I, Kelly Diels, plan to poach and scramble our every conversation and interaction

into yummy blog posts and other delicious content.

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Just kidding.

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(Sorta. That disclaimer basically describes life with a writer. Just ask my loverloverman.)
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…and now back to our irregularly unscheduled newsletter/loveletter/blog post…

So. I don’t put everything in my every blog post or story or article or Facebook update.

But my life and my art are intertwined. Explicitly. In all senses of that word.

I think it was Anais Nin who said “My life is my art” (if not, let’s pretend it was as that would be wildly appropriate since our girl Anais never let the truth get in the way of a good story, just ask her two husbands…whom she was married to AT THE SAME TIME) and that’s a much truer thing for me to say than my art is my life.

(I’ve been reading a lot of Victorian fiction. Can you tell? The tell is the overstuffed, overpunctuated sentence. It’s a delicious reprieve from online brevity.)

(Although with that particular sentence, I’m ape-ing Stephen Elliott’s comma splices too, despite the fact that when I first started reading him, they made me prissy. I’d see a series of his phrases hinged together with commas – all technically incorrect because they ran-on beyond a complete sentence – and sniff into my imaginary lace handkerchief thinking this: well that’s not correct.

And it’s not grammatically correct. But in his contexts and his voice it’s right.)

Because my life is my masterpiece. I just write about it.
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And teach you how to write about it.

And then write about teaching it.

And then slip into an alternate dimension.

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Let’s wander back to my point. I left the lead-up to it two sections and seven paragraphs back. But I’m going to pick it up in the next one.

(“It” being the aforementioned foreplay. We’ll climax a lil’ later.)
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Writing realistic telling and compelling dialogue can be enormously difficult. No matter how many multitudes you contain, it can be hard to speak in the voices of several characters.

I can, however, teach you two ways to generate authentic, excellent dialogue.

1. Do like Chuck Pahalaniuk -

Chuck Pahalaniuk is known for his memorable dialogue. Think,

“First rule of fight club, there is no fight club”

and

“You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake”

and

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.”

- and define a limited vocabulary for each character. A narrow range of words. A verbal tic. Short sentences. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Think about it: everyone you know has a favourite word or phrase or schtick that we use over and over again like a chorus. Or shampoo. Or a recipe. And most of us cook the same three or four recipes using the same three or four ingredients. I didn’t make that up. That’s research, baby.

And that’s why most blog posts generally feel conversational: because they’re composed of short sentences and short paragraphs. It’s both intentional – bloggers are usually explicitly attempting to build a community and so speak naturally, conversationally, communally – and an organic feature of digital offerings flowing from the limitations of the medium: it’s hard to read blocks of texts – ie long sentences and paragraphs – online.

(But don’t let that stop you.)

(There’s always a place for The Great Wall of Text – especially when you’re trying to build to an emotional climax, because a long sentence or paragraph can feel like a stream of consciousness rant, similar to the kind of thing that flows from your mouth during an impassioned argument or tearful, uninterrupted confession.)

So that’s a way to guide good dialogue: define a limited, different vocabulary for each character and use short sentences. The conversations of your characters will instantly feel more real.

Or – and here’s what I do a lot of the time -

2. Just use real dialogue. Eavesdrop on conversations with strangers so you can drop that dialogues into your stories. Write down your own wrenching interactions for your novel or memoir (caution: this can be risky for the retention-rate of your relationships). Copy and paste your IM or Twitter conversations into blog posts. (But yo, tell the other person you’re doing it!)

And so when students of Artful, Heart-full Blogging ask me how to write authentic, easy-feeling dialogue, that’s what I often suggest/advise/insist/command.

To write great dialogue, steal from your life. And the lips of everyone around you.

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And those two practical, tangible how-to’s bring us a touch closer to my more existential point.

Good artists copy. Great artists steal. – Pablo Picasso

That wasn’t it. We’re still caressing and corresponding. Onward.

But Picasso presumably knows of what he speaks, yes? He’s kind of a big deal, art-wise.

