The Scripted Podcast: Building a career as a freelance writer with guest Michael Nadeau
MICHAEL [00:00:00]: If you see both of those films, you've really seen the pinnacle of American culture over the last...
[00:00:14]: Intro Music
JOHN [00:00:[00:28]: Hello and welcome to the scripted podcast. My name is John, I'm the writer community manager here at Scripted and I'm here joined by
KEVIN [00:00:36]: This is Kevin, I'm the senior marketing director at Scripted.
JOHN [00:00:37]: It's true, he is. Kevin, it feels like it's been a little while since we've been on the microphone here.
KEVIN [00:00:42]: Yeah. Quite some time, but we're back!
JOHN [00:00:45]: We're back.
KEVIN [00:00:46]: It's 2022.
JOHN [00:00:46]: 2022!
KEVIN [00:00:49]: The new season.
JOHN [00:00:49]: Has it really been since 2021 that we've done one of these?
KEVIN [00:00:52]: Yeah.
JOHN [00:00:52]: Wow. Time is moving quickly these days as they say. But hey, listen, more importantly, we have an exciting guest today. um, but before I get into who that is, Kevin, you and I have been at Scripted for a long time now. How long has it been for you in particular?
KEVIN [00:01:12]: I'm, um, on my way to my fifth year.
JOHN [00:01:17]: Wow, five years already. It's been my seventh I think this past March, but joining us today is actually a Scripted writer, Michael Nadeau, who has been on the platform for ten years, so he's going to be talking a little bit about how he found Scripted, about his journey as a freelance writer and his beginnings and uh probably going to be sharing some best practices with us as well as talk a bit about um how the landscape of content marketing has changed and maybe where it's going from here. So super excited to have him on, let's just jump right into it.
KEVIN [00:01:51]: Alright, um, welcome to the show, Michael.
MICHAEL [00:01:56]: Thank you very much, it's my pleasure. I'm excited to be here.
KEVIN [00:01:59]: Yeah, we're happy to have you. So, uh, so let's get into it. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you really just got into freelance writing.
MICHAEL [00:02:07]: Uh, well, let's see, a little bit about myself. Well, I'm 37. I live in Norwood, MA, which is about four or five miles away from Foxborough Stadium, so right around there, about twenty minutes south of Boston. Um, I live out here with my fiance. I know you guys are Eagles fans so we gave you that one Superbowl, but whatever.
All [00:02:35]: {Laughter}
MICHAEL [00:02:35]: Um, but yeah, I live out here with my fiancé and our two Golden Retrievers, getting married in April so I'm in the midst of planning a 255-person wedding, which is always fun. Yeah, it's funny she's doing a take-off on twenty-seven dresses so she’s got twenty-six bridesmaids and I have thirteen groomsmen so…
KEVIN [00:02:55]: Wow.
MICHAEL [00:02:55]: It's just a very comfortable, quiet time here in the midst of all the wedding planning.
ALL [00:02:59]: {Laughter}
KEVIN [00:03:01]: Sure.
MICHAEL [00:03:02]: How I came into freelance writing? I went to undergrad for journalism in New Jersey where I lived and then I came back up here to `New England where I was born and raised to go to graduate school at Emerson College, which is in Boston. Um, which is one of the better journalism schools in the nation. It's - you can't go to Emerson and, like, major in physics or science. It's strictly performing arts and, uh, you know, journalism and acting. There's a lot, it's a very interesting group of people that go there. A lot of, like, local news anchors and great journalists, screenwriters, actors, comics; Dennis Leary and Jay Leno both went there. Henry Winkler, the Fonz, went there. So it's a really interesting school and very specialized and very, very good at what it does in order to produce journalists and writers. So I went there for grad school.
Unfortunately, I was there really at an interesting time in journalism when, um, it was sort of the mass transition from traditional print journalism writing which I had grown up with and loving. I really wanted to be a sportswriter as a New Englander reading Peter Gammons and Bob Ryan, all the time on the weekends. I loved sports writing and I worshipped at the altar of it, that's what I wanted to do. But, you know, I graduated in the midst of the p- not the pandemic, but the financial crisis which was, so, it was that.
