Who’s Afraid of The Big Bad Wolf? A lesson in perseverance from a 7 year old

So my 7-year-old son is in theater camp this week and there’s a performance Friday afternoon for family and friends to cap off the week. I pick him up on Monday and he announces he’s playing the Wolf in his group’s production. The leader hands me the script with a smile, “He’ll need to have his lines memorized by Friday.” I slide it into his bag and we start home.

“I get to wear a wolf costume!” Will it have a tail? Will I get to wear a mask? He was zeroed-in on Everything Wolf during the short car ride home.

No stopping this guy!

Figuring we should rehearse, I pull out the script and my eyes progressively widen as I go through it. He’s the LEAD with like 20+ lines!!!!! And this ain’t no cutsie play either. It’s ridiculous, with references to Shakespeare and humour even I barely get!

Sample:

“Skakespig: A bell by any other name would chime as sweet. A bell, a bell, my pigdom for a bell.
WOLF: Hey, in there—It’s the Big, Bad Wolf. Get up off those curly tails, pack your suitcases, and get ready to move out, ’cause I’m gonna huff, and puff, and blow your house down!”

Three.Typed.Pages.Plus.

Trying to mask my fear for him, for me—for the entire production, I manage to eek out,  “Honey, these are a lot of lines to learn. You know you can’t read it from the paper, right? Maybe you’d like to be the person that shouts ‘Make-up!’ instead?”

(Oh please, Oh please, let him pick the person who has five repetitive lines…)

“I want to be the wolf. It’s the only wild animal in the play Mom!”

We ran through the script a few times, me humoring him for the time being while trying to plot a way to save him…and the play. He just turned 7 and the kids range in age from 7 to 12! He’s the youngest in the group. To my astonishment, he didn’t do too bad on the read-through. When I asked him to read it through for his Dad, he replies, “I can’t. I’m embarrassed.”

Could this be him?

“Dear, you realize you’re going to be doing this in front of A LOT of people on Friday, right?!”

I figured I’d speak to the leader when I picked him up from camp on Tuesday. Maybe there was another role he could get excited about?

After tentatively voicing my concerns, Cheery Leader responds:
“Oh your son’s doing great with his lines! Better than most in his group and he’s really enthusiastic!”

Wait. What?!

We ran through his lines again 4x that night and again the next. I’m sweating like a pig and my wolf has about 3/4 of his lines memorized already!

I don’t think I’ll make it to tomorrow. I’m a ball of nerves  and I’m sure I’ll be sprouting grey hairs by then.

Putting my selfish anxiety aside (for now), my 7-year-old son taught me a lesson I should have taught him this past week.

If you want something bad enough, you’ll be willing to work hard and take risks.

In this case, my son wanted to wear the wolf costume. He would not settle for one of the pigs. Not by the hair on his chinny, chin, chin. The risks were explained to him and he was even dissuaded by his own mother (how’s that for overcoming obstacles?). He understood that wearing the wolf costume involved a lot rehearsing and memorizing. And he was willing to do it.

He learned his own lesson and I got schooled as a Mom. I will never be a ‘hater’ again or try to over-protect my son from the possibility of failure. From now on, I will be his biggest fan no matter what the odds. Though he was willing to go for it alone, having a team behind you –  that believes in you, certainly increases your chance for success.

My son has it right!

The curtains open tomorrow at 3:30pm EST. He could run off the stage. He could freeze and forget his lines. He could start crying. But he could also nail it! Though I’ll be cheering for the latter, if any of the former(s) happen, I’ll be there to pick him up and tell him how proud I am that he made it this far.

Mother Theresa once said, “God doesn’t require that you succeed. He only requires that you try.”

The morale of the story:

May you all have the courage to be the Wolf!

