Observed

If you write for a living (or think you might want to try), do yourself a favor.  Watch this movie:

What the 50 screenwriters in Tales from the Script (2009) tell me is important for any writer, especially one with a client.  However you define that.

Here are four of the many lessons they offer:

1. Get used to chaos. No matter how sincere the time line and approval commitments, life has a way of showing up.  Things slide,  and before you know it, you’re part of a train wreck.
2. Develop a thick skin. There’s never any way to predict how your work will be received.  Clients are human, and it’s impossible to know who might have a bad day or when.  Plus, people can disagree.  Your take on something might not be their take on something.  Even if it’s personal, don’t take it personally.
3. Great writing alone isn’t good enough. Writing for hire is a team sport.  If you’re not good with people, find something else to do.
4. Don’t quit. It can be discouraging to go through draft after draft after draft…even when you’re getting paid to do it.  Nothing ever gets created, however, without the risk of failure.  Be brave.

The sooner you accept the legitimacy of these things, the happier and more serene your writing life will seem.

When I build a bio page for an attorney, I remind them that getting picked is an emotional process, at least in part. That’s why it’s important to let visitors to your page know they’re dealing with someone who’s more than a list of impeccable credentials.

Carl Aveni, a litigator based in Columbus, Ohio, agrees. Take a look at this recent clip:

Making your bio like a personal story will also make it more readable and set you apart.

PS:  Thanks to Larry Bodine for sharing this clip with me.  Plus, there’s a related post at http://doug-stern.com/blog/2010/11/19/people-buy-from-people/.

George H.W. Bush understood the importance of superficial impressions. In 1988, he used this picture of a hapless Michael Dukakis to win the presidential election. Bush's fabled campaign ads featuring escaped felon and murderer "Willie Horton" drove the final nail in his opponent's coffin.

We’re hard-wired to judge others.  And situations.  Some of us (e.g., parents of young children) seem to acquire this urge under the right circumstances.

Judging others factors into how much we trust and feel safe.  This is one reason why chemistry and even small, tangible details seem to figure into the hiring choices clients make and whether they remain satisfied with a vendor’s performance.

So, too, it seems when picking presidential candidates.  A recent story in The New York Times vetted several Republican favorites with an eye toward how they present the qualities it takes to win as opposed to govern. (more…)

There are a ton of conference calling platforms out there. Let me know if you find one better than FreeConferenceCall.com.

For those of us still doing business with the telephone, there’s a tool which seems too good to be true.  Here’s how FreeConferenceCall.com describes itself:

Free Conference Call With Free Recording Only normal domestic long distance rates are charged by the participant’s long distance carriers for the length of the call. Teleconferences can have up to 96 participants for 6 hour period of time per session. Each FreeConferenceCall account remains safe and secure and is never shared or sold. Our free conference call service provides you a great opportunity to connect to many people on a conference call. Loaded with great features, our phone conferencing service has revolutionized the way in which national and international teleconferences are organized.

In addition, you get a report via e-mail when the call has concluded, detailing who participated and the like.

I’ve used it.  It works.

"O envy! envy! thou gnawing worm of virtue, and spring of infinite mischiefs! there is no other vice, my Sancho, but pleads some pleasure in its excuse; but envy is always attended by disgust, rancour, and distracting rage." -- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter 8.

In the last couple of days, both Seth and The New York Times have taken a look at the connection between on-line technology and envy.  It’s not clear who coined it, but the Times uses an acronym to describe the way Facebook, Twitter and the like have tormented those of us stalking a better offer — FOMO…or, Fear of Missing Out.

Of course, there’s nothing new under the sun.  It’s been ages since Envy was added to the Seven Deadly Sins list.  The ancient Greeks invented Zelos (god of envy and the root for the word zeal), and Cervantes wrote Don Quixote around the end of the 16th Century.

So, I’m reluctant to further demonize our gadgets and apps and how they abet our addiction to connectivity and the inevitable quest for something other than what we have.  Technology is, after all, partly a solution in search of a problem.

In a way, we set ourselves up.  When we open a Twitter account or create a Facebook page, aren’t we giving some part of ourselves permission to act on whatever innate urge might reside in us to compare our lives to the lives of others…and, perhaps, to despair?

A buddy of mine said it really well when he called out Facebook years ago.  He called it invited voyeurism.

So, really.  Who are we kidding?

Who hasn't acquired an electronic device and felt that it was obsolete the minute they opened the box? The feeling that someone has pulled the rug out from under you? The feeling many got when Cisco announced the sudden and disappointing demise of the Flip video camera. Willy Loman -- played here by Brian Dennehy (with Elizabeth Franz as Linda Loman) in the 2000 production of Arthur Miller's Pulizter Prize-winning Death of a Salesman (1949) -- knew the feeling.

I couldn’t help but think of Willy Loman.  When I read the news last week about Cisco’s decision to shut down the enormously popular Flip video, I remembered the scene with Willy and his wife, Linda, in their kitchen at the beginning of Act 2 of Death of a Salesman:

LINDA

Well, you got one more payment on the refrigerator….

WILLY

But it just broke again.

LINDA

(Laughing it out of him.) Well, it’s old dear….

WILLY

I told you we should’ve bought a well-advertised machine.  Charley bought a General Electric and it’s twenty years old and it’s still good, that son-of-a-bitch. (more…)