Category Archives: Career

For love and money: balancing life as a writer

When I decided that Professional Writing would be my major, I did it for many numerous self-fulfilling, positive reasons. I wanted to be a novelist but I couldn’t count on that. I still loved writing, just didn’t want to major in creative writing and get stuck teaching it. I wanted a major that would get me a job I would love.

Professional Writing was the obvious choice.

And now, out of school and working full-time in Greenville, South Carolina, I have a job I love working as a Project Manager in the Marketing department of a mega-church. It’s crazy how life turns out. I spend four days a week (I know, I get three day weekends because I work 10 hour days, it’s basically the bomb) managing and organizing the Marketing department. I do everything from doling out work and keeping the schedules of our designs to ordering items to writing synopses for the CDs and DVDs we sell. And that’s maybe an eighth of what I do.

But here’s the thing—I still want to be a novelist. I still want to, someday, become a self-sufficient writer career wise, and if that’s going to happen I have to work toward it on a regular basis.

Let’s face the facts, people. I work 4 days a week, sure, but they are 10 hour days. I don’t get home until 6:30 – 7pm, and if I go to the gym let’s make that 8pm. I’ve sent anywhere from 80 to 100 emails that day (I am not exaggerating), and the last thing I want to do is sit down and write a novel. I’d much rather eat some ice cream and catch up on How I Met Your Mother.

But I have goals. I don’t have time for any of that.

Here’s what you might be asking—not just how do you find the time, but how do you stay inspired? How do you balance being a professional writer at work and come home and do blogging, book reviews, and creative writing?

Determination. And time management.

That’s the short way to describe it. It helps that I love writing, and if I get myself in the right mindset I can force myself to write. And after about ten minutes of forcing myself to write, eighty percent of the time I’m not forcing myself anymore. I’m deep into whatever I’m writing and I’m excited.

Sometimes this might take a beer or three. Sometimes it takes a cupcake. Sometimes it takes watching How I Met Your Mother before even attempting. And sometimes it takes determination.

Time management is incredibly important for me. When I get home, and let’s say I haven’t worked out so I’m home at 6:30, I need to eat. By the time I’ve finished and done dishes, it’s 7:30. I’m mentally exhausted, so I watch 30 minutes of mindless TV. The hardest part is forcing myself to turn it off and get to work. From there, I always say that I’ll just write for a little bit. Then I pick the thing that I want to work on most, and I dive in.

Some days I get about one hundred words in and give up and go back to my library book or some TV, but most days I’m in it for the long haul. I write for a while, usually until I know I need to do some other stuff. Then I work on stuff I didn’t really want to do. Maybe a blog post, maybe some blog reading about queries (who likes to read about queries?). Sometimes, if I’m feeling ambitious, I try to do a little French, since I’m trying to pick up the language again.

By the time I’m done, it’s usually 10 – 11pm. Time for a shower, maybe a little reading, and bed. Then I wake up and do it all over again, but not always in the same order.

Something that is incredibly important for me is inspiration. And so is taking the time to find it. For me, inspiration comes in all forms. Reading is the big one—anything from blogs to novels to poetry. A blog about how a certain writer approaches outlines might inspire me. A poem about a cat might make me think that I want to write about a cat. Pinterest is another big source of inspiration, both writing and not writing (cooking and DIY stuff I will probably never do). I’ve always found photography to be hugely inspirational, and many a time if I need a prompt to write something I pick a photo and write the story behind it. If I feel blah or stupid or like my writing is dumb, reading helps, and so does Pinterest, and sometimes so does wine.

There’s no right way to balance your work ambitions and your personal ambitions—everyone does it differently. I write lists. I check things off. I read blogs (a lot of blogs) about writing and the publishing industry, trying to keep up to speed. I’m always thinking about the next step, both professionally and personally. Being lazy is okay sometimes—the other day I spent a whole three hours watching That 70s Show. Such things are necessary. Reading for fun is necessary too. How else am I going to get inspiration for everything on my to-do list?

For me, the key is balance. When I’m at work for 10 or often 11 hours, I spend about thirty minutes a day working on a blog post that isn’t about work. It frees up my brain halfway through the day and allows me to unwind, and when I jump back into work I’m so much more focused. It helps me be able to make the switch from professional to creative writing that much easier. Not everyone has time to do this, but I highly suggest it.

