Since learning to rely on G-Recorder earlier this year, I’ve found that the biggest benefit is how it allows me to listen. As long as I see the microphone and envelope icon beating in the tray, I can relax knowing the call is being recorded.

G-Recorder icon pulsates to show it's working

My need for “insurance” caused my one snag with G-Recorder. In an early interview, I captured the receptionist but not the call transfer to the client giving me the brain dump for his book. At the time I felt fortunate that I had also recorded this two-hour interview on Pamela, my old system. G-Recorder sent an update with a solution, but also said that using two recorders was likely the problem.

I haven’t had a conflict since I stopped also using Pamela. I prefer to trust the real insurance, which is that G-Recorder puts one copy on my hard drive and keeps one in the Gmail cloud.

Several analogies come to mind as I try to explain how the gap in my blog can be blamed on too much paying work.

The condition is the cheery opposite of explaining a gap year in a work resume.

Sowing seeds for writing and web work: Everything came up

It is like a yo-yo, the usual issue with any freelance-style work. But is it like being up and secure with the world in the palm of my hand because of frequent pay checks or is it risking being at the end of my string and over-extended?

One Friday afternoon in March, in the hours after accepting a nice, creative position, no fewer than nine more inquiries came in by way of email. Startups that didn’t start up were ready to try again. Fabulous work for a company that shuttered its doors now was needed at the acquiring company.

Along the way, my business partners and I declared the recession officially over. At summer’s start, several of these jobs are at full steam, and the emails keep coming.

I keep thinking of a line from the movie, “Stevie,” with Glenda Jackson playing the English poet, Stevie Smith. Remarking on an older relative’s impossibly flowered dress, Jackson labels it: “Everything came up.”

So the blog goes fallow as everything comes up from the seeds we’ve sown the past two years. Until we’re sure the dust is out of our lungs from the long dry spell, we’ll keep saying a bloomin’ yes to almost everything.

Researching work distractions, Part 2, I watched my seventh consecutive YouTube video, dashed to the kitchen and scribbled:

“Dinner will be late. Still too much work to do!”

There. I’d written something for the day. To justify, I decided those videos are not distractions but storytelling insight.

Many corporations attempt the close connection of this “view from the couch” with consumer storytelling. Whenever speaking to college classes about writing profiles, I encourage students to snuggle readers closer to their subjects by including conversational asides that seal universal ties: “No, it had to be more than five years ago, Vera, because we still had Puff.”

A friend emailed a YouTube link of decade-old Seattle square dancing that includes “our old friend Lee Stripling,” my late dad. Once in YouTube, my mind drifted to my other 2009 loss, my dog. That took me to “Intelligent Border Collie Puppy” with 206,271 other viewers, all probably also ignoring deadlines.

In Texshan74’s popular upload, Star, 3½ months, picks out different toys by name to the command “brang-it!” She shuts herself into her own crate for “nigh, nigh” and fetches a newspaper half her size.

Like all the best dog stories, this one has a beginning, a middle but no end. In other installments, Star shines in her first agility test. She holds a paw over her one eye in mock shame when her ribbons, strung like fish, include no blue. We see Star collecting trash at 7½ months, Star’s failure at herding deer, Star leaping on and off her owner’s back to catch a Frisbee at age 1.

No Hollywood script. No high budget. But enough intimacy that soon I envy not just Texshan74′s two-way devotion to this pup but also her brick-red tile, clean house, snaking driveway and off-porch wildlife.

Ties that bind. Evidence grows that we’re hurtling through a creative period rich with storytelling. If Star also celebrates her second and third birthdays on YouTube: I say, “brang-it!”

Postcards of books furthering my journey from old media to new:

Be clear

“Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability,”Second edition, (New Riders, 2006). Steve Krug’s advice on how to design websites that take people where they want to go no side trips to frustration.

The Web Content Strategist’s Bible: Developing Content for Large-Scale Web Sites,” Richard Sheffield, CLUEfox Publishing, 2009). What are the projects, who are the players and how content strategists work their way up the food chain.

Skim, scan

“Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works,” Janice (Ginny) Redish, (Morgan Kaufmann, 2007). People come to websites for content but they skim and scan. Good web content:

• Is like a conversation
• Answers people’s questions
• Lets people “grab and go”

Drive action

“Killer Web Content: Make the Sale, Deliver the Service, Build the Brand,” Gerry McGovern. (A&C Black, 2007).
Content needs to:

• Drive action
• Deliver new knowledge
• Focus on the customer
• Make the core task clear

Ask and listen

“Content Strategy for the Web,” Kristina Halvorson, (New Rider, 2009), $16.49 at Amazon. Brain Traffic’s Kristina practices what she preaches. Dramatically improve content with five principles:

• Do less, not more
• Figure out what you have and where it’s coming from
• Learn how to listen
• Put someone in charge
• Start asking, ‘Why?’

These books have taken me from “Really?” to “I said that in a meeting yesterday!” in five, not-so-short years.

Raucous home repair sent my laptop and me back to my chicken coop seeking refuge: The world’s hardest thing to find.

