I worked my way through college by writing and recording commercials at a radio station. The process was simple. A station salesman would give me a sales order with notes and specific details to include in the commercial.

While babysitting the station at night I would write and record a radio commercial for the client. Recording the commercial was easy and seldom took more than one or two takes to get it right. In other words, minutes.

Writing the commercial took longer. Much longer. The routine back in the day was a time honored method. Type a few sentences, decide it wasn’t good enough or think of something different, rip the paper out of the typewriter, wad it up, toss it into the waste paper basket, repeat ad nauseam.

It didn’t take long for the waste paper basket to get full of wads of paper.

One night the chief engineer, a good friend, dropped in to check on some new equipment. He noticed the waste paper basket overflowing with wads of paper and asked, “What’s that?”

I responded straightforwardly, “Radio commercials that didn’t make it. I start over a lot.”

With a facetious grin on his face he responded, “Why not just write it right the first time.”

Funny.

His remark was not to be taken seriously but I began to think about it. Seriously. I asked myself, “Why not just write the commercial correctly the first time?”

The thought kept bouncing around in my head. Look at the time I would save. And the paper. But how? “How can someone just sit down and write a radio commercial from beginning to end without a few wads of paper as part of the process?”

So I thought about it. Then I figured it out. All I needed to do was think about what needed to be said then say it while typing. Admittedly, it took some extra effort to get the process going but in the end I found a way to write a 60-second radio commercial in minutes.

That saved an enormous amount of time and many wads of paper.