Ireturned from a recent three-day watercolor workshop with three marginal values’ studies in gray (trying to see and control the range of light-to-dark without being distracted by color), and a scrap of paper scribbled with doodles and notes. Some … Read more
Cop-shop PIOs typically don’t ruminate on life in a small city or make jokes at their own expense. At least, not on social media. But since 2014, Tim Cotton — a lieutenant with the police department in Bangor, Maine … Read more
Are you wondering how you can break out of writing brief news items into writing longer, more engaging narrative articles? Mark Kramer, the founding director of the Power of Narrative conference, focused a breakout session at this year’s virtual … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cathy Henkel, a retired newspaper reporter and editor from Seattle, was wintering on the west coast of Mexico when borders closed because of COVID. She turned a hobby of shell-and-stone creations into a daily practice and posted it … Read more
Defining a writer’s “voice” has always stumped me. It came up again recently, when a journalism professor put me on speaker phone with her class of college freshmen, who had a straightforward question: What is the difference between personal … Read more
Sometimes I push writing students to look for new ways to tell stories. Should you start with the “small” things? Is there a story in the way a character dresses? How about the things they hang on the wall … Read more
A clear grasp of “voice” in writing has always eluded me. Not that I don’t have one. Everyone does. But I’ve never been able to define mine, and certainly can’t control it. I still remember, with embarrassment, having my … Read more
Growing up in a family of Chinese immigrant mathematicians and scientists, then ditching my PhD in biology for a career in journalism makes me somewhat of a maverick. But that transition was fun. My left-brain love of science’s rigor … Read more
Elizabeth Weil, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Outside, says she doesn’t write about “super important” things. But her warm and captivating voice has animated every subject she’s chosen to tackle over her 22-year career writing … Read more
At the end of 2013, everyone I knew was talking about a single essay: Ariel Levy’s “Thanksgiving in Mongolia: Adventure and Heartbreak at the Edge of the Earth,” published in the New Yorker in November. Read more
