Offering truly excellent editing, writing, and graphic design services for businesses, organizations, authors, and would-be authors.
Names can be slippery things. Mine is Craig R. Smith, not to be confused with the Craig Smith who is a professional basketball player, the Craig S. Smith who writes for the New York Times, or the W. Craig Smith who was the art director for Gilligan’s Island and Victor/Victoria. The R. stands for Ross, after a distant uncle, though I think the only place I’ve ever used the name in full is on my driver’s license. On top of that, I got married a few years ago, so now I’m a Lloyd-Smith, at least socially.
Besides my freelance work, and despite a rather disturbing penchant for low humor, I’ve garnered a good deal of respect as a nonfiction writer and a religion scholar. Physically, I’m a bearded Friar Tuck, complete with matching bald spot; Myers-Briggsically, I’m an INFJ. For better or worse, I’m a creative perfectionist. It makes me a little hard to live with, but it’s been keeping my clients happy since 1989, when I started my business, Craig R. Smith Editorial & Design Services.
According to an old Yakut proverb, “Smiths and shamans come from the same nest.” Both possessed esoteric transformative knowledge; both were masters of fire. And in Celtic lore, Brighid was the patroness not only of blacksmiths but of shamans and healers, and of poets and writers as well. As Mircea Eliade put it, “The shaman is the original poet, the tribal myth-maker who pulls up a ‘secret language’ from the depths of ecstasy: the hidden roots of language.”
Writers try to perform a similar alchemy with words, transforming the static and awkward into the powerful and lucid. “Whether in the compelling articulation of ideas, or the artful placement of words and images on a page,” wrote one client, “what Craig can do is nothing short of magic. He’s sort of a shaman of the written word.”
Yadda-yadda-yadda. Forget all this esoteric stuff—let’s talk pragmatically. You need a writer, or an editor, or a graphic designer in your back pocket. Someone you can count on at a moment’s notice.
You need me. Drop me a line to discuss your latest project.