Because, as Picasso so crassly, concisely explained, this is what artists do. They sculpt, paint, dance, and write their lives, their experiences, their thoughts, their worlds, so that we can see the world through their eyes, see it differently, see…

…because when what we see changes, everything changes.

And so, to show us their inner lives, artists steal from their outer lives: a gesture, a line, the line of your back.

Which, Dear Reader (dear writer!), can prickly and problematic for the people in your life. When you’re telling your story, you’re often telling theirs, too. And maybe they didn’t sign up for that.

And maybe sometimes that doesn’t matter.

Maybe when you’re telling the truth you don’t protect the liars. Even when you love them.

And maybe sometimes it does.

This dilemma makes it essential for you to make up your own writing religion and define the artistic commandments by which you will abide and at the core your doctrine will be this question:

Which relationships in my life will I protect?

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(Hello, point! We finally come together!)

(I may need a cigarette. Or a cuddle.)

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And that’s exactly what memoirist Jillian Lauren – whose parents disowned her after the publication of her autobiography – realized, and lives by:

There are certain relationships that I’m unwilling to lose in the world, that would trump me publishing something, and have. I have written a few things that he’s been very uncomfortable with, and so they haven’t made it out of the house. But generally, he [Lauren's husband] is very comfortable being written about. He knows that aspects of our life are going to be all over things I release, and he’s perfectly fine with that. He’s believes in me, and he accepts it. He knew this about me when he married me. I didn’t marry somebody who wasn’t okay with it. So yeah, there are a couple of relationships I’m not willing to lose.

And that’s it.

That’s the point of my cracked-up introduction/disclaimer + two-point dialogue tutorial + my life, really.

Thus far, writing has been the most enduring and compelling relationships I’ve ever had but I refuse to be entirely faithful to it. My first loyalty is to my loverloverman, whom I do write about…and, when I do, he sees it before anyone else does. If anyone else does.

Because I want to be like Ayelet Waldman and Matt Damon.

Ayelet Waldman has publicly braved slings and arrows of outraged parents by declaring that she loves her husband more than her children. Of course it’s a false dilemma; “more” or one over the other isn’t the point; the point is that we raise our children to leave us – that’s our job – but your lover is your lover for life, so love your lover first. And always. Forsaking all others (for the sake of your children who’ll then blossom in the light of the love of their parents).

Similarly, in this month’s Vanity Fair, when Matt Damon was asked, What’s your greatest accomplishment?, he answered,

My marriage, so far.

And that’s what I aspire to. My life is my art. My love will be my greatest accomplishment.

(That and my thus-far imaginary, unwritten, best-selling book.)

(It’s coming. I hired childcare and everything. ‘Cuz I need more time than “nap time” for writing my magnum opus.)

(PS I love you, baby.)

That’s because 2012 is The Year Kelly Diels Gets a Book Deal.

You know I’m serious about it when I refer to myself in the third person.

2011, on the other hand, was The Year My friend Josh Hanagarne, World’s Strongest Librarian, Got a Book Deal.

I’m telling you this for three reasons.

1. Because loooooooong time ago I interviewed Josh about the book-proposal-writing process…and seeing him transform idea to writing to proposal to CONTRACT TO PUBLISH HIS BOOK, YEAH BABY!!!!! has been incredible. I’m so happy for him.
2. Because today I have a guest post over at Josh’s World Strongest Libarian. It’s about getting hard. I mean, getting over “it’s too hard”. Or something like both of those things. Naturally there’s sexual innuendo. I wrote it, after all (and I’d love it and madly appreciate it if you’d go read it and maybe say hey to both of us there).
3. Because I wanted to share Josh’s reaction to getting a book deal with you. It goes like this:

She started by saying, “Are you sitting down?”

And the world spun, but I managed to find a chair before falling out the window. I won’t go into specifics, but she needed to tell me what the offer was, and did I want it? After talking with them and having such a great time, hearing that their vision of the book closely matched my own, and hearing the offer itself, I couldn’t say no.

