That it happened while I was running headlong into several copywriting and consulting deadlines is likely proof of a vengeful god, and – like the snow-shattered trees in the yard – I’m still cleaning up the mess.

I’m also making big changes to my business model, and if it’s one lesson I’ve learned over the years, writing your own copy and consulting on your own marketing plan are much, much harder than doing it for others.

As several other bloggers have noted, the copywriting world is changing fast, and not always for the better. I’m simply recognizing those differences.

The new venture is the logical outgrowth of my focus on the value-added copywriter, and while I’d suggest I’m taking a bold new step, the reality is less hyperbolic; I’m hurrying the transition that’s been occurring for the last handful of years.

I’m a fly fishermen, and given water’s tendency to flow downhill, I’ve always known that you never foot in the same river twice.

Given the nature of our times, it’s equally true you never step out of bed into the same world you left when you crawled in.

Ignoring that reality is a prescription for something other than fulfillment, gratification and success.

We’ll resume normal function here soon – once the trees are off the roof (and the porch, and the driveway, and the…).

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

Embarrassingly, I had to read my own blog to discover where my last post left off (hint: Zombie Copywriter attacks Slacker Building Contractor).

The Good News?

• The new kid is doing great (she is a sweetheart and my cynical marketer’s heart soars every time I see her – unbearably adorable photograph added below)
• Despite the madness, I launched a tourism Web site project (with all the trimmings), and the client is happy (they should be)

The Bad News?

I remain barely a half-step ahead of my client commitments.

Which leaves little time for a blog. Or personal writing. Or sleep. Or even a shared (fun) Web site project (aided and abetted by another copywriter).

Naturally – now that the Thanksgiving Madness is over (as is the last-minute Black Friday client rush) – I’m teaching four nights a week for the next three weeks.

Like raising a kid, teaching is hugely exhausting and wildly gratifying at the same time (more on that in an upcoming post).

I expect to have a lot of fun.

What Else is Coming on the Underground?

I’ve got some great stuff ahead.

I’m putting the finishing touches on an update to the profile I wrote of Airgun niche writer Tom Gaylord, who now hosts a TV show and is even signing lucrative product development contracts.

In his typically direct, impassioned style, Tom offers ample food for thought for anyone dominating their niche – but wonders what comes after you own the space.

Then there’s my call for a Modern Word Processor for the Contemporary Online Writer. Today’s writers are using yesterday’s writing tools, and it’s time that changed.

In other words, the Copywriter Underground’s not dead, just moving at whatever pace the world’s best one year-old daughter allows.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

Adorable Photograph of Reason You’re Not Reading This Blog Very Often:

In other words, if you want to grow, you sometimes need to make uncomfortable, life-altering choices.

Like that day in college when I realized words were cool things, and perhaps I could make a living arranging them for people.

Or the decades-later realization that my clients had email addresses, so maybe I could live near a good trout stream instead of the alternate universe known as the Silicon Valley.

Then there was the afternoon I realized life with a certain woman looked a more appealing than life without her, and that it was time to make this whole thing permanent.

Every one of those decisions seemed huge at the time – and each created its fair share of anxiety – but all worked out beautifully.

Time to pick up another brick.

Soon, my wife and I are saddling up a Boeing 777 jet and flying literally halfway around the world to meet our little daughter.

Our new little daughter.

Holy shit.

I’m about to become a parent.

The New Reality

And yes, since this process began over a year ago, I have often huddled in bed at 3:30 in the morning, eyes wide open, mentally bulleting the ways I could emotionally (and physically) scar a kid already facing the challenges of adoption.

The good news? While adoption rules forbid me from posting her picture or name here, the pictures we’ve seen clearly indicate Little M (my clever code name) is cuter, smarter and just plain better than all the other kids on the planet.

In fact, it’s likely she’s a world-class athlete, a brilliant chessplayer, and a natural-born fly fisherman.

I just know it.

You can tell by looking. Plain as day.

(And yes – I already have the whole Proud Poppa thing down pat.)

The Parent Trap

I suspect I’m not entirely alone in this, but as parent-to-be, I’m already excellent at cycling between excitement and sheer terror.

One minute I’m convinced I’m going to be a great dad, teaching my daughter all the really cool, important stuff while driving her to her next athletic triumph (track/tennis/soccer/etc – I’m easy).

