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The Writing Life: Researching History

by Sherri Burr


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Researching people and events can be one of a writer’s greatest challenges. The further back you travel in time, the less likely you are to find people with direct connections to interview about the lives of particular individuals. Writers are thus left to forage out documentary information to compile their stories and analysis from multiple sources.

In 2015, I was blessed to receive a fellowship at Monticello, the home of President Thomas Jefferson, which is now run by a foundation dedicated to preserving his role in history. If Jefferson once owned 200 slaves who labored for his happiness, as he once proclaimed, his Monticello estate now employs 300 individuals who toil for his immortality. Fellows are provided housing on the grounds Jefferson once owned, and given a badge granting after-hours access to a shared office within the Jefferson Library.

After receiving a tour of the library I immediately researched their collection and found thirty books related to my topic on the Free Blacks of Virginia. My fellowship goal was to find enough material to support my book and the chapter I envisioned dedicating to Jefferson’s connections to Free Blacks.

What I knew before arriving at Monticello could be described in three general categories. First, as a lawyer Jefferson had represented individuals seeking freedom. Second, as someone who was frequently cash strapped, Jefferson had borrowed money from Free Blacks and some of his slaves. And third, he had formally or informally freed ten individuals either during his lifetime or by the codicil to his will, and that all of these individuals had connections to Sally Hemings. My goal was to document what I previously knew and create an analytic framework.

The documentation came more easily than expected as I listened to the full audiobook version of The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed. This Harvard professor had won a Pulitzer Prize for her exhaustive research about one family whose lives intersected with Jefferson in ways that were good and bad. Many times he repaid the money he borrowed from his Hemings slaves. And he informally freed two of Sally Hemings’ children, and then formally freed her last two sons and arranged for Sally to go live with them. The discussion of one freedom suit Jefferson lost as an attorney was illustrative of his personality because he then gave the client money, instead of collecting fees, and the client freed himself by running away.

Gordon-Reed’s book presented these issues so well that I decided to expand my topic. After talking to another Monticello fellow from The Netherlands, who was studying Jefferson’s intellectual life, I contemplated Jefferson’s cognitive dissonance about blacks, particularly how he said and wrote one thing (“slavery is an abomination”) while doing another (owning and purchasing slaves). I shared my idea with a Jefferson Librarian whose face dropped as I spoke. “We all know T.J. was wrong,” she said, and encouraged me to expand.

I visited the Library of Virginia in Richmond to peruse documents on microfiche, and the archives of Virginia State University in Petersburg. In between conducting this detailed study work, which involved long hours reviewing manuscripts in cursive writing, I toured Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, and the homes of Virginia presidents. It was the slavery tours at the homes of Presidents Madison and Monroe that led to the formation of another idea. I decided to expand the chapter originally planned to focus on Jefferson to include Washington, Madison, Monroe and John Tyler, all of whom were born and raised in Virginia.

Virginia gave our country five of its first ten presidents, all of whom had declared slavery evil while owning slaves. As I drove into the parking lot at Sherwood Forrest, the home of the country’s tenth president, John Tyler, I noticed my car was alone. An hour and forty-five minutes into the conversation with the guide, I asked if he had to prepare for his next tour and he replied, “That’s next week.” While Jefferson’s Monticello receives approximately 700,000 visitors a year, Tyler’s Sherwood Forest was explored by very few. It was then I realized that I had found a history topic to research and write about that was in less-charted territory.

I urge writers to think of researching history as the equivalent of working on a jigsaw puzzle with neither a picture nor boundary pieces. Begin with an idea of what the chapter or book might become. As you acquire more data, be open to expanding your idea until you find what finally clicks.


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is a long-time member of SouthWest Writers as well as the New Mexico Press Women’s Association.




The Writing Life: Is Technology an Advance or a Hindrance?

by Sherri Burr


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In our advanced technological age, we are bombarded by the latest gadgets for everything from appliances to voice recording apps, all claiming to make lives more efficient. But do they?

