Some things are as simple as black & white.

Writing, for instance. It’s either compelling and your readers or customers will pore over it as they would People or Newsweek—or it’s rambling and gets tossed.

I am a medical journalist, marketing copywriter, and product namer. I used to teach creativity at the Smithsonian. I won a Telly. And I am available to do my best thinking on your story or project.

Here is my day….how can I make your day easier?

6:00 am. My first thought is of the projects I must do today. Maybe one of them is the reporting, website, or brochure job you assigned me. I am in Arizona. I have to get to those East Coast experts before they go to lunch.

6:30 am. I read three newspapers in print and then jump on the computer and catch a couple electronically. I have services that shoot me health news. I send some items along to you if I think they’re of interest. I save some for my cheeky health news website, HEALTH’Sass (left).

7:30 am. Start checking Internet job listings. Where are those $5-an-article job listings coming from? Guess those people don’t need clear writing to make their living. The writers sure as heck won’t be making one, either. Here’s one! Writing about the uninsured. I used to be a contributing editor of both Managed Care magazine and Managed Healthcare News. I send a note and some samples.

10:00 am. First interview of the day. This one is for a WebMD story—on the best and worst things to drink in summer. The nutritionist is full of ideas. (Some smoothies are a caloric death trap, drat!)

11:00 am. See a story about a psychologist who counsels athletes who have lost their will to win. He could be a pitch. I rip it out.

11:30 am. Lunchies! Then, the mail. A check! Ah, it’s all worth it.

12:30 pm. Email—do I still name products? I love naming, but the client I named for, Landor Associates, stopped using contractors and went in-house. Will I quote a price for names? You bet!

1:00 pm. My last source for a story on weird fruits calls. He’s ugli, I mean, an expert on Ugli™ fruit. You meet the most interesting types in this business.

1:30 pm. Time to write. Funny how writing, crafting, revising, and fine-tuning is the least time-consuming part of being a writer. Finding credible sources, thinking, reading websites, and looking up telephone numbers take more time. When you hire a professional writer, you get more than copy. You get salvation from having to do all this yourself. Today it’s the weird fruits story. I went to a specialty market and bought some of these. Can I be honest? Stick with bananas.

2:30 pm. Phone again. A high tech case study—people tend to talk to me, an outsider, more candidly than they would to their vendor. I send samples of such studies I have done for Apple and others. This is for a brochure. I have written dozens.

3:00 pm. Inquiry about doing a story with a legislative aspect. Do I know Washington? I should! Lived there 35 years, 16 of them as a lobbyist. I send samples.

3:15 pm. Time to do my entries for tomorrow’s HEALTH’Sass. Let’s see, what’s left that I didn’t sell to someone else? I also pick a picture. No one should have to read about disturbing health matters without pictures. The funnier, the better.

5:00 pm. Brain freeze setting in. The reading, emailing, yucky fruits, thinking, revising, looking at 200 pictures…it’s time for cable news. That should be relaxing.

5:30 am. The next day! What’s on for today? Wonder if that case study will come through. And it would be fun to do names again.


Will you be calling? Give me a buzz at (480) 917-0206 .
Or drop me some electrons at jkellaw@aol.com.