Delivered at a Dartmouth College writing conference in 2012, this address opens with McCullough’s assertion that the English language is a tradition worthy of a lifetime of study. He argues that genuine happiness comes from loving one’s daily work, and that writing, because it is hard, is uniquely captivating. The process of learning how to write takes years of practice, and there is no universal method.

McCullough urges writers to talk about their work with others, since material can surface from unexpected sources. Research should run the full length of a project, not just precede it. Writers should visit the places their subjects inhabited, engage all five senses, and learn to observe closely—possibly by taking drawing and painting lessons. McCullough invokes Charles Dickens’s admonition to “Make me see” (146) and credits his high school English teacher, Lowell Innes, for teaching him to show rather than tell.

McCullough advises absorbing not only what people in the past produced but what they themselves read, particularly when portraying distant eras. He recounts advising HBO’s John Adams miniseries producers to preserve the vocabulary and difficulty of 18th-century life. A key distinction for the historian: Dialogue cannot be invented; it must be found in letters, diaries, and testimony.