A man, mid-40s. We were chatting in a bar, this past August. He asked about my hat, his wife asked about my sun shirt.

He said he’d had skin cancer, then he rolled up his sleeve to show me: A long, laddered scar that spanned his elbow and wound its way across his bicep. He’s got, like me, hundreds of moles. He’s had, unlike me, more than 30 biopsies. He is, I’m glad to report, one year away from the 5-year mark, when he will be deemed cancer-free. I hope he makes it. He’s sure he will.

And he confirmed – as if I could possibly disbelieve my eyes – what my surgeon said: There is no cure for melanoma. They cut. And cut. And cut. So deep. So wide. So long.

It’s the so long that gets to me:

Melanoma is the least common but the most deadly skin cancer, accounting for only about 4% of all cases but 79% of skin cancer deaths.

For 2002, the American Cancer Society estimates there will be 53,600 new cases of melanoma in the United States and 7,400 deaths from the disease. Melanoma is currently the sixth most common cancer in American men and the seventh most common in American women. The median age at diagnosis is between 45 and 55, although 25% of cases occur in individuals before age 40. It is the second most common cancer in women between the ages of 20 and 35, and the leading cause of cancer death in women ages 25 to 30.

What about sunscreen?
There is an ongoing debate about sunscreen:

Yes, it’s necessary to protect yourself from the sun.

Yes, it will keep your face looking youthful, longer.

Yes, there appears to be evidence that some sunscreens are worse than others. Here’s a list of products that might help guide your decision.

I wear sunscreen (minimum SPF 15)  myself, every day. For me, the risk of wearing a possibly harmful lotion is less than the reality of the surgeon’s blade.

August 2008: I have this mole, right above my right breast. I like it a lot: It’s sexy.
About six months ago it started getting darker. The edges blurred. It grew, slightly larger, slightly thicker. I knew it had to come off. But I really liked the mole. So I watched and waited.

Mole-roulette, I was playing with fire.

I walked into my doctor’s office. “This mole has to come off.” She glanced, nodded, then her eyes flew up to my face. She pushed back my hair, touched my left cheek, above the jaw. “This one, too,” she said. A few minutes later, I felt her cool hand, touching the back of my left leg, the meat of my calf. “And this.”

Lidocaine, bandages. This time a rash, a fierce itch on my chest, swelling. “It’s very deep,” the nurse said when I called, “Doctor had to dig deep to get the whole thing.”

Third time down this road, I’m waiting for a phone call that doesn’t come.

I wait, denial leaves me content. The itching stopped, the swelling eased. I don’t call – silence is good news.

The phone rings while I am on deadline. “We need to schedule surgery…”

There are only two details worth sharing:

1.  I was ‘as close to’ melanoma as one could get…without actually being diagnosed. In other words, one screaming close call.

2.  This time, no white sheet blocked my view. Instead, I kept my eyes closed the whole time – except for this one moment: I peeked, and saw the surgeon transporting a large blob of flesh, blood dripping, fat globules dangling, from my chest to a large vial.

The mole is gone. I have a jagged scar I’m told will fade in time. I’m trying to believe it’s sexy, but all my necklines are higher now.

I’m glad, grateful, that this cut – so deep, so wide, so long – was enough. The margins are clear. That’s what the lab report says, it gives no other explanation, no recommendations for self-care. But I don’t need them: I wear sunscreen. I invest in Coolibar clothing. I see my doctor annually. Between visits, I study my front. My husband’s got my back.

I don’t want to see another mole go bad. I don’t want another scraping, another surgery. I’m taking care, but at the same time there’s nothing more that I can do. The initial damage – years of unprotected sun worship – is done. What lies beneath each and every one of my moles is an active volcano: It can erupt at anytime.

Next up: Susan meets melanoma survivor.

“Is this Susan Rich? We need to schedule you for surgery, immediately.”

“What? Why?” I was baffled, sure I’d misheard the voice on the line.

“You need to have some moles removed.”

That’s how I found out (again) that my moles were on the march, taking their first unwelcome steps towards melanoma. This was December 2005, a few days after I’d had four moles scraped off my body.

Less than a week later I was on an operating table, a white sheet dividing me in half. I stared into the bright overhead light, at the surgeon, his assistant. I couldn’t see my abdomen, the lower right quadrant where two errant moles had been scraped away.

Scraping is a biopsy, removal means surgery: Stitches, a scar.

“How big?” I asked.

The surgeon shrugged. Until there’s a clear margin, he said.

And then he explained: Even though the visible mark is gone, moles are not surface blemishes. A certain amount of skin – so deep, so wide, so long – has to be removed to make sure the entire mole is gone.

“And then I’m ok,” I said. A statement. Relief. Another small scar. No big deal.

He shook his head. “No. Then we do another biopsy. If there’s still a trace of pre-cancerous cells, we cut some more.”

