Dena's Musings

Often when I have the opportunity to meet with a prospective client who is considering using me to ghostwrite a blog, help with a newsletter, re-write their bio or help with any other number of writing projects, I am asked about how I can help them with social media, web site design or even graphics.

Do I know much about any of these other services?  Sure.  In fact, I have a DANGEROUS knowledge of what they do, which is why I must admit that I am not an expert in ANY of those things.

Words are my drug of choice -- the tools I use to make ordinary people sound like the rock stars they really are as well as showcase their talents and experience in their chosen businesses.  Most of us have something we are really good at, though.  Just because writing is not something you enjoy, are stellar at or can take the time to do doesn't mean you're not the most talented insurance broker, financial planner, attorney, closet organizer or aesthetician in your area.

Truth be told,  most people have not had any instruction in writing since college or even high school, yet they are called upon to be excellent communicators in print or online. Can you even sit down and write a five-paragraph essay any more?  That's okay, because I can't advise people on how to invest their money, defend themselves in court, or build a house.  But I can write about any of those things by doing research and using well-chosen, carefully crafted words.

Like an aerobics instructor who spends most of his or her days in workout clothes, I spend my time in my "grubbies" behind my iMac screen writing nearly every day of the week. Writing has rules, it has a cadence and for me, it even has a formula. It's similar to how your personal trainer knows what to do when warming you up, putting you through your paces and how avoid injuring your back while tightening up your abs.

Why are freelance writers in such demand these days?  Because the cyber-written word represents us on a global scale in this medium we call the Internet.  Whether we are trying to fill in our web sites touting who we are and what we do, informing potential clients about what is new, giving them points to ponder in our blogs or just using the proper words to convey our message on a simple brochure, the words we use cause people to judge us in so many ways.  They judge our education level, our ability to communicate in general, what we do and how we do it, and even the passion with which we do it -- all by how our words on the computer screen or iPad or smartphone speak to them.

Did you know that more than 75% of consumers will go online and Google (who knew that word would become a verb...) before they'll even begin considering using someone's services or buying their product?  Whether it's to get information on pricing, look at photos, read about what to expect or even find out what other people have said about you, most consumers will do their own due diligence before laying out the cash or signing on the dotted line.  For instance, I might look on Yelp.com before I choose someone to fix a dent in my car door.   What people say about your body shop there MIGHT make we want to check out a web site or two. Most of the time, however, I'll just keep web surfing until what I find a person or company that seems like a good fit.   This only goes to illustrate that if the words that represent you don't match up with someone's ideal of the expert you're supposed to be, your credibility is dismissed in a matter of seconds. We have developed shorter and shorter attention spans because we have the world at our fingertips, so to speak.

Services like mine can be one-trick pony assignments, like providing edgy wording for your web site home page or writing your bio or they can be ongoing with regular blogging and newsletters that drive potential prospects to your web site and help your "brand" move up in the Google search rankings.  It's easy for me to explain why I love what I do because, like any job we do that we are passionate about, my profession offers so much more than a mere income.  I help companies win coveted awards, tell a family's history, or even write "elevator speeches" so small business people know what to say about themselves in networking groups.  When you think about it, professional copywriters are behind every TV show, commercial, speech, movie, book, branding message,  and advertisement you see. But pay no attention to the man (or woman) behind the curtain. People just don't know we're here.

Okay. So now you're expecting me to come up with something profound to say:  I write, therefore I am?

But we freelancers don't just write.  We write for YOU and can often make you sound better than you can in your own words.  And that, my dears, is what makes all the difference.

From the time I was tiny, old-movie-watching was a disease in our household.  My father, a lover of television and communication technology in any form, would excitedly yell out to the entire family when a good old movie was about to start on TV.   And because he was the smartest man on earth to my brothers and me, we would rally ‘round the old tube-laden console and try to see things through our father’s eyes.  He would explain who the actors were, what the story was about and we would learn to love the past through movies. 

