Wherefore Writes-A-Roni?
Writes-A-Roni is more than a pun with a high-value keyword relevant to what I’ve got to sell. Writes-A-Roni is the brand name of a content services business and a Web site created to promote my search for work as a blogger and other editorial assignments. It is also my pen name and alter ego.
Those looking for a versatile, thoroughly professional writer have come to the right place. Check out the Services page for the forms of content in which I am expert and descriptions of the sensibilities I bring to each. Also consider working with me in related areas such as information architecture, editorial process management and product selection systems. Click on Resumes for focused accounts of my experience as a writer, editor and manager in print and Web publishing, public relations and desktop publishing.
See my “On the Job” posts, in which I offer samples of my blogging voice through stories about my search for work and lessons learned throughout my career. Readers–especially writers and editors about my age, which is 50-something–may suspect that I’ve been reading their mail. Reporters and editors covering the unemployment story may find some tasty fodder there. President Obama and his legions should look at the blog periodically for a progress report on job creation. “On the Job” is my shot at becoming famous for being underemployed, thereby to remediate the fault.
And Writes-A-Roni is a research platform. See “50-somethings” and “Growing Up.” With these pages I seek user-generated content in response to two interesting , persistent questions: 1) Why don’t folks like to work with 50-somethings?, and 2) What have you learned on the job that has changed your character and/or informed your way of being? A good exercise in social/business media networking, I hope. I ask contributors to register and complete a profile that includes general information about their age, the industry they work in, and their professional rank–this in anticipation of someday categorizing and analyzing readers’ responses. Might make one or more interesting books, don’t you think?
Now back to the name Writes-A-Roni itself. I was after something resonant, memorable for the brand. I really would’ve preferred something more apt, straightforward, less silly. Believe me–I gave it a lot of thought. But in researching the options I found that Write Stuff, Write On, Write Angle, Write 1, and Write Way were already taken. Writehand Man? No, not gender neutral. Write Thinking? Too cerebral, too presumptuous. Writes All Wrong? Too ambitious, and when scanned quickly, might actually convey an unintended impression. Radical Write? Too scary. Christian Write? Doesn’t work with “The Handiest Jew in New York.” Many more puns on the words write, content and professional were considered.
Writes-A-Roni. Based on a brand name that catapulted an immigrant family to wealth and fame. Leveraged by the mighty Quaker Oats Company. Incorporates an active verb, a salient keyword. When you think it through, what better name could there be? What other choice did I have? This creative act of naming–it was really a no-brainer.