One thing I’m still working on is waking up an hour early to write. I can barely wake up ten minutes early to do my makeup nicely. Someday I’ll be badass enough to do it and not complain.

About the Author

Vanessa-Levin-PompetzkiVanessa Levin-Pompetzki is an alumni of the Professional Writing program at Michigan State University. She currently works as the Marketing Project Manager at Redemption (please excuse the website, they’re redesigning) in Greenville, South Carolina. Tweet her at @vanessalevpom or check out her blog.

On making

Want to make art but don’t know where to start? Check out Good Life Project’s interview with Lisa Congdon about her career as an illustrator, artist, and author. In telling the story about how she became an artist, Lisa touches on the importance of being open and not letting low moments stifle creativity:

I don’t want to be blocked, I want to be open. And part of that is being in a place where you just let yourself be whatever you are that day. […] Being in a place where you’re feeling good about your work and confident about your ability to execute your next idea is important, especially if you’re in the business of making art for a living. We need to draw from all these different parts of ourselves to make what we make every day.

The interview is 45 minutes long, but it’s definitely worth watching (or listening to — GLP offers an mp3 as well).

To check out some of Lisa’s work, I recommend starting with her most recently completed Daily Project, 365 Days of Lettering, which is being published in a collection in 2014. Also, keep an eye out for this year’s project, The Reconstructionists. It’s a collaboration with Maria Popov of Brain Pickings that combines illustrated portraits of trailblazing women with hand-lettered quotes and micro-essays.

The necessity of risk

The Great Discontent recently interviewed design great Debbie Millman, who shared her experiences from 30 years in the business. Here is one passage that particularly resonated with me:

I don’t think you can achieve anything remarkable without some risk. Risk is actually a rather tricky word because humans aren’t wired to tolerate it very much. The reptilian part of our brains wants to keep us safe. Anytime you try something that doesn’t have any certainty associated with it, you’re risking something, but what other way is there to live?

The first ten years of my career were very much organized around avoiding failure, but my inadequacies were completely self-constructed. Nobody told me that I couldn’t do something; nobody told me that I couldn’t succeed; I had convinced myself and lived in that self-imposed reality. I think a lot of people do this. They self-sabotage and create all sorts of reasons for not doing things under the misguided assumption that, at some point, they might feel better about themselves and that will finally allow them to take that risk. I don’t think that ever happens. You have to push through it and do it as if you have no other choice—because you don’t. You just don’t.

Debbie talks a lot in the interview about dealing with rejection, fear, and failure — things we all have to deal with, but don’t like to talk about. And yet in sharing her own moments of self-doubt, Debbie shows that great things come from taking risks — a valuable lesson for creatives at all stages of their career.

For more on the necessity of risk in creative work, check out iA’s Story of a Beautiful Failure and Seth Godin’s Risk, fear, and worry.

Things I wish I’d understood when I was in design school

School is a bubble, a safe haven from the real world. Cultivate curiosity. Stay up all night X-actoing. Try to understand that right now you don’t really have to worry about dental bills, insurance, rush deadlines, press checks, expense reports, and pitches. Retirement benefits are important (unless you want to work until the age of 80), and compound interest is worth learning about. One day you’ll be responsible for all that, and you won’t ever be able to find the time for anything.

Write down your goals, draw a map of things you’d like to do. Once the seasonal structure of school is gone, life can start to feel like a never-ending free fall or a stagnant pool of sameness if you don’t draft your own direction. You will learn more at your first real job than you did in school.

A job is a job, so don’t take it too personally. Work can sometimes bog you down and make you forget that you’re alive. You can make your life anything you want it to be, but you’ll have to be the one to take the actions to get you there. This may seem obvious and sound easy; it is not.

If you’ve never had a crappy job, get one, at least for a little while. Later in your career, when you’re a manager, you need to remember what it felt like to make minimum wage and do menial work.

Learn how to almost always say yes, even when your initial reaction may be no. Use social media strategically. Create on a regular basis, not just for your job, but for yourself. Then put your work out there for everyone to see. Be flexible. Details matter. Use grids most of the time and kern thoughtfully. Read. Look. See. Remove the price sticker from your portfolio case before going to your first job interview.

