Last week my newsmastering work (internal link) increased substantially. I wrote as many as six posts a day, each new Google alert prompting a shutdown of my other work, to see if an accident report was worthy of writing up. By worthy I mean, did it satisfy our criteria? In general, we want victims named and multiple vehicles involved. Single vehicle crashes are not as noteworthy, in that the majority of these accidents are not the fault of other drivers.

I’ve progressed enough on my latest article to start sending out requests for quotations. Quotes in an article are the cinnamon in an otherwise boring bowl of oatmeal. They add spice and variety and are indispensable. Unlike many of my other articles, this article can’t be in the first person, so I am heavily dependent on other people’s observations and thoughts.

As I wait for responses I continue to read. An excellent book is Rivers by Design: State Power and the Origins of U.S. Flood Control. Also helping is “A History of the Ransdell-Humphreys Flood Control Act of 1917”, published in the journal Louisiana History. While I can’t reveal what magazine I am writing my current article for, these works should give you an idea of what I am investigating. A freelance writer has to be adaptable to all kinds of topics. I wouldn’t want it any other way.