Write Well Me

Titles - Be Original

The other day I came across a Virtual Assistance eBook that takes off on the "Lions and tigers and bears - oh my!" line from The Wizard of Oz.  The minute I saw it, I groaned.  How many times have we seen that line copied or parodied?  I admit I've used it verbally, but I try to stay away from it in my writing.

There are times when it's clever to riff off a popular line or title from a song, book, slogan, or movie, but if used too much, it doesn't have the same impact.

Consider these

• "You had me at hello"
• "You complete me"
• "Got milk?"
• Every song known to woman and man used for a car commercial

Used too much, what seems quick and witty rapidly becomes stale and old.

It's easy to parody something else (think about the title of my post on Saturday - "I've Lost That Vacation Feeling").  We do it because it's easy, and we hope to catch people's attention by echoing something familiar and original and creative in its own right.

It's far better for us to be original and create our own thing.  Then we don't have to worry about the riff getting old and losing the respect and interest of our audience.  We can just let others mimic us!

What are some lines, titles, slogans that you're tired of seeing copied?

I Even Dream About Blogging - Part II

While I dream about possible blogging topics, I also dream about shopping carts.  Sigh.

I use 1ShoppingCart for my shopping cart needs, and I've been pretty hot and heavy in 1SC as I've launched Write Well University.  In my dream, evidently I was selling pigs (if you know my daughter Anastasia, then you know that pig-adorer is the first description that comes to mind).  In the 1SC interface, when I moused over the various products in the system, an image popped up.  So, when I moused over the Jumbo Pig product, a picture of a pig rolled over the product name.  When I moused over Smaller Pig product, a smaller pig image appeared.

While that would be cool, I don't know how it would work.  Would you have to upload an image for each product?  What would be the purpose?  Who cares if in the interface you could see a little image of each product you're selling?  If it doesn't help the end user, your customers, what's the point? 

So, I don't think I'll be contacting 1SC with this new idea.  :)

Oh, and by the way, we do NOT sell pigs at Write Well University!

I Even Dream About Blogging!

As a blogger, and those of you who blog know this feeling too, you're always looking for fodder to blog about.  The best posts are those that just come to you, and you feel drawn to write about.  We're not always so lucky, and so we view the world through a filter of our blogs.

You know it's bad when you have a dream about a Cary Grant birthday celebration, and in your dream you say, "Oh cool!  Something I can blog about!"

As far as I know, there is no Cary Grant birthday celebration, and if there were, I'm not sure why I would blog about it.  I do adore Cary Grant (he actually eclipses Colin Firth as my favorite actor), but I'm not sure that a Cary Grant birthday celebration (especially since he's dead) would really rate blog posting.

But, hey, it ended up being a blog post anyway!  ;->

I've Lost That Vacation Feeling

I'm on vacation today, on my way to Massachusetts with my family and the Brices.

We've been planning this trip for several months, and the dates were emblazoned on our calendars from the beginning.  Good.  One should make sure that vacation days get entered into one's calendar, especially when someone else schedules appointments and such. :)

As we were smartly putting in these vacation dates, Stacy added a few extra days before and after our trip so that she's away two days before we leave, and over a week and a half when we return (for some reason she wants time off for her birthday).

Hmmmm. 

You can do that?  Add extra days before and after a vacation trip as vacation days themselves?  Really?

Suddenly, the possibilities opened up before me.  Imagine not working until 2:00 a.m. the morning we're supposed to be leaving.  Or letting the 2387 things to do pile up for the day before we leave.  Imagine feeling as if I'm on vacation before I go on vacation.

So I happily put myself down as on vacation the two days before we left for official vacation through the 4th of July.  Dandy!

Except I still ended up working on Thursday and Friday before we left.  I still had several errands to get done Friday.  What good did it do for me to block those days off when I still worked and felt stressed?

I haven't yet mastered the skill of clearing away unnecessary things.  Instead of filling out passport applications for my daughters on Wednesday (a pre-planned appointment), maybe I should have been working on taking care of some of those to do items. Instead of spending three hours on Tuesday working on the Ready, Set, Write program, I could have been doing other things that would have gotten me closer to that vacation feeling.  Instead of scheduling a playdate with a good friend and her kids, I could have had a free morning.

