Category: Posts (Page 1 of 33)

Who Are You Inviting To Your Greatest Performance?

November 15 / Elisa Doucette / 13 Comments

Isn’t it funny how often we won’t do something or make changes until something pushes us to re-evaluate?

After months of chatting with my SPIRLBFF about where we wanted our lives to be, I resolved on Memorial Day weekend to make some changes in my life.

The biggest of the changes so far is my decision to move to San Francisco in January.

Oh, did I not mention that sooner? 😉

Between having a bunch of clients, colleagues and friends in the Bay Area, the possibility of transferring out to UC Berkeley to finish my English degree as a CA resident ($20K tuition difference WHAT?!), finally feeling the tug of wanting a desperately needed BIG change of life, and the promise of no-snow-winters, the decision was practically made for me.

But this isn’t really about my decision to move.

It all started when I read Sam Davidson’s new book for a review over on Forbes.com (and because he is easily one of my Top 20 favorite humans on the internet). Not the “sell everything and convince yourself you are free and complete” stories that tend to float around, in the book he talks about simplifying your life by making conscious choices about where you spend your time/money/energy/life.

Then I read a post by my friend Lael Jepson about carefully choosing the people you offer a front row seat to the grand performance that is your life.

The perfect storm that swirled in my brain suddenly flashed into a serene scene that was vividly clear:

I only have 6 months left to spend with the people that matter to me in Maine.

Now let me be clear, I am fully aware of the fact that I am not falling off the face of the Earth never to return to the East Coast again. There are people who live that life sentence and I am VERY fortunate to not be one of them. The phone and internet still work in San Francisco and planes still fly West to East as well as East to West.

When your realizations are forced and you have to carefully consider your choices, those choices suddenly matter that much more.

I’m not actively shunning people or anything.

I am actively selecting people that I value (who value me back) to get a front row pass to the limited engagement of time I’ve allotted myself.

As Sam would say, we don’t need unvisited or former friends.

I think that if people add me to their online site-world-place-thing, they want to be actual friends. I don’t stop to think about the fact that they probably just want to see my pictures or add to their counts or ask me “a quick favor.” I try to value the relationship, and then I’m hurt when I realize they obviously didn’t really care in the first place.

Same happens in the 3-dimensional plane as well. Friends who live less than a mile who complain that they never see you anymore or only find time to reach out when they want something. Phones dial out the same way they receive calls and cars travel to where I am the same way that my car travels to where friends live.

Social engagements with people who don’t even reply to my Tweets and networking events with people who want to pick my brain (for free) about how to chase their dreams and offer nothing in return have tumbled headlong down the massive Chutes’n’Ladders board slide that is my life.

My friend Chris is spending 2011 writing a personal message to each and every single one of his Facebook friends telling them why they are his “friend.” I anxiously counted down the days (he is daily going through his friends alphabetically, and since I’m a genius the math was pretty easy) until mine appeared.

Elisa: The entire time I’ve known you, you’ve always been one of the friendliest and most creative people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Just scan through Ophelia’s Webb, a shining example of everything you can accomplish when you put your mind to something. Always kind and approachable, I’m glad we’re friends, and here’s to all your success!

Shit like that makes someone matter.

Sure, it feels good to hear nice things (I’m not an idiot, I know that this is totally inflating my slightly-out-of-control ego) but it also makes me realize that Chris values my friendship. For that and much more, I value his.

You know what that means?

BAM! Front row ticket. Right there.

Friendship, especially in this modern world of Face-Tweeting-Plus, is such a delicate and beautiful gift to give. It is one of the things that should matter in the beginning, middle and end. Not just at the time.

Yet it is precious.

Friendship is a small piece of you, sliced out of your chest and offered humbly with reckless abandon.

It is important to make sure that before you maim yourself, you are slicing your heart up carefully.

Hand out your pieces and front row tickets to those that will realize the precious gift that they are receiving.

Photo Credit: Flickr

What’s The Weirdest Place You’ve Gotten Some Writing Done?

November 15 / Elisa Doucette

Like a longer message? This is from my fortnightly newsletter, and you can get in on that action if you want more. Just enter your information here, and I’ll be poppin’ into your inbox before you know it!

Don’t know about you, but one of my “surf the ‘net, find pretty pictures, save to Pinterest for ‘one day’ application” rabbit holes is searching out writing and creating workspaces.