As a child, I saw the movie world that lived inside our TV set as one that must have existed on another planet.  Movies made in the 1940s had people wearing huge shoulder pads, hats at all times, suits  even in the hottest weather and dresses in the kitchen, spouting their lines in fake British accents.  They spoke to one another just a few inches from another actor’s face (tight screen shots, no doubt), which made me wonder about halitosis on the set. Still, I was riveted.  They spoke more rapid-fire than you and I, and they miraculously never interrupted one another.

Some of the more enjoyable movies were the moral-to-the-story ones with children, however.  Movies like Cheaper By the Dozen, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Lassie Come Home, National Velvet, and The Yearling helped us get a peek into another child’s world, whether growing up in a huge family, being the offspring of immigrants, being lucky enough to ride horses, owning an amazingly smart dog, or living out in the wilds of America.  Even charming shorts like The Little Rascals captivated me, as I saw what life was like when my parents were small.

As I grew older, I came to savor the whacky humor of the Bowery Boys, the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s “Road to…” movies and Laurel and Hardy’s antics as classics, taking any opportunity to see them again and again.

Some people don’t like to watch old movies.  Having seen them once sometime in their past is enough for them.  “All the actors are dead now,” one naysayer in my life would counter when I begged him to watch a classic with me.  How morbid.   The thought never occurred to me, probably because it didn’t matter. If all the characters in the movie were make-believe anyway, why did it matter that the ones who portrayed them no longer got up and brushed their teeth every day? It’s inconceivable now that he would ever purchase a DVD of an old movie and watch it over and over again, as if it were an old friend.  

So I am a sucker for nostalgia.  But I wonder if the generations that follow us boomers will learn to appreciate our history through the world of cinema or take comfort from watching decades-old movies.  Unlike my father, I was not the parent who called out to my only child that she had to watch an old movie with me because she would be silly not to, nor was I as clever nor as regal as my father when trying to explain the significance of old cinema.  Did I do her a disservice?  Is it like failing to guide your child to classic books – ones that can live inside them for a lifetime?  I can only hope she remembers the delight on my face when she passed by the family room as I watched an oldie and that memory will be enough to make her curious. I would love that legacy to live on.

When asked, most people like to talk about themselves. 

When I used to train people in the corporate world, one of the first things I would ask my students to do is  ‘fess up.  Who are they? Why did they choose this as a profession?  Why this company in particular?  And what do they bring to their careers that will help catapult them into success?

Most spill their answers out with no hesitation, offering considerably more than a short glimpse into their personalities and experiences.  So why is it such a monumental task for people to write their own professional profiles?

Truth be told, the ‘disconnect’ between spoken and written words is not imaginary for a lot of people.  And the frustration you may feel about writing your own profile, whether for a press kit, a resume or a web site is very real too.

Here’s the thing: Think long and hard about whether you want people to read about you having been described in first person or the third person.  Which sounds better?   “I have 5 years experience’  or "Joanne is a five-year veteran” --?

True, it may feel like old home week to blog about yourself, but if you look at the most well-written

 professional profiles, they tend to read more like press releases than individuals expounding on their own virtues.

Still want to say something more up-close-and-personal?  Use a quote, as if you were a reporter writing about yourself:  “I believe in giving back to the community,” says Joanne, when talking about her volunteer work at the Children’s Home. “There is nothing more rewarding than knowing I have contributed in some small way to putting a smile on the face of a child.”

Words are important.  They can move us, inspire us, inform us, pique our collective curiosity, change our minds and, for us writers, anyway, help create our legacies.  The way you sum yourself up is just as important for something that will become your semi-permanent brand in print or online, so I encourage you to give some forethought to how this portrait of you will sound, feel and appeal to others who would read it.

“Hey listen to this! The entire work force of the state of Virginia had to have ‘solitaire’ removed from their computers because they hadn't done any work in six weeks. “  ~ line from the movie You’ve Got Mail.

Remember when using computers was a novelty?  And when simple games like computer solitaire or blackjack was what you did on the sly at work? 

During an evening when I found myself channel surfing hundreds of cable TV cable channels and coming empty for something notable to watch, I defaulted to the ones that play old movies. There, I found one of those favorite old-ish romantic comedies that seem to crop up around Christmastime each year – You’ve Got Mail.