Seek and foster relationships with mentors you respect. Jump into chaos, fix the problems later. Sit beneath a very old tree and look up. Know design history. Designing non-functional typography á la David Carson won’t work for most paying clients. Hoefler & Frere-Jones is not a fancy French winery. Know your type foundries and understand that at some point you will have to pay money for a font.

Have strong opinions. Share them, but don’t push them. There are no absolutes.

Travel, near and far. Embrace empathy; it is the key to all successful relationships. Purposely leave your comfort zone; familiarity and habit can make you stagnant. Accumulate stories. Understand that as a problem solver, you’re obligated to explore and be open to all experiences. This is how you will make new connections and arrive at surprising solutions. This is also how you’ll come to feel super alive.

We’re all in this crazy world together, and don’t ever become so selfish that you forget it. The government isn’t always right, and corporations are not people, no matter what legislation says. Some misguided people will try to pay you a lot of money to design something that is unethical. Go to a quiet place and really think about if it’s worth it. Use your problem solving and visual communication skills for good; give back to the world that helped you get to where you are today. As a designer especially, you have an obligation to a greater good; don’t leave a legacy that ruins the future of others.

There is so much more you don’t know. Realize it, and let that knowledge humble you and inspire you to keep seeking. Don’t waste your time always searching for advice from other people. If you take time to listen to the quiet of your heart, you will come to understand that you already know the answer.

A lot of other people have advice to give. Here are some of my favorites:

David Foster Wallace – Kenyan commencement speech

Stefan Sagmeister – Things I have learned in my life so far

Frank Chimero – The Particle

Ira Glass – on being an artist

First Things First Manifesto 2000 – on ethics and the responsibility of being a designer

About the Author

Jessica Yurasek is a Creative Strategist at Innovation Protocol, a strategic brand consulting firm. She also works with socially conscious non-profits such as The Tiziano Project and Counterspill.org to promote truth through storytelling using design along with new media platforms. Find her on Twitter @missjessrose.

In the Workplace: Spring 2011 Edition Round-Up

We recently showcased the talent of professional writers, editors, and designers in the Spring 2011 edition of our In the Workplace series. Today we’ll take a look back at their answers to the question:

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers, editors, and designers?

“Never, ever, ever take a job for the money. Just when I think I’ve learned this lesson, I fall back in the hole and end up hating myself, the publication, the world. Only pick the jobs and assignments that are going to make you proud.” — Alissa Walker, Freelance writer

“I’m sure you’ve heard this one before — write regularly. Or if you design, design regularly. It’s the only way to keep your skills sharp and your audience engaged. Also, expose yourself to a lot of newness. New news, new people, new places, new ideas. It spurs creativity and gives you interesting content and perspective. Newness can also mean variety. I’ve noticed that some of the best writers and designers I’ve met have built up experience in many sizes, formats, and mediums.” — Tim Gasper, Keepstream co-founder / The Appconomy contributor

“Be a student of your industry. Read/look at as much work from others in your industry as you can to see how the pros are doing it. Start some kind of “inspiration spot” where you save photos or links or samples of things that inspire you so you can reference them later. But probably the most important thing is to just get out there and create something. Write a blog, take photos, redesign ads or publications you like, just practice your craft and set it free for others to see. You’ll learn the most when you have to stand behind content you’re creating.” — Becky Johns, Account Executive, Agency Communications at Cramer-Krasselt / Freelance Photographer

“Be true to yourself, your skills, and your internal motivations. Be confident in yourself in order to take steps to be doing exactly what you want to be doing. If it were easy, everyone would be doing fine art or publishing a magazine. Having faith in yourself, finding the benefit in what you’re doing, and staying optimistic are the most important things.” — Chad Kouri, Maker and Doer

Thank you to all our featured professionals who gave us a glimpse into the work they do, from how they create and communicate in their job to how they define professional writing. For more inspiration, be sure to check out all our interviews with young professionals.

Introducing GradHacker

As a grad student, you’re expected to be a full-time everything: student, teacher, researcher, collaborator, networker. Add on the life you’re supposed to have outside of school and it can be very overwhelming. That’s where GradHacker comes in.

