My Top Five Favorite Biographies

If you're in publishing you've pretty much gotta love books, amiright? Well, I certainly do, and my favorite books to read are biographies.

Herewith are my five favorite biographies.

1 Anything by David McCullough

I will read any book this amazing biographer publishes, he's that good. My favorite David McCullough book is Truman, but 1776 and The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge are also wonderful. I found The Path Between the Seas a compelling story of the building of the Panama Canal, an endeavor that took decades to complete and was as much a war of politics as of engineering.

2 Einstein: His Life and Universe

The esteemed Walter Isaacson has given us a treasured, measured, and comprehensive account of the life and times of one of the most iconic geniuses of all time. Isaacson writes with intelligence and understanding, making the book a great read.

3 The Hemingses of Monticello

This account, by attorney and history professor Annette Gordon-Reed, focuses on the slave family that supported President Thomas Jefferson for years and years at his homestead in Virginia. Little is known about the Hemingses, even the most famous of them, Sally, but Gordon-Reed still managed to craft an enormously important book about the most intimate relationships of a most perplexing president.

4 The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

Okay, this one is might not seem to fit this list, but it's a must-read for anyone in health care, education, or child care. The Reason I Jump is a collection of stories, sort of, about what it's like living with autism, and it's written by a boy with autism. I can't describe this book any better than Whoopi Goldberg, who called it “Amazing times a million."

5 Tie: The Children and Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement

These two engaging, well-written accounts focus on the civil rights movement of the 60s. The first, The Children, is a deeply researched book by Pulitzer prize winning author David Halberstam  and ells the story of many of the pioneers of the civil rights movement, from the pivotal Rev. James Lawson to the stalwart John Lewis to the hard-driving Diane Nash. Halberstam actually covered many of the key events at that time. While Martin Luther King was unquestionably the face of the movement, the Lawsons, Lewises, and Nashes served equally critical and dangerous roles. Their stories are completely worth knowing.

The second book, Walking with the Wind, is a personal account by one of those founders, the distinguished Rep. John Lewis. Lewis gives us a firsthand account of King, Lawson, Diane Nash; of being arrested over and over and being beaten and nearly killed; of leading the march over the bridge into Selma. Through Lewis's plain, compelling prose you can almost feel the terror the marchers must have felt as they began to cross over the bridge.  You can see, on the other side of the bridge, scores of stern-faced police, growling police dogs, and hundreds of racist townspeople who wanted nothing more than to see the marchers beaten to a blood pulp.

Taken together The Children and Walking with the Wind form an immensely enjoyable and socially relevant view into a seminal period in our nation's history.

3 Key Factors for Successfully Self-Publishing a Health Care Textbook

I came across an interesting article on self-publishing the other day, and it got me thinking about the future of self-publishing in health care education.

The article mentions the huge success of E.L. James' book, Fifty Shades of Grey. The book was self-published and then "picked up by Random House and became the fastest-selling paperback of all time, propelling James to the top of the Forbes list of highest-earning authors in 2013."

We see very few successful self-published health care texts or references. One of the most successful of those ventures has been the Clinical Practitioners Pocket Guide to Respiratory Care, by Dana Oakes. He worked extremely hard for that success and continues to do so today.

So it's possible to succeed, but the odds are stacked heavily against it.

I think that going forward there will be three key factors for success for a self-published author of a health care textbook or reference book.

1. Keep it Niche. Topics designed for markets underserved by medium- and large-size publishers will have a leg up for authors looking to self-publish.
2. Promote heavily on social media. The successful self-publisher will make effective use many of the various social media outlets available today, including Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Authors who use Amazon's self-publishing app will also be able to sell the book on the site.
3. Spend the money for a good copyeditor. Errors will kill any self-published book before it ever has a chance to grab the market. Hire an experienced copyeditor to go over your manuscript with a fine-tooth comb and then again with a bristle brush. You'll be glad you did.

One last piece of advice, if I may.

Don't self-publish.

Work hard to find the right publisher for your particular product, and then, only if you've exhausted all available options, should you consider self-publishing.

Good luck!

Who Makes Better Writers, Men or Women?

Grammarly, a wonderful little company with a terrific blog on writing, recently released a cool infographic that tries to answer the question posed in the title of this post.