The next minute I imagine falling prey to one of my absent-minded fogs, forgetting to feed my daughter, wandering off, then coming home to find her swilling drain cleaner from the bottle I left on the floor next to the gasoline-soaked rags piled on the accidentally left-on stove.

Clearly, anticipation is a two-edged sword.

Stepping beyond the glass window that defines the limits of your “normal” life means picking up a brick and creating a little chaos.

You throw the brick, life changes, and then you sweep up the broken glass – and notice the view is clearer, plus you’ve got more room to grow than before.

Things may be challenging for a while, but you remember that’s the way things are supposed to be, and you can’t really complain.

I mean, it’s what you asked for when you picked up the brick in the first place.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

You can’t help but hear the drumbeats about Twitter. Depending on who’s talking, it’s either a colossal waste of time, or humanity’s last, greatest hope.

I’ve used Twitter for months now as a simple micro-blogging sidebar on my Trout Underground fly fishing blog. In that relatively undemanding capacity (and helped along by Alex King’s excellent Twitter Tools), it worked fine, though hardly perfectly.

Recently I tumbled for a personal Twitter account to see about all the fuss.

Well, I tried to see.

Seems like the service is down a lot. In fact, as I write this — having just shipped a messaging platform advocating a radical repositioning of a client’s product (something I was willing to crow about) — I can’t log on.

Can’t tweet. Can’t do anything. (I wrote this yesterday. Today — right now — we seem to be experiencing another temporary outage).

While not everything about Twitter is trivial, it’s clear that most tweets aren’t exactly life-changing, which is precisely why the service needs to work flawlessly.

The Experiment Continues

Still, I’m going to continue the Twitter experiment.

You can find me there hiding behind a ChandlerWrites address.

I invite you to follow along, and I promise not to clog the pipelines with “shorts or sweatpants?” subject matter.

After all, I initially “followed” a lot of people in an attempt to quickly gain perspective. And the noise level was… high. Too high.

I find Twitter an interesting idea. Perhaps once I’m following the right people, the light bulb will come on. And regardless of of whether it sticks, you have to do these things to speak about them with your clients.

Still, Twitter feels more like a proof of concept — a proving ground for something better that has yet to evolve.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: twitter,tweets,copywriting

Those of you who’ve gotten The Call know the jarring mix of emotions that come with it, and right now we’re digging through the accumulated belongings of a man who — like many who lived through the Great Depression — threw little away.

It’s a little like an archeological excavation, with the artifacts getting older as you dig deeper, until finally — at the bottom of one box — we found the little cards he handed out to people at his high school graduation.

I’ll be back and blogging by the end of the week.

Technorati Tags: painful stuff

That’s because I’m a staunch advocate of ethical marketing practices, and long been an outspoken critic of deceptive mailing practices.

In an age of increasingly jaded customers, deceptive marketing practices harden customers, eventually harming all marketers — especially those marketing fairly.

That’s whyBRANDWEEK sourced me when they wrote a story about the growing practice of deceptive mailings. While they ran several quotes, this stood out:

“The public is exposed to so many messages that when a growing percentage of those messages turn out to be deceptive, the result is yet another upward ratchet in consumer cynicism,” said Tom Chandler, a 20-year ad copywriter and consultant based in Mount Shasta, Calif., who operates ChandlerWrites.com. “That growing suspicion of marketers and brands has become so profound, some companies can’t even get customers to open envelopes containing real documents.”

Delight, Don’t Deceive

The rule here is simple: rather than deceive, why not delight recipients with a novel or creative approach?

Most deceptive marketing practices rely heavily on fear appeals. Unfortunately, the psychology of fear is well understood; the next time fear is falsely used as a motivator, you’ll need more of it to get the same response.

Where, exactly, will that end?

There’s also the larger question of brand value; as a proponent of engagement marketing, I must ask why anyone would risk their brand?

“What I don’t understand is why organizations allow deceptive practices to undermine their carefully [and expensively] cultivated brand images in the first place,” said Chandler. “I recently received a series of envelopes from a large credit-card bank where I held an account. All shared the same alarmist stamp that “Important Information” about his account was enclosed. “Of course, it wasn’t important information,” Chandler said. “It was a series of cross-selling pitches. After a month or two, I canceled my account.”

The Ethical Marketer

Every seasoned copywriter I’ve ever spoken to has a similar story; a chilling encounter with a client pushing them very, very hard to do something unethical.