Signed, Completely-freaked-out-but-very-proud Stage Mom

How My Mommy Scared Me Social Media Straight

It was early evening. I was mindlessly scrolling my timeline taking in the mish-mash of posts: toddler-smearing-supper-on-face / Look-at-me: I-just-ran-another-25k! / Here’s-that-recipe-for-pizza-lasagna / cat-stuffed-in-shoebox /. And the Skype sounded off.

It was my mother.

Not the How-did-Nanny’s-little-man-enjoy-daycamp-today Mom but the I-told-you-social-media-is-evil Mom. She was on another social media rampage.

“You’re putting too much out there!” She proceeded to tell me that my latest blog post was filled with critical comments.

As I’m hitting blog-related tabs and buttons in panic mode, Yorki Poo Pepper begins barking at me to throw her stuffed monkey across the room and hubby is yelling questions at me about our weekend plans while on the phone with his buddy.

I’m in full-on freak out mode at this point and vaguely remember screaming at people (and animals) to “Zip It!” in an attempt to focus on my mother’s monologue.

I’m bouncing back and forth between glee, “I have blog comments?!” and horror, “People are telling me I’m ‘clearly too young to be a serious copywriter'”. What the what?!

Fast-forward.

Mommy Dearest was not looking at my blog. She accidentally clicked on a tweet in the sidebar that linked to an article. An article I didn’t write. The cleverly-worded condescending comments were not directed to me or my blog post, but to this poor girl’s article.

Cue: Mutual Sigh of Relief (and valium if either of us had any).

I proceeded to explain for the 100th time to Mom why it was important that I was active on social media while reminding her that her beautiful face was in fact, purposefully, obscured from said post.

See Mom? No face!

Since when do we ever really listen to our well-meaning Moms anyway? 😉

But Mom got me thinking (again) about the lasting impact our words have in cyberspace. Obviously it’s a huge can of worms. To get more specific and relevant to my audience: Our personal and professional Social Image is fabricated from our posts including comments on other posts.

It’s the reason employers are asking for access to Facebook accounts. Even without the access, a Google search on a potential candidate can yield a treasure chest of information. That info is processed to paint a picture.

It’s up to you and/or your company whether that canvass features a Mona Lisa or an extra from the set of the Walking Dead.

Is this your social media face?

I, for one, am typically careful about what I post when it has my name or my company’s name attached to it (one begets the other).

In the case of the article Mom was referring to, the comment that caught her attention came across to both of us as condescending and rude. A potential employer or prospective client could easily find her comment and make a snap judgement about her character. We sure did.

This particular example targeted the author’s ‘credentials’ as opposed to discussing the article’s overall content. The way you interact with a company’s brand can also be up for interpretation. We, as consumers, increasingly leverage social media to interact with companies.

Three years ago or so, I wrote a blog post lamenting some winter boots I purchased. It was meant to be humorous, chronicling the kilometers-long walk to pick up my son from daycare that felt more like an Everest expedition in bare feet. Three days later, I received a comment from the company who manufactured the boots offering to give me a full refund on the boots.

I was flabbergasted.

Customers are jumping onto social media to sound-off, good and bad, and savvy companies are bending over backwards to respond. Just as we are told to be careful what we say on a friend’s page, we need to be equally vigilant about how we interact with the companies we do business with on social media.

Don’t get me wrong.

When you have exhausted every offline avenue in attempt to get an issue resolved, taking to social media can very quickly turn a situation around. But how are you approaching it? Remember. Companies are people too. The majority of these people have the best interests of the customers they serve at heart and work hard to bring home a paycheck. Reckless social media rants can damage livelihoods and even close businesses down for good. For every justified public complaint, try to post at least one positive compliment on another business’ page.

The moral of the story is pretty clear, if you haven’t guessed it already: THINK before you POST.

If it’s not, don’t post!

And also, don’t let your well-meaning, anti-social media Mother attempt your blog by herself 😉

This message has been brought to you by: Mother Sorta Knows Best

This Copywriter’s Vacation

“Farewell to Nova Scotia, the seabound coast…” It’s a song I sung proudly and loudly in my Grade Four music class, led by the incomparable Mrs. Parsons.

