Do you believe in the power of the written word?
I have been befriended by some of the world's most talented and successful people because they'd read something I'd written and liked it, me.
A superstar singer, not used to being made fun of, was being treated rather unfairly in a series of mean and therefore unfunny Doonesbury strips. This singer heard my response and asked me to write it down and fax it over to his Palm Springs home. I did and for the next week or so, he used the line on stage in front of sold-out concerts all over America.
A longtime Las Vegas resident, a great comic and fine director and one- half the biggest act in show business in the 1950's, liked the way I wrote introductions so much that he ordered them put up on the telepromter without edit. I've heard lyrics I've co-written performed in clubs and of course quotes from my fiction recited to small groups but there's something pretty powerful about hearing your words read out to millions of television viewers during the annual Labor Day telethon.
We launched a show review website that featured my written opinions of 'live' concerts and productions in Las Vegas, Reno/Tahoe, Branson, Missouri and other top entertainment venues and it seemed that just about everyone had an opinion but a well written one can make you real enemies but also earn you some real friends IF you know what you're talking about and are honest about everything you write.
The day that I ran into MICHAEL JACKSON (well, actually, HE ran into ME) rocked my written world. You see, Mike was wheeling around a bookstore in his wheelchair and backed up over my foot . He had been living here in Las Vegas for some time and we both were regulars at a certain Barnes & Nobel and also a local Borders Books. He was embarrassed and apologized. No harm done but when I posted a picture and a note, my blog blew-up, getting tens of thousands of hits just because I wrote about the hitmaker running over my foot.
A while back I wrote a couple thousand words about the-then Number Two player in men's tennis, a young man whom I admire very much, a tough-as-nails competitor who is a monster on the court. Imagine my thrill when, at a Palm Springs event, that tennis star pulled me away from the hundreds screaming for autographs and pictures just to thank me, to say that he read-and liked-my words. I stood there, embarrassed that I didn't speak Spanish, wondering if what I'd written translated well and wishing that I could express my apprecaition, until I remembered that I'd said it all already, in writing.
Those who are successfully using Facebook know that the better you write, the better, right?
Well please know that reading my stuff is an intimate thing. Check with anyone who knows me, or, better yet, ask someone who read me prior to our meeting. I am here, living in these words. I believe in them. You and I both do, right?
Right!
