5 September 2016
When I worked at a newspaper, my cubicle walls were lined with little reminders about craft-things of the "every word counts" and "hard writing makes easy reading" variety. But my absolute favorite piece of advice was from William Blundell, who wrote a wonderful book called The Art and Craft of Feature Writing. This particular quote has traveled with me from desk to desk and from journalism to fiction; I still include it with handouts anytime I teach a workshop or give a craft talk. The only line that has equal mileage for me is the one from Michael Connelly that's still taped to my computer today: "Write with your head down."