Jennifer Jeffrey, Writer & Editor

A Day in the Life of a Writer

I realize that my last post probably got you closer to understanding what I do every day, but that it still didn’t get you all the way there. I plan to eventually tell you a bit more about my day-to-day routine, but I thought it would be MUCH more fun to tell you what I used to think life would be like as a writer.

Before I became one.

A Day in the Life of a Writer (Fantasy Edition)

9:00 am – Wake to the sound of birdsong. Rise and meander to the kitchen; put on the teakettle. Idle on the deck for a while, overlooking the downtown skyline, teacup in hand.

9:30 am– Enjoy a leisurely hot shower; slip on something stylish; apply makeup.

10:15 am – Turn on the computer. Check email; send witty replies.

11:00 am – Write page after page of pithy, insightful… words.

12:30 pm – Meet writer friends for lunch; talk about writer-ly things. Discuss who has what plum international assignments. Say things like: “I’m scheduled to be in Europe that same week!  Let’s meet up in Budapest!” Linger over an espresso.

Decoding the Word “Writer”

A couple of years ago, I realized that most people had no idea what I meant when I said: “I’m a writer.” Do you write poems? They asked. Children’s books? An advice column?

I couldn’t fault them for being confused; “writer" is a very broad term. With so many different kinds of writers writing so many different things, how could anyone guess what I do from day to day? That’s when I started using the term “copywriter” – it was more specific, and a few people knew what I meant, but still – most people asked what section of the bookstore they could find my books in.

Then a friend introduced me as a “copyright.”

That’s when I realized that we writers need to get better at explaining this wild world of words that we inhabit from day to day.  So I created this short list of the major categories that fall beneath the word “writer.” For you. Because you might want to know.

Different Kinds of Writers – Or, What Writers Do

(in alphabetical order)

Authors. Broadly defined, an author is someone who has published a book. Not always, but usually. She might be a romance novelist, or a crime writer, or a cookbook author, but in general, an “author” is defined as someone who has her name on the cover of a book. Most authors identify themselves as “novelists” or “nonfiction writers” – but if they have an ISBN number, they're authors. Historically, this is the gold star category that all writers aspire to.

Job description: Write books that people will buy. Preferably more than 10 people. Bonus points: write  books that tens of thousands of people will buy.

Bloggers. Are bloggers writers? Hey! Don't be such a snob. Bloggers are a newfangled addition to the genus writer, and may or may not overlap with other writer types. There are copywriters who blog. There are journalists who blog. There are novelists who blog. There are people who had never written more than two sentences a row before they started blogging, and now their blog is popular, and they’re getting writing assignments and book deals. It's all good.

Job description: Keep readers coming back. Make friends with other bloggers. Don’t let a war break out in the comments. Don't ever say: "newspapers are dead."

Copywriters. A copywriter is someone who primarily creates marketing-related materials. We work with advertising agencies or directly with companies; we write about brands, products, or campaigns. Copywriters write for the web, for print (brochures, catalogs, press kits, postcards – anything you can hold in your hand), packaging (including wine labels, product boxes, jars, and bags) and any and all advertising mediums. Our audience is usually “the consumer” – that means you, if you’ve ever bought anything in your whole life.

Job description: Make people want to buy things. Provide them with the information they need to make a decision. Bonus points for being clever, insightful, or memorable.

Reports of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

 

Just because I haven't posted in over a month doesn't mean... a thing.

Except that I'm re-thinking my blog entirely.

(Don't be a-scared)

It's that time of year, isn't it? Time to re-evaluate. Time to notice what's working and what isn't; what feels natural and what doesn't.

I'm most definitely not going to stop blogging - I just needed to take a bit of time to step back, reflect, and consider where to go next.

More on that soon.

In the Meanwhile - the Internets are Full of Goodness:

+ 100 People: A World Portrait. If the world were made up of 100 people, who would they be? (Hint: 13 would be Africans; 17 would speak Chinese; 18 would not be able to read & write.) This is great stuff.

