For All-Hallow's-Even, a sweet ghost story

I wrote this within half an hour or so one evening while gathered with women friends in a writing circle. Our leader gave us a convoluted writing prompt and I somehow ended up with the words splendid, saddle and coffin. I was to use them any way I saw fit. Normally, a complete story doesn't fly out of my body in one quick flash like this. In fact, I don't even write fiction at all, ever, so this story's appearance remains a singular mystery in my life so far.

I fiddled with it a bit today. Couldn't help myself.

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The Splendid Saddle

A ghost story by Lauren Edwards, 11/11/2004

How to get the splendid saddle into the coffin had been puzzlement at first.

Nobody questioned its importance. It was just a matter of how. David Woodman explicitly requested he be buried with the silver- and gold-inlaid prize he’d won at the 1942 rodeo in Satin Falls, Oklahoma, then a dusty, has-been of a city that would soon disappear from modern maps.

Some folks remember how Peggy Ann Rice kissed him the day he won. She just up and did it, out of nowhere, and afterward looked as surprised as anyone. She was a pretty little thing with gray-flecked, green eyes and skin the color of wheat in sunlight. David caught the pleasure in her eyes as she darted toward him, and craved it again afterward when she’d lowered her eyelids and clasped her hands lightly at her hip line. She stood there veiled in silence, radiant with an inner stillness that practically drew his heart straight out of his chest, as if it could land smack dab in the middle of hers and dissolve there like sugar in hot tea.

The crowd was buzzing with excitement of its own, and Peggy Ann’s kiss became part of that tableau, felt but a little bit forgotten. David forgot her momentarily when he was being carried on the shoulders of raucous buddies glad to see him win. No hour had been sweeter than that one, not in all the 37 years of the rest of his life.

It was matched like a bookend by the grief-soaked horror that followed. The girl Peggy Ann, this beautiful girl who’d kissed him, was trampled by a bull that got loose. It happens. It’s a thrill, usually, to watch muscle on muscle, and rope against hide, when the cowboys wrassle him back in.

David himself saw the awkward turn of Peggy Ann’s ankle above the lace trim of her white sock. He knew it was broken. He saw that her sun-kissed face was distorted by pain and that she lay unnaturally still, dainty and garish at once. Six days later, she died at St. Mary’s Hospital, in a room sweet with blossoms. Not all had been sent by David, but a lot of them were, and he felt there still weren’t enough in the room when nurses finally insisted he stop bringing them. He wept in the hallway, perplexed by the cruelty of nurses who couldn’t see how deserving Peggy Ann had been of more flowers, more sun kisses, more breezes and more life.

David caressed that prized saddle of his each time he rose in the morning and before he went to sleep at night. Whenever he moved to a new home, the saddle was transported in the front seat of his car, to make sure it wouldn't be left behind or so much as nicked.

Prayerful friends who attended his funeral knew the saddle was a beauty and assumed he’d been proud of his accomplishments. They celebrated him.

Only Brandon, the three-year-old son of the funeral home director, glimpsed the truth. He saw two human figures wink in and out of view near the coffin, which had been sawed out along one length to make room for the saddle.

The bluish-gray vision flickered unsteadily, but Brandon knew what he saw – a man lightly caressing the back of a lovely girl’s neck. Her eyelids were lowered and her hands were clasped lightly at her hip line. She was so still and light and sweet that she reminded Brandon of marshmallow topping on a chiffon pie. But his heart registered unmistakable evidence of this girl’s humanity. Brandon could feel, even more than he could see, the crinkle of pleasure in the tender flesh between her temples and sunlit eyelashes.

Peggy Ann was smiling.

Can PR ghostwrite client blogs?

Executive Summary:

As marketing departments turn corporate collateral into blog posts, they find the task more time-consuming and difficult than imagined. Should you hire ghost writers? Yes and no. It depends on your audience's expectations. This article tells you how to decide and suggests effective small tweaks to the options you've probably already considered.

Key Points:

1. Social media experts generally caution against ghostwriting blogs. They say the medium and audience expectations make blogs unlike speeches and contributed articles.
2. Analyze your audience and ask key questions about your company's goals and resources before deciding which blogs to ghostwrite or whether to write a particular post at all.

