Mind-blowing lines #28

The end of Bright and Distant Shores unhinged me for reasons I find myself unable to explain adequately here. This passage, in particular.

He thought abut the Kanaka boys in the sugar plantations of Queensland and the stories of them dying from homesickness. Actual death from longing. They would stop eating, work listlessly in the fields all day, speak to no one, then quietly slip away one night. Death of the soul, he thought. What good are we without a candle burning behind the glass?

Word of the day #11: boondled

boondled, adj. To have bounty cast upon one, or enjoy good fortune, at random.

The usage of this term was restricted to the English moors around the turn of the 21st century. First recorded in Mayor Matthew Vice's May Day address to constituents in the town of Pickering for the year 1887, the latest remaining usage appears in a letter from Bessie Smythers to her sister Anne, now held in the archives of the Museum of London:

...But finally the nag was sold at twice the price we bought her! The auctioneer really was most perturbed, but Archie had put in such work to get her to a saleable standard, and she still has two or three years' field work left in her, he says. Dearest Anne, I really cannot tell you how boondled we felt! I was near faint with glee...

The word was briefly resurrected by little known rapper Baby C, in verse three of his 1983 release, "F*ck L*ck":

Ain't won no lotto
So I'm gonna get blotto
Don't tell me I'm boondled
You f*ckin freak
Just turn up
(turn up, turn up)
Them funky beats

This, C's last single, vanished into obscurity immediately upon its release.

So long, long copy

In recent times I've been writing 80-word blurbs for print collateral. Yeah, print—it's dead, right? Anyway, the thing is, I keep getting to 45 or so words and thinking, "All this other information's kind of superfluous. No one needs to know that. Why can't we just stop here?"

Also, this: those narrow columns they print in New Scientist are so charmingly narrow, and the paras are so delightfully short, that one barely needs to move ones eyes horizontally to read them. Run your eye down the column and your peripheral vision will pick up the words you're not looking at directly. That, my friends, is freaking handy.

So what? So what is that shorter is better in practically all media (if you ask me), and the less it feels like reading, the more I'm likely to enjoy, er, reading (or for that matter, writing) it.

I know what you're thinking: everyone knows this. Well, if everyone knows it, then why are we still being tortured with long copy, poorly laid out? Hmmmm?

Ironic tears

Currently I'm working on a project about productivity, and it's all one big fat irony. To prove it, here's today's schedule:

• 6.30am: Arise to prepare for a research interview (read: drink much coffee and clear throat endlessly in the vain hope that voice will sound less gravely than it inevitably does at this time of day).
• 7.30am: Interview an American about productivity from my treetop hideaway. Celebrate remote freelancing "workstyle" with more coffee while doing so.
• 8.15am: Interview ends. Scan to-do list. Weep ironic tears.
• 8.16am: Commence content management.
• 4.30pm: Content management ends.
• 4.31pm: Write print blurbs for client. Fail to complete.
• 6.30pm: Realise I still have shitloads to do. Stop writing print blurbs in a panic. Print and proof a small portion of collateral for another client. Mark up errors on PDF. Curse technology. Fail to call testy family member.
• 7.30pm: Put who-knows-what from bowels of freezer on burner. Commence research for interview with another American productivity guru in a mere 12 hours.
• 7.52pm: Write this post as a distraction from the cold, hard reality that I should be writing interview questions.
• Afterward: All I have left to do tonight is finish this interview prep, proofread 23 pages of print collateral, mark up the changes on the PDF, upload a blog post for another client, and weep some more ironic tears before setting my fucking alarm. Oh, and eat whatever it is that's bubbling on the stove.

For information's sake

What is it with "article authors" these days?

Once, back when I was but a slip of a girl, people used to write articles for websites because they wanted to build their authority, gain credibility by association with the brand, build some standing in the site's community, and get a link back to their site from their bio.

These days, a time-worn content manager has to explain in no uncertain terms the reasons why she wants to maintain objectivity in an article to said article's author. Multiple drafts later, she resorts to simply rewriting the fucker (technical term) to get the desired, factual, realistic information into the article so that it may be as helpful to the readers as possible.

What ever happened to giving information for the sake of giving information? Put what you think is your precious "personal brand" aside for five minutes and do yourself a favour by doing someone else a freaking favour. Sans attached strings. Call it "content altruism" if you will.

This is exactly, precisely, and unarguably where it's at.

Four unrelated facts

1. I went past an orthodox church yesterday and wanted to sleep in its belltower, overlooking the parched wasteland west of the city through its small, round windows.
2. I'm passing up on the next semester of philosophy, entitled "Love", because I have too much work to do. For a range of reasons, this is the irony of ironies right now. Jesus.
3. I'm unconscionably enamoured by the giant crocodile they found in the Philippines. For some reason, that animal is enormously inspiring to me.
4. I'm reading almost nothing right now. I have two books on the go, but they're stalled.

I hope, friend, that if you have a collection of unrelated facts, it's more coherent than this.

On pitching articles ... and taking your own advice

I'm always trying to tell people how to do writerly stuff, including how to pitch posts. Here, though, is incontrovertible proof that I can't take my own freaking advice.

These are the key elements of three article ideas I pitched to a publication recently. Read them and weep...

1. "A wildly fascinating piece looking at the way brand language works online..."
2. "An equally scintillating piece (who's with me?!) on creating brand personas as a means to facilitate consistent communication across multi-part and/or multi-media messages ... It's a pretty cool concept ... and the clients dig it."
3. "Hold onto your hats: what about the Flesch Reading Ease score?! This unputdownable piece would look at the Flesch Reading Ease score (and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level), so highly regarded online, and consider the challenges involved in meeting those requirements when balancing word counts/space, brand vocabulary (such as product names), and the digital marketer's desire for compelling, search-optimised copy. I'm currently working with this for a client and in the moments when I don't want to hunt down Flesch and torture him/her, I'm thrilled by the prospect of manipulating the language to meet the right tone, brand and comms mandatories, space and word count requirements and Reading Ease score."

I think it's fair to say things got slightly out of hand. And for that I'm eternally apologetic. But, really, how could they not get out of hand? Look at these pitches, people! They define intrigue, don't you think?

I know what you're thinking: "Torture? Really?" Don't worry: I originally had "kill" but had the feeling it'd take my precious pitches from the echelons of the merely "out of hand" and throw them well and truly overboard, so I toned it the hell down. How terribly astute of me.