Thursday, January 15, 2015

Writers on writing - Hylton on Hillenbrand, Leitch on Boyhood & Tullis on Journalism class wisdom

There's been a few pieces I've come across over the past month that featured writers on writing (a subject I've oft rambled about on this site), including a profile of a great author, review of a brilliantly done movie and Journalism professor on great writers who talked to his class.

The author profile was "The Unbreakable Laura Hillenbrand" by Wil Hylton for the New York Times and an in-depth look at a fantastic writer (I wrote here about her book Unbroken) with a really remarkable back-story as someone forced to largely remain at home as an adult due to chronic fatigue syndrome. Just fascinating details from Hylton on Hillenbrand's life as well as her writing process.

The movie review was actually written in July 2014, but one I waited to read until actually seeing the film this last weekend. For Deadspin, Will Leitch wrote "High On Life: The Divine Boyhood, Reviewed" on the movie written, directed and produced by Richard Linklater. It was a pretty monumental film in both scope (a fictional work filmed over eleven years) and actual delivery, with how, for lack of a better word, human it was.

The piece on writers and wisdom from them was by Ashland University professor Matt Tullis who did "What 14 Great Writers Taught One Journalism Class" for the website Nieman Storyboard. It was a tremendously cool piece that at the end had a link to another Nieman post, "10 Pieces of Wisdom from Top Writers" with axioms taken from class speakers.