Tag Archives: journalism

What’s your writing style?

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I took two fiction writing courses while in college as electives. To be honest, a lot of my college courses fell into the “elective” category. The sage advice I got from mom and dad was “You can study whatever you want. You’re going to college for your MRS. Degree.”

They told my brother that he should enroll in Pre-Med.

On the positive side of my parents advice, I took classes in whatever interested me. From ballet, to writing and drama, with a mind’s eye out for credits I needed to graduate — science courses like Botany, Astronomy plus math.

I loved my children’s lit class. I struggled more with literary fiction. I enjoyed it just as much and worked on a story based on my experiences working part-time in a hotel restaurant with a creepy customer who was a stalker. My professor didn’t see much merit in my writing style. He said my sentences and paragraphs were too concise. He gave me suggestions of authors to read including William Faulkner.

Have your read Faulkner?

In describing the writing process for his work, “The Sound and the Fury,” Faulkner said, “One day I seemed to shut the door between me and all publisher’s addresses and book lists. I said to myself, ‘Now I can write.'” After its completion, Faulkner insisted that Wasson, his literary agent, not do any editing or add any punctuation for clarity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Faulkner

I wasn’t a big Faulkner fan. I told my literary fiction professor that I was graduating as an editorial journalism major.

“That makes sense,” he said. But he encouraged me to expand my writing style for his class.

In the old format of writing for newspapers — before websites and blogs — the goal was to use as little space as possible, write clearly and and get important information up front. As it’s said in Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, “Omit needless words.”

In a 1957 New Yorker column, writer E.B. White (Cornell Class of 1921) praised “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr., his former Cornell English professor, as “an attempt to cut the vast tangle of English rhetoric down to size and write its rules and principles on the head of a pin.”
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2009/03/omit-needless-words-elements-style-turns-50

Here’s another famous quote from “Elements of Style:”

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
― William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style

I believe there are different styles of writing used for different formats and purposes. I’m trying to expand my sentences and paragraphs a bit for my NaNoWriMo manuscript that I wrote about HERE. But, then I think with our micro-attention spans, maybe short chapters with shorter sentences works in today’s world.

How would you describe your style of writing?

Have you used Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style?“

The Job Hunt

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Baby Waffles
Baby pic of Waffles, our daughter’s pug, turned eight-years old this week!

My husband and I were talking about how it can be difficult looking and applying for jobs. Currently our DIL is on the job hunt after her recovery from cancer surgery and chemo.

That reminded me of when I moved to Palm Springs to get married. I was perfectly content to spend my days soaking up the sun, floating on an air mattress in the apartment complex’s pool, when my hubby said I needed to help out and get a job.

My husband said, “I’ve been there and it sure can be tough finding a job.”

He had been literally pounding the pavement for a job and finally got hired.

As a journalism major, I applied to the local newspaper, The Desert Sun, to be a reporter.

I went through an interview process that took a few weeks, including literacy and writing tests.

My husband suggested that while I was waiting, I interview at a few more places like local radio stations where he had connections.

Then sitting one day sitting by the pool, the phone rang. My husband said it was for me.

It was a man named Cliff Brown from Cliff Brown and Associates, a PR firm located in the Bob Hope building at the local medical center. Cliff asked me to come in for an interview. I had never applied there. It turns out he was too cheap for classified ads, so on his daily trip to The Desert Sun to drop off press releases and photos, he rifled through their employment files. He pulled out my application and resume and called me. I was hired the next day.

My husband shook his head and said, “That’s now how it works!”

I told my husband that yes, that was how my first PR job in Seattle worked. I was working in a hotel restaurant as a waitress through college and one of my regular customers asked me what my degree was in. He asked me on the spot to come work for his company, which was a Native Alaskan fishing and timber company. They needed a brochure and other material. I worked there until the Seattle office closed down and I met my future husband.

How did you get your first career job? Did you have to send out resumes and pound the pavement?

Bill would do what?

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Clips I saved in a scrapbook from my journalism internship as a student at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Thanks to fellow blogger from Writing from the Heart with Brian for his post about “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White. It brought back memories of my first encounter with the powerful little book that has been by my side since my internship as a “stringer” for a Washington state newspaper.

The Elements of Style was listed as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923 by Time in its 2011 list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style

I haven’t thought about those days “like forever.”

