https://blog.karljtaylor.com/categories/writing/ Recent content in Writing on Karl Taylor Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Thu, 26 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-26-youre-not-writing-for-the-reader-anymore/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-26-youre-not-writing-for-the-reader-anymore/ the last time you wrote something — a LinkedIn post, a thread, a research note — you probably had a human reader somewhere in the back of your mind. someone who would scroll past, stop, skim, maybe click. that mental model is now outdated. the primary audience for professional content in 2026 is not a human. it’s the AI that runs before the human shows up. before a meeting, before a hire, before a deal gets greenlit, someone asks an AI to summarize whoever they’re about to talk to. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-06-23-perspectives-change/ Sun, 23 Jun 2019 11:08:38 -0001 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-06-23-perspectives-change/ I’ve spent just enough time exploring my family history, to know that despite being in the United States as early as some time in the 1600s, not too many of us every really stuck around somewhere for long enough to be from there. That bit of history always really resonated with me growing up, as my early years involved a fair share of moving around. I liked the idea of not really being ‘local’ to any one place, and I spent a lot of time trying to follow that pattern. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-10-11-how-i-learned-to-love-pulp-or-on-the-occasion-of-the-birth-of-lewis-fry-richardson/ Wed, 11 Oct 2017 17:19:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-10-11-how-i-learned-to-love-pulp-or-on-the-occasion-of-the-birth-of-lewis-fry-richardson/ How I Learned To Love Pulp On The Occasion Of The Birth Of Lewis Fry Richardson “He would peek into the curtained windows, or, climbing upon the roof, peer down the black depths of the chimney in vain endeavor to solve the unknown wonders that lay within those strong walls.” Edward Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes I never quite had the sort of undergraduate experience of which great stories of studious behavior might be told. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-08-quality-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/ Mon, 08 May 2017 23:39:05 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-08-quality-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/ I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of that idea. Growing up, I remember keeping a list of each time I ran into it. I don’t know that I kept it up, but I do know I first heard it as a shoddy explanation from a caricature of a public school art teacher. I normally write slightly longer posts, but I just wanted to take a moment to share one thought. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-13-when-youre-working-online-to-offline-take-a-moment-to-really-look-at-what-youre-doing/ Mon, 13 Mar 2017 23:53:21 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-13-when-youre-working-online-to-offline-take-a-moment-to-really-look-at-what-youre-doing/ I first learned to make things by taking apart things that other people made. I didn’t know that other people did this too. Over the years, I’ve learned that people who grew up to make other things did the same thing too. Ken Mazaika even suggests it in “29 Behaviors That Will Make You An Unstoppable Program,” but I have found that many of us in creative production might benefit from this simple, yet powerful advice. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-22-the-dirty-secret-about-how-long-it-takes-to-write-something/ Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:28:11 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-22-the-dirty-secret-about-how-long-it-takes-to-write-something/ I still think back fondly on some of my the early days of my career spent putting words on paper. I remember being annoyed that it didn’t ever seem like there was enough time to read all of the things that needed to be read and to write all the things that needed to be written. When I thought about it, I figured that if I could just learn to write faster, I could spend all the extra time I wanted reading. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-17-one-trick-for-evaluating-readership-numbers/ Tue, 17 Jan 2017 05:11:38 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-17-one-trick-for-evaluating-readership-numbers/ When I first realized that advertising would become a focus of my career, I was in part drawn in by the relatively numeric world of digital advertising. I liked that it was easy to base all of your work on an actual number of users, and it seemed reassuring to be able to know what was happening with the content that you produced. Over the years as my scope of practice has grown, I’ve had to learn the nuances of the way this same information is communicated differently in different mediums. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-25-the-one-where-i-quoth-something-someone-once-told-me-about-quotations/ Sun, 25 Dec 2016 21:19:40 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-25-the-one-where-i-quoth-something-someone-once-told-me-about-quotations/ One of my more peculiar habits is that once I start paying attention to something like a new album or company or news, I have a really hard time adjusting once that topic is out of the limelight of coverage. As a result, I spend a lot of time staying up to date on things I probably would be better off ignoring. It was on one such fact-finding mission, that I noticed an old associate recycling one of my old tags in an interview with a journalist. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-11-01-when-the-time-is-far-spent/ Tue, 01 Nov 2016 18:49:49 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-11-01-when-the-time-is-far-spent/ I’ve given myself a constraint for this post. I want to make sure that I finish it as quickly as possible, because the truth is that I’m a little bit behind on a laundry list of tasks, and I just found out I may need to squeeze one more thing into a week’end,’ that was already operating on a ticktock. It’s given me the occasion to think a little more about all of the different ways of managing time. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-13-iterative-writing/ Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:29:07 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-13-iterative-writing/ I’ve been meaning to spend a little more time talking about all of the different ways that you can leverage digital tech to lower the barriers of entry to getting into print. I think that’s the kind of topic I might think would be easier to cover one bit at a time. The trouble I’ve been having is that picking which of those bits really is a bit of a sport. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-11-blank-screen-problems/ Tue, 11 Oct 2016 17:20:33 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-11-blank-screen-problems/ I should really get into a more regular flow of blogging. I have the same trouble with writing for myself these days though; it’s felt a lot like just one more thing. One of my favorite parts of my job is that I get to have the tremendous responsibility of having a very pragmatic view of how long it takes to have a good idea. I also get to estimate the amount of time it actually takes to put something together, which means I’ve got to be really disciplined when it comes to metering out production.