Creating Creative Space

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Daniel K. Brantley| Leave a comment |

Anyone who performs any kind of creative work knows the creative environment needs to be—well…creative. Granted, creative spaces differ as much as creative people, but there has to be something there to drive creativity. At the very least, there can’t be anything that actively prevents creativity.

For some, a creative space looks like a hot mess. There are books scattered on the floor beside an overflowing kitty litter box that is buried beneath a pile of last week’s pizza boxes. For others (such as a young Stephen King), the creative space is something like a closet. No windows and no outside world to slow down the creative process. But I can’t work like King or a slob. I need life and some sort of order in my workspace.

An incredible Ed Kellogg original that is situated over my desk.

Yet one more reason I’m thankful that my father-in-law, Ed Kellogg (a.k.a. Poppy), has some serious art chops. And recently, after having lunch with the in-laws, I was given the opportunity to sort through some of Poppy’s pieces for my workspace. I wound up with a couple great pieces: one that is now situated directly over my desk and another that is above the double bed near my desk.

And these aren’t the only things down here that get my creative juices flowing. I’ve also got a photo of my wife and pictures of the kids set up in a way that makes me feel they’re staring at me, keeping me on task. Then there’s the kitchen sink, which may not seem like a big deal, but it’s great to get a quick drink without having to run upstairs.

It's no Ed Kellogg, but this painting by my great granddad is inspiring nonetheless.

Then there are a few other things that probe my creative side. One is a painting by my great grandfather. It’s borderline rudimentary, but that zebra painting shows a love for all things art. Or maybe it’s my knowledge of my great granddad’s back-story that gives the painting meaning. Word on the street is that he was a drunk for many years, only to change when he became a grandfather. Props for that. Then there’s the fact that he didn’t just paint. He built marble-top tables, made leather belts and wallets, and even tattooed the old-fashioned tap-tap-tappy way. Guess he was something of a renaissance man, and that painting reminds me to be creative and make art—not excuses.

[Announcer’s Voice] But wait, there’s more!

I’ve got a pile of CDs that are constantly being played as I write, and my drum set is always ready to take a beating when I can’t find the right words to say. Spend 15 minutes on the drums (or 45 when necessary), and my fingers get an energy boost that makes finishing stories a cinch.

Enough about me. Let’s talk about your space. Does it foster or diminish creativity? If you’re having a hard time getting started on your painting, moving your book forward, or building an innovative LEGO construction, you may need a change of scenery. Take a look around your workspace and figure out what’s gotta go and what needs to be added, and you may find the secret to creative success.

Share

Why You Need to Blog

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Daniel K. Brantley| 1 Comment |

Need some wordsmithing for your website? Copy that. I mean...edit that.

All right, I admit it. For a long time, I saw no value in blogging. From my perspective, it was a fruitless endeavor that had no place in the business world. It was even more difficult to convince myself of the need to blog on a regular basis. Why write a blog when I could either be writing for a client or searching for a new one?

Sure, I knew that if you want to show up on the first page of the major search engines you’ve got to blog regularly—but I didn’t care about being found on search engines.

Until it started reaping dividends.

Because after a few months of writing one blog entry a month, my sweet little website started showing up on the front page of Google. Exciting as it is to have my site show up early and often, the real impact I wanted is only just beginning to be felt. That’s right. After a few months of blogging, my site is finally bringing in new clients who need some copywriting and editing.

One of these clients is Billy McCoy, owner of B & C McCoy General Contractors / B & C McCoy Home Renovation Solutions. While stoked about his company’s new websites, which were built by Bobby Ryan Marketing, the copy needed to be cleaned up and modified to reflect the same quality B & C provides clients every day.

So Billy and his wife, Connie, hopped online and did a search for freelance copywriters and editors. Guess who popped up? If you’ve been paying attention, you should be able to guess it was yours truly.

Billy shot me an e-mail, explaining his needs, and I gave him a call to talk the project over. I then started doing what I do, editing the copy on the B & C McCoy Home Renovation Solutions site and writing new copy for B & C McCoy General Contractors. When all was said and done, B & C McCoy’s websites could finally tell the business’s story accurately and concisely.

And to think—it all came about because of this little blog. If you’re still not a believer in the power of blogging, give it a try for a few months. Plan to put in at least six months worth of work, as it typically takes at least that long for the search engines to begin showing your site some love.

Even if you only get one new customer, that’s more money in your pocket that didn’t cost you anything but time.

Need someone to handle your blogging responsibilities? I can do that, too. Actually, I do it for quite a few folks, including all of Amplification, Inc.’s clients. Drop me a line to find out how I can beef up your online presence with useful and engaging web copy and blog entries.

