By Caren Chesler

[dc]E[/dc]ssayist and poet Hillery Stone lost her 4-year-old dog not long ago. A door was opened. The dog ran out. Several people who tried to steer the dog away from the road inadvertently pushed him toward it. Stone can still hear the screeching of the brakes. And she can smell his scent, but that’s by design. When she picked Wilder up from the middle of the road, she wrapped him in her scarf and rushed him to the hospital, where he died. When the scarf was returned, she wrapped it around her neck and wore it for days.

That was the launch to Stone’s session on “Crafting the Personal Essay” at this year’s Power of Narrative Conference at Boston University. Her story of losing Wilder contained all the pain, passion and pathos that makes for a great essay. But that was the important limitation to note, she said: It only makes for a great essay. It’s not an essay in and of itself.

[caption id="attachment_174623" align="alignright" width="375"] Hillery Stone[/caption]

Stone’s talk dove into a challenging reality for aspiring essay writers: Putting an experience on paper, no matter how scary or sad or unique, is a journal entry or a story to tell friends. To become an essay, the experience must be placed in context and build to some universal point. If an essay were a necklace laid out on a table in a line, the death of her dog might be a ruby dangling from it — important and noteworthy but just a component of the whole. That’s because the experience happened only to her, the writer. To merit an essay, the event has to reach people outside of the singular experience. Someone beyond the self must be intersected with for the essay to work, Stone said: “It’s not just the experience itself but its connection to others. A subject beyond the self must be intersected with.” She cited late British novelist and literary critic V.S. Pritchett, who said, “It’s all in the art. You get no credit for living.”

Stone, who taught essay writing at New York University for 10 years, has work in several publications, including Guernica Mag, the American Literary Review and The New York Times. In her talk at the narrative conference, Stone told attendees that she’s not ready yet to wade fully into an essay about the death of her dog. That’s because she knows what it takes: She immerses herself in the experience, journals about it, jots down details and feelings surrounding it. There are the tangential thoughts and memories that arise and the dreams one has as the mind tries to grapple with the experience itself.

This is the evidence one must collect it when they write an essay, she said. It’s an investigation, and it’s in that pile of evidence — and sometimes the interaction between the items in that pile — that the writer determines the greater meaning of an experience. The writer must go on a quest to uncover that meaning. E.L. Doctorow used to liken this process to driving in a car, where he would focus on just the three feet in front of him that were illuminated by the car’s headlights. Even though it was a short distance, so long as the car kept moving forward he would reach his destination.

The seeds and gestation of an essay

Stone did just that with her essay published in Guernica in May of 2021 called, “Wolf Peach.” In order to show how small or seemingly insignificant the seeds of an essay can be, Stone formulated “Wolf Peach” out of an unsuccessful attempt to grow tomatoes during the pandemic. She had taken her family to the country to better protect one of her children, who has asthma. Once there, she decided to grow tomatoes from seeds. She bought them from a nearby farmer and put a lot of time and effort into their care, watering and feeding them, even moving them if they didn’t get enough sun. Yet by early summer, while they were bushy with leaves, they had not borne a single fruit. She returned to the farmer for advice, confessing that her plants were barren. The farmer and his wife suggested she stop watering them so much and just leave them be. “Plants need stress,” the farmer said.

That’s when Stone says she knew she had the kernel of an essay.

She went on long walks and jotted notes about the experience (although she told attendees they should always take notes in full sentences lest they forget what they meant at the time). She journaled and thought about how hard it was for her to give these tomatoes life, and what that meant to her. She thought about her grandfather, who died by hanging when her mother was young. “What makes something want to live?” she thought. She began free writing, without censoring or editing herself, trying to answer some central questions of what it means to nurture a life, and what it means to want to live. She ruminated about her divorce and her children, who spent periods of time with their father, and about her sister who came to visit, simply handing her daughter to Stone to care for while holing herself up in a room for several days to work on her poetry.

Free writing can lead to connections between seemingly disparate ideas and experiences, Stone said.

After a time, she had a repository of evidence: a sister’s aggravating visit, a dead tomato, a dead grandfather, her grandmother’s subsequent boat trip to America with Stone’s mother and sisters, and some research into biology. These were the pieces of her evidence, which she then tried to fit together or let challenge one another. As she laid it out, some of the evidence was kept and expanded on while other pieces were discarded.

