image courtesy of Derek Slaton
Writers are readers first. I'm fortunate, in that my mother read to me regularly. She also enrolled me in the Dr. Seuss book club and encouraged me to use my imagination from an early age. Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little by E.B. White, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margerie Williams, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis were the epics of my youth.
In the nature vs. nurture department, I have my paternal grandmother Dorothy Steele Burn, to thank for my writer's gene. The presence of this gene was first recognized in fifth grade, thanks to the expert teaching of Mr. McKay at Washington Elementary in Wheaton. Later, at Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia, I had the good fortune to work with Dr. Fles and his favorite tome, The Norton Anthology. At Franklin & Marshall, Joe Voelker, Jody Gladding, and Ira Grushow saw something in me. Sometimes it was potential, other times it was adolescent pretense.
The College Reporter at F&M gave me my first taste of what it felt like to be recognized for my work. And recognized I was, by several members of the administration in fact, all who felt the newspaper was dangerously off message. I was also routinely recognized by angry frat boys who banned me from their parties, because I "lacked discretion" when reporting on their sordid behavior. I truly came to understand the power of journalism (and thus the responsibility it demands), when a grown man I was interviewing broke down and begged me not to write about him, or about the incident that led to his being fired from the college. Coming out of school in 1987, I opted to put the reporter's notebook down. In its place, I picked up the rhetoric of the environmental movement and applied it in clever ways to secure funding for the cause.
While working on Capitol Hill in 1989, Dupree's Diamond News published my poem, "Musings on George Bush's Inaguration" next to a memorial piece on Abbey Hoffman. I released a self-published chapbook of poems, information age blues in 1992, and then re-relased a second edition in 1993. In 1994, Salt Lake City's alternative press, Private Eye Weekly ran my poem, "space" on their back page. The publisher compensated me with a free dinner for two at a local restaurant. I began to understand this is how poetry pays. In 1998, online literary magazine, Morpo Review, gambled and decided to run "Game Day" in their December issue, giving me my first short story credit.
In the mid 1990s I turned to advertising, and ad agencies in particular, for work. My copywriting career has spanned seven agencies in five states, plus freelance work for a number of others. I've helped shape messages for many of the nation's leading consumer brands--Camel, Baileys, Captain Morgan, United Airlines, Coors, HP, McDonald's, NAPA Auto Parts, American Tourister and Samsonite to name a few.
In August 1999, I took a web-based html tutorial and launched my first site days later, driven as I was to bypass the gatekeepers and get my work out there. In July of 2003, I began keeping a personal interest weblog. Now I also write and edit the ad industry trade rag, AdPulp, and I keep track on my various musical interests at Leftover Cheese. Covering music, literature, politics, the environment, travel and the ad industry has effectively turned the journalism light back on for me. Interestingly, some of my advertising clients are now asking for "content, not advertising," so the personal and professional are converging.