Writing for Marketing

I wrote marketing copy at my company for a while. It was kind of off and on, and they recently hired someone else who is going to be taking over (thankfully). A more scholarly person would draw comparisons between writing fiction and writing to sell stuff, but all I have to say is that in both cases you are making stuff up.

The experience was kind of eye-opening for me. At first I was excited about learning a new technique, and how to think from a different perspective. But it got old. Especially when I was writing glowing praises for a piece of software that is as bugged as the Nixon-era White House. Most especially when I learned that a customer had already been using said software for over a year.

The boss man is a smart guy. He knows stuff. He also has a tendency to assume his employees know nothing, so meetings with him last forever. In those meetings, he spent a lot of time talking about how placing restraints on the creative process allows for more potent creativity from the writer -- something I have long believed, on account of everything I've read and written. But he also wanted to come up with a Detailed Marketing Copy Writing and Editing Super Good Stuff Process so that a person with no knowledge of our software could write the same calibur marketing documents that I could (note: I'm involved in design and testing, so I know our software pretty well). This is where I start to smell something funny.

I'm going to assume that anyone reading this is somewhat familiar with the hero's journey. I think it's a wonderful outline for an epic tale. However, I think it takes more than just that outline to craft a good story. A writer needs to approach the hero's journey with unique characters, different settings, and an assortment of devices to set it apart from every other hero's journey. So why not create a more specific hero's journey template? It could include all of the stock characters you need, all of the locations, and even the conversations that need to happen. Excellent! What happens after someone writes that story? Do we just keep writing the same one over and over, and just change the names?

That was pretty much what my experience with marketing copy was, only I spent far, far more time creating outlines and templates for writing pieces than I did actually writing them. It was ridiculous.

And the boss actually made a comment at one point about how marketing writing was useful, unlike fiction or something you write "for yourself." Sure thing. Deception in the name of filling someone else's pockets. I'm not sure how that's useful, since people will be pretty pissed off when our programs crash and halt their productivity.

Let's Try This Again

This is me identifying a problem and attempting a solution.

Today a buddy of mine found out I have a blog. I mentioned that I don't write in it very often, and he said, "Aren't you a writer?"

While blogging isn't my primary interest when it comes to writing, it has proven to be a good exercise for me, so I've been thinking about why I don't write a little something every day. I came to two conclusions:
1. Having two blogs provides me with too wide of a focus, causing me to be perpetually overwhelmed by the number of things I could possibly write about, rendering me motionless
2. This particular blog, while I've been doing more and more with it, still has too narrow of a focus

Well, the first step is obvious - axe the other blog. I figure I'll use it when I need to be juvenile, or perhaps just wait until I have a purpose in mind for another blog. Anyone who read it will notice that it's now private. I know this is a sad day, but I promise you'll get over it.

Next, I had to identify what the problem was with this blog. It really wasn't that hard. When I first started it, I was basically just trying to reinterpret the concepts we were talking about in my advanced fiction class. The idea was that if I could explain them to someone else, then I had a pretty good handle on them. A couple of things have happened since then:
1. I graduated from college.
2. I started working full-time at my company, which involved a transition from programming to technical writing and marketing copy. The boss-man is obsessed with base questions, procedure writeups, and excessive amounts of useless writing, and is also constantly saying, "The best way to learn something is to prepare to teach it," with this look on his face that says, "I know for a fact that this thought has never occurred to you." I leave it to you, dear reader, to imagine how that might affect my attitude toward this blog.

This blog no longer serves the purpose it was designed for, so I've been sort of floating in limbo, throwing things up as they "felt right", and not really knowing what the hell was going on here. No more! (That phrase needs to trigger an image of a dirty peasant standing on a soapbox, surrounded by dirtier peasants, giving a huge pep talk about how they're going to ambush the local lord's guard as they escort him to his summer beach house, where he plans to carry on with the duke's wife if you know what I mean, and throw off their shackles and long-stick-things-they-use-to-carry-two-buckets-of-water and make a new life for themselves). No more! This blog is not going to be a place where I yammer about disciplined writing and theory anymore. From now on, it's a place where I live the disciplined approach to writing. I'm going to start posting. I'm going to screw with my schedule and figure out how I can post every day. It might not be good writing. It might not even reach mediocrity. But damn it I am going to practice Howard Taylor's BIC HOK technique if it kills me. Why? Because bitching about how much I hate my job doesn't bring me any closer to publication. Actually writing does.

I know, it sounds far-fetched, but I think I'm on to something.

Apparently it WAS a good idea...

I found something via Penny Arcade today -- Ommatidia, a site where a guy writes 101-word stories every day. Like the silly person I am, I immediately became jealous, because I had a similar idea a few weeks ago, and here's a guy who has been doing it since 2003. "So much for that," I thought.