Written by graduate students for graduate students, GradHacker is a collaborative blog and digital roundtable that came out of the Michigan State University’s Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative. The goal? To share and learn from each other how to ‘hack’ all aspects of grad life.

Our contributing authors are all graduate students from a variety of universities and disciplines. We are always accepting new authors or guest posts from any grad student in any university. We are dedicated to creating a community of grads who can benefit from hearing the stories, tips, and challenges of others who are experiencing the same things. The topics that we will tackle are just as varied as the individuals who are writing them […]. Posts discuss topics such as raising kids in grad school, how to propose a digital dissertation to your committee, how to volunteer in grad school, the basics of twitter, strategies for being a teaching assistant, and even healthy recipes.

GradHacker just launched this week, and it’s already proving to be a fantastic new resource for students with articles such as making your dissertation more accessible outside of academia and how to write an academic conference proposal. New articles will be published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so be sure to check it out and subscribe. You can also follow GradHacker on Facebook and Twitter.

In the Workplace with Chad Kouri

Name: Chad Kouri
Title: Maker and Doer
Website/Blog: www.longliveanalog.com
Location: Chicago, IL


Photo by Andy Schwegler of Letterform

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I came to Chicago for school in 2003 to study graphic design. Before I moved here to study, I knew I didn’t have enough money to finish a four-year program, so I took all the design classes I could at Columbia and then jumped out and got an internship, which turned into a job at a marketing firm. I was there 4-5 years on and off and progressed my way up to a Junior Art Director for a very small company. Overall, my experience was that I really liked the people I was working with and the family atmosphere, but the work I was doing wasn’t very rewarding. So I started pursuing some of the things I was doing in my free time like custom typography and collage work to see if that was something I could pursue that would pay the bills and not just occupy the space in between doing the work I paid my bills with.

That was about three years ago. Another thing that motivated me to make a change was the inception of The Post Family a year previous to that. The Post Family is a group of seven creative, like-minded people, mostly from design backgrounds, that wanted to kind of get away from being on our computers for 14-16 hours a day and have a studio space where we can get together and come up with concepts and ideas to fuel our creativity on our “passion projects”, things we do in our own pursuit of general happiness. We had just gotten a space and everyone was pushing hard in our networks to make people aware of what we were doing. There’s a pretty large community of support around the idea of pursuing these kinds of goals—making things because you want to and expressing yourself through creativity in place where it’s not being forced upon you. It was fairly easy for me to really kick it into high gear and utilize some of the network I had developed over the past couple of years and jump out of the job. For a year I basically did a week of work a month at a design company to pay the bills, and the rest of the time was spent on screen printing, doing collage work, and donating time and working with Proximity Magazine, which is a very impressive, thorough quarterly contemporary art magazine in the city here.

That went on for a little while and then Edelman PR contacted me and said they really liked what I was doing within the design and art community, my illustration work, and my mindset on creativity. They said they would like for me to work for them, but they didn’t really know what I would be doing. That was about a year ago. It took us a little time to figure out exactly what the position would entail, but now I’m their Artist in Residence.

Tell us about your current job.
I work mostly from home, typically 20-30 hours a week for Edelman on everything from new business pitches to helping curate artwork throughout the office. They bring me in for general creation of ideas and to figure out how to not only have people feel like they’re in a creative atmosphere within the workplace, but also to reinvigorate some of their business pitches with different, more interactive ways of presenting to potential clients rather than just projecting a screen on a wall.

With The Post Family guys, our space has evolved to a gallery and studio space. I help coordinate events and do general promotion for the group. I also do studio tours of different artists’ space that I photograph and interview for the website just to add another layer of transparency to what everyone’s doing. That’s what we’re all about, and I think it’s a midwest/Chicago mentality of “all for one”. Everyone is willing to share skills and knowledge for the greater good of the community. I’ve been participating a lot in the art happenings around here as well. I’m trying to focus a lot more on developing a larger body of fine art work so I can start showing more often with different people. I’m finding out that generally I try to make things as difficult as possible for myself and see if I can get out of it. Fine art is the next wall to climb, which I’ve been enjoying.

