OLYMPIAD WRITING

I've been watching the Olympics the last couple of weeks. I'm usually not even interested in many of the sports, but I find myself watching anyway as it is something different from HGTV and old sitcom reruns. Also recently, I've been working on my mind - my thoughts, beliefs, self esteem, and confidence. I've always heard that an Olympian's success is as much of a result of his or her mindset as it is physical ability, but it didn't solidify until watching the Olympics.

Though I would never put myself on the same level as an Olympian, certainly not physically, and not even mentally, my process as a writer is not totally different. Part of writing well involves having pre-contest rituals - drinking a cup of coffee, taking a walk, reading through research, or breathing deep. I see the Olympic competitors performing their own pre-competition rituals.

A big part, for me, is confidence. When you write pages and pages to get a few paragraphs of something decent, your confidence can be shaken. When Olympians fall or miss their landings, even though they may have done the same thing successfully hundreds or thousands of times, their confidence can be dented. So it's important to be able to remind myself I've written successfully in the past and one (or more) miss-steps don't mean my writing will never be good again.

Finally, another similarity is simply not thinking about it too much. Before competitions, Olympians jump around in the locker room to stay loose or listen to music in headphones to try to distract themselves from the impending performance. Often, they avoid watching their competitors or seeing the scores. They concentrate only on themselves and what they have to do, not even thinking about the scores or outcome. I try to do this with my writing as well. Although I read others' work for inspiration and instruction, I certainly don't copy them and I try not to compare the quality of my writing with theirs. I simply attempt to do the best job I can do, turn it in, and hope for the best.

And maybe, just maybe, one day I'll get that writing gold!

Happy Writing - And May All of Your Words be Golden...
The Wordsy Woman

STRATEGIC FOCUS

As part of my MBA program, I'm taking a competitive strategy class online (which is awesome - class in my jammies!) We've been talking a lot about a company's mission and vision as it relates to strategy. Most (I believe) of my classmates work for large companies, totally unlike my little, one person writing and editing business. So our perspectives are different - which is actually great for the class because it gives me a way to contribute.

But because my business is just me, everything we talk about is more personal for me. My company's vision is my vision; my company's mission is my mission; and my company's strategy is my strategy. We are intertwined. I'm thinking that this is an ideal situation even for large companies - to have each employee's personal vision, mission, and strategy aligned with the company's. If an employee follows his personal mission to achieve his vision according to his personal strategy, and that is intertwined and aligned with the company's, it can do nothing else but help that company excel.

What is challenging for me in this whole strategic mission and vision process is focus. Sometimes I have so many ideas about how to operate and promote my business that I get distracted. The first step, of course, is to align everything I do with my vision and mission. My mission is to help people say what they want to say and my vision is when someone needs writing or editing services, they will think, “Get that Wordsy Woman!” and hire me. Helping people say what they want to say is the bar against which I compare everything I do; if it helps people say what they want to say, I consider it, if it doesn’t, I dismiss it.

This doesn’t eliminate everything, however, and I realized recently even more focus is needed, so I’ve decided that other than serving my current and future paying clients, I will choose three additional projects to work on over the next three months. I’m still getting ideas, but I’m writing them down in a notebook to evaluate at the end of the three months. This way, I can have enough focus to follow the strategies I’ve chosen, but I won’t lose any new ideas. 

Happy strategizing!

-The Wordsy Woman