Nancy Updike | Transom
Nancy Updike speaks plainly. In her radio interviews, you can tell she's really curious; she's asking what you would ask if you had the presence of mind. She writes with the same honesty you hear in her interviews, and with what might pass for simplicity, if it weren't so tricky to do. Now she unveils some of her secrets on Transom. You will find them so concrete that you will print out her tips and keep them by you next time you need to solve a writing problem, which will probably be any minute now. "I’d like to tackle, here, three aspects of radio writing: beginnings, writing into and out of tape, and writing a scene without tape. With those skills, a person can write a radio piece that lasts a minute or an hour. But first let me lay out a few things I find useful to do before I start to write and as I’m writing, because they make the writing process go more smoothly. In radio, I find that being organized and obsessive pays off."