Hubby, the almost 7-year old and myself just returned from a whirlwind ten days visiting my folks and family in the Canadian province dubbed as “Canada’s Ocean Playground”.

Selfie Fail with the Mom

Though we didn’t dip our toes in the ocean this time around, we enjoyed four days of record-breaking heatwave poolside at the folks’. Nova Scotia is also well-known for it’s sucky unpredictable weather so we relished the sweaty sunshine before it turned back to sucky typical.

Hubby and son rock climbing at Peggy’s Cove

The cooler weather sure didn’t dampen our fun times. The closest we got to salt water was climbing the rocks at famed Nova Scotia landmark Peggy’s Cove and our highly overpriced 30-minute expedition around Halifax Harbour on Theodore Tugboat. Seriously Halifax? If you’re reading this, $20/adult?! Next time, we’re taking the $2 ferry ride from Halifax to Dartmouth and we’ll wave to Theodore when he’s docked.

The BFF and her little man on Theodore

With the exception of ‘social-media-ing’ for a fantastic client and the occasional “Look-at- how-much-fun-we’re-having!” FB posts, I rarely touched my keyboard. My writing hands were devoted to cuddling my adorable niece and new nephew, holding glasses of wine, scooping out mussels and slamming killer volleyball serves.

Son loving his baby cousin

Daddy getting ready to serve

Ten days later and now my hands are back in their usual position, ticking away on QWERTY. And you know what? I kinda missed it. That my friends is how you know you’ve found a ‘job’ you love.

From the mouths of sharks

My desk is my playground :-). Join me! I promise we’ll have a lot of fun!

Until next time, Jenn the Copywriting Queen

http://www.ifixtext.com

Your English Language Superhero

How to avoid overused words, jargon, idioms and cliches

I’m working on a mission and vision statement for a soon-to-be-launched design house in Sweden. It’s fun. And it’s amazing how much work goes into a few lines of text, primarily because of how much impact these two statements have on shaping the business. Honestly, it’s quite humbling to be involved.

My passion has always been in working with start-ups. It’s like giving birth. Scratch that. It is NOTHING like giving birth. Been there, done that. And if you’re a Mommy, there’s nothing quite like THAT experience ;-). I’ll compare working with start-ups to the beginnings of a new, romantic relationship. So much excitement, mystery, passion and hope mixed with confusion, awkwardness, fear and anxiety. It’s a rush.

Just like a new romantic relationship, you have visions of a beautiful end result. Marriage, a family? In the case of a small business, hitting big customer and $$$ milestones? Words like: “market-leading, world-renowned, the biggest/best, the #1” become part of your presentation jargon. After all, at this early stage, The world is your oyster (cliche-alert).

So…in working with this cool new start-up, I loved their use of the word ‘iconic’ to describe the ultimate destination for their brand. And then my balloon deflated when I read this…

“Some writers say that the terms “icon” and “iconic” have been overused. A writer in Liverpool Daily Post calls “iconic” “a word that makes my flesh creep,” a word “pressed into service to describe almost anything.”^[24] The Christian Examiner nominates “iconic” in its list of overused words, finding over 18,000 “iconic” references in news stories alone, with another 30,000 for “icon”, including its use for SpongeBob SquarePants.^[25]

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_icon

Boooooooo! And then I started looking at every word and term in our draft vision statement critically. And I started second-guessing the text. And worse, coming down on myself as a writer because I was ‘guilty’ of employing overused words and cliches in my copy.

How many do you use on a regular basis?

Then, I put my head back on straight (idiom), dusted myself off (another!) and leveraged (overused) my proven experience (a no-no word in CVs/resumes) as a copywriter to teach myself a lesson (cliche).

Disclosure: Even as a professional copywriter, I am still not 100% clear on the difference between idiom and cliche. Though I do know an idiom can be a cliche and vice versa. Have a read on the differences yourself and feel free to correct me in cases where I may be wrong.

