Name: Cindy Wooden
Getting started: I worked on a school paper in California when I was in the fifth grade. We called it Chalk Dust and managed to put out only one issue. I don’t even remember what my role in it was or if I had an article in it. But there were only four or five of us involved in the project! In junior high school in Sandpoint, we managed to publish more than one issue of the school paper, but definitely not more than one a month. I worked on the school papers in high school and in college as well.
Education: English classes and journalism classes obviously helped enormously, but there was and is no substitute for actually working on a paper. That’s how you learn to handle deadlines, style questions, space requirements and editors.
Advice: Writing is a discipline. While blogging or journaling can help you realize you actually can fill that blank page, it is even more important to realize that anything you write can be improved. That’s where editors come in. Sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes they ruin your pristine prose. But mostly, they make you look better and may even save your butt!
To write well, you must read EVERYTHING. For aspiring journalists, you must read newspapers. I try to find copies of the Pulitzer Prize winning news stories each year. Any time I read something that makes me think, “Wow,” I try to rewrite it as something normal and boring, then compare that to what made me say, “Wow.” It’s a fun exercise, and my writing seems to improve … at least for a few days!
