My favorite college professor, who I have mentioned before, taught a class in sports journalism. Not surprisingly, this class was very writing-intensive, with no real tests or exams, just writing assignments, articles, and feature stories. I probably wrote 20 different pieces that semester, from short 400-word news articles to a 5,000-word feature that served as our final exam.

So it may be surprising that my professor used to talk about how much he HATED writing. Before his unfortunate death just a few weeks ago, he wrote five books, not to mention hundreds of articles during his 18 years at Sports Illustrated. But still, he hated writing.

Now, once he explained what he meant, it made much more sense — and I agreed with him wholeheartedly.

“I really despise writing,” he used to say. “But there’s no feeling better than the feeling of have-written.”

Simply, he agonized over his computer (and typewriter in the early days), procrastinating, stalling, and making himself sick trying to find the right combination of words. But the reason he loved writing was not the actual process of writing, but the feeling of “Have-written,” that satisfaction and pride that comes with seeing a finished product.

I couldn’t agree more. Whether it was a column or feature story during my newspaper days, or a video script or page of search engine optimized content during my time as an advertising copywriter here at DDA, the actual process of writing can sometimes be agonizing. Changing a word here or there, never quite settling on a tone, rewriting the same paragraph multiple times. But looking at a completed section, or seeing a page I have written “go live” on the Internet is satisfying enough to make it worthwhile.

This idea could apply to anyone in the working world, and especially here at a full-service advertising agency like DDA.

I’m sure Laurence and the video specialists downstairs don’t especially love the tedious editing and frame-by-frame review that they do every day. I assume Jess and the SEO specialists sometimes grow tired of inserting meta tags and keywords into web sites via our SureThing™ Optimization program. And I’m sure matching frame after frame of animation can be a little monotonous for Vinnie and the animators.

But every time a finished video looks just as it should, a client’s website reaches the front page of Google, or a completed animation makes someone go, “Oh, wow!”, everyone who worked to finish that task gets that feeling of satisfaction that makes them love their jobs.

Which reminds me, it’s time to get back to writing, so I can feel that “have-written” feeling a few more times before the day’s done.

The holidays are fast approaching, and with the holidays comes lots of consumer spending. That also means it’s time for your company to start formulating a new advertising push to get that consumer spending to come your way. That’s why you should check out Dynamic Digital Advertising (DDA) right now!

DDA boasts the largest number of services of any advertising agency. Graphic design, web design, digital photography, web programming, 3D animation, flash animation, copywriting, search engine optimization, database programming, videography, video editing, and more.

All of these services are offered using the most skilled workers and latest technology. Advertising may be more important this year than ever before in recent memory due to the troubles with our current economy. People may be more thrifty with where they are spending their money, and the right advertising campaign could make the difference.

Don’t wait until the last minute to get your new advertising campaign ready. Call DDA today, and try us out to get your company more business this coming holiday season.

Rumor has it that Adobe will be releasing their CS4 production package next month. It seems like just yesterday we were upgrading to CS3 here at the studio. Boy, time sure does fly. As always, Adobe has come up with some really cool additions to help them compete with Apple’s production package. One of the most interesting developments is the addition of Speech Search in Premiere. Apparently, you will be able to type in any word that is spoken in the dialogue of the video, and the tool will find the exact point that word is said. Pretty darn cool! This feature will be quite the time saver when combing through the hours of raw video we sometimes get with our video production projects. Another strong addition to Premiere is the ability to work with video files in Photoshop and vice-versa. This makes frame by frame adjustments easy as pie since you don’t have to render it out as a movie clip first! Other programs have improvements as well including the under-used Soundbooth and On Location, whose interfaces got a bit of a face lift to look more similar to the other Adobe programs. All in all, it is shaping up to be a solid release for Adobe!