I hope you've been reading Roy Peter Clark's "Writer's Toolbox" series. I plugged it at the end of my first "Training Tracks" column, which was posted in May. Roy's current column puts him at the halfway mark of the 50-column series, so I plugged it again in my most recent column. If you have been following the series, you might enjoy Roy's answers to my questions (I've inserted notes into his answers, identifying the tools he's discussing):

Steve Buttry: When did you do your first 20-tool toolbox?

Roy Peter Clark: It occurred to me about a decade ago that I really did have a toolbox.  It came at a time when I realized that for about 100 years writing teachers were saying the same kinds of things. So I wrote down my list of 20 and shared it at an National Writers' Workshop event in Portland, Oregon. Then I began to write them down in the shortest possible forms and use them in my teaching.

When did you expand to 30?

The expansion came a couple of years ago.  I Googled myself (is that a sin?) and marveled at how far and wide these tools had traveled.  A professor in Europe translated them into Italian! This emboldened me. These tools were really working, so why not add a few more until we got to 30. I hope to reach 50 within the next year.

As I recall, both of those were lists. Is this the first time you've done columns on each tool, or did either or both of the earlier toolboxes also become series of columns?

I would hand out my tools at workshops and then answer questions about them. So I had developed a "rap" on each one, sometimes using journalism as examples, sometimes music, sometimes Shakespeare. As often happens, teaching was building up my reservoir of knowledge and anecdotes. I wanted to do some special things for my 25th anniversary at Poynter, so I gave myself the assignment of writing brief essays on each tool. These have now been translated into about a half-dozen languages, and I just gave an Egyptian editor permission to translate them into Arabic.

Which tool excited you most when you first started using it?

My friend from the University of Delaware, Dennis Jackson, taught me about "right-branching sentences," about the power that comes from putting subject and verb together at the beginning.  (Tool #1) Then Don Murray taught me how to put emphatic words at the end. (Tool #4) Together, these tools work magic.

Which tool is rustiest (or hardest to use) in your own toolbox? 

Hayakawa's ladder of abstraction is a great tool, so great it takes a long time to master. (Tool #13) It's one of those magic tricks you wouldn't let a Hogwarts student use until the upper grades. I understood the top and bottom of the ladder, but it was Carolyn Matalene who warned me of the dangers of the middle, where the language of policy and bureaucracy breeds.
 
Do you have a favorite tool that you use so readily that you worry you might use it too much or use it sometimes when another tool would work better? 

I am a ruthless adverb cutter. (I first wrote this: "I cut adverbs -- ruthlessly.")  (Tool #3) I'm starting to worry that I'm being unfair to the poor old adverb, that I've become an anti-Adverbite. Also, in my original list I had a tool that said: "Remember, that three is the magic number." Then it occurred to me that three was A magic number, but that one had magic, and two had magic. That led to a serious revision of that tool.  (Tool #17) I love that moment when I learn that a favorite tool is inadequate, that I've got to forge something new.
 
Writing a series of 50 weekly columns strikes me as a pretty daunting task. Unless you wrote all of these in advance, you must be writing some of these on deadline or when you're distracted or struggling with a particular topic. Which tool(s) have been most helpful in writing the toughest toolbox columns?

At one point, I was about six weeks ahead, now I'm only two weeks ahead. But I'm over the hump. More than half-done. Downhill the rest of the way. Breaking big projects into the smallest parts will be one of my later tools. It's how I work. Don Murray taught me "A page a day equals a book a year."  A liberating notion.

For his Training Tracks column, Steve Buttry interviewed Poynter Senior Scholar Roy Peter Clark about the 50 writing tools. Buttry is a Writing Coach/National Correspondent for the Omaha World-Herald. His column is edited and reprinted here with permission.