+  The Selby... is in your place.  This Selby guy gets to go into people's houses and take pictures of the gorgeous, inspiring, creative spaces they live in. Hey, I want that job! (Via a story in the New York Times)

+ An interview with artist Peter Crnokrak. With a last name like that, you simply MUST be awesome. And he is. Check his type treatments. Yah.

What She Said? That's What I Wanted to Say:

"I always wanted a happy ending... Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." ~ Gilda Radner (1946 - 1989)

Above: Nobodys Coming, by Ray Beldner, taken at the Catherine Clark Gallery.

That Last Couple of Drops Makes All the Difference

It’s been nearly three weeks since my last post, and I’m not going to grovel, I’m just going to say: wow. Wish I could feed you stories about diving off an exotic reef, or at least dipping my toes into the Pacific, but no: I’ve had projects + deadlines + stacks of Things To Do. My fingers, lo, they have been flying.

But the air is beginning to clear, and I’ve taken a couple of days to replenish my sleep deficit, and I'm starting to feel human again. The air is turning crisp, and I'm greedy for the last few weeks of summer. I’ve taken to getting outside early in the morning, feeling the fog dissolve into mist against my skin as I measure the light with my eyes, pleading silently with it not to go. I’m not yet ready for dark mornings and murky afternoons. Light: please stay.

Coming up for air, I stumbled across this strand of inspiration:  perusing the New York Times online, I found  an intriguing piece on John Stewart, brilliant-witty-handsome news anchor with serious content beneath the snicker. Buried on page three was this gem by Stephen Colbert (speaking here about working with John):

“We often discuss satire — the sort of thing he does and to a certain extent I do — as distillery,” Mr. Colbert continued. “You have an enormous amount of material, and you have to distill it to a syrup by the end of the day. So much of it is a hewing process, chipping away at things that aren’t the point or aren’t the story or aren’t the intention. Really it’s that last couple of drops you’re distilling that makes all the difference. It isn’t that hard to get a ton of corn into a gallon of sour mash, but to get that gallon of sour mash down to that one shot of pure whiskey takes patience” as well as “discipline and focus.

Score.

That paragraph stopped me for a moment, pulled me back to center as I wondered: what am I distilling?

Am I still digging for the pure stuff, staying the course through the last couple of drops?

Am I being patient, disciplined and focused? What’s coming through?

(It takes space + time to parse those questions. They get right to the heart of everything I hope + fear as it relates to writing + communication.)

More soon. Really and truly.

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I don’t often blog about the projects I’m working on, but one of my client sites launched recently, and I'm so excited about it, I had to share:  479° Popcorn is an artisan popcorn venture based here in San Francisco, the brainchild of a wonderful woman named Jean Arnold. It was a pleasure to work with Jean and the rockstar team at The Engine Room, who designed this gorgeous packaging that has been mentioned by everyone from The Dieline to Packaging  Digest.

Organic, local ingredients + sustainable business practices + meticulous attention to detail - 479° Popcorn is the real deal, and I feel fortunate that I got to be involved from the start – working on everything from the packaging copy to the website.

It's so much fun to see it out there in the world!

If you happen by BiRite or Blue Fog Market, or if you’re far away from San Francisco and get a jones for caramel popcorn dressed in fleur de sel – 479° Popcorn has the goods.

A Letter from the Editor

Today seems like a good day for a State of the Blog Address. After a week of dizzying heat that delivered summer on a sweat-soaked platter, San Francisco is cool and foggy once again. It’s Monday: time to get down to business.

I’m envisioning this post to be like a letter from the editor that prefaces so many of my favorite magazines - you know the type: in the top left corner is the editor’s photo, often in crisp black and white, eyes looking calmly at the camera, shoulders square. A cozy chat follows: “Here at Thus-and-Such Magazine, we’ve always believed that…”

I love those letters - that sense of purpose, that warm, reassuring tone. It makes me feel like I’m gathered with all of the other readers in a dark auditorium, or around a crackly fire, and someone is saying: Here's the inside story, people. We've got a plan, a map, a vision. Just follow along, and all will be revealed.

