Hi everybody. I’m writing to you from Dublin, Ireland where this afternoon I was the keynote speaker at the International Dublin Writers’ Festival, which runs until Sunday. I did one of my favorite writing workshops, “My Favorite Dessert,” which I use to indulge my prejudice that attendees at a writing workshop should do more than take down bon mots; they should write. So we should write a story—I always write, too, following the dictum from my mentor, Donald M. Murray that “if they write, you write”—and we all freewrote for ten minutes about our favorite desserts. Then I paired everyone up so they had someone to read the story to. So first the room was full of the sound of silent scribbling, followed by a joyful hubbub. Then it was time to discuss what the story was really about as a way to identify the theme of the story, which is the guidepost for all that follows: what to pursue in your reporting, what to write, where to put it, etc., etc.
At the awards dinner Saturday night, I’ll read a chapter from 33 Ways Not to Screw Up Your Journalism.
From there, it’s on to Bergen, Norway where I’m presenting at a narrative storytelling conference with Norwegian writers and editors and a cadre of American writing coaches who were sidelined by the pandemic: Jan Winburn, Moni Basu, Jacqui Banaszynski, Mark Kramer and Tom French. I’m spending another five days there.
After Norway, I’m fulfilling a long-harbored dream to visit Paris for a week.
I’m burying the lead, but this is all to say that Chip’s Writing Lessons will be on hiatus while I’m on this speaking tour and vacation trip.
I flew out of Florida Sept. 14 and return Oct. 2, which makes a total, if my math serves (numbers aren’t my friend) of 19 days out of the States.
Chip’s Writing Lessons #82 will return Friday Oct. 7.
I hope to file dispatches from the road and hope one includes a link to one of the coolest Nieman Storyboard annotations I’ve ever had the privilege to take part in.
Take good care and may the writing go well.
Chip