Interviews matter. Interviews are the foundation of good reporting. They are the best way of understanding a complicated situation and seeing it from someone else's perspective. A wise, old editor of mine used to say "report it out." She meant "go talk to people, don't rely on your own opinions and judgment." It's a good maxim. One of my rules of thumb is to do one interview for each 250-500 words of final copy. So here are my top tips for a good interview.  Continue reading...

The anonymous mom behind the popular parenting blog Ask Moxie wrote us to say: "Parenting is such a life-changing and inherently traumatic experience that I'd bet at least half of us have seriously considered writing a book about it. (Mine would be filled with incidents like the time my 2 1/2-year-old accidentally glued the cat to the chair.) It's hard to improve on the standards, though, so if you're too bleary-eyed and laundry-wearied* to write your own, don't feel guilty about stealing some time to read these classics of the parenting narrative genre:"

(In reverse chronological order)

Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It, by Andrea J. Buchanan. "A series of essays about changing identity, joy, disappointment, and negotiating the daily ebb and flow of life as a new mother, Andi's book is real and raw and encouraging. It compares the process of becoming a mother to the process of moving to a foreign country and learning the culture."

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The Roberts Group, a company that provides editorial services to businesses, posted their booklet "11 Ways to Improve Your Writing and Your Business" online. In the introduction, they write "the best argument for good writing is simple logic: People won't buy what they don't understand." Read this informative booklet here.

You may remember an interview we did last year with Katie Raynolds, a remarkable 10th grader and dedicated linguaphile from Seattle, Washington. Katie recently spent a busy week with us here at the VT's New York office as our editorial intern, and put together this list of SAT words -- with tips on how to remember them:

The SAT, of course, is one of the most important tests a student takes during their scholastic career. I can't help you with the math section, but I thought to give you a useful method for remembering tricky vocabulary. In the list below, I'll show you "memory hooks" you can find right within the word and its Latin root. I'll also share some cool linguistic histories!

Dubious
Root:	Dubious derives from the Latin word dubitare (to waver, to hesitate)
Relatives:	Doubt
Hook:	When you see the dub-, you should remember the word doubt.

Brevity
Root:	Brevity comes from the Latin breve (short)
Relatives:	Abbreviation, brief, breve
Hook:	If you're more familiar with the word abbreviation, then you should see the brev- in brevity and remember short!

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A few weeks ago the novelist Laurel Dewey graciously shared with us her story about writing her debut suspense novel Protector. It's a book driven by a complex protagonist named Detective Jane Perry. We were curious to know how Laurel created her hero so we called her up for an insightful and fascinating conversation about character development:  Continue reading...

From practical advice to raising children while disabled, the authors of these blogs write engaging, touching and funny posts about the thrills, chills -- and, ultimately, the joys of parenting:

Ask Moxie

Sweet Juniper!

Indigo Girl

Twinkle Little Star

We have bedizened the Lounge in old-fashioned language this month and invite visitors to behold.  Continue reading...