via Laineys Repertoire

There have been a rush of blogs across my RSS reader lately about how 2012 is the year content marketing is set to take off. Many marketing heads will be looking to hire out content development to ghost and guest bloggers. After all, it is rather difficult to market content when there is no actual content to market.

This is almost 100% good news for those in my industry. Except for the tiny part where writers have to work with non-writers.  While this isn’t entirely a bad thing, I have had some experiences in the past which demonstrated how many professionals aren’t sure how to work with a copywriter. 

Writing is one of those things that everyone assumes they can just do. If you can speak, you can write. Right?

No, not really. At all.

Some are lucky enough to realize their limitations and are lucky if they can spell out their grocery list correctly. Others whip out words to their blog/website without a second thought and we’re left to wonder how serious they are. I mean, if a website is poorly written, do you have to tell the owner? How do you recover from that? Remove your contact link?

Others, though, are able to develop a strong understanding of written language. They become the novelists and playwrights, the journalists,  the copywriters.

Flat out – if you own a business, you’ll eventually need copy. If you can’t hack it then you should save yourself the headache and the embarrassment of doing it wrong and hire a copywriter. 

What does a copywriter do?

As they name suggests: we write copy. The words that fill your promotional material, your websites, your advertisements. In a case where one word follows the next, that’s what we’re up to. Our goal is to generate the kind of copy that turns your audience into your customers through targeted language and keyword research.

That’s copywriter. Not: copyrighter. We have nothing to do with settling patent issues. Yes, I have had to dispel this on more than one occasion. “Copyrighter” isn’t even a thing.

Where do you get a copywriter? They’re all over the damn place. If you’re working with a marketing firm, they probably have in-house writers. A lot of copywriters are freelance and have established websites to promote their work. Google it. Or ask around. Look for companies that have really good copy and ask them where they got their work done.

What do you need written? It’s best to lay this out up front. The better idea you have of what you need written up front, the less surprises there are down the road. Smart copywriters will have some kind of survey to fill out or a handful of questions that will allow them to collect the information they need. Not only do we want to create solid copy, but we also want to be able to convey your voice and personality through it.

The more information you can give us, the better. Give us the scoop on your product, your brand, business, and services. Otherwise we’re left shooting in the dark and pulling words out of our ass. While I can do that all day long, the clock is running.

Speaking of clock’s running…

Payment. Yep, it is that much. No, discounts aren’t available. Ok, if you can do it for that much, then why are we still talking? Please understand: Having great copy is the cornerstone of your marketing. Snazzy websites and great graphics are nice, but how are you planning on conveying what your brand or product is/does without the copy? Video is on the up-and-up, but what good is a video without a script that is written? What about your customers who can’t/won’t watch the video. You need a writer, a good one, and it will definitely cost you something.

This is your business, why wouldn’t you invest in your marketing?

Looking for something cheaper? Always something good going on over at Elance. Keep in mind – you get what you pay for, and the language barrier can be a bit of a, you know, barrier.

A few Dos and Dont’s

Do: Trust us, we know what we’re doing. At least, most of us know what we’re doing. You can only review the copy so many times and say “I don’t know, it just doesn’t sound like me” before I have to wonder if you ever listen to yourself.

Do: Build a relationship with us. Build a good relationship with us. You never know when you’ll need something else written, so keep your copywriter in the loop for changes your website or marketing campaign may be experiencing.

Don’t: Run the copy by your teenage daughter – the one who happened to get into the freshman AP English class at her high school. I was in that class, it’s not that impressive. You are the business owner, you need to be making the calls.

Don’t: Try to stretch out the terms of the contract. Don’t try to sneak in extra pages of content. If we estimated 15 hours of work and it ends up being 20, expect to pay the 20. This is our craft, our profession. We are as good at this as you are at your business.

Overall, get yourself in good with a copywriter. If they are anything like me, then they know professionals from a variety of backgrounds.  Many copywriters are multi-talented as well and can do everything from community management to content marketing (mind you, these services are not usually free) which can also do wonders for your business.

