Category: Personal Favorites

Sixteen years ago I sat at our crappy kitchen table in Lexington, Ky., and braced myself for a life of mediocrity.

The newspaper I had helped found was foundering. I was working such late hours that it was easier just to sleep under my desk. My wife, Lucy, was pregnant with our first child and was working (more than) full time as a newspaper reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

She was standing by our freezer with a pint of chocolate ice cream. I was wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life.

“The problem,” I recall saying, “is that I’m kinda good at lots of things. But I’m not really good at anything.”

It was true. Lucy and I had both been reporters for newspapers and magazines, and she was the star player. I was the waterboy. She was feted by her bosses. I was plagued by errors and corrections and a judgment misstep that still haunts me. Ask me about that over a beer some day.

By some stroke of luck or divine intervention, I landed a job at Popular Woodworking, and all the pieces fell into place. I got to work with my hands. I was allowed to write, edit, design and take photos – all things I was “kinda” good at. This job salvaged my career. Without it, I have little doubt that I’d be writing obituaries for a shopper with a fifth of Ancient Age in my desk.

So my emotions were mixed as I loaded up my bench, tool chest and shaving horse yesterday and took them to my house. This job was the only job I’ve truly ever loved. I’m paid well (for a writer). I’m treated well and given plenty of freedom.

Why? Well, in journalism school, one of the first things they teach you is that when you write, you should “show – not tell.”

So I guess I’m going to have to show you why.

After my friend Phil and I loaded my stuff into his truck, I got into my car and started the drive home. At the first traffic light I plugged in my iPod. The song waiting for me was from Superchunk, one of my favorite DIY bands.

When I learned to talk, I found words that weren’t worth dirt
Heavy like the rocks we carry, I stopped sinking and learned to surf

I stopped swimming and learned to surf
Stopped swimming, learned to surf
I learned to surf.

— Christopher Schwarz

Note: I am asked about once a week about how to become a better writer, especially by woodworking bloggers. So while the following entry isn’t entirely about woodworking, it is intended for woodworkers.

Writing is a trade skill, and it involves no more magic or mystery than cutting a mortise or planing a board’s edge.

I went to college to become a journalist, but it was a trade school through-and-through. In fact, there really isn’t much to the training needed to become a good journalist. Of the 60 or so classes I took in college, only 12 were related to the craft. And of those, only nine were related to its practice.

So I think that anyone can learn to write at my level, which is where you use an 8th-grade vocabulary, sentences shorter than 30 words and an active (not passive) voice. Here’s how.

1. Buy a copy of William Zinnser’s “On Writing Well.” It is dirt cheap – I buy used copies for friends for $1 at Half-price Books. This is the only writing book that I really like. There is zero navel-gazing (unlike another popular choice, “Bird by Bird”). It is about writing clearly and it is clearly written. It is concise. I read it every other year to refresh its core messages in my mind.

2. Practice. I write every day. Usually the results become a blog entry or a section of a future book. Nothing helps more than practice. And unlike practicing woodworking, you aren’t wasting wood. Words are cheap.

3. Use the phone. My iPhone is my favorite writing tool. When I see something interesting or funny, I make a note of it in my phone’s Notes application. I take a picture of it with my phone (or with my Canon G10, which I carry everywhere). You will never run out of ideas if you record the world around you in one-sentence blurbs.

4. Get a blog. I wish every woodworker had a blog and recorded his or her woodworking triumphs and trials. Blogs are free – like this WordPress blog – and they are great ways to record your progress, even if no one else reads it.

5. Try to write like you talk. Don’t pretend to be another writer. People who read your writing should feel like they know you when they finish a piece. Don’t use words or sentence constructions you wouldn’t say.

6. Pretend to be dumb. When you finish a piece of writing, go back and read it over and pretend to be an idiot about the topic you are writing about. Explaining stuff to people is hard. It’s easy to skip over an important fact or assume your readers know a lot.

7. Learn to use a hatchet. Most writers are too wordy. Try to remove every word you can from a sentence and have it still mean the same thing. Good writing is concise writing.

Speaking of which, it’s time to be a moron.

— Christopher Schwarz

It took only two sentences to convince me to resign my position as editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, forsaking a stable salary and a company that appreciated my efforts.

I was teaching a class on handplanes with Thomas Lie-Nielsen at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking a couple years ago. On the second day of the class, Thomas narrated a film of how he makes tools at his factory in Warren, Me. At the end of his presentation, one of the students asked the following question:

“Aren’t you afraid that the inexpensive Wood River planes are going to put you out of business?”

“They can’t put me out of business,” Thomas replied. “Even if I had to let go of every single one of my employees, I’d still be there making planes until I died.”

At that moment, my world turned upside down.

I had started Lost Art Press in part as a way to insulate myself. Editors of magazines get fired – a lot. My goal was to grow Lost Art Press slowly using pet projects, such as “The Art of Joinery.” Then, when some day I got called into the Glass Woodshed by the People Upstairs, I would have something to fall back on. But after listening to Thomas, I knew that I had the equation reversed.

My undying and consuming passion for the craft was what would insulate me from failure, not some little business.

So starting June 15, I will be full time here at Lost Art Press. I’ll be blogging here almost every day about my work in the shop. I have about two or three years of work and books lined up for us to publish. And – I hope – I’ll also be blogging and writing for Popular Woodworking Magazine, which I have only the deepest affection for.

What’s going to change? Good question. I probably won’t be able to do many tool reviews. At Popular Woodworking Magazine, I personally purchased (or borrowed) all the tools I wrote about to avoid a conflict of interest. And I’m not about to become a hand-tool harlot, complaining about my irritable bowel syndrome and whining about how toolmakers won’t send me free stuff.

That’s not me. I buy my own tools.

And with a four-figure income (the other half of the headline on this blog post), my tool purchases are going to be more carefully made. I don’t want to go out of business.

Oh yeah, I forgot. That’s not possible. Thanks Tom.

— Christopher Schwarz