A Love Affair Begins With A Fantasy.

Nothing Is Ever Quite As Bad As It Could Be.

Sometimes A Flat-footed Sentence Is What Serves, So You Don't Get All Writerly: 'he Opened The Door.' There, It's Open.

It Was Like That Class At School Where The Teacher Talks About Realization, About How You Could Realize Something Big In A Commonplace Thing. The Example He Gave--and The Liar Said It Really Happened--was That Once While Drinking Orange Juice, He'd Realized He Would Be Dead Someday. He Wondered If We, His Students, Had Had Similar 'realizations.' Is He Kidding? I Thought. Once I Cashed A Paycheck And I Realized It Wasn't Enough. Once I Had Food Poisoning, And Realized I Was Trapped Inside My Body.

Obviously, In Journalism, You're Confined To What Happens. And The Tendency To Embellish, To Mythologize, It's In Us. It Makes Things More Interesting, A Closer Call. But Journalism Taught Me How To Write A Sentence That Would Make Someone Want To Read The Next One.

An Idea Might Spark An Essay, But Never A Story.