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Pro Essay Writers Intimate journalism is often accomplished by leaving out this kind of ugly reporting substructure. When you read it, you think, “Lord, this man can write! ” But it is the in-artful substructure â€" the reporting â€" that Hendrickson leaves out of his telling that makes the artful possible. While once doing a story on a fundamentalist family, I asked the mother to walk me through her house and tell me where she got each item on display. As she gave me the tour, it became clear that she and her husband had bought nothing with an eye to decorating their home. The African American painter Allen Stringfellow once said, “I work by music â€" religious music when I’m doing religious things and jazz when I’m doing jazz pieces. While doing the McGillis story, I took to joking about “method journalism,” after her method acting. I don’t believe for a minute that this is any kind of gift. List under “facts, quotes and details” what you’re pretty sure you’ll use. Now you’ve got to select your themes and tensions. With all this done in anywhere from a few hours on a small story to a few days on a huge story, try one last metaphysical trick before getting down to the rock-breaking job of writing. Sit down at the computer, put up your feet, close your eyes, think about your story and see what flashes to mind. Far more often than not, whatever image or scene I see at that instant turns out to be my lead. I tell myself that the flashing image is me talking to myself, that whatever flashes in my head after all the hard work is probably the strongest single image I’ve go to offer. After a couple of rambling interviews, the themes of the subject’s life often emerge. But in the story, this information is woven into the narrative so it seems as if the subject is thinking it at that point in the story. Nothing is scarier than staring at a blank screen and trying to see your way through all the junk you’ve collected to find not a lead but a story. It’s a moment of supreme arrogance, because it’s when you sit down and decide what you have to say â€" what you’ll put in, leave out, emphasize or downplay. It’s important to remember that a lot of detail in stories also comes from interviews â€" in the form of anecdotes. You have to fill in the material that you will need to make an anecdote into a scene. To keep ourselves open to what is before us, we must not become too obsessed with asking ourselves, “What’s the story here? ” â€" and thus fall victim to the reporter’s paranoia that we’ve got to produce something out of this mess and we better figure it out fast. Williams was trying to avoid that trap, to do a better job of collecting the human facts he needed to be a better doctor and a better poet. Sitting down to write is probably when the only smidgen of magic in intimate journalism really comes into play. Sitting down to write is at once the hardest and the most exhilarating part of what we do. Under the rule of “you don’t know what matters until you know what matters,” you ask questions about everything â€" depending on the story â€" from “Do you believe in God? ” to “Where did those little white spots on your shirt come from? His goal is not only to get people to open up to him, as most reporters would say, but for him â€" Coles, the observer, the reporter â€" to be able to hear what people are saying. It’s simply an emotional and cognitive dimension of our craft. Just as working from what I called an open heart is a necessary tactic of intimate journalism, this method journalism is a tactic to get in touch with your material. To help do this, you’ve got to step outside the mind-set of straight reporting. After trying to soak up all your material, you’ll still find sometimes that nothing will come out of your head. At those times, sit down and read sections from favorite books or articles that capture a tone similar to the ones you hope to capture, to get yourself in the mood.