Writing about writing - the guts of me

I've worked for a publishing company for almost 15 years now. I have loved selling and producing great advertising campaigns for a WIDE variety of clients. I have lived, loved and grown up swimming in words and images.

There has also never been a single word of editorial content, not an errant byline stating Created By Marielle Howard, printed in any of our publications.

Louisiana Business Inc, which was just Business Report and its annual supplements when I started this journey, has a strict, concrete thick strict, division between its advertising and editorial teams. This has given me both pain and relief over the years. Regardless of how I felt about our line in the sand, it was there.

I guess if I hadn't loved selling and creating advertising so much, the line might have posed a moral dilemma well before now. A few years ago, I began missing exercising the art of writing and reporting. But the line was still there.

My love of writing began in high school. A brave and brash English teacher taught a poor tomboy girl how to use poetry and prose to express herself. From tentative journal pages, to collections of short poems, to full fledged contest entries and even my first foray into publishing of mine and my classmates poetry in a magazine, Margaret Goode instilled in me a passion for the written word.

Mrs. Goode so profoundly influenced my life that to this day, I want to grow up to be a high school gifted English teacher. She changed my definition of myself, gave me permission to write my own story and the courage to laugh at myself along the journey.

And what a journey it's been. I continued to write after high school. From published analyses in my political science classes, to stories in LSU's student newspaper, I managed to feed my love of writing and share that love with a wider audience. My second degree in public relations was as much about my love of writing as my awareness that I would need a real job after college and I didn't know any political scientists.

After college, my writing became about profit. My career took a turn into the marketing world and I wrote, a lot. It wasn't the great investigative or insightful analysis pieces of my college days, but it was pen to paper with a paycheck. Oddly, this stab at writing was equally enjoyable.

From there, I ended up in sales and advertising. More specifically, I was in the business of selling advertising. Probing questions, concise proposals and fast ad headlines filled my time. All the while, life was happening and I drifted further from my love of creative writing.

A husband, kids, a career, cancer, life, death, marriage, sales, goals, life. My creative energy found lots of outlets. Photography, scrapbooking, home decorating, arts and crafts, teacher gifts, coworker gifts, baby gifts. I was telling stories, just in other ways.

One afternoon while at a professional conference in rural Tennessee, I learned about Eastern Tennessee State University. This magical place actually has a master's program in - wait for it - STORY TELLING! I told everyone I knew for months after this encounter that I was moving to rural Tennessee and going back to college. I felt my calling.

Then I discovered blogging. What a perfect way to burn my creative fuel! Pictures + words + readers, I thought this was going to be my lifelong outlet for all of the stories I've collected.

As I began experimenting with blogging, my work life changed. I'd never considered it, but the art of selling was being redefined in the most amazing way. Self appointed experts were now raking in the bucks teaching sales teams around the country that sales wasn't about probing questions, concise proposals and fast ad headlines, instead sales and advertising were now all about STORY TELLING!

If you ever doubt if there is a God, then the long thread of this story should at least convince you there is some greater and infinitely humorous power bringing us all full circle. I have no doubt there is a God and he had just revealed the guts of me - shown me my core purpose and passion in life - I am a Story Teller of the first order.

So now I am exposed to the core. I know what my Purpose is, with a capital P. Now what?
Lots of little projects, a story here, a press release there, a stint writing newsletter articles later and I was longing for a byline again. Part of me really wanted to see one of my stories, presented with authority, for consumers to chew on, be dragged into and sent away from different.

This summer, completely by accident, that powerful moment came.
"Would you consider reviewing the dinner you attended this weekend?"
"Would I!?!?"
"We'll have to get permission"
Patiently waiting while banging out the lead and first 5 paragraphs anticipating getting the chance.
"OK, this once, you can do this if you still want to."
"SIGN ME UP! WHEN IS IT DUE?"
"It's here!"

I have always been a story teller. At my core, it is what I am and what I love doing. I didn't need a byline to know that.

This byline gives me something completely other than validation of my life's true calling.
It gives me the joy of work.
It gives me the giddy excitement of opening an issue of one of our magazines like it's the BIG present under the Christmas tree.
It gives me immense gratitude for the people and challenges that have given me a voice.
It gives me pride that I work for an organization that gives stories life and import.

Inspiration?

I used to think there were geniuses out there in the world. You know the brilliant first guy who really believed we could fly. Or the first woman who imagined she could vote. You know - the Steve Jobs of the world.

As I grew, I worked really hard to have my epiphany, to come to my one world changing idea or creation, the one everyone would remember me for. Surely I was meant to have at least one moment of pure genius in my life.

Then I decided I had lots of original thoughts, just not ones big enough to set the world on fire. Surely my perspective on or use of some obscure craft product was original. I had to be the only one in the world who could make gift wrap out of left over toilet paper roles, right?

Now? Now I've glommed onto the completely unoriginal excuse to reinvent, reappropriate and reinterpret everything around me and take credit for it that goes, "There's nothing new in the world, just a new way to use/present/purpose the same old stuff." It's distasteful even to type it, but it sure takes all that spark of genius pressure off of me.

This post is the direct result of that kind of inspiration, not of the divine nature, but of the contextual type.

Four years ago, I had the itch to blog, to put down all the bizarre and, occassionally original or so I thought, things rolling around in my head. And, like so many hobbies I've loved, I created my blog... and never wrote a single post.

Not a single post.

Until today. Today a dear friend emailed me a link to her blog post. And after reading it, I was in tears. The story she told, I knew. And I certainly had already come to the point of her post on my own years ago. But her words, her perspective on a story I'd heard and never been brought to tears by before, moved me. I shared her story, not because her thought was original in all of the world, but because it was beautiful.

http://conniemcleod.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/soul-mates-and-angels/

So, the grammar is terrible - I'll get around to fixing that. The only thing I am sure of is the title of this thing, whatever it's going to be, is still appropriate. And after reading Connie's post, and wiping my tears and snotty nose, the only thing that felt right was to give her credit for inspiring me to write something down. To be inspired by her inspiration.

I'm not committing to consistency, or even grammatical correctness. I don't know if I'll be inspired to write a single nother word after today. But hey, who couldn't love a blog you only had to commit to reading once every four years?