Writing book brought new focus to job.

* Authoring a book on opinion-writing in Norway serves multiple functions: To feed the ego, to raise a profession's standing, to grapple with fundamental questions.

"The radio will never be a substitute for newspapers. In the long run, it's too costly to kill flies with radios," once said a famous Norwegian humorist.

I think he's right, even if he includes newer media like TV and the Internet. The Internet can't kill a fly, anyway.

The only way we can prove him wrong is by killing the reader first with boring writing. In Norway as in most countries, I think, too many editorials are too boring. They are pompous, inconclusive, serious, and dull. All too many fit into the classification DBI - dull but important - that someone came up with in the exchange of abbreviations on the Web.

Now, this is not the reason I have written a book about editorials. However, I wish I had done just that. It's a badly needed book. Next time, perhaps.

The reason for my writing the book is - it's almost a shame to tell - purely egoistic! Not to earn money, of course. I'm far too idealistic for such a thing, and the Norwegian market too small. Or perhaps it's the other way around.

No, this is about my ego. If you have never written a book, you don't know the fantastic feeling of receiving 20 books with your name on the front and back. You give it to friends with a special dedication and try to believe they read it, but you know they don't and you don't care.

It all started one night. Or one day. It might have been stormy and dark, but it might also have been one of those long Norwegian nights when the sun almost doesn't set.

I had been a journalist for almost 20 years and an editorial writer for almost 10. Was it not time to sit down and think? Not about life in general, but about all the whys and hows and whats that fill my days and make the bank account fill up every month.

I aired the idea to a friend and fellow editor, and he instantly agreed. He was on, and we started out with very high ambitions. After some lunches, dinners, research travels, and reading, the ambitions were lowered. Why not just sum up our mutual experiences?

We knew that no book on editorials in Norwegian was on the market, and we found nothing anywhere else in Europe. In the United States, however, we found NCEW and as many books as we cared to buy. I became a member of NCEW, and we bought a lot of books.

The contents of the book may be helpful for some editorial writers in Norway. The main thing is the mental process I've gone through. I have not studied journalism but have a Ph.D. in economics and am - to boast for half a sentence - now president of the professional economists association in Norway.

Economists are normally bad writers. I'm one of the exceptions, perhaps. But why? And what shall I do to write better? One of the answers is obviously to discuss with, criticize, and help colleagues as we do in NCEW. The other thing is to write a book about it.

Or just imagine doing so. Sit down. Pose all the fundamental questions. Try to give all the answers. Why do we have editorials? What shall I write about? What shall I write about that particular "what"? What kind of style do I choose?

Another - at least partly egoistic - reason is to heighten the professional quality and thereby the editorial writer's standing in society. This book will not help more than half an inch, but we hope that it may stimulate someone else to write a larger and better book on the theme. Then we would really have achieved something.

Having met with NCEW members and passed through the critique sessions scarred, but still alive, and having read some American books on editorial writing, the thing that still surprises me is all the similarities we have.

Good writing in Norwegian is very similar to good writing in English. The words and syntax might be different, as are our references and sometimes the metaphors. But the tricks we use to guide the readers through our confused minds are more or less the same.

NCEW member Stein B. Hauglid is political editor of Dagens Naeringsliv in Oslo, Norway. His book Vi - en bok om ledere (We: A Book About Editorials), coauthored with Stein Gauslaa, was published this year.