Our professor, who was an intimidating former editor/publisher of a Northwest paper before he retired to “professoring,” selected 12 students to move to Olympia, Wash., our state Capitol. He assigned each student a newspaper where he believed they’d fit.

For example, a single mom who was older than the rest of us, got the Seattle Times, the biggest newspaper in the state. I was assigned to The Daily Chronicle and covered news for Centralia and Chehalis — the midpoint between Seattle and Portland, Ore.

I was surprised to be one of the chosen. In fact, I was scared to death having no interest or knowledge about government and politics. How was I going to write about it?

I looked up to — or rather worshipped my older brother at the time. He was the golden boy who was smart, good looking and could do no wrong in my eyes as well as my parents.

We got together so he could go over the basics of government with me. I was going to get a crash course in politics.

“What’s a Gop?” I asked pronouncing the word so it rhymed with cop. I was referring to the GOP or Grand Old Party.

“Is it too late to get out of this?” my brother asked. “Please, do not go!”

I was so afraid to go, that I procrastinated and showed up to the state Capitol several days late. My excuse was my part-time job at a restaurant. I was comfortable in my apartment with my roomie, watching General Hosptial and eating Kraft Mac-n-Cheese. I liked working with career waiters and waitresses. It was so less threatening than the unknown I faced.

I missed orientation, meeting the other students, but finally mustered up courage and made my appearance. My professor gave me a one-on-one tour. My best friend’s dad was a lobbyist for Weyerhauser and invited me to his office for my second crash course — this one about the timber industry. His wife was a big wig in the department of Natural Resources and they took an interest in me.

They helped me get off my feet and I busied myself with my first article, writing it longhand on a legal pad.

“I never would have selected you if I knew you wrote longhand,” the professor said stopping at my desk. “I can usually tell. Put down the pen and use the typewriter from now on.”

The 12 students, including me, shared one big room with our desks in two rows. The professor had a private office and critiqued our stories. He made us rewrite them before sending them via wire or snail mail to our newspapers. If there was a tight deadline, I’d call my editor at the paper and read the story to him as he transcribed it.

One of the students put up a picture of a cowboy and named him Bill. Then he posted all our headlines that included the word “bill.” Bill would to this. Bill would do that. Bill would do all sorts of things.

I turned in my first article to my professor. He called me into his office. It was marked with lots of red ink. He told me it was a great puff piece for Weyerhaeuser, but instructed me to get both sides of the story. He gave me names of several people to call who were in government or lobbied against the timber giant. He also showed me how to cut and paste my article so the most important facts were up on top.

Yes, back then we cut and paste with scissors and glue!

The article above about RIF by lottery above was from a bill that a Senator in my newspaper’s district proposed. My editor asked me to write about it. The bill and the article was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. I got a call from a congressman reading me the riot act over it.

“You must feel so powerful!” he yelled at me.

I guess he missed the joke — even though I have the word “joked” in the article. Sheesh!

What memories do you have of an internship or first job? What did you learn?

What’s your major?

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Olive the pretty kitty.

My pretty kitty Olive sitting on the back of a sofa. No, this photo has nothing to do with my post.

I saw an article that said that many college graduates regret their major. The number one regret was journalism.

I was Communications Major in Editorial Journalism from the University of Washington in Seattle.

I enjoyed the experience. During my last year of school I was assigned to be a reporter at a local paper. I reported to the editor and worked there five days a week. I turned in my articles to my professor to be graded.

Then, I went to the state Capitol and was assigned to a local paper as a stringer. I’d write three and four articles a day about the goings on at the state Capitol. We were a group of 12 journalism students living and working together.

When I got into the workforce I had a nice portfolio of news clips. I ended up in Public Relations and wrote stories and newsletters I was assigned. I soon found out it was a LOW paying job. Especially my first one. I was making less than $1,000 a month in the mid 1980s.

The article from CNN listed these majors as the ones graduates most regret:

PERSONAL FINANCE

The top 10 most-regretted college majors — and the degrees graduates wish they had pursued instead

PUBLISHED SAT, NOV 12 20228:00 AM EST
Jessica Dickler. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/12/the-top-10-most-regretted-college-majors.html

The article states that people who make more money are more satisfied with their majors. Who’d have thunk it? Read the article HERE to find out what the top 10 favorite majors are.

What was your major? Would you select something else if you had a chance?