You might think that the art of writing fiction would have little in common with the art of practicing law. Scott Turow would beg to differ.

"They're actually very similar tasks," says Turow, the bestselling author who is also a partner at the Chicago law firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. "You know, you've got to shape characters and shape witness testimony ... . You are an author in both venues to a great extent, and particularly as a prosecutor, you really do need to keep your eye on the narrative, and make sure it's compelling."

Leslie Powell-Skinner of Eldridge, Iowa, last month was named the winner of the American Library Association's At My Library Creative Essay contest. She won $350 for her poem "A 'Cents'ible Resource."

After being swamped with opinions, and instead of making a decision this December, the Iowa Board of Pharmacy will hold a special one-day meeting in February to make a recommendation to the state legislature on whether to legalize medical marijuana. The delay is to give board members time to read 12,000 pages of written comments. The public meeting will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, February 17, in the auditorium of the Iowa State Historical Building, 600 East Locust Street in Des Moines. For more information, visit Iowa.gov/ibpe.

On December 1, the Quad-City Times ran 29 square inches of copy on the not-for-profit organization Skills Inc. shutting down at the end of the year. The Rock Island Argus ran an eight-square-inch brief on its front page.

This can be seen as a microcosm of the Quad Cities' two daily newspapers. A River Cities' Reader analysis found that last week, the Quad-City Times devoted 80 percent more space to local news content than the twin Illinois papers, the Rock Island Argus and the Moline Dispatch.

For the week of November 29 to December 5, the Times had 91 articles, editorials, and columns written by staff members or Lee Enterprises bureau reporters concerning local and state issues and news, totaling 2,300 square inches. The Argus/Dispatch had 69 such articles, totaling 1,274 square inches.

Including letters to the editor, the Times had more local news content each day last week than the Argus or Dispatch. Outside of Saturday's paper -- in which the amount of local news content was nearly the same -- each day the Times devoted at least 23 percent more space to local news content than the Argus/Dispatch did. On Monday, the Quad-City Times featured 307 square inches of local news content; the Argus/Dispatch had 30 -- all letters to the editor.