As editor-in-chief here at the Jennifer Jeffrey blog, I’m here to tell you – just as you suspected, we don't have a plan at all. I know – you're not surprised. But it feels good to say it just the same, to put it out there, to acknowledge that I have no idea from one day to the next what I'll post, or if I'll post, or even if I should bother posting at all.

And to admit that I'm truly amazed that anyone still checks this space out, because it's so inconsistent and haphazard. And to say that I'm really grateful for those of you who do, because you know what: I like you. I like you a lot. Those of you who comment, and those of you who don't; those I've met and those I haven't met yet - you're good people, all of you.

I know it's gotten a bit weedy and overgrown around here – I get it, I do – and it feels terrific to say so, even though I don't have a prescription for it.

Remember when this blog thought it might be a food blog? When I posted pictures of swiss chard + ice cream and wondered if feminism was compatible with eating SLOE? Ah. Then there was the introspective period, when “we” became “me,” and I drew the curtains while I grieved. Then there was the Little Bit of Everything phase.

Lately, this space has become more of a clipping site, a place where I post pictures and links to things that inspire me. Over the last few months, I’ve found myself craving beauty, seeking out light + bright, dark + quiet, beating down the door to every museum and gallery opening in town, soaking up color + texture, images + words. Art has been the balm for my soul, and I who love words have just wanted to look and listen, not write. Even the pages of my personal diary are largely blank.

The result, of course, is very untidy, and it certainly doesn't make for responsible blogging. Every day, I talk to my clients about Staying On Message, and Creating a Consistent, Authentic Voice, and Sticking To a Publishing Schedule, and on and on.

AND I DON'T DO ANY OF THAT.

But I want to, I do.

And eventually, I will. I'm feeling the itch to write again – slowly, you understand. I don't want you to start Expecting Things.

But I do want to say: thank you. Thank you for hanging in there through the twists + turns + dry patches. I know you have many marvelous reading choices, so the fact that you check back in now and then means a lot.

And fear not: here at this blog, we've always known that we’re going to find our way eventually. We aren't sure when that will be, exactly, but we hope you'll stick around while we meander towards that glorious day. As a token of our appreciation, we'd like to extend a special offer to you, our loyal readers – if you subscribe today, we'll give you 60% off the cover price for the next TWO YEARS! What can we say – we're feeling generous.

Who loves you, baby?

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(Oh, and while I'm in housekeeping mode: that black bar near the top of the page? Several of you have politely coughed and murmured: um, that bar thingy doesn’t work. When we click on those words? Nothing happens. Yep, I know. Those words should be clickable, and soon they will be. I’ve always believed that when you experience tremendous frustration on a website, you're that much happier when things finally start working… Wait. No. I don’t believe that at all.)

Munching on Corbis Brain Bran

I recently signed up for Corbis Brain Bran and ordered their deck of inspiration cards.

It's a limited-edition collection of 24 cards printed with an eclectic assortment of images from the Corbis Image Library. Each card has a statement on the back designed to juice up the creative process when your mojo is running dry.

Like:

Go Commando

Create a Manifesto

Hire an existential detective (what a fabulous idea!)

The images range from shocking to mundane (the tribal figure above is one of my favorites: yow!) You can also subscribe to their RSS feed, which offers a steady stream of images + ideas.

It's a fun concept. I wish I could make my own deck. I'd love to assemble my own collection of images on thick, sturdy cards like these. Hmm. Maybe I could order a postcard deck from Moo - but they're glossy and snapshot-like, and I love the matte, cardboard feel of these, and the way that you can play around with them and make a sculpture of sorts when you're feeling bored or thinking through something.

I occurs to me that a custom deck like this would be a great branding piece for design agencies and copywriters to give as a gift to clients + prospects - a way to say: we think groovy thoughts and you should hire our brilliant selves, pronto-like.

Oh, the wheels :: they are turning.

The 9-Year Old Cynic

Have you seen this Dairy Queen ad?

It starts off so well; I love it when the little girl flutters her fingers in a sweet wave to the boy across the restaurant.

Then the employee delivers a sundae "...compliments of the gentleman in the donkey shirt."

