Sample: Fiction/Children's

The girls listened to Jack and the dogs bounding up the stairs above, sounding every bit like a herd of wild elephants loose in the house. Then again, Alex thought, even that wouldn’t be too shocking around here! She leaned over and pushed the buttons on the phone control console to switch all the incoming calls on the public lines to their in-house answering service. The efficient operators would take messages to be returned later. If her father needed to reach her, or her grandparents tried to call from the islands where they were traveling, they’d use the private line. Getting up from her chair, Alex crossed over to the buttery-soft leather sofa that stretched along one wall under a giant picture window. She stared out into the driving rain, watching the wind whip towering California redwood trees and lodgepole pines one way and then another. “I sure don’t envy my dad or your mom being out in this weather,” she said to Kim, reaching down to pet Moose, the longhaired Golden Retriever stretched out on the couch. Moose answered by wagging his tail, hoping she meant something along the lines of “I have food.” After a thorough sniffing to make sure that Alex did not, in fact, have any food, he sighed, and laid his head down in her lap as she curled up on the couch. Moose was only ten months old, really still a puppy, and his life revolved around food and his favorite squeaky toy.

Sample: Magazine Article (Trade Press)

{Magazine-style article; addressed to event managers} Building a Better Site Visit As event managers, we know that the key to a successful, wrinkle-free show is all about being prepared. A good site visit or familiarization trip results in a better informed event manager, which leads to more accurate show planning, fewer surprises onsite, and most importantly, happier attendees. While site visits can be an integral part of your pre-show preparation, it is sometimes difficult to show cost-conscious supervisors just how valuable a site visit can be. Site visits and familiarization trips are often short in duration and long on objectives. As an event manager, your challenge is getting the most out of your time and demonstrating a return on investment to the boss. With a solid plan and some out-of-the-box thinking, you’ll show your managers just how a site visit can be a valuable part of your pre-show routine. ------ Some site visits have a very specific purpose—to find the perfect special event venue, perform a technical inspection of a conference room, or select a hotel. Some are far more general in nature, and are intended just to familiarize the event manager with the local area. A well-prepared event manager will be able to accomplish both. The first step to getting your boss to sign that travel voucher is to present defined objectives. Why ARE you going on this trip? What specific tasks do you need to accomplish while you’re there? Write it down, and make a checklist of specific goals and objectives for your trip. Distribute your draft list to management for review. Most of us work under the Sales or Marketing departments, but don’t stop there. Heads of any department attending the show should be aware of your trip, and they may have needs as well, needs that sometimes only occur to them as a result of reading your list. By distributing your checklist well in advance of your site inspection trip, you give stakeholders a chance to think about their needs for the show, be it a restaurant with a private banquet room for a client dinner, transportation to a golf outing, or a hotel conference room with a speaker phone. More often than not, you’ll find that your checklist has doubled in size well before you leave, but by soliciting input from the higher ups, you appear proactive and organized, and avoid last-minute scrambling at show time. If you’re friendly with personnel at your show’s organizing association, or other exhibiting companies, check in with them as well! They may have questions or something you could look at for them while you’re there, earning you some goodwill or return favors in the future. Now that your trip is planned and approved, do your homework. While nothing can replace the trip itself, doing some research in advance of getting on the plane can make all the difference in how your time onsite is spent. Visit hotel and restaurant guides, CVB sites, and local city guides to get reviews and information about places you’d like to visit. Use online mapping services to determine which hotels and restaurants are nearest the convention center. Map directions from the airport to your hotel, and from the hotel to your intended destinations, print them out, and keep them in a folder in your carry-on bag to save valuable time on the ground. Once you arrive at your destination, divide up your time, devoting specific days to one type of task. Day one could be divided between inspecting hotel properties and doing some reconnaissance at the convention center, and day two be devoted entirely to restaurant visits or special event venues. Make a schedule, but leave some time for flexibility. ------- Now that you’re ready to pound the pavement, start thinking outside that box. One common mistake many planners make is to schedule their site visits to be spent entirely with the hotel staff, CVB personnel or a DMC. While it’s sometimes impossible to avoid announcing your planned arrival to your local contacts, their job is to sell you on the venues and services they’re paid to promote. You can often learn a lot more about your destination if you arrive incognito. When planning your meetings and tours with your official contacts, try scheduling them for the second or third day of your visit, not when you first arrive. While your presence in the hotel may be known, your face isn’t yet. Take that undercover time to familiarize yourself with the facilities and staff, as just any run-of-the-mill guest, not as a potential big-ticket client. See how the staff treats you, and watch how they treat others. Ask the concierge really dumb questions! It may seem sneaky, but it’ll give you a good idea how useful they’ll be in a crunch. Outside of the hotel and convention centers, your job is to become a local expert for your attendees. When they’re onsite, your show attendees are going to have a myriad of needs, and with a little legwork, you can anticipate just about all of them. Sales people, in particular, need to entertain clients, so knowing the restaurant scene is crucial. Visit as many local restaurants as you can at peak lunch and dinner hours. Even if you’re not eating there, you can get an idea of how busy they are, the atmosphere and the level of service. Most will have a take-out menu you can bring home with you, making up a valuable piece of your attendee materials. A binder with these menus and your personal notes on the restaurant kept in the booth during the show is a goldmine for busy sales folks. Don’t be afraid to interrogate the locals! You may find that hidden gem of a restaurant by asking the clerk in the gift shop where she would most like to go on a special night. If you belong to an online community or bulletin board, these can be great advance sources of local expertise to direct you to the best restaurants or tell you about that “secret” special event venue. You might also learn some surprising, but important things about the city the show is being held in. Arriving unprepared and learning too late that a local festival will close down a major street for the weekend or that every restaurant in the area will be closed on SuperBowl Sunday could put a serious crimp in your show! As you explore, don’t just focus on restaurants. Have a car, have a map, and get out on the street. Nothing will give you a better lay of the land than wandering around your show area. None of us have been to a show where one of our attendees didn’t need a drug store, office supplies, a copy center or even a hospital. By taking a few hours to explore and be observant on your site visit, you’re prepared for just about anything they could need, which not only saves time and stress, but can make you look like a real hero when that emergency crops up. Above all, if you want to return from your trip and show everyone just how valuable your site visit was, there are four things you must always do while you’re there. Keep looking at your checklist, constantly. Take notes, incessantly. Take pictures, pictures, pictures! Collect as much physical information as you can—brochures, maps, menus, floorplans, business cards—to bring home. These are invaluable later when you’re preparing materials for your attendees. ----- Now that you’re back in the office, it’s time to demonstrate to management that their money and your time away were well spent. Immediately, while things are fresh in your mind, begin writing up your notes from the trip into a site visit report. It’s often a good idea to start fleshing this out before you come home, or on the airplane. Using your site visit checklist as a template, create a concise, but thorough, written report to explain how you accomplished each of the listed objectives, and what the results were. Try to include photos and reference items if applicable, to give your stakeholders a complete picture of your findings and observations. In some cases consider holding a formal meeting with the managers concerned to discuss your findings. By providing your managers with such a detailed account of your show planning objectives and how your site visit better prepared the company for the show, the value of the site visit trip becomes immediately apparent. Your stated objectives provide a metric against which you can measure the success of the visit and your site visit report provides you with a demonstrable return on investment. With a little planning, a little creativity, a lot of exploration and even a pinch of sneakiness, you can easily show the most budget-conscious manager that a good site visit can be the key to a worry-free show.

