If you are going to be a successful marketer, there is no way around it, you have to be a good writer.

You might get by being a good salesperson without good writing skills, but marketing is  different.  It’s a more diffuse activity that requires succinct communication presented in a creative manner.

And what’s more, you have to enjoy writing, and look forward to it.  I know, that’s asking a lot for many folks.  But it’s a critical mindset.  If you don’t enjoy writing, you will find any seemingly rational reason to procrastinate.   And avoiding marketing will make your business anemic.

Here’s how I make it fun for me.  I jot down ideas and drafts of paragraphs throughout the week.  Then I finalize the blog on a weekend morning while sipping my coffee.  It’s turned out to be  one of my most enjoyable times of my week.

Also, if you enjoy writing, guess what, chances are it will infuse your writing.  I can’t tell you how many readers have said to me, “You seem to have a lot of fun writing, don’t you?”

It wasn’t always that way for me.  I struggled with writing throughout my youth.  Somehow I got excellent grades in high school.  I guess it was through just plain ‘ole hard work and a gregarious  personality.

But in college, the jig was up, and it wasn’t until years later that I realized all the criticism from my professors about my writing was valid, and that my quick dismissal of them being academic snobs was immature and totally incorrect.

Where did things go wrong?

Well, you could blame it some on the ever-changing way of teaching grammar as I grew up in the 60′s and 70′s.  Just as there was ”new Math” being introduced, it seemed that every year in my school (a top notch public school no less) there was some ”new” way to to teach English grammar.  The result was that many of my peers and I somehow fell through the cracks in learning the basics of good writing.

It wasn’t really until I studied Latin in college that I finally gained a good grasp of grammar.

What’s most ironic is that after muddling through college, I went on to get a graduate degree in Communications.  Sure enough, the professors finally put their foot down and made me take a  ”remedial” writing course.  So I got better, and I actually did pretty well in some journalism courses.  But my real love was in television production, and I felt I could succeed in the field with my “superb” organizational and leadership skills . . . and leave the writing to others.

Wrong.

It wasn’t until my second job as a producer and director at the South Carolina Educational TV Network that I realized the power of good writing.

I was teamed on several projects with producer/writer Rick Sebak, yeah, that now renowned WQED Pittsburgh-based PBS producer who has brought us many great documentaries about the quirky, wacky and intriguing side of our culture.

When I worked with Rick at SCETV, it was like a light bulb went on.

David Ryan and Rick Sebak in 1985

Rick and I became good buddies, and I soon learned that part of the secret ingredient to his success as a writer was that he had always been an insatiable reader.   He had his own book review spot on our station’s art program that I directed, and his enthusiasm for the written word was infectious.

I knew I couldn’t be as good as Rick, but seeing the confidence and influence Rick derived from his writing skills, not to mention the sheer pleasure, I made a commitment to improve my own writing.

I read more (Hemmingway became my favorite author), and I kept working on my writing, starting at first with the modest goal of improving my memos at work.

The years passed on, and I remained diligent in improving my writing.  A stint at hosting my own cultural magazine series at KRMA in Denver was another great learning environment.  Fortunately, my good friend and executive producer Kaye Lavine, (of whom I have written before) provided me with excellent candid constructive criticism.

And then there was my admiration of the clear yet creative journalistic writing skills of my sister-in-law, Jackie Ryan, (now a VP of marketing and strategic planning at a hospital and subsidiaries in Georgia) and Patrick Pexton, now ombudsman of the Washington Post.

But I’d have to say that the biggest influence on my writing after Rick Sebak was my future wife, Susanne Stahley, whom I first met in an editing room in DC.  She was a producer from LA at the time, and I had been assigned to off-line edit her PBS documentary pilot on Native Americans.

I had worked with a lot of producers by then, and so was rather ho-hum about first drafts.  But when Susanne handed me her first draft, I could tell within the first paragraph that this was different.  Not only was it well-written, it had a unique voice.

Susanne had an MA in English, and like Rick Sebak, had been an incessant reader all her life.

Susanne Stahley

In working with Susanne, I realized that while I had improved to being a decent journeyman business writer, there was much, much more room to grow.  One poignant lesson that I learned from her (and author William Zinsser of “On Writing Well,” – a book given to me by a former boss) is that there is no shame in editing your copy over and over.  “Relax, it’s ok,” she said.

Some twenty years later, I am still learning to be a better writer from Susanne.  She is now a producer for Maryland Public Television and our discussions have advanced from lively exhortations trying to get me to stop writing in the passive voice . . . to more sophisticated discussions on how to develop my own style.

Click here to continue on reading Part 2 of this article, where I talk about my latest writing muse.