NEED HELP WITH MAKING YOUR BUSINESS SAY WHAT YOU WANT IT TO SAY?

As part of my splitting into separate personas: my literary-author persona and my copywriting-business writing-writer persona, I'm launching a new quarterly electronic newsletter on or about November 10th: Wordsy Woman's Business Word News Quarterly.

This electronic newsletter will be designed to help businesses say what they want to say. Each issue will contain a feature story on some aspect of writing or words in the business setting. I plan to cover topics such as social media, legal issues, relationship building, content, and story-telling. Some of them will contain tips on writing headlines, promotions, blog posts, press releases, website copy, and signs. This is just a start and I plan to eventually transition into a bi-monthly or monthly publication.

A business will also be spotlighted in each issue with a focus on how each uses words and writing in providing goods and services. Finally, a quarterly tip and suggested website link or newsletter will be included. Each issue will be short, to the point, and informative.

To subscribe, click here and enter your email address where indicated toward the right of the page. I will start posting editions on that same page to start an archive once I start publishing.

Thank you in advance for allowing me to help your business say what you want it to say!

-The Wordsy Woman

SPLITTING PERSONALITIES

My goal when I started out on my own at the beginning of 2010 was to eventually spend half of my work time on literary endeavors like poetry and fiction and the other half on business writing and editing like writing website copy and e-newsletters and editing dissertations. Three and a half years (thereabouts) and three literary publications in and I'm finally getting ready to morph.

This week, I created my author website: www.jodietoohey.com. I also transformed my Wordsy Woman website to focus on my business writing. I'm also preparing to split my social media presence. People interested in me as an author of fiction and poetry will receive insights, tips, and musings on my Facebook author page and through my author Twitter handle (which I've yet to set up). Wordsy Woman's Facebook page and Twitter account will focus strictly on helping businesses say what they want to say, particularly in marketing settings. I'm up in the air about my Pinterest page and might keep that consolidated as people can just follow the boards which interest them most.

There will be some overlap, of course, but splitting will hopefully help my followers to receive communication from me more suited for their needs. The author "stuff" will be targeted toward readers and other creative writers. Wordsy Woman will be suited for businesses, entrepreneurs, or people in the marketing industry.

This blog will remain but will slowly transition more into the business writing, entrepreneurship, and marketing arenas. For now, my only literary-related blog is my historical fiction reviews blog, but starting a blog chronicling my creative writing ups, downs, and insights is on my list of eventual to-dos.

I hope you'll indulge me with your patience as I make this transition. It's a big project that I've broken into bite sizes pieces I'll feed myself (and, subsequently, you) as time passes.

If you have been in this situation of needing to create two different personas for two different businesses or "hats," please feel free to comment below.

Thanks!
-The Wordsy Woman

TRAIN YOUR BRAIN FOR NOVEL WRITING

When I was a kid, as a way to fall asleep at night, I would picture elaborate "day dreams" in my head. I was always the main character. When I was a teen, these mostly involved imagining how my latest crush would realize his love for me and we would be together. Eventually, I would get to a boring spot and I'd fall asleep.

But, sometimes, if my imagination brought me to somewhere emotional or with a lot of tension or suspense, it would keep me up half the night.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was actually training my brain to write fictional stories. So when I started to write my first novel, I already knew how to imagine the story - the trick was translating it into words on paper. To keep people reading, I just had to imagine the types of things that kept me up at night. And if I find myself getting sleepy, I know the story is going stale.

Now, when I work on my novels, I do the exact same thing but with a keyboard in front of me. I imagine the story in as much detail as possible down to the words used in conversation and I type it.

If you write stories, you may already do this as well, whether you realized it or not. But, if you haven't and you find yourself stuck, give it a try. Just write down what you see in your imagination.

Happy Daydreaming!
-The Wordsy Woman

IT'S GRAMMAR TIME - PREMIER VS. PREMIERE

It's been awhile since I've posted a grammar lesson. I ran across this premier vs. premiere word pair recently in my own writing so I thought I'd share.

According to Dictionary.com, a premier as a noun is the grand pubah or head honcho of an organization. Some countries refer to the heads of their cabinets as premiers or it can simply mean the chief officer in any organization. As an adjective, it means the "first in rank" or "first in time."

This last meaning is what confused me. I was thinking of the word in terms of the first edition or first show of a series, like on TV. At first, I thought, based on the adjective definition, premier was correct. But it didn't look right and I was justified in my suspicion.

The correct word I needed was premiere, which, according to Dictionary.com, means the first time something is performed or presented to the public. This something can be a person or the performance or presentation itself. It can take the form of a noun, verb, or adjective but all have the same meaning.

