raid at Fair Finance. Jim McKinnon, Cheryl Powell, Akron Beacon Journal. (Original article not available; read McKinnon's follow-up here.)

Best Consumer Reporting, second place:
Utility Choice: Company Promises Easy Cash. Dan Gearino, The Columbus Dispatch.

Broadcast journalists are well-represented by SPJ, and many of the honored pieces can be heard on their respective stations' websites. (Like Vivian Goodman's Dana and Desiree, which took first place in Best Minority Issues Reporting for Goodman's employer, WKSU.)


Besides being impressed with the reporters' outstanding (and important) work, I like to support SPJ because I believe it's a highly professional organization, providing clues for new journalists who want to cover the system the right way, offering scholarships and contests for blossoming young people who will no doubt reveal things about our world that may not be pretty, but should be uncovered. 


Mired in my copywriting assignments and surrounded by the family commitments that I've allowed to push aside (some) career ambitions, I am not the "real journalist" I planned to become. But I'm thrilled to stand on the periphery, ever grateful those professionals are out there, doing their jobs. 


Write on.

Guest Post: Salvo or Salve?

Salvo or Salve?
One vowel. Big Difference.

The words we say or write can hurt or heal. Whether we lob a salvo or offer a salve is our choice. 

In the era of cell phones, texting and other immediate communication, quick responses are expected. But, hasty, knee-jerk reactions have consequences. To skip an intermediate step to contemplate the impact of our words, and instead allow our raw emotions to shape what comes out of our mouths or appears onscreen unedited, can be costly to our personal and business relationships.
 

Do we intend to demean a subordinate by spewing an insult?
Do we intend to reassure a child with a calm explanation?
 

Whenever the opportunity arises, we can choose to use statements that empathize, not terrorize; expressions that heal, not hurt.
 

Why? Based on our own experiences, we know that positive salves and negative salvos can have lasting, residual effects. Each of us probably can recall vividly the caring or damaging exchanges we have had. When Word Hugs™ were shared or pains were inflicted, those memories lingered. Both repeated kind and unkind remarks are particularly unforgettable.
 

We should be aware of whether our speech or writing helps or harms others.

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I'm delighted to have this guest post from Carmen Ambrosio! I met Carmen in May, when she was enjoying some well-deserved recognition at a meeting of Ohio Professional Writers.

After earning a journalism degree from Michigan State University, Carmen gained extensive experience in corporate marketing communications. Now, she pursues her own writing and art full-time. Her first book, Life Continues: Facing the Challenges of MS, Menopause, and Midlife with Hope, Courage, and Humor, was published in 2010. 

 

 Learn more about Carmen, her work, and Word Hugs™ at http://www.ambrosart.com where she also shares a little about her writing philosophy, and life.
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"We all need the daily emotional nutrition provided by positive, supportive communications of friends, family and others we encounter on our paths." ~~ Carmen Ambrosio

Oscars and Writers

OK, I'll admit it, I plan to watch (at least some of) tonight's Oscar presentations. I hate celebrity gossip, in spite of the fact that there's a lot of money in it for writers. (One of the many times a conscience can get in the way of a good paycheck!)

One of my favorite movies (from years ago) was overlooked by the academy and the vast majority of the general population, I'm sorry to say:  Stranger than Fiction is a story about a story, a work-in-progress by a writer (Emma Thompson), and her (unbeknownst to her) real-life main character, Will Ferrell. Will she kill him off in the end? Major spoiler alert: No. But how she writes around her planned ending after she falls in love with her main character - in real life, 'cus she hated him until she met him - makes for a truly entertaining story. Um, film. Well, both.

It's a movie you don't have to be a writer to love, but I haven't met a writer that doesn't love it. :)

But back to tonight's Oscars. Don't you think some of the actors could do their careers a favor by paying a writer to pen a charming acceptance speech... and then follow it? The good news for our profession: those who don't certainly help support the PR industry.

And for that, I'd like to thank the Academy.

The Case for Having an Editor - or Friend

I've been reading a lot of medical journal articles this week (not as bad as it sounds) and finding embarrassing errors, like this:

"Mortal Combat, for instead, is embedded in violence."