Another wave. Aww.

It's the ending that gets me: "Like shooting fish in a barrel," the little girl tells her mother with a cynical twist to her lip.

When did 9-year olds get so jaded?!

I've never written copy for TV ads, but I have written magazine ads, and I understand that technically, this piece is a success. The writer here delivered both warm fuzzies and a surprise ending. I mean, I'm still thinking about it, and isn't that what counts?

But: it leaves me feeling queasy. I don't want to believe that pretty little girls are calculating how to squeeze gifts out of boys BEFORE THEY'RE OLD ENOUGH TO WEAR A TRAINING BRA.

Though it does fit nicely with my Guaranteed-To-Be-A-Bestselling e-book titled: How To Become Filthy Rich as a Freelance Copywriter.

Chapter 1: Always Appeal to Base Human Instincts

In no particular order:

• Greed
• Envy
• Pride
• Lust
• Fear
• Hatred

Master this, grasshoppah, and your bank account, it shall overflow.

And you thought freelancers toiled away for peanuts? Bah.

Psst: The Middle Class is Sitting in the Comfy Chairs at Starbucks

Over tea a couple of weeks ago, a friend and I were discussing our mutual addiction to the New York Times online. "It's kind of embarrassing," my friend murmured, "how far short the Chronicle falls in comparison." We both sighed, and took another sip of tea.

I remembered our conversation this morning, when I clicked over to the Chronicle and saw not one but two intriguing headlines: "A Midwage Free Zone" and "Water Coolers for Freelancers." The first article claims that midrange jobs in the Silicon Valley (defined as a yearly wage between $30,000-80,000) went up in smoke - "vanished!"- over a four-year period. The second article talks about the hordes of independent professionals who haunt Starbucks and are now looking for co-work spaces.

What do these two topics have in common? Anyone?

One thing I love about the New York Times is that their writers often cross-reference each other's pieces, acknowledging and discussing the findings of their peers in their own work. This is smart for so many reasons: the site gets more page views because their writers are linking to each other, and the experience for readers is much richer and more rewarding.

It would have been so nice for someone at the Chronicle to take a moment to connect the dots between these two pieces, or at least for the writers of the pieces to reference each other. I don't believe that the middle class has "disappeared" in Silicon Valley, though the suggestion did provoke a number of hostile and prejudiced statements in the comment section that follows the article. I do know that the number of creative, independent professionals in the Bay Area is continuing to grow rapidly, as it has for years. This isn't news, but it directly affects the credibility of the first article.

Who, after all, is paying for the electricians and plumbers that the article lauds? The shrinking middle class is an intriguing topic - but in this case, I think the writer missed an opportunity to take a closer look at some additional dynamics that might be causing the "job" number to shrink.

If there is one thing that many bloggers know that some newspaper writers don't, it's this: cross-linking to thought-provoking ideas is a great habit to learn. It only takes a minute, but it makes your work so much more effective.

Perhaps the best part of the "Midwage..." article was the closing quote, offered by economist Doug Henton: "In a world where the company no longer takes care of you, you have to take care of yourself." Many of us already are, Doug - and you can read all about it in the "Water Cooler..." piece!

(I wanna be a) Paperback Writer

so grateful am i

The wine glasses have been polished and returned to their cabinet, and the leftover turkey has been tucked away in the refrigerator. Thanksgiving Weekend is nearly over.

I don’t want it to slip away without mentioning how grateful I am.

If you’ve read between the lines in my (scant) posts over the last few months, you know that it’s been a tough year for me on the personal front. There has been much sadness, and many tears, and more sleepless nights than I can count. My heart is still raw and punky and sore, and summoning my usual optimism has felt like a chore.

But that's not the whole story. Not by a long shot. I could easily stay stuck on the sad, discordant events of 2007, but the fact is that they’re only a small part of the rich narrative that has run through the year.

This weekend, I’ve taken some time to reflect on all that is good and precious and true in my life. There is so much – it makes me weak in the knees when I think of it.  I’m a blessed girl, truly I am.