And it was also the transition from the traditional print newsletter uh, to the really online model. In the midst of that, you know, Craigslist killed online classifieds so the revenues for all these papers were, you know, imploding and, you know, places like, you kno2, places like the Boston Globe came very close to shutting down forever, for example. You know, I looked at the journalism landscape and it was just not an appealing thing to go into.
So, you know, I just, I didn't see, you know, it would be one of those things where I'm slaving away at, you know, whatever, $26k a year for years and then in fifteen or twenty years get a column somewhere. So it just didn't seem like a very appealing direction to go into.
JOHN [00:05:14]: No.
MICHAEL [00:05:15]: So I got a job working for a, you knowing, working in marketing which is, again, a parallel track to journalists and journalism. And working in marketing for a company called {Indecipherable} which is a competitor of PBS or something along the same lines. They sort of syndicate programs like cooking shows and everything to, uh, working for different public television networks across the nation.
So, I was doing that and it's, uh, where I kind of started my career. I was doing that and going to grad school at the same time. So, um, while this was all happening, you know I started messing around and just writing screenplays in my spare time as a big film fan and what have you. I just would just mess around and probably got inspiration from a couple of places and I just, you know, just messing around and writing screenplays and I found a website called "Script". S-c-r-i-p-p-e-d dot com. Um, which actually was a place that I could work online and host these screenplays that I was writing.
And then I think, I believe from there, the same people that started Scripts were working on Scripted. I think this is the way it was developed, that they had a good idea of just saying "hey these people who are writing screenplays would probably be decent writers. Why don't we invite them to this platform for Scripted.
KEVIN [00:06:41]: Mm-hmm.
MICHAEL [00:06:41]: And I signed up I think it was in 2006 or seven or eight
JOHN [00:06:48]: {Laughs} Wow.
MICHAEL [00:06:48]: I think by the numbers I think I was one of the first, like, ten or fifteen people
JOHN [00:06:55]: Yeah yeah yeah. No that's true, yeah. I've been with Scripted for seven years now. You predate me considerably, so um, I think on the platform it said, like, ten years.
But no, what you're saying about Script and sort of the origin of Scripted is true. I think that it's like you said. It's um, the original idea was predicated on we want to work with some creative people. But ultimately I think what it turned out to that's a really hard business model.
MICHAEL [00:07:28]: Yeah.
JOHN [00:07:28]: You know?
MICHAEL [00:07:28]: I think a lot of people, like 75 to 80 percent of people deep down have something that, you know, they've written or consider themselves writers at heart.
JOHN [00:07:39]: Right, right.
MICHAEL [00:07:39]: But, you know, and they say, "oh I would love to get into doing that, how can I do it?"
JOHN [00:07:45]: Mm-hmm.
MICHAEL [00:07:45]: And I always think to myself: I didn't get here by winning a lottery. I didn't get here by, you know, somebody tapping me on the head. It's, you know, it's just so many little things that you have to know and deploy and be aware of when you're working in this medium, you know? It just, and the fact, just thinking to ask clients if they want American English or British English can be the difference between, you know, having a client for, you know, two years and being really productive with them to them rejecting a draft.
JOHN [00:08:25]: Oh, yeah. Oh no no no no. We talk about that all the time on this show. It's something that when I'm bringing on new writers I share quite a bit. Which is the idea that basically, um, if anyone who is hiring a writer, if they had the ability to clearly articulate what it is that they need, they wouldn't need to hire a writer, right? So, there's definitely a service aspect to it that I think sometimes writers overlook. It can really, really help.
But also, you're one hundred percent right about the way that people think about themselves and how they think about writers. I think that when you tell people that you're a writer, um, their first inclination is to assume you're unemployed, right?
MICHAEL [00:09:08]: {laughs}
JOHN [00:09:10]: After that they assume you're some kind of tortured spirit. Um, but the reality of it is, is that it's a craft not really unlike carpentry or something like that where the more that you do, the better you get. You only get better by doing more of it. It's tedious ultimately to get good at it. Like anything else, I think the romantic aspect is a little bit overplayed and so is maybe the simplicity. But being that you've been a writer for a long time, do you find yourself writing about any particular topics on the platform more often than others?