An essay as an inquiry

Stone explained that an essay is built around a central inquiry. The writer often doesn’t know where it’s going to lead when they start. But it’s what they have to figure out as they write to the end of a piece.

The reader should have a similar experience, she said. She likened it to scaffolding, suggesting that people just write and write, extensive and imperfect sentences and paragraphs, in order to get to the best sentences and the most meaningful ideas, which, when all the excess material is removed, will be revealed underneath.

At the end of her own process writing “Wolf Peach,” Stone said she realized it was about how to nurture something so that it thrives, whether it’s a tomato, a child or a sibling, and how much we should intervene to make sure it does. It was as much about a single plant as it was about a family tree, where one generation’s trauma is spread to another, as one branch sometimes shades another, limiting its light and proximity to other branches. As she wrote in “Wolf Peach:”

“I carried the new tomato plant I’d been instructed to ignore and positioned it close to the others in the backyard, for company. I resisted the desire to encourage it. I didn’t trim the dead leaves or pluck the suckers. That summer, I hadn’t remembered how I left my daughter alone when she first discovered books, their nitrogen words, their phosphorus pages—I’m remembering now. By September, a green tomato had swelled, then shaded slowly to gold, then red. Then loosened itself free.”

A final and counterintuitive takeaway from Stone’s talk: While she learned that she needed to exercise restraint to let a person or plant thrive, an essay needs the opposite. It requires an embarrassment of vines and shoots of all kinds. Only then can it be cut back and pruned to its essence.

* * *

Caren Chesler is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, Slate, Salon and Popular Mechanics.

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I was re-reading an old essay of mine that I’d sent out nine times but could never sell. As I finished it, I thought, “Damn, I like this essay. Why did no one want it?” I decided to send it out one last time. I sent it to a publication a friend had just told me about, and within 10 minutes, the editor wrote back: “I like this a lot. We haven’t run a story on this topic yet.”

I was elated. Maybe my luck was turning. I had a great run two years ago where I felt like Midas. Editors were buying everything I sent out, including a piece for The New York Times’ Modern Love column, the holy grail of essay markets. This year has been the opposite. As they say in basketball, “I can’t buy a bucket.” I’d lost my touch. So when this editor liked my essay, I felt resurrected.

The editor went on, “How long is this piece? We rarely run anything over 800 words. And we pay $500 for an accepted piece.”

If I could just cut it down a bit, she’d buy it. So me, exuberant but a bit of a motor-mouth — usually I’m just trying to be funny but sometimes my foot, wedged between my teeth, gets in the way — sent this in response: “You rarely run pieces over 800 words? Well this one is, um, 799. Actually, it's not. It's about 1,500. What should we do? If I can shave off, say, 300-400, can this be one of those rare occasions where you run something that's more than 800? (I don't know why I care; it's not like you pay by the word. Vanity, perhaps?)”

Yes, I wrote all that.

Her reply: “Vanity? I’m not sure what you mean. I thought it was an interesting piece but please feel free to pitch it elsewhere and hopefully you can earn more for it. Thanks.”

I was flabbergasted. Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut and my fingers still?

In an attempt to remedy the situation, I quickly wrote back: “Oh my goodness. By vanity, I was referring to ME, not you. I was making a joke about how I was trying to hold on to the length of my essay when it wasn't as if I was being paid by the word. I was trying to be clever. Oops. That certainly backfired. No, I'm really pleased you liked it. And I'd love to work with you. Sometimes, I talk too much, when I should just keep it simple.”

Yes, I wrote all that, too. And then, still fearing I’d chased her way, I fired off another missive, telling her I was actually quite pleased with her rate, that I was sorry if I had offended her, and added, “I can't believe how badly my attempt at cleverness went awry.”

When I didn’t hear from her for more than an hour, I sent off yet another email that said, “Did I just lose the sale?”

Tone deaf emails

Not hearing from an editor for an hour is not unusual. She could be eating lunch, getting out an issue on deadline, visiting her uncle in hospice, burning an effigy of my face. But an hour to someone who has fired off a self-sabotaging email feels like a week.

