Uncommon Thought #001 — Mick Armstrong
“This is why events unnerve me…” – Ceremony, New Order.
I’ve decided I’m a writer.
There you go.
Only took me 56 years.
Although that’s not quite true.
I’ve always written. I just never thought I was allowed to call myself a writer.
There seemed to be rules.
Writers wrote novels. Writers had agents. Writers got reviewed in newspapers. Writers lived somewhere considerably more literary than Lancashire and had photographs taken looking thoughtfully out of windows.
Possibly wearing a roll-neck.
I don’t own a roll-neck.
I’ve spent most of my working life in sales and business development, so whenever somebody asked what I did, that’s what I told them.
Sales.
Business.
Marketing.
Websites.
More recently, AI.
Occasionally I’d begin explaining one of my latest ideas and notice the exact moment they regretted asking.
But never writer.
Which, looking back, is bloody ridiculous.
Because I’ve spent most of my adult life writing.
Turns out I’ve been doing it all along
Sales proposals.
Adverts.
Websites.
Business plans.
Emails.
Presentations.
Marketing campaigns.
Ideas.
Articles.
Half-finished books.
Quarter-finished books.
Books consisting of a brilliant title, three paragraphs and absolutely no discernible plot.
I’ve got enough abandoned ideas to open a sanctuary.
And I’ve always obsessed over the words.
Not necessarily whether they’re grammatically perfect.
Whether they’re right.
There’s a difference.
Does it sound like something a human being would actually say?
Does it make you want to read the next sentence?
Does it make you feel anything?
Does it make you laugh?
Does it make you stop?
Does it make you think:
Hang on. He’s got a point.
That’s writing.
Apparently.
Would’ve been useful if somebody had mentioned it 30 years ago.
Business people are told to stop writing
Here’s something I’ve never really understood.
The higher somebody climbs in business, the more they’re encouraged to communicate like nobody you’ve ever met.
Normal person:
“We need to sell more.”
Business person:
“We need to leverage a multi-channel strategic growth framework to unlock incremental revenue opportunities.”
Do you?
Or do you need to sell more?
We’ve somehow decided that sounding intelligent means making simple things difficult to understand.
I think the opposite.
If you properly understand something, you should be able to explain it without hiding behind twelve syllables and a PowerPoint deck.
Some of the best salespeople I’ve known weren’t particularly slick.
They could just tell a story.
They understood people.
They knew when to talk.
More importantly, they knew when to shut up.
And they could explain why something mattered.
That’s writing as well.
Then the machines learned to write
Which has made things considerably more interesting.
AI can now produce 1,500 words on practically anything before I’ve finished making a coffee.
And naturally we’ve responded to this extraordinary technological achievement by asking it to produce:
“10 Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Website.”
Brilliant.
Human civilisation has spent thousands of years getting to this point and we’ve finally created artificial intelligence so it can write filler for LinkedIn.
I use AI every day.
I’m fascinated by it.
I’m building businesses around it.
I think its impact is going to be enormous.
But I’m also increasingly convinced that AI makes having something worth saying more valuable, not less.
Because words have suddenly become almost free.
Thought hasn’t.
Taste hasn’t.
Experience hasn’t.
Curiosity hasn’t.
Judgement hasn’t.
And neither has knowing when something is complete bollocks.
That’s becoming quite a useful skill.
I’m suspicious of niches too
Apparently, if you’re building an audience online, you’re supposed to pick a niche.
Choose your subject.
Identify your content pillars.
Establish your posting cadence.
Optimise for engagement.
Repeat what’s working.
Absolutely fuck that.
I’ve spent 56 years becoming interested in far too many things to spend the next ten talking exclusively about “Five Ways SMEs Can Leverage AI.”
Some days I want to talk about business.
Some days AI.
Some days websites.
Sometimes I’ll have an opinion about something happening in the world.
Sometimes I’ll go somewhere and want to write about it.