What does a typical day look like for you?
I try to have a “No meetings before 10:30″ rule. Sometimes that doesn’t work, but I know I’m much better in the later part of the morning because I typically work until 1 or 2am when I can get the most work accomplished. So I usually get up around 10—hopefully not to an alarm—and then go to my home studio to organize things. I usually spend most of the morning doing correspondence—keeping up with people, making sure email is answered. The second half of the day is more focused on either commissioned work as an individual illustrator or work for Edelman. That’s about 60% of the day, and the other 40% is general exploring and ideation time. I typically have a notebook open all day as I’m thinking about different ideas and concepts. If I have something that comes to mind, I try to facilitate the time to at least get it down so I can come back to it. I also try to leave little bits of free time throughout the day to just let my mind wander and see what happens. I tend to doodle a lot too, though I’m finding out more and more that doodling is working.

Overall, it’s more of an organic work schedule where if I’m having a hard time working on something, I step away from it for a while and don’t try to pound it out. You’re not always going to have that opportunity, but keeping it a bit looser has been really beneficial for my process. That seems to help ideas happen a little bit quicker rather than sweating it out for a week.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
At Edelman I’ve done everything from redesigning new business pitches (PowerPoint templates) to interoffice communication stuff that is a little bit more fun and loose, such as illustrations for the employee recognition boards. I also do some concepting for problem-solving initiatives. If we have a big problem that comes in from a client, I figure out different scenarios so people can get together and brainstorm in a quick fashion. There’s everything from highly conceptual ideas to very bare bones at Edelman.

As for myself, most of what I’m creating right now is a lot of collage work, a lot of fine art work. I’m developing concepts and ideas into a body of work. I also do typography work for individuals, lately for music people who are looking for custom lettering for their website or promotions. But mostly I’m just trying to create collaboratively and set up scenarios to meet with other people and have free-form experiment in creating stuff. I’m doing a little traveling this summer to do video work with some friends in LA, and hopefully I’ll be in New York at the end of September with some other friends doing the same thing. So not so much individual documents, but more of a free-form body of work.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
I really enjoy the problem solving at Edelman. You not only have to figure out a solution to a problem, but you also have to figure out how to communicate that solution to an array of different people who have different ways of communicating. It makes for an interesting back and forth, and it takes a lot more work to push through a big idea. You have to make sure that not only is the idea good, but that you are willing to put forth the time to fight for it to come to fruition. That’s been really interesting for me, to develop my communication skills with talking and selling ideas to different people. It’s also helped in the gallery sense because if I have some kind of situation, I’m more on my toes about figuring out how to solve that problem and communicating with that person to make them feel more comfortable.

How did you prepare for your job?
Everything about me, and The Post Family as well, is that we try to be organic in our processes: let things live, let things breathe, and see what happens. Being able to roll with the punches and not really having a specific plan means you can’t really fail. There aren’t any personal expectations to live up to and you have broader ideas of what’s best. Also, being an optimist—what’s the worst thing that can happen? Even if a job goes terribly, there’s absolutely something there and probably more to learn from than something that went perfectly well. So I’m always optimistic that things will turn around.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.
Google Image Search is pretty ridiculously awesome. I probably use it every single day on every project I do, just to get some visual stimulation. I can put in one word and there will be so many different images that may not even relate to that word that draw my attention to different places. I don’t typically use those images in what I’m creating, so for my collages and other work, the Library of Congress has a great digital archive that is mostly public domain or Creative Commons. Flickr Groups for vintage ads have also proven to be full of high-res old imagery that is public domain now.

My email—my email is chaos. I have four different email addresses for different jobs that I do and it’s great to be able to work on everything at once. Everyone can get a hold of me and I can be plugged in from anywhere, so that’s been super beneficial. Early on, email was something I was utilizing. I would go out to Borders and look in the credits of magazines for the email addresses of art directors and publishers and then just cold email. I was able to develop this really rough community of people whose work I really enjoyed, and maybe there was a possibility they would like mine. It’s proven to be a really good tool. I emailed a woman that I met in San Francisco last July at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art. I met her there—she was the buyer for the gift shop—I introduced myself, wrote her an email when i got home from the business card she gave me, and told her it was nice to meet her, here is some of the work I do, hope to be in touch. She emailed me and The Post Family today about a potential project that we could do together.

