Readers of the Lost Art

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The 12-year-old who is grounded from his iPad: I’m bored. There’s literally nothing to do.

Me: There’s a hundred great books in this house. Pick one.

The 12-year-old: But, Dad, reading isn’t any fun. I have to read in school; why would I want to do that at home?

Me: *bangs head against wall until falling into sweet unconsciousness.*

Anybody else had this nightmare of a conversation with your kid? Fun, isn’t it? All three of my children, at one time or another, have considered any suggestion of them reading a novel without being made to do so to be some kind of prank, as if there’s a hidden camera filming their reactions. Dad couldn’t possibly be serious, they think. Reading on purpose is something people did in the olden, black and white days, back when the steam-powered compact disc mills were still in operation. We have iPhones now! Why the heck would we choose to read?

It really makes me wonder if my generation might be the last of the real readers. Is this possible?

I was lucky enough to have been raised in a time (the 1970s) and a place (the rural North Carolina mountains) where there was little to do after the sun went down. We usually didn’t get more than three TV stations, and even then, somebody (usually me) had to stand with one finger on the rabbit ears antenna and the opposite arm and leg outstretched, like DaVinci’s The Vitruvian Man, just to kind of get a picture.

“Mark, go hold the rabbit ears,” my dad would instruct. “We can’t see John Boy.”

Eventually, I couldn’t hold my arms up anymore and would give up, slinking away to my room. To entertain myself, I would read books. Real books. Y’know, the paper kind.

My heroes weren’t famous actors or musicians; they were Doc Savage, the Hardy Boys, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. They were Charlie Bucket, William Tell Sackett, Paul and Maureen Beebe of Chincoteague Island. They were anyone who lived within the margins of a classic novel.

Reading a book wasn’t a chore, it was a privilege. It was fun. It was awesome. It was inspiring. And it all happened within the synapses of my own noggin. My brain had to fill in the blanks, and it was good at it. Plus, the reception was always perfect. Most shocking of all was the fact that I loved to read and, given the choice, would usually choose it over other available forms of entertainment.

You’ve all heard people of my generation complaining about this before, so I won’t indulge myself much further, but in the 2020s, reading books seems nearly to be a lost art, even for adults. Technology and its evil brother, the Internet, has conspired against us. Entertainment is so plentiful and easy to access, we often don’t see the point in reading something longer than … hang on… 427 words.

There, you just surpassed the threshold. Keep going!

I’m as guilty these days as anyone. It’s darned easy to go down a YouTube rabbit hole or get sucked into a well-designed game on an iPhone screen. I’m terrible about it.

But every time I decide to embark on reading a new book, I immediately enjoy myself. In the process, I’m convinced I can actually feel the brain cells that have atrophied due to too many repeated viewings of The Office beginning to perk up, as if they’re considering a return to productivity. I’ve been on a roll lately. I just finished David McCullough’s masterful The Wright Brothers, after having polished off Robert Morgan’s Daniel Boone a few weeks ago. I can’t remember when I’ve ever been so proud of my American heritage and fired up to get things done. (Wilbur, Orville, and Daniel were all avid readers, by the way.)

You don’t get ground-breaking innovation and iconic heroism from Angry Birds. You just get … well … angry birds.

I understand. Life will never be as simple as it once was, and time will never be as empty. From here on out for us humans, there will be a million fun and pointless distractions yelling at us from within our phones, iPads, and TVs, providing us with a million easy reasons not to spend a quiet hour with a good book.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Use that neglected “Off” button on your phone. Invest in good reading glasses and try not to misplace them, like I inevitably do. Block out the time, grab a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, and start reading. Let the candy crush itself for a while.

“Dang, I really regret investing the time it took me to read that amazing book,” said no one ever. “I wish I was a little less smart right now.”

A great lead is prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay… important

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Written a crappy lead? Expect the reader to jump ship before the dock is out of sight.

Written a good lead? Expect them to joyfully stay with you for the entire voyage.

“Your lead was just too interesting, so I’m not going to continue reading,” said no one ever.

The first sentence, paragraph, or cohesive thought of a written story is called the “lead,” or in hard-core journalism circles, the “lede.” (I’ve always found that spelling to be a little snooty, so for this story, I’m sticking with “lead.”) To use a fishing analogy, the lead is your best opportunity to snag the reader like an enthusiastic bluegill on a treble hook and reel him back to the boat with no chance of shaking loose.

