Pretty Girl Karma

Surprisingly, this post applies to my male readers too – and to people that don’t consider themselves to be pretty (you really are, like it or not).

Writers, freelancers, work from homers – whoever you may be. At some point in your illustrious career, some lovely person has said this to you, “That’s so cool that you work from home! You can just wear your pajamas all day and no one will care or see you!”

Uh huh. It’s true. We could do that. And some days, I’m sure we all do.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and proclaim, superficiality be damned, that what we wear, how we costume ourselves, really does matter. It affects what we think about ourselves, how we act, how we talk, what we say, what actions we take.

When I dress in sweats and running shoes, I’m casual, I slump – sometimes when I look from the work I’m doing on my computer down to my clothes and back up again, it occurs to me that I’m maybe I’m only ‘playing’ writer.

So, I don’t do that anymore. Because when I wear jeans that fit in all the right places, my good bra that erases 3. 5 years of pregnancy and nursing with a single clasp, a beautiful and stain-free sweater and shoes that make me almost as tall as most other people who are on the shorter side of average height – then, I feel it when I’m sitting in this chair.

I’m confident, I’m worthy, I’m an adult, I’m a professional. I’m in touch with my power source. I own it. You can see it in the way I hold myself, in the way I walk, in the way I am and in the way I do. I dare say it’s my pretty girl karma. Because what I put out, comes right back at me – respect, value, compensation for what I’m worth, hotness, good people, great projects.

And in this case, karma is not a bitch. (Unless you piss her off.)

This post is dedicated to the FANTASTIC Kelly Diels who, when I told her that I dressed hot for the big Dragon Tattoo Blog Hunt launch yesterday even though no one saw me all day, remarked, ‘Of course…pretty girl karma’ without skipping a beat – and sparked my brain and ignited this post. Kelly gets it and just so you know, Kelly always looks hot and always shows plenty of Cleavage. I love her to bits.

What about you? Do you have power clothes? A power look? Are you affected by your threads? How?

Image credit: AlyssssylA

We Have Lift off (and a Dragon Tattoo Exclusive)

This morning, I’m thrilled to announce, the Dragon Tattoo Blog Hunt launched into the blogosphere.

Here’s the official hooha on the social media campaign:

In anticipation of the March 19th U.S. theatrical release of Dragon Tattoo, Music Box Films will launch a clue-based Blog Hunt around the web on March 10th. Top bloggers will publish articles about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with an embedded clue leading readers to the next site in the Hunt. Readers will follow these clues for prizes including film tickets, books and posters. The contest will focus on blog topics covered in the film including technology, writing, violence against women, and tattoos. The Blog Hunt will begin on the movie’s official website where the first clue will be published.

And because I love all of YOU so very much, I’m giving you an exclusive clue – or rather to the answer to one of the clues.

Yours truly wrote one of the blog posts for the Blog Hunt and it’s published on Copyblogger. So, if you’re playing along and you get to the clue that talks about ‘copy’ and ‘blogging’ you’ll know right where to go. And now on to the post:

Blogging Lessons from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

A 40 year-old unsolved murder mystery. Strange cryptic codes in a bible. Sweden, sandwiches and many, many cigarettes. The badass-est female protagonist since…forever. And an author who has, posthumously, caused quite a ruckus in the book world and in the minds of conspiracy theorists everywhere.

Yes, I’m talking about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. If you haven’t heard of it, the rest of us are inviting you to come out from under your rock. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) is topping bestseller lists as we speak and the theatrical release of Dragon Tattoo hits the U.S. next week.

I had the good fortune of screening an advanced copy and, of course, my mind went blog, blog, blog. Because that’s what blog obsessed people like us do. It’s almost like we’re wearing blog colored glasses as we look out onto our worlds. Here are the blogging lessons I learned from this tattooed ‘girl’…

Gasoline feeds a fire, but first there has to be a spark

At one point in the movie, a man lays under a car. Having just flown off the side of the road, both he and the car are demolished, gasoline is spilling out everywhere…and he waits, watching, trapped. Finally there’s a spark…and then fire, total combustion.

So often we have all of the ingredients, right? The design is just right, the writing is perfection, the research says that there’s a need for the content….but then, nothing. No traffic, no comments, no buzz. Why? What’s missing?

There has to be a spark. Maybe it comes in the form of a new partnership, a referral or an outside event (like a shortage of light bulbs) that makes your product (candles) suddenly burst into high demand. Or maybe you have a life changing event that triggers your passion, maybe you read a book that causes something to click in your brain or your heart.