I created an office space out an old chicken coop years ago, saving a fir and cedar loft from fast returning to nature under a glistening moss roof. I escaped there whenever I faced big deadlines, saving my life and my career. I could concentrate – no Internet, no phone and no company, critical since my home office was mislabeled: “guest room, sleep as late as you like.”

My writing cabin: quiet except for the mice

Eventually too many jobs required Internet research and too many mice moved in. One night a 100-year-old poplar shouted “Timber-r-r-r!” in 70mph winds, sending what we euphemistically called “my cabin” on an awkward two-foot journey to the east.

Now I have concentration issues of a different sort, same as most of us. Some days I check email or search Google 10 to 20 times an hour, sometimes by need, mostly by compulsion. My cell phone, the landline, the door bell work in harmony: hopeful signs they may soon hit the road as a trio.

The radio was squished by the tree

But before I opened the padlock and knocked away the cobwebs in my quiet old chicken coop this week, I looked up: What people say about the struggle to focus.

The list leader is my favorite study of all time − the psychiatrist at King’s College in London who gave IQ tests to three groups:
• One performed the IQ test only
• One was distracted by email and cell phones
• One smoked dope and took the test
The first group won, of course, beating the others by an average 10 points. But, as blogger Tim Ferriss points out, the stoners beat the e-mailers by an average of 6 points. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby!

I turned to my yearly attempt at self-improvement, Sunday newspaper supplements. The January issues of Parade magazine has article called, “Make Happiness Happen,” the authors say, “Do one thing at a time—at least for one or two hours a day.” Now that! I am going to do.

The chickens moved to the milk shed beside my writing coop

On the granola, high-brow side, this month’s Utne Reader describes us as “A Nation Distracted.” Workers spend an average of 11 minutes on a project before switching to another. During those 11 minutes, we typically change tasks every three minutes. Click. Click. Click.

Interruption scientist Gloria Mark’s research shows that when we are interrupted, it takes an average 25 minutes to regain the same degree of concentration. And that’s not counting how long it takes you to find your glasses.

Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, from which the article is excerpted, speaks to me when she says, we must “learn to inhibit the response to the lure of distraction.”

We are what we focus on. By nurturing our abilities to pay attention, she says, we can shape our lives to “recover the ability to pause,
focus, connect, judge and enter deeply into relationships and ideas.”

Will I thank the workmen for sending me back to my refuge? Will I find the mice have all grown up and gone away? I don’t know. But I’ll
find out, and I won’t use Google to do it, either.

I hate to spew a bunch of brand names, but after decades of trying to find a recording system that works for phone interviews, I have succeeded at last.

CC-By-2.0 Creative Commons – Louise Docker photo

My system has five parts:
• Skype “call out” to reach regular phones for pennies.
• A double-eared Logitech headset with USB connection.
• Pamela for Skype, which automatically asks if I want to record when I place Skype calls.
• Express Scribe, a downloadable program from NCH software that controls speed, rewind and play for easier transcribing.
• Foot pedals to keep hands free for typing.

Total cost: $205. Satisfaction: Extremely high.

I’m sure other profile writers and/or FBI agents record and transcribe with ease. But I have a graveyard of complicated cords and recorders from my earlier attempts to find a reliable system. I’ve even tried professional services (too expensive and awkward timing for the interviewee).

That unreliability has led to a lot of frustration: muffled recording, fuzzy country phone lines made fuzzier by all the extra gadgets. “Can you tell me that again with the same emotion?”

Pre-Skype, pre-Pamela, I could sometimes hear my voice clearly recorded but nothing on the other end. “And the ingredients to your secret recipe are what, Col. Sanders?” Rewind, playback, turn up volume, rewind.

For live interviews, I’ve also moved up a big notch since I began using an Edirol R-09 digital recorder ($300-$350).

I always get permission from the subject to record for legal/respect for privacy reasons. People seem willing to assist for greater accuracy and authentic tone.

But whether by phone or in person, I still type or scribble notes as I record. Technology is a wonderful friend. Someday I may even trust it.

In co-teaching a writing class for financial advisers recently, I expressed the idea that content is the new oil, a “precious resource” with real cost and real value as Gerry McGovern writes in “Killer Web Content: Make the Sale, Deliver the Service, Build the Brand.”

Merriman, Inc., formerly known as Merriman Capital Management, was an early leader in giving away quality content through their fund advice website, financial articles and books (often given free). In return, the company has received national attention, caché and ever-important links to its two websites.

Adding an exclusivity to some client profiles

Merriman is refining its approach to what it wants to give all visitors vs. what it wants to save for existing clients. For instance, my early profile writing was posted on the website. Now, my profiles are published twice a year in a newsletter given only to clients.

Advisers at this meeting talked about the fine line of providing real, usable information as part of their commitment to free educational resources but also the need to save their most comprehensive writing for the exclusive use of clients.

Quality content takes effort and skill. It has value so why not save the best to add value for committed clients?

Or, to continue the analogy: When oil is cheap, fewer people invest in the extra expense of a hybrid.