An easy way to remember the difference is to simply consider the subject of your writing. If it is a play, movie, book, television show, magazine, or any other item written, performed, or presented to the public for viewing, reading, listening, etc., the correct word is premiere. If you're talking about an officer or government person, it's premier.

Click here to view the premiere of grammar blogs by me, the premier of Wordsy Woman Word Sales and Service.

HAPPY BIRTH DAY TO MY NEW BLOG

This past Thursday, September 19th, I posted the first substantive post on my new blog: My Historical Fiction Reviews. I read a lot of historical fiction; not only do I enjoy the genre but I also write in it, currently the mid 1800s for novel set in Camanche, Iowa.

Sometimes, I find it hard to recall what I learned from or what each story was about so I decided I should keep a detailed book-reading journal. And then I thought I'll need to organize these in some way where perhaps I could search them for specific details. I could do that in a Word document, but what if my computer crashes? I'd need to create a back-up plan, etc., etc. Then I thought, why not share my thoughts on the historical fiction I read in a blog?

That way, theoretically anyway, I have people counting on me to post a review once a month so I'll be motivated to do it. And then I'll have a mechanism for searching them and they'll be backed up on the web. Voila! A blog was born.

My first post is about The Union Quilters by Jennifer Chiaverini. Click here to check it out.

Thanks for looking!
-The Wordsy Woman

P.S. If you have a historical fiction book you'd like me to consider for a free review, describe it in an email sent to me at jodie@wordsywoman.com and I'll let you know if I'm interested and where to send the review copy (print or digital).

TO DO TODAY: WRITE BLOG POST

According to a personality/character trait test of which I cannot recall the name, I'm an Achiever. One of the qualities of this trait is the affinity for to-do lists. This description is totally accurate.

Most people keep to-do lists to help them avoid forgetting something they need to do. I do that, but I also use them for another reason. I've been making to-do lists since I was in high school and needed to convince myself I actually did have things going on in my life. (The school-mandated planner process wasn't around yet.)

It's true, I enjoy crossing items off my long to-do lists and feel a little frustrated when I have to transfer things I didn't get around to doing to future days or weeks. But I also need them to remind me that I do, in fact, have goals and things I'm working to complete. If I don't, and I'm faced with a blank to-do list, I end up staring at the wall, unable to think of a single thing I need to do. And then, yes, I end up doing NOTHING.

A lot of my projects are big, so I need to break them down into smaller step-by-step pieces. This is not a new concept. I then take it a step further by writing down all of these small pieces, whittled down as tiny as I can get them, on my to-do list on my calendar. I do this because if I start to think about the whole project and all of the options available to me, I get overwhelmed. And then I get stuck.

When I get stuck, I get nothing done and then when something comes up I HAVE to get done, I erroneously think I have much less time than I actually do. Because if I focus and work and move forward on my projects, I actually get a hell of a lot accomplished. The trick is in having the right amount of items on my to-do list. Too many that I can't complete and I feel overwhelmed about that, which makes me anxious. Too few that I have everything crossed out by Wednesday and I end up staring at that wall wasting time.

When you work for yourself, sometimes you're the worst employee you could imagine having. So you need to trick yourself. To-do lists help me do that.

May your to-do lists be full and crossed-out!
-The Wordsy Woman

IT'S GOING TO BE A CRAZY PARTY

I'm a planner - sometimes, I'm a party planner. I enjoy having creative get-togethers and hearing praise for my food and ingenuity. So when it came to planning the launch party for my new book, The Other Side of Crazy (918studio), I knew I could have a lot of fun. Especially because the book itself tends to be dark - I thought it pertinent to lighten the mood a little.

As I usually do when planning a party, I scoured my recipes for ideas fitting my "crazy" theme. I wanted food disguised as other food or things, but more akin to April Fool's Day rather than Halloween. I need the food to taste good and I don't want to gross people out. I decided on Marbled Orange Fudge that I've made before and noticed it looked like Colby-jack cheese cubes, Candy Sushi, and dessert pizzas, one sweet one disguised as pepperoni and a fruit one disguised as veggies and other pizza toppings. For drinks, I'll have Sunday Punch - not all that crazy except the party's on Saturday - and plain water for the non-punch-drinkers.


I also wanted to make the party a little more appealing by giving away door prizes. Most of them, however, are not crazy: ebook stubs for Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters and copies of poetry chapbooks published by my host, Midwest Writing Center. The grand door prize is a brightly-colored snail-adorned bag with a high heel tape dispenser, to-do list napkins, a hamburger cord wrapper, candy, and colorful notebook, pens, and pencils.

Of course, the party will have the typical reading, book signing, and sale. It should be fun. If you're in the neighborhood (3rd floor, Bucktown Center for the Arts, 225 E. 2nd Street in Downtown Davenport, Iowa) from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, September 14th, be sure to stop by.

Have a crazy day!
-the Wordsy Woman