Tag Archives: copywriting

Staring at a blank page

2 Sep

blank page

I found this piece of paper in a file and it got me wondering. Writers sometimes get writer’s block. They can’t get started. And often the harder they try the more blank they become.

In George Plimpton’s fascinating Paris Review series, a number of famous writers were interviewed about their techniques. This was about how do you write everyday with the kids screaming, your wife leaving, a revolucion going on, a 1st book best seller to better.

Amazingly enough some writers copy out tracts of the bible to get started, some sharpen pencils, others still drink a lot and smoke endless cigarettes (a different era I suppose.) The issue is how do you get started?

It can be a problem for people in business to get fresh ideas or even an accurate idea of what their business actually does for their customers. It’s also difficult to get noticed in the crowded cyber world where attention spans are short and customers can shop around and read reviews online.

It takes a fresh pair of eyes to do that. Daily regeneration and a childlike curiosity of life which when you think about it is quite amazing.

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Rodie – King of Content

2 Sep

King of content 230813

“When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.” Hemingway.

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Bill

31 Jul

My first blog post is dedicated to my father, Bill Rodie – a feature writer and all round Sydney newspaperman, later to become one of the city’s 1st PR consultants. Originally from New Zealand, Bill worked for a number of newspapers including Smith’s Weekly, and was great friends with poet Kenneth Slessor.

To quote George Blaikies’ book, Remember Smith’s Weekly, “Rodie, before coming to Smith’s, had been a romantic adventurer from New Zealand, who had wandered the South Seas with Errol Flynn, pursuing a try anything once policy. Four white dots under his right eye showed where the prongs of a fork had hit bone when the wielder had intended to drive them through his eye. In the depths of the depression he took a job as a footman in Government House, Sydney, and on leaving, wrote a cheerful series of  articles about hard times in the palace.”

At a time when culinary advice came from the Country Women’s Association and a roast leg of lamb was about the best you could expect in many households (still is really…) Bill was a gourmet who loved to cook and a wine connoisseur before it was fashionable.

Ted Moloney’s “Oh For a French Wife” cookbook came out in the late 1950’s – long before our own blockbuster reality cooking shows. My mother and father spent their honeymoon with Maurice OShea, creator and founder of McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant, Lovedale.

I didn’t meet Bill. Well I did but I was a baby. Wish i had. I think we may have been alike in some ways. This blog is dedicated to you dad! And to my son Max, my other role model.

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