But that's a dumb thought. So some guy has a daily writing blog. That's awesome! Why should that I mean I can't do it? Because I wasn't the first to think of it? That's a horrible way to operate. Imagine what would happen if every person refused to do something that had been done before. There would be no new stories, no books, no movies, no music, nothing.

The kicker is that my idea really isn't the same as his. Sure, I'd shoot for daily, and definitely in a blog format. But mine would have been different. I wouldn't have wanted one-shot deals; I would have preferred a running story. I would be more lax with my word count, too: he chooses to limit himself to 101 words. I would be more lax and keep it "around 300". It would still be mine, not my attempt to steal his.

That being said, a daily writing blog isn't next on my list. I do have something in the works, and I do intend for it to be online, but I'm not ready to share yet. If I talk too much, I'll never actually act. And I want to act. I also have a lot of prepwork to do, but it's moving, and I'm hoping to launch this summer. I'm excited.

How about you? Do you ever find yourself wanting to trash a project because someone already did something like it?

Holy Crap, Reading is Awesome

So I haven't posted in a while. Oops...

I had a pretty amazing experience last week. It was almost like fulfilling a prophecy, since it was repeatedly foretold by writing professors and the guides by professional writers.

Let's travel back in time first. The class that sparked my desire to write was Children's Lit, back when I was still at the community college. I stayed in touch with the professor, even volunteered on his campaign when he ran for state representative. About two years ago, he loaned me a book called "The Pooh Perplex", and I don't think I've seen him since.

My wife and I just moved last month. We live pretty close to this guy, and I figured it would be inexcusable of me not to try and get in touch with him, so I shot him an email. I also decided it was time to read "The Pooh Perplex."

Between Children's Lit and Pooh, I took a few classes, attended groups, and read a bit about the writing process. One thing that kept coming up was, "Read!" For a while, I was reading quite a bit, but once classes ended and my job started, it got harder and harder to make time. My book queue is marginally smaller than it was a year ago, which is kind of depressing. It's not that I don't want to read, it's that I tend to relegate reading to the bottom of the priority list.

I was still trying to be a writer, though, and despite the fact that I identified several weaknesses in my writing, and that I knew a little field research was in order to correct those weaknesses, I continued to put off reading. So, imagine my surprise when, one day after reading half of The Pooh Perplex, I cranked out a really good start to something. Seriously. It was good. I liked it. I have no idea if I'll do anything with it, but I was impressed at the quality. My subconscious had stolen some things from the book and incorporated it with my existing style, and the result was pleasing. I haven't looked at the beginning since that day, so I'll probably think it sucks when I do, but I'm feeling pretty good right now.

Bottom line: Listen to the writers who tell you to keep reading. It really does make a difference.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke died. I don't consider myself a rabid fan of his (I haven't even read 2001), but I own one of his books. I still haven't even read the whole thing, which makes me feel weird for saying he has had an enormous impact on my imagination and the way I approach writing.

My first encounter with Mr. Clarke's writing was a story called "The Nine Billion Names of God". It was in one of my lit textbooks, though it was not assigned reading for the class. I was flipping through the book to get to the forgettable classic I was required to read that night and the title caught my eye. The author's name looked familiar, but I didn't know where I'd seen it before. I decided to give the story a go.

Obviously I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't been mesmerized. The story was short, but the characters all had the kind of depth that lit professors gush over. On top of that, and probably the reason it wasn't included in my class, the events that took place were a few levels beyond ordinary. This wasn't another politically-charged story about a guy who experiences the same things I go through every day -- this was an exploration of our assumptions about reality, played out in some unnamed mountains, with an unspecified religious order and a couple technicians from a computer company. It was different from the drivel that is force-fed to English majors. It was fresh. I wanted more.

Of course, school being what it is, I soon found myself swimming in papers and readings and forgot about the concept of "leisure reading." It was more or less an accident that I stumbled upon the massive tome of Clarke stories. As I said before, I haven't read the entire book. The thing is huge, and I had some other things I wanted to read -- things that fit more neatly in my backpack. What I did read, though, was amazing. It's been over a year now... I hope I can find that book when I move.

What to Write

I've been kicking this post around for a while, and I'm never really sure what it is I want to say with it. Bear with me while I ramble.

My degree is in English with a specialization in Writing. Here's a brief summary of what I learned in school that I didn't also learn from Stephen King's On Writing:

• Literary fiction is better than genre fiction
• People who write genre fiction are hacks
• Literary writers never wrote bad stories, and if you dislike something, it's your fault

Okay, so that's a cynical assessment (I'll give a fair one someday), but that seemed to be the prevailing attitude among people who liked the canon. You were of sub-par intelligence if you liked Harry Potter, and doubly so if you disliked Shakespeare. Granted, most of this came from students because none of the professors actually bothered to read anything that wasn't pre-approved by Conclave of Literary Overlords (again, a cynical statement -- I'm about as fair and balanced as FoxNews today), but it was a horrible atmosphere for us fantasy writers.

