Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Why Do I Write?
Reading Charles Bazerman’s Handbook of Research on Writing (NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008) makes me think about exactly what I am doing when I write. The very first page spells it out:
“A world in which we read but don’t write is a world in which we do not have primacy agency. To gain direct agency it is necessary to be able to write, to produce the texts that will reach out to others, that will interact with others and influence them, that will mark our interests and perspectives in the literate world. It is by writing that we inscribe our place in the literate world and all the social systems that depend on literacy.”
This seems exactly right and is the motivation behind much of my own writing. I write because writing is a way of interacting with the world. When I write I am synthesizing information as well as responding to what the world throws my way. And beyond that, I write about things that are not yet important to others. I write hoping they will become important.
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Is It Time To Start A New Magazine?
What's old is new.
Um…no. Or would that be, yes? In a world where old is suddenly new, the correct answer is: Maybe.
Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher) talks about Generate, a “yummy beautiful” magazine to which he actually—yes—subscribed (sounds like he purchased it with cash money, right?). Glancing through the sample pages he shows made me think, “Hmm. Yes. I want to look at that.”
And that is just the way with old stuff that comes around again with a post-modern twist. Sort of like Pink Martini, old music from my parent’s generation recast for today (or maybe tomorrow). I listen to be reminded of melodies and words long forgotten. But I also listen because I get the joke: it’s old but there is something of today happening in the connective tissue of the music. And I listen because no one sings like China Forbes.
In the writing classes I teach at Northwestern College, we’ve been talking about how old communication vehicles can suddenly become extremely effective when composed today with a vigorous nod to today’s aesthetic. Pamphlets are finding their way back as a short form of communication. Brochures and Slim Jims can be repurposed so they suddenly don’t fit the category you thought they did when you picked them up—possibly resulting in not a small amount of delight. And who can keep from actually reading through a personal letter delivered by the postman (I don’t mean that generically—ours really is a guy).
Starting a magazine when most are dying doesn’t sound like a winning endeavor. On the other hand, one of the lessons of social media is that audiences can be found and they can find our project if it is repurposed to become ”yummy beautiful.”
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Things to do while waiting.
Photo Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Active waiting: when you’ve done all you can to move in this new direction, but God needs to open the door. Where to stand while you are waiting? Check out Finding Solid Ground in Slender Times at the The High Calling. org.
Corpse of the Month
I saw this bumper sticker a few years ago (8/11/2004) but just ran across it again today in my favorite quote pile.
Hair-Shirt Meet AIG
We need a prophet of old to come and set AIG on the straight and narrow. AIG who must pay out millions in bonuses because their “hands are tied” by binding agreements.
We have redeemed you, O AIG.
We have provided bailout monies,
because we pity your groveling
and hope to reign in the damage from your reckless ways.
We have pulled your donkey back from the flame,
To carry a burden another day.
But this.
Your bonuses smell of loathsome stool
From saggy trousers of insurers gone wild
Whose excesses are piled
For all to sniff and consider corporate contempt.
Your demand for plenty
From the hands of those who want.
Extinguishing trust.
Let public pain
Visit the craving maw of your greedy accounts.
Put away your business as usual
With the spotlight on you
And 170 billion public reasons to turn from your ways.
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Grow Your Craft of Conversation
In the coming age where conversation fuels our business, we’ll need to sharpen the usual tools in a different way. As a copywriter, I help my clients hone their messages, kill jargon, simplify, and answer “Who cares?” But helping my clients engage in conversation with their customers demands something more. Good conversation is about sharing useful information, information that goes beyond primary and secondary marketing messages. Conversation is markedly different from the old formulas that required key selling points to be repeated over and overin the presence of an audience that is assumed stupid or hard of hearing or both. Of course, officially we say we’re just trying to “break through the clutter.” But unofficially, do we think less of our audiences when we dumb things down? The dialogical world assumes clutter breaking up like spring ice as customers locate their real interest.
