Becoming the Well-Read Explorer
So I haven’t been at my desk much lately. I’ve been writing, but it’s been in on yellow legal pad and not on a computer. I’ve been outside in the woods, deserts, and mountains for a while. I’ve hiked many miles in far flung places from Alaska to the Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grande at the edge of Texas. I’ve lost over 50lbs since I last put up a blog post. Just weeks ago I was out in Arches National Park. I’m back with many stories.
But today I want to champion stories that others have written. Maybe they’ll inspire you to get outside as well. Outside Magazine has a pretty damn good reading list here for anyone looking to learn more about the wilderness. My favorites listed here are Bill Bryson’s Walk in the Woods, and Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.
Much of Bryson’s humor comes from the foil of his buddy Katz as Bryson himself plays the straight man. Katz gets lost and when he makes his way back to Bryson, he says: “To tell you the truth, I’ve never been so glad to see another person in my whole life, and that includes some naked women.”
Krakauer’s book is one I just finished yesterday, and I’ll be writing more about that book shortly. But the Christopher McCandless as described in the book was less annoying and more human than the film version led me to believe. And though I’m not positive I’d get along with McCandless if I’d have met him in person, I can relate to the wanderlust he was filled with, according to Krakauer: “The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.”
Two books not listed that inform my thinking about hiking and spending time in the wilderness are Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Strayed’s book wasn’t published when that list came out. And McCarthy’s is a post apocalyptic novel about a boy and his dad walking and scavenging the wasted gray landscape with all their meager positions in tow, but it still sounds like hiking to me.
#optoutside
Letters to a Young Poet on Creative Content, Part 1
Last week a poet, musician, graffiti artist, and recent graduate (bachelors in English) asked me, “What are all these creative content gigs about?”
I thought this might be something that other people are thinking about. So here it is. Thanks for reading.
First, I want to admit that I’m no Tim Ferriss or even Brian Clark (http://www.copyblogger.com/about/). However, I know a little bit about this stuff. In addition to the usual skills and writing experience you’d expect from a dude who teaches college English, I’ve been working with “creative content” for a long time now. I’ve blogged here, at Critical Margins, and even for Jane Friedman (the former publisher of Writer’s Digest). I’ve produced and hosted radio shows and podcasts for KDHX (a station that has over 82,000 listeners per week) and Critical Margins. I’ve created the copy, the products, and the press releases that have landed coverage in as diverse publications as Riverfront Times, ESPN.com, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Now, let’s get back to the poet’s question about creative content. Every large company has somebody writing the words that appear on their website. Some smaller companies and non for profits do this as well.
Q: What’s all this about SEO and copywriting?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a game where you try to load as many key words into an article or the headings and titles of the articles to make that article return at a higher place in users search results. The algorithms that underpin search results apparently attend to the frequency of keywords as one of their variables. The best way to optimize search results is to consistently put up good content. I’m not the first to say this. All the tricks in the world aren’t worth as much as good, honest, thoughtful, and frequent writing that comes from a perspective that feels like a human wrote it.
Q: If I was a producer of online marketing content, what would this actually tangibly look like?
This depends on the company and the contract. Some gigs are for a jack-of-all-trades who can create internal materials (employee newsletters, CEO speeches, training materials for new employees…) and external materials (customer facing web copy, press releases, infographics, podcasts, videos…). Some of these gigs might want you to do just one or two of these things. There are gigs that people do from home and then some gigs where they’d have to go in for. Some of those tasks I mentioned above quickly become other job descriptions (and fields of study) of their own at larger companies: public relations, advertising, instructional design, audio and visual production, and even technical writing.
Like kung fu, all the rhetorical skills you’ve learned as an English major can be used for good as well as evil. Some companies might want you to write them out of a corner or explain away certain mistakes with your exceptional storytelling abilities. Theranos is a health tech company that, according to The Wall Street Journal, lied about their blood tests and then covered up their problems. Wired just wrote a story about how Theranos is looking for a writer to spin this (http://www.wired.com/2016/02/theranos-is-hiring-a-writer-to-solve-its-problems/?mbid=nl_2516).
Q: Content writing seems like a growing field. But what are the long-term career prospects for this (plus the salary/benefit/ full time vs. part time situation)?
