i don't do press, i do narratives.

I've loved narrative for as long as I can remember.  I used to drive my mother crazy because I would read rather than do anything else.  Until I was 22 or so, my only career aspiration was novelist.

Narratives are the most important thing in getting attention, interest, audiences and markets.

I was never the kind of writer who planned everything out.  I developed my characters, a situation, some undefined ideas, and went to it.  Writing was a process of discovery.  I can't do that anymore.

PR isn't just about arranging press coverage.  It's about developing a narrative, and exploring and expanding it through the media.  This is a hell of a lot more complicated, because you need to plan around the unexpected actions of others, the trends that dominate the marketplace, upcoming changes in those trends, the personalities of your stakeholders, the tangents that drive away from the actual narrative, and, of course, the truth (which is essential, immutable and unavoidable).

I'm spending a lot of time crafting, developing, and planning the narratives I manage and create now.  It's very rewarding, in a very similar way to how writing fiction was.  If anything, it feels like a particularly complex version of the same, but rooted in truth and the real world.

Because your brand, your narrative, is no longer up to you in the post-internet world.  All you can do is create the set of concepts, framing, ideas and narrative that best defines your product and goals, while planning around the nearly limitless number of things the newly infinite citizen media can do with it.

It would be terrifying if it wasn't so much fun.

note to publishers.

Okay, when it happened with James Frey, it was an eye opener. It shouldn't have been, but it was. And now this. How much longer can publishers really justify not shelling out a little cash to check the validity of memoirs and 'true stories' published? It has to be cheaper than a recall of a book poised to become a best seller.

Welcome to 2008. People WILL find inconsistencies. Crowley's First Rule.

from my journal.

statement:
long talk with angus last night. basically, he was arguing that supplying people with truth and evidence in media should be enough to make positive strides in society. i was taking the counterpoint, that people don't ever just want the honest and noble. you have to give them the honest and noble, AND a reason to desire it. this is, in part, the explanation for my interest in user experience design, and in the presentation of information. just telling the truth hasn't been enough in generations. the truth needs to be put in the right dress, so people will actually stop and stare.

response:
re: truth dressing...this is why scientists don't talk to the media at press conferences. we (as a discipline) don't understand why people just don't care a priori, thus miss out on the sexifying process. This is why we need people like you. you will be useful to the world, likely someday soon.

Thanks to Kirsten, but this is basically here as a reminder to me that most people don't think the way I do, in terms of what use information has. The 'sexifying process' is fairly integral, in my opinion, to the point where it baffles me when it is left out. Facts aren't remembered without framing, and they definitely cannot tell a story without it. To revisit, I suppose.