PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE THE TOILET BY FLUSHING ANYTHING THAT SHOULD NOT BE FLUSHED HERE
Set aside that violate for a moment (a word that feels unnecessarily charged… time-sharing as it does half its letters with violent).
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A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * How do you write about Difficult Topics? How do you message to an audience about the Hard Stuff? At a time everything is wildly in flux for everyone literally everywhere? If there were an awards show for Top Issues that have challenged all of us in Marketing and Communications these past few pandemicked years… I’d nominate “How to Message Hard Stuff When We Haven’t the Foggiest Idea What to Say” to take home the Golden Globe. There is no one right way to message the Hard Stuff. But I liked an approach I saw last week. It comes in the form of a 125-word intro to an email from Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic, in Minneapolis. I’m going
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A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * <Hand over heart; eyes to the heavens.> This year, you resolve to…. 1. WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT AS FAST AS YOU CAN. Get it out of your head. Get it onto the page. It’ll be lousy. It’ll be ugly. GOOD FOR YOU. You did it! Have a snack. ➡️ How to create that first draft: “Rework the horse.” 2. NEVER PUBLISH THE FIRST DRAFT. Rewriting sounds about as much fun as recovering from a Moderna booster. But please-please-please do it! Even if what you are going to publish is “just” an email. “Only” a LinkedIn post. “Merely” a marketing article. The difference between mediocre and not-mediocre is one more round of revisions. The difference between something you make excuses
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A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * I’m typing this with one hand—let’s call it Lefty, because it’s my left hand. Righty hangs by my side, injured but itching to get in on the action, like a sidelined Olympian in Tokyo 2021. I had shoulder surgery two Thursdays ago for rotator cuff tears—four of them. (Caused over a year ago when I slipped and went down hard on a slushy Boston street. My right arm shot out and tried to be the hero.) I thought my cuff and I would bounce right back. I thought my arm would spend the weekend lounging in the summer sun like a lizard. And within a week—tops!—she’d be good to go. Maybe not quite ready for the batting cages. But
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A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * Long before I wrote books and your favorite newsletter 😊, I wrote for a financial newspaper about Federal Reserve regs and housing prices. A high point of my career there was a headline I wrote for a story about NACHA (the National Automated Clearing House Association, a US electronic payment regulatory system). The headline: “NACHA Business.” My pun game was strong even then. The headline. I loved it. The editor did not. (Still salty about it TBH.) * * * Eventually I went on to work for the Boston Globe, among other pubs. And while I left journalism a long time ago, writing for newspapers gifted me the biggest lesson of my career. The lesson: No one is
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Normally I celebrate standout marketing writing. But this week I’m sharing a line from a novel I’m reading. It’s simple. It’s compact. And it’s perfect: “His skin was not just clammy but the color and consistency of actual clams.” —Ann Patchett, Bel Canto Ann is describing a Bel Canto character—a Russian bureaucrat named Fyodorov. I read that line Monday night and I literally LOLed. That sentence is now in my head. (It’s moved in. Possibly vacationing there.) I keep remembering it at odd moments (in line at the checkout, in the middle of a meeting). And I laugh suddenly and quietly. Yesterday I was picking out grapes in the supermarket when I thought of it and smiled. A woman across the produce aisle looked at me and then at the grapes, like the grapes had said something funny. Anyhoo… Let’s break down the science of why this sentence from Ann
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A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * From time to time I answer reader questions. This is one of those times. <Hoists mailbag onto table. Rummages around. Pulls out reader letter.>* *Kidding. Of course questions come via email. But “clicked email and pasted here” doesn’t land quite the same, does it? “How do you know when the time is right to draft your first book? Did you feel overwhelmed by writing about such a competitive topic?” —Sara Let’s answer the first part of that question with a visualization. (Walk with me…) I You’re wandering through the aisles of a bookstore/clicking around the virtual aisles on Amazon. You eye a certain book tucked on a shelf. A small shock of recognition: The topic. The positioning. You’re staring
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A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * I sense I’m being watched. Followed. Stalked, almost. He’s quiet as a ninja. And like a ninja, he seems everywhere at once. Often I sense him before I see him. I think I’ve entered a room alone but then turn suddenly, and—yep—there he is: his silhouette in the doorway, backlit by the yellow hallway light. “Oh, hey. You good? Just keeping an eye on you.” It would be a little creepy, except for… well, look at him. Let’s start with his legs. They’re six inches long—too short to scale all the stairs to the second floor without needing a nap. He lies on the landing and cries. He might be part ninja. But at that moment he looks
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A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * * Three years ago this week—in January 2018—I decided to start a newsletter. Why? I wanted connection—not one-to-many social media connection, but me-to-you direct connection. Three years ago, I also realized a fundamental truth: The most important part of the newsletter is the letter, not the news. There were other, secondary reasons I thought of later—some much later. I wanted the joy of making something that was 100% mine. I wanted to understand how to build momentum with an email list (and truly understand, from the inside-out, what works). I wanted to experiment, to play, to have fun. I wanted to feel a little more alive. Does that feel like a ridiculously tall order for an email ferpetesake? Especially
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