And then, there’s no stopping the heat….

Read the rest of the lessons on Copyblogger’s slice of the sphere and get the next clue in the Blog Hunt!

The Importance of Butterflies

When I was little, Sundays were my least favorite days. Not only because of Sunday School, but because, I think, it always felt like an ending. Saturday, you were in it. But, Sunday, even though it was 40% of the weekend (including Friday night), felt doomed. The steady advance of the clock swallowing up any remaining freedom. I wasted a lot of it, I’m sure, mourning for it’s inevitable departure.

I had a physiological and emotional reaction to Sunday. I named it – in true writer fashion – when I was about 7 years old. I know that my mom (who reads this blog) won’t remember this, but I do. I was trying to tell her how I felt, because it was so, well, sad and intense. My interpretation was that I had my ‘Sunday Feeling’. Eventually, this became the term that I used to describe that particular brand of sadness whenever it happened – Sunday or not. Clinically, I think it would be identified as depression. The Sunday Feeling feels bottomless and lost, a little bit scared and incredibly still. And it still creeps up on me every now and then.

See how I’m a classically tortured artist?

I like to name things, always have. Like the time I told my 1st grade teacher, Miss Carragher, that I was carsick. She told me I couldn’t be carsick sitting at my desk – but it was the only reference I had for nausea at that point, being in the car. It made perfect sense to me. That woman never understood me.

But, Friday, glorious Friday. It held so much possibility, you know? It was the day you spent planning and dreaming up the weekend, the expanse of the two days to come spread out hugely in front of you. And, just like the Sunday Feeling, the Friday Feeling also and quickly became unattached to the actual day.

The Friday Feeling happened on the last day of school, and on the first. The Friday Feeling happens at the beginning of a relationship. The Friday Feeling happens when you get a call about a great project. The Friday Feeling happens when you can’t stop writing and everything just works. The Friday Feeling feels topless (as in the opposite of bottomless, not as in shirtless – though sometimes that could apply), full, purposeful, gleeful. The Friday Feeling has butterflies attached – they fly around in your gut, your chest, your throat.

To me, the butterflies are the drive behind the Friday Feeling. Their movement, after all, is the surest sign that you’re leaving the despair-filled stillness behind.

Image credit: Laura Burlton

Why do the math when you’ve got a calculator?

I know we’re all different ages here (like Ron is really old and Amanda is really (really) young) – but let’s pretend we were all in junior high in the mid-80’s together, just for a second. (I won’t make you do the math, I’m 36, which hangs me squarely in ‘not old’ and ‘not young’ limbo, relatively speaking.)

So, back in junior high, calculators were forbidden. They were seen as cheating tools. But, did you know that today they’re considered learning tools? They’re included on school supply lists along with pencils and 3-ring binders and White Out (which is another cheating tool, if you ask me).

The Writer’s Calculator

When I’m doing math and I have to add up a receipt (4.29 + 2.79+ 3.39 + 5.99), I’m all about using my calculator (the one on my computer, the one on my Blackberry or the one sitting on my desk). And, I have to admit, I always feel like I’m doing something wrong when I whip out my computerized math-brain. It’s like the guy on Sex and the City that has to take a shower immediately after sex because 30 years earlier the nuns told him intercourse was dirty. Calculator use sets off a reflex that kicks the ‘you’re cheating!’ button in my head.

But, it’s different when I’m writing. We (writers) have our own ‘calculator’ – it’s called a Thesaurus. And just like my calculator, it also lives on my computer, on the web, on my phone and on my desk.

I love my Thesaurus.

I’ve tried many…but am firmly and deeply head over heels for the one that lives in my MacBook. Apple does a lot of things right and this is one of them. Personally, I don’t think it’s cheating to use the Thesaurus to find words because (and tell me if you can relate) I know the word I want to use, I just can’t remember it. But, when I’m adding up those decimally pointed amounts on the receipt, the calculator isn’t reminding me of the answer that I already know, it’s telling me the answer plain and simple.

My thesaurus, if you will, is like an artist’s pallet. I have the vision in my head, and I look to the thesaurus (from time to time) to see what colors will help me bring it to life.

Image credit: FranKaño

When old media and new media play together in the sandbox

‘This is a very simply game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes…it rains.” Bull Durham

As I see it, one of my roles on this blog is, for lack of better words, to play the fool. For you that is. In other words, I’m taking one for the team. I’ve said time and time again that I’ve wished, both when I was starting out and still as I find my way, that I had someone like me who I could ask for advice or learn from. But I didn’t when I was starting and I frequently forget to ask for help now…so here I am as a result, sometimes doing it right, sometimes doing it wrong, sometimes…just doing it.

