Writerland, Chapter 36: You’re Smart. Don’t Think So Much. Hold on, you say: your advice makes no sense. You tell us we are smart but not to think too much. You are telling us to stop doing what we do well. Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. I say this because in thirty years of teaching aspiring journalists, and in editing journalists who have already achieved many of their aspirations, I have seen how often those writers end up undermining themselves by committing not the sin, but the mistake of overthinking.
Magic! I recall that story and the obit-of-Jerry-Falwell exercise too and your coaching Mike, thanks. It also takes me back to Lviv, Ukraine just 2-3 months after I graduated and was reporting a breaking news tragedy after a fighter plane cartwheeled through a crowd at an airshow. Wild dogs were circling the morgue, drawn by the stench of dozens of bodies and I called my editor to ask if she wanted that in to 'bring people to the scene'. She did. My gut was validated. Thanks!
So helpful. Thank you.
I loved this. Thank you.
I really, really needed this. Thank you!
Hear, hear! Authentic & genuine wisdom needed to be written and now read.
Great advice. So much easier to read than to do! Guilty as charged!
Magic! I recall that story and the obit-of-Jerry-Falwell exercise too and your coaching Mike, thanks. It also takes me back to Lviv, Ukraine just 2-3 months after I graduated and was reporting a breaking news tragedy after a fighter plane cartwheeled through a crowd at an airshow. Wild dogs were circling the morgue, drawn by the stench of dozens of bodies and I called my editor to ask if she wanted that in to 'bring people to the scene'. She did. My gut was validated. Thanks!