Until you craft something big that sets you apart or get experience with top-level clients, you’re competing against an international computer using, English speaking mass of people who aren’t spending US dollars to live. They’re spending rupees, pesos, or duckets. They can afford to work for less than you can and still pay their rent. This is not an argument for or against outsourcing. You want to know about the economics of a situation, that’s all.
Q: Does getting a gig in this field require knowledge of HTML or programming?
Learning a little bit about HTML and CSS is easy. Spending two or three hours at codecademy (www.codecademy.com) will be useful to you know matter what you end up doing (as long as you’re not going off to a mountain to be a yogi or something). If you do creative content marketing HTML will come in handy sometime. Same goes if you become an English professor. HTML is just a mark up language. It isn’t a functional programing language. The functional stuff is more of a challenge. But surely not beyond your big brain.
I guess it is all political
One night about a year ago after having a beer or two at the Stagger Inn Again in Edwardsville, Megan Hudgins and I walked out to our cars where heard the strangest bird song. It was not of this world. It sounded digitized. I approached the shrubbery with caution. This bush of sorts was located about equal distance between the Napa store and the library. It was not a hoax. Half a dozen of real birds were making those sounds. I know because they tried to attack me. I wrote a poem about the sound of these birds. I thought it was just another sci-fi poem. But apparently it is political, or so says Mobius: The Journal of Social Change.
http://mobiusmagazine.com/poetry/animatro.html
Oh and if you’re in Edwardsville sometime, stop by Stagger. Tell Tim the literati sent you. That and five bucks will get you a picture of Stag.
3 New Poems Published at Squalorly
Here’s some poems I wrote about not knowing how to explain what Russian ballerinas do, working at an Oklahoma oil refinery, and the songs of sea turtles. Maybe you’ll like them.
Two poems of mine for Diego Rivera went up at The Monarch Review Today
It’s strange. Valerie Vogrin pointed out to me that these are such small poems written in response to such large paintings and murals. But I think the people in Rivera’s painting are of few words.
Twenty Avocados Published
A well-traveled poem of mine about Guatemala, the people you meet in hostels, and avocados just went up at Outside In Magazine.
I wouldn’t be mad or anything if you clicked on the link to check it out.
http://outsideinmagazine.com/issue-thirteen/poetry/twenty-avocados-jason-braun/
Published online at Thunderclap
Here’s a very short and maybe even funny poem that just got published today-
http://thunderclappress.com/2013/04/29/jason-braun-platonic-ideal/
One of my poems, “Klimt Flashback” is up at MUSED
It’s got everything a poem should have: reference to a painting and Hamlet, a redhead, and death.
http://infertility.bellaonline.com/review/issues/spring2013/p014.html
Don’t worry about the “infertility” in the web address above. Everything’s a-okay here.
An absurd poem of mine is up at Clutching at Straws
It’s me at my Tom Waits-y-est!
http://clutchingatstraws.wordpress.com/category/jason-braun/
One of my poems just went up at Front Porch Review
The poem is about a solder coming home. This is a much shorter poem than The Odyssey.
http://frontporchrvw.com/issue/january-2013/article/after-a-long-absence
My poem Cosmos just went up at the Evergreen Review
http://www.evergreenreview.com/b/current-issue-number-130/cosmos-jason-braun/
Today’s Poem
Simon of the Desert
Refuses goats milk
because one day it will turn
and refuses the girl
because one day she’ll age
and refuses the young man’s
piety because he does not grow
a bear and refuses the eyes
of his mother because she knew
him before he martyred
and he drank at her breast
and hell is an unexpected
airplane ride, beatniks,
and a wife forever dancing
with other people.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Presidential Debate October 3rd, 2012
I didn’t watch because my vote
is as good as cast. Nothings news
here: Obama is a handsome,
charismatic man. Yes, I could
watch him brush his teeth,
and be compelled.
But he would have to confess
he’s a product of an unnatural
birth in space, undress
down to a lizard-man
skin and eat a small child
live to lose my vote.
And this is why Republicans
have their fingers crossed.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
For Michael
Thriller was my first
tape and it gave me fever dreams
but that could have been the hundred-
zippered faux leather jacket
that I thought would keep my cool
all that July.
