Top 3 fun stories of 2007
I don’t think I’m a great judge of my own writing. Any writer can appreciate this I am sure. You’re trying your best, you spend lots of time on a story and then you have someone else read it and they find things wrong with it.
So this isn’t a top 3 best stories of the year. It’s the top 3 stories where I had the most fun reporting them. I’ll provide links to the stories so you can read them if you like.
3. B-E students see Chehalis devastation firsthand
To anyone who knows me, this is a no-brainer. I love writing about the weather. I really like getting out of the office and I love creating audio companion pieces. See my previous post for more commentary.
2. Local grabs brass ring, Loveland H.S. grad gets Tony nomination
I love Jamie Lee Curtis and I loved the movie “Legally Blonde.” So guess how excited I was when I found out a Loveland High School graduate was nominated for a Tony award for her script of the musical version of “Legally Blonde”? As soon as my editor pitched it I knew I had to write it.
The second paragraph of the story says it all. Heather Hach, whose parents still live between Loveland and Fort Collins, were gracious enough to meet with me for the story. Heather had also written the screenplay for “Freaky Friday.” I was a bit starstruck when I first called, but she was so down-to-earth I calmed down pretty fast.
Then Heather told me she was talking with Reese Witherspoon about an upcoming screenplay of “When Bees and Honey Drown.” Like, I almost died!
1. Forrest, Baldomir a long way from Las Vegas or New York to claim vacant title
This was the first story I wrote after moving to the Seattle area. I had been out of practice for a while and I was really nervous. Eric and I live north of Seattle about 45 minutes, and Tacoma is about 2 hours if there’s no traffic. It took me about three hours to get there, and because traffic was so slow, I was taking down observations in my audio recorder.
It was really cool meeting such high-caliber boxers in person. In May I visited Las Vegas with some of Eric’s family, where they had to pay $50 each to see the Mayweather-De La Hoya bout — on closed-circuit television. Tickets to see the Forrest-Baldomir match were about $100 each if memory serves. I must add that this story wouldn’t have been nearly as good if Gregg Bell had not edited it and added such great local context (like the paper mill detail).
January 1st, 2009 at 8:31 am
[…] I’ll post the top three fun stories of 2008. I wrote a post about this last year. The goal is not to write about the best stories I wrote, but the stories where I had the most fun […]