Rough Draft

In the last episode of Rough Draft, your host explored storytelling from a myriad of angles, culminating in a thorough vetting of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey concept. This time we thoroughly vet Campbell, the man. And we do it with superstar Campbell scholar Robert Segal. Professor Segal is an unstoppable fount of knowledge about Campbell…

Marketers are agog over stories. For good reason … A story lifts a person out of her ordinary world … and stories take her on a journey that ultimately leads to a vision of herself as a better version of herself. This is marketing that educates your audience through the storytelling arc. And one way…

So, we are making a few changes here at Rough Draft. Good changes. Three in fact. One, after this episode, I’m taking a month break. A month to clear my head. A month to plan the next 100 episodes, namely the content and the format. Listen to this twelve minute episode to learn about the…

Some astronomers and philosophers make the grand, if not absurd, claim that we are ten thousand things, but one substance. Perhaps ancient stardust. Fair enough. I have my own absurd claim: behind one single article by a seasoned writer is the weight of one thousand books, one hundreds movies, hours of lectures, a litany of…

It’s funny. How we forget things. Sublime reflections and exalted ideas. Like they were never even there. But if they were so sublime and exalted, why did they not remain with us? And it’s funny how we fear losing these ideas. The lengths we will go to preserve them. The legends are legion. Keeping waterproof…

As of late, it’s fashionable to write hell for leather. In fact, there’s a hot cottage industry in the writing culture. But is it good for the writing community? Or detrimental? For lack of potentially better terms, let’s call this trend the “The Hell-For-Leather Writing Movement.” Or HFLWM. You see, HFLWM in titles like “How…