And last week, I did something wrong. So I’m here to tell you about it so that you, hopefully, don’t do it wrong if the opportunity should present itself.

Swimming around the freelancers’ pool

Freelancing has placed me in wide variety of situations at this point, I’m assuming you could say the same. By definition, we get thrown into all matter of circumstances where we may or may not have any clue how to act or be or do. Over our heads, soaked to our ankles, blowing bubbles, treading water or swimming speedily through the course – sometimes within a span of 5 minutes. Right?

Currently, I’m working on a massive project with a sizable team, we’ve got a little bit of every role you could imagine. Specific to my ‘doing it wrong’, we have two publicists. They’re Big deals. (It was suggested that I add the capital ‘B’).  One of them is French – and I imagine her sitting at a huge mahogany desk with a toy poodle on her lap and a long, thin cigarette hanging off of a long porcelain cigarette holder between her long thin fingers. Her hair is piled on top of her head and she’s wearing Chanel. But I have no idea if that is even a little bit true.

Anyway, I pissed her off.

You see, on a regular basis, the publicists send out emails to the team alerting us to news breaks or product mentions. And I, in my blind ignorance and bloggy haze of ‘we’re all in this together’, figured they were just letting us know whenever we were featured in the media. Since I’m running the social media campaign, I’ve engaged many listening tools – effectively holding my trusty stethoscope up to the internet – so that I know every time we ‘appear’ online. Obviously, then, I thought I should contribute to these emails as well. You know – one for all and all for…

Oops.

I got told off…and how (and quickly) for this gaff. Those press breaks they were sending were gigs the publicists themselves had landed. The break is there metric for their work for the client. Had I secured the mention I just emailed? (she asked). Um…nooooo, not so much. I just thought we were all spreading the good news. It turns out, we weren’t. Not even a little bit.

All worked out fine, I apologized, I never did it again, I returned to my corner to do my job. And I learned some things, which makes it all worth it in the end:

1. Now that I know why what I did wasn’t okay, it seems blaringly, glaringly obvious.
2. This is true of most lessons learned, except maybe those gleaned from a calculus textbook.
3. When entering a new situation, take a good look around and identify things that might not be familiar.
4. Find someone, either within the fray or without, that is familiar with those things.
5. If you feel like doing a certain something that is out of your general knowledge area, ask this someone for guidance: Run it by them first.
6. Keep your wits about you – did you just break a cardinal rule? ruin a business? step over a cultural line? threaten someone’s place on the totem pole? Put your mistake in perspective.
7. Life is very interesting when the old media and the new media play together in the sandbox.
8. My skin is getting thicker. Once upon a time I might have been mortified or at least obsessed about my faux pas. This time I said ‘whoops!’, laughed and moved right along.
9. What’s next? (Thank you, President Bartlett). The only way out of an error is forward. Fix it, change your behavior, don’t do it again.
10. When you have the best readers in the world, it isn’t that hard to tell them about the times when you’re stupid.
11. I really do love to share. It’s how I got myself into this mess…and it’s how I’m getting myself out.

Image credit: Banalities

Delighting in the tumult

I love how you often don’t realize something’s missing until it shows itself. This morning on my run, I heard the most tremendous sound: bird song. I didn’t know I’d been longing for it, so sweet – and full, demanding its rightful place in the woods and in the air.

But it wasn’t the only rare sound that I heard this morning. On my run, I circle around a knob of land that sticks right out into the ocean. The first part, on the west side, is quite open to the elements and the wind and surf are usually pounding me and the sand (respectively) with tenacity and total disregard.

The second part, however, as I come around the bend to the east side, sits in a harbor. It’s protected, in part because the space through which the greater ocean feeds it is relatively narrow. So, typically, no matter how crazy the wind is on the west side, the east side is seemingly always calm and serene.

But not today. Today it was the exact opposite. Somehow – for the first time since I’ve been running this loop – the wind and the waves were blowing at exactly the right angle, allowing them to puncture the inlet and pummel the harbor.

As I ran alongside the eastern shore with the wind threatening to push me over and the new sound of crashing surf in my ears, I thought about the fish and the plants and the whatever else is in this bowl-like slice of water. What it must feel like for them today to be shaken up? I projected that they were upset or alarmed or scared.

