HOW I WRITE WEBSITE COPY

Being succinct is never more important than it is when writing website copy. Visitors may be visiting a website on their smart phone or tablet or if they are viewing it on a large computer screen, they will most certainly soon be distracted by their smart phone or their tablet. When someone lands on a website, the copy, along with the graphics, has to catch their attention in a snap.

Websites should be content rich and changing frequently. They should provide value to visitors; when they leave, they must feel like they got something for their valuable time. The important information should be spotted immediately. Articles and other information-rich pieces should be short enough and simple enough to be skimmed through quickly. If the grey bar in the scroll bar on the right side of the page is small, there is too much copy. Visitors should never get a cramp scrolling down to your footer.

In summary, my philosophy regarding writing website copy is like this blog post, short, simple, to-the-point, and easy to understand. And, unlike this post, web copy should only be a part of the piece, links and graphics are integral, working with the copy to make an intriguing and engaging website.

-The Wordsy Woman

HOW I WRITE ... POETRY

I never usually sit down and tell myself, "Okay, time to write some poetry." My poems usually come to me while I'm writing in my journal. I'll be writing away about mundane, every day life things and a poem will just come out in the process. Sometimes, as I'm writing my stream of consciousness, rambling writing, there will be a sentence or two, or even a few phrases, that I'll take and use to create poem.

Many of my poems are about tiny moments. They are something that just struck me as interesting so I wrote about them in as much detail as I possible could, and then I massaged the words into a poem. These are things like fog swirling over the Mississippi River on a February morning driving over the crest of a hill toward the water, the sheet of water from a sprinkler cascading over a green electrical box, or abandoned toys and roller skates in suburban yards on an early Sunday evening. I just notice them and write about them.

Some of my poems are seemingly random words that pop into my head. I just listen to the words flying through my mind and write them down. Many times I don't even know what the poem is about or, sometimes, that it will even be a poem. There have been several occasions where I'll re-read a set of lines I thought I just wrote randomly and think, "Hey, that's about..." I wrote a poem I entitled "Apology" this way.

My poems are mostly free verse. I don't follow any particular forms. Some of them rhyme and some of them don't; some of them partially rhyme and some don't rhyme at all. If a rhyming part comes to me, I include it but I don't force rhymes onto my poems. Most of my poetry is easy to understand and accessible, especially those in my book, Crush and Other Love Poems for Girls. There will be a few more abstract poems in my upcoming collection by 918Studio, The Other Side of Crazy, but even they are not terribly abstract.

As far as revising my poems, it's a matter of paring down. I cut any unnecessary or redundant words and tighten things up. I will count lines and syllables to see how close they are from stanza to stanza; if they are close, I'll revise to make them match as much as possible because I like symmetry. But, if they're too far apart, I just leave it as a free-wheeling, asymmetrical poem. Finally, I read them out loud to see how they sound to my ear and feel their rhythms.

Unlike articles or outlined novels, poems feel more elusive to me. They are something I catch like butterflies rather than sit down and produce.

Happy Writing!
-The Wordsy Woman

HOW I WRITE PREVIEW

It has occurred to me that though how people approach writing various subjects, genres, and, for lack of a better word, things, has similarities, it also has differences. So the next several weeks, I will be blogging about how I approach and "do" the things I write.

This is what I have in mind:

• Website copy writing
• Essays
• Poetry
• Novels
• Personal narrative or memoir
• Articles
• Blogs
• Social media posts
• Emails
• Journals

Today I'll talk a bit about how I approach my writing practice. I would love to say that I wake up every morning at five a.m., get right to writing, and have dozens of brilliant pages of copy by ten a.m. But, alas, that is not true. When I was working on one novel, I did get up an average of four mornings each week at 6:30 a.m. and wrote for a couple of hours before having to go to my at-the-time out-of-the-house job, but I did it reluctantly. Most mornings the only thing that motivated me to get out of bed was the thought of my rotting, pre-programmed coffee.

Nowadays, between taking graduate classes, doing volunteer work for Midwest Writing Center, and carting kids, I am a full-time writer. Though I am a full-time writer now, I'm always intending to spend more time actually writing. With a couple of recent regularly paying gigs, that is happening to a degree. As far as my writing practice, I really have no set schedule and no set routine.

I keep a three week spreadsheet of my days broken down into two hour blocks from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. that I fill in with my planned activities. This helps me to meet my deadlines and fit everything I want or need to accomplish into my schedule. It is a fluid and flexible plan so I probably never follow it exactly, but I know if I get groceries when I was scheduled to work on my blog, I'd better swap somewhere. I also keep a calendar with specific lists of tasks to complete in the week; I go by the week since my aforementioned general schedule changes so frequently.

Whether I write long hand with pen and paper or on the computer varies by what I'm working on. Generally, though, I type anything concrete I'm writing like an article but will go long hand for poetry and journal writing. I probably do write every day but not creatively and not always in the project where I want to be, but it is a process and work in progress. That's one of the great things about writing; if it doesn't work one way, you try something else.

Happy writing. I hope you enjoy my upcoming posts!

-The Wordsy Woman

MY WORD FOR 2013

One of my former instructors and owner of Integrity Integrated, Ginny Wilson-Peters, offered a challenge to her Facebook friends. Instead of making New Year's resolutions, she encouraged people to pick one word or phrase to focus on for the year, just as she does. It didn't take me long to choose a good word to focus on in 2013:

You see, I have a confidence deficit. I worry too much that I'm not good enough and that my mistakes doom me to ultimate failure. The word confidence serves as an umbrella for all of my goals for 2013 and beyond: confidence that I can eat healthy and exercise sufficiently, confidence that I can be a good mother and wife, confidence that my writing is good enough, confidence that my business will succeed, confidence readers will enjoy my literary works, confidence that people will be interested in what I have to say, and confidence that I can help others say what they want to say.

So, there it is: Confidence. This is the word I pledge to focus on in 2013.

I urge you to like Integrity Integrated on Facebook and share your word for 2013.

May all of your words be meaningful and purposeful in 2013.

-From the Wordsy Woman