Graham or girl here, I'm a neon fugitive, your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today I have an interview with Roy Peter Clark, who's taught writing at the Pointer Institute

since 1977, and has written so many books on writing that he's lost count.

He was hired as one of America's first newspaper writing coaches, and he's worked with writers

of all ages, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists.

His most popular book is called Writing Tools, but today we're going to talk about his newest

book, Murder Your Darlings, as well as his thoughts on civic clarity.

I always find his writing advice to be incredibly valuable, and I hope you will too.

And just for context, we recorded this interview about 10 days ago.

Roy Peter Clark, thank you so much for being here with me today.

It is a pleasure to be here on the other end of this amazing continent.

Yes, it's wonderful that we can connect through the miracle of the internet.

I can't imagine being in quarantine without it.

You are working from home now.

We had to reschedule the interview because we were going to do this right after everyone

started working from home, and we weren't quite set up yet to do the interview.

So how are things now that you've been doing this for six weeks or longer?

Yeah, it's closing in on, from our point of view, it's closing in on three months.

It's been going, I would say we feel lucky in my family.

People are healthy, people are working, and most of the people we encounter,

both in our neighborhood and in the community, are doing the right thing.

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