Writing

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

If Carlos Fuentes could have invented the perfect character to star in one of his novels, he might have come up with a protagonist named Carlos Fuentes. That character would be a glamorous global citizen who was born in Panama as a diplomat's son, then hopscotched to Washington, D.C., London, Paris and other glittering power centers. A dapper ladies' man who married an actress and claimed to have had affairs with screen sirens Jeanne Moreau and Jean Seberg. A lifelong adventurer, like the tragedy-haunted journalist hero of Fuentes' novel "The Old Gringo," played by Gregory Peck in the 1989 film version . A man who, like many of Fuentes' characters, overcomes personal tragedy of near-mythic proportions partly through the sheer power of his own relentless drive and productivity.

In the remote northeastern corner of Guatemala, archaeologists have found what appears to be the 9th century workplace of a city scribe, an unusual dwelling adorned with magnificent pictures of the king and other royals and the oldest known Maya calendar. This year has been particularly controversial among some cultists because of the belief that the Maya calendar predicts a major cataclysm - perhaps the end of the world - on Dec. 21, 2012. Archaeologists know that is not true, but the new find, written on the plaster equivalent of a modern scientist's whiteboard, strongly reinforces the idea that the Maya calendar projects thousands of years into the future.

Re "Does my writing compute?," Editorial, May 6 Whether this letter is published in The Times depends entirely on the judgment of the editor, who has spent years developing the expertise to evaluate written expression. The same process takes place in the classroom when a teacher grades an essay. No computer software can ever take the place of the wherewithal they respectively bring to their work. Walt Gardner Los Angeles The writer is the author of Education Week's Reality Check blog.

There's so much to praise in the blissful Broadway revival of "Follies," which opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre on the heels of its numerous Tony nominations, but let's pay homage first to the sheer sophistication of the show itself. After experiencing "Follies" again - an adult entertainment if ever there was one - I flat-out refuse to accept any more jukebox substitutes. One doesn't often talk about architecture when writing about musicals, but the most impressive thing about "Follies," beyond Stephen Sondheim's bejeweled score, is the ingenious way it is constructed.

David Paul Hammer was a prisoner at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester a few years ago when he bragged to a reporter for an alternative magazine that he had received at least $176,000 from 1,500 to 2,000 people he had duped into sending him money. "The trick is making them fall in love with you through letters and on the phone," Hammer told the Los Angeles-based magazine, the Advocate.

Lurking in the 2,592 entries in the third annual Scariest Story Ever Told contest were thrills, chills--and a frightening brain scan of what's on the minds of Southern Californians. Our eight winners included eight writers--Joe and Denise Altick of Ventura, Peter J. Estes of Lancaster, Sara Ludovise of Laguna Niguel, Michael Hook Mack of Sun Valley, Lynn J. Reinert of Irvine, Michael Schwartz of Reseda, and Lotus Yu of Yorba Linda--and one illustrator, Barbara Abbott of Newport Beach.

The list of freelance writing gigs on Craigslist goes on and on. Trails.com will pay $15 for articles about the outdoors. Livestrong.com wants 500-word pieces on health for $30, or less. In this mix, the 16 cents a word offered by Green Business Quarterly ends up sounding almost bounteous, amounting to more than $100 per submission. Other publishers pitch the grand opportunities they provide to "extend your personal brand" or to "showcase your work, influence others." That means working for nothing, just like the sailing magazine that offers its next editor-writer not a single doubloon but, instead, the opportunity to "participate in regattas all over the country."

How truly remarkable that in this overwhelming info-age where our concerns are more toward keeping our fax straight, cellulars operational and modems on line, that there are actually people out there in readershipland who still hold an opinion or feel so strongly about something that they are compelled to sit down and take / make the time to put their "two bits in." Cheers to every one of you who said, "Wait a minute here, I have something I think is important to say," and then put it in writing.

I was left bemused by Roger Scruton's ("Art of Making Sense Is a Thing of the Past," Column Right, Oct. 20) commentary complaining about the state of contemporary academic writing. The philosophers he wistfully offers as exemplars of clear writing are the very ones to whom we owe thanks for the gibberish produced by their epistemological offspring. The Kantian divorce of mind from reality was couched in the grammar of an earlier age of reason. Is there any wonder that in the aftermath of the divorce the children are without guidance and cannot speak in any meaningful way?