I tried to make myself feel better by thinking, “Okay, Caren, you messed up, but don't crucify yourself. It's not the end of the world. Just take a lesson and move on." But how could I? I’d brought this upon myself. I suffer from diarrhea of the mouth. I talk until I do damage. If my husband overhears me leaving a voicemail, he’ll wave his hand across his throat, the international symbol for “cut it off.” I feel like the character the actor John Cleese plays in the British comedy series, “Fawlty Towers,” when this old war veteran with PTSD comes to stay at Cleese’s hotel, and Cleese is warned, whatever you do, don't mention the war, and all Cleese can do is keep bringing up the war. (By the way, that episode has since been removed by a BBC-owned streaming service, apparently due to offensive content.)

It wasn’t the first time I nearly lost a gig by talking too much. I once pitched a story to a stand-up storytelling show in Boston, and when the editor said my story had been chosen for their live event, I said, “Oh my God!!! And now I feel sick. With nerves! My performance-anxiety self was sort of hoping you’d say ‘no!’" To which she replied: "To be honest, now I'm wondering if I should say no." I was  expressing my insecurity through self-deprecating wit, but she was not amused. She feared if I bombed, it would reflect poorly on her. I promised her I wouldn’t raise the issue again.

Misery loves company

In need of a kindred spirit, perhaps someone else who shoots themselves in the foot as routinely as I do, I asked members of a writing group if they’d ever done something like this.

One member told the story of a misstep with an online magazine editor she had worked with many times. She sent an email to a friend, complaining that the editor doesn't respond as quickly or reliably as she wanted. She accidentally included the editor on the email thread.

“He told me he wasn't offended, but he never answered an email from me again,” she said.

Another said, "I had to learn when I moved to Texas that my East Coast sarcastic sense of humor was offending people right and left.” She went on to say she’d once sent an email to a writer colleague checking out a particular editor before pitching her — and of course inadvertently sent the email to that very editor.

“Somehow the writer was implicated. I can't recall the details, but he was super nice, as was the editor," she said. "But by then I was too mortified to pitch her.”

While their experiences took different routes, they met similar ends. And they all advised me that with new sources, one should tread carefully and formally, at least until a relationship is established.

Learning (or not) from your mistakes

After reading the commiserating emails from my colleagues, another email came in, from the editor I feared I had offended. She had noted my address and now enthused that she, too, was a New Jersey resident.  She went on, “If you could just cut it so that it’s less than 1,000 words, that would be great."

And just like that, my world was right-side-up again.

I’d like to say I learned a valuable lesson, but I probably haven’t. There’s a self-sabotaging aspect to my behavior that doesn’t listen to reason. I take risks with people who don’t know me, knowing it may backfire, and then when it does, I chastise myself until it hurts.

But then perhaps that’s why I do it, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. After all, if I didn’t, I might succeed. Perish the thought.

Caren Chesler is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, Slate, Salon, and Popular Mechanics. She has a blog called The Dancing Egg, about having a baby through IVF at age 47.

The post Pitching a new editor: Don’t be too clever appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

There were two things I knew: I wanted to write a story about how heartburn can kill you, as it did my father, and I wanted to write for Undark, a really cool science magazine that prizes long-form journalism and has a New York Times pedigree. When I heard that its co-founder and editor-in-chief, Tom Zeller, Jr., would be participating in the pitching event at the Association of Healthcare Journalists’ conference last year, I seized the opportunity to woo him with a proposal.

I did some pre-reporting, gathered some statistics, and then structured a pitch that wove a personal account with new scientific information.

For my story, I wanted to explore how reflux’s corrosive effects on the esophagus can turn into cancer. For personal reasons, I wanted to know how this murderous monster took my father at age 62, killing him 10 months after he was diagnosed, and leaving me traumatized. My brother and I were there until the bitter end, watching my father decay and wither, and we remained even after he died, sitting next to his dead body, touching his arms and his mouth, as rigor mortis set in.

And since I also suffer from reflux, I wanted to know if I was at risk for the same fate. So I pitched a story called, “Hunting My Father’s Killer, Before He Gets Me.”

(The edited story was published March 2019 as an Undark Case Studies feature under the headline "Heartburn Gave My Dad Cancer. What About the Rest of Us?")

Zeller assigned me the story, accompanied by this note: “I normally like to have a phone chat about long-form assignments, but this is a rare instance where I'd prefer to not interfere just yet. Your trajectory is solid, for starters, and I'd like to avoid knocking you into another direction unnecessarily. I also read your horseshoe crab piece for (Popular Mechanics) and couldn't put it down. These suggest to me that I ought to simply let you do your thing.”

