No Refunds on My Two Cents

Beagles are the worst.  If you ask any beagle owner, they will tell you that they are horrible, stubborn, escape-artist runaways who relentlessly follow their nose and then give the best snugs ever when/if you get them back. Mine is no exception. Charlie is half beagle/half Shiba Inu, and she is the love of my life. I will never, ever own a beagle again. Ever.  Off the top of my head, I can name six friends who have lost my dog. My own mother has lost her. Charlie's fight or flight reflex is such that, to fight the idea of being left behind, she flights right off and won't come back. It's terrible. She's a monster.  A precious angel face monster. About a month ago, we were taking our daily long walkie and it began to rain a bit. Charlie paused to shake the rain off (the technical term is flippa-flappa), and it happened - her leash came unclasped from her harness. There stood my escape-artist-precious-angel-monster, unattached to me, two miles away from home, and it was...

 I agree, that title is  low-hanging fruit (of the loom).  When I hear the word "brief," I think of two things: underroos and legal or other jargon-ridden documents that I don't care about written by lawyers and those of their ilk.  Simpsons already did it.  (Image: Frinkiac Dude, Tenor ) I don't think of a document designed to breathe life into a concept and/or a conceptor. I don't think of a "creative" brief, if you will. This is an unfortunate misconception on my part and the part of many others, I'm guessing. Any advertising or marketing creative worth their salt will tell you that the creative brief is the heart of a campaign if executed properly. According to the short documentary " Briefly " from Bassett & Partners, there is a saying in the creative disciplines: "Your briefs are showing," and it's not a compliment to the brief or the title of this blog.  The saying is about a brief with no soul, one that may be rest...

    The image you conjure of the blocky-guy-thing from the Mario Brothers Universe will depend on your age. I will go boldly forth into the realm of dating myself by showing you the blocky-guy-thing in my mind’s eye:  No, your resolution is fine, that's what he looked like. Evidently his name is Thwomp. (Image: Amino Nintendo Community )      I am a writer, currently by passion, in practice by life-long dream. That dream is a long way from realization for various reasons - scrapping of would-be novels, young adulthood misspent on a quest for stories of Kerouac-esque proportions, a return to school in my mid-30's, and, most notably, writer's block.      Writer's block looks like Thwomp.  It's-a Me, Mario! You're never going to write that novel. (Image: Evolution of Mario Getting Crushed by Thwomp, YouTube )     There is a book that has been sitting on Package Mountain in my living room for months. It's called Story Engineer...