A few months ago, I recall, you reviewed (in the New York Times Book Review) Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens and Letters to a Young Lawyer by Alan Dershowitz. How about Letters to a Young Free-Lance Writer? In highly abbreviated form, I would offer the following advice to a young person who wishes to enter this prestigious and remunerative line of work.
1. How to Get Started: Write an article and send it to an editor. If it gets printed, send that editor another article; if not, send that article to another editor.
2. How to Become a Columnist: First, find something to say. Then keep on saying it.
3. Book Reviewing” You need only actually read the book if you are going to give it a pasting. (I hear that even this rule is routinely violated these days.)
4. Don’t let anything evade your eyes – plagiarize! (Actually, the term “plagiarize” is seldom used anymore, having been replaced by the verb “to ambrose.”)

briggs i went to the watershed poetry
reading and environmental ho-down in golden gate park on saturday,
april 6, and then to a national poetry month reading
at herbst theater also in san francisco, monday, april 8.

we wrote up our observations, ostensibly for
Literary Kicks (and also
for briggs’ friend margarita [sp?] who gave us the tickets to the
indoor event) and i’ve also posted the poems
we wrote at watershed.