Tips for Writers and Journalists from Pulitzer Prize Winners

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The Pulitzer Prize is one of the most prestigious awards for journalists and writers. We have read interviews with the award winners in different years and have selected the most useful quotes and tips.

The Pulitzer Prize is one of the most prestigious awards given to journalists, musicians and writers. The size of the prize is $ 10,000, however, for the winners, the prize itself is first of all important, and not its monetary equivalent.

The Pulitzer Prize winners over the years have been the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee Harper, Ernest Hemingway and the poet Karl Sandberg. The latter received the award three times in different years.

In literature, the award is given for the best dramatic work, biography, poem or fiction book. Journalists, on the other hand, sometimes have to risk their lives to get it, covering the war, finding sensations or investigating various conspiracy theories.

Many award winners share tips in their interviews about how they succeeded, how the creative process proceeds, and how to overcome the writing crisis. We've picked the best tips from Pulitzer Prize winners of different times.

Jennifer Egan

Egan won the award in 2011 for Time Laughs Last. In interviews, she often talked about what she needs for inspiration. It turns out not that much.

In order to start a story, I only need time, place, and also know the problem that I want to raise.

According to her, the main thing in creativity is to be obsessed with the process itself and to move in small steps. Egan considers himself not a very productive writer, but writes 5-7 pages of original text every day.

Like many other authors, Egan does a few drafts. Usually three or four. Each draft is rewritten up to 20 times until it is brought to the point in which the writer is ready to show it to the editor.

Bill Deadman

Deadman received the 1989 Atlanta Investigative Racial Discrimination Award. His investigation led to reforms that changed the attitude towards this problem in this city. He advised journalists and writers to explore the world around them:

Expressing your opinion about another person's work or translating their work is easy. Instead, try to create something of your own by observing the world and the people around you.

Deadman uses Microsoft Excel to sort the available information and then work with it. Should you follow his example? Keep in mind that Deadman is an old-school journalist, so he uses the tools he is used to.

It immediately comes to mind that, to write his books, he uses an old computer with the DOS operating system and the Wordstar 4.0 text editor, which was popular back in the 80s.

Adam Goldberg

The Goldberg Award was won by an investigation that affected the New York City Police Department and attitudes towards Muslims in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In his opinion, the main quality of any journalist is fearlessness.

Do you want to become a successful journalist? Half the effort is learning to be fearless. I cannot count all the people who refused me during the investigation and through whom I had to fight my way.

Jason Zep

Zep received the award most recently, in 2014, for his journalistic work in Asia. He considers the advantage of his work to be constant communication with new people and traveling around the world. The advice is simple: always keep perspective.

Never think that the story you are doing is worthless. There is always something else underneath. Expand the topic completely and dig as deep as possible.