When will I learn?

The one thing that blocking my calendar did was prevent me from having any calls or work appointments.  I've learned that, at least.  I've also gotten better at not handling everything right this minute.  I pushed off some things for when I return, whereas once I would have tried to get it all done - today - before I leave.  I think also that knowing that Thursday and Friday were supposed to be vacation days kept me from trying to get things done like a crazy woman.  So while I've worked more and been more stressed than I wanted to do and be, it's still better than it used to be.

I have learned, but there's still more learning to be done.

Next time (and please remind me!) I'll clear my schedule for a few days before my scheduled vacation days.  I'll only do what's absolutely necessary, and I'll make sure I plan blocks of free time that I cannot fill.  :-)  No unnecessary errands, no creative time that can wait until I get back, no appointments that don't immediately serve a vacation purpose.

I don't want to lose that vacation feeling again.

What Dawn Is Reading Today - 6/22/07

If you're new to Write Well Me, read this to understand why I tell you what I'm reading.  :-)

I've had a yen to go back and read a lot of books from my youth.  As a matter of fact, when I went back to Texas for my little brother's wedding in May, I made a stop on memory lane at the library I used to go to every week.

The Crystal Cave begins the saga with Merlin as a little boy and gives the background behind the familiar story.

This book is one of the first Arthurian stories I'd ever read, and it really brought the characters to life.  To this day, when I think of Merlin, Uther, Arthur, Guinevere, and Mordred, I think of them as portrayed by Mary Stewart.

Although it took me a while to get into the story (reading one page a day at breakfast is not conducive to getting into the meat of a story), I'm really enjoying it and am looking forward to reading it on vacation (more on vacation tomorrow).

Silly me!  I just thought, "What if I finish The Crystal Cave while I'm on vacation in Massachusetts?  Should I go buy the second book in the series (and add one more thing to my list of 2387 things to do before I go)?"

I'm guessing that there are bookstores in Massachusetts, and if I do finish The Crystal Cave while I'm there, I can easily find book #2.  Geez.

Fog Vs. Haze Part II

When we were at the Shenandoah State Park on Sunday, it was a very hot day.  The views were beautiful although there was a haze that prevented the spectacular, crystal views we've seen before.

Kathryn remarked that it was foggy.  "No," I told her.  "It's hazy." 

"What's the difference?" she wanted to know. 

In my mind, fog is a state of murkiness created by weather.  Haze is a state of murkiness caused by pollution.

Chris didn't agree with me (and check out the comments to see what you all believe), so I looked it up.

According to Wikipedia, "Haze is an atmospheric phenomenon where dust, smoke and other pollutant particles obscure the normal clarity of the sky. It occurs when dust and smoke particles accumulate in relatively dry air."

Wikipedia again on fog:  "Fog is a cloud in contact with the ground."

Okay, so my thinking of fog as weather wasn't completely accurate, but haze IS pollution.

It takes a dork to try to discern the difference between haze and fog.

Fog Vs. Haze Part I

Without looking up the words, what is the difference to you between "fog" and "haze"?

Leave your thoughts in a comment, and on Thursday, I'll explain why I care.  :-)

Three Seconds

It was a beautiful sunny Father's Day.  The ten- and eight-year old daughters surprised their daddy with cards and pictures of love and gratitude.  After a special breakfast of bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits at McDonald's, the family made plans for the day.  That afternoon, after Mommy and Daddy did a few things for work, they'd all drive to the Shenandoah National Park for hiking and dinner at Skyland Lodge.  The goal was to leave at 2:00 p.m.

At 2:00, they all got in the car.  The ten-year old forgot her camera, and she took a few seconds to go back into the house to get it.  The dad had a thing for Diet Coke, and when the Mobil On-the-Go was out of fountain Diet Coke, he took a few more seconds to drive across the street to the Shell station.  Success!  The Shell had fountain Diet Coke.

The happy family drove through Frederick into West Virginia.  They were listening to the Movin' and Groovin' playlist on the iPod, and they were all enjoying the music.  After each song, the ten-year-old said, "I like this song, too!  This is a great playlist!"

