Getting out of a spin and back on track
By Sandra Phinney A few years ago my freelance business was in a shambles. Due to a combination of circumstances (two hip replacements, too many travel gigs, a prolonged bout of pneumonia, and a mountain of volunteer work) my income had taken a nosedive. I was derailed, and in a spin. So I hired a […]
The 5-Minute Freelancer Q&A #27 — Steve Burgess
In this regular feature, Story Board asks Canadian writers to share a few details about their work habits and their strategies for navigating the ups and downs of freelance life. Steve Burgess is a Vancouver humourist and freelance writer who covers a wide variety of subjects. Currently, his writing appears most often in Vancouver’s 24 Hours, The Tyee, Montecristo and BC Business. He’s won two […]
The 5-Minute Freelancer Q&A #26 — Arno Kopecky
In this regular feature, Story Board asks Canadian writers to share a few details about their work habits and their strategies for navigating the ups and downs of freelance life. Arno Kopecky won the 2015 Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for his article Title Fight, which ran in the Walrus last summer. The Vancouver-based writer has had his work published in Maclean’s, the Globe and […]
The 5-Minute Freelancer Q&A #25 — Frances Bula
In this regular feature, Story Board asks Canadian writers to share a few details about their work habits and their strategies for navigating the ups and downs of freelance life. Frances Bula knows Vancouver. She covers the city’s wide-ranging urban issues — from drug addiction and prostitution to property development and transportation — for publishers such as the Globe and Mail and Vancouver Magazine. […]
John Vaillant on high-impact non-fiction writing
by Rachel Sanders Master storyteller John Vaillant delivered a highly concentrated dose of non-fiction writing advice last weekend at a day-long workshop in Vancouver that was part of The Tyee’s fall Master Class series. The author of the award-winning and bestselling books The Golden Spruce and The Tiger took an intense dive into the processes and narrative techniques necessary to create stories that grab […]
From research to story: advice for writers
by Lesley Evans Ogden At the recent Canadian Science Writers Association Meeting in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, two gurus of science journalism, Tom Hayden and Peter Calamai shared their sage advice on the art of turning research into a story. While their advice was given to and intended for science writers, many of their tips will be […]
The Born Freelancer on The Creative Journey
This series of posts by the Born Freelancer shares personal experiences and thoughts on issues relevant to freelancers. Have something to add to the conversation? Your input is welcome in the comments. I’ve discovered a site which you might enjoy. It’s called I Write Like and purports to tell you whose style your writing most resembles. While I cannot […]
Tips on writing long-form journalism from AAN
by H.G. Watson It’s not often you get to sit in a room with three people who have, respectively, lived with and written about crack gangs in Los Angeles, exposed the financial crimes of some of the most high profile people in America and played a round of golf with former President Bill Clinton. But […]
“A topic is not a story.” A post mortem of a postmortem on Columbia.
by Lesley Evans Ogden One of the most difficult but also most valuable lessons I’ve learned in making the transition from scientist to science journalist is that a topic is not a story. Scientists are often driven by passion for topics – bat behavior, particle acceleration, human genome sequencing… Journalists, in contrast, need a […]