Sound Bite:

"The smartest and most trusted people say, 'Don't ghostwrite company blogs.' But if you absolutely must do it, disclose the contributor's real names or only ghostwrite content the company created previously and is simply re-purposing for easy digestibility."

*****

Read the whole article:

Should your PR team ghostwrite your company's blog posts?

The short answer is "no." The long answer is "sometimes."

Let's do the long answer first. If you absolutely insist on having your PR team write some of your company blog posts, proceed with caution. Give ample thought to:

• your company's goal
• the degree of expertise/attitude/thought leadership required from the author
• originality of content

Questions you can ask yourself while making decisions:

(1) Is the content company-created and is the PR team merely re-purposing it for social media digestibility?

If so, fine. Go for it. But avoid packaging overly canned material in a business-neutral voice. If you must include posts like this, consider interspersing it with more personal and authentic pieces by individuals. Otherwise, your audience is likely to tune out, justifiably so.

(2) What are the audience's expectations?

Consider the degree of skepticism and ethical rigidity of a particular audience. What does the audience value most highly? How will they use the information? Are they likely to be forgiving of sterile business content as long as it includes a tip or resource they can use? Are they expecting a CEO blog with business acumen or an app developer blog with technical depth? If you walk a safe middle line, you may turn off the very people you hope to influence.

(3) Is the time and money worth it if the blog isn't influential?

It's safe to say that a CEO blog carries more weight when it shows incisive thinking and passion, even if not necessarily "good writing." In the world of blogs, "good writing" can be icing, since most posts are produced rapidly in response to an ongoing conversation by a person who isn't a full-time professional writer.

Do application developers carry more weight when they are irreverent and independent? Probably. In some scenarios, it's possible that this level of integrity and authenticity is almost more important to the audience than the content. A rough-around-the-edges post that's spirited and technically well grounded might be better than a smooth vanilla offering.

Writing is time-consuming. That's why people quit blogs after a while or try to hire ghostwriters. But what matters most is substantive content that will influence people. If you don't have that, should you be blogging at all?

(4) Can you manage expectations by disclosing who sometimes contributes?

This is the best practice if the author's credentials aren't the main draw. Avoid leaving a post unsigned or just using the company's name. Commonly, companies-in-the-know say something like "Contributors to this blog include Sam Smith, Jessie Jones and Betty Buttons."

But even so, better to sign each post with "Sam S. for Acme" or "S.S." or "B. Buttons" or "Jessie Jones." If you feel like you don't want the audience to see the "man behind the curtain," then you've got a problem, especially since "transparency is the new black," as they say. At any rate, hiding fake wizards behind curtains is bad -- period.

It's OK to say that your PR team creates some of the blog posts. It's better to do it and say it than to do it and not say it. Otherwise, you risk losing trust down the road. Audiences may think you are hiding something other than a writer's name ("What *else* is this company keeping from me?").

Bottom-line as I see it, the smartest and most trusted people say, "Don't ghostwrite company blogs." But if you absolutely must do it, disclose the contributor's real names or only ghostwrite content the company created previously and is simply re-purposing for easy digestibility.

It's not like a speech. Some people argue that a blog post is like a speech. Presidents of companies and nations hire speech writers, right? Yes, but we all know they do that.

Our *expectation* is that a really talented speech writer did the leg work, the president absorbed the content in full, made substantive changes as he saw fit, then practiced for hours, with coaching.

In contrast, a blog post is perceived as a more informal and less well measured opinion, often formulated quickly, as part of an ongoing social conversation.

In 2004, social media purists said, "No ghostwriting."

In 2010, I see a lot of softening in expert opinion.

People now admit there are gray areas where careful consideration can make a ghostwritten blog OK. For more on that, see an excellent discussion led by Toby Blomberg and John Cass. Thirty-nine contributors weigh in. My favorite comments were those by Lynn Anne Miller, who looked at social media from the corporate perspective.

Edelman's Steve Rubel foresaw the debate in 2004 and said, "What we need to do, however, is separate what works from what doesn't and what level of transparency and input is required. Time will tell."

I agree that we are still determining best practices and that they are likely to change as the blog-reading public itself continues to mature and evolve.