(Once you shake off the icky grammar, you can see the author probably meant "instance")

Another, in a questionnaire:

"The think you're most likely to do in your leisure time."

(Pretty sure the author meant "thing")

In both cases, the authors are highly-educated, world-renown scientists. Apparently, they're also prone to the same stupid mistakes the rest of us make when we spend long hours in coffee-fueled typing sessions.

When the errors are few, or found on page 57 of an otherwise solid research paper, they're excusable, yes? Usually, yes.

When the error is on your website where you're selling swimming pools, pink tiaras, or vitamin supplements... you run the risk of losing the sale.

Get an editor, or a friend that reads v e r y c a r e f u l l y.

Editor as Floral Arranger

If you've read one entry you know my bias: I think journalism is here to stay, it's a worthy, beautiful profession, and it's absolutely necessary to a civilized society.

Biased as I am, I think (good) editors are artists; I see an Op-Ed spread, or just about any section of the paper, as a carefully constructed work of art. Balanced, and if not lovely, at least interesting to a variety of viewers. It's not always a floral arrangement; sometimes it's just a collage. But it's art, baby. Art. (A good page designer sure helps, but the editors and writers collect the material.)

Consider a recent two-page book section in The Plain Dealer. Of course, you won't see it online, so try to imagine...

Two equal but very different three-column reviews sit front and center: one on the weighty Cheever, a biography by Blake Bailey, is balanced by a look inside the lighter Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee. The "grownups" hover over reports on two tales for teens - it's as if the arranger knows that the kids are growing up fast. Fiction and nonfiction reviews hold up the edges of the spread.

It's big-headed hydrangeas and graceful young buds, a bright spray here and bit of greenery there. A fresh look at a new-in-paperback book and a glance at the NYT Best Sellers list poke up from the bottom of the page like baby's breath.

There's something for everyone.

Keep reading.

- - - This post also appears on my reading blog - - -

What Are Words For?

Missing Persons asked the question, What Are Words For? in the early 80s, and it seems we're still asking. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The answer is, words are for human communication.

I hope you'll forgive me when the question "is content still king??" makes me roll my eyes and spew sarcastic sound bites. Such as, well, you only need content...if you want to communicate.

Full disclosure: I'm a writer who just laid off from a company (Viacom) that recently hired a half-dozen (more) SEO/Social Media Marketing gurus.

Sour grapes? No!

We need SEO that works. We don't live to search, we live to find. And what we're looking for - in a gazillion different forms - is content. Ergo, good SEO is pointless without good content.

Content, of course, can be a picture, a game, a form, a joke, King Lear or step-by-step instructions on hotwiring a car.

I think we've heard the "reading is dead" argument enough over the centuries (Plato?) to realize it's not. I think content is still king as long as SEO marketing firm Best Rank (and others) say it is. True, content has taken a hit in accounting. But even as stately old newspapers are disappearing others are starting to ask the right questions, like: what about distribution? and how can the print product add value to the web product? Aha! Now we're getting somewhere!

(But where? It's hard to say. Just keep reading.)

Cautious Twittering & Facebook's About-face

So I said I didn't Twitter, and now I do.

That 140 character limit is sure to hone my editing skills, right?

I assume all writers (except perhaps those who live under rocks, and/or still use typewriters) watched the little dance Facebook did earlier this week, since it was detailed from Baltimore to Helsinki. I wasn't surprised that the social networking leader (uh, sorry MySpace) pulled a change-a-roo on its terms of service, what surprised me was its claim to deleted content as well as current content. Wow. We'll all be watching...and studying up on our copyright laws, I suspect.

What the Hell is Attribution? Who Wants to Know?

Who wants to know? It's the engineer. The one I married.

The conversation started, "what the hell is attribution?" and a minute later, we agreed to disagree. (One of the benefits to being married to an engineer: short arguments. One of the benefits to being a writer: I can always get the last word.)

My husband forwarded an e-mail to me this morning, with a lovely article (and picture) of one of his "bumps." The "bump" is a new communications radome used by Southwest Airlines to allow its passengers to enjoy wi-fi (sky-fi!) communications while in the air.

The article was lovely, however, there was no attribution. It took me less than a minute to find the source, Run Way Girl's blog, posted yesterday. Then I replied to the e-mail with a "attaboy" and a promise/threat to lecture his sales manager, who forwarded the article sans credit, about attribution.