WASHINGTON — Nicholas Katzenbach, the Kennedy administration lawyer who faced down Gov. George Wallace to enroll the first black students at the University of Alabama and who helped write the landmark civil rights and voting rights acts of the 1960s, has died. He was 90. Katzenbach died Tuesday night of natural causes at his home in Princeton, N.J., according to his daughter, Anne Katzenbach of New York City. Katzenbach was one of the "best and brightest" who were drawn to Washington when John F. Kennedy became president in 1961.

Digby Wolfe, an Emmy Award-winning comedy writer who helped producer George Schlatter develop "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," a landmark TV series that became an overnight sensation in the late 1960s, has died. He was 82. Wolfe, who later became a professor of writing at the University of New Mexico, died of lung cancer Wednesday at his home in Albuquerque, said his wife, Patricia Mannion-Wolfe. The British-born Wolfe - an actor, writer, singer and comedian whose early career included writing for the BBC's satirical "That Was the Week That Was" and hosting an Australian TV variety show - moved to Los Angeles in the mid-'60s.

A few years ago, my local school district invested in software designed to teach students better writing skills. The computer program - without the help of a teacher - would rate their work on a scale of 1 to 6 and give them feedback on the needed improvements, such as fixing grammatical errors or expanding sentence fragments into full sentences. The students could watch their scores rise as they made corrections, actively engaged in the process of learning new English usage skills, while their teachers were freed from the chore of reading every draft.

The cancellation and hefty write-down of HBO's"Luck" and the closure of a TV channel in India put a damper on an otherwise solid first quarter forTime Warner Inc. The New York media giant reported a profit of $583 million for the quarter ended March 31, compared with $653 million for the same period in 2011, an 11% drop. Revenue was up 4% to $7 billion. "We're off to a great start to the year, and we're benefiting from strong momentum for our content across our businesses," Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes said Wednesday.

As they do on many Saturday afternoons, the teenagers from across Los Angeles county descended on the nondescript Fairfax district office building. It was time for the weekly editorial meeting at L.A.Youth the newspaper by teens for teens. The latest issue had just hit the hallways of L.A. schools, and the deadline for the next one was fast approaching. As more than a dozen students sat around a square of folding tables, Amanda Riddle, one of the adult editors, kicked things off with a question: What did they know about Trayvon Martin?

I can still remember the first time I saw Los Angeles. It was December 1980, I was 9 years old, and the view came from the back seat of my older brother Lee's brown Chevette as we climbed up the Grapevine. My two sisters and I were crammed into the car along with all of Lee's earthly possessions - well, most of them, anyway, since the butterfly chair he had tied to the roof flew off somewhere near Kettleman City - which amounted to stacks of paperback books, three typewriters, every issue of Starlog that had been published to date and whatever pots and pans our mother could do without.

Telling Times Writing and Living, 1954-2008 Nadine Gordimer W.W. Norton: 742 pp., $39.95

Book reports, magazine articles and newspaper columns are all examples of the essay, a type of composition originated by French writer Michel de Montaigne in the 1500s. Montaigne's essays were informal comments about his personal experiences. Essays can also be informative, humorous or persuasive. Want help with all types of writing projects, from book reports to research papers? Use the direct links on The Times Launch Point Web site. http://www.latimes.

Jesmyn Ward was struggling. Despite two master's degrees and five years of work experience, her job situation was difficult: She commuted an hour each way to a low-paying college teaching job. In her writing career, things were even worse. She sent out stories and got back rejection letters. Her agent tried and failed, and tried and failed again, to sell her book. "I almost gave up," Ward says. In the spring of 2008, she thought, "Maybe I should stop this. Maybe I should just quit and do something that would give me a steady, higher paycheck, like nursing.

Robert Weil, formerly executive editor at W.W. Norton & Co., is at the helm of the company's recently revived imprint, Liveright & Co., well known for publishing great early 20th-century writers. Liveright's new editor in chief and publishing director, scheduled to appear on a panel about the nuts and bolts of publishing at this weekend's Festival of Books, talks about Norton's surprising move and other issues facing the book industry. Let's talk about how and why the Liveright imprint was revived.