Zeller made clear that Undark is a science magazine; the investigation and distillation of the science must be vigorous, but it must also be readable and comprehensible “to a reasonably intelligent middle-schooler.” And he said that they value an elegant narrative style, but not to the point where it becomes distracting or preening.

I didn’t know what he meant by “preening,” but I certainly understood “distraction.” Still, his confidence in my storytelling abilities made me feel I could take some creative risks.

After five months of reporting and writing, I turned in 8,100 words; the assignment was for 4,000. I’ve been a journalist for 34 years, and I’ve never overshot my allotted word count by more than 400 words — let alone 4,000. (OK, I did it one other time, in a piece this year for Popular Mechanics; I must be suffering from a bout of self-importance.) But now, between reporting the story so thoroughly, and then indulging in personal narrative, my word count ballooned.

I was apologetic and told Zeller I wanted him to see what I’d written before I hacked away, in the off chance he liked it all. His response: “I'm sure it's great. However, I do see that it is over 8,000 words.” He said they are a very small team with lots of stories to edit and could not easily absorb a piece of such unexpected size. He said I probably wouldn’t hear from someone until the end of the year. That was Oct. 3. And he warned me they’d likely bring it down to the assigned word count. I again offered to cut, but he said I was probably too close to the story at that point.

When he got back to me Jan. 30, the story had been trimmed to 6,157 words — halfway between the assigned amount and my draft. I was even able to negotiate a few sentences back in because I felt they reinforced my premise that I, too, feared I could die from reflux.

Overall, I was relieved. It was like signing up to rent an economy car and driving off in a Cadillac. And yet some of the things left on the cutting room floor were personal favorites.

I feel like a spoiled brat complaining about this, because the editors really did indulge me. But they took out part of a scene that takes place after I talk to an oncologist in Baltimore about why there’s been a spike in reflux, and I’m told, for the hundredth time, that it’s largely because of obesity. That response was not satisfying because neither I, nor my father, nor lots of other people I know who have reflux, are obese. In the scene, I’m sitting in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor watching all these people go by, and I make a mental note about how they’re not all fat. The editors kept much of that scene but cut the last few lines from my version:

But I saw lots of people who were thin or average. In fact only about an eighth of the people who walked by were overweight. Was my study scientific? No. But I do have two eyes.

Another part of the story was based on learning that we have the tools to treat reflux, but don’t yet know how to use them. Here’s a scrap from that passage that hit the cutting-room floor:

I felt like my father had died of tuberculosis or polio — some old world disease that they didn’t know how to treat. But with reflux and adenocarcinoma, the treatments are there. They just don’t know when to do them or which patients need them.

I originally had a long, contemplative ending, where I likened my father’s quick and unexpected death to watching him swim in the ocean when suddenly he vanishes, yanked underwater by some invisible monster. I wrote about meditation and the belief that thinking about something can make it so. And how now, fortified with knowledge about this wretched disease, I won’t meet the same fate as my father, and so I will plant my feet firmly in the sand.

That whole thing got chucked.

Perhaps I had gotten a little too introspective, too self-indulgent, even long-winded. Maybe I had veered too far into the personal and too far from the science, as Zeller had warned me not to do. What made my story different from a regular science story was the personal. And yet in delving into the personal, I crossed an invisible line that was only revealed when I stepped over it.

But then this whole line of thinking may be the same trick I used when my father died: I began to see him critically so as not to care so much that he was gone.

It’s now 18 years since my father died, and some of the harsh thoughts that bubbled to the surface then remain, though they’ve been softened by time (and by becoming a parent myself). The same could be said of my story, on an accelerated pace. My immediate instinct was to view passages that were cut almost with contempt, out of some sort of survival instinct. But as time has passed, a thoughtfulness has moved in. I now see the published story and the lost passages in the same way I view the park across the street from my house.

I bought the house because I loved the trees and the woodsy feel. When I renovated it, I made sure it had lots of windows — big windows — to view the park. Then, a few weeks ago, lots of little men in big trucks came and cut down 27 of the 88 trees. The Shade Tree Commission said the trees were decayed and at risk of falling.

I was willing to take that risk. I felt nauseated when I heard the buzz saws and watched the trees but get down and carted way. Now there are gaping holes in the park, like a mouth missing teeth. It looks horrible. But the other day I thought, well, if I had moved into my house six months from now — if I had never known those 27 lost trees had been there — I’d probably just think it was a lovely park with lots of trees.

