Some thoughts on writing.

Professionally, I've done a lot of writing this year. I've written my share, or more, of manifestos, minifestos, and something I call minutefestos. That is, as much brand blather as you can write in the minute you get to write such things.

I've also written my share, or more, of decks, print ads, banner ads, long copy, short copy, in-between copy. TV commercials, brand films, online videos, web pages, even congratulatory memos.

I'll admit, I'm from that old skool of copywriters who believe that many of a brand's communication problems can be solved with a nice bit of well-thought out, well-crafted copy.

I'm proud of all that writing. I put my heart and soul and brain and muscle into it. And these days, frankly, where so much of the world and our business is consumed by talking about what we're going to do, or might do, or should have done, I take real satisfaction in not talking, but facing the blankness of my Word doc and firing away for as long as it takes.

Much of our lives in agencies is running from meeting to meeting, up and down stairs and elevators like laboratory rats on cocaine.

A lot of the time, amid all that scurrying, I still have words--clarifying, coalescing words to churn out. So, like a fish in winter, I lower my neural responses and my pulse and focus like a sonofabitch--even when I'm interrupted, as we are constantly, by pings, beeps, chimes, and our noisy neighbors, including that account person who works on nine and is up here all the time and just doesn't stop gabbing at the top of her voice.

(I joke about starting Talk-a-holics Anonymous, which I call "on and on-anon.")

In any event, the other writing I do, is of course, in this space. Where I exercise my typing skills and the dark recesses of my over-active brain and give my imagination and my vocabulary and my Laurence Sterne-like inclination and propensity for sentences of prodigious length with more clauses and subordinate clauses and, even, santa clauses, a little room to run and a little room to play--running and playing being two things we get too little of in the ever-more-hectic-crush of work.

Speaking of which, I'm hiding this supposition down here, reckoning that no one's made it this far, I would imagine if there were any serious advertising journalism left (besides Bob Hoffman's "Ad Contrarian) we'd find that in the Holding Company Era in which we live, staffing has been cut by 300% and creative units to produce has increased by 300%, meaning, if my math is right, that whoever is left has about nine-times the work we had just a couple decades ago, before the internet changed everything.

That's it for now.

It's after nine already and I'm on company time.

Besides, I have things to write.