I find it fascinating to see where people work, whether they are big-name famous artists or everyday folks toiling away at their NaNoWriMo self-published vampire fanfic (that could pay off big one day…) Aesthetically and practically.

So when I saw: This Woman Wrote Her Novel At A Tire Store And Now They Are Her Biggest Fans, I obviously had to click through.

There is no crazy hook here, or bait-and-switch. This woman took her car in to get serviced, and found such a motivated jam in the visitor waiting area (with free wifi and coffee and donuts) that she started asking family and friends if she could take theirvehicles in. Just to get more time in a sweet spot she had found.

Eventually, the tire store made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

Can any of you say that you are a Writer-in-Residence for a tire company AND a published author?

Maybe you just haven’t found your perfect place to write yet; surrounded by the right people who will support you tirelessly. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)

You’re Doing Better Than You Think

November 15 / Elisa Doucette

We’ve been getting a lot of replies from people who are beginning to submit their ideas and articles more, using the calls for pitches we’ve been searching out and sharing in newsletters for the past couple issue.

I’m so glad you are finding them helpful, and putting yourself out there!

One of the top replies we get, though, is from people asking for advice on how to pitch or how to get over the anxiety of knowing whether your ideas are “good enough.”

I get it. Putting yourself out there can be scary. And rejection totally sucks.

So here’s my pep talk for you, complete with some picture evidence (so make sure you have images “turned on” in your email view):

No matter how bad you think your pitch or submission is, if you are putting in an effort and some serious thinking time, you are already ahead of 10-25% of the competition in an editor’s inbox.

I’m not just saying warm fuzzy things to make you feel better. Here are a couple recent submissions we’ve gotten in our own and various client submissions queues.

And this doesn’t just apply to pitching articles. I occasionally get pitches from publicists and PR firms asking if I’d be interested in signing on with them. Those ones are crafty, because they aren’t obviously templates (that are badly executed, like above) and they seem to have actually done some research. Yet they almost end up being worse, because they drip of falsehoods and feigned authenticity. When you only pretend to do the work, it’s painfully obvious.

(That last one almost got me to consider a positive reply…until I saw that it was suggesting that the could help me get on Forbes (where I had my own online column for a half-dozen years) and referenced a podcast I did in 2012 in which I was supposedly talking about a project I worked on in 2016. Damn, I’m a soothsayer!)

Like I said, if you are putting in the effort and time, you really are ahead.

So go out there and be the email/pitch/proposal that someone actually wants to read today.

Be Honest, Do You Read and Watch Drivel?

November 15 / Elisa Doucette

A friend sent me an article a couple weeks ago, and it’s been twitching under my skin ever since.

In the piece, the author was making an argument for watching and consuming fun and light content. Their argument was that not everything had to be a work of high craft.

Now, I’ve spoken before about my glee in the resurgence of people’s interest in “craft” and quality, especially when it comes to their media and content. Not just because I don’t have to explain as much that I don’t run a business centered around decoupage and knitting.

So it took me a while to figure out what my issue with the article was, as I’m obviously someone who believes in the importance of craft.

There’s an old phrase, furthest attributed to an English humorist Thomas Hood in the 1820’s, that “the easiest reading is damn hard writing.” Mr. Hood, you hit the nail right on the head, and that observation is even more important.

I’m always perplexed by this elite and rather ridiculous concept that for content and media to be high-quality and crafted, that it has to be obtuse. So outside our grasp and understanding that we have to work to understand and appreciate it. Slogging through any 1000+ page tome of literary drudgery will turn even the most curious reader off.

Maybe it is my affinity for reading “trashy” chick lit as often as I can? Maybe it is my binge-watching tendency on cult television darlings like Community and Arrested Development? (Season 5 coming soon on Netflix…after a Season 4 re-edit that makes it SO MUCH BETTER!) Maybe it is my guilty pleasure movie secret, which is that Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and Midnight in Paris are the only movies I have ever downloaded to every laptop I have traveled with?

The twitching, the itching, the uncomfortable feeling that I had with the article lies in the fact that someone would perceive work that isn’t critically acclaimed and lauded to not be crafted by its creators.

It’s easy to create content and media that only you understand. But to craft something that appeals to people, that resonates with them, that persuades them to become fans who eagerly anticipate your new releases…that’s quality. That’s talent. That’s devotion.

To have someone write that it isn’t, about how you shouldn’t feel bad for consuming things that aren’t “crafted”, well…that’s someone who doesn’t understand and appreciate the craft that goes into creating something great. Even when it’s “not.”