This question occurred to me after two home appliances broke, and I replaced them with “high efficiency” models. The new washing machine included a sensing device that calculated the amount of water it needed. Since it had a glass top, I watched the machine twist the load back and forth before it turned on the water. Although I had piled in clothes to reach the top of the tub, the machine added water to fill only about a quarter of its capacity. Eighty minutes later a load was finished, yet several items had dry spots. A load of whites took two hours, and I tricked the machine into filling up the tub by first bleaching clothes in a bucket, which made them heavier.

My initial reaction was astonishment. The machine took nearly three times as long to wash loads, and it didn’t get them as clean as my 1989 Kenmore machine that went to washing machine heaven after three attempts to fix it failed to produce a functional apparatus. I questioned the term “high efficiency,” and realized it only referred to the machine’s miserly water use. When it came to electricity, my bill would go up because it now took nearly all day to wash four loads of laundry, instead of two hours. When I went back to the store, the clerk questioned whether I had loaded the machine correctly. I thought, given the cost, the machine should have loaded itself. I requested the store pick up the machine and return my money before purchasing a non-high efficiency machine that allowed me to set water levels, and clean loads in half the time.

I share this story to challenge writers to question whether the new technology in their lives is an advance or a hindrance. Are we better off interviewing subjects and typing our notes on our laptop at the same time? Are we better off interviewing subjects and exclusively using our iPhone’s or iPad’s Siri to record the notes?

As someone who has used technology to her detriment in interviews, I submit that both questions must be answered with “no.” I interviewed someone and placed my “iDevice” on the table to record the conversation, while I actively listened and took notes on a paper pad. Thank goodness I did the latter because Siri recorded gibberish. I learned the hard way with voice-recognition software that if it doesn’t recognize the nuances in a person’s speech patterns, it may not accurately translate the person’s sentences.

The other problem I’ve found with recording devices is that subjects are intimidated by them. After getting nothing from a former bachelor from the television show The Bachelor, I put away the recording device. He immediately started talking. Since I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the conversation, I just actively listened. The minute we finished, I ran to my car and wrote everything I could remember. I went to bed that night thinking I had nonsense, but awoke the next morning with a complete story organized in my head. My subconscious had sorted out the text while I slept.

In a law class simulation, I asked four students to role play as clients and lawyers. In the first group, the lawyer wanted to use his iPad to take notes. As the interview progressed, he didn’t use his iPad once. Rather, he focused on the client’s pre-interview sheet to ask questions. Because he was reading from the sheet, he didn’t observe his client. In the second demonstration, the law student used no electronic device and, even though he had the pre-interview sheet, he focused on talking and listening to the client. The second interview was more effective.

My final technology concern focuses on studies demonstrating that students who type their lecture notes on computers produce more complete notes but do not processes the material as well and do worse on exams. Other studies have proven that reading material on electronic devices leads to less recall of the material learned.

Thus, before you ditch your paper products in favor of electronics, think about whether they will advance or hinder the cause of obtaining effective interviews and learning material. Those who feel they are listened to will tell more. Look directly at interviewees, and actively tune your ears to capture all that you can from them.


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.




The Writing Life: Wandering Off the Beaten Path with Annie Leibovitz

by Sherri Burr


SherriBurrFor creative types, there is often a tension between concentrating energy to become known for a particular type of work, and wandering off that path to create something new and different. This tension confronted Annie Leibovitz, who is famous for her unique portrait photography such as that of a naked Demi Moore sporting a sizable baby bump, a naked Whoopi Goldberg immersed in a bathtub of milk, and a naked John Lennon with his arms wrapped around his wife Yoko Ono, taken just hours before he was assassinated. Leibovitz owed Random House a fourth work under her four-book contract when she came up with the idea to photograph objects of dead creative types rather than the people themselves. The results were on display at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe in 2013, and can be found in the book Pilgrimage.

On a press walk through the O’Keeffe Museum in February 2013, Leibovitz discussed what drew her to photograph particular objects, such as Georgia O’Keeffe’s bed, her pastels in a drawer, or the door in the adobe wall of her Abiquiu, New Mexico home. Leibovitz considers O’Keeffe to be a great American artist. “We think we know who she is and we don’t,” she said. When she saw the pastels in the drawer, Leibovitz thought, “It’s all the colors in her landscapes.”