As I type this everything aches. My fingers, veterans of this keyboard, are reluctant  - raw, tender. Bright red and dried out from hours of testing my grip. The gentle soreness of my shoulders and core that comes from having spent hours scrambling up and falling off of the infrastructure of a climbing gym. It’s the good kind of hurt.

Somehow, though, I’m ok with it. I’m alright because I told myself that there was a point in time I sought out this feeling, I thrived on it. Now if I could just remember when, and why.

Maybe it is the looming re-write of the never ending, umpteenthed drafted, million-timed outlined project that may forever just be known as “The Boy Scout Book.” All of the meditations, the remembering of finite details, the pouring over old journals from the era that makes me slightly nostalgic. What did I like about this? What thrill did I get out of a good climb that made me want to get back into the hobby seven years later? I’m still trying to place a sore finger on it, but I think it has something to do with trust.

I’ve been thinking about trust a lot lately. Thanks to being raised in a culture of popular culture, synthetic news, and social media I find myself doing ten minutes of research on just about everything I read or hear about. I find I get nervous around police – who society used to trust to serve and protect, I can’t even fathom any of the Republican nominees being trusted with the burden of running the all of America. I can’t trust most of the food I find at the grocery store or the products for sale in just about any retail establishment.

Hell, I can’t even trust that your hands are clean when we first meet and you reach for that handshake.

The new one, lately, is a trust in my own abilities. Working freelance can do that to you. There is no one around to really pass work off to or affirm that what you’ve just completed is anywhere near the ballpark of what is expected.

I think about trust and it brings up a lot of mixed feelings about my Scouting days. I saw a lot of weird stuff happen, saw sides of a lot of people they probably wouldn’t want shown. However, first and foremost, a Scout is Trustworthy. The more positive experiences revolve around the development and discovery of this trust in others and showing that I was capable of it myself. While working at Philmont I spent an inseparable and irreplaceable week with my Training Crew, TC-13, and to this day I’m pretty sure I’d give any of them a place to crash if they happened to show up on my doorstep. Mind you, I haven’t seen or heard from most of TC-13 in almost a decade.

There is a trust in oneself that comes with the physical exhaustion of the outdoors. Hauling 50 pounds of gear through somewhere you’ve never been, not entirely sure what the next turn in the trail might bring. But you press on, one blistered and aching foot in front of the other, even if you arent’ entirely sure you can move on. Until that following wintery ou find yourself looking at maps, tracing routes with your fingers, saying “I have no idea what is here, but I know myself well enough that I can go there and be just fine. Hell, I might even enjoy it.”

The recent climbing has been re-learning that. Relearning how to trust. As an introvert I have a difficult time trusting, especially new people. Building a relationship, no matter how menial it may be, can take years and it can be undone in just a few sentences. All of this is quite possibly what I find so endearing about climbing.

Climbing is like that. Climbing can be a lot of things, but I feel it is mostly about trust.

Trust in the equipment, in the idea that someone took their careful time in the design and manufacturing of everything: the harness, the belay, the ropes.

Trust in people you don’t know at all – I have done a few afternoons of climbing at Rock’n & Jam’n up in Thorton, Colorado (note: the only reason I will ever go to Thorton – blegh). Several of their routes are top-rope. This means I have to rely on the rope being in good condition. I also have to trust that other climbers know enough about ropes to know when it should probably be retired.

Trust in those I do know – I’ve been climbing with Matt, who I met by random happenstance a few weeks ago at a bar here in town. Twitter happens. Now Matt has served as my belay for our few climbing sessions. This means, should I fall (and I do, a lot) I’ll have to trust that Matt is paying attention enough to catch the rope before I turn into a mess. Likewise, Matt expects just as much from me.

Trust in me – You favor what you can get the best grasp on – the holds I can wrap my whole fist around. Sometimes, though, these holds aren’t available. Sometimes the challenge is forced upon me and all that is above me are skinny grips, some barely a quarter inch wide, that I have to use to get to higher. I can’t wrap my whole hand around it. Testing it, it barely feels like my fingertips can grasp it.

But what choice do I have? Of all places to test out how much I trust my own abilities, this is it. Assuming, of course, Matt is paying attention to my inevitable fall.

And at each summit I’m lowered again. Each time I prove that I can do that much. And the next climb, while inevitably different, will be the same – a transference of skills and the trust that comes with knowing that someone else was able to do this, so why can’t you?

