“On Writing” posts show interesting copy from around the web.

David Simon
David Simon, Baltimore-based author, journalist, and writer-producer of HBO’s The Wire, on the goal he has in mind when he writes:

Whoever the average reader was of my newspaper, I never wrote for him. I always wrote for the people living the event. And I wanted not to be embarassed in front of them as a writer.

So if I’m writing about somebody who is struggling with addiction, I want other people who have struggled with addiction to say “Yeah, you got it right.” Or people who are police doing a certain job, I wanted them to say “Yeah, you got it right.” Or a street level drug trafficker, I wanted them to say “that was real”.

Pamela Slim
Pamela Slim is a consultant who has worked with clients like Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Charles Schwab, and Sun. Her About page talks about her work with San Francisco gang members.

Despite lots of corporate experience, I learned some of my best coaching skills from gang members on the streets of San Francisco. For ten years, while working with corporations during the day, I was also the Executive Director of Omulu Capoeira Group, a non-profit martial arts organization. Through my work with Omulu, I developed innovative gang-prevention programs, and often walked the streets of some of the most gang-ridden parts of the City, talking with teenagers and encouraging them to join our program.

You can imagine the positive body language I got from them at first – crossed arms, glares and puffed out chests. But since I had worked with teens for so long, I knew that underneath they were vulnerable, bright kids who just needed some positive encouragement and structure.

One day when I walked into the conference room of a corporation to do some work with the executive team, I noticed similar body language from the executives, although it was a bit more subtle. So I told them so.

“Wow – you look just like the gang members that I work with. They look at me like that when they want to intimidate me. What’s up?”

After a tense silence (when I was wondering if I had finally lost my mind), they burst out laughing and immediately changed their demeanor.

What I learned from the kids is that the worst thing you can do when confronted with hostility is to appear afraid. The best thing is just to act relaxed and confident and start talking. Ask questions. Gain trust. Pretty soon the walls come down and rapport develops.

Most copywriting on the web sucks because it’s written for the writer, not for the reader. Write for the reader. That is all.

When collaborating with others – especially when designers and programmers are part of the mix – watch out for these dirty four letter words:

• Need
• Must
• Can’t
• Easy
• Just
• Only
• Fast

They are especially dangerous when you string them together. How many times have you said or heard something like this:
“We really need it. If we don’t we can’t make the customer happy. Wouldn’t it be easy if we just did it like that? Can you try it real fast?”
Of course they aren’t always bad. Sometimes they can do some good. But seeing them too often should raise a red flag. They can really get you into trouble.
Related: Revealing hidden assumptions in estimation by Jamis Buck.

[On Writing posts offer up interesting copy from around the web.]

SORBS Dynamic User and Host List
SORBS is the “Spam and Open Relay Blocking System.” Boo to the site’s perplexing explanation of how to get deleted from the Dynamic User and Host List:

Anyone else may request delisting of addresses or netblocks provided that reverse DNS naming is set to indicate static assignment. SORBS will consider unique names that are not part of a generic naming scheme, or a generic naming scheme with an indication of staticness (we prefer the word “static” being included in the names, but will accept any existing ISP convention if the ISP just informs us of it) as proof of static assignment. Also, the Times to Live of the PTR records need to be 43200 seconds or more. This is an arbitrary limit chosen by SORBS. And of course, the reverse DNS names need to be valid; i.e. the names given in reverse DNS need to map forward to the IP addresses for which they were given.

Wondermill
User Experience Design Ninja job description:

When people have created an account with one of our products, they should shed a tear because the experience is over.  They should write ballads and march from town to town reading them to anyone who’ll listen.  They should hang signs from highway overpasses proclaiming our good name, hold 3-day block parties and call up radio stations to dedicate cheesy songs.

They should obsess.

Banzai De Bug
Banzai De Bug Pest Control shows that even unsavory industries can come up with an interesting story:

The pest control industry is changing. Most people picture a pest control operator as a guy walking around with a tank spraying chemicals. George started out with a sprayer but for the past 5 to 6 years has been using glue boards and baiting techniques.

George goes to work every day dressed in a blazer and gets to his clients on his motorcycle. He got into this business at the age of 43 and loves it. He feels this job is great for his personality and feels he needs to be his own boss.

George’s specialty is treating for rats and mice. He describes his job as that of a detective. “A big piece of this job is getting the details and facts, figuring out how it can happen and then solving the problem. The real satisfaction comes when I go back to the job to see that it worked.” His approach to catching the rodents is to give them a well balanced meal, served up on a glue board. He takes a piece of cardboard and spreads glue all over it. Then he takes bits of meat, sardines, and a Hershey Bar with almonds for dessert. The beverage of choice to serve with this feast is beer. George knows that the rats will drink until they can’t drink anymore and eventually they will become sick, choke and die. This is all done without pesticides.