MICHAEL [00:09:46]: It's more the fact that I know what I can't write about. There’s a certain - I know, for example, that I'm not a technical writer. I know enough that if it's a, um, extraordinarily tech-heavy aspect that I’m trying to write about, you know something that, if it's way too far into the weeds I know enough to let the people that are - that can produce that stuff to take it.
JOHN [00:10:15]: Right.
MICHAEL [00:10:15]: If there's elements that I might want to, that I know about or I can interpret and work with the client to produce content, that's something I can take. But I know if it's far, far too into the weeds, I know to say, "Hey, you know what it's just not going to be worth my time to produce that and I'll let somebody who is an expert take it."
KEVIN [00:10:38]: Right, so it sounds like, I mean, a couple of things that are important for a writer to understand based on your story so far. One is being able to adapt, right? Your story is one that started in screenwriting and you found your niche in more business marketing writing when you saw, like, the landscape change. Right?
MICHAEL [00:10:57]: Mm-hmm
KEVIN [00:10:58]: And then, uh, secondly, you know, know what you don't know.
MICHAEL [00:11:01]: Right.
KEVIN [00:11:02]: Have an understanding of where your talents lie and your strengths lie and then leaning in. Is that about right?
MICHAEL [00:11:12]: Yeah. I don't want that to seem limiting, I think that there's, I mean, listen. I've certainly learned more about more things from doing this job.
JOHN [00:11:24]: I bet.
MICHAEL [00:11: 24]: Because I've taken - I always say this. I think I'm the best - I think I'm a pretty good trivia player anyways, but I think this job has made me the best trivia player in Massachusetts.
KEVIN & JOHN [00:11:35]: {Laughter}
MICHAEL [00:11:35]: Because there's just so much stuff I know about random stuff, you know? I don't want it to seem limiting.
KEVIN [00:11:44]: Right.
MICHAEL [00:11:44]: If there's something that's interesting and you can learn about it without having to become an expert on it, I think that's kind of, that's great. I love that stuff. I love diving into something where I have to understand it at a level at which I know I could produce content at.
It's just that there are certain things that I know if we're talking about advanced computer technical stuff or machine learning or AI, you know I can understand the concept of it, but if you want to tell me how it actually works, I know when to say, "you know what? I'll leave that for the experts for somebody else."
JOHN [00:12:31]: Right, research has a limit. A common thing that I actually see with a lot of writers is maybe not having the gauge to properly know that hey, maybe this is outside of my limits. And, hey, maybe this isn't the right job fit for me.
MICHAEL [00:12:39]: Right.
KEVIN [00:12:43]: And that's just going to take time, really, to understand.
MICHAEL [00:12:46]: And there's no magic formula, too.
KEVIN [00:12:48]: No.
MICHAEL [00:12:48]: You just have to have the experience to know. And again, I've been doing this for so long that I can kind of recognize within, you know, a minute when I read a briefing and say, okay this one I can do, this one for me. Or I could just say, listen this is above my, this is out of my pay grade. This is not in my wheelhouse.
And you know, I would say to all the young, the writers out there that are just approaching this platform, you know, not everything is going to be in your, don't just - if you, don't think you can do this in your average sit down think about it session, then it's not for you.
And you know what? You might get there someday. But just don't take it because you're also going to drive yourself crazy.
JOHN [00:13:40]: It's okay to turn jobs down.
MICHAEL [00:13:40]: Yeah, absolutely.
KEVIN [00:13:42]: I wanna, I want to talk about your sit-down session. Like, I want to talk about your process and you've been in the game, like John said a long time. I'm sure that process has changed over time. What is it like right now from the time you accept the job to the time you turn it in? At this point do you have it down to almost your own science?
MICHAEL [00:14:02]: Yeah, I do. And you know what? I've actually gotten a lot better over the years. I think that - over - there's a couple of things I would say that I've learned over the years.