The trick, though, is making sure you have a novel at the end of the month. 50K continuous words doesn’t necessarily mean you have a novel. It probably just means you have a big document. NaNoWriMo is good at doing one thing: showing the every man that a book can be written in the span of a month, and you really don’t have any excuse.

John Updike said in an interview that there weren’t any more serious writers. Everyone who writes does so as more of a hobby. As a result few think that writing should have any work put into it. Career writers – who work at the words like their careers depend on it – replaced by hobby writers who do it because they decide it’s fun. Updike died in 2009. Probably unrelated.

In my junior year of college I took a screenwriting class. It was one of those classes that everyone wanted to take but no one learned anything because the college didn’t want to have anything to do with the film or writing programs. Underfunded, apathetic instructors, lost bets.  I did have a legitimate desire to be in the class; to learn the format and craft of the screenwriting process. But I sucked at it because my love affair with whiskey and percocet and generally-unattainable women I was having at the time made it rather difficult to do any kind of writing.

Like, not one single page of script. Not one line that a student director could even imagine placing a shot around. I managed a D in the class only because I managed to give halfway decent notes on other student’s scripts. When the semester ended I went home to my folks place for a few days and found myself entombed in their living room as four-foot snow drifts piled up out in the holiday snowstorm. No one was going anywhere and my parents house has been a notoriously dry one for all of my upbringing. With a clear-ish head and ridiculously bad cable playing in the background I banged out a 165 page screenplay over the span of 3 days in my fever of comparable sobriety. I called it “This is Not A Love Story”, I was listening to a lot of Public Image in those days.

At the start of the following semester I went to the screenwriting professor’s office and dropped a copy of the script in the center of his desk and begged for a higher grade. I had, after all, finished the assignment for the semester – does it matter if it’s a little late? It is, after all, the creative process!

He read it and gave me one note a week later: “This is the most narcissistic, self-absorbed, egotistical garbage I have ever read in my entire career. B+” A week later he walked off campus, allegedly in the middle of class. Probably unrelated.

I had a friend read it. Her only note: “Do the characters do anything other than fuck in this movie?”

Three days of writing, no rewrite, and it shows.  I’m sure I’ve got a copy of it around here somewhere.

The point? Maybe this: words, literature, stories, characters, plots – all the things that make up a book or a movie – are really like a decent wine, bourbon, cigar, cheese. It’s never very good right out of the gate. If they’re going to be really good, they  have to rot. Decay. They need to be left out in the rain, allowed to rust and swell and break. They need time to erode down and develop a natural feel.

J.A. Jance and Janet Evanovich each have something like 40 or 50 novels to their name. A new one comes out every six months or so. Jonathan Safran Froer is winning international peace prizes for his work – he’s got, what? Three books? Franzen is the middle-aged grump who has worked his whole life for the sum total of four novels. David Foster Wallace let his work kill him – literally.

I do wish every writer well, especially when it comes to NaNoWriMo. But when the month is said and done, don’t rush your work to press. Let it live on the back porch until spring, give it another once over, tune up the glaring weak spots and then send me a copy.

A lot of writers will tell you the hardest part is the title. Without titles, I’d have no idea what I am working on. Titles are easy. Titles, whether you end up using it or not, is the very first thing you should apply to a project. It gives it life even if it ends up dead in the water.

Here are just a few titles in the pile right now:

Cute Girls in Shitty Civics

Tall, beautiful blondes

Drugs and Whiskey got me through it

Here There’d Be Monsters

Missed Mornings

Sunrise in the West Hills

Kill City

Family Matters

The Affricative “K” 

NaNoWriMo is coming up. Which means we might get to see one of these titles put into action.

It’s OK. Most writers aren’t entirely sure what they’re after either.

I see ads and requests for writers who have extensive experience writing in a certain field, research on a certain topic. What a waste. For to hire those writers would be to hire soemone who has already written about it. Chances are, they would rather be writing about something else.

I write for discovery. Personal, professional, and otherwise. Most of the reason I lay my pen to the page is to understand something I don’t know. I have never taken a class on medicine in my life, but I have assisted in the authoring of a medical textbook. I know not the lives of my characters until I explore with the writing.

