photo credit: Tilemahos Efthimiadis

Mavenettes, I don’t know about you, but I’m buried under a full load of writing and consulting work here.

Not complaining. Not siree, not in this economy. Just sayin’ …

I do have a terrific post planned (after this one) about emotions and decisions and buying stuff. But for now, this caught my eye. And because I’m easily distracted by shiny, sparkly things and interesting factoids, I’m bringing this to you first.

I was perusing Genius and Heroin: The Illustrated Catalog of Creativity, Obsession and Reckless Abandon Through the Ages, by Michael Largo, a wonderful little encyclopedia of oddness and the creative mind. He shares this sidebar info under the subtitle: Me, Myself, and I Writers:

Psychologist James W. Pennebacker counted the number of pronouns in the works of many published poets. He concluded: ‘Suicidal poets use a large number of I’s and a low number of references to other people.’

So I’m thinking since smart- and outer-directed copywriters, like you and me, always write for our readers as opposed to at them … and using second person ‘you’ far more than the first person ‘I’ … does that make us the most supremely mentally healthy writers in the universe?

Yes, I think it does. So all of you with that self-possessed poetry littering your desk drawer. Throw it out, burn it, shred it away and go write some copy.

Ahhh, don’t you feel better already?