Saturday, September 29, 2012

Wilkinson's Edge

My latest for Asbury Pulp is in a style I haven't really used since college. I had a regular column then in the Trenton State College newspaper, The Signal, called "Wilkinson's Edge." Then-editor John Robinson had invited me to write a couple of articles and from there, encouraged me to step it up into a regular column. I would probably never have tried it otherwise. The column name was his doing and I always liked it. (For the record, I'm not related to the Wilkinson Sword Blade family that I know of.)

The style of those columns was free and snarky and the words flowed easily, like water out of a clean deep well. It was a joy to write those, to try to make myself laugh out loud as a I wrote them. At my first newspaper job, a small Princeton Packet Publications paper called The Franklin News-Record, I wrote one or two and my editor used the same name, "Wilkinson's Edge." At the Times of Trenton, a few years later, I ran one, toned down a bit, but still in the same vein. (To my knowledge, none of those are available online.) But since then, now writing mostly about classical music, I've restricted myself to a more serious approach, a more conservative style.

Writing this article on Mitt Romney (see the link below), I came back to that pure happiness, hammering away to make something a little silly and still opinionated and punchy. And I'm pleased with the result. With Asbury Pulp editor Steven Froias' encouragement, we decided to run it and it appeared Saturday morning.

I'm hoping to make it a regular part of my contribution there. Will be interesting to see how it develops.

--C.
www.theandofone.blogspot.com

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