How do we teach students about developing arguments and learning new concepts? Through the process of writing, which always has some element of research.

No one writes to showcase what they already know. We write to show what we have discovered, to express the new ideas we have tied together, to show the research in a whole new light.

To write about something which you’ve already written about? How long until that dead horse starts to stink?

As a writer, I really can’t write about writing. It’s weirdly meta. A writer who writes about the craft of writing is no the same as a mechanic who writes about the art of cars. Eventually you find yourself so close to the subject. The topics are so familiar that you can’t explain them. Like trying to give someone directions to a place you have driven to a million times before – you might forget to explain the crucial point where they need to keep left versus turn left.

Frankly, I would only want to hire the writer who doesn’t know anything about your industry or business. Chances are, you’re hiring that writer to write content for people who are also not as knowledgeable about the topic. What better person to write to the less-informed audience? Why not hire someone who will process the new information into an analogy that your new audience can easily digest?

Then, yeah, hire a writer far outside your industry. In a matter of no time, they’ll probably know more about your industry than you do.

Mostly they are recycled bestsellers, neglected paperback purchases from grocery stores and airports,  serials of mystery novels, a few new printings of pop-books. Every now and again I find a gem – a rare printing of a great book written so far ahead of it’s time that the publisher lost their ass on and closed up shop before the next printing. Lots of leather-bound volumes, collections, things that the owner has found and picked out to mark up to prices only the most devout of antiquitarians would pay.

Black and Red keeps their lights on from the loyal fanbase of used book aficionados. Like so many bookstores, there are those who forgo their libraries and big box book sellers to read something that has been weathered by time. They sell back books they’ve finished, exchaning store credit for something new. Some collectors and sellers earn a living circulating between here and other book stores to find rare copies for clients, pawn off forgeries, or to find a second-edition they can sell on their skeezy eBay store as a first.

I can only imagine that this secondary economy is at risk of dwindling away. The new, fresh stock that lines a majority of the shelves – the books read once or twice – isn’t as robust as it used to be. As new book retailers close up shop all around the country and ebook editions consistently outsell their paper-bound counterparts it’s odd to think: one day this store will do nothing more than cycle around the same stock of books. Imagine if the books that existed now are the only books to ever exist, nothing new going into print. With each passing of the book from one pair of hands to another the paper returns a little more brittle, beat up, stained by the oils from the thousand fingers thumbing the edges before you.

New times, new technologies, new business models. I can’t say I hate the idea of epublishing or a life of ebooks. Sure, the romantic notion of having a home full of worn books may evaporate. But the hippie in me fears the environmental costs of printing entire runs of books on virgin paper, the glues that hold the pages together, the generally toxic process of making ink. Not to mention the fuel burned to ship and deliver each of those books.

Two years ago I was given a Kindle for Christmas. I love it. It is one of the only pieces of technology I have that actually does what it says it is going to do and works the way I need it to work. The screen which can be read in direct light without glare. Text I can actually read, a system for purchase and delivery that asks me for the least amount of time and effort.  During my tenure with the device Amazon has only made me do one software update. Not to mention I also have access to millions of free books empassioned writers put on the market.

How easy school would have been if only I had access to an e-reader. Not having to buy second, third and fifth-hand editions of stories that have been read for hundreds of years. Instead, Project Gutenberg! Purchasing science texts that would be considered archaic by the end of the semester would not have been an factor in my frequently contested pizza and whiskey budget.

The drawback? I’ll be damned if I can tell you about this great book I’m reading, and not be able to offer it to you when I’m done. Sure, the Kindle and Nook does have a built in digital lending feature, but it doesn’t work with all books. The sharing of the books is a lot less meaningful when the handing off of the pages is reduced to the transmission of invisible data whenever I can remember what your email address is.

Oh! The dangers of the ereader. Like the ironic deletion of 1984 from numerous Kindle’s back in 2009 (in all fairness, the original posted product did not rightfully belong to whoever posted it to the Kindle store). It makes you wonder, if Amazon does this, then what else? How far will the threat of random, unnanounced censorship go? It serves to remind us that the purchase and acquisition of an ebook could be easily contested, deleted, and manipulated.