Sample: Essay/Journalistic

Would you like to dance? So, have we got you interested yet? Ready to try hitting the dance floor? Well, if you’re ready to try this swing dancing thing, you’re going to need some lessons. Unlike most types of dancing done in clubs, swing takes a combination of formal instruction and lots and lots of practice. Luckily, those things are easy to come by in most cities throughout the U.S. Through a combination of group lessons, private lessons, video instruction and dance camps, even the sheer novice can be confident on the dance floor after a period of time. In this article, I’ll cover group and private lessons, the two most common ways for a beginner to learn to dance. Group Lessons Group dance lessons given at clubs are probably the single most important factor in getting new dancers on the floor, and a big part of the reason why the swing scene is going strong today. When clubs began booking swing bands and hosting DJ’d music nights, it became immediately apparent that they needed to offer some sort of instruction to get people dancin’. At most clubs, a group lesson is held immediately before the band or dance starts. No partner is needed, and basic East Coast steps (either single or triple time steps) are taught to the beginners. Some lessons are taught in a format where you are matched up with a partner right from the start and stay with that person throughout the lesson, typically one hour in length. In another version, usually when there is an uneven number of leads and follows, the group will form a circle or a line and rotate partners every few minutes. This is especially helpful in an uneven group so that everyone gets a chance to learn the steps, and helpful overall so that each participant can experience different partners. Sometimes getting over the shyness of actually touching your partner (eek!) is the hardest part of learning to swing, and a rotation lesson can be a huge boon. Don’t be intimidated. Everyone else on the floor is out there trying to learn, just like you are, and they’re nervous too! Many classes are taught on a one-shot basis, meaning that the same beginner steps are offered each night that the club is open. However, a number of swing dance groups and some nightclubs offer series lessons which run over the period of a month or more, offering the chance to build your repertoire over time, and build on what you’ve learned. The real benefit of group lessons held in a dance club is the chance to immediately practice what you’ve learned. When the lesson ends, you’ve got your steps fresh in your mind, and a whole class full of other beginners to practice with all night long. A couple of great places to find group lessons in your area are www.swingmap.com or www.sonicswing.com. These two sites maintain nationwide lists of swing dance clubs, organizations and nightclubs offering free or low-cost group lessons and dance nights. Many community centers, health clubs and adult schools are also offering swing dance classes these days too, and can be great sources. Private Lessons Private lessons are a costly, but fantastic, way to learn to swing. Many dance instructors have studio or club space available to them to offer private instruction to dancers wanting less distraction or greater detail. The cost is often prohibitive—$50 an hour or more—but the benefits are great. By working one-on-one with a skilled instructor over the course of an hour, you’re able to get individualized help on specific moves, posturing, lead or follow techniques or problem areas. Privates are a great follow-up to group lessons especially, once you’ve learned the basics, but want to improve your form or add some new moves to your routines. The only disadvantage to private lessons is that you don’t get that immediate chance to hit the dance floor with a variety of partners, and for that reason alone, group lessons might be the way to go for the absolute beginner. Finding private lessons is a bit harder than finding a group class, but many of the same sources apply. The instructors teaching a group lesson at a club or dance might very well offer private instruction or have information on who does in your area. Many dance camp weekends also offer private lesson time with their instructors, usually nationally- or world-renowned teachers and competition champions, which is a fantastic opportunity to learn from the best of the best. Get out there and do it! Whether you learn to swing in a group lesson or from a private instructor, the most important factor is practice, practice, practice. The steps you learn tonight are going to be a distant memory to your feet three days later if you’re not using them. Learn the moves, then hit the floor.

