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Buzz Bissinger on being OK with sucky first drafts
I’ve always been a huge fan of Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, one of the best narrative nonfiction books I’ve ever read. His recent appearance on the outstanding Longform Podcast is a great listen. He covers everything from his classic book, to his more recent work, to his own personal and professional challenges,…
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Why writers should be using Evernote to make their lives easier
Evernote helps me remember things, but also organize, research, and collect documents for my writing.
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What I Learned by Reading 31 Longreads in 31 Days
Now that I’ve wrapped up my 31 Longreads in 31 Days challenge, here are some thoughts, observations, and takeaways from the experience. 1. Longform nonfiction is alive and well With the collapse of the magazine industry and the shrinking newspaper business, many have suggested that longform nonfiction feature writing is a dying genre, with business…
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“The Loved Ones” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 31)
The best narrative nonfiction tells true stories with the crafts and elements of a short story, and that’s exactly what Tom Junod delivers in “The Loved Ones,” published in the September 2006 issue of Esquire. It looks at the tragedy at St. Rita’s nursing home in New Orleans, where 35 residents died in the floods…
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“The Truck Stop Killer” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 30)
The Truck Stop Killer by Vanessa Veselka in the November 2012 issue of GQ is the account of a woman’s search to uncover the history of the death of a hitchhiker left in a truck-stop dumpster. The body may have been connected to a series of young women kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by a serial…
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“Atonement” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 29)
There is a simplicity to Dexter Filkins’ Atonement in the October 29, 2012 issue of The New Yorker: a company of Marines got into a firefight and wound up killing a number of civilians, including many members of the Kachadoorian family. Ten years later, one of the men in that company tries to find them…
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“The Trading Desk” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 28)
Michael Lewis is a prolific nonfiction writer, author of The Big Short, Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, as well as hundreds of articles for The New Republic, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times. The Trading Desk, which appeared in the March 30, 2003 edition of the New York Times Magazine, was adapted from…
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“How David Beats Goliath” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 27)
As I near the end of this 31 Longreads in 31 Days challenge, I’d be remiss if I didn’t focus on at least one story by one of my favorite nonfiction writers, Malcolm Gladwell. I dissected his story on dogfighting a few years ago on this blog. Another impressive Gladwell story is How David Beats…
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“Looking for Someone” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 26)
I’m an admitted Nick Paumgaten fanboy, already having raved about his story on elevators and, more recently, for this series, his story on commuters. So as I worked through my pile of longreads, I read his 10,300-word examination of online dating: Looking for Someone published in the July 4, 2011 issue of the New Yorker.…