Manipulated!

Someone’s favorite book remains as someone’s favorite book because it is unchanging. The plot and characters and style are there, set in ink on the page, for all of time. The only thing that changes the story is the reader. No one has a favorite blog post, because blogs change and the context of what the writer has said can change with an anonymous comment

Until now.

If recent history has handed us any lesson, it is that all digitized content is one encryption key away from becoming free, pirated content. A whole new way to steal books. Digital property can be changed, updated, manipulated, deleted, replaced.

So what will become of the romantic nature behind books? Lovers who share volumes, notes scribbled in the margins, the unique feel of  a broken spine? The smell? Lord, the smell. Who is going to say they don’t like the dusty, mildewy smell of an old book?

This deficit of printed words will probably bring about a new class of antiquitarians – lovers of old books. The collecting of books will rise to a whole new level of fetish. What are now piled on the priced-to-move table at Barnes and Noble could eventually be something worth fighting over in the not-too-distant future. Print will probably go the way of vynil. Books will be distributed digitally and the print will be an afterthought. Released years later, in a large collector’s box with gold-leaf pages. Something that only a true fan of your work would really enjoy. I tell people that Songs About Whiskey is released exclusively on the e-reader and the first thing a lot of people ask is when the actual book is coming out.

Print isn’t dead. It just needs a new model.

Some images:

Saturday – Podcamp Denver

I am not a podcaster. I mean, I listen to them whenever I get the gumption to actually open iTunes (going on 3 months since last use) to sync my relic of an iPod (there’s a clickwheel on it. Seriously).  But I don’t know the first thing about making them, producing them, spreading them all over the net. However, there was no shortage of opportunities for me to learn about podcasting and everything new-media related at Podcamp.

I’ve been the nerdy kid in the back of the class since forever. I fell in love with the internet because it allowed me to connect with other people and opportunities without actually having to actually be social or talk to anyone.  Over the years the net has become more social and so have I – both on and off line.

Podcamp was an active observance and discussion of all those wonderful little facets. I enjoyed that the topics were covered through guided conversations rather than lecture. While no actual conclusions or solutions were reached, the discussions allowed for fresh ideas to take seed.

As a writer, I’m constantly looking for new ways to build and connect to audiences. The tools of new media and the bright minds that come together at events like Podcamp help. Both of my parents were also in attendance. Unlike me, they are avid podcasters and constantly working up new products over at their Podcasting home page (don’t let the picture of the cat deter you). Over the next year I would love to play around with a little video to support my various blogging projects and broadcast my messages through a stronger medium.

For the moment, however, I’ll stick with words.

Like this, but with less heroin

I loose track of things all the damn time. Contacts, phone numbers, faces, stories, notes. That I have come this far in life, in my little career, is a damn miracle.

I have a few tricks and bits of technology at my disposal. The Android contact integration with Facebook has been a lifesaver with the “who am I talking to?” situations. I’ve also get text message notifications that remind me the street-sweeping truck is coming that day (even though I sometimes get these reminders on the wrong day – government conspiracy?). Other times, I run into an old associate who asks “hey, did you ever finish that novel that you quit your job so you could have more time to write?”

No, ass.

But when it comes to keeping my writing projects together, it’s all about the editorial calendars. An organization trick I picked up from my days as a small time journalist on a half-time slick, editorial calendars are prime for those of us who aren’t on a 24 our news cycle. They are for when you wind up writing features and special sections, things with deadlines, being able to see how much time you have and all the important details can be the difference between a fantastic story and a blank page.

When it comes to dealing with ten different clients, all with special writing requirements, each on their own meticulous deadline, an editorial calendar is the difference between a stack of paychecks and screaming “screw it” and throwing the Country A-K rack out into the street and working the rest of your days in a Virgin Megastore maintaining one’s sanity.

In the days when the copy desk had ancient iMac desktops balanced on them, the editorial calendar was a mix of a blotter-sized calendar on the wall and the A&E editor’s manic demands. Sure, there were the column inches I had to routinely account for and could plan out weeks in advance. Then there were the “emergencies” (which, in A&E was either a celebrity death, or the ad sale’s failure to fill their ad blocks) that kept me at the office until two or three in the morning (with class frequently starting at eight) making up absolute garbage to fill in the gaps with.