Sample: Research report

[3. Excerpt, Scientific research paper ] In the Maiasaur nests of Montana, John Horner found evidence that dinosaurs were indeed capable of rearing their young. Particularly surprising was the discovery that the babies remained in the nest for quite some time, and did a great deal of growing there (Horner and Weishampel 66). The internal bone structure of both the adult and juvenile Maiasaur is densely riddled with blood vessels and Haversian canals, more closely resembling that of mammals than reptiles, who lack both (Desmond 62). This type of bone, known as plexiform bone, belongs generally to the fastest growing animals, as it shows evidence of continuous deposition (Horner 175). The presence of numerous Haversian canals also indicates a higher growth rate, being the sites which control the exchange of calcium between the skeleton and blood supply (Desmond 62). A greater number of canals facilitates a greater speed of exchange, allowing large warm blooded animals to reach their full weight usually in one year or less, rather than the five to twenty years required by the larger reptiles (Bakker 348). Reptile bone is of the type known as lamellar zonal bone, with few Haversian canals, and distinct growth rings showing a disparity of growth rates between the warm and cold seasons (Horner 175). This histological evidence is supported by the discovery of Hypsilophodont remains in an area of Australia where the polar winters lasted many months. These small herbivores show every sign of having been active in the sub-zero climate, even developing a larger optic lobe for improved vision in the winter darkness (Rich and Rich 36).

Sample: Technical, Training Manual

[2. Excerpt from surgeon training manual, medical device ] Intacs act as passive spacing elements that change the arc length of the anterior corneal curvature. The refractive effect achieved by the device is directly related to the thickness of the product. Placing the product in the periphery of the cornea causes local separation of the corneal lamellae that results in a shortening of the corneal arc length. This “shortening” of the corneal arc length has a net effect of flattening the cornea, thereby correcting for myopia by lowering the optical power of the eye. When the thickness of Intacs is increased, greater amounts of local separation occur that result in increased corneal flattening. Thus, the degree of corneal flattening—or correction—achieved by Intacs is directly related to thickness.

Sample: Essay introduction

[1. Introduction to my topic area on Suite101.com, an online writing workshop] Swing Dance is a uniquely American art form, born in the early days of Harlem and the Savoy Ballroom. Swing dance, and the swing lifestyle are enjoying a world-wide resurgence of late. Ten short years ago, however, the few practitioners of this exuberant dance style were confined to private dance studios and professional competitions, with little or no public recognition of their talents. Today, you can find swing dance lessons, performances and live swing bands in nearly every city in the nation, with hundreds of enthusiastic dancers at every level packing the dance floor. For some, it's recreation; for others, it's a lifestyle, influencing every facet of daily life, from the clothes they wear, to the cars they drive and the furnishings in their homes. These young dancers have embraced not only the dance itself, in it's myriad variations, but also the early greats who defined the art form; dancers such as Frankie Manning, Norma Miller and Dean Collins, providing them with not only belated recognition and adulation, but in some cases, a long-overdue means of financial support for doing what they love and created. These will be the stories of those living legends, the dancers they have inspired, and the art form they created, as well as practical references and information for those interested in learning the dance, coverage of U.S. and international competitions and instructors, and discussions on the new swing lifestyle.

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Kidding, kidding... This blog is designed to provide a place for me to work on the craft of writing itself, and display my writing samples in an exceptionally diverse variety of styles. If you're here to view samples of my work, welcome. If you're looking for a standard blog, well, you'll probably be disappointed, but you're more than welcome to stick around. I'd appreciate anyone who takes the time drop in some comments and let me know what you think. Mahalo!