I could barely say yes, for that matter. As soon as I realized what Lisa was telling me I was a mess. I didn’t even know I was crying until I noticed how wet the floor was getting. I’ve never indulged in phone sex, but I imagine it pales in comparison to that phone call. For years I had been reading about the experience of getting The Call. Now I had gotten it. It didn’t disappoint.

Then I called my wife. I cried. She shrieked.

Then I called my mom. She didn’t answer.

Neither did my dad, my brother, or my two sisters.

Then I called Betsy Rap0port, who had helped me edit the chapters I had written.  She was almost as happy as I was.

I called Adam Glass. He responded with exactly zero emotion, because that is what he does. It was still fun to tell him, though.

By then coworkers could see that something was going on so, rather than have them suspect, based on evidence, that someone had died, I told them “I sold my book” but didn’t know when I could give more details.

Then I went for a walk. I told a stranger in the crosswalk.

I told the cashier at 7-11.

I told a bird. The bird seemed delighted for me.

By 1 PM the high had worn off and I was more tired than I had ever been. It was like having a three hour orgasm.

Yeah, baby!

Imma gonna get me some of that.

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Congratulations, Josh.

1. Keyword/phrase is in the title.
2. Keyword/phrase is in the headline.
3. Keyword/phrase is in the piece.

That’s 80% of your SEO work. Done.

Woot woot.

Now, you can tinker. Or do housework. Because, according to Dave Doolin, author of Blog Post Engineering and my favourite unSEO expert (he takes the approach that SEO is like vacuuming – you’ve got to do it regularly but you don’t design your house around it), there are a number of tasks you can tick off with each blog post or page that will help you get some Google luv.

Quick story. Why I lovehate Dave Doolin.

Once upon a time, I invented a phrase. Red Shoe Blogger. It’s a manifesta. It’s what I do. It’s what I want you to do.

It’s also a service I offer…so naturally I have a whole bunch of blog posts and pages about being a Red Shoe Blogger.

And, last August, when I did a Google search on the phrase “red shoe blogger”, here’s what I found:

Dave Doolin ranked higher for “red shoe blogger” than I did. And I invented the phrase. IT’S MINE, DAMMIT.

But.

Dave was doing his SEO housework. And I wasn’t. And I knew better, because Dave had taught me better.

So I rectified the situation. I started doing the things he told me to do. (There’s a checklist. He’s all methodical like that.)

Now…

So muwahahahahahaha to you, Dave Doolin.

And here are a few of Dave Doolin’s evil genius unSEO recommendations for you, Dear Reader:

1. Slug. Make the blog post slug echo the title. So if the title of your piece is “Red Shoe Blogger” (it better not be, you SEO-thief you), make the URL www.kellydiels.com/red-shoe-blogger. (The slug is the editable, definable words-separated-by-dashes that appear after your site address. In WordPress, the slug automatically populate with the words from your title, but you can manually change them to be the essential keywords you’re targeting.)
2. Categorize. Always categorize your pieces. (‘Uncategorized’ is not a category. Ahem.)
3. SEO Title. Install an SEO plugin in WordPress and then, in the dashboard for each post, make sure to populate the SEO Title.
4. Blog. Update your blog regularly. Not only will you continue to organically grow and nurture your keyword themes over and over again (good for SEO!) but the more often the site is updated with fresh content, the more authoritative it looks to the search engine gods. I mean algorithms.
5. Endure. Your site – and therefore each post and the keyword themes you return to, over and over again – will have more authority the longer it has been around.

So that’s it. That’s pretty much all you have to do. Of course there’s more, but as Rand Fishkin wrote,

I generally abide by the 80/20 rule when it comes to keyword use. 80% of the value to be had comes from 20% of the effort…The additional impact on rankings to be gained from perfectly calculating the number of repetitions or ensuring every paragraph fits into the “theme” of the keyword and document is likely to be a waste of time better spent on other priorities.

And nobody wants to waste time. Right? Right.

Especially not on SEO. That shit will assasinate your artistic soul.

Except…it doesn’t have to.

We can also use the dark art of SEO for good…

…to enhance our art, voice and message AND to ensure that our gorgeous, meaningful creations get read.

