The answer is always YES

When my daughter was a baby, and Ace of Cakes was on TV, I decided I needed to learn to decorate cakes. So I took a class at Michaels and learned how to pipe and make a buttercream rose. I made some birthday cakes, and then somebody asked me to do her wedding cake.

What she said was, "Do you do wedding cakes?" The answer was yes. Of course I do!

So I did.

A little later, when my cousin sent me this photo and asked if I could do it, the answer was yes.

Of course I can.

 In reality I had no idea how to do this:

Or this:

But that didn't stop me from doing this:

The year handmade scarves were all the rage, I'd never crocheted or knitted a stitch in my life.

That didn't stop me from gifting handmade scarves to everybody on my Christmas list.

The word "can't" was never allowed in my house growing up. My dad told me once, "There's no such thing as can't. There's will or won't. So either look me in the eye and say that you won't, or quit whining and do it."

Can I run a business, even though I've never taken a business class? Yes.

Can I write a novel in 30 days? Yes.

Can I do whatever it is your Marketing Manager or Content Wizard or Social Media Guru needs to do? Yes.

If it can be done, I can do it. And if it can't be done, well...we'll see about that.

Confessions of a Chronic Overachiever

It's no secret, if you follow this blog, that I'm looking for work.

Why? I'm not unemployed. Far from it, I have an established career at a stable institution. But the thing is...I'm hungry.




The thing is, I'm bored.

I've been called an overachiever my entire life. Sometimes it's a compliment, often it's not. Sometimes I've wished I could be satisfied with underachieving, for once.

But I'm not, and I never will be. That's just not how I'm wired.

For over 10 years I've worked at a California State University. It's a gorgeous campus, all green grass and waterfalls and cobblestone paths. There are worse places to spend eight hours a day.

But for all its aesthetic beauty, it's also got its difficulties, if you're an overachiever. It's a state school. It's all the bureaucracy of government layered into all the politics of academia. Red tape is the name of the game. Things move slowly. Or sometimes not at all.

I like to move.

I've stuck with it, for a few reasons. One, because where else am I going to be paid to write in this town? Short of relocating to the Bay Area, this has been my best option.

But I've also stuck it out because I've built something here. I started at the age of 22 as a receptionist. But I was one overachieving receptionist. After answering phones and opening mail in the Office of the University President for a week or two, I saw a need: her writer was busy writing speeches, and her correspondence was falling behind. I offered to write a letter or two, flashing my hot-off-the-presses B.A. in English. Very quickly, I was ghostwriting all of the President's letters, as well as editing some of her high-level publications.


I spent the next several years working as a secretary in several different offices, but I maintained the connections I'd made with C-level executives, and I built a solid reputation as a flawless writer, editor, and communicator. I did side work for everybody from the President to individual faculty members to the University PR office.


When I was hired as Assistant to the Dean in the Graduate School in 2005, I performed all my Executive Assistant functions beautifully. But I also combed through the School's publications and web site, offering suggestions, until finally the Dean asked me to rewrite and redesign them all. Within a few months of hire as an Executive Assistant, I was promoted to a position created especially for me: The Graduate School Communications Coordinator.

I held this position for 5 years, and I built an entire marketing, recruitment, and communications plan from literally nothing. I hired an assistant. I attended conferences and made connections. And I wrote. I wrote everything.

At the same time, I took a side job as a Thesis Reader, responsible for proofreading master's level theses just prior to their publication. I made myself the best Thesis Reader on staff, and eventually another position was created just for me. I became the Thesis Reader Coordinator, and my job was to hire, train, and supervise the staff of readers. I instituted staff-wide workshops, training, style guides, and an email list, bringing 8 Readers who had previously been fully independent (and wholly disconnected) together to form a cohesive team. And I personally read every thesis written on campus that first year, to be sure my staff (and the training I'd provided them) were up to par. The crop of master's theses that year was widely recognized across campus as the best-written and cleanest copies in recent memory, and I learned so much about the writing and reading process that I was able to further improve the work of the Readers the following semester.

Eventually, a victim of budget cuts, the Graduate School was reorganized and disbanded, and I was reassigned to the Admissions and Outreach office. This was 2010, and I walked into an office whose social media efforts were stuck somewhere around 2006. The Admissions office had a dusty, silent Facebook page boasting 30 fans. So I took over. I opened Twitter and Instagram accounts. I created an editorial calendar, a social media marketing plan. I grew the Facebook page from 30 to nearly 500 fans. I took countless online courses and attended every webinar I could cram into my schedule, to teach myself the art of Social Media and Content Marketing. I hired another assistant. I incorporated social media into every aspect of our recruitment and publication efforts. Every event had a hashtag. Every web page had social media links. To this day most of my superiors are not on Facebook or Twitter. For the most part, I don't think they have a clue what it is I do. But it brings in traffic, and it attracts students, and it increases engagement, and so they let me do it.

