Every term I meditate on what I teach, how, its relevance in
today’s ever e-ing four-inch-screen world.
I teach writing print. Don’t call me Old School for it.
Why teach writing
print/body copy when life is streaming, online, in video, ten second Snaps, #140
characters?
I know my demands for adherence to format, Copy Sins, Prospect
Centricity, Creative Strategy and learning to write print my very low tech/high
expectation way is called O so very last century. If that’s you think, you’ve
been screen staring too long.
Yes, I teach writing print copy. Yes, I am painstakingly persnickety,
talk about things that happened long before you (or I) were born, bring in
strange music to torture you and make you take notes on paper with (gasp!) a
pen.
Here are smart reasons to indulge my lunacy.
Writing print is the basis of everything we do, even if all
we do is digital, broadcast. Got a favorite band, rapper, hip hop, country, punk, dub step
reggae death metal whatever artist? Their lyrics all start in print.
Like movies? Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and every TV/Radio/Streaming
entertainment medium there is? How do you think actors learn their lines? You
betcha. Print.
The Old School pen/paper note taking? Sends a mind/body
connection, rearranges your brain synapses to process information in a more open,
memorable and creative way. Touch screens, keypads, speech recognition can’t do
that.
If you can’t write a great line, how are those banners, websites,
pop-ups, videos, tweets working for you?
If you don’t know proper grammar, how to invisibly
manipulate it, how are those corporate site and trade show brochures coming?
If you don’t know history, literature, old and world music, aren’t
culturally literate - how are you going to put your ideas in conceptual context,
understand the elements and appropriateness of writing in different styles. Find
a piece of music so unusual and interruptive it stops Prospects and award show
judges in their tracks. (Don’t get me started on old music – read Steal Like an Artist instead.)
If you knew enough
about old, you’d hear it in every new sound your generation discovers.
If you
can only write in one voice – yours – better stay 24 forever. Pray you never get assigned a bank, Depends,
credit card, hospitality, AARP, Get It Up or hormone replacement product. Pray
your current agers find Peter Pan and the Lost Boys – it’s not enough to age
along with them – you have to see life coming before they do.
No matter the concept, format. Being able to transition from
one idea, product feature, benefit without changing tone, losing logic,
lecturing or worse – boring the bejesus out of them – keeps you connected. Gets it approved. Produced.
Writing great print makes broadcast (radio, TV, web, video)
easier. Without all those Copy Sins print teaches you to find and edit, you’ll
have a harder time saying what needs to be said creatively in under ten seconds,
under ten minutes.
Will print ever go away, replaced by e-everything? Not in my
lifetime – or yours. As long as kids and their parents share Doctor Seuss; you
can’t feel paper’s texture under the screen. As long as language keeps living, writers
keep writing, print will survive as the basis for everything. You’d best know to
read – and write – it well.
Some of you will be much better creatives than I. Many of my
former students already are. But right now, today, what I know about writing
print, ways you’ve not conceived, let alone explored, played with, translated,
keeps me ahead in all mediums required.
Writing print is the foundation, the launch pad of history,
music, popular culture past and present. All give entre to Prospects' heads,
hearts, guts. Teach relevance of different values, beliefs, jokes, music, speech,
feelings.
An app may work fine, but it can also cut you off from the
very people you’re being paid to motivate.
Without intimate, one-on-one understanding. Without the ability to write
your ideas in amazing print, then translate it into other mediums here now, around
the corner in the next future. You’re building your house on sand for the
lack of basics.
I teach writing print. Want you to take its every little
detail seriously. What I commit skillfully, conceptually, stylistically,
organically to printed page can grow into any media, any message I want. Any
way I want.
And the kicker - almost every CD I know bemoans the lack of
writers who can actually write.
Why I know you need
to learn it, too.