And you wonder why journalism is a dead sport.

The calendar tells you when the meetings are, when certain drafts are due, where’s the photo for this story? What’s the deadline? Who is writing this article over here? He fell through? Fuck! What’s the backup story? The thing on cats? Fuck! Alright, whatever, run with it!

That was then. Ink dried on paper and now we have URLs instead of newsstands. So it goes.

I don’t keep track of projects and client demands on a paper calendar hanging on my wall because I’m the kind of guy that remembers to turn the page of the calendar somewhere around the 12th of each month. If paper calendars are your thing, however, get a calendar that is big enough to write a lot of stuff on. Sadly, this means it’ll probably be a dull-as-hell Office Max number that is completely devoid of the real reason people hang calendars on walls (bikinis and/or well-oiled firemen. Or cats. Or well-oiled cats).

Personally, I use a mix of Google Calendars (with lots of colors and different clients kept to different calendars because they can’t get along) and, when necessary, the WordPress Editorial Calendar’s plugin.  Editorial Calendar gives you an actual calendar to draft, schedule, and plan out your blog entries. No more guessing what day is a Tuesday!

The plugin is invaluable to me, especially when it comes to my personal blogging projects (like the one you’re reading). As a writer, I rarely finish anything in one sitting. I mean, how can anyone do this? You are, after all, sitting in front of the same machine that has Hulu on it. The Calendar’s plugin keeps me responsible because I have it set to publish the scheduled post whether I have finished it or not.

Sometime, blank pages go live. As do half baked ideas.

Such is the internet.

Which is kinda true. I mean, think about it. The interface is stupid simple; it reminds me of the laminated menus at Denny’s after an evening out at the bars. You don’t even need to know how to pronounce what you’re ordering – just point at the pictures.  Users are allowed to design their personal Tumblrs to look like anything they want, even if what they want is a Myspace circa 2005 aesthetic.

And the idea of “creating content for your blog” on Tumblr has been boiled down to the button on every post which says “reblog.”

And there’s porn on Tumblr. Like, a lot of naked people. Some of it may just be artsy photo stills, the rest are somewhat clever gifs. All of which is avoidable so long as you keep a close eye on the other Tumblr blogs you happen to follow.

Actually being able to see what content is good

However, Tumblr is far more than just another startup looking to expand the English language by opting out of vowels. There is a world of really cool, amazing stuff on Tumblr. I happen to follow hundreds of blogs through Not Quite Hippie’s Tumblr and many follow back. It’s a wonderful way to find new ideas, links, videos, and information to keep the world of sustainable content moving.

More than half of the traffic to NotQuiteHippie.com each month is driven through Tumblr – that’s more than I get from Twitter and Facebook combined. Not to mention that my bounce rates are particularly low on Tumblr traffic, and the new users camp out on the blog forever. It is all thanks to the Re-Blog function. If I post a link to the blog, and the world of Tumblr deems it interesting enough, it takes off on a wildfire of reblogging. One of my followers reblogs, then their followers see it and reblog to their own followers and so on. Through this platform, anything can go viral.

From what I’ve been able to tell, Google has yet to provide a unique index for each time the link is reblogged. For now, all of the links I’ve posted that I have been reblogged hundreds of time still show up as a big, fat “1″ on my Google webmaster tools. Most likely? It is that every blog on Tumblr is on a subdomain rather than a directory (Tumblr: http://your blog.tumblr.com opposed to http://tumblr.com/yourblog).

But, yeah, there’s still a lot of porn out there too. But I thought Google loved porn?

I’ve got a Tumblr for all the cool, somewhat juvenile stuff I find.

And I’ve got a Tumblr for Not Quite Hippie.

Do you Tumbl? What’s been your experience? Are you worth following?

Also, I really loved last night’s Ignite. It’ was great. I loved meeting all sorts of new people and hearing that folks enjoyed my presentation (although I can’t remember a single thing about it). What’s that? Yes, I pushed my book coming out this month: https://www.facebook.com/songsaboutwhiskey