WE GO AGAIN
KEVIN McCALLUM: Messi business of wads of words dribbling on empty
I am not a teacher but I do like to help, and so, when I am asked for the odd bit of advice on writing and how to improve it, I have one maxim — read. Lose yourself in books, ramble through the joy of long-form journalism, spike up with the sharp hit of short stories and pick up a comic or two to learn how words give power to illustrations. Learn the rhythms of others, their techniques, hear their tones and feel the love and the work that goes into making a phrase sing. Steal from them, take bits and pieces of what they do and make it into something that is your own. Just frigging read. And then tell a story. Tom Wolfe was a sports editor. So, too, was Hunter S Thompson. Sport was the freest arena in which to be a writer on a newspaper, Wolfe told Sports Illustrated in 2004 after he had released the book, I am Charlotte Simmons. "All through high school and college I was the sports editor of the newspaper. I was always conscious of the way sportswriters wrote. Sportswriters always h...
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