Introduction

Created works pull people into private engagement. Like the figure and ground of an image, the form and rhythm of sentences communicates as much meaning as their factual content.

Language is so complex that the brain processes it in two different ways at the same time.

The left hemisphere is better at the straightforward language tasks like recalling word definitions. In contrast, the right hemisphere of our brain activates large fields of remembered information, including information only distantly related to the input words.  It fills in the gaps left out of the dictionary definition. It fills in the emotional context. Each hemisphere computes linguistic input uniquely. Each contributes to understanding.

The creative task is to allow room for the parallel processes of the left and right brain.

Technical Publications

I wrote more than 20 formal scientific papers between 1981 and 1992, the period I was involved in academic and government research.

Copywriting

Shaping copy means preserving some space for ambiguity.  In ad copy there has to be a certain purposeful emptiness, like the rests in music. That porousness allows readers to slip inside your writing, so that they can experience it on their own terms.

Ghostwriting

The real challenge of ghostwriting is getting into the subject’s verbal cadence and nomenclature.  I think it goes beyond attempting to mimic traits to absorbing a persona much like a method actor assumes a character.

Scripts

Recently, I added script writing to my theater related portfolio when I developed a script for the Artistic Director at Salem Repertory Theatre.  Although Nyayo House was never publicly produced, it was well received by the artistic community.