Sometimes I’ll hear a record I’ve heard 500 times before and suddenly hear something different.
And some days I’m going to want to explain, at unnecessary length, why a band from Manchester changed everything.
That seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Which brings me to Ceremony
There are records you like.
And then there are records that somehow become part of you.
Ceremony is one of mine.
Joy Division wrote it. New Order inherited it after Ian Curtis died and recorded it as their first single.
A song sitting between an ending and a beginning.
I’ve always loved that.
And there’s that opening:
“This is why events unnerve me…”
There’s something about those words.
Change is exciting when you’re talking about it afterwards.
At the time, it’s usually messy.
You don’t get a big sign saying:
CONGRATULATIONS. YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE NEXT CHAPTER OF YOUR LIFE.
You’re normally just cracking on.
Trying something.
Getting it wrong.
Trying something else.
Wondering whether you’ve completely lost the plot.
Then one day you look backwards and realise the wheels had been turning all along.
I’ve certainly taken the scenic route
I’ve been doing this long enough to have succeeded, failed, started again, changed direction and occasionally changed direction back again.
I’ve had ideas I was convinced would work that didn’t.
I’ve had things I nearly gave up on that did.
I’ve spent money I probably shouldn’t have spent.
I’ve built businesses.
I’ve built websites.
I’ve sold things.
I’ve watched technology completely change the industries I work in.
And I’m still ridiculously excited by a new idea.
Possibly more than ever.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that you’re supposed to reach a certain age and start quietly reducing your ambitions.
Bugger that as well.
I’m 56, not dead.
I’ve got more things I want to build now than I did at 26.
The difference is that I’ve also accumulated 30 years of mistakes.
Which, if nothing else, gives me plenty to write about.
So I built somewhere to put it
I’ve rebuilt mickarmstrong.com.
And I made one decision quite early.
I wasn’t bringing the old blog with me.
No archive.
No recycling articles from years ago so the place looked busy.
No pretending I’ve been faithfully publishing profound observations every Thursday morning since 2004.
Clean slate.
And that’s how Uncommon Thoughts came about.
It’s not really a blog.
At least I don’t want it to feel like one.
It’s somewhere for ideas, observations and occasional nonsense.
Business.
AI.
Websites.
Writing.
Culture.
Travel.
Music.
Life.
Whatever I’m genuinely interested in at the time.
That’s the editorial strategy.
I have to give a shit about it.
Revolutionary, I know.
And yes, I’m offering writing professionally
There’s another change.
I’m now taking on writing work for businesses, founders and people who have something worth saying but can’t quite find the words.
Website copy.
Articles.
Founder stories.
Thought leadership, although I’m still not entirely convinced anybody should describe themselves as a thought leader without being fined.
Brand writing.
Business writing.
Words that sound like you, rather than something approved by a committee of twelve people who all use the word synergy.
That’s the sort of writing I want to do.
But Uncommon Thoughts isn’t here to sell you that every five minutes.
If you like how I think, you might eventually want me to write something for you.
If you don’t, that’s alright too.
Stick around for the Oasis articles.
Number one
So this is it.
Uncommon Thought #001.
I don’t know what #002 is yet.
And that’s deliberate.
It might be AI.
It might be business.
It might be websites.
It might be Italy.
It might be New Order.
It might be about why Definitely Maybe still sounds like somebody kicked the door off its hinges 32 years later.
It might be something I haven’t thought of yet.
That’s rather the point.
For years I’ve written to sell something, explain something, build something or persuade somebody.
Now I’m going to write sometimes simply because I’ve got something rattling around in my head that won’t leave me alone.
Maybe that’s what being a writer was all along.
Not the book deal.
Not the roll-neck.
Not permission from somebody else.
Just having something to say and being daft enough to put your name underneath it.
So:
Mick Armstrong.
Writer.
Still feels a bit weird.
But then again, I’m from Lancashire.
We’re suspicious of anybody who gets too pleased with themselves.
I’ll get used to it.