Cynthia J. Starks

Last week I gave a “speech on speechwriting” to the Columbia Club of Indianapolis. It was well-received (attendees filled out speech evaluation sheets).
Now I’m working on leveraging the speech to additional audiences, hoping it will generate new speechwriting assignments.
Here’s what I’ve done/am doing:
1. I posted a blog about the event with a link to the [...]

As readers of my blog know – and are probably sick of hearing – on Feb. 16 I’m giving a talk on speechwriting to 25-30 members of the Columbia Business Network, a club I belong to in Indianapolis.
 
In preparing my presentation, I did what good speechwriters do – some audience analysis. I asked about half-a-dozen [...]

The January 21 decision was a startling one.  
 
Michael Waldman, former Bill Clinton speechwriter, now executive director of the Brennan Center, a non-partisan public policy institute that specializes in political reform, said this: “Exxon Mobil’s profits in 2008 were $45 billion. At 9 a.m. Thursday morning, Exxon’s managers could not spend any of that money [...]

Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul,
and sings the tune without the words,
and never stops at all.
                                               Emily Dickinson
In the midst of earthquakes in Haiti, still climbing U.S. home foreclosure and unemployment rates, politicians who break their promises and our hearts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Qaida cells in Yemen and Pakistan, [...]