Briefly up for air

There … may … soon … be … light …

I'm nearing the end of this book manuscript and feeling pretty good about making it happen. Of course, I've got to roll right into other writing deadlines for Friday and Monday. It's off to Columbus for a writing workshop for a couple of days next week, but the last week in March is looking pretty open. The breathing room will be welcome.

More than anything else, I'm looking forward to Florida over Easter break. The entire extended Hoke clan will be gathered at Santa Rosa Beach in the panhandle. White sandy beaches, crystal blue water, three pools and lots of R&R.

Before that happens I've got two more speaking engagements coming up. I'll be heading down to OU on April 4 to talk to some journalism students. I'll also get the chance to have coffee with Dr. Anne Cooper-Chen, one of my favorite J-profs. We've recently reconnected via e-mail. And then it's on to Cincinnati April 7-8 for the SPJ Region 4 Convention to talk about freelancing.

I've been working on a new profile for SPJ's Quill magazine called TEN: a profile of people with some of the coolest jobs in journalism. The January/February issue featured a profile of NPR's Nina Totenberg. It wasn't available online, but you can download the entire issue in PDF. One of the highlights was Nina saying, "Can you hang on for one second, Susan Stamberg is asking about my lunch plans." Pretty funny eavesdropping on this typical office conversation from two of the grand dames of radio journalism.

Here's the March profile on Poynter columnist and journalism insider Jim Romenesko. Romenesko doesn't like to have his photo published. He keeps a pretty low profile.

The April issue profile is by far the best yet. I won't yet reveal who it is because you may not know him by name. I had to cut the actual interview in half to fit the magazine space, but plan to run the interview in its entirety on Creative Ink. Look for that here in early April.

Finally, today, the doc for whom I'm writing the book on chronic pain shared this quote with me and I thought it rightfully encapsulated what I've been working on for the past two months. Who knew that a doc could so readily quote Viriginia Woolf?

“English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy or Lear; has no words for the shiver or the headache … The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.” — Virginia Woolf