But conversation may well be a lost art, given all the years we’ve spent crafting our one-way messages. I was reminded of this when reading about the healing power of conversation in Edward Wimberly’s “African American Pastoral Care and Counseling: The Politics of Oppression and Empowerment.” Wimberly writes about how oppressed peoples (in particular) get recruited into stories that powerfully shape their world—leaving them powerless. In fact, we all get recruited into stories that shape our world, for good or ill. But the power of conversation is in reshaping how we engage with the world. The best conversations have, among other things, elements of truth-telling and deep listening.
How does this relate to marketing conversations in the dialogical world? It means we’ll need to grow in our ability to listen. We’ll need to grow beyond techniques for active listening (the “Uh-huh” and “I see” we mutter from behind the newspaper when our spouse talks). It means listening because the person across from me has value, because as whole people they are truly interesting, and because their life experience—not just their experience with my product—has a bearing on your route through this world.
That’s why growing in our ability to converse may actually help us grow more human.
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Conversations Create Stuff
If there is one word that sums up the life of a consultant, it might be “talk.” But not for the reason you think. Consultants always seem to be selling—true—but it is even more true that fresh new solutions pop up in the middle of the most mundane conversations. Good consultants realize this and always have their radar up.
Yesterday I talked with a high-powered, well-connected friend who had just left the corporate world and was thinking about consulting. We waxed on about what fun it is to reconnect with old friends and colleagues in the course of networking, and finding new friends and hearing their stories. We both mentioned this crazy thing that can sometimes happen when someone innocently says “So, what is it you do, again?”
Suddenly you find yourself casting about for an appropriate way to summarize your work for this precise conversation, this context, and this person. You may even have an elevator speech ready to go, but even that needs to be tweaked right now. This instant.
And so you talk. And sometimes you are surprised by what comes out of your mouth. New stuff you’ve never thought of before. Stuff you can follow-up on right away.
My work as a communications consultant allows me to probe for ways to serve people and organizations with strategic writing skills. This conversation miracle happens routinely. We trade problems. We share insights. We consider what is and what could be. Along the way we often say true things about ourselves. And if we are listening, small confirmations pop up in the conversations. Small confirmations about who we are and what we do in life and how our role fits. When these small confirmation pop, and when I am listening, small acts of creation spring forth. Solid bits of ground beneath my feet, ready for walking forward, ready in a way I could not walk before. All because of conversations.
As a Trinitarian God-fearer (that is, your standard-issue Christian), I’m reminded that creation sprang forth in much the same way: the Triune God talking together and—behold—this blue ball, and everything on it.
So…have a conversation today.
P.S. Speaking of conversations, read Jeff Cornwall’s take on how his undergrad students view corporate career paths versus entrepreneurship. It will cheer you. Or not.
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Blagojevich on Letterman: Gawking at the Wreckage
It was embarrassing to watch Rod Blagojevich on Letterman last night. Several times I almost turned it off, but the same thrill of gawking at a car wreck kept me riveted. The AP story quotes him as misunderstood, that he will be vindicated and—what’s this?—offers of work are coming in? Book deals? His own television show? So the AP writer speculates.
Letterman is engaging because he sometimes nails my thoughts with his words. When telling that Blagojevich would be on the show, he admitted he had no idea why the former governor was there—which was exactly what I was thinking. He had been in the monologue crosshairs for some time. The AP story reports:
At the Letterman show, Blagojevich laughed with the audience when the host mentioned watching him on several television talk shows, including “The View” on ABC, “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC and the “Today” show on NBC.
“The more you talked,” Letterman joked, “and the more you repeated your innocence, the more I said to myself, ‘Oh, this guy is guilty.'”
Blagojevich refused details or to answer direct questions because of the impending criminal case. All he can do is claim innocence, which furthers Letterman’s observation every time Blagojevich talks.
The dishonored governor and his personal media campaign remind me that in this country, any fame is good fame. Even notoriety (“widely and unfavorably known”) is favorable, because getting in the public eye opens the possibility of getting in the public pocketbook. Reputation, honor, effective service, all these pale in comparison to the possibility of making money.
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conversation is an engine 