Share

Grow Your Writing Expertise

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Daniel K. Brantley| 1 Comment |

Grow the skills, pay the bills.

Yes, I have my specialties when it comes to writing. At least I used to have specialties. Now I look for ways to grow my expertise and thereby my income. Because while specializing has its perks for those who break into the big-money markets, the rest of us need to canvas the market to stay fed.

My freelance career began in 2001. I was a high school English teacher with a couple published pieces under my belt (think: mediocre poetry, tense-shifting sci-fi, and small literary magazines). Somehow, I grabbed a gig covering sports for one of America’s first online-only newspapers, Chattanoogan.com. Sure, I played baseball with the owner’s son in high school and college, but I never dreamed of working for him. After all, newspapers were full of fact and boring sentence structure, whereas I was full of fiction, themes, daring story construction, and artistic merit. But I did it for a little extra cash and to get into sporting events for free.

As a reporter for an online newspaper, I had to submit my story immediately after the game finished. It was a bit frustrating for a burgeoning writer as myself. I needed time, time, time! How else could I polish my prose to be as unprosaic as possible? Eventually, I realized there was no option. I did what had to be done. I compromised my literary name to get a job done. That’s right—I forced myself to write quickly. One or two edits at most, and the story was shot to my editor, who would edit it once more before launching the story into the land of 0s and 1s.

Fast-forward a year. I’d given up on teaching and was looking for full-time work, as I continued freelancing for Chattanoogan.com. Providentially, I got an interview at True North Custom Publishing Company (now True North Custom Media). They appreciated my ability to work on deadlines and still write with a little pizzazz. (Okay, I added the pizzazz part. It’s called artistic license.) Over the next five years, my writing became compact and my areas of expertise expanded.

Mainly a healthcare custom publishing company, True North practically handed me an honorary MD. I diagnosed loved ones and told them about the latest treatment available to care for their diseases. Slowly, the company picked up a few bank clients, put out an outdoor magazine for a while, and even produced an art magazine. While the company grew, so did my writing chops and confidence. At the peak of my time there, I wrote 3,000 words a day, and most of them found their way to print with very little revision.

But as Robert Frost said (or was it Ponyboy?), “Nothing gold can stay.” Things changed and it became time to move on. I became the editor of a weekly paper, only to have the paper go defunct under my feet a year later. Suddenly, the freelancing I’d done for years on the side became necessary. No freelancing? No food or shelter.

Thankfully, my training at the Chattanoogan.com and True North paid off. I’d not written press releases, eBooks, or paid blog entries. I’d never covered snowboarding equipment, how to become a better conversationalist, or working as a paparazzi. That all changed when my freelance business required a boost. I was ready and willing to tackle it all!

At least I was until I didn’t get paid for a job. Desperate for more work, I told a client if I didn’t do a bang-up job, there was no need to pay me. Guess what? The client didn’t like what I wrote. Or he said he didn’t. Regardless, I didn’t get paid and became more selective in my clients. I continued going after demanding jobs that stretched my abilities. However, before I’d sign on the dotted line, I would make sure I could work well with the client and provide the quality work they deserved. More often than not, the answer has been yes. Yet there are still times when I am approached for work when I have to decline.

Has diversifying my writing improved my bottom line? Of course it has. If you don’t open yourself to new challenges and a greater diversity of work, you’ll go hungry or possibly worse, your writing will grow stale. Thankfully, with the crazy variety of new clients coming my way courtesy of folks like Amplification, Inc., I don’t have time to let my writing grow stale. In the event things get a little routine, I’ll just look back at my last blog entry and get my head back on straight.

Share

News Worth Writing (and Reading)

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Daniel K. Brantley| Leave a comment |

If you’ve ever had a newspaper gig, you realize it’s not all glamour and glitz. There can be a bit of drudgery, as you find yourself dealing with the same-old, same-old.

The news isn't always this exciting, but it should always be interesting and accessible.

Not written for or edited a newspaper of any shape or size? You may be surprised to learn that the newsroom isn’t always full of excited buzz. Little birdies don’t constantly drop hot tips in the newsroom. And you will rarely get an assignment that gives you an opportunity to change the world.

Fully disillusioned, the question changes from How do I figure out which of these insanely awesome leads to follow? to How do I keep it fresh? Possibly even more important, How do I write news that people are going to want to read?

It starts with a dedication to your readers and the facts—not necessarily in that order. Actually, you can’t serve the readers or the facts justice without keeping both in mind at all times.

