Overview
I've been a writer and editor for over 25 years, with long stints in New
York and Tokyo. I've conducted my own writing business out of the same
address in San Francisco for the past 12 years. My fields are business, computing, and Japan.
I have written:
a 60-word review of the Bank of Japan website;
a 600-word piece on the CANSLIM stock-picking strategy;
a 6,000-word article on the aluminum sheet industry; and
a 60,000-word book on Microsoft Access for beginners.
Overall, I have written or edited thousands of books, textbooks, magazine articles, newsletters, investment reports, annual reports, corporate brochures, press releases, web pages, training manuals, and many other publications.
I always do professional work, and I always turn in assignments on time. If I can't do both, I don't take the job.
You can contact me at
Experience
The first company that paid me for my writing was the American Management Association. I wrote a 75-word item on directors and officers liability insurance, which they published in one of their journals in 1978.
I got my first full-time writing job in 1979, when I joined the Dealer Finance Division of Savin Corporation. I wrote bulletins and manuals that helped Savin's network of dealers manage their inventory financing programs.
During the 1980s I put in two shifts at Morgan Stanley. From 1980 to 1983 I was an Associate Editor in their New York office, where I edited the reports of their equity research analysts. From 1986 to 1989 I did basically the same job for them in Tokyo. As the branch's Senior Editor and Supervisory Analyst, I also managed a couple of editors and signed off on all Asian investment research.
Between the stints at Morgan, I worked as a Senior Writer for AIA, a Tokyo-based investor relations firm. I wrote mostly English-language annual reports of Japanese companies, but I also did corporate brochures, press releases, and financial fact sheets.
When I returned from Japan in 1989, I took some time off from writing to earn my CPA at O'Rourke & Clark, a California-based accounting firm. Since 1992, I've had my own writing business in San Francisco, specializing in three fields: business, computing and Japanese.
Education I received a BA from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1975. My specialization was history and my minor was English.
In 1976 I earned an MBA from Columbia University, where my concentration was accounting.
Writing Philosophy In an episode of the TV series "The Odd Couple," Felix the Neatnik and Oscar the Slob are playing Password. The password is birds, and Felix is giving Oscar the clues. Felix confidently leans over to Oscar and says Aristophanes. Oscar is slightly baffled, but he gamely replies Greek. Their opponents go on to win the game.
Afterwards, Oscar wants to know why Felix gave him that ridiculous clue. An indignant Felix answers "Everybody knows Aristophanes wrote The Birds." Oscar shouts back "Everybody except me!"
The writer cannot assume that his audience knows that Aristophanes wrote The Birds, or that Alfred Hitchcock directed The Birds, or that Mr. Tambourine Man was sung by The Byrds. At the same time, prose that presumes the reader is an idiot is, well, for the birds. In all my writing, I try to respect the intelligence of my readers, without making any of them feel that "everybody must get this except me."
Personal Philosophy "That best portion of a good man's life...His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love." William Wordsworth, Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" (1798)
