working to surprise and delight.
Author and writing teacher Frederick Barthelme used to hand out at the beginning of his workshops. This is great advice. Be sure not to follow it to the letter. Step one in the great enterprise of a new and preferable you in the house of fiction is: Mean less. That is, don’t mean so much. …
Continue reading “The 39 Steps: a primer on story writing by Frederick Barthelme”
Just blowing the cobwebs out of my blog and seeing how this upload function works… playbook_v1.6 CaseStudy print ad
Last Saturday was my 46th birthday. Maybe I should be more upset over that, but I suspect I’m saving up my angst for the big five-oh, so I was calmish about it. Ed gave me a quite lovely gift. Back in college, my Nanna and Pop-Pop gave me 8 slide carousels with pictures from the …
I was catching up on Facebook last night when I ran across the following exchange: Chet Farmer “hey, that guitar looks familiar.” Joel Frank Black “Man, that guitar didn’t mess around nohow– it wouldn’t take no jive turkey crap from NOBODY, had solid yttrium pickups, was carved from the finest particle board plank available in …
Never had a large family, and over the years it has dwindled. The husband has a large family, and they have kindly adopted me as one of their own, so it hasn’t trouble me too much. I have a sister in Mississippi, a father somewhere in Texas, probably extended relatives out there somewhere. It has …
Don’t tell me chance doesn’t run the craps table in the casino of life. And don’t tell me there’s any such thing as a self-made man. I know better. Everything I have I owe to sheer dumb luck, and to the generous spirits of the people I have had the good fortune to know. Jackson, …
We live a long way from our relatives. A plane ride with a layover long way. That means we generally eat Thanksgiving dinner by ourselves, just the four of us. I like it that way. But it doesn’t stop me from cooking a dinner big enough to feed a couple dozen aunts and cousins and …
And I have a whole list of excuses that do nothing to mask the real issue: it’s easier to consume content than to create it. Also, I’m hesitant to create more white noise, and I haven’t had a lot to say in, oh, eight months or so. But I have recently been at once shamed …
Ed (the husband) and I are currently hooked on the cable television show “How It’s Made”, airing on Discovery Channel. It shows, step by step, how common objects (paintballs, golf balls, hotdogs, bubble gum, etc.) are manufactured. It’s wonderful. It succeeds because it doesn’t try to tart up the content. No corny hosts, no flashy …
Continue reading “Content done right, part 1: How It’s Made.”
This remains to be seen. I’m a copywriter, associate creative director and general promo ho who has been chewing on a few basic question for most of my working life: What makes great work? What makes a successful career? What makes a happy life? Have I got a shot at any of that stuff? Those …