Have a great factual story about a topic no one cares about? Your story is worthless. Only go after stories that involve scandal? You may wind up quoting “inside sources” who don’t want their names mentioned. When this happens, you could be penning rumor, and that blood is hard to wash off your hands.

Getting your facts straight isn’t just a feather in your cap. It’s a necessity. Unless you’re not interested in building and maintaining readers’ trust. And if this is the case, you won’t have a job for long. Or at least you shouldn’t.

But writing a factual story—even if it’s on a topic that readers care about—can sometimes become routine. As a result, your writing can become stale, unexciting, uninspiring, and not much fun to read. So people stop reading it. What’s a writer to do to make sure this doesn’t happen?

Good question. Since I occasionally catch myself slipping into a sleepy, boring routine with my news coverage, I have had to find ways to kick myself out of it. Hopefully by allowing you behind the magic curtain, you’ll be better able to stay on track when your first sentence is as exciting to read as a printer manual.

Trick 1: Read It Post-Publication

After writing for a few years, the novelty of seeing my words in print wore off. I got paid for my work, and that became all that mattered. Besides, if I read any of my stories after they are printed, I always saw things I wanted to change. Not that I got my facts wrong, but there is always a better or shorter way to get my point across. So instead of torturing myself by thinking of what might have been, I taught myself to keep my head down and move on to the next story.

Unfortunately, this is a major cause of boring-news syndrome. To fix it, I force myself to read one of my stories now and then after it’s been printed. I pay careful attention to what I don’t like about the story and use this knowledge to get better. Kind of like I did when I first started writing and wasn’t so full of myself.

Trick 2: Remember Your Wallet

Getting the next writing gig is largely dependent on mastering your last. If you want to be a successful writer, you need to approach every project like it’s the most important thing you’ve ever written.

Every once in a while, I get comfy writing for a long-term client, and my writing suffers. The remedy? Remind myself that as a freelancer, the next project is not guaranteed. If I don’t deliver top-notch writing or editing services each and every time, I am putting myself out of work.

For me, the threat of being unable to buy groceries is usually enough inspiration to create news stories worth writing and reading.

Share

Beefing Up My Resume

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Daniel K. Brantley| 7 Comments

A few months ago, I went from being a husband/father/freelance writer and editor to a husband/father/freelance writer and editor/chicken farmer. If you’re like millions of other folks, you may wondering why I would do such a thing and what impact it has had on me as a person.

Well, fair readers, these are valid wonderings. So why did I do it? And what’s it done to my inner self?

An adolescent me holding one of my many parakeets.

First, the first question. I did it for a few reasons. Since I was a kid, I’ve really liked birds. I’ve had a lot of pet birds, attended a handful of exotic bird shows, subscribed to Bird Talk magazine, and even pitched a story to them that was ultimately rejected (possibly because an eerily similar story ran shortly after my submission).

While I still love birds, I eventually grew tired of cleaning up after them in my house. But I still wanted birds around, so I followed the path my father-in-law and neighbors took. I got chickens!

On top of being great entertainment to watch, chickens are—unlike parakeets, green-cheeked conures, and cockatiels—utilitarian birds. They serve an immediate purpose beyond being cute. They provide edible eggs on a daily basis. Or at least they will once they start laying.

The chickens when they were just chicks hanging out in a double-wide cardboard box.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get to the next question burning in your brain. (By the way, you may want to stop, drop, and roll. Not too safe to have your brain on fire.) What exactly has chicken farming done to me as a person?

Thank you for asking.

Chicken farming has made me a better man. It has made me more aware of my surroundings and increased my desire to make the world a better place. And by “a better place,” I mean a place that has eight fewer rats.

That’s right. I’ve murdered at least eight rats since setting the chickens up in my backyard. Think it’s gross? Toss some chickens in your yard. If you don’t see a rat within the first three days, I’ll give you a dozen eggs. Well—I will once my chickens start laying.

The asymmetric coop that the chickens enjoy thoroughly.

In addition to taking away my fear of disposing of rat carcasses, becoming a city-dwelling chicken farmer has helped me figure out how to use hand and power tools better. Before building the chicken coop, I never completed a project without getting frustrated and throwing something to let off steam. Somehow, I didn’t mess up anything when building the coop. Granted, there isn’t a single right angle to be found on the entire structure, but I don’t really care. The chickens don’t either. In fact, a couple of them were talking to me the other day, insisting they dug the asymmetry of their abode.

And getting the coop built was just the beginning. I’ve since done a couple minor modifications, and they’ve both been relatively easy to complete.

Will the next project go this well? If it has to do with updating the chicken coop, probably. Otherwise, watch for flying tools.

Share

Posted in Chickens, Cleveland, Outdoors, Tennessee