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24<br />

-esse-<br />

Write as Well as<br />

You Can<br />

I'm occasi<strong>on</strong>ally asked if I can recall the moment when I knew I<br />

wanted to be a writer. No such blinding flash occurred; I <strong>on</strong>ly<br />

knew that I thought I would like to work for a newspaper. But I<br />

can point to a set of attitudes that I inherited early in life and<br />

that have guided me ever since. They came from both sides of<br />

my family, by different routes.<br />

My mother loved good <strong>writing</strong>, and she found it as often in<br />

newspapers as she did in books. She regularly clipped columns<br />

and articles out of the paper that delighted her with their graceful<br />

use of language, or their wit, or their original visi<strong>on</strong> of life.<br />

Because of her I knew at an early age that good <strong>writing</strong> can<br />

appear anywhere, even in the lowly newspaper, and that what<br />

matters is the <strong>writing</strong> itself, not the medium where it's published.<br />

Therefore I've always tried to write as <strong>well</strong> as I could by<br />

my own standards; I've never changed my style to fit the size or

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