As far as trade publishing goes — you know, novels and such for the lay public — it seems that women beat men at descriptions, characters, and plot development.

From my end, having dealt with male and female authors in health care educational publishing, I would have to agree with the Grammarly results.

Granted, I deal with more female than male authors, but still, for health care education, for people who want to become engaged in a caring, giving profession, well, you just can't beat the ladies.*

Look these data over and let me know, who do you think makes the best writers for health care education or for any health-related publication, for that matter?

Click to enlarge

* Attention, Ray Rice: You can't beat ladies, okay? Or women. Or females of any age. Period.

5 Tips for Keeping Your Writing Clear and Focused

I see many beginning writers struggle to find a writing style that doesn’t sound too academic (read: stilted, boring, and needlessly obtuse). Here are five tips to help keep your writing clean and focused.

1. Avoid long sentences

It’s hard to write a long sentence that works, to get the verbs, punctuation, timing, and cadence right so the reader doesn’t get lost.

So don’t write them. Focus on writing plain, straightforward sentences.

One of the best writing tips I ever received came from a former boss, the wonderful Nancy Webb, who served as an executive editor at Weekly Reader for many years. I had been trying to write a compelling article lead but kept get mired down in my own prose.

“There’s nothing more powerful,” she told me, “than a simple declarative sentence.”

She was right. Take a look at your own writing, and look at how many simple declarative sentences you tend to use. If you don’t spot many, start slicing those long sentences into sentences that would make Nancy proud.

2. Avoid long paragraphs

There’s nothing inherently wrong with long paragraphs. In fact they can prove enormously helpful in fully describing a complex idea. However, for much non-fiction writing, and certainly for health-related textbook writing, long paragraphs should show up only when necessary.

Click to enlarge.

Part of the reason for that is to provide some white space (also called negative space) on the page, though that’s more a benefit than a reason. (See image, right.) Avoid long paragraphs mainly to maintain reader interest.

Purists might argue that a paragraph should be as long as it needs to be and that if the writing is good enough, the reader will come along for the ride.

For fiction and other more literary pursuits, that rule works. But for today’s student, for better or worse, faces time pressures many of us didn’t face when we were in school. To succeed in reaching today’s reader, then, writers need to take that pressure into account.

Vary the length of your paragraphs, absolutely, but try to stay away from paragraphs longer than a couple inches deep when printed on the published page.

Note how the size of the column on the left in the above image, with just a tad over one paragraph, makes the column dense, with little white space. The column on the right, with five shorter paragraphs of varied lengths provides more white space and so proves more engaging to the eye.

3. Use active verbs

Nothing moves prose along faster than active verbs. Learn them. Keep them handy. Use them often.

Banish to the extent possible those mangy passive verbs: is, am, are, was, were, to be, have, had, and the rest. Smash them. Splatter them. Lay waste to them like the Huns ravaged those pesky rascals of Western Europe.

‘Nuff said.

4. Change directions up front

When you need to present the "flip side," the "other side of the coin," or the proverbial and also trite "on the other hand," do so straight away. Don't make the reader guess the direction you're heading in.

Use words like these to signal a shift in direction:

• However
• Although
• Yet
• But (By the way, there is absolutely nothing wrong with starting a sentence with "But." Just do so sparingly, because it gets tiresome quickly.)
• Whereas
• Even though
• If only
• Until
• Unless

Once you've changed directions, continue apace!

5. Say what you mean

Too many people write as if to prove they’re intelligent instead of writing to make their meaning clear. They use jargon like mayo on a BLT and adjectives and nouns strung together like misshapen pearls on a too-long necklace.

For example…

To minimize the possibility of these mismatches proving problematic for intensive clinical interpersonal relationship-building, clear communication among active participants is essential. Any inherently vague instances of teacher-learner connectedness must be evaluated in light of ongoing information dissemination challenges.

Writing like that deserves one gargantuan Huh?

So don’t write that way. If you’re having trouble putting into words what you’re trying to say, speak it. Tell it to someone or into the nearest recording device.

Our “speaking mind” works differently than our “writing mind.” When we speak, our mind helps simplify and clarify our thoughts. Use it to help simplify and clarify your writing too.


Now, go forth and speak your mind in writing!

