Writers and Editors

By popular demand, here's my list of books for those of you who are good at spotting typos and spelling errors and wonder if there's a career for you in freelance editing or proofing. Check out your skills first, and then develop them more fully. You can do a lot with these books, after  Read More 

In Michael Connelly's latest thriller, The Scarecrow, Connelly's hero Jack McEvoy is forced to take a buyout. What other novels about reporters and reporting does Connelly like?  Read More 

"...Crains notes that last week's auction for the story of Capt. Richard Phillips, the man who saved his crew from pirates and was rescued from his kidnappers by the Navy, "drew top bids of around $500,000--half the seven-figure advance it had been expected to fetch." There has been no deal for the Britney Spears'  Read More 

Nothing like social networking to suck away time. Sree Sreenivasan's page on Twitter (he's one of the few people I follow) led me to UnHub Offers a Simple Way to Showcase the Online You as  Read More 

A funny thing is happening to the men and women who take my Life Stories and Legacy Writing course at the Writer's Center in Bethesda--especially those who keep writing and reading their stories aloud to each other in sessions I hold for the "graduates."  Read More 

Here, on Baseline Scenario, is "a good example of how a blog can be light years better than any traditional media," wrote Anita Bartholomew in a recent e-mail. "James Kwak wrote a post in which he responded to New Yorker economist/writer James Surowiecki's  Read More 

Take a look at Media Storm,a powerful site for online multimedia narrative journalism. Animated video is also effective for both telling a story and getting a message across, as you can see in Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff,  Read More 

"When did you realize you were no longer a child?" is the last of ten Questions We Should All Ask Mom, from Lisa Belkin's NY Times blog. For more ideas on how to trigger  Read More 

"I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies," writes Roy Blount Jr., "and every time you write very unique, or 'We will hire whomever is more qualified,' thousands of literate people lose yet another little smidgen of hope.  Read More 

"One week after its post on YouTube (click here to watch it), over 37 million people watched a heartwarming viral video where a not-so-glamorous, yet charming, 47 year-old Scottish woman swept critics' hearts on 'Britain's Got Talent,' the UK's version of 'American  Read More