Chip's Writing Lessons #70
IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Deborah Eisenberg on making things better
Interview | 4 Questions with Patrick Holloway
Craft Lessons | The marvels of data journalism
Writing to Savor | “All the Sharps,” by Mary Pan, Sunday Short Reads
Tip of the Week | Your life is full of story ideas
WRITERS SPEAK
“When you start writing, your incredulity at the childish, incompetent, graceless thing that you’ve done is shattering. One of the advantages of having experience as a writer—and there aren’t many, in fact I can’t think of any other—is that you know you can make the horrible thing better, then you can make it better again, then you make it better again. And you may not be able to make it good, but at least it’s not going to be what you’re looking at now.” —Deborah Eisenberg
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH PATRICK HOLLOWAY
Patrick Holloway is an Irish writer of stories and poems. He is the recent winner of the Molly Keane Creative Writing Award. He won second place in The Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and was the winner of HeadStuff Poem of the Year. He’s been published by Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Carve, Overland, The Irish Times, The Moth, Southword, among others. His story 'Counting Stairs' was highly commended for the Manchester Fiction Prize. He has been shortlisted for numerous other prizes including the Bath Short Story Prize, Moth Poetry Prize, Moth Short Story Prize, Bath Flash Fiction Prize, Dermot Healy Poetry Prize, Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Award (for both fiction and poetry) and the Alpine Fellowship for Fiction.
What is the most important lesson you've learned as a writer?
To keep sending things out. I remember when I first started, a rejection meant the writing wasn’t good, so I’d stop sending that specific poem or story out. With time I realized the importance of researching where I was sending my work. Also, being kind to myself in terms of my writing. Being tough with what was on the page but by no means taking away its worth.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
How difficult it can be. How, especially when you are not a full-time writer, you have to sacrifice other things in order to write. That can be challenging on relationships and on yourself. Difficult in terms of the craft, in terms of being disciplined and dedicated. Difficult in terms of rejections and self-doubt. Littered among the difficulties though are the joys of writing well, of surprising myself by winning some writing awards and seeing my words among those of brilliant writers I admire.
If you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be and why?
It’d have to be tennis-related — my other passion. Especially writing a novel now, I see it like watching a 5 set grand slam final. There are so many ebbs and flows, lots of layers, lots of backstory, tension, rivalry and conflict. The points themselves are the sentences, some are hard and fast, others full of finesse. Games are chapters. I suppose the win is getting a publisher.
What’s the single best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
I think a huge shift in how I saw writing and my relationship to it came when I was in the U.S and I had a class with Karen. E. Bender. She told me after to think about doing an MFA. It suddenly made writing something altogether different, gave it stature. Also, I suppose, it gave me the belief I didn’t know I was lacking.
CRAFT LESSON | THE MARVELS OF DATA JOURNALISM
Mention the word data and many journalists look like a deer caught in the headlights. We’re word people, we say. Data is for geeks.
That attitude denies your audience information in computer databases that reveal hidden secrets and compelling stories. It can cheat you of the chance to do the most exciting and important work in your career.
“Data journalism matters because we live, increasingly, in a data-driven world,” Casey Frechette, who teaches and researches data journalism at the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus, told me. “The digitization of society means the emergence of limitless troves of information about how businesses operate; how citizens lead their lives; how governments run. In this sea of data, it’s easy to find ourselves adrift. Data journalists help us make sense of it all.”
STEP INTO DATA JOURNALISM
Acquire. The Washington Post used newly released tract-level census data for an interactive database that shows, by typing in your address, how the racial makeup of your county has changed since 1990.
Query. The data journalist probes the stockpile of information, looking for story ideas in spreadsheets or to confirm key facts from traditional sources, like an interview with a public official.
Analyze. Using basic math and at times advanced statistics, data journalists find averages, establish ratios and crunch percentages. Sophisticated calculations can establish correlations between two variables, such as tenant evictions and rising rents.
Visualize. “It’s vital.” Frechette says, “to enable people to understand what data means. That’s where visualization comes in, turning statistics into interactive maps and visual worlds.”
Wall Street Journal reporters Joel Eastwood and Erik Hinton achieved that with an algorithm to compile lyrics from the Broadway musical hit Hamilton that enabled them to show, in a captivating display, how Lin-Manuel Miranda tapped rap and hip hop’s imperfect, internal rhymes to make musical history.
HUMANIZING DATA
Behind every statistic is a human being. Data journalists who don’t find them fail to connect their findings with their audiences.
Numbers numb, according to psychologist Paul Slovic, who co-authored a 2015 study “The More Who Die, the Less We Care.” It concluded that “as numbers get larger and larger, we become insensitive; numbers fail to trigger the emotion or feeling necessary to motivate action.”
About 700 women die in America every year from pregnancy or delivery complications, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making it the nation with the highest level of maternal mortality in the developed world.
But how to illustrate the problem when most of these deaths are kept hidden by authorities?
ProPublica and NPR reporters solved it by creating their own dataset of victims by scouring public posts on Twitter and Facebook and the crowdfunding sites, GoFundMe and YouCaring, and then using obituaries and public records to verify the women’s basic information. Working with student journalists from New York University, they reached out to family members.
“Lost Mothers,” the series they produced, features a gallery of 134 women who died giving birth in 2016 and 16 feature obituaries. It’s a heartbreaking example of how data journalists succeed by putting a human face on the numbers their computers churn out.
WRITING TO SAVOR | “ALL THE SHARPS,” BY MARY PAN, SUNDAY SHORT READS
A husband and wife sit in the bathroom. It’s late at night. He is suicidal. She is desperate. Mary Pan, a physician trained in narrative medicine, takes that situation. and in a riveting, single 1,007-word scene, shows the power and bravery of the personal essay. This gripping and tragic short read manages to employ all the elements of narrative nonfiction—setting, characters, plot, theme, revealing details, dialogue, suspense and a resonant ending—and still underscore the maxim that brevity is the soul of eloquence.
TIP OF THE WEEK | YOUR LIFE IS FULL OF STORY IDEAS
What are the health, political, financial, art and consumer issues that matter to you and your family and friends?
What milestones in your life—buying your first house. moving your father to a nursing home or your own home, struggling from paycheck to paycheck—illuminate a larger trend story, one you can report with greater empathy?
Joel Rawson, former editor of The Providence Journal, used to say that extraordinary stories about ordinary people, reveal “the joys and costs of being human.”
Dan Barry of The New York Times demonstrated that in a pitch-perfect meditation about Covid-angst while shooting hoops at his late father-in-law’s house as he waited for the results of a virus test. (Subscription required, but the paper allows 10 free articles a month before putting up its paywall.)
Kevin Merida, executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, was a reporter with The Washington Post when he covered the 1996 presidential election campaign. He was also a new parent. Shopping for supplies in a baby superstore in suburban D.C. one night, he found himself surrounded by new and expectant parents. He realized he was in the midst of voters who would have definite opinions about the election. He returned to the store and spent part of an evening interviewing this ready-made focus group for a story.
Examine your life, and you can find a wealth of great story ideas. The best source of story ideas may be you.
BEFORE YOU GO
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