George feels that if you are honest and good you get better at what you do and you will do well. He created his business; no one gave it to him.

Even if you’re not a fan of Stephen King’s fiction, his book on writing is filled with insightful advice on the craft. (Btw, it was also the inspiration for the title of the “On Writing” posts we publish here.) Some excerpts below.

Get the first draft done quickly…

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity.

On rewriting…

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

Second drafts can only help so much…

“A movie should be there in rough cut,” the film editor Paul Hirsch once told me. The same is true of books. I think it’s rare that incoherence or dull storytelling can be solved by something so minor as a second draft.

Formula for success: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%...

Mostly when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts. This suggest cutting to speed the pace, and that’s what most of us end up having to do (kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings)...I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: “Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.”

Shure: The best?
This Q&A at the Shure site is interesting because the company rep actually backs away from declaring its industry standard microphone “the best.”

Question: I was just wondering, the sm57 seams to be the mic that most artists use for their Guitar Cabinet, but is it really the best mic for that or is it just that it’s been such a classical model so long that they just presume that its the best and therefore use it? I mean the technology must have gone forward since it was first released?

Answer:
There is never a “best” microphone. Is there a “best guitar amp”? Is there a “best guitar”? The selection of a mic, guitar amp, or guitar is subjective. It is what appeals to your ear that is important. Many artists prefer the sound of the SM57 for miking a guitar amp, thus its popularity.

“I mean the technology must have gone forward since it was first released?”
The SM57 has been internally improved in many ways over the years, but the styling has stayed the same because customers like it. Some styles are classics: Marshall amps, Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, Shure SM57 and SM58. Why change if it a model is successful?

Steven Berlin Johnson: Insane, etc.
At author Steven Berlin Johnson’s site, he provides snappy and straightforward summaries for each of his books. The kind of unique p.o.v. stands out from the accurate but dry summaries you usually see.

Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture—and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received of all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.

Jason Turgeon writes: “The textbook evaluator blog by Mark Montgomery has become a must read for me, not so much because it’s relevant to my work as because it’s so well-written.  Right now, the author is deconstructing, chapter-by-chapter, a book called Closing the Achievement Gap: A Vision for Changing Beliefs and Practices.  His reviews are vicious, funny, and fit right in with the spirit of 37signals.  He’s taking the authors to task for using unnecessarily big words simply for the sake of using big words. I’d love to see you write about this series of posts.”

Here’s an excerpt from the blog called Direct Vocabulary Instruction: An Idea Whose Time Has Come:

Anyway, all this discussion of convoluted defintions is starting to drive me crazy. The point that Marzano makes is this (drum roll, please): those kids who know more (who possess more “crystalized intelligence”, as he confusingly calls it) display higher academic achievement.

Let me state it again.

Students who know more are higher academic achievers.

Whoa. Blinding Flash of the Obvious.

So what does this have to do with direct vocabulary instruction? It means that we have to teach our kids new words. We have to provide direct instruction. We have to make them learn new words…

I “know” more words than a lot of people. Friends make fun of me when I use weird words like “limn” or “tintinabulation.”

And get this: I’m not smarter than my friends. I just know more words.

Why?

Because I studied them. I had teachers who instructed me–and taught me to love–the power of words.

Thus it irks me no end when people like Marzano have to invent new phrases and concepts. They end up obscuring the true power of words, even as they argue that our children should receive more vocabulary instruction. Even as I agreed with every word Marzano wrote, I became more and more irritated by his verbal obfuscation. Can’t academics use normal words–even if they are big ones? “Crystallized intelligence”? Please.

It’s all about knowledge. Plain. Simple. Easy to understand.

Got an interesting copywriting excerpt for Signal vs. Noise? Send the excerpt and/or URL to svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

Three sites that restrict text by 1) number of words, 2) number of questions, or 3) amount of space.

Panopticist
Panopticist limits the word count on its sidebar link roll. Check out the haiku-like “five five-word links.”

Tull’s Ian Anderson loves cats!

The horror of overcompressed music.

Bronson Pinchot’s now a freemason.

The aesthetics of wind farms.

Mike Davis on “horrific mega-slums.”

SuprGlu
Instead of offering typical bios, SuprGlu conducts interviews with users customers in a “three questions, three answers” format (example).

3. 3 things you’d bring with you to an island, for a week?
That’s funny, I didn’t even know this Island question was next. For a week, let’s see. I think I’d definitely bring my wife. Now this is always the tricky part. If I bring my laptop or ipod does the battery magically stay charged for the week or am I just out of luck. If it stays charged then I bring my laptop as one item. If no magic batteries exist then I guess I bring my pet unicorn and a sci-fi anthology. The unicorn is cool right?