This re-match-up cutie of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (of Sleepless in Seattle fame) chronicles the demise of a small, independent bookstore in the heart of the Big Apple run by the movie’s impish female star. Tom Hank’s Fox & Son (representative of the huge chains that took over the book retailing business) has installed one of its newest mega bookstores within a few blocks of Ryan’s “Shop Around the Corner” – the one where everybody knows your name and several generations of New Yorkers can remember buying books when Ryan’s mother ran the store.

I won’t give away the entire plot of the story, just in case you consider renting it sometime in the future.  I will say that the movie remains a charming vignette with that formulaic started-out-hating-one-another-ended-up-falling-in-love stories between the movie’s two stars. What became obvious to me while watching this, however, were all the ironies that have come to pass since this 1998 movie was released.   1998!!  Doesn’t that sound like friggin’ YESTERDAY???

The premise of the mega-store eating the lunch of the small, locally run business has, in this case, already reversed itself, for one.  With the demise and down-sizing of chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble, latte-drinking purist page flippers who used to hang out all day in the big box book stores are now relegated to either finding the small stores again (if they exist) or going totally green and using their Kindles and iPads to e-read instead. That touch screen “flip of the finger” to turn pages will no doubt someday entirely replace the feel of rough paper and the smell of print; those of us old enough to remember the Ray Bradbury  novel and 1966 movie, Farenheit 451, can recall scenes of mountains of printed books in huge bonfires, making us sci-fi shudder all the more...

What’s even more ironic is the premise of You’ve Got Mail, with the two main characters meeting one another online and forming a fast cyber-friendship before actually meeting one another. It carries with it one of the main reasons for the demise of both the small AND the large booksellers: the digital age had just taken root. Remember when we were all slack-jawed by the lightening fast speed (yes, even with dial-up!) at which we could disseminate information and send communications?

It almost sounds like turducken delicacy -- the turkey-eating-the-duck-eating-the-chicken. The megastore eats up the tiny store and then a gigantic computer processor eats them both.

Okay, I pride myself in being able to find myself around a computer fairly well for a person of my decade.  I have seen the world of the communicative arts morph before my very eyes and am still waiting to see where it all ends up, as you read this from your fast-as-lightening word processing modem-spinning desktop, laptop, Android, or iPad2. 

But there is one thing I have not had the heart to give up: my original AOL email address.  The moment I read it off to someone as a way to contact me, they know my age. At times, it makes me feel like Columbus coming to America and never giving up his wooden sailing ships.  Keeping it is like hanging onto an old friend.

That’s why I love one of the self-searching lines narrated by You’ve Got Mail’s main character’s, Kathleen Kelly, as she shuts down her laptop for the evening: 

“Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when  -- shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.”

Even though many Greek-Americans like myself come to Greece more frequently than the average tourist, our memories become clouded in between trips, making the comforts of daily life in the U.S. something we rarely think about.

Contrasts and curiosities are everywhere as my husband and I arrive after a long series of flights from California. The German-designed Athens airport, completed a few years before the country proudly hosted the 2004 Olympic Games, boasts expanses of marble and gleaming metal — a testament to how the Greeks so magnificently demonstrated their worthiness in handling such a huge event while steeped in the pride of their Olympic origins. In years past, our plane would come to a halt on the tarmac amid a sea of other parked planes at an old, but humble airport. There, we would board buses that took us to the terminal in the distance. To the average American, chaos ruled as we stepped off the vehicles. Self-important men herded us into de facto lines only to wave us through seemingly “official” procedures to the excited faces of our relatives waiting outside customs.

Fast forwarding in time, we are amazed at the cosmopolitan nature of the new facility, complete with fancy bars, high-end designer shops and indoor cafes. My cousin, waiting on the other side of security, whisks us off to his new apartment in an Athens suburb. A huge departure from the types of (Spartan) accommodations I have seen in years past, his kitchen boasts a gleaming stainless steel array of miniature appliances, while the rest of the modern abode regales us with a generous outdoor balcony topped by a motor-controlled awning that lazily shades a generously sized patio. I begin to contrast it to my cousin’s grandfather’s house of the ’60s, where the kitchen contained nothing but a sink, an ancient refrigerator and a small table, forcing my aunt to take her pans of food to a local store where she paid to use an oven. Then I remembered how my father took note of this and promptly located the Greek version of Sears and Roebuck. To great fanfare, a new range was delivered and placed in a corner of the kitchen as my brothers and I watched, thinking how our father was no doubt now referred to as a “rich” American.

