A Writer's Coach: An Editor's Guide to Words That Work

A practical, innovative step-by-step approach to the writing process from one of the most acclaimed writing coaches in the country

In A Writer’s Coach, Jack Hart–a managing editor at The Oregonian–shares the wisdom with which he has coached reporters to Pulitzer Prize—winning success. He gives invaluable advice on gathering ideas, writing theme statements and outlines, and using the “ladder of abstraction” to add variety and texture to writing. He provides a lexicon of lead sentences. He shares his ideas for composing and sustaining powerful writing, and for ensuring that what you write will be accessible to your audience. Discussing the ways writers can trip themselves up–procrastination, writer’s block, and excessive polishing, to name just a few–Hart demonstrates how to overcome each obstacle. Excerpts from writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Joan Didion, and from articles gathered from magazines and newspapers, provide inspiration and instructive examples of both inadequate and exemplary writing.

Like a personal, portable writing coach, A Writer’s Coach will be a boon to writers, editors, teachers, and students.

Jack Hart is a managing editor and writing coach at The Oregonian. Formerly a professor at the University of Oregon, he has also taught at several other universities, at Harvard’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and at writers’ conferences throughout the United States. He lives in Portland.