In June, we announced that we were doing anti-racist work, both as individuals and as a company. We’ve been reading books and articles, watching documentaries and movies, and educating ourselves in other ways. Our recent donation to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund proved to be so eye-opening that we want to tell you all about it. At RLM, we’re in the business of helping you tell your story—no matter who you are or where you come from. While this is fulfilling work, it’s important to acknowledge that the telling of Black stories has all too often been pushed aside. So we we ..read more

Not so long ago, inexperienced authors who struggled to get published might fall prey to a vanity press. These were book publishers whose business model was essentially a scam: They’d do little more than take your money, throw your unedited manuscript into a sad little binding, and “market” your work, which would, predictably, never achieve the promised bestseller status. Gosh, bad luck! So you can understand my chagrin when I described Remarkable Life Memoirs to a new acquaintance over cocktails only to hear: “Oh, so you’re like a vanity press?” Sigh. Take a drink. Remarkable Life Memoirs sp ..read more

He played Division I college football and had a real shot at the NFL. He entertains me, between sets in the weight room, with stories of hard hits, brushes with greatness, and off-the-field craziness. He analyzes the latest games with a mixture of passion and intelligence that goes way beyond the usual Monday-morning quarterbacking. “You should write a memoir,” I say, and I mean it. “I’m not ready to sum up my life yet,” he snorts in mock offense. (At least I hope it’s mock offense). “I’ve still got plenty of years left in me.” Now, I’m not about to mix it up with a guy who regularly squats o ..read more

It seems like a lifetime ago, but the Commander-in-Chief Forum preceding the presidential election was supposed to be an opportunity for both candidates to discuss national security. Instead, moderator Matt Lauer turned it into a seminar in how not to conduct an interview. In light of his dismissal from NBC’s Today for accusations of sexual abuse, why focus on Lauer’s journalistic wrongdoings? Apart from providing a damning sense of how he views women, it’s an opportunity to study how interviewing technique can bring out important truths—or cover up massive deficiencies. In my business, that ..read more

Recently, we featured a blog post exploring how design lends meaning—or fails to lend meaning—to marriage licenses. Susan’s wry takeaway was that modern marriage licenses lack the beauty and solemnity of previous ages, which goes right along with our high divorce rate. I don’t have a solution for marital woes, or bad design, but there is another side to this conversation. The ketubah is the name for the Jewish marriage contract (the plural is ketubot). Its use began about 2,000 years ago, so I’d say it has a pretty good track record. It’s a purely legal document. Even today, among traditiona ..read more

I went to the Metropolitan Museum recently to look at a closet. This is not a joke about the high cost of Manhattan real estate, although the closet in question is pretty small. The installation shows the belongings of a woman named Sara Berman. Nearly everything in it (and there’s not much) is hyper-organized, perfectly folded, and white. You’d think that someone with such a pared-down existence would be pitiable, probably poor. But Berman was no ascetic; there were luxuries, too. A half-empty (or half-full?) bottle of Chanel No. 5, an orange tin from the Parisian bakery Fauchon, oversized t ..read more

It was probably in the early '80s when I wandered into a local bookstore a few blocks from my little apartment in New York. I had nothing but time then and seemed to spend a lot of it poking around second-hand bookstores and thrift shops. I walked out of the store that day with a baby book from the 1920s—partially filled out—commemorating the first year of a child's life. Entitled Our Baby, it was smudged and a bit tattered. Its beautiful illustrations and type brought to mind a different era. Handwritten notes listed celebratory telegrams, the baby's first gifts, developmental progress, and ..read more

You know that scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy opens a door and suddenly her black-and-white world turns Technicolor? Well, that’s what happened to me this year. There I was, cheerfully copyediting memoirs (and other things) but, I admit, feeling that something was missing. Monochromatic, you might say. I would have soldiered on forever, except that I met Susan Hood. And then my work life just kind of . . . bloomed. If you’re reading this far, you probably know I’m a proud word person. I love everything about language and the way people use it, even the really annoying, geeky parts ..read more

I started my writing career at a daily newspaper. This was in the ancient past, when computers had only recently replaced typewriters. We still harvested Associated Press wire copy from a hefty metal monstrosity whose endless roll of paper sputtered day and night. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the simple fact that readers expect to read stuff. And reporters are expected to write stuff. On a deadline, sometimes an absurdly tight one. There’s no better motivation than a managing editor standing over you, glowering, as the minutes tick away. Sure, you’re probably not a beleaguered cub ..read more

For the past 20+ years, November has meant National Novel Writing Month for an intrepid bunch who commit to the seemingly impossible: writing a book in 30 days. In this case, “book” is defined as a minimum of 50,000 words. That’s a lot—especially for the month that contains both Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Fortunately, the folks behind NaNoWriMo stipulate that the finished product doesn’t have to be great, or even good, or even finished. It just has to be written. WriMo folks need to create at least 1600 words a day to reach their goal. However they do the math, participants need serious st ..read more