I raised my head, tried to stare down the table. The white sheet blocked my view.

“Again?” My voice faltered.

“And again. Sometimes we have to cut so deep we need to do a skin graft to cover the wound.”

“Is it.” I couldn’t say cancer.

“Melanoma? No. But we still have to make sure we get it all.”

Then he explained: There is no cure for melanoma. No cancer drugs have proven effective. The only treatment is to cut: So deep, so wide, so long. A series of deep cuts, mathematically precise, with no guarantee that the first cut will be the last.

I put my head down. Stared up at the lamp. “It was a tiny mole. Both of them. Smaller than the scrape you can see.”

He swabbed my abdomen. Injected a local anesthetic. The scalpel glinted. “You’ll feel pressure, not pain.”

He was right – there was no pain. Instead, I felt warmth: My blood welling, then spilling down my side, pooling below my back.

“I grew up in Arizona, Phoenix. Before I knew about sunscreen – I used to put on baby oil and bake in the sun. Now…I’m better about it. Not lying in the sun.”
But I was lying.

He nodded, pursed his lips. Yes, it was my fault. Yes, I was paying for my past – my passionate love affair with bronze skin.

“You had a mole removed once before. I can see the scar.”

“Yes…”

He looked up, his eyes met mine for the first time since the surgery started.

“Statistics show – once moles start to turn, they keep turning. That doesn’t mean you’ll get melanoma, but your risk goes up with every biopsy. Now will you take this seriously? Start wearing sunscreen. I don’t want to see you in here again.”

Next up: When is a mole a beauty mark?

December, 2005: Four small black marks with irregular edges and dense centers. These spots have been a part of my anatomy since my late teens, along with dozens of others sprinkled across my arms and legs and back. A precise row comets across my face, the one in the middle looks just like Cindy Crawford’s.

When I was 12, I used to cry when I looked in the mirror. In the words of a sixth grader, my face was spotted, like a bug. All that year and next I shied away from meeting people, convinced their instant judgment had them comparing me to a less-than-glamorous ladybug. I refused to look at myself in a mirror, and if I did, I focused on my eyes or my nose or the center of my chin, mole-free venues, safety zones.

My mother proffered makeup: I daubed on foundation and cover up. The dark spots faded, my skin tone was smooth. I studied the results and reached for a washcloth. I realized, suddenly, that hiding my branding was the same as hiding me.

More moles appeared as puberty progressed, like a permanent form of chicken pox. Spots and spots and more spots.
It took years to adjust to the moles, the imagined stares.

I laughed when I learned that fake moles – beauty marks – were the rage in the era of Marie Antoinette. Men and women pasted on what nature had sprinkled on me like pepper. Of course women also rouged their nipples and men wore white wigs. It is easy to covet, enjoy, what isn’t real.

Nature’s tattoo, that’s how I describe my moles today. A swirl of cocoa-colored constellations that only I can name. My moles are a part of me, too many to count, a visual anchor when I look at my arms, my legs, my chest.

Fifteen years ago a mole on my stomach started to shimmer and grow. Its progress was noticeable, frightening. The mole was removed, a biopsy done: Displastic, indicating the presence of pre-cancerous cells. A narrow white mark, thick with a ridge of keloid scar tissue, is all that remains. This and the knowledge that I am at risk for melanoma, and have to avoid the sun.

Waiting for the next mole to morph was a slow trickle of sand through a large hourglass. Yesterday the sand ran out.

The dermatologist checked my scalp, my eyes, the soft tissue in my mouth; my neck and shoulders, the broad sweep of my back; hips, then legs, and in between my toes. She used a jeweler’s loupe and a sharp blue pen, inking circles first on my chest, then low on my belly. She’d pause, reconsider, then wipe off a mark with a cool swipe of alcohol. The others were scraped off, tested, results mailed to me in a week.

“It’s nothing to worry about but we have to be sure,” she said.

Three needle sticks of Lidocaine, two oversized bandages, and it was done. The lab tech left the room, glass slides clicking on a stainless steel tray.

I sat up and studied bloodied Q-tips in the trash. My moles were elsewhere. Underneath the tan stickers was a raw patch of skin where a starburst pattern of black moles used to be.

I spent a lifetime learning that I am more than the sum of my skin. It took less than 45 minutes to alter a tattoo more personal than any artist could create.

When I peel this bandage off tonight, I’ll know that what lies beneath is the real beauty mark.

Next up: Susan needs surgery

But neither did the original topper:

Insider’s PEAK into the NO Excuses Summit

I get the wordplay: Peak (the tippy-top of a mountain) and Summit (the same).

Except the correct word is PEEK (as in peek-aboo, we see you make a grammatical misstep). Word play is fine — hey, I’m all for it. But you do have to use the correct words in the appropriate context. Effective communication trumps clever writing.

