Browsing Category: "miscellaneous"
Are you guilty or innocent of complicating your message and thereby making it less clear? Let’s find out.
Do you favor big words over small ones? If you say “utilize” instead of “use,” you’re guilty.
Have you created your own language by turning a noun into a verb? Really now, if you say “bulletize,” give yourself another guilty.
You’re guilty again if you craft sentences that rival those of Charles Dickens. Learn to self-edit (delete words and condense phrases) and to chop sentences into two or more thoughts.
Are you driven by your organization’s lexicon, throwing buzzwords and acronyms into every (or even a single) sentence? Guilty again. Save the jargon for emails to your boss. Instead, talk to your customers about what matters most to them in a way they (or even your own grandmother) can understand.
Post your worst sentences here and I’ll give a few of them a before-and-after makeover.
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I have a 17-year-old cat named Buster. And what a Buster he is. He once hauled a frozen chicken out of the kitchen sink, across the floor, around the corner and into the half-bath just so he could gnaw his way through the packaging undetected. (He did, btw, go largely undetected for several minutes. We had spaghetti that night.)
But now that’s he’s getting up there in years, my Buster is showing his age. His robust form is giving way to a bony, frail structure. When he plays he mostly lays down and doesn’t get up unless he absolutely has to. And he sleeps a bit more than he used to – which is a lot, considering cats sleep something like two-thirds of their lives, anyway.
So watching Buster curled up in his kitty bed snoozing the day away made me realize something. He’s listening to his body and taking a much-needed time-out so he’ll have the energy to do Buster-type things. Like begging for popcorn, jumping up next to the computer to help me write, or pushing his sister out of the way so he can sit where she sits, because it’s obviously the best place to sit at that very moment.
Buster knows when to do his work and when to take his rest. I’ve seen him take just a short nap and wake up raring to go.
And so it is with writing. Sometimes we need a physical rest. When the words don’t come easy, when the ideas seem stuck or nonexistent, or when we get aggravated over whether or not to use “were” or “was,” it’s probably a clue that we’re too tired to write.
Take a nap. Go to bed. Sleep on it.
It’ll clear your head and help bring forth new and better ideas. It may even make your next round of writing go faster. Thanks, Buster.
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Some days you’ve just gotta let words be fun!
So I created this image on a site called Wordle.
It “read” my blog and created the image. It’s unfortunate that it picked up words like “tartar sauce,” tho. Guess I should be careful what I blog about!
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I always wanted a mentor. I never had one.
Even now, when I hear someone say, “My mentor …” I get a little wistful.
Sure, there were people in my career path who could’ve mentored me, but 20 years ago, it was the age of being a climber. Sorry to say, but the career women in my life were tight-lipped about their success.
In fact, I remember accompanying an editor of mine to a fancy BPW meeting. I was so excited to have been asked to go and it was clear that I was an ankle-biter in a sea of well-coiffed, impeccably dressed (replete with fancy floppy scarf ties) seniors. As I was standing there soaking it all in, a topic came up about finding a young, aspiring writer for a project. My editor-boss she said she didn’t know one.
Hello?!
I was standing right there.
Other people even commented that I might perhaps be a fit and they looked at me with sad eyes that said, “Sorry, she’s being an idiot.”
The editor-boss poo-pooed the idea. (BTW, she’s now a highly acclaimed editor at her state’s largest newspaper.)
So, instead of being bitter (wistful’s not the same as bitter), I’ve decided to give what I couldn’t get. I’ve signed up to be a mentor on www.thecreativecareer.com.
If you’re in the marketing communications field, I urge you to sign up to be a mentor, too. If you’re not, be a mentor anyway. It’ll do you and the world some good.