First off, you know, I want the actual writing of the piece to be the easiest part of the whole piece. So when I sit down, I want to have it written in my head. This is just, actually how I approach all writing, but I want the actually sitting down putting fingers to keys to be the easiest part of the whole job. So I want to know everything about what I'm going to write about before I write word one.
KEVIN [00:14:43]: Mm-hmm.
MICHAEL [00:14:43]: And that's just a good habit to get into.
JOHN [00:14:49]: Yeah.
MICHAEL [00:14:49]: So most of it is figuring out what the client's asking for, right? And as soon as you do that, then everything falls into place. Then it's, you know, perusing what information is out there? What information is on their website that you can take and put into this? What's the call to action?
If there's a boilerplate, you know, you gotta remember, too, the little things. If they have to include a boilerplate or a call to action in there, you know that's probably 150 words off the word count right there.
JOHN [00:15:19]: Yup.
MICHAEL [00:15:19]: Then I think the next step in the process is, as I said, all about figuring out, you know, what has to be in there because that will sort of inform the structure you have to write. Is there a heading? Is there a headline you have to put in there? Are there SEO keyword terms that you have to integrate in there?
So, as you mentally tick off all of those boxes, you end up with a very specific set of things that you have to hit. And if you go through that process in your mind and you hit those different things, it will become very easy for you because, you know, again, when you get all those things that have to be in there then you get to the actual stuff that you have to play with, you know you're cutting down really the ask by maybe a quarter.
JOHN [00:16:09]: Right, right, right. And whatever remains after that, then...
MICHAEL [00:16:12]: What remains is the fun part.
JOHN [00:16:13]: Yup.
MICHAEL [00:16:14]: That's the stuff you get to play with and then I don't have a set process written down. I think it's just over time.
JOHN [00:16:23]: Well, honestly. Let me ask you something. And sorry to interrupt you there, but I wanted to know, um, one thing that we've found with a lot of the writers who are, um, who have been on the platform for a long time, have a tendency to use tools like Grammarly, even outside of work. Do you find yourself doing that?
MICHAEL [00:16:42]: Yeah, I think it's very important. Because, you know, and I say this to a lot of people that are younger. It's like if you learn how to write and if you're a good writer and you teach yourself how to write, it's a dying art.
Both of my parents are teachers, right? So, you know, I've been in their classrooms every once in a while. And I see that - and they complain about it, cuz, they were pretty decent writers themselves. They see it's just a generational thing, because writing talent, it's declining. People can't write anymore and it's just a natural offset of the smartphone culture. It's how we communicate, we communicate in these little blurbs.
JOHN [00:17:26]: {Laughs} We're aging ourselves. But yeah, I think it's bizarre even to see things that are on really reputable websites and outlets that are just publishing things that I would have got torn to shreds for in a high school paper. But, you know, you've been in the game a long time. Have you seen the landscape kind of changing in terms of demand for content and things like that?
MICHAEL [00:17:50]: I can say just, you know, in my full-time position that I've never seen the content marketing world be so in demand. I just recently took a new full-time job coming from a place that I really enjoyed. I loved my last job, but the offer was there you know, just because, it was in demand.
I was getting three or four calls a week from recruiters within the last year, just for content marketing. So, you know, if you can show that you're a good writer and you know the content marketing world, I don't think it's going to go the way of the dinosaur anytime soon. I mean when I started at Scripted I remember it was like a year or two or three in that I saw the first thing about the SEO keywords pop up as, like, a requirement.
JOHN [00:18:46]: Right.
MICHAEL [00:18:46]: That shifted very quickly within the last decade from being, you know, oh, okay well that's in there, I guess I have to do this to being something that's a necessity with everything else.
Um, I think over the years I've seen things go from, you know, because it's weird, right? It's, we went from, you know the era of having to write everything for mobile because people thought people were just going to be on their mobile phones all the time to the transition to wait, if you do everything for mobile then that means that your website isn't text-heavy enough to be found on Google. So there's a whole generation of websites that had to be redone because they were too light with words and there wasn't enough text on there for them to rank on Google which lead to the whole pillar page strategy. Which I think we're still kind of in right now even though I think that's being a little bit rethought in some circles.