In 2012 I took it upon myself to start a Student Blogging project. This was an ambitious undertaking for a little rural state school whose administrators barely accepted Facebook and pretended Twitter didn't exist. Nobody wanted to let me do it. Student bloggers? Uncensored? Unmoderated? Right on our website? Was I insane?

Probably. But I was determined to drag this school into the 21st century, so I did it anyway. I did it responsibly, but I did it, without the support or even the knowledge of many of my higher-ups. I hired 4 bloggers, students I knew and trusted. I trained them, and I set them free. Then I marketed the crap out of them, and I tracked their analytics, and I submitted a report to my manager. Here, look what I have done. It's already in motion. Try to stop it now.

Spoiler: they didn't. Because it was awesome. Because it was innovative and unlike anything any other campus in the 23-campus CSU system was doing. Because other, larger campuses took notice. And because it worked. It brought in the kind of students we've always had trouble attracting: high-achieving, highly engaged students who had choices, who were looking for something special. We showed them the only story that matters, the student story. We let our current students do the talking and the recruiting, and it worked. It still works.

Two years later the blogs are the cornerstone of our social media and content marketing efforts. Incoming students love reading them, and current students love writing them. I have dozens of applications each semester; they're only paid $18 a week to blog for us, and I'm only allowed the budget for 7 of them at a time, but those 7 spots are coveted.

From an outside perspective, from the real world, our blogs and our social media profiles are not much to look at. I know that. I'm proud of what I've accomplished here with very few resources and with roadblocks at every turn, but I'm not deluded. I may live in this small town, but I live on the Internet, in the pages of Venture Beat and KISSmetrics and Lifehacker, on Twitter and on Reddit. I live at lynda.com and TED, at Moz and Seth's Blog and Entrepreneur. I live wherever I'm learning and growing and readying myself for something bigger.

The world has changed in 10 years. A lot. And the Silicon Valley is calling my name. I love tech, I love communication, I love social media and content marketing. Above all, I love writing. But I also love living where I live. I want to work where I live, so I've made the most of it for 10 years.

I'm bored.

I'm hungry.

And it's time to break out, because the remote work movement is real, and it's happening, whatever Marissa Mayer might tell you. And for the first time in history a talented person can live where she wants to live and still work on the cutting edge. Tech like Sqwiggle and Dropbox and Skype make it possible. Teams like Buffer, Automattic, and Zapier are leading the way. Remote work has the Richard Branson Stamp of Approval. It's the future. And I want in.

I read this article the other day, and it's been stirring around inside me ever since. Ten Years of Silence.

My ten years are up, and I'm ready to begin my masterpiece.

If you're a forward-thinking company looking for an overachiever, hit me up:

Follow me on Twitter.

Link up on LinkedIn.

Shoot me an email.

Image credits: FilmDoctor, Buzznet

"Let Alone." Use it right.

"Let alone."

I keep seeing it used wrong and it. is. driving. me. nuts.

pics on Sodahead

PSA: "Let alone" does not mean "not even."

Here is a wrong usage: "I wouldn't follow you across the country, let alone down the street."

You could replace "let alone" here with a version of "not even": "I wouldn't follow you across the country, or even down the street." That would be correct.

That's not what "let alone" is for.

"Let alone" means "certainly not" or "especially not" or, perhaps most clearly, "much less." MUCH LESS. In other words, it's exactly the opposite of the above uses.

If you say "I wouldn't follow you across the country, much less down the street," what does that mean? I wouldn't follow you all the way across the country, probably, but I'm much less likely to follow you down the street? That's not what you mean to say, surely. You mean to make a contrast for emphasis...

"Why would I follow you all the way across the country? Dude. I wouldn't even follow you down the street!"

Correct usage: "I wouldn't follow you down the street, let alone across the country."

See? The first thing is minor...the second thing is major. It's a contrast. I wouldn't do the first thing, so I would be MUCH LESS likely to do the second, bigger version of that thing. I wouldn't EVEN follow you down the street...LET ALONE all the way across the country.

Stop using it backwards. It makes me crazy. I know you don't want to make me crazy, Internet. So stop it.

I'm here to help you stop making me crazy. You're welcome.

a poem for my daughter

(on her 6th birthday)

I'm almost surprised
to find your hand
is still delicate in mine
crisp paper bone
fingers
one by one
flutter wings
in the shelter of my palm
not seeking open sky
but content
to flutter in place for now
as you sing to the sun
your voice not a baby's
but a girl's.

How writing is like cake decorating.