(It’s my story so I get to use fishing analogies if I want to.)

For hard-news writers, leads usually consist of the good ol’ 5 Ws — who, what, when, where, and why.

A Nashville man (who) was struck and injured by a runaway water buffalo (what) last night (when) near the Music City Zoo (where) after the animal managed to scale the 20-foot wall of its enclosure using “Mission Impossible”-style suction cups smuggled into the facility by a relative earlier in the day (why).

OK, that’s pretty interesting, but you see what I’m getting at. Structure-wise, it’s boring. The creativity of a typical beat writer is usually squashed by those Ws. She must (or should) convey the most important info in the lead and then flesh out the details in the body of the story.

Feature writers don’t have to do that. In fact, we are allowed to write with a clear bias toward our employer, industry, product, or whatever. (And yes, I realize there is also startling bias in today’s mainstream journalism, but that’s a topic for another newsletter and a different writer.) For years, I’ve written for farmer-owned agricultural cooperatives, and my stories hardly ever involve investigative journalism — they are about supporting my employer’s mission or telling the cooperative story in creative and positive ways.

That’s where the lead comes in.

Imagine a great feature-story lead to be like the classic Larry David comedy, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” It’s nearly all improvisation, and the actors are encouraged to be inventive and, frankly, a little goofy and over the top. That could also describe an effective lead. The writer is not boxed in with normal rules of alternating quotes and paraphrases, attributions, and traditional sentence structure, but is allowed to make editorial statements, ask questions, incorporate a little slang, and even use sentence fragments.

What do cloven hooves, illegal and oddly powerful suction cups, and a very ticked off but resourceful 1,800-pound African bovine have in common? A Nashville man with a broken leg and the rest of us with a whole lot of unanswered questions.

The remainder of the story, however, is like any other traditional TV show — the actors follow a script, and the plot is carefully structured. As soon as the lead ends, we are bound by the natural laws of journalism to stick with a framework that readers clearly understand.

As an editor who often works with young writers (including my own kids), I regularly encounter otherwise decent stories with uninspired, mundane leads. This makes me nuts. I want to grab the writer and shake them, screaming, “This. Was. Your. Chance. To. Be. Creative! You. Blew. It!” (Each word gets its own shake.)

Of course, I don’t do that. But I want to.

But I’m totally serious when I say, “Don’t blow it.” A feature story lead is your best opportunity as a writer to have fun AND do your sworn duty of hooking the reader. Every  story you write took time and effort, and by writing it, there is a built-in assumption that it will somehow improve the life of the reader by reading it.

Might be by providing critical information. Might be by providing good ol’ mindless entertainment. (Arguably, just as valid.)

But by starting this important story with a lame lead, you are dooming it to a life of loneliness and indifference, never to be fully read.

That’s not cool!

Give your lead the time, consideration, creativity, and fun it deserves, and you will, in turn, lead your grateful reader down the path of enlightenment.

If you refuse to read, you can’t expect to write well

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When I became a communications professional back in 2003, the world was a much different place. Although personal computers had become commonplace and the Internet was running full blast, humanity had not yet been seduced by the sirens that would become known as “social media” and “smart phones.”

It wasn’t far away, though.

Facebook burst onto the scene in around 2005 — iPhones, a couple of years later — and as a result (intentional or not), the collective attention spans of human beings would shrink like a woolen sweater in the hot cycle. Twitter even made this official when it was introduced in 2006 by limiting stories to 140 characters. (In 2017, they very graciously doubled this to the startling, War and Peace-size word count of 280 characters.)

But way back in 2003, people could still handle a magazine feature story of 1,600 words. Heck, they could even read an entire book.

Not so much, now. Long-form reading has taken a back seat to the small blocks of colloquial copy that the world now serves to our tiny, pea-sized attention spans. Written communication has become as disposable as the products — shoes, vehicles, kids’ toys, etc. — that were once made of hearty materials and built by our grandparents to last.

Again, not so much, now.

In keeping with the trends in digital and social communication, the basic writing sessions that used to be mainstays at my communications seminars and many other similar events are getting hard to come by. I get it, and I enjoy social media as much as the next guy. (Maybe not quite as much, but pretty much.) But at the obvious risk of sounding like a typical “Boomer,” I urge you, Younger Communicator: Don’t neglect the craft of writing. Sure, when you head back home, do what you need to do to communicate via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, but also make long-form reading and writing an important part of your daily curriculum.