Leibovitz also photographed the bed of psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, the desk of author Virginia Woolf, the nightdress of poet Emily Dickinson, and the television of Elvis Presley. This TV is notable because it has a hole in it. Leibovitz explained that during her second trip to Graceland, she was given a tour of the basement containing items Elvis never threw away. The Graceland staff informed her that every time Robert Goulet came on the air, Elvis would pick up a gun and shoot the television. Because Leibovitz photographed this object, we learned something novel about one of the most examined musicians of our times. About Graceland, she said, “The second time I went I felt it was just a house, when you ignore the red carpets and the velvet ropes.”

There was another reason to explore another trail. “Forty years in the magazine world wears you down,” Leibovitz said. “Pilgrimage presented an opportunity to do something different.”

At Niagara Falls, Leibovitz observed her young children staring at a horizon, as if they were mesmerized. She walked to the location, stood behind them, and took the picture. “As a photographer, a lot of times I have to work to get the picture. This time my children saw the picture first.”

“Walden Pond was about an idea, not a place,” Leibovitz informed us as we stood by her picture of Henry David Thoreau’s bed. “He walked to town every day. It’s about being out in nature.” Thoreau first published Walden; or Life in the Woods in 1854 to explore experiences gained from the two years, two months, and two days he spent living on the shores of Walden Pond. Of her depiction of Thoreau’s bed, Leibovitz says, “It’s not a photograph, it’s a document.”

She paid homage to Ansel Adams by traveling to Yosemite to recreate one of his famous photographs. “To get the picture,” she said, “I had to push back about forty people.” Additionally, she visited Adams’ darkroom that had been turned into a wine cellar. She removed all the wine bottles before capturing the darkroom as it once existed.

The exhibition featured framed photographs shot using digital equipment. “I think digital is closer to how we see color,” she said. “We all see color differently. You’re still doing the work that Ansel did in the darkroom when you’re sitting in front of a computer.” She adds, “One of the reasons I’m interested in landscapes is because they present true color. What’s interesting about digital is that it has more detail.”

Leibovitz’s exhibition (and book), also contained photographs of the hat and gloves Lincoln wore the night he was assassinated. Being in the presence of these objects was “very powerful,” she said.

After departing the O’Keeffe Museum, the exhibition made two more stops before concluding its tour at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library in Springfield, Illinois in 2014.

“When you do something new, you don’t know how it’s going to be. I wanted to know if I could find my own way. You have to feed your heart and your soul,” said Leibovitz.

The exhibit was, and Pilgrimage still is, an inspiration to all of us who feel it’s time to innovate.


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.


This article was originally published in the May 2013 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




The Writing Life: Juggling Priorities

by Sherri Burr


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Recently, I read T.D. Jakes’ book Instinct and was startled by the chapter on juggling priorities. The author discussed juggling as “giving each object just enough of a push so that all items remain suspended and none falls out of sequence.” I thought of my efforts to make time for my writing life while working full time, attending to family obligations, volunteering to help others, practicing a healthy lifestyle, and looking after my home. In short, like the readers of this column, I have a lot of balls in the air.

As writers, we type stories, edit material, shepherd work through the publishing process, market and promote the work. Depending on how many projects writers have on their desks, they could be juggling all of these. Each takes time, and yet are required to manage a successful writing career.

Writers need sustained work time. Scheduling thirty, sixty, or ninety-minute blocks to put words on paper can be helpful. If I get on a roll, I hit the timer to add another block. When I have a passion project, I can’t wait to read and write about my subject.

So how does one decide to accept other opportunities that take time away from writing and other necessary priorities related to family, work, and home? Do you say “Yes” and add another item to juggle? How do you know when your schedule has reached its saturation point?

I know I have reached schedule saturation when even the thought of taking on another commitment causes stress. Ultimately we have to say “No” to people when a “Yes” could bring all the balls crashing down.