Just read this and got inspired.  "Are the Rules of Writing Killing Your Creativity?" by Asrai Devin.

The rules of writing include all those "do-nots."  Don't overwrite.  Don't overtell.  Avoid purple prose.  Stop describing things that don't matter.  Get to the meat.  YES.  This is all important.  But this is not how creativity works!  Here is the line that hit me hardest:

"It's hard to go back and add details.  You lose the voice of the story."

YES.

And that's the key.  The rules of writing are really the rules of editing!  And you cannot edit what you have not written!

I've mentioned before that I've been known to decorate cakes.  Here is one of the cardinal rules of cake decorating, the rule that ensures your buttercream is satin smooth with no lumps and cracks and inconsistencies, no unsightly cake crumbs marring its surface:

Start with way too much icing.  

After the first application of icing, only remove, never add.  Never.  Add.  More.  Icing.  Only remove the excess until you're left with perfection.  And if you don't add enough excess in the first place, you're screwed.  So you have to really pile it on thick.  Lots and lots of icing has to go on that cake, icing that you know full well is just going to come right back off.  But it has to be there!  It serves a purpose!

And it works.

And that's how writing works, too.

And that's why NaNoWriMo works.

These 30 days are your first application of icing.  The dumping.  The huge scoop, scraping the entire bowl of icing onto the top of your cake, leaving nothing behind, never worrying that it's too much.  Dump it all.  Write everything.  Write the nonsense.  Write the garbage.  Write all the possibilities, every ounce of plot, story, character development, overanalyzation.  Put it all down.  Because you cannot go back and add substance later, not really, not consistently.  You'll end up with cake crumbs marring the surface of your cake.  You'll end up losing the voice of the story.  All you should be doing in draft two is removing.

Or, as Stephen King put it in his book On Writing:  "2nd draft = 1st draft - 10%."

Only removing.  Never adding.

But before you can remove?  Before you can edit and whittle and shape and carve and smooth it down to perfection?  You have to DUMP.  Empty out the bowl on top of your cake and leave nothing behind.

I need to go write now.

How NOT to begin NaNoWriMo

1. With a sink full of dirty dishes.
2. With a mountain of unwashed laundry.
3. With an endless to-do list at work (the kind that follows you home).
4. With a Girl Scout guilt trip cupcake order due November 2nd.
5. With no outline or any story-related prep whatsoever, really.
6. Without an official Survival Kit consisting of Mountain Dew, chocolate, fuzzy socks, note cards, post-it notes, guilt-inducing quotes and reminders, etc. (I always make one of these the last week of October.  Until now.)
7. Without a fully-planned menu and housework schedule to get the rest of the family through November with as little drama as possible.
8. With a mind that is totally scattered, distracted, unprepared, and not remotely in writing mode.

What can I say.  I'm a rule-breaker.

Write on, Wrimos!

I'll...um...catch up.

RemembeRED: Turning Heads

This year Mom took me shopping at Masquerade Madness, the dusty little costume shop downtown bursting with glorious wigs and unexpected treasures, a whole wall of movie makeup and an old man behind the counter who can turn you into anything, anything at all.  I picked my way past the rustling ball gowns that have hung there longer than I’ve been alive, the twenty different varieties of vampire fangs, the vials of black-red gelatinous blood and the Marilyn Monroe wigs on faceless wire busts.  I made my way to the back, to a long white dress.  A glossy black wig, so unlike my own newly-permed cloud of hair.  Gold jewelry, lots of it, all snakes and winding things.  And makeup.  So much makeup.

Early in the morning I wrap my hair up tight, cover it with the cap like the old man showed me.  I adjust the heavy black wig, admire the way my skin glows fair beneath it.  Such a change.  I apply makeup slowly, carefully, following instructions I’ve clipped from Seventeen.  Smoky Egyptian eyes.  Red lipstick.  If I keep my mouth shut you can’t even tell Cleopatra wears braces, the bands orange and black for October.  I am transformed.

I walk to school.  This is always the worst part, on Halloween, the solitary walk to school, head down.  It’ll be better when I get there.  When I'm surrounded by monsters and fairies and the flirty, almost-slutty nurses who are sure to appear now that we’re teenagers, but we'll all be in this together, all of us pretending, playing, all of us transformed.

I hold on to the memory of myself in the mirror as I left the house.  I tell myself I am stunning.  Conspicuous.  So unlike the invisible girl I am.  I’ll turn heads.  I am brave.  I am beautiful.  I am transformed.

By the time I arrive my feet are already protesting their strappy gold sandals.  I smooth my wig, feel the lipstick, waxy on cold lips, lift my head high, and step onto the middle school campus.  Into the den of lions.  I’m thirteen and this is the fall of my eighth-grade year.  I’m going to make an impression, one that will carry me into high school, one that will change everything.