Start by reading a novel. Y’know, something that by modern standards would be considered excellent. Why? Because it is only by reading that we, as writers, can hope to understand the arc of a story, the development of a character, and sensible development of a plot — all things that are also necessary in writing quality non-fiction articles for our various publications.

If you refuse to read, you can’t expect to write well. It’s as simple as that.

How to interview a ‘dud’

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(Note: I’m writing this article from the perspective of a freelancer or communications pro who writes for a corporate magazine, newsletter, or something similar.)

 

There are “duds” in every walk of life. You probably have encountered one today.

You, to frowning checkout person at grocery store: Hey, there! How’s it going today?

Checkout person, not looking up: Beep… Beep… Beep…

You: Alrighty, then!

Unfortunately, not every person we interact with has the radiant, outgoing personality of a communications professional or freelance writer/journalist (wink, wink). Usually, we can either deal with these types quickly and move on or avoid them altogether. But what happens when we are tasked with interviewing a dud?

This is a moment when you really earn your money.

Probably eight out of 10 times, interview subjects are fairly happy to see you. They may be nervous and might not speak in perfect soundbites, but usually, people are somewhat flattered to have someone in the media (sorry if that word made you squirm a little) asking them what they think about things.

Occasionally, though, you run into a subject who would prefer a visit to a proctologist to being interviewed. Honestly, this is usually a result of the local contact for your organization not properly vetting the person to make sure he or she has the gift of gab and is amenable to the idea of being interviewed. (Ultimately, it’s your responsibility to make sure your contact knows what you’re looking for.)

The mistake often translates into interview exchanges like this:

You: Tell me, Mr. Manfrenjensen; what is your favorite thing about bullfrog farming?

Mr. Manfrenjensen, after a painfully long silence: I don’t know. Nothing I can think of.

You: Nothing? Surely there’s something!

Mr. Manfrenjensen, checking his watch and looking out the window: Uhhh… Uhh…

You: Just give me one thing. Anything.

Mr. Manfrenjensen: Well. I guess I like the bullfrogs pretty well.

And it goes on like this.

The bottom line is, not everyone likes to talk, let alone be interviewed, and there’s nothing you’re going to do to change that. Others may have been raised without any social training — not gonna change that, either. There’s probably a good reason why Mr. Manfrenjensen is a surly bullfrog farmer and not a game show host. (I’ve heard that bullfrog farmers are notoriously anti-social.) Sure, you may be able to break the ice a little by discovering an area of commonality between you, or by finding that person’s secret favorite hobby to discuss, but in most cases, you’ll be lucky to come away from this type of interview with anything good.

But you have to deliver a story.

In these excruciating cases, I’ve found that going to the basics is the best course of action. I usually begin by having Mr. Manfrenjensen give me the statistics of his farm. How many acres? How many, er, head of bullfrogs? Is it a family farm? How long has it been in the family?

Even a dud can answer these questions. It’s not philosophy, just facts.

After that, consider asking him about his wife, kids, and grandkids, if he has them. Even a world-class dud will lighten up a bit when discussing his grandchildren. Get all the hard and fast information from Mr. Manfrenjensen that you can before going in for the subjective questions.

You: Mr. Manfrenjensen, how the heck does one become a bullfrog farmer?

Mr. Manfrenjensen: Don’t know. Just did.

If he refuses to go there, then you at least have the framework for a story. But don’t give up until you give it the old college try. React to his surliness with enthusiasm and good nature, as if you haven’t noticed his behavior, and then flee the premises as soon as possible. There’s no reason to put the poor man through any more misery. Write a short profile, fill in with quotes from other sources, or make your awesome bullfrog photos a little bigger in the spread. So, what are the takeaways to interviewing a dud?

  1. Try to avoid it altogether by making sure your local contacts know what kind of subject you’re looking for.
  2. Be prepared for it when it happens; it eventually will.
  3. Ask questions about family to break the ice.
  4. At the very least, get the factual information.
  5. Be nice, write your story, and move on.

Use a pre-story-submission checklist

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Effectively editing your own writing is impossible. There, I said it.

But why? Why is it so dad-gummed difficult?? And where does the phrase “dad-gummed” come from, anyway???!

I don’t have any official answer for either, so I’ll give you my somewhat educated opinion, which you may take or leave. (About self-editing, not dad-gummed.)

