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Hi, I'm David Brewster - welcome to my website and blog. I'm a freelance writer, ghostwriter and copywriter able to assist you with your writing needs, whether for print or the web. Anything from a brochure to a book. I bring a strong background in business to my work. I'm based in Melbourne, Australia. Check the Services page for more details. Otherwise, please enjoy reading my articles. And please subscribe by RSS or email to receive future articles as they are published.

Santa at work

You know that uncomfortable sagging feeling you get when you leave for school camp knowing you’ve left something behind – you just don’t know what? It’s horrible the way the hunch sits in your gut like too much cake until, as you open your bag at the other end, the realisation hits: it was the swimming costume! Or your toothbrush. Or, worst of all, the iPod.

I’ve been getting that feeling myself lately, only it hasn’t been about a holiday. My nagging discomfort has been about Christmas.

I’m not troubled by that feeling of “didn’t we just do this?”. I’m used to that, though I admit it feels weird when even teenagers like yourselves comment that Christmas decorations are appearing earlier and earlier. Nor am I worried about making an empty commitment to get the cards done early this time. You’ve heard all that before. I know you won’t be at all surprised when we’re posting them just before New Year.

No, this year’s nagging feeling has been different. I just couldn’t pin it down … until this morning, when I saw a thought-provoking little video called ‘The Story of Stuff‘. Like that empty corner of the backpack where the undies were supposed to be, this video crystallized my discomfort in its opening few minutes. [click to continue…]

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I had no idea.

20 years ago I came out of university and moved into a job. I spent the next ten years as an employee. Earned my wage. Spent my wage. Simple.

About ten years ago I got myself out of that world and set myself up in my own little business. As a self-employed management consultant, there have been financial ups and downs but by and large I reckon we’ve come out on top. And certainly the benefits of working for myself have outweighed being ‘tied to The Man’.

In the last couple of years I’ve tweaked the direction of my business to include a greater proportion of what I love to do most: writing. I do corporate writing mostly, or at least what you might call ‘commercial’ writing, and while it doesn’t pay as well as a lot of consulting work, it is comfortable enough.

As I’ve written more and more, I’ve also started spreading my creative wings, writing and pitching feature articles, profiles, opinion pieces and the like. In doing so I’ve entered the world of what we can broadly call the ‘creatives’ and discovered that … I had no idea. [click to continue…]

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Hurry Up and … Slow Down

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Over forty years is a long time to work on a single task. Yet that has been the lot of the four editors of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. The massive 3,952 page double volume will be released this month, the culmination of the editors’ entire careers. In our world of fast, [...]

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Marketing Shock! Less is the New More

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Not two, three, four or five. My latest razor now has five blades – plus one on the back for trimming any recalcitrant hair. Our toilet paper is now three layers thick, has a space-age texture and is quite possibly made from Kevlar. Our toothpaste makes so many promises that our dentist can safely retire. [...]

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Why Everyone – even Blokes – should see ‘The September Issue’

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To judge from the gender balance in the audience, there aren’t a lot of blokes lining up to see The September Issue, the new documentary feature that gives us a peek inside the walls of Vogue magazine in New York. Which is a pity, because the film has a lot to offer anyone – male [...]

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Happiness Sheds its Hippie Heritage

I was listening to a talkback radio discussion last night about what constitutes achievement and success in work and life. While not a particularly original topic for evening radio, I was struck by the tone of the calls. During quite a lengthy discussion, not a single caller suggested that success is about climbing the corporate ladder or making money. Could it be that success – for everyone, not just the hippies – is about being happy?

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The Scourge of Human Spam

My mother taught me that it is rude to interrupt. It is something that my wife and I, like most parents, try to instil into our daughters. With all that happens in the modern household it is hard enough to find time to have a conversation of more than 30 seconds without those precious sentences [...]

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Steve’s Diabolical Challenge

Like Senator Steve Fielding, I am a lapsed engineer. Like Steve, I have attempted to understand the science of climate change. Unlike Steve, I eventually understood that the task is beyond ordinary mortals. In fact it is even beyond the intellect of a single engineer. I realised that we should be leaving it to the [...]

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Our Life at Work Stripped Bare

Most of us spend a healthy slice of our lives working. We spend additional time thinking about work, but these thoughts are generally focused on the job at hand. We think through an upcoming meeting, worry about a deadline or scheme about our next job change. Much less often do we think about the wider connection of our work to our community. Rarely, if ever, do we think about the extent to which others’ work impacts on, and is essential to, our way of life. In ‘The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work’, Alain de Botton does this for us in a thoughtful and entertaining way.

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Do we Expect too Much of our Politicians?

Like my father, I like to converse with the television. Every time a politician talks out at me from the box, I can’t resist the urge to talk back. If I were to read a headline like the one on this post, I would probably head straight for the comments box and launch into a tirade against the average parliamentary representative. As a rule, politicians are self-absorbed, narcissistic egomaniacs … or is there another side to this story?

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