by Laura on August 17, 2010
I’m a sucker for books on writing. I’ve got a whole shelf full, from Charles Baxter’s Bringing the Devil to his Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life to Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need.
I keep thinking that one day I’m going to finally get the book that has a secret decoder ring hidden inside. I’ll slip it on my finger and suddenly I’ll have all the beauty, grace and ease of writing I’ve ever wanted. I will be a star!
And maybe you think that about your business, too: Some seminar, some trade show, some deep-pockets client will sprinkle you with magic fairy dust. And presto! Your bank account will fill up and all of your worries will evaporate.
We may not like to admit it, but we know that’s not how it works.
Here is how it works:
You have to put the time in and just do the work. Again and again. Day after day.
It’s not glamorous. It’s often not even all that much fun.
But it’s the only thing that really works.
And with writing, putting the time in has an even more measurable effect on your success. Because you really do have to write page after page of mediocre copy to extract the super-good stuff that makes doing what we do so much fun.
If you aren’t putting in the time to get through to the good stuff, then you’re going to end up turning in that mediocre copy. The client may think it’s “fine,” but you know deep down what could have been.
So here’s a challenge to myself and to everyone:
Suck it up. Do the work.
I promise we’ll all feel better at the end of the day.
by Laura on July 22, 2010
I love Penelope Trunk, and so I have to do a tiny post to pass on this essential advice that she dished out today:
“Forget about being an evangelist. Work hard at knowing yourself and being kind to people. The right career path comes from that.”
That’s it…carry on.
by Laura on July 22, 2010
The “all of a sudden everywhere because of his new book” Gary Shteyngart had a superb essay in the NYTimes book review recently, “Only Disconnect.” In it, he struggles, beautifully, to reconcile the competing desires to be engaged in the technological world and to be an unencumbered, thoughtful observer of it:
“With each post, each tap of the screen, each drag and click, I am becoming a
different person — solitary where I was once gregarious; a content provider
where I at least once imagined myself an artist; nervous and constantly updated
where I once knew the world through sleepy, half-shut eyes; detail-oriented and
productive where I once saw life float by like a gorgeously made documentary film.”
This dilemma is nothing new, of course. From the minute the first listserv went live, we’ve been trying to sort out how to balance our online lives with our “real” lives—work, families, and the occasional indulgence of watching Mad Men.
And if, like is increasingly the case, your work is online, it gets even trickier.
You have to be connected because that’s how your business stays busy—and relevant. And connecting with people who are in your “tribe”, is essential to learning, growing, evolving.
But I believe there has to be space for ideas to emerge (and enough space for both good and bad ideas to emerge because you have to have both to get anywhere good).
And I also believe there has to be some psychic breathing room so the good ideas can take root. An always-connected mind is like hard, clay soil: you can scatter seeds all day long, but they won’t grow.
I’m still trying to figure out the balance. I’ve tried social media guru Gwen Bell’s “only check email twice a day” system (though I turned it into a 3-times-a-day system, and that only worked for a while); I haven’t been nearly brave enough to try a Digital Sabbatical, but maybe someday.
What have you tried?
Two days ago, a group of really smart people put on the smartest event ever: The Influencer Project: The Shortest Marketing Conference Ever.
The whole point was to get a bunch of gurus to give tips about how to make sure you stand out in the blog-o-, tweet-o-, whatever-o-spheres.
Why was it smart?
1) it was free (well, if you still consider giving someone your email address as free)
2) each of the 60 speakers had a 60-second limit so the whole thing only lasted an hour
3) if you have to distill all of your knowledge into a 60-second soundbite, it’s got to be GOOD, right?
I’m about halfway through listening to the MP3 of the event (the fact that they made this available for free, too, would be smart thing #4, actually) and so far, it’s awesome. As advertised. I’m a super-satisfied customer.
One of the tidbits that hit home with me was from Loren Feldman of 1938 Media. I didn’t know anything about Loren before I heard him speak, but am a total fan now (his WTF Wednesdays, an homage, surely, to master WTFer comedian Mark Maron, are priceless).
Anyway, Loren said something like this in his 60 seconds:
When you put yourself out in the digital space, you have to take a stand about who you are. You have two choices:
1) You can be totally transparent/brutally honest in how you communicate and risk pissing people off; or
2) You can be the totally nice person whose only goal is to make friends and to never ruffle any feathers.
He says either route works, but you have to choose. Because when you do a mashup of the two routes, you get into trouble.
This sooooo hit home for me, both in my own tip-toe-y efforts to get some of that “influence” everybody wants and with the clients I work with. So many people/companies have been programmed to water things down so as to appeal to the broadest range of people possible. And that works, to a degree (e.g. Mama’s Family, Starbucks, Wal-Mart). But how good can you feel at the end of the day that what you’re doing is making the world the tiniest bit better? Not so much, I would imagine.
The lovely and amazing Catherine Caine had a blog post just yesterday that was inspirational in this regard. She wrote a refreshingly honest review of Charlie Gilkey’s new book, The Unconventional Guide to Freelancing. She took a stand in her own cheerful, truthful, “how could you ever get mad at this smart-and-funny chick?” way. Even Charlie himself gave her a pat on the back for the review.