It’s easy to become enamored with your own writing. By typing a keyboard with your fingers, you are creating a thought that, moments before, didn’t exist. But now … presto! A brand-new thought was just birthed into the world. So yes, at the risk of using a well-worn cliche, your writing becomes your new baby, and who is comfortable in critiquing their own squiggly, cooing baby? Certainly not me! (When they become teenagers, it’s a lot easier.)

It’s also difficult to catch typos in your own writing. My theory is, when you read your own copy, you know what’s coming — it isn’t new to you — so your brain fills in the missing words or changes “your” to “you’re” in your mind without signaling your hands to make that correction on the page. This is why it’s always a good idea to sleep on a story before editing it. When you come back to it, things won’t be quite as fresh and you will read the story more as another person might.

But whether you represent a self-editing freelancer or are a member of a large staff, consider using a pre-story-submission checklist before giving the printer the green light or sending your story around to be edited by others. In both environments, you will save yourself the time of making changes, you will spare your coworkers the agony of fixing your mistakes, and you will end up with a much better story for your readers.

Answer these questions:

  • What kind of story is it? If it’s a straight news story, use the 5 Ws and get quickly to the point. If it’s a feature story, be a little more creative with the lead and use interesting transitions. Be clear on the goal and nature of your story before writing the first word, and then double-check to make sure the finished product jives with your intention before submitting it.
  • Have I answered all of my own questions? Be sure that when you pose a question in your story, you answer it. Or, if you make a cryptic statement of some kind in the lead, you don’t leave the reader hanging. Explain yourself and answer your own questions.
  • Am I making subjective comments as statements of fact? This is a biggie. If John loved the rodeo, be sure that John says this in a quote. This is journalism, not fiction, so we can’t have intimate knowledge, as the writer, of what John does and doesn’t love. He has to tell us himself. In another example, don’t say that the weather was “so nice” or “amazing” in your copy. Say the weather was “mild” or “temperatures were below average.” These are statements of fact. Let your story subjects make personal comments on the weather in quote form.
  • Is every word necessary? “Rainfall during the month of August was below average all across the entire state of Nebraska.” A better choice might be, “Nebraska’s rainfall was below average in August.” There’s nothing wrong with being creative in your writing, but there’s definitely a problem with using unnecessary words. Strive to meet your word count as efficiently as possible. That equals more meat and less fat in your writing.
  • Is this story actually interesting, and will anyone other than the subject give a hoot? A cardinal sin of feature writing is penning a story full of boring exposition, family names, ages, and backgrounds, and banal detail simply to satisfy a word count. But when you view it from 30K feet, it’s about as compelling as your monthly water bill. Look at the first draft as way to get the facts down on paper; the second draft should be about making that copy more directed toward an interesting angle.

Writing is hard and often thankless work, so I admire you for undertaking the job. But never be seduced by that sneaky devil on your shoulder who is assuring you that your first draft is a masterpiece. It’s not. It never is, no matter who you are. Ask yourself the hard questions and make that story better.

Keep your paragraphs from crashing into one another — write good transitions

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Imagine that you’re driving along on Interstate 40, minding your own business, and you hit one of those terrible patches of pavement where the top layer has been scraped off in preparation for re-paving.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!

You know what I’m talking about. The sound of your tires on the grooved sublayer creates a sound akin to an approaching tornado. After a few seconds of torture, you see the newly paved section approaching, but the road crew has failed to create a nice little pavement slope from the sublayer to the new layer. What happens? The front tires bang into the new layer with a jolt that rattles your fillings, wakes the baby, and likely loosens every screw, bolt, and rivet in your once-pristine vehicle.

Ouch.

A similar thing happens when you fail to write a transition between paragraphs. Whether consciously or subconsciously, the reader’s mind bangs into the next paragraph with an unappealing jolt.

Good transitions are what make your story an easy read. They create a smooth, glossy, playground slide for the reader’s figurative backside, with the top of the slide being the story lead, and the bottom of the slide, the ending. Without good transitions, it’s a bumpy ride down for the reader, and they will likely jump off before the end.

Here’s an example of poor transition:

Harvey Manfrengensen grows 5,000 acres of soybeans, cotton, and corn on his farm in Pawnee, Indiana. In addition to his row crops, Manfrengensen also raises 11,000 turkeys and some 75 head of water buffalo.