Because if the shoe word fits, wear use it!

What I’m trying to say in a very roundabout way here, is this:

Don’t get yourself all worked up trying to avoid overused words, idioms and cliches. When you’re writing an important piece of copy, just go for it. You can always go back and replace a word you feel may be overused (cue: Thesaurus) or pare down a jargon-filled paragraph. In the case of my client and the drafting of the all-important mission and vision statements, being bold in your language should trump worries of ‘overused words’ every time.

After all, if you don’t toot your own horn/sing your own praises/, no one else will ;-). That said:

1. If you’re appealing to an an international audience, be forewarned that idioms that work in your native tongue usually don’t translate well to another language.

2.  The KISS Principle: Keep It Simple Stupid Sunshine! Go for a word like ‘use’ over ‘utilize’.

3.  And if you’re still freaked out about potentially ‘utilizing’ overused terms, have a read through the following links:

• This general list contains a mix of funny and serious: Enough already! 2012’s list of most overused words and phrases
• Get on that LinkedIn Profile folks (heading there straight after I hit ‘Publish’): 10 Most Overused Words On LinkedIn Profiles
• I am guilty of using a lot of these words. That said, I still consider some of them irreplaceable: A Bizspeak Blacklist

What words do you want to see banished to the fiery pits of Mordor? Do share!

Until next time, Jenn

http://www.ifixtext.com

 

Freaky Friday: Does your website look like this?

Mr. iFixText sent me a link saying, “I thought this kind of website was dead.” It really should be honey. Grab the shovels and let’s start digging a very deep hole.

Seriously though, designing/redesigning a website for your business can feel like a death sentence. Obviously if you have the funds, you’ll hire a professional. But if you’re strapped for cash and using one of the growing number of Do-it-Yourself tools out there (Wix, Weebly, GoDaddy), Day #1 can feel like you’re at the bottom of Everest looking way up and wondering how you’ll ever make it to the top alive.

These are just a few of the zillions of questions that will start running through your head:

“What do I say about my company and its products?”

“How do I organize the information?”

‘What types of graphics should I use?”

“Is this too much (text) or not enough?”

“Where should I stick my social media links?”

“Where’s the valium?!”

You’ll read through/watch tutorials on your chosen platform, scour the Internet for tips, ask friends, check out competitor sites and fill your brain till it’s borderline comatose.

Calm down, take a deep breath, grab some chocolate and have a look at this awesome Infographic I came across shortly before hubby sent me the website from hell. This is only a portion of the Infographic. So you’ll have to visit SingleHop for the full graphic (because it’s proper cyberspace etiquette to give credit where credit is due).

Such a great resource for DIY web ‘developers’

In the humble opinion of this marketing writer, these are genius tips for anyone building a website (because they’re based on solid evidence of what works). They’ll give you a benchmark against which to plan and measure your content. And they’ll give you the confidence you need to start your journey towards that great, money-making website for your business.

What do you think? If you already have a website, are you evaluating it against the Infographic? (I know I sure did) If you’re planning a website, are you giving me (and SingleHop) a big cyberhug of thanks right now?

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Jenn, The Text Fixer

www.ifixtext.com

jennifer@ifixtext.com

How the Pink Caped Crusader Welcomes you to her Blog…

“GAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!” That’s the sound of me after spilling an entire fresh cup of coffee onto a pile of paperwork, my only batch of business cards and the adjacent wall (for good measure). See?!

:-(…my poor business card…

This happened shortly after I spilled half a container of coffee grounds onto the kitchen counter and floor.

Truth be told, the “Gah” above was only a small portion of the sounds that could be heard throughout the home that houses my office. I also swore. A lot. But the lady buried underneath my yoga pants and cutsie pink t-shirt will not repeat the swear words on her business blog. Have you ever noticed that the first words, after “Hello/Goodbye/How much?”, we tend to learn in another language are of the expletive variety? I know bad words in French, Swedish and Serbian. Yay me! So there you have it, your first impression of the founder of iFixText. She swears and she can do it in a few random languages. “Nice to meet you!”