Anyway, in the two creative writing classes I took, we were told not to write genre fiction. The intro professor was actually lenient about this, since we were keeping up a journal of daily writings -- I was able to write a fantasy story because she got to see all of my notes and was able to understand the world. There were no exceptions in the advanced class, but rather than complain about it, I threw myself into it and wrote some pretty good stuff. It was the first time I had taken any of my attempts at "literary" fiction beyond a first draft, and I found that I enjoyed it quite a bit.

But then, somehow, I started morphing into one of those elitist assholes who writes because he "has something to say." I started channeling all of the hurt and frustration gathered between 1996 and 2004 and aiming it at all of the churches and churchgoers who caused it. It was a slow process, and the stories were decently well-written at first, but as things progressed, I became angrier and more heavy-handed, to the point where my wife actually told me to stop writing those stories and go back to fantasy.

It was a sobering moment for me. I had been telling myself I could write a great critique of Americanized Christianity in the form of loosely interconnected short stories -- in short, I had ceased writing because I loved telling stories in order to use stories as a weapon. Malevolent and didactic, I had completely forsaken what drew me toward writing in the first place.

Which sort of gets to why I'm writing this blog. Sometimes people like to pretend they have two options: Doing what they love, or selling out. I think that's a completely fictitious dichotomy, but that's not even the point. My struggle was between two types of writing I was passionate about -- one that allowed me to be stretch my imagination, and one that allowed me to make a point. Both were fueled by my love for writing, but one was clearly capable of leading me astray.

The question, then, is how to decide the "what" and the "how" of the writing, and how to avoid using fiction as a glorified blog. I don't have an answer to that yet, because I haven't tried leaving fantasy in a few months. The idea scares me. I don't want to become an angry person in order to write, and I certainly don't want to become one of those beatniks with "something to say." If I'm going to write, I want it to be because I like writing, not yelling.

Fear and Apprehension

Over a month ago I said that I would actually post something I had written. I'll try and make good on that over lunch today, provided I don't freak out and think it's utterly worthless like the stereotypical writer has a tendency to do. I'm actually going to get my whining and insecurity out of the way now: Even after I make corrections to the part I'm going to post, I won't consider it "as good as it could be" and will likely go through another five revisions before I decide to leave it alone... blah blah blah etc whine complain.

In this instance, most of my insecurity is due to the fact that I use this blog to talk about the act of writing -- what I've learned about it and would like to share. My horrible, dark secret is that I don't follow all of my advice (at that moment, all of the writers in the room rolled their eyes) and I certainly don't write good first drafts (and, grinning, shook their heads). In my head, I know writers get this, but I still harbor the irrational fear that when I serve up the pudding, I'll be mocked for not having the cup of proof that is supposed to be in there (or, in some cases, substituting said proof with two cups of BS).

Anyway, coming up at some point today will be a snippet from my work in progress, which still doesn't have a title. It might be modified slightly to make sense as a short story, or I might just leave things as they are and see what happens. Who knows.

Hackers and Crackers: A Linguistic Dilemma

A group of hackers wired a bunch of money to a foreign account. Someone hacked into the school's database and gave A's to everyone. Put up a firewall to guard against hackers. What is a hacker? Well, according to the news, entertainment, and most people you talk to, a hacker is a person who circumvents computer security. Works for me.

But one day, a kid on a message board made a post to clarify: crackers are people who break into computers; hackers are people who modify their computer's software to improve performance. Also, hackers don't like that their title is applied to people who do illegal stuff.

Ok, that's cool, too. I guess. I mean, it makes sense -- "cracker" seems to hearken back to safe-cracking, so that's cool. I don't know where "hacker" comes from, but I can accept it. It's nice to have a distinction.

So what do you call them in your fiction? Do you go with definitions, or with common usage? 

I bring this up for the benefit of new writers, those who are relatively new to the peer review process. The hacker/cracker issue may not apply to your current project, but I think it exemplifies a general concept I'm just going to call the "proper/common" issue. Now it's story time...

Writing fiction is far different from writing a research paper. I know that should go without saying, but I really want to stress it: Writing fiction is far different from writing a research paper. It is not the same as doing homework.

When I first started my adventures in fiction, I attended a couple writer's groups (Borders in Flint and Auburn Hills, for you Michiganders). One week I invited a friend from my Japanese class to sit in and maybe read something of hers. I read a section from something I had written (it was about eight or ten pages, double-spaced). The feedback I received from the regulars was pretty standard -- You don't have enough description; Your dialogue was good, but you should describe what they're doing; I have no idea where the hell your characters are because you don't describe it very well. I was pleased with the response, because they didn't find anything glaring that destroyed the story.

