Archive for the ‘Piece of Mind’ Category
The items began collecting in 1994 when I decided to keep my first letter and some photographs from a girl I’d met one summer, which was also her name. The shoe box is filled with envelopes and corresponding letters written in girls’ handwriting, ticket stubs from concerts and baseball games, birthday cards signed by people I remember and some I don’t, and paper scraps with a young man’s wisdom written on them. The young man thought they were worth holding onto. (more…)
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Tags: Thoughts on Writing
The old man’s afternoon began with an egg boiling, a ritual carried out at five minutes after five during the week and just after 4 on weekends. He had a small under-cabinet radio and he stood at the range and listened more than cooked, his mind half-listening and fully agreeing with conservative commentators. This was the routine: remove a pot from the metal drawer under the stove, turn the burner on so that it could heat, hold the pot under the faucet until it was a quarter full, then set it on the burner, watch the coils turn warm to orange, listen to the crackling under its metal bottom, and finally watch for the ripple through the water as it braced for something worse. (more…)
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Tags: Free Writing
This was one of the first songs I learned the words to. I remember sitting on the floor around an upright piano with the other kids with folded legs. Ms. Bachus, our kindergarten teacher, looked over her shoulder at us us and raised her eyebrows – an encouragement to sing along. Her hands were arched and they lifted and dropped on the chords sounding rich and wooden in the piano’s belly. Kindergarten teachers were magic then in how they taught and entertained us, too, with real vaudeville talent. I was a nervous little boy so scared to go to school some days that I’d worry myself sick. I missed a full week that winter with a pretend illness that came about with no fever and no recognizable side-effects. Rehearsing this song for the winter music concert made me feel happy. It filled me with so much joy that I wondered if anyone could see it inside me.
Every divorced mother in the 80s piloted a white Chevy Citation hatch-back. They were affordable and family-friendly, with plenty of space, and most importantly, they weren’t station wagons. I rode in one with my mother almost always in the back seat so I could carry out battles between my action figures or lie on my back and watch the clouds. My parents were divorced in 1984, and for a time, I was worried that the judge might make me choose between living with my mother and father. I was afraid of what my dad would do about my choice. I can remember a dozen songs from that time, but this one is the most vivid. The mix reminds me of the way my little boy smiles while he cries when something upsets him, but he doesn’t understand why. (more…)
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Tags: Music
Exercising a haughty vocabulary – particularly in a sales piece – can be a risky move for a copywriter. I don’t know about you, but if I was writing promotional copy for a book touting effective communication with employees, I don’t think I’d use the word “panoply” in the opening sentence. PR News dropped me a line with an e-cycle today that utilized this hook. I’ve pasted the opening paragraph below. Notice the semicolon and yet another vocabulary stretch, “foolhardy”. The person who wrote this is trying to tell readers something – and I think it’s that they are more intelligent than us. Or maybe that know how to use a thesaurus. But that does that make you want to purchase the book?
“In PR News’ inaugural Employee Communications Guidebook, we offer a full panoply of information that can improve your skills for many scenarios. Whether it’s recruiting and retaining talent or greening the workplace, this Guidebook will hone your understanding on how you can craft and ensure effective messaging to employees; it will also give you the resources you need to streamline all channels of internal communications. Putting employee communications on the backburner during this challenging period is not only foolhardy but a serious misstep that can have damaging repercussions from which your company, agency or association may never fully recover.”
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Tags: Business
My first real writing gig was as a reporter for a driveway-weekly newspaper. You know the kind. The kind that nobody picks up to read, that bake in the sun until they are stacked like kindling and threatening to catch flame. No one read the newspaper I worked for so no one knew the name of it or who to call to hold delivery if they took a trip with the kids to Disney World. In the summer, every other driveway in the suburban delivery zone would pile up with them because no one was there to feel the shame from being too lazy to toss them. The glory in writing for that paper wasn’t in the byline and certainly not in the paycheck. What should have sweetened the deal was that I had my own office, even if it was a storage closet with no view onto the quaint rivertown streets. (more…)
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Tags: Journalism