And that is pretty good for this artistic soul.
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PS Here are some SEO Resources that might help you with the black arts aka SEO:

• 4 Graphics to Help Illustrate On-Page SEO by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz. Where to spend 80% of your SEO efforts.
• The Blah Blah Blah Blogging Rules. F It by Kelly Diels for ProBlogger. How people read online. Yes, I’m recommending myself.
• Five Steps to Effective Keyword Research by Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media. How to do keyword research (this is the first step of SEO – how else do you even know what keywords to build into your titles and pages?)
  • (Admittedly, I don’t do this much for myself – I do it for clients, yes – because on my blog I just write what I want.)
  • (The exception: all my Red Shoe Blogger stuff. Because if I didn’t do the SEO housework then effing Dave Doolin would still own a phrase I MADE UP, DAMMIT.)
• Blog Post Engineering by Dave Doolin. How to maximize the quality, effectiveness and reach of every single blog post you publish. Contains a 35 point checklist of tasks to complete for each blog post (you can do it every time you press publish or once a week as a house-cleaning/blog-cleaning). Aff link. ‘Cuz I love it that much.

PPS We – Dave and I – teach this unSEO stuff in Week 4 of my Artful, Heart-full Blogging course.

(just so you know. Next one starts February 1. xoxo)

And then I read this piece by the bodacious Kim Anami and said yes, yes, YES all the way through.

• Yes! We don’t date, either. We have sex. Lots of it. (Even now with a newborn. LOTS AND LOTS OF SEX and this is definitely why we’re more madly in love and lit up than ever.)
• Yes! I don’t wear pants either. I’m a woman, dammit. Besides being practical (ahem!), sexy dresses are my birthright.
• Yes! Sex is more than sex. Soul-fucking and love-making are necessary, nourishing and the path to enlightenment. Swear to God. Pray to God. (Why do you think we say ohgodohgodohgodohgod?)

And right after that I saw The Big Beautiful Book Plan by Danielle LaPorte and Linda Sivertsen – I wrote a piece about it already – and sighed, yes, this is the answer. This is what I want to do. This what I am doing this year. This IS the plan. And thank you for creating it.

So now I’m a believer again. I believe in women who create from their hearts and the beauty and transformation that results.

Which means I’m not over this blogging/makin’ stuff thing at all. In fact, I’m ON IT.

PS You have to check this out, too. Thanks to Matthew Stillman for tipping me off to it. xoxo

PPS Every day in January (from the 4th on) I’m posting a FREE writing prompt to my facebook page. Just sayin’.

PPPS See? Imma creating and sharing. *Gasp*.

PPPPS That was the-sharp-intake-of-breath. And that means something.

They aren’t. They’re good editors. They’re ruthlessly consistent editors. Good writing is about editing.

Books aren’t written. They’re rewritten. – Michael Crichton

Half my life is an act of revision. – John Irving

I have rewritten – often several times – every word I have ever written.  My pencils outlast their erasers. – Vladimir Nabokov

‘Cuz writing – the act of getting it down, flowing, creating – is the shortest and sweetest part of the process while editing and rewriting is the long, laborious, less pleasurable bit. Rewriting is the bit that writers* do and others don’t.

And story is the result.

So great writing is about rewriting.

And that’s what writers do.

It’s simple, really, deciding to live as artist. It’s as simple as rewriting a sentence, instead of moving on. – Stephen Elliott in The Daily Rumpus newsletter**

That’s what I teach and that’s what Sunday School for Sentences is all about. That’s why I don’t talk about inspiration or creativity. (Flow is a pleasure, like chocolate, and I’m assuming no one has to coach anyone into eating and enjoying it.)  That’s sexy stuff but it doesn’t guarantee you’ll produce great pieces…

…but learning how to rewrite WILL turn your scribbles into stories. And that’s why I suggest – no, insist – that you go back to your piece and edit and rework and rewrite it using a series of tiny techniques to hugely improve it.

