Left brain / right brain
By Matt Carter, Thursday, April 3, 2008.Bookmarking Sites
Who says mortgage brokers don't have a creative side?
When Portland, Ore. real estate broker Jennifer Bukaty challenged Active Rain bloggers to a "Mortgage Creative Writing" contest she got a ton of entries -- many quite good. See the winners and a roundup of all the entries here.
To give you an idea of the level of competition, Walnut Creek, Calif. mortgage expert Mike Mueller cranked out a ton of mortgage-related haiku -- 17 poems in 10 days at the end of March -- landing mentions in the San Jose Mercury News and Redfin blog. For his efforts (see example at right), Mueller earned a "well-deserved" honorable mention in the contest.
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Submitted by Matt Carter on April 3, 2008 - 5:13pm.
Just got off the phone with Jennifer, who said thanks for the write up but she also wanted to point out that I'd misspelled her last name. D'oh!
Jennifer was very nice about it, and how cool is it when somebody takes the trouble to pick up the phone instead of shooting off an e-mail?
Bukaty said she's trying to get contest winner Janet Guilbault's hometown paper to write something up on the winning entry, "One McMortgage, Please, With A Side of Lies."
An excerpt:
"Yes, the carefree days of drive through McMortgages are gone. There are still plenty of people who show up at the drive through window, but the window is closed. ACCESS DENIED. Now you need to go inside and sit down. Getting your food takes much longer, and you must engage with the one that is serving.
Lots of those drive through fast food places that served McMortgages are simply gone, out of business. They couldn't figure out how to survive in the new, HEALTHIER environment.
Is the food still cheap? Well, yes. But getting used to a limited menu of healthy food is tough when we gorged ourselves for so many years on fast food that was a nutritional disaster. Going on a diet to shed pounds is an uphill battle. There is a price to pay for betraying our health."
Submitted by Mike Mueller on April 3, 2008 - 6:23pm.
Matt -
Thanks for the mention.
The entries were all great!
Creative Mortgage Writing?
Sounds like an oxymoron doesn't it?
I actually wrote them all at the same time but chose to release them one at a time.
Having never written a poem in my life, I owe my inspiration to one of the 145 RSS feeds in my Google Reader.
The Daily Beer Haiku
How cool is that?
Mike Mueller
(thanks for spelling my name right)
Submitted by Matt Carter on April 3, 2008 - 6:43pm.
Oh, I see Mike -- that's how you write haiku about mortgages: beer!
Is this the site?
http://www.beerhaikudaily.com/
Very Jack Handy. Nice.
Submitted by Janet Guilbault on April 7, 2008 - 12:33pm.
Matt: Thank you for mentioning the post I wrote on ActiveRain that won the Mortgage Creative Writing Challenge contest.
Trying to be creative in our industry is always a challenge, but the analogy of unhealthy loans to unhealthy food seemed to put it in perspective for many readers.
Agree with Mike...the entries were great and it is a great honor to have won.