Random thoughts on the creative life, small business, traditional architecture and city design, and steady state economic policy.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been making shit up. When I was four, I’d turn my front yard into a vast molten wasteland, and I would jump about with my trusted “lifesaver” and save the day. When I was eight, I wrote my first original work, a poem about a killer who sneaks up on a woman, and though the subject matter prompted a certain amount of parental hand-wringing, I received enough positive attention for the story that I became addicted to the rush of creation. Through stories I could say things that I’d never be able to say out loud, which was a magical gift for a socially awkward ginger from small town midwestern USofA.
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I have been a great many things during my 37 years on this planet. I’ve been a songwriter, and a singer in bands. I’ve been a banker, a loan officer, a business consultant. I’ve been a writer and publisher, start-up founder, and a chief marketing officer. Yet through it all, I have always written stories, and I’ve found the most joy from crafting narratives out of the raw ingredients of life.
Though they may seem different, I see little difference between writing a song or a short story, and crafting a marketing campaign. Both require the author to build something cohesive out of whatever ingredients they find lying around. Both rely on narrative flow and world-building in order to manufacture an experience for the audience. And both require a decided amount of creativity to pull off effectively.
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From that first poem when I was eight to now, I have dedicated my life to telling stories, to documenting my time on earth in whatever format I can muster. Whether it’s a song, story, digital collage, or marketing campaign, I am motivated by the story, by the narrative, by the feeling of being swept away somewhere else.
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Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you,” and I couldn’t agree more. It’s a river I can’t dam. So, why try?
- Tres Crow
Tres Crow is a writer, founder of DogEatCrow marketing agency, the Co-Founder of the event mapping technology Walkabout, Chief Marketing Officer of MapMeLocal, Founder of the Climate Change non-profit the billi, and an advocate for sustainable design, architecture, and economic policy, and the small businesses that make it all possible.