Since I began writing about life issues, or, more specifically “quality” of life issues, for a lifestyle insights blog, I’ve bumped into an old writing emotion that has to do with audience.

It’s an odd reaction. The deeper, I write, the closer I get to real emotion, and the stronger the piece. My first sense is satisfaction: I have actually said something. But then, as the piece nears publication, I start to have writer’s remorse.

All this came back to me when new colleagues surrounded me at an event and said how much they liked my blog entry about a “no regrets” box I’d created for a celebration of my father’s life last spring. Instead of saying something gracious like “thanks,” I instead mumbled something about “revealing too much”.

Then I read this passage from Bill Moyers’ wonderful “Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft.” The poet Deborah Garrison told him:

Fooling With Words

“It’s a paradox, isn’t it? You create poetry when you’re alone. It’s a very private thing, and you’re not really thinking of who your audience is. You sit there in the middle of the night, trying to figure out the form it should take, looking for words that connect at some basic level to each other.”

Writing is a very solitary experience occurring in your head, Garrison says, “but somewhere in the back of your mind, you know the reason you’re doing this, the reason for the struggle, is that you have to invite other people into the experience you are writing about. You’re trying to communicate something. But the first criterion is for it to work on the page, right there in front of you.”

That’s exactly how it works for me, though I am far from a poet. On rare occasion I know I’ve hit it, and every favored old teacher and editor whispers that it’s true.

I may lose control of that supportive (if imaginary) audience once the piece is published. But the thrill of getting beneath the surface for heartfelt connection with real readers comes often enough to be worth the risk.

Molly Martin and I took our blog-and-pony show on the road recently with two goals and a bonus:

• To show writing classes and business groups how writing for the web differs from other writing
• To show creative non-fiction classes the places for good narrative on the web
• And the bonus: Helping our many former journalist friends stay relevant as teachers

Molly is one of my business partners at First and Union.com.  The first time we spoke to a writing class together was in 1993. Back then we talked about writing in narrative form, using our then-recent story of coming to blows while exploring boxing as a new fitness craze for women.

Now that we’ve converted to web writers, we are ever mindful that most readers scan pages quickly, using headlines, bolded phrases and bullet points to find what they need to click deeper. We talked about the why and how people scan:

• Tired eyes
• Impatience
• Information foraging
• The user’s need to feel active

And that how, as writers, we had to accept the differences or get out of the kitchen, which leads me to more bullet points. Among the ways we adapt is to:

• Get to the core point quickly
• Try to get people to take action by understanding what they want to do and what we want them to do

But longer-form writing also has its place when users get ready to settle down and read. Adding narrative to bios or company histories adds depth and understanding. Compelling and useful content presented in story form brings existing users back and encourages new users who are drawn to links.

For examples, we pointed to one of our sites Tales of the Farm and to this nicely narrated blog entry on Google’s very deliberate process of adding or subtracting a single word on their home page.

Active writer friends point to another bonus: Online magazine editors today find not only story ideas they’d like to expand by trolling favorite blogs, but also the writer − a built-in benefit for both.

I begin work this week creating the narration for the documentary on my father, fiddle player Lee Stripling. Though the hard work has been done by others, the narration may have a major role. First I need to restructure the story line to bring the focus back through the filter of my father’s experience. Then I must use the narration as the thread from which to hang all the golden nuggets, which include:

• The importance of his father, Charlie Stripling, Alabama’s most recorded fiddler
• My father’s role in passing on a music heritage he learned at the knee of fiddlers who date back as far as the Civil War

A flyer for a preview shown at 2008 Fiddle Tunes

There are 30 hours of rich video shot on location in rural Alabama, Seattle, the Berkeley Old Time Music Festival, and the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, WA. Fittingly, a preview of “Winging My Way Back Home: The Stripling Fiddle Legacy,” was shown at Fiddle Tunes last summer when my father, then 86, was once again on the faculty.

The documentary was instigated by his bass player, Tony Mates, in 2005, and brought to fruition by Jeri Vaughn, now of Frause Visual. I wrote and spoke the narrative introduction to the preview version. More key interviews were added in a second edit last winter adding insight but losing some of the story’s drive.

Thus, Vaughn the director has called me back as loving narrator, attempting what she optimistically hopes will be a blend of “Scout” in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” with NPR’s wonderful Bailey White in anything.

Hearing how stories sound when read aloud has always been a key writing tool for me. That’s made writing and speaking narration feel surprisingly like home.

Vaughn wants to recapture the warmth, optimism and sense of survival she felt when reading the version of my father’s story that I wrote for The Seattle Times in 2002. That story told of how fiddle music had twice been my father’s salvation, first as a sharecropper’s son in Alabama, and then, picking up the fiddle after decades of absence, as a man in his 70s grieving for my mother.

We will try to seamlessly blend in lessons from the Great Depression and why my Alabama grandfather’s music is played throughout the Northwest, where old-time music thrives today. By filtering it through my father’s story, I hope we can show his essence, which is:

How he passes on the benefits of kindness, optimism and maintaining a zest for life along with the toe-tapping music from America’s roots.

I’ll keep you posted on our progress.