"What the hell is attribution?" was his reply. Well, the writer deserves credit, first, I explained (and almost lost him right there) but more importantly, the reader needs attribution; it provides context.

If the article had been written by Southwest, or my hubby's sales manager, we'd know to read with a slightly jaded eye. (It's PR.) If the article had been written a month ago, it's old news - not necessarily less important, but time = context, too.

Then he had the gall to say, "Who cares? It's just an internal e-mail!" Which he forwarded to me, and a friend, and fellow pilot, and former co-worker... do I have to explain how this works?

Attribution matters, if you want to know you know. To riff on the old adage, in God we trust. All others need to cite their sources.

Bye Bye Blogs, So Long to Standards?

Today I read that blogs are passe, dead, a waste of time. When the question is, how can I get readers? apparently, the answer is Twitter. Hm.

I can digg (in fact, I really Digg it!) but I'm not ready to tweet.

Assuming there's some momentum and truth (or real worth) to back up the tweeting on Twitter, and Digg lasts longer than most of my web-crushes, then (you know what's coming) what does it mean for writers? and for writing?

I'm not sure, beyond the fact that it's acceptable to start a sentence like the one above with a lowercase "a."
- - - - - - - - - -

I believe writers are really, really important in any civilized society. Seriously. And not just the legal specialists who write the plethora of contracts, disclaimers, and warranties.

But it's been a long day.
- - - - - - - - - -

I spent part of it on a conference call with about a dozen eager writers who were, I was led to believe, all ready to jump at the chance to write for the website of a "major brand" in the medical space for ... ready? $70 per article. The articles should take about two hours to complete, we were told. (I suspect more like five.) Writers on the project are instructed to conduct one interview and use it to create 5+ articles on a given topic. And/or to source quotes from the host website - with attribution to the folks previously quoted on the host website.

Is anyone besides me nauseous at this point?

If we, the professional writers, are to repurpose and essentially regurgitate the same material, the same quotes, over and over and (I really HATE this part) reuse OTHER writers' material (even from "approved" websites - in this case, a partner site, but one with separate ownership and a separate staff of writers) how long will it be before what we read has no meaning?

Not very long, my friends; webspeed is roughly equivalent to the speed of light.

And the ugly twist in the wild-web-world is that while we can crank out "new" material with a few keystrokes and cut-and-paste commands, it's damn near impossible to to determine the relative age, or accuracy, of anything we read.

What if I repurpose a quote from a doc who was an expert in his field last year but who recently was indicted for having sex with his patients, prescribing drugs based on kickbacks, fiddling with research results to further his career at the big-name clinic?

I won't know and readers won't know, if I didn't do the interviews firsthand.

So for $70 you can get a pithy article on pinkeye, and say "goodbye" to journalistic standards.

That's a very costly mistake.

I'll admit that news of the death of the blog may be grossly exaggerated, and not at all related to the demise of journalism, however, there's a lesson to be learned in both.

I think it's this: While you don't always get what you pay for, even more often, when the price tag is low so is the quality.

In the case of the $70 medical article, you, dear reader, don't know if you're getting the story straight from the horse's mouth, even if the horse is quoted and the website looks like a thoroughbred.

Caveat emptor, dear readers. Writers, good luck. And fact-checkers, raise your rates. I hope you'll soon be in great demand.

The Book I Want to See

I'd love to see a book written by, or heavily packed with interviews from, the '08 presidential candidates' speechwriters. Specifically, the ones who had to write the candidates' acceptance AND concession speeches.

Crafting either must require a blend of skills employed in both fiction and non-fiction. Imagine your candidate wins: the acceptance speech should be worthy of a page or two in the history books; it must address joyous supports and angry detractors from the other guy's camp; and it must set the tone for the next four years, at least.

No pressure.

Oh, and when you finish that, could you spend a few minutes drafting a just-in-case-I-lose speech?

HA.

Top-level speechwriters in both campaigns probably began their drafts in May, if not before the spring primaries.

I'd sure like to find out how they did it, how much the candidates themselves contributed to the process, and how far McCain and Obama veered from the written document in their live addresses Tuesday night.