“I really enjoy shooting skeet with my son-in-law, Jean-Ralphio,” Manfrengensen says. “Those clay targets don’t stand a chance.”

Quite a jolt, right? We needed a transition. How about…

Harvey Manfrengensen grows 5,000 acres of soybeans, cotton, and corn on his farm in Pawnee, Indiana. In addition to his row crops, Manfrengensen also raises 11,000 turkeys and some 75 head of water buffalo. With this extremely odd pairing of crops and livestock, the Indianan says shotgun sports have become his “outdoor therapy session” and one he enjoys sharing with family.

“I really love shooting skeet with my son-in-law, Jean-Ralphio,” Manfrengensen says. “Those clay targets don’t stand a chance.”

Sure, that’s an extreme example, but you get my drift. If your paragraphs are slipping seamlessly from one to another rather than colliding with jarring thuds, you’re doing it right.

~ Mark Johnson

The lost art of conversation

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Originally published in the Cooperative Communicators Association Connect newsletter.

 

“We don’t know the long-term effects.”

This is phrase you hear a lot in news stories, and it is usually being spoken by a doctor or scientist of some kind. But it’s not just medicine that can create a long-term, negative change.

At least half of my job over the past 20 years has been editing other people’s writing. Also occurring over those same 20 years has been the introduction of social media and its eventual domination over practically the entire population of the planet. In my view, it’s only now that we are beginning to see the long-term affects of social media — both good and bad — on a generation that was raised on it, and who are now entering the work force, including my own three children.

Among these affects seem to be — and I’m only theorizing, here — the loss of the art of the conversation.

Why do I believe this? When I edit manuscripts written by some young people, usually college interns or recent graduates, I’m often appalled at the lack of information provided by the story, not to mention the quality of the writing itself, which I’ll leave for a future column. Based on the copy of many of these stories, it seems that the writer spent very little time interviewing the subject, and has gathered only the surface-level information required for a publishable story. These kinds of pieces appear to be written only to satisfy a word count and to fill layout space.

You may have a different opinion, but I attribute a lot of this to the influence of social media. It trains us to communicate more with our keyboards and iPhone cameras and less with our in-person faces and voices. The critical skill of listening goes unused and has essentially withered on the vine.

Social media communication is mostly one-sided. We display a sanitized and slightly-to-entirely artificial version of who we are and express this to the world at large. Our culture has become about the Empowerment of Me, and has little to nothing to do with real conversation.

There could be volume’s worth of material related to the long-term affects of social media on our culture at large — I may write one myself — but how about on the quality of story-telling and journalism?

As feature writers, our jobs are to discover an interesting angle to a story, something beyond the number of acres or square footage of the barn, the names and ages of children, and how many years the subject has been doing this or that. Sure, the statistics need to be included, but the real story is in the why, not the what.

For an interviewer, this requires an actual conversation. It begs for a glass of iced tea or a cup of coffee around a kitchen table. Or a long, bumpy ride in a cluttered pickup truck. The interviewer must make a human connection — not a technological one — to get at the good stuff, those colorful stories that make a article worth reading.

Otherwise, we’re only satisfying the requirement of putting out a magazine. There. Job done. Paycheck, please.

I don’t blame you, young journalist, for finding yourself in this predicament. The blame falls to my generation, not yours. I do, however, blame you for keeping yourself in this predicament. As a professional, you have to be better than only an Instagram post writer. You must consciously and intentionally develop your skills of conversation. Go sit down with your granny and ask her about her life as a young girl. Find out what your papaw was really thinking and feeling as he stepped onto some faraway battlefield as a terrified kid. And when you interview that farmer or lineman or craftsperson for your publication, find out why they do what they do, not just that they do it.

You see what I’m getting at. Social media trains us to be narcissistic, and that trait has no place in journalism, and especially not in great story-telling.

Five reasons why you should consider a mobile app for your company in 2021

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I can easily recall attending a communications seminar in around 2005 and being dragged kicking and screaming to a session on social media. I had no interest in it whatsoever, and thought it was silly.

“Nobody is going to do business this way!” I snorted to one of my coworkers. “This is a total waste of time.”

Ummm…yeah. I was an idiot.

That little lesson taught me that seemingly silly trends in technology and communications are often precursors to an entire new way of doing business, whether I totally understand them or not.