So that's how I'm trying to see my esophageal cancer story — for what it has, not what it doesn't. Because truly, readers don't know what's missing. That remains between me and my editors.

A friend came over yesterday and confirmed I was on the right track. As she went from room to room in my house, she marveled at the large windows facing a park.

“Your view! It’s amazing! The light! The trees!” she said. “Can we do a house swap?”

A postscript:

When I wrote Zeller to ask if I could use some of his comments from our early email exchanges for this piece, he also offered some insight into the thinking behind the trims to my story. He said editors must always balance a reporter’s sensibilities with other concerns, such as the publication’s specific audience, the topic and the cultural context into which it is being introduced, as well as the magazine’s personality, mission, and the reputation and expectations it has developed among its readers. He also said they must weigh how much subjective, first-person exposition should be used in the context of fact-based reporting, striking “a balance between the two that satisfies our internal journalistic sensibilities.” All of that is weighed against the reporter’s goals and desires. They do want the reporter to be happy, he said.

Are our decisions infallible and right?” he wrote. “Absolutely not. I know the end result wasn't everything you'd hoped for, and that it might have taken a different and equally powerful trajectory — all 8,000 words of it, perhaps — with another publication. Truth be told, it might even have appeared very differently here at Undark, had it not been me at the helm, or Jane (Roberts) in charge of fact-checking. We're human, and we come with our own reflexes and priorities and, yes, our own darlings.”

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EDITOR'S NOTE: The 2o19 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University was a full immersion into the craft, challenges and characters of story work. We are scrambling to mine as many of those riches as we can, including full transcripts of some of the talks, and share them here. Earlier we posted take-aways from some of the breakout sessions. Today we offer a few sparkles of insight from three of keynote speakers. You can find other wisdom on the conference website, and on Twitter @narrativeBU.

AL LETSON

Poet, podcaster and host of "Reveal" at the Center for Investigative Reporting

Narrative journalism is an act of empathy. It takes us out of our own narrow lives into a world that we could not have imagined. There are horrors and monsters in this bigger world, but love and wonders too.

Interacting with people all over the country for the "State of the Re:Union" show for National Public Radio made Letson fall in love with America in a way he never had before. Seeing America’s true diversity transformed him.

Even when he’s doing an an antagonistic interview, he tries to listen attentively and with respect. It’s important to be present and compassionate as a listener, not to be moving your subject through to your ending.

DAVE CULLEN

Magazine journalist and author of "Columbine" and "Parkland: Birth of a Movement"

He spends a lot of time trying to figure out structure: where to put the pivotal event, how to tell a story. But he can be creative in how you do it, as evidenced by his use of  two storylines, one being the traditional one, with rising action, and one doing the opposite. He looks for ways to make the two lines cross.

A technique: write an appalling brutal scene, then something funny. Use a spreadsheet to track many uplifting scenes vs. violent/murderous scenes.

In his upcoming book "Soldiers First," about a friendship between two gay men in the military, he used a white board to track beginning/middle/end, and to set up scenes and chapters.

ELI SASLOW

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The Washington Post, author of "Rising Out of Hatred"

Identify a societal problem, look at data, and then find somewhere you can be to observe someone dealing with that problem in real time. He checks two boxes for his Washing Post narratives: The micro (intimate reporting of a character, a place, an event) and the macro (big issue or concept of national interest). For example, in a story about the rising rate of death among middle-aged women from alcoholism and addiction, he wanted to be present when someone was dying (or had just died). To find possible places to report his story, he poured through obituaries on legacy.com and in local newspapers and libraries.

Be clear with your subjects about what you're going to write, why you want to be there. Tell them all at the beginning of the reporting process so they're not surprised later. If you’re going to be told “no,” find out early so you don’t waste time.

Pre-reporting is a massive part of his reporting; if he spends six weeks on a project, two of those weeks will be pre-reporting.

The post High notes from the keynotes appeared first on Nieman Storyboard.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The 2o19 Power of Narrative conference at Boston University was a full immersion into the craft, challenges and characters of story work. We are scrambling to mine as many of those riches as we can and share them here. We start with some sparkles of insight from a few of the breakout sessions, generously shared by conference attendees Madeline Bodin, Jill U. Adams and Caren Chesler. In coming days, we will offer insights from keynotes and, we hope, some links to full transcripts. We welcome your notes or captures from the conference. You can find other wisdom on the conference website, and on Twitter @narrativeBU.