However, my interest was piqued (irritated OR captivated) enough to keep reading. Which means, in the land of headline-writing, the writer is halfway home.

I also wanted to see if she was going to show me how this summit is going to drive my business to its peak: She might have deliberately chosen the wrong word to pull me in to her writing web — a win for her if so.  If that was her intent, it mis-fired, leading me back to the distinction between peek, peak, and effective communication.

But I was invited to attend a free webinar. This offer should have been the headline in the first place, not some nugget buried at the end of her post, and not some offer to peak at a summit.

The real lesson:
Your call to action should be the peak of your writing: Copywriting is about sales, or sharing information that leads to sales. Therefore, your headline should state the benefit of reading further. In this case, a free webinar. Time, date, how to join in are part of the body copy. What gets me to read is the word FREE, followed by what I’ll learn for my time invested, and how I will benefit.

And that is how you pique interest in a summit that helps you reach a professional peak.

From a job posting on Craigslist:
Compensation commiserate with experience

Come again?
This just struck my funny bone: A greeting card company located in the Pacific Northwest is hiring. Only problem is that their compensation (salary) is commiserate (we’re sorry to say) with experience.

The word we’re looking for here is commensurate, which means corresponding in amount, magnitude or degree. As in, you will be paid in accordance with your experience.

Commiserate means to feel or express sorrow or sympathy.

There’s quirky humor in the idea that a greeting card writer (specializing in sympathy cards) will be commiserated for her experience.

Even stranger (to me) is a faux pas like this coming from a company that stakes its reputation on effective communication.

There are times when spell check does you no good. This is one of them.
There are times when people truly don’t know the difference between two words. This might have happened.

Careful editing – which includes having a co-worker review your copy – will ensure that your words work…your company’s credibility is preserved…and some wise-cracking rich writer can’t commiserate with you about broadcasting your boo-boo.

Free excites us to take a closer look at the rest of your offerings.

Free is the happiest word in the English language…and from a copywriter’s perspective, it is darn near fool-proof.

Fool-proof is good. Fool-proof means it should be in your toolbox — not just mine.

Some time ago I blogged about why free is a better word choice than its counterpart, complimentary.

For starters, free is easy to spell, and you don’t get confused about the pesky “i” and “e” that completely change the word’s meaning.

Complimentary (the stand-in for free) is spelled with an i.

Complementary (note the middle “e”) means talking about contrasting colors that, when blended, become neutral. For the grammarians out there, here are other definitions.

More to the point — here’s what happens when you get it wrong:

Complementary 1/1 coaching today through July 9, 2010

Spell check won’t catch it, but eagle-eyed readers will.

What to do?
If it’s free, say so. No service — especially a free phone call — is so high-falutin’ that you can’t call it what it is: Free.

One more reason
In this instance, free is part of the call to action.
If you want your reader to take action NOW then your message should be clear, direct, easy to read and remember.

And that’s the end of today’s free advice.

Why should I read your website?

There are more than 206 million websites on the internet: How do you make yours stand out from the competition?

By telling a captivating story that instantly tells your customers they have come to the right place.

Sounds easy, right?
But it’s not – put your consumer hat on for a moment. Now think how often you can’t find what you’re looking for online. Think of all those search terms that yield mountains of data, but not that one piece of information you are looking for.
Frustrating!

Now, let’s step back into business owner mode to understand what’s happening:
It’s easier for us to write about what we do (telling our business story) than it is to describe how our customers benefit by choosing us.

Whether you are a solo-preneur or work for a company, your job as a writer is telling YOUR story from the CUSTOMER’S point of view.

As consumers, we know how this works: We buy solutions, not products. We buy nails to build a dog house, not because we want 100 shiny spikes in a box.

As business owners, we have to shift our thinking: If we’re selling nails, we need to write about hanging pictures, building a tree house, or fixing the sagging garage door.
This means we don’t talk about the history of nails, how many employees work at the factory, or where the CEO went on vacation (and you can tell her I said so!)

Think about it this way: Marketing is about information, sales is about choice. We want to communicate so that our customers make an informed choice.

Writing to sell is:

• What grabs attention and drives sales. This is what I call “benefit-based” writing. It is what sets you apart — and above — the competition.
• How you show customers that you not only understand their problem, but know exactly how to solve it.

The next time you write website copy, a blog, a sales email, or an ad: Ask yourself: How does my customer benefit by what I do?

What’s in it for you?
Business writing that delivers results: Increased traffic. Greater credibility. More sales.

Courtesy of United States Geological Survey A 5.7 magnitude earthquake rattled Southern California, striking 5 miles east southeast of Ocotillo and about 70 miles east of San Diego just before 9:27 p.m. Monday night.

All I can say is…mind your punctuation. California thanks you.