This brings me to the mobile app industry. Less than five years ago, mobile apps were the territory of giant companies only. They were magical, mysterious, and extremely expensive, way out of the range of most small businesses. Today, though, apps have become nearly as ubiquitous as smart phones themselves, and are currently where much business is done. Here are five darn good reasons why you should consider budgeting for an app for your company in 2021:

5. People are used to them. Apps are no longer exotic add-ons to your smart phone and useful only to the super tech-savvy. These days, practically everyone uses an app, one way or the other.

4. People prefer them to websites. When it comes to using a mobile device, most folks avoid visiting websites, especially to make purchases. A well-constructed mobile app is much easier to navigate and doesn’t always require an internet connection.

3. They legitimize your company. Now clearly, not every company in the world needs a mobile app, but there is no escaping the fact that if you DO have one, customers view your business differently. Whether they love your product or not, a potential customer will consider your company “successful” if you are flexing a mobile app. It’s just human nature.

2. They are better-suited to marketing tactics like daily specials and geofencing. There is simply a LOT you can do with a mobile app — from a marketing perspective — that will, at best, be rather clunky in a website environment and, at worst, impossible.

1. They are finally affordable. As I mentioned earlier, only a few years ago, you could expect to drop $100K on a high-functioning app — at least. Today, a fully custom app will still run in the $50K range, but pre-coded platforms like Shoutem and AppyPie are now allowing developers to create amazing apps for much, much less. Simply put, mobile apps are now within financial range of almost any company.

For these reasons, I urge you to look into an app for your company in 2021. I think we’ve reached that tipping point where the cost has become reasonable and the technology will be with us for the foreseeable future. Give us a shout at Big Harvest Creative if you’d like to talk it through!

Happy New Year!

Face it, communicators: You’re gonna screw up

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You dread it. You do everything possible to avoid it, take every precaution and all the right steps. But one day it will happen.

You screw up. Or something you’re responsible for gets screwed up.

If you have been in communications for, say, five years or more, there is a very good chance that some disaster has happened at least once.

What do I mean by “disaster?” Something like…

  • You traveled several hours to a one-time event that you were assigned to cover, only to realize at the last second that you don’t have a memory card for your camera.
  • Same thing, but instead of the card, you forgot to charge your camera battery.
  • You accidentally delete an entire, two-hour digital voice recorder interview — before you got it transcribed.
  • You took a flash photo of a valuable, prize-winning show chicken, which promptly killed the chicken of a heart attack.
  • You misspelled somebody’s name throughout an entire published story.
  • You designed a sales flyer with the decimal point in the wrong place on a price.
  • You inadvertently ran a magazine cover featuring a controversial subject, and now, your organization is getting hate calls.
  • You wrote an annual meeting speech for a board member, and he ad-libbed a dirty (really filthy) joke at the end of it — in front of an aghast lunch audience of 300.  Many assume you wrote it for him.
  • Your CEO is nearing the most pivotal moment in his keynote annual meeting speech when lightning strikes the venue. All the power goes out. Many assume the lightning is your fault.

There’s a reason why these seem so detailed. Yep. Most of them happened to me. A couple happened to people I know and who will remain nameless, lest they come get me in my sleep.

The bottom line is, if you work somewhere long enough and put out lots of content, something bad will happen, even to the very best, most professional communicators in the world. It’s just the law of averages.

Here’s what I’ve come to realize: It doesn’t matter.

These things are meaningless in the broad scheme of things. Oh, sure, there may be some short-term drama, but folks, we live on a relatively tiny planet in a vast galaxy of zillions of other planets and even solar systems that have been spinning around in space for a very, very long time. Our lifespans hardly even register as a blip on the timeline of this world, let alone that of the universe. If you don’t believe me, go listen to the song “Dust in the Wind.” (See? Kansas knows.)

Do the best you can with the time you’ve got. Do something you love. Surround yourself with people you enjoy and give it your best shot. Don’t sweat the mistakes! That’s not what people remember in the long run. They remember all the good stuff you’ve done and how you treated them with respect, humbleness, and love.

But for God’s sake, don’t use a flash when taking a portrait of a chicken!

Need creativity? Take a saunter!

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Looking for creativity? Good luck.

If you are a communicator, writer, photographer, graphic artist, or something similar, being creative on a regular basis is probably part of your job description.