Pssst...I'll write it! Simon & Schuster, are you listening?

Agent Info

To have one or not have one, that is a question writers ponder at length. I'll wager few have done it as eloquently as stellar ya author Cinda Williams Chima. Chima's website offers two pages of thoughtful and articulate pros and cons related to the "should I get an agent?" question. The only advice I can add: read it!

Yay, Newspapers!

I just read that the Washington Post, New York Post, and the Daily News are planning to consolidate some operations to save costs - particularly in distribution. And I'm thrilled! It sounds like a very logical step, and one that could loosen up a bit of $$$ that should be allocated to paying writers. You know, the people who provide the content? Yeah, them.

We need them thar writers, folks. If we want to know what's going on in the world, we really need 'em.

Oh, leave Mr. Colfer alone!

Eoin Colfer, middle-school teacher turned best-selling author, has droves of critics - which I find perfectly absurd. He's a fine writer; of course he's not perfect.

It annoys me to no end to see how writers get picked apart almost to the extent that presidential candidates do. Is it not enough to have an overall grasp of the language, be able to connect with millions through mere words, imagine (and describe) a world that doesn't exist, create rich, full-bodied characters, and tell a gripping story in under 400 pages? How 'bout six of 'em (in one series) or sixteen?

Apparently, it's not enough.

As I'm preparing to review a book, I try to do a fairly broad analysis of existing criticism on the author and his/her works. So I've done with Mr. Colfer, and found many - most! - reviewers all but gloss over the main points (here's a gifted storyteller with a fabulous imagination, good-to-great writing skills, and a terrific sense of humor) to put (right up front, in the lead paragraphs sometimes!) little digs like "Colfer writes B-movie dialog" or "characters speak in cliches," or "not as action-packed as the first book."

Oh, give me a break.

I love Jane Austen's work, folks, but even Jane didn't always write up to Jane's standards. She delivered damn fine books, though. Not perfect, but good enough.

As my favorite boss liked to say, "Sometimes good enough is good enough."

I say, great writers have to know when good enough is good enough, or we (the reading public) will never get our hands on great books, or even good ones.

So leave Mr. Colfer alone! He's great! Enough.

Payment Varies

Hmmmmm. Hmmmmm. That's the sound of my brain cells trying not to calculate the hourly rate I'm really earning at this job called "freelance writer." I start to prepare my taxes each year about this time, always with the same reaction: THAT'S ALL I MADE?!

The good news is (I always tell myself this) that I'm not in it just for the money. This year I've learned about solar integrated roofing panels, EEOC audits, retail security systems, campfire cooking, and a few other things I wouldn't have set out to learn, frankly, if I wasn't getting paid to write about them. Ahhhh, well. I like to tell people "it's like getting paid to get an education." You just can't be too picky about WHAT that education will cover...

For what it's worth, a number of professional organizations have weighed in on what writers "should" make. Most suggest "professional writers" should charge a minimum of $1-$2 per word. That sounds like a lot, I know, but the fact is an 800-word article may take a week to research and a week to write. And even if the client provides all the research, the writer still needs to do quite of bit of reading/learning before the article can begin. So even at the top end of things - two bucks a word - the writer is making $800/week... and yet, folks are clamoring to break in to the biz, even writing for nuthin.' Go figure.

To see what ASJA says about fees, see the organization's website.

Gettin' the Lead Out

What do you?

I'm a writer.

Oh, what do you write?


And that's where the conversation usually fizzles. "I'm a writer" is a great conversation starter. But it's usually a short conversation. It's hard to gauge your audience's interest.

Usually, I aim for the shortest version of the truth. "Mostly newsletters and press releases, things like that." Frankly, it's enough for most people. If I get a raised eyebrow or a glimmer of interest, I'll add, "And I wrote a hiking book."

Some are obviously relieved that I don't fancy myself the next Stephen King, JK Rowling, or Dr. Seuss. Others are disappointed that I'm a 'commercial' writer. They WANT to hear about the fun stuff. So here I am, baring my soul: I write fun stuff, too.

One of my poems (Monster Lunch) appeared in the July/August issue of BabyBug. I'm writing a nonfiction book about vegetables for middle grade readers, and a couple of YA novels.

If you're interested, keep reading. :)