I survey my audience.

I turn heads. Yes I do.  I make an impression.  Because I?

I am the only one in costume.

 

This was my first contribution to the Write on Edge memoir-writing meme RemembeRED.  Here is the prompt:

Reach back to a costume that made an impression. Was it yours? A friend’s? Maybe it was a costume you never got to wear. Show it to us with your words, draw us into the emotions it evoked at the time.  Word limit is 400.

Head over to Write on Edge today to read the work of other writers responding to the same prompt!

In which I inspire greatness.

I'm feeling giddy today because I woke up to THIS.

See, you guys?  I am totally INSPIRATIONAL.  And you thought I was just some nut writing about my kids and antidepressants and zombies.

Thank you, Shannon!  You made me giggle too and I'm so glad we "met" last night.

Did you know? I'm a writer.

I'll be participating in my third National Novel Writing Month this November.  NaNoWriMo, if you weren't aware, is a challenge to complete a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (the month of November).  I started in 2009 and successfully completed 50,000 words.  Let me tell you something:  That's a lot of words.  A LOT of words.  Many try.  Few succeed.

Check it.

In 2010 I gave birth in September and attempted Nano in November with a 6-week-old in the house.  It was a spectacular failure.  But I was ok with that.

So now I'm trying again, 2011, ready to go.  My baby is a year old now and reliably goes to bed at 8 and sleeps all night (holla!).  So I should be able to get some writing in each evening and get my gears turning again.

Because I want to be a writer.

I want to be a writer?  How sad.  I used to say "I am a writer."  But writers write.  Right?  Writers write, and I don't write anything these days.  Well, let me qualify that.  I write for a living.  Technically.  I am a writer.  But I write marketing copy, admission letters, college catalog copy.  I write other people's words.

And I write this blog.  And I love writing this blog, and part of the reason I started blogging was to find my voice again.  And I plan to keep writing this blog as long as you keep reading it, and maybe even if you don't.  But at the end of the day, the writer I want to be is a fiction writer.  A novelist.  And I haven't been actively writing fiction since...November 2009.

So I'm here to say that I am a writer, and I am going to write. I'm going to write marketing copy and admission letters and academic catalog copy, and I'm going to write this blog, and I'm going to write 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days.

 I'm pretty sure placement of this badge constitutes a legally binding contract.

Some of that may cross over.  Well, I won't make you guys read any admission letters.  Probably.  But you might have to read some of my NaNoWriMo fiction posing as blog posts.  Deal with it.  It's good stuff.  You'll like it, ok?

Oh, also?  I'm cheating.  The rules of NaNoWriMo state that you must write an entire novel, a new novel, in 30 days.  I'm not doing that.  Because that's not what I want, what I need, from this experience.  And I don't work for NaNo, NaNo works for me.  Yeah.

So I'll be starting my word count at 0 and doing 50,000 new words.  But they'll be part of a larger work in progress, because I'll be continuing the novel I began two years ago.  OK, the novel I began at age 16, the novel that has grown up with me, that's been written and rewritten and burned and resurrected a dozen times in a dozen different iterations over nearly half my lifetime.  Because that's the novel that's in me, and someday it'll be finished, and someday it'll be great.

Here's a synopsis of that novel:

In 1979 Dr. Vivian Bell, two-year-old daughter Julia in tow, led a motley band of idealists from a California university to a patch of rural farmland and built a commune--a self-proclaimed “Utopia” seeking to create a life of equality and harmony. Rebelling against both the competitiveness and materialism of the culture at large and the free-love individualism of the hippies before them, the founders of Orchard Valley Homestead set out to create something better for themselves and their children. Decades later the community lives on, forgotten by the world, its members doggedly clinging to ideals they’ve failed to live up to time and time again. It was here that Julia grew up, both inextricably bound to her mother’s creation and unbearably resentful of it. 

How We Go On is the story of mothers and their daughters in a world defined at once by isolation and by community. Vivian will grow larger than life in this world; Julia will be destroyed by it. And in her last moments Julia will throw her own daughter, 13-year-old Shelby, the only lifeline she has—a life somewhere else, with a man Julia once cared for, a man who left their childhood home without her. Shelby steps out alone, still numb with the loss and betrayal of her mother, towards an unknown future in a culture both deceptively familiar and terrifyingly foreign, only to be confronted by her own past: her newly appointed guardian, an uncle she’s never known, holds secrets about her, her mother, her long-forgotten father—and the community they all once belonged to, the only family Shelby has ever known.

I hope you guys will all stick with me through November, and cheer me on, jeer me, kick my butt, mock my failures, etc.  I need you to hold me accountable.  OK?  OK.  Thanks.