I've always hated Video.

I hate having to put my dumb face on camera.

I hate the way I apparently need special equipment to create Video, including something called a "ring light." (Ugh. What's a ring light?)

I hate the improv of Video. When I'm at a conference and someone points a camera at me and asks me to respond to a question, I choke. I always think of a better, wittier, more succinct answer after I'm back in my hotel room.

(There's a phrase for that, by the way: It's called esprit d'escalier—the regret of thinking of the perfect reply too late. Literally, it means "wit on the staircase." In my case, it's "wit in a Marriott with a view of the HVAC system.")

I'm intentionally capitalizing Video like it's a proper noun, by the way, because it has felt like Video and I have been locked in a toxic relationship. The therapist/Buzzfeed quiz I consulted (Should You Ditch or Stay?) confirms as much:

When you spend time together, do you feel uplifted, relaxed, and confident? (No.)

When you're apart, do you feel certain and at peace about your relationship or do you feel confused and anxious about it? (The second part.)

When you think of your relationship, do you feel depressed, nervous, and unsure? (Bingo.)

Meanwhile, I'm noticing that all of my friends seem to be reveling in their Video relationships.

The views on Allen Gannett's LinkedIn videos rival the GDP numbers of Saudi Arabia (jillions, minus the riyal sign).

Drew Davis produces a weekly video show that gets better and better every week.

Katie Martell posts a photo on Instagram of her new ring light. (It turns out that it's a light shaped like a circle that bathes her in a dewy glow even if she basically wasn't already perpetually dewy and glowing.)

So I had two choices: Clutch my writerly black No. 2 pencil with the sure grip of the righteous, refusing to step out of my comfort zone. Or, for the love of Pete... just work things out with Video, already!

(Buzzfeed Therapist: Try to communicate your concerns without judgment using "When you... I feel..." statements.)

I chose the love-of-Pete path.

And you know what...? I'm glad I did.

Because I realized that my beef with Video was actually fear. Not hate. (Then again, hate and fear are two sides of the same coin, as 2018 politics has shown us.) (Or shown us again.)

And it turns out that the key to successful video actually is writing. (Duh. Scripts.)

What's more, good video and good writing share the same DNA. All the stuff I talk about. Literally. All. The. Damn. Time: Relentless focus on the audience. Offering value. Connecting in a real, accessible, human way. An engaging tone of voice.

What's that line about making the blind see? Was it from Isaiah? Or a lyric from Frozen?

All I know is that the Buzzfeed Therapist said in our last session that real progress has been made and she's proud of us.

Plus, Video is fun! It's fun to develop a new content muscle. It's fun to challenge yourself.

But, writing for video is different from writing for text. It's taken me a few tries to understand that what I love about writing-you-read doesn't always hold true for video-you-watch. As in:

It strikes me that the toxic relationship I let develop between Video and me isn't unlike what adult-onset writers share with me about writing:

This isn't news to you, maybe. And I suppose in a lot of ways it's dumb-obvious. But it's more than I understood before.

It's the difference between understanding something intellectually and experiencing it.

It's the difference between thumbing through a Fodor's travel guide entry highlighting Lilac Sunday at the Boston Arnold Arboretum, and actually visiting the Arboretum that Sunday and experiencing how the air smells exactly like a detour through Macy's perfume aisle.

So, right now, I'm deeply inhaling the lilacs, letting it fill my lungs... breathe in... breathe out... and ah yes... well, now... I think I get it.

* * *

You need a chart to illustrate a post or a presentation, but you don't have a spare art director lying around.

Pricenomics has given Marketers a generous gift with its new, and free, data visualization product, Onimics. Paste in your data, make beautiful charts.

Brand them with your logo. Embed them everywhere. Stuff yourself silly with data tables, vertical bar charts, horizontal bar charts, line charts: It's like a data-based Hometown Buffet.

What I really like about this free tool is Pricenomics's No String Attached approach to begifting: The tool lets you try it for free without having to register or set up an account. Check it out here.

You know I'm a fan of long-form storytelling in marketing because it gives us a chance to shine a flashlight into spaces no one else explores to discover richer, slow-roasted ideas.

That doesn't mean I hate short-form tweets and Snaps and Instas... Because life isn't binary. And people are nuanced. (The one exception = me and Video. But we've worked that out, see?)

So: Use short-form to extend, expand, market, or test ideas you're thinking or talking about (in long-form) already.

Here's a good example of that strategy: My friends at BuzzSumo realized that the most engaging blog posts they've ever written (short-form) were based on original research (long-form).

"Just us?" BuzzSumo wondered. Mantis Research overhead, and the two partnered to explore the question of whether the value BuzzSumo saw in conducting and publishing research-based posts was unique to them.

Results: It's not. Original research = the piñata. Results = the candy. Go deeper here.

More long-form writing and marketing, because this tics all my boxes: content, writing, marketing, typewriters, shoes!

And, yes, I fully appreciate that Kiwi Shoe Polish is using a long-form narrative about shoes owned by the reported author of the world's most famous six-word story, also about shoes: "For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."

Kiwi is featuring iconic stories from other original shoes owned by Amelia Earhart, Muhammad Ali, Lincoln, and more. Site here.

I like to look up words or phrases I already know, because doing that sometimes sparks ideas for more descriptive writing. My favorite watering hole for that is RelatedWords.org. (I sent a Valentine to it back in February.)

The Online Etymology Dictionary is my other favorite place to belly-up. Think of it as walking in the wheel-ruts of modern English, passing waypoints of where our words have traveled over hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of years.

If you're worried that a concept like etymology is musty, it's not. It expands your thinking. The word amateur is sometimes used derisively, akin to hack. So it was practically life-changing for me to realize that amateur has come to us via the French amour, in turn from the Latin amare, to love.

Those of us who are amateurish might be unskilled, but our hearts are full of love. Cool, right?

And where else can you get a lighthearted romp through compulsion via the suffix -aholic? It originated in 1790 with alcoholic and was later Krazy Glued onto other obsessions: sugarholic (1965), foodoholic (1965), workaholic (1968), golfaholic (1971), chocoholic (1971), and shopaholic (1984)?

Just me? Or are you an Etymonaholic, too? Get stuck in some deep wheel ruts here.

Relatively few people know how to use a semicolon—including the Founding Fathers, who tossed semicolons into the U.S. Constitution like candy from a parade float.

Malcolm Gladwell explores the world's most controversial Constitutional semicolon in the new season of his Revisionist History podcast, launched last week. The kick-off episode will be near and dear to your heart if like me you love when grammar gets a speaking role in a news story.

The episode also features a brief discussion between Gladwell and the "Comma Queen," Mary Norris, the longtime copyeditor of the New Yorker. Gladwell wonders aloud whether Mary should be the US Government's Chief Copyeditor.

Given the ambiguity of Washington generally, yeah... why don't we have a Copyeditor in Chief?

Listen to the kickoff story wherever you pick up your podcasts. Or here.

Speaking of using short-form to market long-form (and speaking of gifts...), Stephen King hopped onto Twitter to gift us a free new short story that's a marketing appetizer to his new book. Dig in here.

P.S. A few comments in the Twitter thread debated King's use of "brand new" when wouldn't simply "new" be shorter and more succinct? (OMG people!) Dear Social Media: This is why we can't have nice things.

(Saw This Cartoon, Literally LOLed)

Via the illustrator, cartoonist, author Tom Gauld.