How To Write A Biography

A Group Interview with Michael Berryhill

Michael Berryhill told feature writing students at University of Houston on Tuesday that; no one should allow any sort of criticism, to cast its shadow over ones writing.

Berryhill can be defined as a person with passion to just write, write and write. He has a unique skill of writing anything and everything from poems, essays, magazine articles, book reviews to anything you can think of. His journey towards success was not very smooth and pleasant, as he said, “I was discouraged all the the time.”, but he never allowed any criticism to take control over him, and continued to write. This attitude explains his positive outlook towards life.

“What to do when you get fired, is not if you get fired, it is when you get fired because this is a very volatile industry and sometime one is got to realise that getting fired does not necessarily mean that your work was personal.”, Berryhill narrates one of his fellows words.

When you are discouraged, you tend to become fearful in writing stories and the end result is what Berryhill calls “writing block”, the reason he explains behind this fear is “when people want to be perfect the first attempt, somehow you have to work through these fears; instead of starting with the end-result, start with the first ugly process, write something that is not ready. This is the way to break this block coming your way”.

Berryhill has a great amount of writing experience. As a Journalism professor David McHam says, “Berryhill most probably has done more writing than any other staff in the school of communications.” He wrote several book reviews for the Monneapolis newspaper, taught writing classes, American literature, and civilization at the University of Lyon II in France as a Fulbright Junior lecturer. He became writing coach for Houston Chronicle because he thinks “Writing coaches can be called a teaching coach, and the most successful and listened to teachers in school are coaches and brand teachers”. Along with these writings, he also did some freelance writing.

Berryhill won “Katie” award for writing “The fight to save the Katy Prairie” as a freelancer, and he describes freelancing as, “What you do between jobs, you have to be committed to do well. Important thing is you got to have clients, you need to law and steady client, you need to recycle stories, but for most people it is just like keeping their head above the water”

Other than Katy award, He has won several other awards for his writing,