And then I noticed something else new. I saw the colors and the light. The sun had already risen for all intents and purposes, but the day was grayer than gray – the skies were soaked in heavy rain clouds. But where the water is usually gray or dark blue, today it was a light green…and vibrant. Like the color ’sea green’ in the Crayola box. A color I didn’t realize was missing from my eyes until I saw it.

I’m wrong, I thought. This safe little harbor isn’t disturbed by the tumult, it’s all lit up – from the inside.

The suspense could, quite possibly, kill me…

It’s not quite as glorious as it sounds. I figured out how to see and control my future. But only my bleak one. And bonus, it’s very easy to do – anyone can play!

This magical skill that I’ve developed is born from an inability to deal with anticipation, with not knowing. In other words: the suspense is killing me.

In reality, I only have one question that I need to have answered. If you look at all the story threads that I have in my life (work, writing, relationships, health, family, etc.) – I want to know one thing and one thing only: Will it turn out for better or for worse?

Like I said, the suspense is killing me. So, the brilliant thing to do is just kill the suspense, right? I mean, if you think about, it is completely in my power to make sure none of those things come true – and then I’ll have my answer: it will turn out for worse. I can stop writing, I can stop running and I can sit around all day doing nothing but eating hotdogs, using Twinkies as a bun. And, just like that, I don’t have to wonder if the fame, glory, health and dollar bills are headed my way. I’ve taken control of my future and satisfied my curiosity.

Yeah, not gonna happen.

I would never purposefully sabotage my life or my pursuits just to abate my anxiety. But, you’ve got to admit, there’s something really seductive about knowing that I could. That if I really needed my answer, I could get it. It’s like the ‘myth of control’ loophole.

I do want to see the future, how this will all play out, NOW. But, I understand…that’s not how it works. How it works is that we show up for it, we move in it, we talk through it, we write about it…and eventually we find out what’s behind those elusive curtains.

And you know what? I believe it’s all good stuff back there. Don’t you? If we didn’t, we’d be much more tempted to chuck it all in the trash…wouldn’t we?

Image credit: The Real Estreya

Reason 930 to Hire a Copywriter or Most People are Bad Liars

Jack, my 3 year-old son, has two moms, he calls us Ma J (that would be me) and Mama. And he has learned to lie recently. Though, sadly, he has only has one lie in his repertoire, he just varies it from situation to situation.

When ‘Mama’ isn’t around, he whines pathetically at me:

“Mama said I could have ice cream! Mama said I could!”

“Mama said I didn’t have to go to bed! Mama said I didn’t!”

“Mama said I get to sleep with my Lego guy. Mama said I get to!”

Let’s be clear, he doesn’t lie well. I mean, I hesitated the first time – but it’s been straight down hill from there, for him. He’s lacking in creativity, yes? Clearly, he needs to expand his game.

Why do people lie?

It’s upsetting that he’s learned to lie, of course, and it’s made me think about lying in general and why people lie. I think it’s about fear. And need. And control. And survival. In his case, he lies to get what he thinks he desperately needs for his survival – like ice cream or his favorite Lego guy. Basically, people lie because they don’t have confidence that their truth is going to get the job done.

So, why is lying Reason 930 to hire a copywriter? Surely, not because I want people to lie! But, because I want them to do the exact opposite. We all have these deep needs and fears and the desire for control and survival – and so, sometimes, you watch companies lie (badly) to try to convince people to use their product or hire them – because of their terror that no one will – which will mean that they’ll go out of business, lose all of their money and die. They’re afraid their truth is not enough.

As a copywriter, I don’t think you need to lie in order to run a successful business. In fact, I think people, potential customers, can smell your desperation and your disingenuousness. And what many people don’t realize is that they don’t have to lie. They have a great story, they have a great platform – something that makes them worth buying, something that makes them stand out from the crowd. But, they can’t see it and don’t know how to say it.

Copywriters do.

We know how to ask the right questions, listen to what you have to say and then pull out the gems and build the story. It’s what we do. We see your truth, write it and make it sound fetching, irresistible.

Gotcha

Because, you know, most liars get caught…and it’s just terrible.

It happened to Jack the other day. There he was, not wanting to get dressed for the day, on the verge of a break down, when he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his go-to trick: “Mama said I didn’t have to get dressed! Mama said I didn’t have to!” Only this time, whoops, he was talking to – yes, you guessed it – Mama.

The moral of this story: don’t lie to your customers. Be proud of who you are and what you do. If you can’t make it sound just right, hire a wordsmith to help you.

And, also: never, ever lie to your mother.