I would say that I don't think there is one - I can't predict the future for what content marketing is going to look like just because I've seen it change so rapidly over the last decade from these big shifts from punchy real quick content to the big heavy pillar page blogs to the smaller shorter blogs that are out there. Social media running everything to blogs on your website being the determining factor. You know, whether keyword-heavy Google thing is Google-rich pieces as being the main strategy so it's shifted back and forth. I think that being aware of what the prevailing strategy should be right up there for any writers looking to produce content either now or in the future -
JOHN [00:20:38]: Well you know one thing that's a little bit on the wind these days as far as content marketing is concerned is AI. So obviously I have my own thoughts about that and I'm sure you do as well. I'm sure you and any of our writer listeners will happy to know that Scripted kind of views that as more of a tool than a replacement. But yeah, I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
MICHAEL [00:21:02]: I don't think you can train a robot or an AI bot to be, you know, John Updike or, you know you just can't. I think that there is, I think that at the end of the day, you know, as they said in the second Bond movie with Daniel Craig, there has to be somebody that pulls the trigger to decide if a trigger needs to be pulled or not pulled, right?
That was the same discussion that Q was having with him, well, you know, you could do a lot of damage by just using computers but at the end of the day there has to be a human at the end of the line to understand what's real and what's not. ,I can definitely see there being an element of it, but practically I'm just not sure - it's like that stupid Metaverse thing that Facebook rolled out, right? It's just why would anybody want to be a part of that, you know?
I don't know if you saw Ex Machina but I don't want to be a part of that.
JOHN [00:22:14]: Oh yeah.
MICHAEL [00:22:14]: I don't want to be a part of that robot revolution, right?
KEVIN [00:22:17]: Michael I think we've kind of discovered the same thing in our research, uh, and what we're referring to it internally is like a cyborg.
MICHAEL [00:22:28]:Right. Yeah. And if we've seen anything, cyborgs from the future, I mean, they can help us, that's what the Terminator did in the second movie
JOHN [00:22:39]: Well...
MICHAEL [00:22:39]: They also came to kill us, that's what they did in the first movie.
JOHN [00:22:41]: Right.
KEVIN [00:22:41]: And like John said, we're viewing AI as more of a tool to help writers optimize their process, right?
MICHAEL [00:22:51]: Sure.
JOHN [00:22:51]:Yeah. It's more about cutting down some of that grunt work and allowing more room to breathe creativity into it. Um, but one thing I think is worth noting is that when we talk about AI, we're not talking about AI in the way that I think we've all kind of been raised to think about it? We're not quite there yet. I don't think anyone is.
MICHAEL [00:23:17]: So we're not going to have, you know, Oscar Isaac... you know...
JOHN [00:23:24]: {Laughs}
MICHAEL [00:23:24]: By the way, that was one of the best movies of the last decade, can we all agree to that?
JOHN [00:23:24]: Yup. Saw that in the theater four times.
MICHAEL [00:23:28]: Me too.
KEVIN [00:23:28]: Just the dancing alone!
MICHAEL [00:23:28]: Oh, the dancing scene is unbelievable. If anybody is listening to this podcast that has not seen Ex Machina, it's one of the best
JOHN [00:23:35]: Yup.
MICHAEL [00:23:35]: Again, best ten movies in the last decade.
JOHN [00:23:39]: Go see it.
Kevin [00:23:41]: And Michael, before we let you go, there was one thing I wanted to bring up. Something that AI definitely couldn't write is MacGruber. I know you're a big MacGruber fan.
MICHAEL [00:23:51]: How did you... Where did MacGruber come from?
KEVIN [00:23:54]: I do my research.
JOHN [00:23:57]: Ahhh, there we go.
MICHAEL [00:23:57]: I, I think MacGruber - it's so funny you say this. I was at uh, I was at, we were at one of our friend’s houses last week and um somebody brought up MacGruber - one of her, one of my fiancée’s friend's husbands brought up MacGruber and we must have talked for half an hour about that. He was like I saw it on a bus.