Please accept my condolences.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s no greater joy — to me, anyway — than creating something today that wasn’t there yesterday, whether it’s a song, a story, a book, or whatever. It results in a huge rush of endorphins, kind of a runner’s high. If you happen to find yourself in the immediate vicinity of me when this happens, you may end up trapped for hours while I breathlessly describe my new idea to you as you attempt to inch away to safety.

Sorry about that in advance.

But being creative on demand and for a living is a tough row to hoe. Once you have been successful with a few creations — let’s say ad copy, for example — you are henceforth expected to churn out equally successful ad campaigns, like Don Draper in the show “Madmen.” However, his methods of generating creativity usually involved cigarettes, liquor, and adultery, none of which I recommend unless you look like Jon Hamm and can therefore get away with it.

Real creativity is an elusive little bugger, and hard to grasp, like that time Mickey made Rocky Balboa try to catch a chicken. Great ideas are notoriously skittish and only let you approach them and carefully slip a halter over their noses every once in a blue moon, it seems. The rest of the time, you’re only flailing around and grabbing hold of well-worn, easy-to-capture, boring retreads, rather than exciting and original ideas.

Well, here’s yet another dairy farm for me to photograph. What can I do this time?

Can I somehow spin a story on winterizing your home a little differently?

For the love of all things holy, is there a better opening for the CEO’s annual meeting speech??

It’s not easy to constantly be Don Draper, right? This is when even the best of us creative professionals need a boost of inspiration.

“OK, Johnson,” you’re probably saying right now. “What do you suggest I do?”

Well, I’m glad you asked, because I have an answer. It’s certainly not the only answer, but it’s a good one.

Take a saunter.

The renowned naturalist, John Muir, once said, “I don’t like the word ‘hike.’ People ought to saunter in the mountains, not hike through them.”

I like that. Hiking is too hard sometimes and often involves blisters, insects, and spider webs. Sauntering, however, sounds pleasant and easy.

You don’t have to be a big-time outdoors-person or athlete to saunter. Just toss an energy bar and a bottle of water into a simple backpack and go to a local state park or something. Find a trail that carries you a fair distance away from road noise. LEAVE THE EARBUDS IN THE CAR. Hike … er … saunter a mile or two and immerse yourself in the sounds of the forest and your own feet on the trail. Keep your eyes open for cool birds, deer, copulating teenagers, and other wildlife.

When you start getting tired or your knees start aching a little, sit down and take a rest. Then, turn around and go back.

“But what the hey does this have to do with generating creativity?” you ask, now clearly agitated.

If you’ll relax, I’ll tell you! Here’s the deal: A short saunter through the woods will clear your mind, get your blood flowing, and physically make you more creative. According to a 2014 Stanford University study, the act of walking stimulates creativity when compared to sitting. There are a lot of physiological reasons why that I won’t bore you with here, mainly because I’m not smart enough to explain them. Or understand them. Or pronounce the big words.

This study doesn’t take into account the benefits of walking outdoors, though, so let me fill in those blanks for you. Another study by the University of Utah found that spending time outdoors increases attention spans and creative problem-solving skills by as much as 50 percent. The authors of the study also point out that the results may have as much to do with unplugging from technology as they do spending time outside.

In other words, having a variety of electronic devices constantly beeping at you like an upset R2D2 isn’t conducive to creativity.

Here’s what I think. As humans, we need to reconnect with the physical, natural world every so often just to remind ourselves that we are carbon-based, flesh-and-blood entities, not cyborgs. We were created with legs and feet, which means we are supposed to move around, not plop ourselves in a chair or across a couch all day long, day after day, month after month. (Unless we’re binging the entire series of “The Office” on Netflix, in which case, it’s okay.) Whether you believe in a higher power, evolution, or some combination of both, the end result is the same: We were designed to move about within the natural world. I don’t mean all the time, or even most of the time. I just mean sometime.

Personally, I think God likes to see us outdoors, enjoying His handiwork. Since He can’t easily give us a Starbucks gift card as a reward, I think He sometimes pops great ideas into our heads instead.

My experience with sauntering, especially by myself, is that I get a lot of thinking quality done and usually come off the trail with at least one good idea. In fact, the concept of Hobnail Trekking Company came to me that very way.

So make it a goal to get outside and take a saunter when you feel your creativity beginning to wane. If you then come back home and write a bestselling novel, I’ll expect a cut of the royalties.

Saunter on, Wayne! Saunter on, Garth!

~ Mark