Re-inventing yourself is another way of saying you are deliberately making a decision to grow. It’s a sore point for some. “I like you the way you are,” is a powerful threat, particularly from those who love you. We all know people who still have the same hairstyle, clothes, and beliefs they did in Middle School.
Tough seedpods protect small seeds.
Nothing against loyalty, but often we outgrow that look, those ideas, and even the dreams we had. In fact, we should. We should allow dreams to grow up, too.
Growth includes overcoming resistance, from the seed breaking out of the shell to the flower breaking out of a bud. Friends and family can be despicably mean in the face of your growth, but it is your growth. If they don’t want to come along, they will make that decision for themselves.
In about six weeks, I will have a new website, and after seven years of having a website and a separate blog, the blog will move over to the website. When that day comes, I’ll lose all my readers who don’t come over and sign up again. I will have to ask people to change with me.
It was never my idea to track my readers, except if they choose to comment. You can sign up or delete the RSS feed to my blog and I’ll never know. Readers have always had the freedom to come and go.
The good news is, it is still in your control to read my blog (or not).
Fencepost cactus flower © Quinn McDonald 2014
The bad news is, you will have to re-sign up on the new website. It’s not ready yet, and I’ll give you plenty of warning when it is. This blog will stay up for a while after the switch, but no new posts will be added. Some of the old posts will be moved and all new posts will be on the new website.
Another change is the tagline. For years, it has been “tips, slips, stumbles and leaps on the creative journey.” While creativity is a huge part of my life, my website will concentrate on writing, teaching and coaching.
The writing focus comes in two parts: corporate training and online training. I’ve been a corporate trainer for 20 years, but never talked about it much–some of my clients have non-disclosure clauses, and it was easier to be quiet about all of them. I’d like to welcome more corporate writing-training clients. I have a killer one- and two-day course on business writing. In person. Grammar, punctuation and syntax with lots of exercises and lots of personal attention. I don’t know how to teach without customizing my class to the specific participants.
I will also welcome invitations to teach writing to retreats and small groups. For retreats, I will be concentrating on the healing, growth-inspiring aspects of writing. Most of it will come from the exercises I’m developing for the new book. [Working title: Write Yourself Whole.]
I have two suggestions for a new tagline:
1. QuinnCreative: Be understood. Everyone, especially writers, wants to be understood. Having the audience understand your writing and message is just as important as the deep personal need to have your values understood. Corporate clients need their teams, departments, sales reps and speeches to be understood. That tagline has both an emotional and a benefit appeal.
2. QuinnCreative: Clarity starts here. Most corporate writers think that jargon makes them powerful, when it weakens the message. Crisp, short, focused writing delivers a message that everyone can grasp and use. I teach a kind of writing that sucks out the bloated, vague words and concentrates on speedy verbs and muscular nouns to get the job done. That tagline fills a tool-using benefit.
Opinions, please: which would offer you more–the real you, not second-guessing what a corporation would prefer.
—QuinnMcDonald hopes she never gets tired of change.
QuinnCreative 