Sorry to just drop back in from out of nowhere, but I could not resist sharing this article about a hard edit on someone's writing and how important that is -- even at the highest levels, or, maybe especially at the highest levels.

Good luck to all of you. See you at the certificate ceremony.

John B. Saul

Good reading assignments

For your assigned reading enjoyment over the break, three pieces to help inspire your thinking about your upcoming "thing" piece. One of the three isn't in your Touchstone anthology, but is here for free in The New Yorker online archives: Candid Camera: The Cult of Leica.

The other two are in your anthology: "The Date" and "Consider the Lobster."

Please remember to think about your "thing" topic and bring a proposal to class March 30. We'll read and workshop the proposals during that class.

Enjoy the break: read plenty, get outside, and reef the main at 15 knots.

The new shape of book tours

We will be talking more about writing books in the next several classes—and, necessarily, the business of publishing and selling them. Here's a fascinating story from the Los Angeles Times about the new shape of authors' book tours