Driving down the highway at 60 mph, suddenly the dad gasped and slammed on his brakes.  The car right in front of them slammed into an SUV, throwing one passenger out of the SUV into the northbound lanes of the highway.  Miraculously, she got up and ran back to the car.  The cars were smashed, the Camry with its horn incessantly blaring, and the SUV with air bags deployed everywhere.  People were lying on the ground, hurt, and there was blood everywhere.  The Camry had fluids leaking, and a boy was trapped in the back of the SUV.  Soon, emergency vehicles descended on the scene, closed the highway, took statements of witnesses, and tried to make sense of the accident.

Three seconds.

Three seconds to make a bad decision.

Three seconds to look again.

Three seconds, and it could have been our car.

Three seconds to change everything.

Take a little time today to look around you and be thankful for your life.

Not Connected vs. Disconnected

At first blush, don't they seem the same, "not connected" and "disconnected"?  One would think that one word could be a stand-in for the other.  And while that may be true, words are so much more than their dictionary meanings. 

"Disconnected" has a much more serious connotation for me than just simply "not connected."  "Not connected" is like a plug that's sitting in the outlet.  It's not pushed in all the way, so the appliance isn't working.  At a glance, though, it looks as if it's connected.

"Disconnected," on the other hand, means the plug is out of the outlet completely and just dangling, disconnected, shall we say? :)  There is no doubt the connection is gone.

These fine distinctions are core for me as a writer.  Just choosing one word over another can make a huge difference in meaning for the reader.  I have to be very careful in what words I choose.

Lest I become disconnected from my readers.

Words And Their Associations

When we hear words, sometimes those words bring up certain images and relationships that have nothing to do with their actual meaning.  Here is a list of words that when I hear or say them, the corresponding association immediately pops up.

• Dazed - "dazed and confused" from the Led Zeppelin song
• Blend - "And you blend" from My Cousin Vinny.  Whenever the word "blend" is mentioned in a sentence, Chris whips his head to look at me .  He just knows I'm going to quote that line.  Sometimes I keep my mouth shut, and he's shocked.  But, boy, is it an effort to keep from saying it.
• Bank - this used to be "to the bank, to the bank, to the bank, bank, bank," but it's been supplanted by Antonette saying "baaaank" in her special way.  Sorry, you sorta have to be there to really understand.  :-)
• History - "His-TOR-eee" from The Longest Yard (the original) when the Warden Hazen's assistant throws Hazen's words into his face.
• Witch - "I'm not a witch; I'm your wife" from The Princess Bride.  I love saying this to Chris!
• Zoo- "Take her to the zoo!" from Rocky.  Where else do you take your girlfriend when you're an aspiring boxer and she works in a pet store?

Obviously, I like movies.  :)

What interesting associations do words have for you?

Autoantonyms

Chris came home the other day thrilled to tell me about a word story he heard on NPR.  It was about autoantonyms, words that are the opposites of themselves.  The example he remembered was "dust" - If you dust the furniture, you're removing the dust.  If you dust crops, you're adding stuff to the crops (in essence, a type of dust).

I had never heard of autoantonyms, but the concept is so cool!  (Okay, I get that maybe it's only cool to me and other word geeks.)

Here is a site that lists 49 examples of autoantonyms. 

While these examples and their opposing definitions make a lot of sense (Duh!  Why didn't I ever think of the fact that some words can mean two opposite things?), someone please give me an example of a sentence with "skin" as a verb meaning "to cover with a skin."  I don't know that I've ever seen "skin" used that way.

Also, I don't agree with "resign."  I say those words differently depending on their respective meanings, so to me, they're not quite the same word.

I Can't Believe It's Been a Week

It's been a week since we lost our beloved Maggie, our mixed miniature Schnauzer (mixed with what, we don't know).  She had been with us for fifteen and a half years, ever since she was a puppy.

For the past several months, Maggie had been exhibiting signs of kidney failure.  Back and forth with the vet, sometimes her blood levels that indicated kidney function were closer to normal; other times they exhibited signs of failing kidneys.  Before we went to Texas a couple of weeks ago, her blood levels were back to showing kidney failure.  Coming back home on Memorial Day, we knew that the road ahead was going to be a rough one, with trying to move Maggie who had chronic stomach problems to a special food designed for dogs with kidney problems.  We knew what the inevitable result would be; we hoped to stave it off a little while longer.