Adding one more meeting means less time to write, and the occasion divides the day. This can lead to missed deadlines and the inability to do any work at all because of the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Within two months this year, I received four offers to join not-for-profit boards. One group met twice a month and that was a non-starter. As I contemplated another offer from a board that met once a month, I looked at my calendar and noticed that their board meeting date conflicted with a previous obligation. Even though the group offered to move the time of their meeting, I just couldn’t see how I could add another monthly commitment to my calendar. For a third board, the executive director said they met bi-monthly and communicated by email in between. That felt worse as I often struggle to read all the email that currently descends into my box. One recruiter mentioned the seriousness of the board work. As the guardian of a brother in a coma, I already make solemn decisions. Just the mere mention of the word ‘serious’ made me want to run.

I finally decided to decline all four board offers until I finished other volunteer projects or freed up time from my university job.

I believe there has to be a good reason to nod an acceptance.

I recommend writers consider saying “Yes” to those offers that bring joy, pleasure, and peace into your life. Writers must intersperse fun activities between obligations. Fun activities and passion projects feed your soul. They make life pleasurable so you can endure the serious and take delight from the prestigious.

For example, after taking several sets of golf lessons, I finally play with enough confidence to make it enjoyable. Fortunately in New Mexico many golf courses substantially discount their fees to encourage late afternoon play. With over 300 sunny days a year, I have become enthralled by the mountain views and gorgeous New Mexico skies. If given a choice between attending additional meetings and playing golf several times a week, guess which one I’ll choose.

At the end of each day, I review what I did that was gratifying. Did I type pages for my next book? Did I help someone? Did I golf in a nice surrounding? Did I see a comedy movie or watch a fascinating television show like How to Get Away with Murder?

There are things that we have to do, and then there are those we want to do. A balanced life requires juggling between both sets of undertakings. So off I go. Today’s writing is done and nine holes are calling my name.


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.


This article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




The Writing Life: Finding the Fight and the Fun in Your Work

by Sherri Burr


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Recently, fortune blessed me with the opportunity to watch live tennis at a high-level tournament in Ohio. As I observed tennis star Serena Williams fight back after losing the first set to win the next two sets and claim the match, I thought about how much we writers can learn from her determination to succeed.

Just as tennis players face the constant threat of losing points, games, sets and matches, we writers often confront rejection. Author Gregg Levoy (This Business of Writing) once told a SouthWest Writers audience that if you are not constantly receiving rejection letters, you are operating too far into your comfort zone. I initially thought this harsh as no one wants to receive rejection letters. But his larger point resonated. If you constantly put out work that gets accepted, perhaps you are not challenging yourself to go to the next level. Are there higher levels of publications that you have not submitted to for fear of rejection? This is like the tennis player who only plays players who are worse than they are. Where’s the test? Where’s the opportunity?

By daring ourselves to query top book and magazine publishers, we increase our risk of rejection but we potentially set ourselves up for great rewards. Tennis players know that if they want to win the big tournaments, the Grand Slam events, they have to constantly improve their games. This requires honest assessments of weaknesses and strengths. Do they have an accurate serve, which allows them to claim free points? Or a weak serve that leads to double faults? Do they have a lightning-accurate forehand, or one that constantly sails long? Is their backhand hit with power, or does it soft-land on the other side of the net and permit the opponent to hit a punishing return?

For writers, do we write articles with humor, or do our attempts fall flat? To predict an audience’s reaction requires test driving the material. This is where critique groups that require writers to read their submissions can be absolutely critical to writer success. As you deliver your words out loud, you can obtain an instant reaction as to whether the material is hitting the intended emotional cues. If your critique group members react by laughing out loud or crying, then you know you are hitting the right level. If there is no reaction, then you know you have to go back to the drawing board.

This is why I prefer critique groups whose members read the material compared to those who pre-send the material by email and then discuss it when the group meets. In the former, you can instantly see the reaction. In the latter, the person might tell you they found something funny but you won’t know how funny. Were they falling out of their seat with laughter or did a bemused look cross their brow?

