For as long as I can remember, the words just come when I call. Or maybe it's that I come when they call. However it works, I tell stories—in person, on paper, on screen, with whatever writing utensil I can lay hands on.

In first grade, I wrote a series of scripts detailing the hijinks of "Nate the Great." I made my friends act them out while I held up my mom's ancient cassette recorder to capture every awkward line recitation. In high school, I crammed my angst-riddled heart into spiral bound notebooks. In college I sold essays to teen magazines. An editor told me the best writers he ever met were journalists, so after graduation that's what I became, filing stories on a daily deadline and filling column inches with all the truth I could glean from school board meetings, police scanners and on-the-scene interviews.

The thrill of seeing my byline on the front page above the fold never faded, but the excitement of ambulance chasing did. So I refashioned myself as a copywriter, naming paint colors and romancing crackers and hawking Black Friday sales. I loved the daily creative challenges, but missed the art of telling the story, of gathering the puzzle pieces and fitting them together. First the heart, then the hook, then the headline.

So I followed the story. I pursued brands who had not just style, but substance. They had stories to tell. Sometimes those stories sold something, yes, but every time they dug deeper to reveal something more real, more human. Something that actually mattered more than profit margins and sales projections. Because the stories are the things that make you pause. And hear. And see. And the best stories open not only your eyes but your heart, as well. 

I don't just write stories, of course. I write marketing copy and snappy headlines and brand voice guidelines and keynote decks for creative pitches. I oversee schedules and budgets and mentor copywriters and drink (very sweet) iced tea. I name products and edit product descriptions and present creative concepts to executive types and drink more iced tea and strategize about content development. I get a great deal of satisfaction out of organizing things: copy docs, processes, bookshelves, people. I try to get strangers to read the poetic genius of Ellen Bass. I stay up too late reading sci-fi.

I get my best ideas in the shower, or riding a motorcycle. I love watching my grade-school daughter climb impossibly tall trees. I daydream about global travel itineraries, and fantasize about publishing a new book of poetry—I have a title ready and waiting. I sometimes hold baby saltwater crocs in Australia.

I cannot curb my wanderlust, my thirst for iced tea or my use of Rodale's Thesaurus. And I'm always, always looking for a new story to tell. Maybe the next one will be yours. 

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