When you send that email, just because someone doesn’t get back with you right away doesn’t mean they’re not paying attention to you. Keep in touch really does mean keep in touch. I have people I emailed four or five years ago who are just now reaching out to me to push forward on a project. You just never know what kind of contacts you can make with a simple thing like email.

How do you stay up to date in your field?
I used to do a lot of blog reading but ever since I started writing a blog, it’s worked its way out of my routine. But I do go through link sets from the blogs that I used to read or other artists that I know, who typically have a list of friends. I’ve developed ideas just through those links from random artists.

But in general, the easiest way to stay up to date is through the community. Just talk to people about what they’re doing, what they’ve seen. I’m lucky enough to have friends and a group of people around me who are into the same things and this is what we do, we nerd out and talk. I hold a lot of confidence in knowing what’s hip through the people I know and what they’re looking at.

How would you define professional writing?
When I think of professional writing, I really think of writing as an art form. If you’re able to explain your ideas or your concepts in a very concise way on paper, the possibilities are endless because you’re able to not only explain it in a way that is easy for people to understand, but then people can explain it easily to others. It’s much easier to spread an idea and a concept.

Everyone thinks, at some point, that they’re a writer or a designer or a photographer, but there’s a craft and a knowledge that you need in order to do this. I would say one of the most important pieces to any concept is to have professionally written content that can spread. A picture might say a million words, but if you can spread a story and a narrative to other people, an actual grounding and concept, that’s much more powerful.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
Be true to yourself, your skills, and your internal motivations. Be confident in yourself in order to take steps to be doing exactly what you want to be doing. If it were easy, everyone would be doing fine art or publishing a magazine. Having faith in yourself, finding the benefit in what you’re doing, and staying optimistic are the most important things.

Also, don’t get stagnant. Even if you’re enjoying something so much, you need to keep new ideas coming in. Always be thinking of the next step—it doesn’t always have to be the five-year step, it can be the tomorrow step. Always keep that momentum and be truthful with yourself. In general, try to have a good time while you’re doing it. It has made a world of difference for me in the past couple years.

In the Workplace with Becky Johns

Name: Becky Johns
Title: Account Executive, Agency Communications at Cramer-Krasselt / Freelance Photographer
Website/Blog: http://becky-johns.com
Location: Chicago, IL

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
I graduated from Michigan State University in 2009 with a bachelor’s in Advertising and a specialization in Public Relations. I spent my college career dabbling in different areas of the communications field through classes, jobs, and internships. I’ve always been a writer with a natural knack for communicating and I really found a home in the PR world. During college I worked for a PR agency, a media planning company, and selling advertising for the nation’s largest collegiate newspaper. After graduation I worked in corporate communications for a large insurance company and after that joined C-K in January 2011.

Tell us about your current job.
My role in Agency Communications is to promote the work, the people, and the thinking of the agency. Basically, I help out when we’re announcing new business wins, new client campaigns, publishing guest columns or industry-related articles, placing our staff in speaking gigs at conferences, working with the trade publications for the industry, and about a million other things. Most people know about agency PR work on behalf of clients. I do PR on behalf of the agency.

What does a typical day look like for you?
I cruise the news in the morning and send a daily email to our entire agency staff across all offices with helpful articles and links to any coverage C-K is getting, to keep everyone in the loop of when we’re mentioned in the media. That’s really the only consistent part of my job. There’s always a handful of projects going on whether it’s writing press releases, working with writers covering our campaigns, taking photos at agency events, doing research or prepping PR strategies for different agency happenings.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
Press releases, research summaries, content for our agency website and media room, drafts of articles, and much more. In my free time (if you can even call it free time) I write posts for my own blog, guest posts for others, write a weekly column on networking for young professionals, daily articles for Ragan’s PR Daily and freelance articles here and there for other websites.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
I need to be able to communicate well with my boss. We’re a team of two handling efforts for four offices, so she and I need to speak clearly, take good notes and stay on top of email, to-do lists, and keeping each other filled in. It’s very helpful I’m a good writer since I’m communicating with people both internally and externally every day, mostly via email. Media relations skills are essential, knowing how to get the right information to reporters and be helpful to them when they’re looking for information about C-K’s work or clients. It’s also really important to be a good listener and have the ability to gather information from a lot of different people and think about the big picture.