Similarly in tennis, a speed gun measures the serve. Players don’t have to guess how fast a serve was, they know. After Croatian player Marin Cilic won the 2014 US Open, he was interviewed about his suspension for four months during 2013 for having a banned substance in his urine tests. Cilic used the time to practice his serve and to work on finding the enjoyment in his game. Others might have spent the four months in “woe is me” mode. Instead, Cilic used it as an opportunity to improve.

When life gives an opportunity to remove ourselves from the normal and reassess, take it as a golden opportunity to improve. Examine weaknesses and strengths. Find the fun in your work. That’s where long-run success lies. That’s where the willingness to fight in difficult moments arises. At the Ohio tournament, Serena Williams battled from a set down to win the semi-final match against Caroline Wozniacki. She won her next match in straight sets and the U.S. Open for the sixth time by beating the same opponent in the finals. Williams took note of her earlier struggles and improved her game.

For writers, progress can come from reading and writing daily, as well as signing up for writing courses. When writing is fun, abandoning your life’s work never enters your mind. You commit to fight until the last letter is struck on your keyboard. Writers don’t retire; the ideas keep flowing until they take their last breath. Challenge yourself to submit to different publishers. The successes may surprise and amaze you.


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.


This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




The Writing Life: Basic Principles from Dear Abby

by Sherri Burr


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In a “Dear Abby” column appearing in local newspapers on September 10, 2013, the famed advice columnist received this query:

…I’m wondering if there is a basic principle you abide by in order to help guide you when giving advice. ~ Curious Reader

She responded:

I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose it’s something like this: Show up for work ready to put forth my best effort. Be honest enough to admit that not everyone agrees with me or that I’m sometimes wrong. Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Don’t pull any punches, don’t preach and always try to be succinct.

Reading her response, it occurred to me this advice applies to the writing life.

First, writers need to work in a disciplined manner at a home office or designated area. Phil Jackson, a retired jockey who penned the memoir On a Fast Track, writes from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. during the week in his home office. Western author Melody Groves, a retired school teacher, writes Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. When Groves taught, she wrote between 4:45 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. She views writing as a job to be taken seriously, as if paid hourly.

Others who have full-time jobs may write in the mornings before the rest of their home crew awakes, or in the evening after their family sleeps. As a university professor, Kathy Kitts wrote nonfiction from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. and fiction from 11:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Personally, I write in 90-minute blocks throughout the day. I read a New York Times article that praised the virtues of taking breaks after each 90-minute session.

Whenever you choose to write, show up, ready to put fingers to keyboard, pen to paper, or voice into a device of your choice.

Doing your best may vary from day to day. Sometimes, you arrive at your designated writing space with ideas flowing and ready to produce. Other times, your mental processes struggle. For those moments, consider playing Mozart, Vivaldi, or other music in the background or through your ear buds to stimulate your brain. In his book The Mozart Effect, Don Campbell extolled the ability of music to stimulate creativity. He subtitled his work “Tapping the power of music to heal the body, strengthen the mind, and unlock the creative spirit.”

Dear Abby’s next piece of advice admonishes to be honest enough to admit not everyone agrees with you or you’re sometimes wrong. This is important when seeking feedback from critique groups. Not everyone is going to consider that the words you put on paper proclaim you to be the next Shakespeare. It’s important for writers to be open to receiving criticism and admit editing is necessary.

When Dear Abby wrote, “Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” she was quoting the oath administered to witnesses in legal proceedings.

This oath applies whether writers pen nonfiction or fiction. With nonfiction, because the reader expects the words to be true, the author should so deliver. Memoirists who shade the truth to make their stories more dramatic have been immensely criticized, and publishers have sometimes pulled their work from the market. With fiction there must be truth in the emotions of the characters, even if the words are products of an author’s imagination.

Years ago, I took a Dramatic Writing course at the University of New Mexico with famed professor Digby Wolfe who had written for Laugh In. An important exercise called “Truth or Fiction” required each student to write and stage a short play for class. Then the audience had to guess whether it was truth or fiction. Wolfe urged his students to produce both their nonfiction and fiction with emotional richness.

