I've been blogging on speaking and listening, sharing what I observed over thirty years of teaching communication. It's important for today's author to be a good speaker, because we must present well before agents, editors, and audiences of potential readers. While I would hate to think we compete with each other, we are compared to other writers as we sit on panels, in pitch sessions, and so on. Many times I've bought books based on the impression a speaker made on me at a convention.…

I hear from many of my author friends that they hate the public part of the business even though they realize that it's required. If you've been reading the last week's posts, you probably know that I'm not particularly bothered by speaking to groups or meeting new people. After teaching communication for thirty years, I can tell you that whatever your nervous symptoms are, everyone has something, and they probably will never go away. All you can do is minimize them. Here are a few things to…

I mentioned in an earlier blog that we must learn to listen to more than the words that are spoken. Last night the Presidential candidates were answering a question about the environment put to them by Katie Couric . She asked if they believe the global warning issue has been over-hyped. Without listening at all to their answers, a person could predict what the words would be. Listening to their tone of voice was much more revealing.

No political candidate is going to say that an…

All day long we choose what we will listen to and what we will tune out. Understanding that, a speaker knows what he must do: capture the listener's attention, pulling it away from television, radio, Muzak, and that building custodian who's mowing the lawn in apparently endless circles. Even if they win that half of the battle, speakers still have to make listeners want to keep…

I don't know how much the average person hears about learning styles, but teachers hear about them a lot. Brain research is fascinating but still pretty new and unsure of itself. One of the things researchers know is that we each have ways to learn that are unique to us. I thought it might help to list them.

Verbal-linguistic learners are teachers' dream students. They learn well just by listening; they tend to speak and write well themselves. That means classroom learning is…

In teaching communication for thirty years, I've learned something about the process. For some, communication is terrifying; my college roommate lived in fear that someone in a group would address her and she'd have to answer with everyone looking at her. I, on the other hand, love to talk and had to learn as I matured that less is better where conversation is concerned.

Writers today must speak as well as write. In order to continue to be published, one not only has to come up with…

It's an old quote from Shakespeare: "Brevity is the soul of wit". Communication in today's world, which is nonstop unless you're fast asleep, requires capturing the listener's attention and then communicating quickly. Most people aren't used to listening for more than a few minutes at a time.

I won't argue whether that's good or bad, but when we hear of sermons that used to last three hours and piano concerts that started with nine mazurkas as an introduction, we understand the…

Yesterday I made a case for listening as a writing tool. Today I'd like to suggest some ways to listen better, gleaned from years of teaching communication.

1. Prepare to listen. It takes some practice, but if you are conscious of the need/desire to really hear what people are saying, you'll do better. As you enter a room full of strangers tell yourself, "I'm going to learn the names of everyone I meet tonight."

2. Use mnemonics. Salespeople learn names in order to be (or seem)…

Yesterday I laid out my contention that listening should be taught, like writing and reading. Authors know that one must observe carefully with the eye in order to be able to capture an image. The same applies to the other senses: we have to hear, taste, smell, and touch with consciousness in order to be able to describe the sensation.

Most people listen badly. Although we spend the largest part of our day listening, not talking or writing, we tend to be thinking of other things as we…

In a former life, I taught communication: reading and writing, of course, but also speaking and listening. One would be hard put to say which is most important, but it always surprised me that schools usually focus on the first two at the expense of the latter two. We assume that because students are sitting before us and talking to us, they are learning to speak and listen. It's true to a degree, but they (and all of us) often do it badly and keep making the same mistakes over and…

I start work early, being an early riser. By 7:00 am I'm at the computer, planning a full day's writing. Here's how it goes.

7:00am Check email, write blogs and post

8:00 am Still trying to think of what to write on the dumb blog.

8:15 am Got it! Now to answer the email.

9:00 am Sent email to publisher and several businesses. Also replied to friend in Chicago, sister, daughter, daughter's friend, people at church, and one fan.

10:00 am Down to work. Read…

Yesterday I wrote on perspective and how my own writing career has changed how I judge a book. One reader of my blog commented that we must keep reading, both to learn and to refuel. I certainly agree. Reading is key to writing. Extending that thought, both reading and writing are key to thinking, and we as a nation lose ground with each non-reader who graduates high school. By non-readers I don't mean people who can't read; I mean people who consistenly choose to do something…

I used to be a generic reader, one of those people who read cereal boxes and pamphlets in the doctor's office about male urinary tract infections. I'm still voracious, but I find that the more I write for myself, the more critical I am of what I read. I can no longer finish a book if the author doesn't create characters I respect, and by that I mean characters who ring true to me. Even with some authors I admire greatly, I find myself asking, "Oh, come now, would a straight-laced, uptight…

In novels, characters are often defined by their physical appearance. The man who frowns all the time is negative and irritable; the woman whose conscience is clear shows it in her relaxed demeanor. It's a useful tool, and it may often be true that our natures are betrayed in physical manifestation. But I don't think that's always the case.

I direct a choir of some fifty people, and if their expressions while singing were used as a judgment of their mental state, one would conclude…

I was having lunch one day a couple of years ago with an author who'd sold not one but two series of three books each. I was as yet unwanted by any publisher, and I listened carefully to everything she said, hoping to get a hint on how to get a break in publishing. I admit I was a tiny bit jealous of her success. Not that she didn't deserve it, but what am I, chopped liver?

To my surprise, she commented along the lines of what I was thinking. "I used to be so jealous of people who got…

Today I'm centered on high school teachers, perhaps the most maligned of all. We hear that these people kill the love of reading and turn young people away from reading in general. Let's take a look at a few arguments from a (retired) high school teacher's perspective.

"The teacher's assigned material made me hate reading."

I doubt that anyone or anything can make a person who likes to read feel any differently about it. Reading a book you hate does not make you stop reading…

The last post concerned elementary teachers who read to their classes. Today I'm thinking of those who teach middle school.

Research has all sorts of things to say about the middle school brain, but anyone who's worked with kids that age knows the basics: they're fluttery. They don't often sit still, they are anxious about themselves and how they fit in with others. So how does that fit with reading?

The most successful teachers I've known in middle school English let students…

There have been several posts lately on a forum I belong to concerning why kids don't read. Several people lay the blame at the feet of teachers who assign "boring" books and kill the love of reading. While I can't defend all teachers and certainly recognize the type, I have to say a few words about the other end of that spectrum.

There were teachers who read to me/us all through elementary, who made books seem as fascinating as I discovered them to be once I could read them myself. I…

Picture yourself taking off in a Conestoga wagon, heading for an unknown destination in the West. Or maybe you're starting across the Sahara, hoping to find treasure or happiness or simply a better life. Maybe you just need to know what's out there.

Anyway, you start on this trek with some trepidation. The territory is foreign, it's scary, and you don't know the dangers so it's hard to watch out for them. But suppose you meet people along the way who tell you, "Here's something you…

It happens right in the middle of a book you're enjoying: the story stops while the author tells you everything he or she knows about ark-building, quantum physics, or blind cross-stitching. If you're really into that particular subject, you nestle into your chair and think, "Cool!" If you're not, you let your eyes roam ahead to the spot where we get back to the story. We've all had the experience of reading a book where everything stops while two characters sit down and discuss some topic…