All I want for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus is…
It’s not too late to make that writer in your life happy (or yourself for that matter.) But what might make the perfect holiday gift?
Here are some gift suggestions for those living the writing life. I’m hoping some of you will have some ideas to offer, too.
Radio Shack Talking Timer
For that deadline-buster, here’s a nifty tool to help you control the clock even if you can’t control the words. The Talking Timer, available at Radio Shack outlets, counts down, counts up, and signals time’s up with a series of beeps ranging from a car horn to a teakettle. I use it when I’m blocked because, while I can’t control how well I write, one thing I can do is write quickly. Invariably, within the first two minutes I leap whatever hurdle my psyche has erected. I think that’s because fear and doubt build a mountain that we think we have to climb over when, in reality, it’s just a threshold. Free writing creates a bridge between the state of paralysis and the state of grace.
Waterproof notebooks
For the nature writer, cop reporter, anyone who braves the elements to report the news
The Anchorage Daily News provides these waterproof notebooks to its reporters, who often have to brave the elements to get their stories. “They are expensive,” notes reporter Lisa Demer, “but they have plastic paper. You can actually write on the paper during a rainstorm or snowstorm. Also good for writing on a boat.” They’re available from J. L. Darling Corporation at 2614 Pacific Highway East, Tacoma, WA 98424-1017; phone (206) 922-5000; fax (206) 922-5300; or online at http://www.riteintherain.com.
Audio Tapes from the 2002 Nieman Narrative Journalism conference
Couldn’t make it to the 2002 Nieman Narrative Conference? You can still listen to the top writers and editors such as Katherine Boo, Malcolm Gladwell, Anne Fadiman, Morgan Entrekin and many others. You can order individual tapes or a complete set on CD-ROM from the Nieman homepage. Read reports from the conference to help you decide.
A blank journal
There’s something about a blank notebook that inspires creativity. Keep track of the progress of your next story. Start a novel in it. Encourage the sketch artist within. Evelyn Hsu, my Poynter colleague, and a fellow stationery freak, advises that the stock is especially wonderful in San Francisco at Kinokuniya (415) 567-8901, a stationery store inside the Japan Center.
Reading Matter
Literary Nonfiction: Learning by Example edited by Patsy Sims. Oxford University Press, 2002.)
Patsy Sims, who writes and teaches the genre explored in this anthology has gone one step beyond reprinting great stories. She annotates the 15 pieces in this book, from such writers as Tom Hallman, Jr., Madeline Blais, and Tom Wolfe, so you can go behind the story to the decisions about reporting, writing and planning that make for great narrative. It’s like having two companions on the journey — the writer and a deft guide. You’ll never read the same way again.
Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1998. James Stewart is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, former Page One editor at the Wall Street Journal, author, and regular New Yorker contributor. He shares the way he reports, plans, writes but most of all the way he thinks about stories.
Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work by Donald M. Murray . Portsmouth, N.H., 2000 Don Murray has made deadlines for decades. This book is full of practical advice and uncommon wisdom.
The Journalist’s Craft : A Guide to Writing Better Stories, Allworth Press, 2002)
John Sweeney of the Wilmington News Journal was one of the founders of the Wilmington Writers Workshop, which morphed into the nationwide series of inspiring gatherings for writers. In this book, he and Dennis Jackson have assembled a sterling collection of essays from presenters over the years.
Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1981. (Reprint of 1934 edition published by Harcourt Brace.) This is the classic text that continues to inspire and instruct.
For that favorite editor in your life, Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius, by A. Scott Berg. Riverhead Books.
How the editor of Ernest Hemingway, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Scott Fitzgergald did his job.
Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life. Edited by Barnaby Conrad and Monte Schulz. It will never be a dark and stormy night as long as writers have the cartoons of Charles M. Schulz. This collection includes all the strips that celebrate the mania and depression of our craft as well as pithy essays from Snoopy-philes such as Ray Bradbury, Sue Grafton, and Elmore Leonard, who use Snoopy to explore the challenges of making meaning with language.
Help others give — and get — this holiday season.