Dear Abby’s final point is: don’t pull punches, don’t preach, and always try to be succinct. For writers, the first maxim relates to not softening the emotional blows of your words. Let the characters go for broke, no matter how hard the story may be for the reader to consume. If told effectively, the reader will obtain the moral without needing to be preached its ethical underpinnings. Being succinct requires not wasting words. For example, Melody Groves is fond of eliminating the word “that” from work she critiques. She finds “that” often unnecessary and once the writer thinks about it, he or she agrees.

To summarize, writers must show up to produce their best work. Be honest, be succinct, and don’t pull punches or preach.


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.


This article was originally published in the December 2013 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




The Writing Life: Building Strengths and Outsourcing Weaknesses

by Sherri Burr


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What happens to you when you realize you aren’t good at something that would be helpful to you in your career? This question was recently posed by the website TransitioningYourLife.com in the article “How to Stop Your Weaknesses from Bringing You Down.”

“Most people,” the article said, “try to improve our weak areas” because “[w]e believe that our weaknesses matter more in holding us back than our strengths matter in advancing us.”

Wrong answer, according to authors Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton in their book Now, Discover Your Strengths. They suggest, “The better strategy is to play to your strengths, building upon your core talents and work around your weaknesses. You can add skills and knowledge to increase your performance in your area, but unless you are building on one of your innate talents (aka strengths), your efforts won’t produce exceptional results—some results, yes, but not dramatic improvement.”

As I read these words, I thought of how this advice might apply to the writing life. I remembered my friend Carolyn Wheelock once pitched and received an assignment to write an article about hats for a women’s magazine, but encountered a problem when the magazine wanted accompanying photos. Since Carolyn felt she was not good at photography, she called and asked me to photograph the hats for her. Outsourcing her weakness to yours truly worked well for both of us. She kept her commitment to the magazine, and I received a photography credit.

While this was a win-win, there might be weaknesses a writer could not delegate. What if a writer struggled with grammar or spelling? While software can correct some issues, auto correct may create even more problems. If you do not know the rules, you may not recognize that a word is used in the wrong context even though it’s spelled correctly. Without knowledge of grammar, you may miss the issue.

Dealing with your weaknesses may be fundamental to success in your chosen profession, and you may have no choice but to put in the time to improve them. While watching tennis matches during the Wimbledon fortnight, for example, it occurred to me that a player with a weak serve is in deep trouble. Not only does the player fail to obtain easy points by hitting aces, he or she increases the chances that other players will break their serve and win the match. A serve cannot be outsourced.

For writers, the serve is the equivalent of mastering the tools of grammar and spelling. They are the building blocks for the stories we tell. Hiring an editor could correct some problems, but beware. Since word choices are critical to story meaning, an editor could accidentally change the message just by replacing a word or two. Grammar and spelling are key ingredients for our written creations. They must be mastered to build strength in either fiction or nonfiction.

But what constitutes innate strength? In their book, authors Buckingham and Clifton define a strength as “consistent near perfect performance in an activity.” Some writers achieve “consistent near perfection” when producing fiction, others nonfiction. The excellence is evidenced by strong sales and important awards.

Once writers reach the stratosphere of their profession, expansion to other creative outlets is possible. For example, Janet Evanovich who created the highly successful fictional Stephanie Plum series also penned the book How I Write. She mentioned accumulating approximately ten years of rejection slips before she was first published. During that decade she perfected her craft.

Similarly, mystery writer Tony Hillerman mastered writing as a journalist before authoring mysteries. It was only after he became a New York Times best-selling author of dozens of books set on the Navajo reservation that he penned his memoir Seldom Disappointed. Hillerman’s memoir extended his “near perfect performance” as a mystery writer into another writing realm.

Evanovich and Hillerman prove that playing to writing strengths after mastering the core elements can lead to exceptional results, such as landing at the top of best-sellers’ lists. When they expanded into nonfiction, they did not stray too far from their innate talent of writing fiction.

For writers, our challenge is to master our core and play to our strengths. We can stop our weaknesses from bringing us down by delegating what we do not do well and what is not critical to learn. Go forth and let your strengths advance you up the writing ladder of success.


