Inspiration from a pencil and W.S. Merwin

Last night I came across the poem The Unwritten by W.S Merwin. I found the following lines inspirational. I hope you will too.

Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught
they’re hiding

maybe there aren’t many
it could be that there’s only one word
and it’s all we need
it’s here in this pencil

every pencil in the world
is like this

You can read the poem in its entirety here.

Image credit: hownowdesign

A Creative Book Promotion Inspires

I’ve been uninspired lately. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t posted to this blog in over a week. But that changed last night when I was on BzzAgent submitting a bzz report for a product I’m testing out. Here’s what inspired me. Dave Balter (founder of BzzAgent) is coming out with a new book, The Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II. That’s not what struck me. Dave’s first book Grapevine was great, but I wasn’t feeling a need for a sequel. What caught my eye was the promise that with every pre-ordered book Dave would mark it with handwritten annotations and (this is what really interested me) Seth Minkin, BzzAgent’s artist-in-residence would illustrate some of the annotations. Seth is one of my favorite artists. I love his work; it’s quirky and fun, much like Seth himself. And I’d happily pay for a book that included some of his hand drawn illustrations. So I’ve placed a pre-order for a book I’m not all that interested in reading. I did it because of the extra effort that Dave and Seth are willing to put into the effort. We can all learn a lot from this example and I hope it inspires you, as it will me, to put a little extra effort into our products, marketing or whatever else we’re concentrating on. And the icing on the cake – the book was only $7 and at checkout I got a surprise, Dave will be throwing in a free copy of Grapevine.