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Deb Amlen
Verified
Columnist and Editor, The New York Times
New York, United States
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Biography
It took me a startlingly long time to discover that writing was the only thing I was kind of good at. This was after a short foray in the tumultuous world of N.Y.C. advertising agencies, where I learned just enough to know that I hated working in advertising. "Six month at each of the major agencies" is pretty much all you need to know about that career. I followed this up with a career in canine behavioral counseling. I know what you're thinking, but it's not as much of a jump from working in N.Y.C. ad agencies as you might think. Skip ahead, skip ahead ... I was raising my children and needed a creative outlet that didn't involve Pokémon, Elmo or sparkle-festooned craft sets, so I started making crossword puzzles for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers, back when people actually read them. Learning to write clues taught me a lot about writing tight jokes. Which brings me to my first published humor column. "Next Exit" ran in The Patch, a hyperlocal online newspaper. This was where I learned that the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, an important career lesson that has made me the writer I am today, namely one who puts the punctuation inside the quotation marks. In 2009, I was talked into writing "It's Not P.M.S., It's You," a totally non-judgmental humor book on male-female relationships, which is all this cis-het woman really knows. If it helps anyone in any other kind of relationship, or at least makes them laugh, that is fine by me. Two years later, I was hired set to fire to -- sorry, to take over -- the Wordplay crossword blog at The New York Times. These days, Wordplay is The Times' official crossword column and has its own section, where we teach people how to be better solvers. I am the senior editor, which is seriously the best scam I have ever pulled off. Many thanks to the great David Carr for the inspiration. During the meanwhile, I was also a senior columnist for David Pogue's Yahoo! Tech, where I wrote the humor column "Buzzology," and was on the original constructing team that made puzzles for The Onion's A.V. Club. I created the "X Games" crossword for BUST Magazine, a rowdy, feminist, X-rated puzzle that I still haven't told my parents about. People ask me for pointers on how to get started in a career in writing and, while I'm not much for giving advice, if you are reading this and you are just starting out as a writer, be patient, keep at it, write thank you emails to editors, and have a good therapist on speed dial. When I am not writing or editing things, I am at home in New Jersey, where I live with my partner, my kids, and Jade, the Extremely Spunky Border Terrier, in a 90-year-old house that will be undergoing construction for the rest of my life.
crossword puzzles and games
I no longer write for tech. Ever. Unless it's a humor gig.
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Company Info
The New York Times
New York, New York, United States
'+1 800-698-4637
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