We just never knew that we wouldn't even have the opportunity.

Tuesday morning, less than ten hours since we'd been home, Maggie started vomiting, and she collapsed twice.  After struggling with what might happen, I told the girls to say good-bye to Maggie before they went to school.  The next hour and a half, Maggie grew steadily worse.  After one particular bad episode of vomiting and collapse, I called Chris and had him meet me at the vet's.  I didn't think we were going to make our 3:15 p.m. appointment.

After Dr. Skipton examined Maggie, I could tell right away, before he even said, "It's time," that there was no hope.  I waited for Chris, and when he got there, the rest of the process was pretty quick.

My husband and I have never lost a pet before. We both left home and went off to college before our childhood pets died. Our children certainly haven't experienced that particular loss either.

After the girls got home, we tried to explain and provide comfort to them. Kathryn had a thought. "I want to write a letter to Maggie, but I know she can't read it. What can I do with it?" I thought that a letter was a great idea. We could build a fire in our fire pit, and Kathryn could throw the letter in. I thought that might be a ritual we could all participate in. We could all write messages of love and wonderful memories of Maggie and throw them in the fire.  That's what we did Friday night to celebrate Maggie and give some sort of bookend to this grief.

All of this at the same time I was launching Write Well U.  How strange to be overcome one minute with grief and the next minute with excitement over my new venture. 

This last weekend was a good opportunity to try to adjust.  It was our first weekend home since our trip, and just that in and of itself was a necessary breather.  Then with all of these emotions going through me... I needed a weekend as a transition and as a bookend of a different sort. 

Now back into a regular week, I find myself feeling as if time is moving through sludge.  Can it be a whole week since that happened?  The sympathy card from our vet came on Friday - and that seems like forever ago.  I still keep expecting to see Maggie lying on her bed when I walk from my office to my kitchen.  She isn't there.  I look for her when we come home.  She isn't there.  Writing this, I'm crying because I miss her so much.  She isn't here.

I know it will get better, and I know time heals.  It's all part of the process.  It's just hard.

Write Well University is Here!

I can't believe it!!!  After almost two years of planning, designing, working, and, of course, writing, Write Well University is here! 

Check it out at www.WriteWellU.com!

There's been a ton of work, staring with designing the main course, the Writing Essentials Program, and creating the experience I wanted my participants to have.  Once that was settled, it was time for me to move on to finalizing the company.  I spent my What's Next? time in May working on the first draft of the website copy.  After four days writing twenty (or so it seemed) pages of copy, I thought that was the bulk of the work.  Apparently not.  There was the design part, the shopping cart part, the new merchant account part, the application/registration pages part, the sidebar part (I hadn't written any content for the sidebar for any of those twenty pages).  It was a lot of work!

Even today, June 1, the day I intended to make the website public (which I did), I've been taking care of housekeeping tasks.  They're not big things, but it's amazing how much time I can spend doing these small, but necessary, tasks.  Things like forwarding the writewelluniversity.com domain to the writewellu.com website.  Things like updating my Virtual Angel website to include links to Write Well U.   Things like making some last-minute changes so that the link to Write Well Me opens in a new window.  Small and still necessary.  And still taking up a lot of time.

That being said, I'm still so excited by Write Well U!  By no means am I tired of working on it or bored with a "Ho-hum, it's done.  Now what?" attitude.  I found myself at my much-needed massage today coming up with new ideas that I can't wait to develop!

So now it's here, and there IS a sense of "now what?" but it's more around filling my classes and writing coaching practice.  To that end, I've had this vision of today.  It goes something like this:  I'm walking along the corridor at a high school.  I get to the closed, big double doors of the gym, and I pause.  What will I find on the other side?  Will it be deafening silence so that when the doors open, they crash against the wall, and that's the only sound?  Or do I open the doors to a filled gymnasium with people all cheering for Write Well U? 

I have confidence it's going to be the latter, and I'm putting all my energy to that end.  I'm a Law of Attraction believer, and I've even watched The Secret (more on that in a future post).  I know that what I focus on and intend will come to be.

Here's to the sound of cheering and applause!