How did you prepare for your job?
I made a big transition joining the agency world. So, I did my best to research the history of the agency, read up on the agency world, and just generally try to soak up as much information as possible during my first few months here since a lot of my colleagues have so much more experience.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.

  1. I read Ragan’s PR Daily (and not just because I’m a contributing editor) and Spin Sucks everyday because they’re both really solid resources for PR pros and keep me current on industry trends and issues. I also check the New York Times Media page, Ad Age, and Mashable a couple times throughout the day to make sure I know what’s going on in the industry.
  2. My Twitter feed delivers me the best news, blog posts, and articles. I don’t follow everyone who follows me, but the people I do follow are constant sources of info-rich links. I’ve spent a lot of time really narrowing it down to the right people. I also have a few private Twitter lists categorized for different types of content: tech stuff, photography stuff, ad industry writers and groups of people in Chicago, Detroit, New York and a few other markets I like to keep tabs on.
  3. HARO (Help a Reporter Out). It’s three emails a day with queries from reporters all over the world looking for sources for their stories. I’d say at least four times per week I find a query I can respond to, I can flag for our client account teams or I can forward onto a friend who would be a great source. Anyone who works in PR needs to be signed up.

How do you stay up to date in your field?
Keeping current on the news everyday for our daily staff email, my Google reader, and my Twitter lists and friends.

How would you define professional writing?
If someone pays you to communicate a message through the written word — and you do it effectively — you’re a professional writer.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
Be a student of your industry. Read/look at as much work from others in your industry as you can to see how the pros are doing it. Start some kind of “inspiration spot” where you save photos or links or samples of things that inspire you so you can reference them later. But probably the most important thing is to just get out there and create something. Write a blog, take photos, redesign ads or publications you like, just practice your craft and set it free for others to see. You’ll learn the most when you have to stand behind content you’re creating.

In the Workplace with Tim Gasper

Name: Tim Gasper
Title: Keepstream co-founder, The Appconomy contributor
Website/Blog: http://keepstream.com
Location: Austin, TX

Tell us about your educational/professional background.
Technology has always been a huge passion of mine, but it took me a while before I really knew which angle I would take to get involved in tech. I went to Case Western Reserve University for Engineering and Physics, but as most college students do, my interests evolved. I ended up graduating with degrees in Economics and Marketing.

More importantly though, the last two years of college I was involved with a startup project. Our first idea was spawned at Startup Weekend, a great event where you go from idea to prototype in a single weekend. The goal is to force you to take the initial step toward becoming a real company — because often that first step is the hardest. The company was called CorkShare at the time, and it was my first experience as an entrepreneur. I was only 19, and I learned more than any class I could have ever taken in college. It taught me to set my own agenda, be accountable to myself, and to do the work that actually impacts your business’s bottom line.

In between college and working on Keepstream and freelance full time, I spent a year working at Hyland Software. They are a business software company for streamlining business processes and helping organizations go paperless by using electronic or scanned documents instead of paper. I was a Software Product Evangelist, becoming an expert on the product and creating a lot of content collateral. A strong focus of the position was on doing presentations, both in person and via online webinars.

Tell us about your current job.
Over the course of three years, CorkShare morphed into Keepstream, where as Co-founder and CMO I do marketing, business development, and community engagement. Keepstream is a social media curation tool that helps organize tweets, Facebook posts, and website bookmarks into shareable, embeddable collection pages. Collections are useful for bloggers, marketers, or just about anyone who wants to curate the chatter from a conference or event, a news headline, or a hashtag chat. Working with startups this long has been hugely rewarding because of how dynamic it is. At any minute I may be working on a different project, whether it’s talking to potential customers, creating marketing collateral, or pitching bloggers and journalists.

I am also a contributor to The Appconomy, where I blog about mobile apps, companies, and trends. The Appconomy’s mission is to serve as your trusted, original source of best practices, profiles, features, and commentary covering the rapid transition to the mobile, app-based economy, aka the appconomy. In addition, I contribute articles to the Austin Examiner on the Austin technology scene and interesting technology trends.

