Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

Write about what you know.

I can't tell you how many writing teachers told me that, and how long it took me to figure it out. It's even more important to think about while planning a non-fiction book. Readers respond to the enthusiasm and expertise of a writer who has actually lived a story.

That's why I picked Joie Jager-Hyman's new non-fiction book, Fat Envelope Frenzy for The Publishing Spot. This former college-admissions officer followed five students from the application process to the final acceptance and rejection letters.

Today she explains how she turned her work-life into a book, part of my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
You have a pretty impressive academic background. How do you turn the theories, statistics and sometimes dull prose of academia into such readable material? On a very practical level, how did you weave these heady concepts into the gripping, human stories of these high school students?

Joie Jager-Hyman:

Making the transition from writing for an academic to a general audience was probably the hardest part of writing this book. Continue reading...

I made my inner circle crazy with countless drafts of stiff material--too many numbers, studies and clarifiers like "based on data from 1,067 middle-income African American students"--before finding a voice that would allow me to interweave stats and data without being boring. 

My goal was to write a quick, digestible book where the reader was learning something without having to work.  People do not like to feel like they're working in their free time.