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.


This article was originally published in the September 2013 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




Lessons from the Life of Tony Hillerman

by Sherri Burr


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Tony Hillerman, the author who exposed the Navajo way to millions of people, passed away on October 26, 2008. After moving to New Mexico in 1988, I mentioned to a University of New Mexico colleague that I was looking for a writer to speak to my class the following spring. She recommended I read The Ghostway and The Dark Wind. I became a fan and wrote Tony.

For a humble person who reveled in his Oklahoma farm boy roots, spending time with lawyers and lawyer-wannabes was not Tony’s idea of fun. But he was also a teacher at heart and always willing to share, even with not-so-modest attorney types.

After publishing three books in 2004, I was invited to join First Fridays, a group that Tony and several of his writing pals started in the 1960s to share knowledge about the publishing industry. One morning a couple of years ago, I received an email seeking someone to drive Tony, now in his 80s, to the next meeting. I immediately volunteered.

Driving Tony Hillerman was a gift. Even as he struggled with health infirmities, he quipped, “Don’t get old.” Here are a few other tips from a great writing mind:

Tip 1: Take Time to Observe the Clouds
“Look at those clouds,” Tony said as we walked to my car. “Don’t they remind you of a flock of geese?” Other times, he would notice horses in stalls or dogs wandering the roads. His books are filled with elegantly described settings. I realized that he could write so vividly about New Mexico and Arizona because he was constantly observing the environment.

Tip 2: Be Generous with Your Writing Earnings
On one occasion, we pulled up at a stop sign as a panhandler approached with a sign. Tony took out his wallet and handed the man $10. Wow, I thought, how generous. At that First Friday meeting, Tony said he had recently opened a letter and a $100 bill fell out. The woman wrote of having borrowed his books from the library all these years and realized that he was probably missing some royalties. Lesson learned: generosity is returned many fold.

Tip 3: Keep at It
Tony’s debut novel The Blessing Way received 101 rejection slips before being picked up by Harper & Row in 1980. Along the way, agents wanted him to change the location of his books from the Navajo reservation to Santa Fe and to alter Joe Leaphorn’s identity. He stuck to the truth of his stories, and you should, too. After bemoaning the dozen rejections one of my manuscripts received, I realize I have to send it out 89 more times.

Keep the faith and keep writing. Tony did and we are grateful that he lived.


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.


This article was originally published in the January 2009 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




The Writing Life: Adapting Your Work

by Sherri Burr


SherriBurr

I was fortunate to conduct one of the last television interviews with the late Navajo artist R.C. Gorman in 2004. I asked him about his propensity to exploit his copyrights by turning a single oil painting into lithographs, posters, greeting cards, mugs, calendars and so forth. Gorman’s response was, “Why limit?”

Writers should adopt Gorman’s approach and explore the many ways that the written word can be adapted into other forms. Take for example Alice Walker’s book The Color Purple. Ms. Walker licensed the movie rights to the book in the 1980s and Stephen Spielberg produced a haunting film starring Whoopie Goldberg as Celie and featuring Oprah Winfrey as Sophia in her film debut.

Oprah acquired musical theatrical rights and co-produced The Color Purple: A New Musical, which opened on Broadway on December 1, 2005 and was nominated for several Tony awards (but lost for Best Musical to Spring Awakening). The latter was adapted from a play by Frank Wedekind. I saw both musicals in early January 2008 on a trip to New York and was amazed at the power of authors to address the significant emotional issues encountered by human beings, including adoption, abortion, suicide, and emotional abuse.

In the version of The Color Purple that I saw, the role of Celie was played by Fantasia, an American Idol winner. Thus, a Reality TV participant teamed up with television talk show host Winfrey to present a variation of a book that won both the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award.

Your work doesn’t have to win major awards to be worthy of adaptation. Section 106(2) of the U.S. Copyright Act specifies that all authors of copyrighted works have the right “to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work.”