My cousin’s comfortable modern sofas face a flat screen TV above the fireplace, so different from the hard-backed formal settees and straight-backed chairs of his parent’s generation. Back then, few residents stayed in during good weather evenings. Instead, they took long walks with their families, greeted neighbors, friends and relatives and chatted about the news of the day, dressed in their downtown best for their nightly stroll.

Outward appearances do not hide the fact that some things about everyday Greek life have not changed much, however. Electrical sockets are still in sparse supply, with one of the most important ones (the bathroom outlet) still located outside the bathroom door, forcing one to use every inch of hairdryer cord. The plumbing system, as new as our cousin’s facilities are, still can not handle the usual handful of toilet paper as it sends its debris through an infrastructure no doubt originally designed in ancient times and never improved upon. Instead, a tiny, foot-controlled waste can sit next to each toilet in every W.C. in the land, ready to receive its unsavory gifts.

Driving in Greece has always been a crap shoot, even though many similar rules of the road exist in other countries. An abundance of tiny cars dart in and out of lanes, cutting one another off at every turn as horns blare and curse words fly. Stop signs seem to be for looks only, as a free-for-all mentality dominates any Greek intersection. When asking my cousin about such things, he explains how, although everyone is aware of the driving laws, nothing is enforced anyway.

Leaving the comfort of my cousin’s apartment, we begin to travel, now staying in small Greek hotels where some of the world’s most affable hosts run charming establishments, some equipped with more luxuries than others, including built-in hairdryers, flat screen TVs and wifi. Despite these niceties, however, door thresholds still do not meet floor levels, electrical conduit is displayed like wall art, and showers still consist of tiny, handheld sprayers while no shower curtain or door keeps the spray from soaking towels hung on wall hooks. Maintenance questions are viewed with a shrug in a “this-too-shall-pass” manner, making you feel as if you take life too seriously to begin with.

It takes at least a week for me to stop noticing these somewhat nagging contrasts with life at home in America; about as long as it takes for jet lag to stop messing with my sleep patterns. And once we’ve seen the sights and done the shopping we’ve dreamed of doing for so long, our afternoons begin to take on a new purpose. The Italians call it “the art of doing nothing.” This is when Greek life is at its finest, especially in the countrysides or on the islands. Shops close down for several hours, restaurants begin to fill for a time, serving tasty Greek salads and savory meat and pasta dishes. Then things turn quiet, as if everyone has conspired to take note of the beauty that surrounds them. Residents and tourists alike soak in the warm Mediterranean sun, gaze at the boundless blue Aegean, are dazzled by the brightness of the white stucco dwellings as the afternoon sun bathes the juxtaposition of dramatic colors everywhere they look. One hears the distant braying of donkeys as the creatures force residents to recall life not long past, the bells around their necks tinkling as they are ushered along by a leathery faced character who nags them to move a bit faster and stay in line. Tourists are reminded why Greece continues to be a travel destination despite its troubles and lack of state-of- the-art conveniences. And a collective sigh can be heard from those facing the idea they must return to their jobs and routines before long.

I remember to let go and permit myself to love this place where my roots run deep and I once again take pride in the sense of identity it offers me. Nodding off for a mid-afternoon nap, considered unproductive at home, seems downright appropriate at this point, as Greek life takes on a sweetness not easily translated.

It is at this point I realize why I am drawn back here each and every time I can scrape together the airfare. And I also know now that Greece offers more than the sum of its beautiful, but flawed and troubled parts I see on international news feeds.

Instead, it is a state of mind, reminding me that life is short, that naps are good, and that beauty is here for the taking no matter how the small inconveniences of daily life never seem to change. In so many ways, it is home.