Example of remix, thinking sideways, merging arts & business...

Here is a concrete example of how merging, remix, thinking sideways techniques can boost you business content.

In an early article on this webs site’s magazine, Nexus, we asked readers to produce a piece of business content which had borrowed and remixed - the style and intention that successful crime fiction writer David Baldacci had used in his bestseller, Simple Genius.

Below is a contribution by Geoff Stewart, who works in an Australian Government Body and is currently completing a university degree in Law.

A exercise in using the method is also here - in another example of the remix process suggested in my blog at http://www.lonewordsmith.wordpress.com   It relates to an older American writer, but could be applied to Charles Dickens, Shakespeare or Dylan Thomas. It could help you to generate new copy that you would be proud to use.

Simple Genius  by David Baldacci

The excerpt:

“There are four acknowledged ways of meeting your maker: You can die by natural causes including illness; you can die by accident; you can die by another's hand; and you can die by your own hand. However, if you live in Washington, D.C., there is a fifth way of kicking the bucket: the political death. It can spring from many sources: frolicking in a public fountain with an exotic dancer who is not your wife; stuffing bags of money in your pants when the payer unfortunately happens to be the FBI; or covering up a bungled burglary when you call 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home.

Michelle Maxwell was currently stalking the pavement in the nation's capital, but because she wasn't a politician, that fifth choice of mortal exit was not available to her. In fact, the lady was focused only on getting so wasted she'd wake up the next morning with a chunk of her memory gone. There was much she wanted to forget; much that she had to forget.

Michelle crossed the street, pushed open the bullet-pocked door of the bar and stepped inside. The smoke hit her first, some of it actually from cigarettes. The other aromas were rising off substances that kept the DEA jacked up and in business.” 

An official (website)  excerpt from Simple Genius, by David Baldacci. Published April 2007  and now a bestseller.

U.S. Publication Details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group USA
• First edition hardcover release date: April 24, 2007
• ISBN: 0446580341,978-0446580342
• Additional formats available: Abridged and unabridged CD, unabridged cassette

 Here is the result, just one result:

Contribution: Baldacci’s influence competition.

 An Announcement for a company internal newsletter

by Geoff Stewart

There isn’t a manager among the executive who thinks our current building is adequate. We know the parking is bad, and that those who don’t make it to work before eight o’clock have to park in the street.  We fully appreciate individual work stations are crowded and cramped now, and that accommodating every new person who starts here inconveniences the old hands a little bit more.  And we know full well the daily interruptions as technicians run more computer cables through ceilings above you and down columns next to you makes your workplace environment as relaxing as waiting for emergency root canal work in a dentist’s surgery.

But we’re stuck with it.  All of us.  Victims of our own success, the company has grown so much over the last two years that the office which once comfortably housed seventy-three men and women in a homely, welcoming manner now has to fit nearly two hundred. 

It’s simple mathematics.  Two hundred doesn’t go as well into the same space as seventy-three used to. In our defence, too, we now have eight managers in the same office area in which three were working. We’re all in the same boat; a boat that gets smaller every week. 

So we’re going.  Moving on.  Folding our corporate tent and setting up further up the avenue.  You’d all know it as the Meyerson Computer Building, but as of May 1, you’ll know it as ours. 

The refit is underway now: computer cables are being routed, work stations are being allocated, registration number are being painted on allocated car parking spaces...and there’s one for each of us.  Every day, not matter what time you get in, your own space will be waiting.

In the offices, there’s glass everywhere, natural light will show off the newly laid carpet and ensure the mature rubber trees being growing in planter boxes on every floor aren’t frustrated when they want to photosynthesise.

And there isn’t a manager among the executive who thinks the move is a bad idea. Surprise, surprise.”

 Ends

 Geoff Stewart, Carwoola, New South Wales, Australia.

 Back to Home page