JOHN [00:24:21]:A bus?
MICHAEL [00:24:21]: I was the only person in the theater -
KEVIN [00:24:26]: Same.
MICHAEL [00:24:26]: I saw it in the theater when it came out. I was the only person and I died laughing. It hit every element of parody, but lovingly parodying but also riffing on all the eighties action movies that I grew up loving. I thought it was one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.
JOHN [00:24:46]: {Laughs}
KEVIN [00:24:46]: Yeah, I remember it was like 2010, I believe.
MICHAEL [00:24:49]: Yeah, it's been ten years.
Kevin [00:24:52]: I remember before it came out, like a couple of months before it came out I read an interview with Jorma Taccone I think where they talk about the movie where they're like this is rated R.
MICHAEL [00:25:03]: Yeah, no-
KEVIN [00:25:03]: You should - it's not going to be an SNL skit.
MICHAEL [00:25:06]: No and anybody who -
KEVIN [00:25:11]: It piqued my interest so much that I was like I'm going to go see this. Because I remember the sketch, I remember the sketch and it was, you know, one-note funny sketch that they do three times throughout an episode where he blew up every time because he kept talking.
MICHAEL [00:25:22]: Right, right, right.
KEVIN [00:25:22]: And then I read the interview and I was like, wow, this sounds like a crazy movie and I went and saw it with nobody in the theater and I was like this is the greatest thing I've ever seen. Like, beginning to end it's one of the tightest comedies that I've ever seen that they're just continuously funny. They never stop making the movie hilarious, like, through the entire film. And yeah, like you said it's a loving to tribute to our eighties favorites, especially like Rambo.
MICHAEL [00:25:47]: Oh, yeah. Completely. I, uh, I remember the ten-year anniversary last year, I think it was Medium or some website did a piece on it. I think it was Will Forte or Seth Meyers, or somebody associated with the movie that apparently Christopher Nolan, it's one of Christopher Nolan's favorite movies.
JOHN [00:26:11]: No shit.
MICHAEL [00:26:11]: They were like, apparently Christopher Nolan came up to Will Forte or somebody and was like, just couldn't stop talking about how funny MacGruber was. They actually invited him to direct one of the episodes of the t.v. series that came out. But I guess he couldn't do it because he was filming the last movie he did.
But yeah, it was - you know what? It's one of those things too that some people just won't get ever. I showed it to my roommate when it came out on video and she just did not laugh and I was on the floor cracking up.
John [00:26:44]: Ooooohhh…
KEVIN [00:26:44]: Oh yeah, I've bored people at parties for years trying to convince them to see MacGruber. Because it bombed terribly, like
MICHAEL [00:26:53]: Oh nobody saw it in the theaters, it was a legendary bomb. Yeah, it's so funny. But yeah, I didn't think I was going to talk MacGruber on the podcast.
JOHN [00:27:05]: It's how we do.
KEVIN [00:27:05]: I wouldn't let it go.
MICHAEL [00:27:07]: What else came up with the research? Just kidding.
KEVIN [00:27:12]: {Laughs}
JOHN [00:27:12]: I think unfortunately that's the only one we have. But listen we did walk away with two good recommendations here. Go see Ex Machina. Go see Macgruber.
[00:27:23] MICHAEL Honestly if you've seen both of those films, you've really seen the pinnacle of American culture over the last -
KEVIN [00:27:35]: The full gamut.
JOHN [00:27:32]: It's a shining endorsement.
MICHAEL [00:27:35]: That's all you're missing, you don't really need to see anything else. Just watch those two movies and you're all set.
JOHN [00:27:37]: {Laughs} That's all you need.
MICHAEL [00:27:37]: I agree.
JOHN [00:27:37]: Well, Michael, um thank you so much for joining us. We hope we have you around for many many more years and uh join us again next time.
MICHAEL [00:27:46]: Alright, well thank you guys. I appreciate it.