I’m going to heed Loren’s advice. And help my clients heed it as well.
Throughout my career, I’ve been a generalist. Want a direct mail piece that will get customers in your new grocery store? Would love to. Need an article on the state budget cuts to health care providers in California? On it. Need to get out a press release on the launch of a new line of window shades? No problem.
I love being a generalist: it’s super exciting to immerse myself in a subject/product/company and learn as much as I can so I can write appealing content.
But I have to admit, I really admire people and companies who focus on doing one thing and doing it impeccably. These are the things I’m organically drawn to, and these are the things I most often spend my money on.
This comes to mind because I’m working with a company like that right now: Aidells Sausage. They’re committed to doing things right—highest quality ingredients, small batches, taking care of their employees and their customers—and the result proves the smartness of their approach: Their sausage is astoundingly good. (And yes, I do spend my money on it at the grocery store).
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to bring that type of focus to what we do here at Story House, and I believe it comes down to mindfulness:
Whatever project you’re working on, do it as though it’s all you’re working on, even if, in 30 minutes, life demands that you’ll be working on something utterly different.
What do you think?
by Laura on June 24, 2010
Maybe it’s my southern upbringing, but gosh I hate talking about money with new clients, especially because writing is notoriously difficult to quantify. Ask any copywriter what takes longer—a killer 5-word headline or a 50-word product description—and you’ll see why (the killer headline takes way longer).
So I loved this nice little story about Niels Bohr, the physicist who basically invented the atomic bomb and quantum mechanics, that I came across recently.
************************
A company’s machine breaks down. The company’s owner, an old school friend of Niels Bohr, calls in the physicist to help fix it.
Bohr examines the machine. He draws an X on the side and says, “Hit it right here with a hammer.”
The company’s mechanic hits the machine with a hammer. It springs into action. The company’s owner thanks Niels Bohr profusely and sends him on his way.
A few days later, the owner receives an invoice from Bohr for $10,000 and gets on the phone with him immediately: “Niels! What’s this $10,000 invoice? You were only here for 10 minutes! Send me a detailed invoice.”
A few days later, the company’s owner receives this from Bohr:
INVOICE
Drawing X on the side of your machine $1
Knowing where to put the X $9,999
———————————————————————————————–
Total $10,000
***********************
So what is your experience worth?
(hat tip to the Consultant Journal blog for the story.)
by Laura on June 15, 2010
I was walking down a not-so-spiffy part of Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley the other day and saw a tiny new pizza place had opened up in an otherwise lackluster strip of storefronts. It was painted a nice Tuscan orange and looked like a sweet little place with just 2 two-top tables and an ordering counter. It was around 5 o’clock and I noticed a guy in there, but there was a big CLOSED sign in the window. I thought that was odd as it wasn’t a “proper” restaurant, which often don’t open for dinner until 5 or 5:30. And then I saw this chalkboard:
Besides the obvious (“NO SLICES NO SLICES”), there’s the more subtle problem here: This unknown place on a sad part of Shattuck is selling whole pizzas for $18 and charging you for every extra ingredient ($1 for red onion, $3 for mushrooms… what?), when you can drive a mile over to Pizzaiolo and get a gourmet, wood-fired pizza with green olives, housemade sausage and basil for $17. And you can use your credit card.
The takeaway:
1) Do your market research. Price your product correctly or at least give the menu some love words-wise so that I am so blown away by the product description that I can’t wait to hand over my hard-earned cash.
2) Avoid the “no” like the plague. If your customers are asking for something that’s reasonable, give it to them and find a way to make it work for your bottom line.
3) Be nice. Even if you do the right thing and avoid the “no,” you still need to put just a little bit of work into making your customers feel happy to be your customer. It doesn’t take much, and I promise it’s worth it.
by Laura on June 14, 2010
I’ve been reading “The Subversive Copy Editor,” by Carol Fisher Saller, chief grammar guru at the Chicago Manual of Style. The graphic designer colleague who recommended it said, “After reading it, I feel horrible about what I’ve done to your copy!” We worked together in a high-stress, this-should-have-been-out-last-week environment where there was never time for the copywriter to proof; I just sent out my plain-Jane Word docs and hoped for the best. Often, the designer would have to decide herself where to trim or ad copy depending on the design. She’s smart, so it usually went fine. But as a writer, it can be devastating to know your words are being chopped and diced without you getting the chance to put a Bandaid on it. And since I do copyediting as well as writing, the book is doubly interesting to me.
Copyediting could, in many hands, be an awfully dry subject, but the author is quite charming (“Now that I think about it, contacting a writer for the first time is much like answering a personals ad . . .”).
And most helpfully, her advice also extends to working relationships writ large as in:
“Write or email after you’ve looked over the project but before you start editing. The writer is going to be your best ally as you work, so establish cordial relations. . . . Show that you’ve familiarized yourself with his work by asking a question or two, and let the questions show your knowledge and competence.
. . . .
Asking questions like this at the beginning will help give the writer confidence that you will pay attention to detail as you whip his stuff into shape. . . . And it will demonstrate your willingness to listen and negotiate.”
I think that’s good advice for any new project with a client.