What does a typical day look like for you?
A typical day is usually split about half and half between my freelance activities and my startup work. I like to start early because I’m a coffee addict — my morning joe is my most productive time block and is when most of my heavy duty writing gets done. This represents mostly freelance work. After my morning writing is done, I’ll usually go for a workout.

My co-founders are night owls, so after all this we’re ready to head to the Keepstream office where I’ll wrap up any additional freelance, and then focus on whatever project is most urgent for Keepstream. As of writing this we are preparing to do fundraising, so I’m focusing mostly on drumming up customer interest in preparation for a stronger investor pitch. I usually have a couple meetings with a Keepstream user or potential customer, or coordinating with my freelance employers. Throughout the day I use Boxcar (for notifications) and HootSuite (for conversations and sharing) for social media community engagement.

I usually stay in the office until relatively late. That means not much free time, but the work I do is fun and engaging, which makes the long hours extremely engaging and rewarding.

What kinds of documents do you produce?
I produce a lot of varying work. Examples include blog articles, white papers, web copy, software tutorial videos, fact sheets, presentation slide decks, spreadsheets for tracking initiatives, marketing or business plans, etc.

What communication skills are needed for your job?
First thing that comes to mind is dealing with massive amounts of email, both inbound and outbound. Thank God for Gmail! I have to be quick, to the point, and well organized. I have to work with a lot of different people in a relatively informal way, so I have to clearly communicate expectations, be very transparent about progress, and place a lot of trust into delegation and accountability. In general, I have to be an effective writer and speaker across many mediums and be comfortable regardless of context, whether it’s online, a coffee shop one-on-one, a networking event, or the boardroom.

How did you prepare for your job?
My preparation came mostly from working with other people, both in school and professionally. I did a lot of extracurriculars in school such as the event programming board, marketing club, economics honor society, and others. Writing and communications skills came mostly from school and these extracurriculars. Also, all the jobs I took on during and after school happened to require me to be heavily involved with writing and content creation. You learn by doing.

List three of your favorite professional resources/references/tools and tell us why they’re your favorite.
HootSuite: I love any chance I can get to profess my love for HootSuite. Overall, I think it’s the best free social media dashboard and analytics tool out there.

Gobbledygook Grader: Great tool by HubSpot for making sure your writing isn’t full of useless jargon. It also tells you what education level your article targets so you can either smarten it up or dumb it down depending on your audience. David Meerman Scott, who wrote the awesome book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, helped create the tool. He uses the word “gobbledygook” to describe what the rest of us call buzzwords or fluff.

AP Styleguide: It’s the go-to guide for writing style and etiquette for me, especially regarding journalistic formats.

I won’t consider it one of my three, but my company Keepstream gets an honorable mention. It’s a great way to incorporate tweets or other social content into your blog posts and websites. Plus we’ll be moving into a lot of analytics soon that will be super useful to Social Media Managers, PR agencies, and writers… so stay tuned. :)

How do you stay up to date in your field?
RSS and blogs are still the best way to stay up to date in my opinion. I use Twitter for conversations and running into information serendipitously, but I use Google Reader to bring in a consistent flow of good blog articles around Marketing, Technology, and Social Media Measurement. A couple blogs I really like include:

How would you define professional writing?
Good question. I don’t think I’m the best person to answer this question, but I think you can look at it in two ways. One, is writing your primary activity? And two, do you make money from writing? I think the first question gets a little closer to the matter, because I’m sure there are many professional writers with an engaged audience out for more than just making cash. The more you write, the better you are at it, and the cooler your job title, I suppose the more serious people will take you when you say you are a professional writer.

Do you have any tips to share with other professional writers/editors/designers?
I’m sure you’ve heard this one before — write regularly. Or if you design, design regularly. It’s the only way to keep your skills sharp and your audience engaged. Also, expose yourself to a lot of newness. New news, new people, new places, new ideas. It spurs creativity and gives you interesting content and perspective. Newness can also mean variety. I’ve noticed that some of the best writers and designers I’ve met have built up experience in many sizes, formats, and mediums.