In the moment, it’s always tempting to succumb, reasoning the work’s unsigned and nobody will know (how I wish copywriters received the credit/blame for their work).

Believe me, you’ll know.

Of course, one marketer’s “deceptive” is another’s fair game. And where that line should be drawn is never clear, though one thing is; if marketers keep stepping over that line, eventually regulation will be created that limit those transgressions (and probably do it poorly).

As copywriters, we are responsible for our work, and blaming clients for “making” us engage in deceptive practices is simply a wonky moral dodge.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

Six OpenOffice windows (five text, one spreadsheet), four Live Writer windows (my blog editor), three draft e-mails, a still warm-to-the-touch Google Talk window, and yes — two Copywriter windows (perfect when line and character counts are important).

By my count, that’s 16 writer-driven windows , and in that environment — one running at 4x my brain’s rated capacity (no jokes, please) — how much room am I creating to think?

Multitasking With a Mono-Brain

You may have noticed a lack of posts lately. A story of alien abduction would cover my tracks in the most traffic-friendly way, but the reality is different; I’ve started a book-length personal project.

For a writer who’s spent the last two decades hammering out 300-word pieces centered around single-sentence headlines, it’s a change.

A big change.

Almost immediately, I ran into a hitch. It wasn’t writer’s block.

It was the sheer number of writer-facing media channels calling for my attention.

At the risk of sounding like a codger, it wasn’t always this way. And yes, it’s interesting how the addition of a “deep thought” personal project finally exposed the problem, which kinda snuck up on me.

Still, this isn’t a plea for time management tips; I’m figuring out what works, and yes, it’s overdue.

The Hard Part

Fitting a couple hours of personal writing into a day already crammed with dangling participles and caffeine isn’t without its difficulties.

But neither does it lack in satisfaction.

I’m not going to bore you with detailed summaries of writer’s angst.

I do aim to interest you in the juicy bits. After all, this book project came to life at the intersection of blogging and what others have called the online world’s “empowerment of the individual.”

In less stuffy terms, it means I wouldn’t be writing the book if it wasn’t for a blog, and I wouldn’t have written the business plan if it wasn’t for the Internet.

The Value Added Author

I talk often of the Value-Added Copywriter. It’s a laudable concept — the idea that someone knows how to do things beyond their narrow specialty.

Equally laudable is the idea that we’d leverage that value-added knowledge for our own benefit.

Stay tuned. And keep writing, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: writing,book,writing a book,brain function

And yes, there were times when I was reasonably sure my typewriter/computer/fingers/brain were conspiring against me. And if anyone else were to see my ad concept doodle notebooks from a decade ago, they’d be tempted to check me into rehab — despite the fact I’ve never touched any of the truly interesting drugs.

Today I’m headed out the door for yet another new client meeting (they’re coming thick and fast right now), so while I’m driving, enjoy this little bit of writer humor, courtesy some other copywriter.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=kvtcmdvsY-A[/youtube]

[tags]copywriting, writing[/tags]

Yet it happens. It’s been happening to me all week.

I’ll be back at work next week. Preferably without the headaches, nausea, fever — and all the other messy symptoms you don’t want to read about.

Keep writing. And stay well.

[tags]copywriting, diseased copywriter[/tags]

You get the drift.

In my writing, it’s second nature. In my speaking life, it apparently isn’t. Last weekend I served as Ride Director for the Shasta Summit Century — an organized, fund-raising bike ride whose crown jewel is the 135 mile Mount Shasta Super Century.

The course is extremely hilly. This year, a rider crashed on a downhill, and needed an ambulance. Back at ride headquarters, we heard the news over the ham radio. We all held our breath.

The news was largely good. He’s still in the hospital, but doing OK, and they’ll release him soon. An hour after the crash, we managed to locate his wife (she was several hours away), and called her.

I took a deep breath. I started speaking. Good news first, right? (Wrong. Scheez.)

Me: “Your husband crashed on a downhill. An ambulance is on the way.”

Her: Drops phone

Me: “No wait — he’s talking, he’s conscious, and everything’s moving. There’s even a doctor right there with him. The ambulance is a precaution.”

Her: More dead air…

Brilliant, eh? Note to self: next time, lead with the “Your husband is doing well, but he had a crash…”

Today’s moral: “Applying general copywriting principles can make your everyday life easier.”

[tags]writing, copywriting, shasta summit century[/tags]