[00:27:49] {Music}
KEVIN [00:28:02]: Alright, that was great. Um, Michael had a lot to say as he usually does. But I think he's one of the most interesting stories from a Scripted writer that you could get because of the path that he's taken and how I think every freelance writer can learn a lot from him because he's been so, uh, adjustable I guess in his career. LIke, the path that he thought he was going to take to the path that he ended up taking was a lot different.
JOHN [00:28:32]: Yeah.
KEVIN [00:28:32]: And I think that's a good lesson for a lot of freelance writers.
JOHN [00:28:35]: I feel like that's, you know, how it works out for almost everybody, right?
KEVIN [00:28:39]: Yeah.
JOHN [00:28:39]: What was your game plan when you were like ten?
KEVIN [00:28:43]: Me?
JOHN [00:28:43]: Yeah.
KEVIN [00:28:43]: Uh, when I was ten years old I probably wanted to be the middle linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles.
JOHN [00:28:51]: Oh, so that did work out then.
Kevin [00:28:53]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did that.
JOHN [00:28:53]: Okay.
KEVIN [00:28:55]: I did that for about ten years.
JOHN [00:28:56]: Okay, okay. A little bit different. Dare to dream, you know? Yeah I'm not really sure what I wanted to be, probably like a Ghostbuster or something. But no, I think Michael's path is an admirable one and one that I think a lot of people don't really take into account when they plan.
What I think I admire most is I think his perseverance to some degree here. Because here's the deal: when you're starting a craft, the first year you're going to suck, right? I mean you're just not going to be good at what you do.
KEVIN [00:29:30]: Mmm-hmm.
JOHN [00:29:30]: But, I think that by sticking with it and also by finding other avenues that allow you to grow that craft the way that Michael has is how you become good at that thing. So in this particular case, right, you know um maybe you want to be a sports writer. It's not as if you have to dash taht dream. However, finding additional ways of income, finding the ability to be versatile while being able to adapt while continuing down that path is also going to help you grow your craft in general.
I think that's something a lot of new writers tend to overlook as well. They want to make that novel or nothing at all. I think when you really love your craft, you can keep growing it through a number of different practices and I think Scripted provides one outlet for that.
KEVIN [00:30:20]: Yeah and, you know, as we said every business needs content.
JOHN [00:30:26]: Right.
KEVIN [00:30:26]: So accounting firms need content. Don't be afraid dto get your feet wet in an industry that you're maybe not that familiar with, but you can get familiar with.
JOHN [00:30:36]: Exactly.
KEVIN [00:30:37]: And along the way what you're going to be doing is honing your skills. You’re going to be honing your writing skills to be able to write for any business or to be able to pitch clients of any business and you know those skills are probably the most important. To be able to write in the voice of someone else, to be writing for the purposes of someone else is going to keep you in business. It's going to keep you writing for a living which Michael is a great example of someone who can do that. Um, and, he's just kind of shown us, you know, because he's been around for ten plus years.
JOHN [00:31:14]: Yeah. And he hasn't even just been around, right? He's been successful,w hich is something that a lot of people I think that when they're getting into something like freelance writing that feels like such a distant goal. But it's super achieveable as long as you're maintaining a reasonable course in continuing to hone your craft.
KEVIN [00:31:32]: Yeah, I think another lesson we failed to mention is that you need to go out and see Macgruber. If you haven't seen it yet, it's time.
JOHN [00:31:40]: {Laughs} Uh, I still haven't seen it yet. Um, but I will say that listening to the two of you might have been the push that I need.
KEVIN [00:31:51]: I'm going to be disappointed if you don't come in on Monday and tell me how much you loved it.
JOHN [00:31:54]: {Laughs} Alright, alright, I'll definitely do it. Uh and then and also we won't do the next podcast if I haven't.
KEVIN [00:32:02]: A lot riding on this.
JOHN [00:32:05]:{Laughs} Alright, then thank you again for listening to us, and uh we're going to be back with a lot more regularity from here. As usual, please like, subscribe, share and we'll see you next time!
[00:32:20] OUTRO MUSIC
