This franchise support brochure was easy to write. All I had to do was tap into precious childhood memories of road trips in our family station wagon and nights at the Holiday Inn. It’s always such an honor to work with iconic brands.

It’s a big deal to put words in a person’s mouth. This speech had a lot of words on employee retention from reports, interviews and PowerPoint presentations, which I smoothed into a fun and conversational tone.

My goal as a writer is to cram as much information into as few words as possible. Time is precious. If we’re going to ask you to read or watch something, it needs to be worth your time. Conversational. Breezy. Even newsletter copy about an employee training program can be fun to read.

KPMG’s Branding U series prepares recruits for partner and client interactions. We approached this script on dining etiquette like a Saturday Night Live skit, drawing on Atlanta’s top improv talent to make the jokes land. The video - which can be seen here along with the shooting script - was fun to shoot and is still a hoot to watch.

We wrote several training modules that added up to about 45 minutes worth of time. Data was gathered through interviews and classes. When the script was turned in, the client only made five changes. Travelocity went on to say that this was one of the best training modules they had ever produced.

I wrote my Duffel Bag columns on the assumption that most people reading it would never go the off-the-road places I wrote about. I wanted to offer the visceral experience of travel. This is probably my favorite sample on this page.

I was involved with the Bitter Southerner in the early days when they were just starting out. It’s amazing to see how popular the site has become, and it’s wonderful to have an outlet to post meditations on living in the South like this abstract piece on my family, climate change and Atlanta’s famous Oakland Cemetery.

They say you should never meet your heroes, but talking to Paul McCartney was a surreal delight. He was funny and thoughtful and even offered a couple off-the-record asides. We covered a lot of ground in a conversation that stretched well past our allotted 30 minutes.

Around the Sun caught R.E.M. at an odd time. Drummer Bill Berry had left and a string of records of mixed quality forced a re-assessment of this band that had meant so much to a generation. I wanted to write honestly about this moment and was surprised to find the band so revealing.

Music has been my greatest inspiration. As a writer, I love to hear a well-turned phrase bouncing off a bass line. XTC’s Andy Partridge is a master of the craft. A raconteur. A painter of words. We talked about our shared sense of synesthesia and love for the hard work of wrestling words into meaning.