The Writer March 2018

Every two years, my household devolves into full-blown Olympic hysteria. For three weeks, we do nothing but watch the Olympics, cook international food, or cook while watching the Olympics. And on paper, it makes little sense. We’re not baseball people (too slow), basketball people (too fast), or football people (too many concussions). We view most sports the way others view pets, marriage, or children: Fine and dandy for other people, but not right for us, thanks. But the Games feel different. They’re a celebration of the undercelebrated, the underdog. I love watching the athletes who only enter the national conversation every four years, those unsung champions of the lesser-watched sports: the curlers, the archers, the rhythmic gymnasts. The table tennis champions, training long hours out of the public eye; the…

* “Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.”—Amy Tan Any woman who struggles to pursue a personal passion alongside the consuming nature of motherhood will inevitably have the following question asked of her: “How do you find the time?” I hear it all the time as a freelance writer and teacher. At writing workshops, it’s the question I get asked most frequently (especially by fellow mothers). It’s also my least favorite question to receive, because the answer doesn’t come easily. The truth is that I don’t find the time to write. Finding the time is a myth: the time doesn’t exist to be found. I love my three sons, but they are…

Is “OK” or “okay” the correct spelling? What about the past tense? This little word gets lots of different spelling treatments, some with punctuation and others with different combinations of capital and lowercase letters. The two you use in your question – OK and okay – are the forms most often supported. You will find them in dictionaries and style guides. When choosing between them, defer to the style guide you typically use, as they vary on this issue. If you don’t need to adhere to a specific style, you can choose between the two. Make sure to stay consistent in your usage, however. All of this also applies to past tense. The past tense of OK is OK’d. (Note the apostrophe as recommended by the AP Stylebook.) Okay simply…

* “I think the hardest thing to do in the world, show-business-wise, is write comedy.”—Carol Burnett Tom Leopold is a comedy writer based in New York City. He has written for TV shows including Seinfeld, Will & Grace, and Cheers and has written for comedians including Bill Murray, David Letterman, Carol Burnett, and Mary Tyler Moore. He is also the author of three novels: Almost Like Being Here, Somebody Sing, and Milt and Marty: The Longest Lasting and Least Successful Comedy Writing Duo in Showbiz History. His other credits include co-writing the musical J. Edgar!, which starred Kelsey Grammer, John Goodman, and Christopher Guest. Currently, Leopold teaches the “Comedy Writers’ Room,” a private master class in TV writing, which he has taught at Columbia University and elsewhere. WHAT IS THE…

I’ve been reading at bookstores, libraries, and conferences for 15 years, and I’ve attended readings far longer than that. I’ve also run a writers’ open mic for five years in a series of dimly lit bars and have been delighted by the authors who can engage an audience in the allotted five minutes. Some authors make the time fly by, and we are so totally with them that we don’t want them to stop, yet other authors seem to be in a state of discomfort and confusion that spreads to the audience like an airborne virus. There are invariably those people born to the stage, but the rest of us have to learn a whole new set of skills to make readings comfortable and even fun. After all, our primary…

My favorite part of writing a story is the research. I know that I may be in the minority, but to me, the beginning of a project is like a treasure hunt – and the treasure is a page full of obscure facts and the names of good sources. Perhaps I enjoy this stage in the writing process because I began my career as a researcher in the Washington, D.C., bureau of the Sunday Times of London, where for three years I was responsible for fulfilling research requests from correspondents throughout the world. This was over 20 years ago, before Google and the internet as we know it; I had to use the now-antiquated system of Lexis-Nexis, the telephone, and my own ingenuity to find sources and information. Doing research…