Had the pleasure of meeting this week with Adrian Zackheim, publisher of Penguin Portfolio, at the Penguin Group offices on Hudson Street in lower Manhattan. Silly me. The Greenwich Village address made me think I was headed to some cool office. Turns out 375 Hudson Street is a sleek, corporate tower.
Adrian is wonderful. He sighed as he settled back on the couch in his small cluttered office. “This next hour and a half is a bad time of day for me,” he said (we had a 3 PM meeting). “I can’t think particularly well or clearly.” Well I usually feel like that about half of every day. So this was a relief.
Of course he was lying.
He’s not directly involved with my book so he didn’t know much about it. (No surprise. This is how it works in a publishing house.) But he asked all the right questions. And agreed that I’m writing the book for someone like him. As he put it: “This blogging thing seems like more than I want to get into right now… demystify it for me.”
Adrian’s questions:
Why do businesses need blogs?
What’s their purpose?
What are they used for?
What’s the point?
How do you do it?
Great guideposts as I burrow into the writing… I’ve had a hard time thus far churning out a draft. Did I mention that I’m a world-class procrastinator?
Keep those helpful tips coming…
Oh, and Adrian recommended Anne Lamott’s classic Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.