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Start with scribbles
“Dubbatrubba, what’s your writing process?” — asked No One Ever.
Why, thanks so much for asking, Mr. or Ms. N.O. Ever!
Whatever weirdness oozes out of my brain usually starts as scribbles. Pen on paper. It looks like gibberish.
It IS gibberish. Or maybe shorthand. But after all the scribbles and scratch-outs and circles and arrows, I usually figure out what I really want to say. And turn to the typewriter to whip it into shape. (OK, it’s a computer – sorry to let you down, Tom Hanks.)
The example above was when I was brainstorming ideas for promotional audio clips (i.e. mini-commercials) to be played on Inhailer Radio. They’re playing old episodes of the “97X Rumblings from the Big Bush” podcast that my friend Dave and I have been doing for several years now. You can catch the new/old episodes Sunday nights at 9 p.m. Eastern.
The time slot is a radio dead zone – I know this from experience because back when I worked at the AM oldies/FM country radio stations (WDJO-AM and WUBE-FM respectively) the program director of the country FM station would let me do air shifts during the Sunday night slot. (With the on-air name of “Cincinnati Redd” so kindly bestowed upon me by the PD…) And there was only one possible explanation for his largesse:
But hey, this new/old medium required very little effort on our part. And perhaps it’ll introduce a few new listeners to our labor-of-love podcast, since Inhailer is a kindred spirit of 97X.
The scribbles above yielded two longer promos (you can listen to one below), two short promos, and three mid-episode “cut-ins” (“you’re listening to…). Not bad for a page of paper and some ink.
Your process may be different. (And it’s probably better.) But if you want to write, start scribbling.
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The full-brain workout
Scott Galloway is a professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, the host of the Prof G and Pivot Podcasts and a best-selling author. His latest book is Notes on Being A Man.
He’s also published a newsletter nearly every Friday for the past 10 years. It’s called “No Mercy/No Malice.” (Or NM2 in Scott’s shorthand.) You can subscribe here.
It was originally a client engagement product for Scott’s company L2.
Before I sold L2, we’d launched a series of media products to create more engagement. Winners & Losers was a video series exploring innovation in the consumer sector, and NM2 was meant to be a newsletter exploring, well, whatever was on my mind that week.
When Scott sold that company, the buyer didn’t want the newsletter. It was orphaned… it turned out pretty well:
NM2 was too salty for Gartner (the acquiring company), and they said it could not be affiliated with the firm, but I could have the IP. A decade later, we have 430k subscribers, and the newsletter is the center of the flywheel for ProfG Media. The tone/aim of NM2 is simple: provide insight and be fearless.
430k subscribers is quite impressive. But getting there took a lot of work. Pen to paper, week after week. I’m biased, but I love what Scott has to say about writing in his 10th anniversary post:
Writing is a full-body cognitive workout. And reps matter more than talent. Amen!
I may never get to 430K subscribers. Or even 43. But the process is good for my brain. And my heart.
Writing is becoming a lost art. You don’t have to be a pro to give it a go, though.
A good place to start is Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages”:
You can learn more in Julia’s book The Artis’s Way. Or you can just do the morning pages.
You also can follow the guidance (and gusto) of Ray Bradbury in his book Zen in the Art of Writing.
Give it a shot. Your brain will pay you back.
Tomorrow, last week
“Tom Tomorrow” is a darn funny political cartoonist. He puts out a weekly cartoon/comic strip called This Modern World.
It’s actually a single-panel cartoon, but it’s usually subdivided into 6 frames. It’s always amusing, and unfortunately these days, it seems less like satire and more like reality. Here’s his cartoon from last week:
“Tom” (a.k.a. Dan Perkins) has some serious bona fides too:
He also won the Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2024.
“Tom Tomorrow’s sharp and iconic work embodies the higher purpose of political cartooning: holding powerful figures to account using satire grounded in good journalism,” the Berryman Award judges said.
(from the article linked above)
I used to read This Modern World in CityBeat, Cincinnati’s alt-weekly. But times are tough in the print biz, and Tom’s strip has been dropped by a lot of alt-weeklies due to budget constraints. You can check it out for free at Daily Kos, but a better way to reward his art is to subscribe to his weekly newsletter, “Sparky’s List,” which includes the weekly cartoon, some commentary on the artwork, and Dan’s personal observations.
You can subscribe to “Sparky’s List” for as little as $20 a year.
A single Jackson a year for a weekly dose of humor from Tomorrow? Totally worth it in This Modern World!
Hold them close
Jason Kottke’s newsletter led me to Molly Burford’s “list poetry” as Jason called it. I thought this one was very poignant:
I especially love “Those who are kind to those who can do nothing for them.” because I think it’s a great litmus test. And “scrappy souls” is a great moniker too!
If you have people like this in your life, you’re truly blessed. As Molly advises “Hold them close. Love them hard.”
And better still, be the type of person that others want to hang on to.
Molly Burford’s first poetry collection Moments to Hold Close is available now here.
The real world awaits!
In his weekly newsletter from last Friday, writer/artist Austin Kleon had this sage advice (which also appears in his new book Don’t Call It Art):
Another assignment for the holiday weekend, from Don’t Call It Art: “Get offline as much as possible. There’s so much input to be found in the real world outside of the internet. Go old school. Listen to radio shows. Browse the recently returned stacks at your local library. Buy weird old books at thrift shops. Visit a museum you’ve never been to. Find a good record store and chat up the clerks. Interact with real people in meatspace.”
That’s great homework (or rather outside-the-home work) for any weekend, not just holiday weekends.
Your smart phone is making you dumber. The apps are engineered to hook you in and drag you deeper down the well (or cesspool).
Get out. Tune in to what the real world has to offer. Rewire your brain. Find something different, something funky, something fun. And then, as Austin so eloquently puts it “interact with real people in meatspace.”
For the uninitiated:
Make the meatspace a meet space too. Do “social” instead of social media. Your life will feel so much richer for it.
The pixels and data centers and ones and zeros will get along just fine without you. And vice-versa.
If you’re in the Cincinnati area, here’s a reco for your assignment. On Tuesday I went to the inaugural “Lunch Club” at the Mercantile Library downtown.
I had no idea it was the first gathering until I got there and the host mentioned it. To be honest, I’m 50/50 on reading the Mercantile Library’s weekly emails (due to time constraints, not due to disinterest). But I happened to read the one promoting this event and signed up, despite my loner tendencies. That was mostly thanks to Austin Kleon’s encouragement. I met four fine folks, we had lively conversations, and I headed back to work energized.
That’s some pretty good meatspace activity, especially for a vegetarian.
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