Of course, thanks to online tools like Google Translate we can all swear in any language we so desire! In fact, these online translation tools make us believe we’re language superheroes, breaking down language barriers all over the world with the simple click of a mouse.

Before you go flying around mainland China in your cape negotiating business deals, join me here on solid ground for a little while?

You see, though these tools have indeed helped us towards a universal language of sorts, they also give us a false sense of security. Online translation tools lack the ability to translate subtext, innuendo, slang, regionalisms and other distinct language qualities.

Here’s an example. A random piece of Swedish text I copied from Sverige.se.

Beroende på vilken tid av året man tillbringar i Sverige sâ finns det olika utomhus aktiviteter. Under vintertiden finns det vinter sporter som skidåkningen , skridskoåkningen och is klättrande. Såsom på våren och sommarn så kan man njuta av bergsklättring, fiske, seglingen och många andra upplevelser i Sveriges natur.

I ran it through Google Translate and this is what popped out:

Depending on the time of year you spend in Sweden, so there are various outdoor activities. In the winter time there are winter sports like skiing, skating and ice climbing. As the spring and summer, you can enjoy mountain climbing, fishing, sailing and many other experiences in the Swedish countryside.

Do we English speakers understand what’s being said here? Absolutely! Do we get the gist of the message? You betcha! Is this how WE would write the above passage? Nope.

If you’re a tourist hopping around ‘INSERT COUNTRY’ and are using that country’s language to communicate (thanks to instant translators), you’re making life easier for yourself and likely charming the pants off the locals in the process.

But…

If you’re a company from ANY country trying to compete in a country that doesn’t communicate in your native language, ‘insta-translators’ are not the answer. There’s nothing charming about bad grammar, typos or heaven-forbid, cultural faux-pas (intentional or not) in your marketing material or business correspondence.

Today, English is the international language of business (that could change!). Non-native speakers learn it in school (or at least through song lyrics) so it’s typically not too difficult to find someone who speaks English to ‘translate’ your company website,  sales letter or direct mail campaign. But what you REALLY need is a translator and/or English-language copywriter to ensure your text communicates your message accurately.

And when I’m not cursing over coffee, it’s what I live and love to do. I spent an incredible seven years living and working abroad, in Montenegro and then Sweden. Working as a communications consultant, I discovered quickly how much I truly enjoyed helping clients and friends fix their English. I felt it was my way of giving back to those who were teaching me how to pay bills, serving as interpreters at my obstetrician appointments and overall, embracing our family into their culture.

I became ‘that English girl’, rescuing the innocent from embarrassment and defeating misunderstanding with my mighty keyboard. Ok, so I’m not your standard issue superhero,  leaping over tall buildings in a single bound, but I dubbed myself The English Language Superhero. A) It makes me look all  mysterious and B) I needed an excuse (any excuse) to buy a pink cape.

Now that we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way (true, they have been a little one-sided..for now), perhaps you’re wondering what’s in store for this blog. I honestly have no (clear)  idea. But I’m thinking…

a little shameless self-promotion…

Call in ‘the Fixer’.

mixed with some wise writing tips,

Yoda knows all.

cute puppy pics,

Meet Pepper, my Office Puppy!

some favorite EngRish tranRations,

If you’re going to fall, do it gracefully.

and random musings from yours truly…

Pink Cape..told ya!

Ok…ME!

Enjoying the Swedish Midsummer Tradition with a crown of flowers in my hair.

I promise to also share some stories of our travels. That’s it for Blog Post #1. If you’re yearning for some more dirt professional info on me, feel free to check out my LinkedIn Profile.

Until the next random blog post,

Jennifer Iannuzzi, founder, iFixText.com

jennifer@ifixtext.com