About that ‘about’ post

I was scribbling the post that describes what this website is all about. And it dawned on me as that some might be interested in tracking its genesis – how it got from the ether to my synapses to the World Wide Web.

To be honest, I was just as interested. I don’t know how this stuff happens, most of the time. It just does. Reflecting on the composition, the editing, the word choice was a valuable exercise for me, too.

It started with Jeff Goins. He’s a writer who teaches other writers, with a specialty in bloggers. He’s good, too. Check out his blog when you get a sec. Jeff says one of the first posts you should write is the one that describes your site’s main purpose in life. This is good advice. And it’s more about the writer than the reader. It focuses your mission, so to speak. Helps shape your brand. Begins to answer the question, “what do you stand for?”

Thinking about folks like Jeff, my first lede for the about page was:

The experts tell me I’m supposed to tell you exactly what this website is designed to accomplish.

But then I thought, wait a minute. I’m supposed to be the expert here. So, I did what copywriters the world over do, every minute of every day: I tweaked the line to put the focus on the product:

The professional communicator in me says I’m supposed to tell you exactly what this website is designed to accomplish.

It’s typical for me to resist authority. Although I respect folks like Jeff and others who really know the blogging business, I bristled at his directive. In a sense, it’s counter to what a successful blog is supposed to be – a conversation. Hence:

But that’s rather a tall order. It’s akin to predicting, as your dinner party guests arrive, exactly how the conversation will go between oysters Rockefeller and tiramisu.

Here I needed a real-world metaphor you could sink your teeth into, no pun. The dinner conversation seemed the right kind of example. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the word tiramisu.

I could have googled it. But that would have required actual, physical effort in typing it into the search window. I’m not a big fan of Siri and other AI assistants. I’ve never gotten used to talking to machines. Instead, I quizzed Mrs. Emma, the human Siri, who happened to be sitting next to me watching the morning news.

“What’s that dessert called, with mascarpone cheese and ladyfingers?” I asked.

“Tiramisu?” came her reply.

“Yeah, that’s it. Thanks.”

(Call me old-fashioned, but talking to people – especially people you love – beats the living crap out of talking to machines, any day of the week.)

Back to my issue with the experts. A good blog is a conversation. I think most of us can agree on that. And predicting the ebb and flow of a really good conversation is a fool’s errand:

In my view, it’s a conversation. And what differentiates good conversations from mediocre? The good ones meander. Thoughts rise to the top and pop, like the bubbles in the champagne, each spawning the next. Sometimes a whole litter. That’s what makes it magic. You never know where it’s headed.

Here, I vacillated between differentiates and separates. In this instance, separates meets one of my top three rules for clear writing: don’t use a dollar word when a nickel one will do. But in the end, I ended up favoring differentiates. It’s more precise. Separates merely divides. You can separate a pile of oranges into three piles. But that doesn’t make any of them apples, right?

See the difference? 🙂

Originally I had:

Thoughts rise to the top and pop, like bubbles in champagne …

Next, I violated one of my other top three rules for clear writing: when editing, pretend every word costs you a dollar. Now get rid of those suckers, they’re expensive. Instead I actually added two words. What’s that about?

Thoughts rise to the top and pop, like the bubbles in the champagne …

The allusion is the dinner party. The illusion is the champagne. I want you to picture that dinner party, to actually imagine it. Calling out bubbles and champagne with the article the locates the champagne at that very dinner party, in your mind’s eye.

Here’s what I can tell you. We’re going to chat about writing. Particularly, writing for business, which is a ridiculously different animal than any other kind of writing. 

Originally I had:

… a whole different animal.

But that didn’t seem strong enough. Copywriters are asked to do some bizarre and counterproductive things. (You have no idea.) So, I punched it up to ridiculously.

We’ll chat about language. Especially about words, their origins and evolution. And we’ll chat about the strange, surreal and otherworldly universe of the advertising agency.

And few things on God’s green Earth are stranger than the advertising agency. Strange wasn’t nearly strange enough, hence:

… the strange, surreal and otherworldly universe …

The rest sparked this very post:

Outside of that, who knows?

If you’re interested in peeking behind the curtain to see what agency copywriters do – or if, like me, you simply love words, you’ll find something worthy of your time spent here.

OK, here’s a crazy idea. Since I just penned this post, its birth, rearing and discipline are fresh in my mind. If you really want to look under the hood of the writing process, take a look at this. (With the caveat that writing may very well fall in the same category of laws and sausages.)

Back to Jeff Goins. He’s a smart guy. He tells a story about Derek Sivers, who founded CD Baby. It was dedicated to giving independent bands a place to publish, before Youtube and iTunes revolutionized the music business. As he looked around, Derek thought everybody in his world was doing amazing things. Everybody but him, that is.

Then one of his customers thanked him for creating something as amazing as CD Baby. And Derek had an epiphany. He considered what he was doing pragmatic, routine and humdrum. But, to others, it was amazing.

With this anecdote, Jeff made me realize that what writers do is kind of amazing, too. Then, I jumped off a proverbial cliff, with this notion:

I’m a writer. Does that make what I do amazing?

No. Couldn’t be. But wait. Maybe it could. Just a little bit?

With that idea – maybe, just maybe what I do is at least a little bit amazing (God, it feels weird, writing that), I thought, let’s dissect the about page to plumb the depths of how the amazing happens.

-S

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