Because that’s what makes you a good writer who crafts great story. And it’s how you can stop beating yourself up for ‘not being a good writer’ because you’re not able to wave your magic pen at the paper and conjure up an epic text at first pass.

No one does that. No one’s a ‘good writer’ in first draft. Editing is the secret – and learning how to edit your pieces (for specific tricks and techniques, read and apply my fourteen previous Sunday School for Sentences lessons) will transform your writing practice.

And your results. (Not to mention your psyche. Self-abuse is a horrible hobby so stop telling yourself that you’re a bad writer.  Immediately.)

Because we’re all crap writers the first time around. Just rewrite and make it right.

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* And writers are the ones who don’t walk away from a piece after they write it. They rework it until it’s done or are in imminent danger overworking it. (Don’t worry about overworking it. Get to work working it.)

** You’ve got to sign up to receive e-mail updates from The Rumpus and I recommend you do.

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Sunday School for Sentences will be a sixteen-part series. Missed one? Here they are:

psssst…If you liked those writing lessons, then you might like to know that I’m teaching an five-week online course called Artful, Heart-full Blogging that starts on Wednesday, February 1.  Hint hint.  xoxo.

Think again.

Now, says author/blogger/truth-telling goddess Danielle LaPorte, “two-thirds of a publisher’s decision is based on your platform”.

In other words, your blog. How famous are you? How big does your audience and ‘platform’ need to be?

“Pretty fucking huge, apparently…” continues LaPorte, whom I interviewed in September 2009 after she returned from New York where she was shilling her latest book proposal to agents and publishers, “because I just got told I’m not famous enough.”

———

Hold up. Whaaaaaa? Didn’t Danielle LaPorte announce a mega-mega-mega book deal (like, a quarter of a million bucks?!) earlier this year?

Yup.

So what’s this “not famous enough/no book deal” business?

The past, baby. The past. That snippet above is from an interview I did with Danielle in 2009. Then, she’d just returned from New York…and although she was already a published author of a hawt book (Style Statement) with lots of media mentions and the creatrix of the searingly smart WhiteHotTruth, she came back without a book deal.

A year and some change later, she had a 4-book, $250K book deal.

Which is why, if YOU want a book deal (and oh honey, I want a book deal, too), you NEED Danielle LaPorte’s newest book/program/detailed insider plan to change yer life/publish yer masterpieces already, dammit.

(I’m lecturing both of us, pumpkin. ‘Cuz we really need to get on this.)

Because she knows of what she speaks. Danielle’s landed literary agents. She’s written query letters and book proposals, published a book, had a book proposal rejected, self-published, wrote another book proposal…

…and that one landed her that six-figure, four-book deal.

So chicka has written books. She’s promoted books. She’s self-published. She’s published. She’s written book proposals that failed and books proposals that succeeded wildly (as in $250,000!) which means  that when it comes to getting a book deal Danielle LaPorte knows – from intimate, incandescent experience - what works and what doesn’t work.

In short, Danielle LaPorte knows the book biz.

And now she’s telling you what she knows.

I wanna know what she knows.

————-

In a former life, Danielle LaPorte was freelance book publicist for publishing houses like Simon and Schuster and Harper Collins. Now she has a juju personal development site called White Hot Truth, a rockin’ inspirational speaking career, a published book (Style Statement with co-author Carrie McCarthy, which they sold to prestigious Little Brown and Company for a $150,000 advance), and soon-to-be published book (The Firestarter Sessions) that’s part of a whopper of a book deal with Random House (four books, a quarter of a million bucks, am I repeating myself?).

And back when she sold her very first book, she didn’t even have a blog. True story.

But she did have moxy. And a big love for Malcolm Gladwell (yes! Malcolm Gladwell! Poet-wooing, point-tipping, intellectual whodunit-spinning, best-selling, Malcolm Gladwell!), which is how she found her first agent.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell “profusely, adoringly thanked his agent” whom, he argued, should be the “next president of the United States or at the very least the CEO of Microsoft.”

Danielle read that and thought, “she’ll do”.

And then Danielle e-mailed Malcolm Gladwell.

(Duh! Who wouldn’t?)

