An excerpt from a Writing Show interview with Hallmark greeting card writer Lisa Riggin, December 2005

The Writing Show (WS): Welcome to the Writing Show’s holiday celebration. I’m your host, Paula B.

My very special guest, here to help us celebrate, is Lisa Riggin, a senior writer with Hallmark. Lisa has written for a number of Hallmark products, including cards for kids, Mahogany cards, and Keepsake ornaments.

Welcome to The Writing Show, Lisa. I’m thrilled to have you here today.

Lisa Riggin (LR): Thank you very much, Paula. I’m glad to be here.

WS: I am so excited about this interview. Everyone uses greeting cards, but almost no one knows anything about how they’re actually produced. So it will be such a treat to talk to a real live greeting card writer.

How did you get into greeting card writing?

LR: Well for me, it was pretty much a happy accident. A lot of people will come right out of college, but I was quite a bit older. I just happened to be on a Web site that was calling for writers at Hallmark. I followed the link and discovered that you can download exercises. You fill those out and send them in along with some examples of your writing. It was through that that I found my way there.

Of course, that’s the short answer. The long answer is I think I’ve been greeting card writing my whole life. I have a little card that my mom saved from when I was seven years old, and when I told people I’d gotten the job, they were like, “Yeah? No surprise there. Something you should always have been doing.” I thought, “Wait a minute. This is a big deal!”

WS: They don’t understand.

LR: Right. I think some people are just attuned to that short, inspirational writing that just seems to work well in greeting cards.

WS: That’s very interesting that you got into—well, you actually made contact with them because of their Web site. Can you tell us about the exercises? What were those like?

LR: I remember one exercise was to think about a new product for women and how that would fit in with the trends of today. I thought about how many women are overworked at times, as men are too. But women at work also have the stress of kids and all the other things going on, so I thought of some products that would call people to mind to center themselves throughout the day and think about what’s important. That was a fun exercise, to come up with “what if.”

Another exercise was if you had to put something on a coffee mug, what would it be? Some fun things you’d give to a friend. Other things were sympathy cards. You would judge the suitability of different verses that they gave you and give your opinion as to whether that was a good card in the situation, and if you had to send a card, what would it be?

It was a variety of different things to test your ability to see if you understand what a greeting card is trying to do and how creative you are in concepting new ideas.

WS: It's fascinating that they’re that open. It sounds so glamorous. It sounds like it could be really hard to get their attention.

LR: Well, when you think about it, nobody comes to it as a greeting card writer, or very few. What they’re looking for is just the ability to synthesize emotions and experience and find the words for them. And if you can do that, then you can learn the ins and outs of the greeting card genre. But they don’t expect you to be able to write a greeting card right off the bat.

WS: Tell us more about what you do. Do you specialize in any particular type of card?

Transcript continues....

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