Creating a Writing Career.by Brian Faulkner
I could say I always wanted to write, but that would be wrong. First I wanted to be a DJ so I could talk on the radio and play records--the perfect job for a kid who lacked confidence, since in order to do that you had to retreat to a small private space with a microphone where you could sound and talk pretty much how you wanted to sound and talk and nobody new otherwise (if you had the voice for it), which is why they say of the many introverts who gravitate to the broadcast business: "He has a face for radio." But I didn't know how to make such a thing happen. Beyond that, all I could envision was working in some shop or factory or store like my father and all the other dads on our street did from 9-5 while waiting for the weekend to come around because their jobs weren't all that inspiring. There were times when I thought maybe I could write and worked up a vision of myself doing so, which is all my writing career amounted to in those early years, although I think the ability to write a smidge better than my classmates may have helped boost my grades--although not enough to amount to anything. One of my grandmothers told me well after I’d grown up that she thought I had a writing knack as far back as high school. If she'd said so back then my life may have taken an earlier turn toward becoming the writer I wanted to become. Before that could happen, of course, I had to struggle through thickets of doubt, beginning with practicing being a DJ by reading stories aloud from the newspaper and copying the technique of pros I heard on the radio, although not when other family members were within earshot and so kept this part of me to myself. I had no real focus beyond that, and there were no attaboys handed out to young Brian in our home that could give me a clue to my work future. I could fix radios, but only those with problems that were so obvious I could see them--things like burned out capacitors and darkened vacuum tubes. So no practical future there! As people get older, they sometimes say they wish they were this or that age again when they were stronger and more attractive and had more hope that life would amount to something. Well maybe, but being a teenager again, adrift in the land of "maybe someday" would not be on my wish list. Because I didn’t think I could do much of anything back then. After a fling at college, during which I proved a clear mismatch for the electronic engineering career I thought I wanted, I decided to join the Army and found a thread of hope there because they said I was "qualified" to train for a broadcast job with Armed Forces Radio and after the training was over began writing news and feature stories, got to play records and chatter about hit songs on Uncle Sam's radio station and began receiving attaboys for my work. After three years of broadcast or broadcast-related experience in the Army, I worked in commercial radio as staff announcer at a prestigious North Carolina station and then switched to news reporting, which I did well but wasn't all that excited about. After that I wrote a lot freelance ad copy (following a discouraging but super helpful failure at trying to do that very thing, which made me determined to figure out how to do it well). By the late 1970s, I had launched a full-fledged marketing communication business, where my able team and I wrote copy, produced corporate slide presentations, wrote speeches for senior level clients and provided speaker support services for a huge variety of small and large business firms and made a success of it for several decades. |
Somewhere along the way, I also thought about writing a newspaper column and called my trial attempt “Tidbits” (because it was about everyday life) and worked up samples to show around, including one about my youngest brother’s eating habits: There was a kid in my life who hated peas, plain old green garden peas. My little brother hated every one he ever saw. Said they tasted like green dust. And would do most anything to get out of eating them ... I felt good about these experiments but got discouraged before I could even place my toe on the starting line by the pleasant but realistic editor of our local daily who took a look at my samples and told me to keep writing and come back when I thought I was good enough and he’d pay me five bucks a column. The pay sounded ridiculous, but I should have swallowed my pride, taken his advice, and worked for free if that’s what it took to get published. I never did go down the newspaper column road, although at one point in my career I wrote and broadcast a daily column on a local radio station as well as a Sunday morning “news” show. I kept at it for about a year just to see if I could write to a deadline and stay fresh. Somebody about that time said I sounded like Charles Kuralt (of CBS Television's "On the Road" series), which was encouraging. And I may, indeed, have sounded a tiny bit like Kuralt, although not in a way that would have given the man pause. This brief enterprise included such scintillating titles as “Man vs. Nature”, “What to do About the I-40 Curve” and “Fifty Bucks for Gas?” and bought me about a year’s worth of very minor local celebrity. But the need to write just for the sake of writing kept knocking at the stubborn door of my mind. Somebody once asked me if I’d thought about writing a novel. My reply was that I didn’t think I had a novel in me but have scratched around with some ideas (several pages of several first chapters) and wrote one short story about a dog named Harley that somehow got itself published in a slick city magazine and could serve as a novel’s first chapter. I know I’ll never write like that “other” Faulkner (the famous one), nor would I especially care to, but still enjoy stacking up the words in thoughtful and entertaining ways and have written a good number of essays and stories here in my “twilight” years and am having fun doing it! I thoroughly enjoy being a writer and even yet find inspiration from those would-be newspaper columns from so many decades ago (discovered recently in a box that looks even older than me). To my surprise and delight, these ancient words sounded as fresh today as they did back in the ‘70s. So, what does all this mean to you here deep in the 21st Century? That good writing endures. It connects, encourages, inspires and motivates--and never goes out of style. Good writing connects hearts and changes minds. It has the power to transform people, whether a few lines in a deeply meaningful personal letter or an extensive repositioning campaign to attract and keep more of the customers a business needs the most. I had no idea back when I was twenty years old and wanting to be a DJ that my career would evolve to the point that my writing has helped so many people in their business and personal lives. That's rewarding in its own right, of course, but there's always tomorrow's needs to consider because change doesn't quit. It will be my pleasure to help you find your way through this challenging world ... with good writing, writing that works for you! - bf |
If you'd like to hear even more from me, listen to this!
| |||
May I write for you?
|
