A Quote by Scott Glenn
I had a job on a newspaper in Wisconsin, and I started off as most reporters did back then: writing obits and free ad giveaways.
Related Quotes
I had this crazy job, though, when I first got to Los Angeles... I answered this ad in the back of the newspaper to be a telephone psychic, and I did that for two days.
I left my job as a feature writer on a newspaper to write a book, then sent it off to a number of agents thinking they would all reject me. Within a week, most had come back to say they loved what they had read, which then led to a bidding war for my first two novels.
My writing became more and more minimalist. In the end, I couldn't write at all. For seven or eight years, I hardly wrote. But then I had a revelation. What if I did the opposite? What if, when a sentence or a scene was bad, I expanded it, and poured in more and more? After I started to do that, I became free in my writing.
New online formats gutted the newspaper-ad business. Why pore over tiny print looking for a job in the want ads when you can tap a few keywords into monster.com, then click through and apply? Why pay a steep per-character rate for a classified when you can hawk a whole garage full of used stuff on EBay or Craigslist for free?
I did a soft drink ad some time back. Later, a mother came to me and said that her child started consuming more of that drink after seeing my ad. It made me measure my actions.
In the '70s, the newspaper guild managed to get people paid what they were worth, but the reporters suddenly became middle class. It's much more respectable, more uptight, and everyone speaks in guarded tones. And the writing isn't as good. We always had guys who were failed poets and failed novelists who did it to eat.
Instead of just purchasing an ad campaign, target test and measure. Give an ad a small try. If the response is enough to pay for the ad, make it larger. With a franchise, ask the most successful franchisees what they did. Ask the bottom five guys what they did and avoid it.
I didn't realize it at the time, but writing obituaries was one of best jobs that I've ever had. After all, it's the only time that someone will ever laminate my work and put it in their Bible. Plus, let's be honest, writing obits in Sarasota is a very busy job. The old saying was that old people lived in Miami, but their parents lived in Sarasota.
Any expensive ad represents the toil, attention, testing, wit, art, and skill of many people. Far more thought and care go into the composition of any prominent ad in a newspaper or magazine than go into the writing of their features and editorials.
The four and a half years I had at Stoke is something I will always look back on with pride because it was a huge achievement. To be able to last in a high profile job as long as I did showed that, for the most part, I did a decent job there.
I started writing sketches with Dennis Kelly, who I ended up writing 'Pulling' with. We entered a BBC competition and did quite well, then started writing bits for other people's shows. You wheedle your way in, write pilots and eventually you end up writing a sitcom.
I had a nice part at big newspapers, small newspapers, and then I went to a very big newspaper - 'The Wall Street Journal.' I wrote longer pieces, and I got tired of working so hard on stories that had a shelf life of essentially one day. So then I started working on longer magazine pieces and realized then that you might as well be writing a book.
I did comics on the Internet because it was free, and if I had made printed copies, I wouldn't have known what to do with them. But I knew how to make a website when most people didn't, and back then, that was enough!
I had a job right out of college writing for a small newspaper called 'The Unterrified Democrat.' Ghastly, ghastly job.
Being sad and going out on terrible dates and having horrible breakups and then having a shitty job and then quitting the shitty job and then wondering if you shouldn't have quit the shitty job and then getting a new shitty job that you get fired off of after six weeks, it's all so good for your writing.
Back then when I started off, I did not expect anything at all from myself. I just knew I wanted to dance. At that time there were no reality shows, we did not have platforms like YouTube where we could learn from.
Related Authors
Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes
Austrian
Actor
Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes
English
Actor
Bruce Lee Quotes
American
Actor
Clint Eastwood Quotes
American
Actor
Daniel Radcliffe Quotes
British
Actor
Dwayne Johnson Quotes
American
Actor
Jeff Bridges Quotes
American
Actor
Johnny Depp Quotes
American
Actor
Kevin Hart Quotes
American
Actor
Kevin Spacey Quotes
American
Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio Quotes
American
Actor
Rob Lowe Quotes
American
Actor
Robert Pattinson Quotes
English
Actor
Sylvester Stallone Quotes
American
Actor
Will Rogers Quotes
American
Actor
Zach Braff Quotes
American
Actor