Poems become songs (think of rap music as poetry spoken to a beat). Songs become films (remember Roy Orbison’s song that became the inspiration for the film Pretty Woman starring Julia Roberts). Many a New Yorker article has become a feature film. The point is to think expansively about your works. Be open to deriving other works based on your original works.

Take a page from R.C. Gorman’s legacy: don’t limit!


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.


This article was originally published in the February 2008 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




The Writing Life: Having it All

by Sherri Burr


SherriBurrWhen Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” in the July/August 2012 issues of The Atlantic, she caused quite a debate among women nationwide. Anne-Marie, a colleague from International Law circles, discussed her challenges of trying to balance being the first woman director of policy planning at the State Department in Washington, D.C., while her husband and 12- and 14-year-old sons remained in Princeton, New Jersey. Taking a government job proved so much more difficult for her work-family balance than her Princeton academic job of teaching, writing books, and giving speeches.

The work-family balance can challenge all of us, both women and men, whether we are married or single and whether we have children or not. It is of particular concern to anyone responsible for the bulk of the house chores necessary to keep families functional. What tipped Anne-Marie over the edge was when she took a job described as “typical for the vast majority of working women (and men), working long hours on someone else’s schedule.” From reading Anne-Marie’s article, the challenges of balancing work and family life seem to boil down to an issue of how much control you have over your time.

Unlike government, corporate or many traditional jobs, the writing life has the advantage that writers completely schedule their own hours. Even when they are on a deadline, writers decide how and when to meet the deadline.

Lucky writers can produce full time and earn a living from it, or a sufficient living combined with other income. They have the flexibility to write in the early mornings, get kids off to school, write while the kids are gone, and do household chores. If a writer has a part-time job, he or she still has a great deal of flexibility to set their own schedule.

Writers with full-time jobs where the hours are set on someone else’s schedule face a more difficult situation. They often have to rise early in the morning or stay up late to produce their work. They have to accept that producing an article or book is going to take much longer than if they could write full time. This requires discipline to write on the fringes of the day when you may be thoroughly exhausted. This kind of commitment demands a project that the writer feels called to produce. Nothing short of a feeling of a calling, and the accompanying stick-to-itiveness, will get a project done for those writers with full-time jobs and families.

I had to face this challenge head-on when my nephew Terrance moved in with me for two years to attend middle school, at a time when I had received a contract for my first book. About a month into his stay, he looked at me over dinner one day and said, “You look like you need a vacation.” From you were the words that immediately surfaced in my head. I was completely exhausted.

Soon thereafter, I spotted an ad for two seminars by parenting guru John Rosemond. I signed up for both of them, and bought his book. After listening to Rosemond extol the virtues of 1950s parenting for several hours, I came home and announced to Nephew that he would now have chores. I made a list of everything it took to keep the house running, including cleaning the house, car, and yards. I explained to Nephew that since he now lived with me he would be responsible for half of all the chores. He protested initially, but agreed after I said I would pay him a weekly allowance.

After Nephew forgot a chore, I just deducted an appropriate amount from his allowance and did the chore myself. Once his paycheck shrunk, Nephew became more careful about his responsibilities. I also taught Nephew how to cook and made him responsible for preparing several meals a week. If I got really busy, I offered to pay Nephew more if he would do some of my chores. He gladly accepted. Nephew’s help proved invaluable, and I ended up publishing two books during his stay.

Can women have it all? Can any parent have it all? It depends on how much control you have over your work and family life. A writer with a full-time job who is also the maid, cook, nanny, and gardener for the family is in for a challenge. The more help you can get both internally (by giving all able-bodied occupants chores) or externally (by hiring help), the more likely you can produce great works.


A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well BeingSherri Burr is the Regents’ Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico School of Law where she teaches Entertainment Law, Intellectual Property Law, and Art Law. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, she has authored or co-authored 20 books, including A Short and Happy Guide to Financial Well-Being (West Academic, 2014). Sherri is also a long-time member of SouthWest Writers and a regular contributor to the organization’s newsletter SouthWest Sage.


This article was originally published in the September 2012 issue of SouthWest Sage and is reprinted here by permission of the author.




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