Read points one and two of this post and then close your eyes for a few minutes and THINK.
1) Come up with a magazine article idea.
Open your ears and listen to what people are talking about. Surf the online forums for the latest buzz. People want to find out how to be more beautiful, healthy, affluent, intelligent and/or better-liked. They want to read about their heroes, their sports teams or their cinema idols. They want to save the planet -- or at least their marriage. They want to laugh, to have great sex, to eat well, to go to heaven.
You can flip your calendar ahead by four or five months for inspiration as to what editors will be planning for in an upcoming issue since editors ALWAYS work ahead. It will be time to go back to university in many parts of the world. Formula 1 will get underway in Singapore; in Australia the 'footy' Grand Finals will be looming in the final week with playoffs underway. Grandparents Day is September 7; the first day of Autumn in the northern hemisphere is September 22. Think of what will be desired in the world of fashion at that time; what will be in season at the supermarket; what will be released at movie theatres. Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino will be starring in Righteous Kill as policemen chasing a serial killer; Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn and Woody Harrelson star in Management telling the tale of a traveling saleswoman who sells cheap art to small companies and motels. She has a fling with an aimless, underachieving assistant motel manager at one of her stops and he pursues her all over the U.S. In Nothing but the Truth, Kate Beckinsale stars with Matt Dillon as a Washington D.C female newspaper reporter who outs a CIA agent and is imprisoned for refusing to reveal her source. In South of the Border, Salma Hayek and Andy Garcia feature in a tale of a pampered Beverly Hills chihuahua, accustomed to riding in a purse, that gets lost in Mexico while her owner is on a spa vacation and is forced to find her way back home.
2) Fix on one idea and distill it to a coverline. Yes, focus. What's your slant? From what angle will you approach it? What makes this unique?
Now OPEN YOUR EYES. Sit down at your work station.
3) Do your research. Get exactly the information you need. You do not need to become an expert, so don't overdo it (you will also lose your enthusiasm for the idea if you work it until you are stale -- and no one wants to read a stale piece). Don't circle around the subject -- zero in. Talk to the people you NEED to speak with. If you can, reach for the BIG NAME. Use only what is quotable and sticks to your subject.
4) START WRITING
Sunday, April 27, 2008
No Detours
Sunday, April 20, 2008
In Conversation
Another year, another round of brand visits at the Swiss watch fairs: I've just returned from Basel and Geneva after two weeks of viewing some spectacular, new horological creations. Keep your eyes out for the new De Grisogono Meccanico, a limited edition watch that is purely mechanical but relays time in a digital fashion.
The new Harry Winston Opus 8 does the same thing, but I find Frederic Garinaud's creation less sophisticated than De Grisogono's. Frederic, Harry Winston's guest watchmaker for this year -- each year they have a guest designer create an Opus -- reveals time in a manner similar to those toys that show your hand print by pressing blunt steel pins with your palm from the back. With his watch, you must pull a lever at the right side of the case. This, in turn, lifts a plate inside the watch that will push the appropriate pins to reveal the time. So, a mechanical watch it may be, but it takes this human intercession to read the time.
De Grisogono's watch reveals the time using a twist on binary language -- a clever idea that I think rings more sympathetically with the concept of 'digital'. His watchmaker uses rods that are coloured white on one side. Like the old binary computer language, the combination of rods to white or black forms the numerals of the hour and minute, mechanically.
For more information on these, check out the insider's site (http://journal.hautehorlogerie.org/) from the Foundation of Haute Horology (http://www.hautehorlogerie.org/). Of course, you could always wait until July, when the watch fair issue of TIMEcraft magazine comes out...
Jaeger-LeCoultre marks its 175th anniversary this year and among the masterpieces it unveiled were three new Atmos clocks. Those of you into timekeepers know the Atmos as a piece of genius that runs for nearly a thousand years without the need for a battery, electricity or even manual winding. A perpetual motion clock, it literally runs on air, with the minuscule changes in temperature driving the clock's mechanism. It doesn't get more environmentally-friendly than that, dear friends, when it comes to energy usage!
One of the new Atmos clocks has been designed by Australian artist Marc Newson, who puts it in an approximately one-foot square Baccarat crystal cube. Very sleek and modern. The second Atmos reveals a more nostalgic look: marquetry using precious woods and gold leaf forms a replica of Gustav Klimt's masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch. An artistic treasure showing superb craftsmanship! The third Atmos crosses the artistic/scientific divide by reproducing a map of the heavens on its glass case: specifically the constellations of the Northern Hemisphere a la the 17th century star-charts of Andreas Cellarius. The clock's movement also reveals the "Equation of Time", a complication that discerns the difference between sundial time and clock time (they differ at certain times of the year owing to the Earth's orbit and tilt) -- a measurement that appeals to the most left-brain dominant of you out there.
Speaking of which...you rational logicians will also love the new "Mayu" from H. Moser as it now features the double hairspring that was first showcased in the "Henry" last year using the Straumann double hairspring escapement. Big deal, you say? Well, tourbillon watches flood the market, and why? This twirling orb was developed over 200 years ago by Breguet for pocket watches because they became inaccurate when resting in a prolonged vertical position in someone's pocket and gravity's tug took its toll. Now, you see tourbillons on wristwatches in all price categories -- and today's wristwatches do not sit in the same position as pocket watches (unless you are a couch potato of the first magnitude). People just like to see these little 'whirlwinds' spin on their watches (tourbillon is French for 'whirlwind'). So, get a life! If you want something that treats the cause rather than the symptom, go for the Straumann double hairspring escapement in your watch to ensure its even running and accuracy. (The escapement controls the speed and regularity of the watch's balance wheel, or a clock's pendulum: it regulates the power from the balance wheel to the gears -- you want them to run neither too fast nor too slow, but as in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, just riiiiigght.)
If you don't care that your watch is off by a few seconds, then make your own statement. Meistersinger still features its single-hand watches as do a few other watchmakers this year for those not driven to calculating time down to nanoseconds on their schedules. You glance at one of these watches and say: "Hmm, it's nearly half past two," and that's close enough for you.
Of course, I lust after the bling that you can find in the Breguet Reine de Naples newbies as well as the new line of women's watches from Perrelet. Niiiiiiice ice!
Now -- back to writing tips. What I have done here today is show how you can write on complex topics in a conversational manner. Why have you read this entry until this point? Maybe you are into watches, but language plays a strong role in holding interest.