EVAN RATLIFF

Founder of the Atavist magazine and author of "The Mastermind"

"Report your way to empathy. If you can’t see the world through your subject’s eyes, the answer is more reporting.”

Triangulate information. Check several sources on what you're told to see if it holds up.

His reporting sometimes leaves him with information that can’t be independently verified. That problem comes along with interviewing, among other criminals, a hitman. As a former fact-checker, Ratliff’s strategy for gracefully including these facts is to show his work by becoming a character in his own story. This lets him write, “he told me,” or “he claimed. It’s a clever solution that could solve many other narrative journalism sourcing problems.

He uses Evernote to organize his notes.

JEFF SHARLET

Author of "The Family" and other empathetic portraits of unsympathetic people

How do you humanize a monster in your story without giving a platform to wickedness? Sharlet suggested a non-fiction poem as an example of how this can be done well, “The Colonel” by Carolyn Forché. Let your readers see the ears on the floor.

Sympathy means “I’m on your side.” Empathy is seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. It does not take a side. This is why we strive for empathy, not sympathy, in journalism. “Empathy is shape shifting. It’s unmooring. We abandon that what we know, to see for a time the view of another. You can have empathy for anyone. That is what makes empathy dangerous.”

JACQUI BANASZYNSKI

Pulitzer Prize winning feature writer and editor of Nieman Storyboard

On curiosity: In an ideal world, we would be passionate and curious about every story we write. In the real world, our editors sometimes ask us to write about things that we have little innate passion for. If you are lack curiosity on a particular assignment, borrow it. Ask friends and colleagues for interview questions.

On critical thinking: Be wide-eyed but not naive. Listen for the lie, for the spin. Ask and ask until it makes sense. Ask, "How do you know?  Where did you get your information?"

On creativity: Take creative risks: if it doesn't work, you can take it out. Start by writing little tiny scenes with characters. Learn to 'draw' stories. Try doing something from a different angle.

On courage: It takes emotional courage to bear witness to terrible things. Always ask the feared question, the necessary question (even if it seems rude), or questions that you fear will make you look stupid.

On interviewing: Before you interview, think about the purpose of your interview. Why are you doing it? What do you hope to gain? Explain the context and process of your interview to your source. Tell people what you want from an interview, how you got their name, whether you'll be talking to others, how you ask questions, how your fact-checking process works. Ask them if there’s anything they want to know.

Ask questions that put people in place, that allow you to report and write scenes as in a movie. Ask about time and place. Ask people to describe things. Use all the senses to inform your questions, including smell and touch. Ask to see photos. Instead of asking “How did you feel?" at a particular moment, ask: “Where were you? What did you say? What were you wearing? Who did you tell first?”

Don't ask 2-3 questions at once. Ask one at a time. Slow down. For every question you ask, ask five more. Give the person you're interviewing time to think things through.

MARK KRAMER

Teacher, author and conference founder

When the interviews and observations are done, you have to create an experience on the page for your readers.  “Voice” in writing is like a window pane. What do you want your readers to see — the subject of your article or your handiwork? It’s the choice between using a clear pane of glass and using green-tinted glass with maybe a clear peephole in it. There are virtues to both approaches, as the fancy handiwork of Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson shows.

Write 27 drafts. When you are done writing, it’s time to rewrite. Kramer said that we shouldn’t be called writers; we should be called revisers. A freelancer at the conference asked Kramer if he was being serious or flippant when he talked about doing 27 drafts of an article. Kramer said that he’s always a little flippant. But even a news brief benefits from a second draft. He can polish the 1,000-word features that are second nature to him in three or four drafts. But sometimes 27 drafts isn’t an exaggeration. That may help you get to the electrification draft, where everything comes alive. The implication is that the number of drafts you do is proportionate to your literary aspirations.

Go on a 'to be' diet: Put an active verb at the beginning of a sentence.

Write low on the ladder of abstraction. Be specific when describing things.

Write forward.  Small tensions within a narrative arc can have their own propulsive power. He gave the example of a John McPhee essay on long-haul trucking, where you’re worried if a truck will run out of gas.

FULL DISCLOSURE FROM THE EDITOR: I did two breakout sessions and moderated a panel at the Power of Narrative conference. I did not ask the contributors to include me in their notes.  I considered cutting them, but that might have been over editing.

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