Similar: Guy Kawasaki’s “Ten Questions With…” interviews, the “5 Questions” bit Craig Kilborn used to do at The Daily Show, and FiveQs (the same five questions are asked to various “inspirational” people).

37signals
Columns present a challenge for online layouts when text runs too long or short. When we recently redesigned our marketing sites, we decided to embrace space restraints and shape our text so it shows up in matched columns which end at the same point (Basecamp shown below, you can also see at Backpack and Campfire sites).

It means shaving a few words here and there but that’s all part of the challenge. You’ve just got to make it work.

Related: Embrace Constraints [Getting Real]

Here’s a look at how four great writers describe an amazing athlete. Note how all three spotlight a single play to explain a larger idea. By zeroing in on a specific moment, they are able to explain to readers what general, big picture platitudes can’t.

Bill Simmons on Allen Iverson
Don’t Question The Answer by EPSN’s Bill Simmons describes a quintessential Allen Iverson encounter.

Once I was sitting midcourt at the Fleet Center when Iverson was whistled for a technical, yelped in disbelief, then followed the referee toward the scorer’s table and screamed, “[Bleep] you!” at the top of his lungs. The official whirled around and pulled his whistle toward his mouth for a second technical.

And I swear on my daughter’s life, the following moment happened: As the official started to blow the whistle, Iverson’s eyes widened and he moved angrily toward the official, almost like someone getting written up for a parking ticket who decides it would just be easier to punch out the meter maid. For a split-second, there was real violence in the air. Of course, the rattled official lowered his whistle and never called the second T. By sheer force of personality, Iverson kept himself in the game.

Look, I’m not condoning what happened. It was a frightening moment. At the same time, I haven’t seen a player bully a referee like that before or since. And that goes back to the “seeing him in person” thing. Iverson plays with a compelling, hostile, bloodthirsty energy that the other players just don’t have. He’s relentless in every sense of the word. He’s a warrior. He’s an alpha dog. He’s a tornado. He’s so fast and coordinated that it genuinely defies description. He’s just crazy enough that officials actually cower in his presence. And none of this makes total sense unless you’ve seen him.

David Foster Wallace on Roger Federer
Federer as Religious Experience by David Foster Wallace, author and tennis player, describes a Roger Federer moment.

Amphibian Design
The about page at Amphibian Design scores high on the “I wouldn’t mind grabbing a beer with that guy” scale.

Amphibian is a graphic design and digital construction empire with humble beginnings in a one bedroom apartment in Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Today it has grown to have offices in … well, one city … and employ over … well, just one person worldwide. Nonetheless, Print Magazine’s 2005 Design Annual called Amphibian ”... a design agency I’ve never heard of.”*

I’ve been designing and building websites, posters, brochures, CD packaging, business cards, and other various forms of communication in the physical and virtual world since 1997. Sure, some of those early projects were “learning experiences.” However I think my body of work today speaks for itself.

Those with few resources who are working for peace and justice in this sad world have been known to get quoted on a sliding scale according to need, funding, and my own personal passion for their project.

It’s an oft overlooked secret to getting hired: Be likeable. A lot of “hire me” energy is spent on showing off and looking professional — education this, portfolio that, etc. But when you’re trying to attract moths to your flame, a friendly vibe and an easy-going attitude are a great place to start. Plus, you’re more likely to attract clients with the same attitude which can help lead to a saner existence.

(Btw, check out the subtle gradients at the site’s contact form and the in-your-face cover shot.) [tx Andy]

Jewelboxing tells a story
People like stories a lot more than sales pitches. One Thing Leads to Another tells the tale of how Jewelboxing came to be. Stories like this are a great way to show you truly care about what you make and create a connection with your audience.

After all the work that went into the shooting and editing and everything else it seemed like printing out some color sheets and putting the disc in a regular old jewel case was not the best way to make a first impression. We’re pretty good at finding things here and over the next couple days we looked at virtually every single disc packaging option available anywhere and decided that they all stunk.

Kevin had saved a promo disc of stock photography he received from Getty, not because we needed another disc full of serious looking businessmen pointing at computer screens or happy people on the phone, but because of the slick, modern hinged case it arrived in. We tracked down another, ripped all the paper out of them and then made our own inserts and sent the Slowtron series winging its way across the Atlantic. I’ll let you know what happens with that.

Anyhow, it didn’t take us too long to realize that there must be other firms and individuals who like us, wanted to put as much thought and effort into what our presentations discs were packed in as we did with the material that we were burned on them.