Advice from Our Mentors, Part Three

ACN members lean into wise words from their learning years.

By Bill Spiegel, ACN President

This is a continuation of Bill’s advice he gathered from ACN members. If you have advice you want to share too, email me at: [email protected]. Catch up on part one here and part two here. There is so much more to add, however.

Years ago I sat across the table from Greg Horstmeier at an early Ag Media Summit. I was new in the industry, and I’d read his byline for years – as a kid reading magazines on the farm growing up, and then as a professional.

Now the editor-in-chief at DTN, he was one of the first people I contacted for this story.

And my favorite from Greg: “A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a writer you should know the difference.”

Retired from stints at Corn and Soybean Digest and C Magazine, Greg Lamp remains active in ACN and a great resource for writers of all ages.

“Don’t overuse quotes. Too many can water down and take the teeth out of the ones that are truly important,” Greg writes. Also, “don’t be afraid to trust your judgment when writing. Be confident in knowing that you’ve done your job of researching/interviewing and have a good grasp of what you’re writing. Don’t fall into the trap of second-guessing yourself and your abilities.”

Brevity Counts

Greg Henderson, editor of Drovers, says good writing is about making words count:

• “As well as…” Why would you write this? “And” works much better.
• “Very” means nothing. Delete.
• “That.” Every time you use “that” in a sentence go back and read it again without that word. It usually can be deleted.

Steve Werblow, who writes for The Furrow, adds this:

“Another great piece of advice came from Mitch Lies, editor of the long-gone CPM: Crop Production Management magazine, one of my early freelance clients. “Reward your reader,” he said. After subjecting readers to long, involved, jam-packed sentences reward them with a short one to catch their breath. Better yet, make it short and impactful.”

Angus Journal’s Miranda Reiman, says her mentor Steve Suther, a longtime writer covering the cattle industry, gave her advice early in her career:

“‘Never use a quarter word when a nickel one will do.’ Meaning there’s no need for fancy language when you’re trying to write for clarity.”

And Mike Wilson, now of Farm Futures, says every article in a magazine is competing against some other distraction. Writers must make each word count.

“Gary Reynolds, my mentor at Prairie Farmer, taught me the power of simple language. Subject-verb-object. Simple, declarative sentences. Get to the point. Readers are busy people. Tell them what you want to tell them, and move on.

As an intern I was blessed to spend a summer hanging around with ag journalists. So when it was time for a coffee break we’d often wonk out on language. One of my colleagues had a pet peeve that I adopted: never use ‘essentially’ or ‘basically’ in your copy. They are overused, filler words that convey no extra meaning.  Work a little harder to find more powerful adverbs.

Another very important piece of advice that always stuck with me is to use the active voice whenever possible. When you review your copy and start to see a lot of words ending in ‘ing’ or in past tense, go back and rewrite to make it active.

No matter how long you have been trying to perfect your wordsmithing skills, you can always make it just a little better.”

Part 4 of this story will come out in next week’s ByLine.