My friend asked if she could hang on to her copy for a few days. I said that was fine, since I had eight other copies to look over and decide which suggestions to follow. She gave it back to me a few days later, in class.

I think there was more of her writing on that thing than mine.

My first thought was that she spent a lot of time really analyzing the piece, and had written every single complaint and compliment that crossed her mind. That was not the case -- the margins were packed with things like, "incomplete sentence" or "missing words", even "don't start a sentence with 'and'". I was astounded. Not only did she apply the rules of grammar to the narrator, she hit all of the dialogue as well. Each page's margins were overflowing with rules-oriented comments, and the half-blank last page included a long note about how she expected good writers, but that everyone missed all the basic rules of grammar, so she couldn't take them seriously.

I'm not making this up. I still have that copy somewhere, because it was too beautiful to throw away.

The point of all of this is that prescriptive rules of grammar are pretty meaningless in fiction. If the general populace says "hacker," then it makes no sense for the characters in your story to say "cracker" -- unless they are real-life hackers who care about such distinctions. The characters in my story are not going to speak with perfect grammar because no one speaks with perfect grammar.  Even my "narrator," who has no discernable personality because the story is told in the third person, will not speak with perfect grammar because he's telling a story. This isn't an academic paper.

Do we still have to put our verbs in the middle of the sentence? Of course -- that's a descriptive rule, whose purpose is to describe how our language already works. To say that we shouldn't end sentences with prepositions is silly -- people do it all the time without creating confusion. That's a rule that was invented by a bunch of dead guys who wanted to sound smarter than everyone else. English worked fine before that rule existed, and it continues to thrive in spite of it.

Write your stories. Damn the rules. Let your characters speak like real people, not textbooks.

70 Days, 10/27-10/28

No writing -- apartment flooded. Working on that. Staying at mom and dad's tonight. Blah. Hope we can break our lease.

The Mini-Recorder, aka Pure Gold

It takes an hour to get to work in the morning, and an extra fifteen minutes or so to get home in the afternoon. That ends up being a lot of time alone with my thoughts, which often turn to my writing and what I want to accomplish in it. Now, some days I would be lucky, and I'd be near my destination when ideas struck, but more often than not I would develop something, growing more and more excited, only to forget it by the time I had access to paper or a computer.

Eventually I grew frustrated enough that I started looking up mini-recorders online. Microcassette recorders are really cheap these days, so I started looking to see what kind of digital technology would be in my budget. There is some pretty sweet stuff out there for people with tons of money to blow, and once I was done pawing at the screen I decided on a forty dollar one at Best Buy. It's digital and can allegedly store way more audio than I need, but it doesn't have USB connectivity. I did crave the USB, but I think I might be better off for not having it.

I keep this bad boy in the car, and if an idea strikes, I hit the record button and mumble awkwardly into it. By the end of the week, I've usually got around ten sound bytes. Since the thing doesn't have USB connectivity, I can't just drag them onto my computer -- I'm forced to listen to them and type them up, which gets my brain working on the ideas again, so I end up with even more material than I would if I sat down and tried to remember everything.

Obviously this sort of thing isn't for everyone, but I highly recommend it to any writer who spends a lot of time in the car.

The Blogger's Hypocrisy: A Lesson

I haven't written in this blog for quite a long time. In the true spirit of professionalism, I'm going to lay the blame on school, my wedding, and the beginning of my full-time employment.

Actually, I don't want to leave the impression that I haven't been writing. There were a few months where I used "too busy!" as an excuse not to write, and I paid for it. Here's how:

The stories I'm working on are of varying lengths -- many are short stories, but I have a few ideas that would fill something longer. Everything I've been working on has suffered because of my refusal to make time to write. The most obvious problem is that I lost the direction of many of my stories; I forgot why certain characters were being forced to interact with each other, and by extension lost the basis for the story. Luckily, I keep notes handy, so recovering that momentum was a matter of spending an hour re-reading the story and reviewing and revising all related documents. That's the simplest problem to handle.

The difficult issue to overcome is that I lost a lot of my drive to write. I got out of the habit of writing every day, and then into the habit of filling my writing time with distractions like TV and video games. What happened when I tried to pick it back up? I had reverted to the state of being an "inspiration" writer, the kind of person who only writes when he happens to be at a computer when a good idea strikes. I stopped pushing myself to try new things and took an undisciplined approach to writing, and as a result, was unable to write anything I found satisfying.

I think I've made huge strides against this one. In the past few weeks, I've made a point to sit down and write at least 300 words, and that has helped immensely. Even when I'm not satisfied with what I write, I'm a lot more motivated to write another draft in the hopes of getting it, if not right, then better. 

Challenge: Berate yourself for your laziness and your petty excuses! Then write 300 words.