Kris Smith

I didn’t choose a writing career. Writing chose me!

It all started back in grade school. From the moment I learned how to string letters into words and words into sentences, I became a writing fool.

Many of my first attempts at nonfiction writing were misspelled and (unintentionally) knee-slapping funny.

After a trip to a Washington State History museum, I wrote an essay I called “The Arow (sic) in the Muzeum (sic).” (My  mom kept it until I was old enough to appreciate it; that’s how I know.)

When asked to explain my family in writing to my second or third grade class, I reported, “My Father is a Cast-O-Brick. My Mother is a house woman.”  

My father, a lath and plaster man, made money creating facades on houses that looked like brick. He had started out laboring as a hod carrier, moving loads of real bricks on constructions sites, and had found a way to offer the look and feel of bricks without breaking his back by the time he went into business for himself as a general contractor.

My mom was his business partner and the raiser of my two sisters and me.  Mom told me that my designation of her as a “house woman” made her feel like Superman in drag.

By the time I was in fourth grade, I was writing Roy Rogers stories as fast as I could think of them.

I had been pestering Mom to pick up the next issue of the comic book every time she ventured into town (weekly) and she finally told me, “Kris, they don’t make as many Roy Rogers comic books as often as you want. If you want more Roy Rogers stories, you’re going to have to write them yourself.”

Oh my gosh, I suddenly realized: I can make Roy Rogers, Dale Evans and the whole cast do what I want them to do!

This amazing revelation thrust me into creating a flurry of fictional encounters with all my evolving idols for the next decade of my life. I wrote endless stories about Roy Rogers, Jerry Lewis, Stoney Burke, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy as the decades passed.

My teachers, enthralled by the creativity and trajectories they contained, read a great many of them in class. Since I was shy (I love the saying, Writing is show business for shy people), I always wanted to melt and run under someone’s shoe whenever they did this, but I was also enormously proud.

As I approached junior high my English teacher, Mrs. Rossetti, took me under her wing. When she told me what a good writer I was, I countered with, “Teach me how to be better!”

She responded with sadness in her voice, saying, “I can’t teach you to write better. I’m not a writer. But I am a reader, and I know good writing when I see it!”

That’s when she went above and beyond. She subscribed me to two years of THE WRITER magazine and paid for the subscription. She knew that, as a poor farming family, my parents couldn’t afford a subscription to a magazine that only one person would be interested in reading, so she went ahead and did it for me.

I was over the moon! I practically memorized every issue, returning to it again and again until the information in it seemed second nature to me.

When I was a senior in high school, I briefly met actor DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy of Star Trek). He was such a delightful individual that I wrote a Creative Writing assignment about meeting him. My teacher, Mr. Dobbs, enjoyed it so much that he suggested I send it to Mr. Kelley to read. I balked mightily, telling him, “I don’t write to movie stars!”

Mr. Dobbs countered with, “Look, if you impressed somebody as much as he impressed you, wouldn’t you want to know?” I said, “Sure! But he’s an actor; he probably hears it ten times a day!”

Mr. Dobbs basically pulled rank on me and ordered me to send it. So, I did. And then I promptly forgot all about it because summer intervened…until one day in August when I received a reply from Mr. Kelley telling me he thought the essay was so good he had submitted it to a national magazine, TV Star Parade, and they wanted to publish it. Would that be okay?

My parents had to peel me off the ceiling, it was so okay!

And when it finally appeared, not a word had been changed.

(That’s the beginning of a much longer saga about how I later became a close friend of DeForest Kelley and his wife and ended up as his personal assistant and caregiver at the end of his life. I wrote a book about the evolution of that relationship, if you’re interested. It’s called DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal: A Harvest of Memories from the Fan Who Knew Him Best and it’s available at Amazon.)

After that, in 1981, I met and worked with a professional writer, Ted Crail, who had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his book APETALK AND WHALESPEAK. Ted was a tough taskmaster to everyone but me. He kept telling me to do something more with my writing than animal welfare articles. “You’re a helluva writer. You need to get out there and turn the world upside down.” (See his letter of recommendation for me in the “Kudos from Clients/testimonials” document.)

I was beginning to get the picture!

In 1989 I moved to Hollywood with DeForest Kelley’s blessing and prompting (he put in a good word for me at Paramount) and began temping at employment service agencies serving the entertainment industry. After temping at various studios, including Warner Bros.,  I was hired full-time there in 1994 and served in a number of roles—administrative assistant, executive secretary, floater, and Hardware Lease Administrator. I grabbed every opportunity during my time there to write for WB newsletters, and a database guru and I created an intranet page for newly arriving employees to help them get up to speed on the lot as quickly as possible. The intranet efforts earned me a Carrot Award (Bugs Bunny runs da place, y’know!) and a $1000 bonus from my boss and the Human Resources Department because it did exactly what we planned: it gave new employees a running head start and improved the speed with which they acclimated to the campus and became true contributors.

After 13 years in Hollywood, I returned home and started writing books. I figured it was time to hang my shingle as a writer and truly dedicate myself full-time to the craft.

In the middle of 2006, I started noticing a repeating ad on craigslist. A high-profile, award-winning on-hold company was searching for a copywriter. The ad appeared repeatedly for months. So, I bought two copywriting books and read them, cover to cover, quickly realizing that I had what it took to tweak my writing style and become a copywriter.

I applied, was given a couple of writing tests, and was accepted. Within two weeks, I was writing copy. (The company owner didn’t expect me to be ready to write for at least two months: I was told to shadow the existing copywriters until then and learn what they knew until he felt he was ready to “risk” turning me loose with his clients.)

I worked there for a year, earning their Employee of the Quarter the last two quarters I worked there.

I was only making entry-level secretarial wages—the other copywriters weren’t doing any better—so when I asked for a raise, it was denied. I persisted, they resisted, and we came to a parting of the ways.

I hung my shingle at Elance (now Upwork) in 2008 and the rest is history. I’ve been supporting myself as a copy, content and features writer and editor ever since.

I wasn’t sure I would  like copywriting, but I love it. As my own boss, I get to choose the clients I work with, instead of having them assigned to me whether I’m interested in working with them or not.

The best part of my career is that I get to transform existing copy and content into masterpieces that return measurable ROI (return on investment) and I can write copy and content from scratch that makes people sit up and take notice—and ACT, whenever an action is what’s wanted.

It grieves me to see substandard websites with anemic or boastful copy on it. Unless someone knows what they’re doing, a website can shoot you in the foot every bit as capably as it can skyrocket you to fame and fortune. I see a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs struggling because their public outreach is either boring or arrogant. It will never stand head and shoulders above the competitors in the niche who hire great people to write their stuff.

If your virtual storefront isn’t stellar, your sales will be in the cellar

My job is to make sure your public outreach is riveting, so visitors don’t jump off as fast as they can jump on.

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