Hey, News Writers, EVERYONE Dies of Cardiopulmonary Arrest

A story today about the death of renowned movie director Paul Mazursky caught my eye. Yes, Mazursky was an excellent director (Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Harry and Tonto, and especially that coming-of-adult-age classic Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice). But what caught my eye was this sentence, in the beginning of the article.

"The filmmaker died of pulmonary cardiac arrest Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles," said Mazursky's spokeswoman Nancy Willen.

I see this all the time, and probably to most laypersons it makes perfect sense, but it annoys the frikkin bejeebers out of me.

Do these journalists not know that absolutely everyone who has ever lived, is living now, and will ever live die from cardiopulmonary arrest?

I know why they do it, of course. They do it because they don't have any other cause of death and, presumably, the editor tells them, "Hey, if you don't have a cause of death, just put in something about cardiac arrest."

Yes, because that adds so much to the conversation.

If you don't have something concrete, if you don't have a history of pneumonia, renal failure, dementia, Parkinson, or some other highly common cause of death in the elderly, why don't you just say that the cause of death hasn't been established?

I mean, there just ought to be a better way, dontcha think?

Hatred Hits Home. Please Don't Let It Hit Yours.

Please pardon this detour. This post has nothing to do with writing, editing, or publishing in health care education, but it does have to do with the humanity needed to care for others and the inhumanity some people needlessly endure.

My niece, let's call her Aubrey, and nephew, let's call him Taylor, recently suffered a nearly unimaginable tragedy, the death of their son at 6 months of age from a congential heart defect. They were at Ollie's beside every day, loving him, nurturing him, giving him as much of themselves as they could in his short time on this Earth. Worse, Taylor had lost his beloved father in 9/11, a victim of the attack on Two World Trade Center. Despite all that, they are two of the sweetest, most loving people I've ever known.

But here's the thing.

Taylor is white. His delightful, intelligent, and enormously unselfish wife is black.

Taylor's mother, the woman who gave him birth and helped raise him to the compassionate soul his is today, has never once spoken his son's name. She has never spoken his wife's name.

Because Aubrey is black, and because Ollie was mixed-race.

Last week, the mother called Taylor to ask him how he was dealing with "your son's" death. Mom, why can't you say his name?

"Because," the woman said, "I've never said your wife's name. Why on earth would you think I would say his name?"

His.

His 6-month-old, horrendously sick, now dead son. Someone who, in her estimation, warranted barely a pronoun.

The woman then asked Taylor how he was dealing with the debt that his "son's" illness incurred. She said that if the debt ever became too much, he "knew what to do."

Huh?

"All you have to do is divorce her and I'll take care of all your bills."

Now, this is evil I can't understand. This is hatred the depth of which appalls me. I am angry and hurt and simply, mightily bewildered.

How can this person, how can any parent, treat someone this way? How can any human feel so much anger, so much hatred, so much pure evil toward another human, especially someone as sweet as this particular niece and this particular nephew — especially and conspicuously after all the trauma they have seen, felt, and survived?

I don't understand it.

I should, I suppose. It's not like it doesn't happen every day. It's not like that kind of hatred doesn't exist in thousands of people in this country.

I can understand it clinically, yes. The incomplete personality. The learned behaviors. The influence of misguided mentors.

But on a gut level? No, I just can't get there.

It seems to me that a parent, of all the many kinds of caregivers in this world, would have at least a modicum of compassion, at least a tiny amount of understanding, just a microscopic bit of humanity for the human they birthed.

I hope with every fiber of my being that everyone who cares for other people possesses not a whit, not a solitary atom of that woman's rancor, that woman's bitterness, that woman's unabashed prejudice.

I want so much to think we're better than that.

That we're nicer, more reasonable, more human.

I know we are, I absolutely know it. This woman is an aberration, an anomaly, a deviation so far from normal that she and her disgusting ilk will eventually disappear in disgrace.

We in health care, we who care for others, everyday, in an innumerable variety of ways, are better than that. We must be better. We are, I believe, preternaturally determined to be better.

We see beyond color, beyond internal prejudices, beyond disfigurements, beyond the surface. We see the person. The human. The soul.

Please keep seeing those things. Please keep looking past all of those things that, really, when it comes down to it, don't matter a damn bit.

You and I are better than that, and for that I am eternally grateful.