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.

As I sit writing a quick note to some awesome folks who are being honored by Sales & Marketing Executives here in Baton Rouge, I am struck with why I haven't blogged before.

Writing is something I've always loved to do. However, it's always been very personal. From hand written notes of thanks or congratulations, to dozens of journals full of scribbled observations and moments, writing has always been a very private affair for me.

Facebook isn't writing, it's notifying, sharing. Twitter, even less so. And yet, how quickly social media, even for an intimate writer like me, has changed what writing is.

When was the last time you sent a handwritten birthday card? Compare that to the last time you made a Happy Birthday Facebook post. Guiltily, I admit the latter was yesterday and the handwritten variety, well, it's been a hectic few months.

While this blog is a meatier narrative than my timeline, it still shortcuts the real beauty of a hand written note, the handwritten part.

In his new book, The Missing Ink, Philip Hensher laments our departure from hand writing far more eloquently than I ever could.

"We have surrendered our handwriting for something more mechanical, less distinctively human, less telling about ourselves and less present in our moments of the highest happiness and the deepest emotion. Ink runs in our veins, and shows the world what we are like. The shaping of thought and written language by a pen, moved by a hand to register marks of ink on paper, has for centuries, millennia, been regarded as key to our existence as human beings."

Surrendered? Ouch. That's convicting. You should read more of his book, he makes the art and act of writing sexy, intimate, familiar and intense. He has reminded me why I LOVE WRITING.

In fact, eerily, I have said for years that I love my work in print advertising so much because I have ink and paper in my veins.

If you need anymore proof that your handwritten notes, even short ones, will mean more to others than any facebooked Happy Birthday, then ask a Baton Rouge advertising professional if they remember Ralph Sims.

Ralph was arguably one of the last great gentlemen of our industry. He was beautiful, and strong and courageous and kind. And he wrote the most amazing handwritten letters.

I fell in love with Ralph while serving on the board of directors of AAF Baton Rouge in 2006. I called Ralph to ask him to email me a brief write up of why he had been active in our club for more than 40 years.

Ralph replied that he could not email the statement I asked for. He didn't have a computer. Fine, easy enough, I asked that he fax it to me. Once again, he politely declined my request. He didn't have a fax machine. He requested that I come by his house the next day to pick up his statement. Really? Drive over and pick up his statement?

Long story short, the beautiful hand written letter he handed me, on his personal stationary, sits in my desk to this day, long after Ralph himself has left us.

Boom! There it is. This amazing man's words, and spirit, will live on long after an email would have been archived or deleted, a fax would have been thrown away. Ralph's grace is the perfect example of why writing should always be, well, writing.

I've already broken my first thought on how this blogging thing will turn out - yesterday I thought I'd only blog once every four years. I wouldn't dare search for the technology that would let my blog be handwritten, that would be pure torture.

Instead, I will promise to send at least one handwritten note for every post I make here. That should slow me down some, and hopefully stymie the draining of my soul into the keyboard used to compose these musings.

And you? Can you be seduced with an embossed or gilded or brightly colored note card to write someone? I hope so. And I'd love to hear who you wrote and why.