Image credit: Denis Giles

The Sex and the City Guide to Copyblogging – (Copyblogger post)

Originally posted on Copyblogger

I’ve always been of the opinion that if Carrie Bradshaw had popped onto our television screens in 2010 instead of 1998, she would have been a blogger. But alas, she didn’t, so she wrote a (gasp!) print column for the fictional New York Star newspaper.

Yes, before there were blogs, there were newspaper columns – where readers couldn’t talk back or share good content. ‘Carrie the blogger’ would have been huge.

Though the words of Carrie and her cohorts have not been etched in permalink stone, their messages linger on. And despite the fact that Carrie was allergic to the internet and only used her Apple Powerbook for word processing her articles, the lessons, ideas and, more pointedly, the actual quotes that came barreling out of Sex and the City still speak directly to us Copybloggers.

“You sleep with someone, all of a sudden you start rationalizing all of the red flags away.”

Now, hopefully, you aren’t sleeping with your clients, readers or other bloggers (on a regular basis). Typically, the copybloggers’ dangling carrot (no pun intended, I swear) isn’t sex, it’s money….

Hop on over to Copyblogger to finish reading this post, yo.

(And I haven’t forgotten the non-hoopla post…it’s coming!)

Image credit: 22

I’m with SportsCenter

I have a thing for SportsCenter. There’s something about ESPN that just really does it for me. And I know what it is (besides the overflow of testosterone). This news media outlet is not scary. Every other news station out there tries to reach out, grab your eyeballs and attach them to their screen with teasers like, “How we know you’re going to die a violent death and HOW YOU JUST MIGHT, MAYBE, POSSIBLY BE ABLE TO STOP IT!!! Next on the News at 10.”

But not the guys at SportsCenter.

They love the game, the love the athletes, they have fun. And when there is drama – cough, cough ‘Tiger’ – they somehow still manage to stick to the facts and not so much the soap opera, focusing on what it will mean to the game of golf. I know, it’s mind-blowing.

This morning I was at the gym, and while I really abhor TV, the screens are inescapable. So I make sure that I’m stationed in front of SportsCenter – just in case my Eye of the Tiger concentration should get distracted. Which it did. And I found myself watching highlights from the Olympics  – where yesterday, Lindsey Vonn and two other U.S. dudes won gold medals. And then I was watching crazy basketball highlights where huge men were leaping gracefully into the sky at just the right moment, catching the ball and slamming it into the basket.

Makes me tingle

I got shivers. Everything I saw was so beautiful, so extraordinary. It made me work out harder, feeling my own strength and power. It also made me think about Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk. You know her, right? She wrote Eat, Pray, Love – a masterful memoir that is so authentically real it’s almost blog like. Almost.

In her talk, which I highly recommend that any human (but especially us creative types) watch (and I’ve posted below), she talks about creative genius. She talks about the fact that now that she’s ostensibly hit her ultimate peak with her last book, it is expected that she can only go downhill with her highly anticipated follow-up.

Ah…fear-based wisdom

Apparently, this is a typical phenomenon for anyone who has reached such heights. As she notes, she topped out at 40, so she has 40 more years (give or take) of never being quite that good again – according to this fear-based wisdom, that is.

Lindsey Vonn is 26. When she gets home in a few weeks, will she sink into a deep, dark depression and think that she’ll never be that good again? Will others assume that as well? Is this, then, as good as it gets?

I’m going to say NO. And I’m going to say it in a very loud and strong voice. Because ewwww. Who wants to live like that? I can tell you that I do not.

Waking up

When these professional basketball players woke up yesterday morning, they knew they were good athletes, they knew they were strong and agile. But did they know exactly how the ball would come to them during the game? Did the know exactly how they would jump and twist and grab and dunk? No and no.

Gilbert discusses the unrealistic expectations we place on geniuses to be genius…and it made me think about what’s coming next, what we can’t see – how maybe some thing, some accomplishment, some physical and creative feat is still out there, around the corner, barreling towards us.

Yesterday, I (and Writing Roads) had a really, really good day. When I woke up, all I had was me – my knowledge of who I am and what I want to do. The rest lay before me sight unseen. I had no reason to think the day would unfold like it did, but as I sat on the edge of my bed, ready to put my feet on the floor and get moving, I thought, Who the hell knows? Maybe today will be the day that things really come together. Maybe today will be my best day yet.

And it was. You know why? Because I’m with SportsCenter. I’m not in it for the fear. I’m in it for the love of the game and its players and my team. And because I really do think there’s always somewhere farther, longer, stronger, better and higher to go.

Image credit: jjaani