Tonight I pray
that some of my heroes not come back
haunted, hollow-eyed, zombiefied,
howling or moonwalking over laws
of pop culture. Let them not chip away
what they once set in stone.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Zombie Rondeau
If the apocalypse came lit by rainbows rays
that’d make my heartache and pain fade away,
‘cause when zombies campaign the streets
I don’t think of my empty bed’s lacking body heat,
and I’ll retreat into sleep forgetting the word fiancé.
The plague ran from here to Boston then to Bombay,
poison contained in the pollen we called Satan’s bouquet,
overwrite the wrath of her fingernails on me in the backseat,
if the apocalypse came.
I might as well have built a house of paper machete
on uneven terrain, as they walk these walls down in disarray
looking for something good to eat, all my sobs are obsolete,
the turning neighbor’s trapped in wet concrete,
but I’d stop a beat to sing your name in the last cabaret
if the apocalypse came.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Case Study
The project’s gone gonzo again,
I’m off the grid and meandering
between participants and observers,
just a good stones throw from skid row.
I call out to them for thick description.
Note their fingers and toes, the way
skin makes a web, the knots that dirt
always finds. Turn the bare bulb on high
to sweat it out of the focus groups.
They lie. They know the names
and pictures on the cartons momma
bought before the storm summers ago.
This was the case study of small towns
and minds. I tilt my hat and am atypical.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Morning Cartoons
Now I know Heckle and Jeckle
broadcasted Jim Crow thinking
into our TV room every Saturday.
Sad to learn that this one show my sister
and I agreed on, now leans on me.
Jeckle’s falsetto switch never did much
for me but Heckle’s Brooklyn gruff
was something I kinda admired.
Turns out we were all being conned,
but not by the magpies.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Brontosaurus
Abandoned by scientists but cradled
by schoolmarms in the cool cave
of the grammar school classroom.
Mrs. Rothenchalk, made all of third grade
memorize the dinosaurs that were issued
U.S. Post Office stamps in 1989. I’m sorry
she sapped your blood for her red ink.
There always was temptress in her
teacup. A bone misplaced, never sets.
I could have been held back that year
for this or any anything else
that didn’t really exists.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Sediment
Under a stone heavy enough
to hold a full grown horse
in place, in between the worming
soil and the weight, a relic of love
breaks down—becomes sedimentary,
mixing with rubbish and a cicadas shell.
Once I knelt down on the side of this road
to put my face against it.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Order
Young, the four French girls grew otherwise
and were submerged by time. Four French girls—
the young always seem to keep the fashion,
hold crushes against history’s lament.
Girls: the four, young French defined
it in a magical way that made the banks
close early. French, the four young girls
gave off an air of propriety consistent
of vigil for fathers lost at sea. Girls, the French
young found their way up the staircase
where other contents would be their context.
The four French girls, when they were young,
called out all the silent letters.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Communiqué
When the curfew came down
in Paris only the fools and old folk
stayed to watch the gun-smoke action
sequence, the melting gold, the neon
street fight, and lip-smack of flesh.
The intergalactic ash changed shop-
keepers into bandits looting blood,
marrow, and everything in-between.
Foolish, I thought a repeating rifle
from the forties and two boxes
full of shells would keep me safe
and warm. Dawn came again without
the sound twenty tanks should make.
I crept and crawled through rotting
men and fruit for food and drink.
I was bitten, and killed him, and now
turning, say goodbye. This is not
a good year for red wine.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
2AM Voodoo
Fighting a war on two fronts,
its unwise to spend time
watching Zombie movies
when you’ve got a case
of the common cold.
Growing sluggish, a fever
takes hold. Sweat marks
your ragged clothes.
Breathing through you open
mouth and dragging one foot
into the pharmacy. They keep
the distance of a pitchfork
between their cold hearts and you.
-Jason Braun
Today’s Poem
Take Backs
This is why we want time
travel. Don’t pay attention.
We’ll do it over. Push the leaves
back into the tree branches.
Button up a girl’s blouse
then light a cigarette. Watch
the bully pay the weakling
to keep his lunch.
-Jason Braun
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