What the ?

Okay, so that was a bit of an unintended, unscheduled break.

It was a long hot summer in central Illinois and too many things happened that gave me a general feeling of ennui (for those who just love them foreign languages). Plus, after that last post, I would read the headline and fail to come up with an answer.

Time to get moving--and writing--again.

Why Blog?

So Jen Singer has this post on her blog exploring all the reasons--including unimaginable fame and untold fortune--that might possibly be the motivation for some people to blog. The whole time I was reading the post, I thought about this blog.

I also thought about the question Jen asks. Why, after all, do I blog?

It's not because I'm expecting some book publisher or movie producer to discover my incredible untapped talent and offer me an eight-figure contract. It's not because I'm expecting some CEO to be cruising the net and stumble upon my blog, realize the potential I have for saving his company through stupendously effective corporate communications, and offer me an eight-figure contract. I'm pretty certain neither fantasy will come true. I figure my odds of winning the lottery are better.

So why do I do it? The reason is simple: I love to write.

Writing is both my vocation--that is, my job--and my avocation, my hobby. I enjoy writing. Okay, I love writing. It's really the only thing I've wanted to do as a profession. I don't tingle with excitement when I sit down at my desk these days, but I still get a kick out of knowing that I make my living by writing.

So if I make my living by writing, why blog?

Blogging, at least the way I blog, is just like keeping a journal. As thousands of teachers have attempted to explain to students in hundreds of writing classes, a journal is not a diary. While a diary is an often emotional recording of the daily events of a life, a journal is a daily exercise in writing. Some journal entries might be essays while others might be character sketches or bits of dialog or descriptions of a place. Most journal entries are exercise.

Exercise is good. As any honest writer in the corporate world will tell you, we don't necessarily write every day. There are days that you spend in meetings, or on phone calls, or doing everything imaginable except writing.
It's like my post "Beating the Blank Page," in which I recount the story of John Steinbeck warming up before writing. Steinbeck probably understood the need to exercise his writing on a daily basis, just to keep that muscle in shape. That's what I'm doing here. I'm just doing it in a way that allows anyone to read the result.

Like publishers, producers, and CEOs with eight-figure contracts.

The Perfect Opening Line

Legendary guitarist Keith Richards has told the story of how he came up with the famous guitar riff that opens the classic Rolling Stones song "(Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

Richard claims the opening--those five notes--came to him in his sleep. He woke up, grabbed his guitar, hit the record button on a tape recorder, and played the notes. Then he went right back to sleep. The next morning he rewound the tape to hear that riff followed by a full tape of Keith Richards snoring.

Sometimes that happens for a writer, too. Not the snoring; sometimes the perfect opening line for a short story, a novel, or even an internal memo comes to you as if in a dream. You just think of what you need (or want) to write, and the opening sentence is right there for you.

But for now, let's talk about reality.

In the real world, most of us struggle with the opening sentence. In fact, a lot of people I've known get so frustrated with trying to come up with a perfect opening line that they're too paralyzed to write whatever it is that they need to write. The blank page is sitting there mocking them because they refuse to soil it with just any opening sentence. They just know they have to right the perfect opening.

Well, that's a load of crap. You should never let the quest for the perfect opening prevent you from writing anything at all.

If you find yourself falling into that trap, if you feel that you can't put any words down at all because they're not going to be perfect, try this: Start with the middle. Just start with the absolute center of the document and write whatever needs to be described in that part of the document. If you get on a roll, write all the way to the end.

Then go back to the beginning. Then think about what you've written and put down some words that prepare the reader. And tell yourself that it doesn't have to be perfect. Take some satisfaction from an opening line that simply invites the reader into your document effectively.

And just be ready for the day that the perfect opening line comes to you in a dream.

It's the Audience, Stupid

The most important thing to think about when you're writing is the audience.

Whether you're writing a corporate announcement, a marketing brochure, an email, a tweet, or a user manual, your audience is everything. And it's the only thing.

If you don't know who you're writing to, you can't write. At the very least, you can't write effectively. You have to know who the audience is to know what works with them.

I've driven quite a few managers up various walls by insisting on identifying the audience before we ever began talking about the message we needed to communicate. I know why they were blowing a fuse, too; it's because they hadn't stopped to think who the audience would be. They only thought about sending out a message.

In any kind of business writing, the audience is the absolute key. Is the audience made up of line employees ("worker bees" as we've called them at too many places where I've worked)? Is the audience made up of mid-level managers? Is your audience executive row? You really need to know which group you're writing for, because each group has its own hot buttons and its own sore spots. Hit the wrong one and your message misses by a mile. But when you hit the right buttons, your message nails a bulls-eye.

You say your message is going outside the company? Okay, who is the audience? Is it the customer base? Is it a group of prospects? Is it your suppliers? Each of those audiences has different relationships with you and expects different kinds of information. In addition, each audience has different motivations. You really need to keep all of that in your head when you're crafting your message.

You're a journalist or a fiction writer? You need to keep the audience in mind, too. But I'll have more on that in a future post.

A Love of Writing

I truly love writing. I love wrangling with the English language in my attempts to convey a message with creativity or mere cleverness. I love it when it's going well and when it's going badly.

I even love it when I realize someone else has captured my attitude toward the craft more eloquently than I could. Check out this blog post, which my friend Jeff Kraft identified for me.

Enjoy the post. I hope to have something of my own very soon.

Joy of a Morning Run

There really is nothing comparable to the joy I feel during a run in the early morning.

At an early hour, there is very little traffic on the streets of my village, so I don't have to be so concerned about safety. At an early hour, I can run for miles outside and still enjoy the solitude of exercising my body by myself. In the quiet of the early morning I can listen to the sound of my shoes on the pavement, the sound of my breathing, and sometimes even the beat of my heart.

During the winter months an early morning run means I run in darkness. Although it seems like a contradiction, the darkness heightens my awareness of everything around me. Sounds are sharper, the air is crisper, and the pavement somehow seems more unforgiving than usual. I feel full of energy and I'm ready for anything to happen--and it sometimes feels as though something will happen.

But these days the sun breaks the horizon well before 6 am, and I am often watching it rise as I run. The combination of the sun's first light and the energy that comes from running fills me with exhilaration. It's incredibly uplifting, and I'm grateful for the experience.

There is joy to be felt during an early morning run. One of these days I'm going to describe it well.

40 Years After Kent State

Tuesday, May 4, is the 40th anniversary of the Kent State massacre. On that day the Ohio Army National Guard opened fire on Kent State University students protesting the war in Vietnam. When the shooting stopped, four students were dead and nine wounded.

College students had been protesting the war on campuses for years, but Kent State stopped all that. On that day the message was clear: Protest, no matter how well-behaved the protesters might be, would no longer be tolerated.

I think about Kent State as I see media reports of today's protesters. Many of them gripe and moan that their rights and liberties are being infringed. I wonder what they would think if National Guard troops showed up and opened fire. I wonder if they even know what happened just 40 years ago in Kent, Ohio.