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I’m not sure what it is about great advice that makes it stick in our brains for decades. Maybe it’s the insights it offers.
Maybe it’s the relief of realizing other people are facing something similar.
Or maybe it’s like discovering the shortcuts at IKEA and getting to your destination faster.
Anyway, good advice stays with us. I know this because last week, when I shared a tip I got more than 20 years ago, a lot of you wrote in with the best advice you’ve heard. Here’s what you shared.
On writing:
“Long ago — 50 years? — a writing coach whose name I don't remember advised to not mistake ‘which’ for ‘that,’ and to recognize ‘that’ is often not needed,” wrote Ross Connelly. “A good tip to help tighten a sentence.”
Pamela D’Angelo keeps this in mind — cutting something out doesn’t mean cutting it forever.
“So, what is being said isn't gone, it's just put on the shelf. That makes it a bit easier for me to scalpel through and rewrite a draft. Still, for me, writing will always be a long, difficult process,” D’Angelo wrote. “I keep this advice from self-taught luthier, Arthur Conner, on a note stuck to my computer: ‘To make a fiddle, you take a piece of wood and cut off what ain't a fiddle.’"
“The best thing I learned is to walk away from your first draft when possible and give it a fresh look the next day,” wrote Earl Vaughan Jr. “I found when time was short and I could still meet deadline, waiting even an hour or two for a final edit was helpful.”
Cam Yee is an overwriter like I am.
“I love to add more words, always seeking to provide that extra bit of nuance to a point or description.” Yee wrote. “In a recent interaction with an editor as we debated my last-minute insertion of two words into a particular passage, he sent me the following: ‘Have you heard the Oscar Wilde quote about how he worked all morning on a poem and took out one comma, then he worked all afternoon and put it back again? I'm not sure what his point was, but I always think of it this way — when you reach the point in a story where you're making, then reversing, minute changes, it's done.’”
On reporting:
“The advice I keep going back to belonged to an amazing editor and mentor I worked with in South Jersey,” Molly Bilinski wrote. “I was on the cops and crime beat at a daily newspaper, and I was overwhelmed with all the stories on my plate. I felt a deep responsibility to cover as much as I could and, at the same time, I constantly felt like I wasn't doing enough — it burnt me out. She looked at me one day and said, ‘You can't write everything.’ I go back to that line often in my brain when I'm overwhelmed and trying to prioritize. It's turned into a calming mantra that, for me, acknowledges the work I'm doing, but is also my limits as a human being.”
“Get the name of the dog,” wrote Mike Foley, the Hugh Cunningham Professor in Journalism Excellence at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications.
And on editing:
“My advice as an editor: Be kind. Even when giving tough feedback, be kind. (Also known as, never be an asshole.) Whether it was simple story feedback or firing someone, I always paused to remind myself that I was talking to a human being who had feelings,” wrote John Robinson. “They would grow with direct constructive feedback delivered by someone who cared about them. They wouldn't benefit from a scolding.”
That’s it for me this week. Thanks for reading.
Kristen
Kristen Hare
Faculty
The Poynter Institute
@kristenhare ([link removed])

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