I’ve always loved to tell stories. When I was a little girl, I used to pretend my brother and I were puppies waiting to be adopted. We would jump around on our trampoline on our hands and knees and grab pretzel sticks from the kitchen and pretend they were dog treats. We’d stage epic battle scenes with all of our Beanie Babies and use Kleenex and Scotch tape as “bandages” for the wounded. It drove our mom crazy!
Not much has changed today. While I have donated most of my Beanie Babies, I still love to write and share stories. I still find myself getting lost in detailed daydreams about traveling, my future, or any possible “what if” scenario I can come up with.
This also translates to my work as a marketing writer for Washington State University. I’m lucky enough to have a job in which I get paid to write! Most of the time, I write short marketing copy for websites or student recruitment materials. And every so often, I get to write a story about a student who studied abroad, a researcher who won an award, etc. Late last year, I was tasked with writing a story about WSU alumnus Robb Zimmel as part of WSU’s 125th anniversary celebration campaign. Robb is a graduate of WSU’s wine science program and is now an up-and-coming winemaker in Washington. Before switching his career to winemaking, Robb served his community and country as a civilian flight paramedic and as an Army medic. He served two deployments (one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq) and spent a total of three years away from his wife and three young children.
Now, he’s making his mark as a winemaker based in the Tri-Cities in Washington. He’s recently released four wines- a malbec, a merlot, a Riesling, and a chardonnay-under his own label, Cerebella. They’re all delicious! I especially love his malbec and chardonnay, and I’m not usually a chardonnay person.
Anyway, I was told my story about Robb should be around 2,800 words. It would include photos, videos, and would live on WSU’s homepage. I interviewed Robb over the phone a couple times before I met him in person, and I realized pretty quickly it would take a lot more than 2,800 words to properly tell this man’s amazing story.
After many hours of interviews, writing and re-writing, my story was finally complete. It clocked in at a whopping 4,000 words, which is almost unheard of for a web feature story.
I loved every second of this storytelling process. I live for this kind of work. Having the opportunity to get to know a person and figure out how to write about them so readers can get to know them too… it’s a beautiful challenge.
This story is one of my proudest accomplishment of my career to date. I’m so grateful to work with an extremely talented team of photographers, videographers, editors, and web designers. Together, we created an awesome product. And I’m grateful Robb was such a forthcoming and honest subject.
To read Robb’s story, titled “Inspiring Perseverance,” click here.
*featured photo credit: Bob Hubner, WSU
*featured photo web design credit: Allen Johns, WSU
Meredith Metsker 