I have been amused lately by the torrent of messages from crooks promising to make anyone a best-selling author in two shakes of a dog’s tale.
I have not found it that easy.
One of my books, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, has been selling steadily around the world since 1982, but it wasn’t easy to write.
I spent a month trying to get going and failed completely. Then I had another go a year later and it took 6 weeks frantic typing followed by a couple of months of editing.
Revising it repeatedly has been a nightmare because it is fairly easy to write something long, then cut it, but very hard to write something short and expand it.
But I had no choice. In 1980 the computer was only used by clever people at places like The Readers Digest; the word database was rarely heard. And as for the Internet – what was that? Text marketing? There were no mobile phones.
So that explains why what was a slim volume has – like direct marketing – swollen until its fifth edition is excellent for propping up tables and keeping doors open
One of the few people who writes intelligently about writing is Ryan Healy.
I just read this in his blog: “Creativity thrives under limits, be they natural or imposed.” It reminded me of the reasons why in 1985 I sold my agency to Ogilvy & Mather when we had been talking to no less than eight other big ad agencies.
David Ogilvy rang me up, which was vastly flattering. They had great clients and I thought we’d get business that way. They were nice people, which is as important as money. But a huge factor was their work, at that time the best in the world.
The guiding spirit was their worldwide creative director, Norman Berry, who had once offered me a job when he was creative director of Young & Rubicam. He said something I have never forgotten: “Give me the freedom of a tight brief”. Pretty much what Ryan says.
If I had written a brief for myself before I set about the great tome, I would have found it much easier. The title is often a brief. My second foray into business writing – How to write a salesletter that sells – was much easier for that reason. That, too, is still around after 25 years.
Bad work comes from bad briefs which is why in my seminars I talk a lot about the brief. It is hard to be entertaining on the subject, but I usually manage to raise a chortle or two.
The two books are available on Amazon at a sensible price, or autographed illegibly by me, for slightly more because I can’t compete with Amazon. And if you want my jokes about briefing and other matters, you’ll have to join me in Andalusia.
Ryan’s blog is at http://www.ryanhealy.com/creativity-and-constraints/
You are quietly, elegantly, and hysterically funny.