She put on her charming pants and danced. She wrote, “I’m Canadian. You’re Canadian. You’re from Etobicoke. I know how to pronounce Eh-toe-bih-ko. You’re half-black. I have dreadlocks. Here’s my concept. Help me get to your agent.”

Malcolm Gladwell replied within two days, writing, “You’re so charming. How could I refuse?”

To recap: kissing best-selling Gladwell ass can land you an agent. If that fails, your blog is your baseball/cornfield and if you build it they will come. If that fails, try calling around, knocking on doors, writing query letters (and maybe even reading books!) and asking for one directly.

But by all means and by whatever means necessary, get an agent, and a good one, and one you like (even love), because a good agent will help you write and sell a great proposal…and because, as Danielle explains, “it is a potentially life-changing relationship. Your agent will be your greatest advocate. They will want to get you the most money, because, you know, they’re getting 10-15% of it, so they will want to get you the exposure.”  Not only that, but “the right agent will actually work with you to craft that book. They could be hugely influential in the finished product. They will go to the mat to you in the end on everything from price point to pub date to cover design. It is really important.”

And the writer/agent chemistry doesn’t have to be interpersonal-clicky-butterflies love. It can be professional luuuuv. “It may sound contradictory,” admits Danielle, “but you and your agent don’t need to see eye-to-eye on the material. You need to have free reign with your voice. An agent can be philosophical opposition and still go get you a good deal and help bolster your career.”

———-

Did you know this? Of course you probably knew this. Every writer knows they need to get an agent to get published.

What we don’t necessarily know is how to get an agent (either through conventional or unconventional channels like the aforementioned Gladwell ass-kissing, and I WOULD TOTALLY DO THAT, no strings attached, Malcolm, CALL ME).

Or how to write a book proposal.

Or what successful book proposals – from published authors, like Tim Ferris (The 4 Hour Body), Michael Ellsberg (The Malaria Book), and Rachel Resnick (Love Junkie) - ACTUALLY look like and contain. ‘Cuz what is IN a book proposal, anyway? (And what was in theirs?)

Let me tell you (and guess where and from whom I learned this?): a book proposal contains a map of the book (the table of contents), your bio, market research (ie where does this fit? Who will read it?), marketing (how will you and the publisher sell the pants off it?) and oh yes, some sample chapters to show that you really can write more than a proposal. Also: the exact weight of your platform. Who are you? How big are you? Who is talking about you? How do you talk back? How much does the world – in the form of Alexa and Google and Facebook and Twitter and your blog traffic and  your list of subscribers and e-mail open and click-thru rates – love you?

———

When she was writing her book proposals – including The Whopper 4-Book/Lotsa Cash Deal - Danielle LaPorte worked with proposal guru Linda Siverston (not coincidentally co-authors Big Beautiful Book Plan with her) and then “when it felt right to go out of the box, I did. I am not Times New Roman. I am not double-spaced”.

———

And so if you are not double-spaced Times New Roman, either, AND you want a book deal, too…

…then you know what to do.

(Same thing Imma gonna do. Follow the advice. Rrrrawk the whitehawt, Big Beautiful Book plan. And get thee – and me – a book deal in 2012.)

pssst…just so you know: I’m selling a lil’ sumthin’ sumthin’ herein. I had planned to time off, but my loverloverman is home (gotta love Canada and parental leave!) and my baby is angelic and easy, and I’m jonesing to work. So I’m going to work. (Hopefully for you, dearest Reader.) But I only want to do my favourite things – which raises a whole series of questions, starting with why would I build a business around anything else???? – which in turn means for the next little while, I’ll only be offering Bio/About Pages, Red Shoe Blogger sessions, and Naked Branding (more coming – ahem- on that one, later).

And bios are one of my very favourite things. That might not matter to you…except that what that means for you is that I write really, really great bios. I have a bit of a formula for them, and it goes like this: write bios that stir.

Stir.

And inspire.

Over and over again.

Because what’s the most visited – and therefore  the most important – page on your website?

For all the effort we put into blogging, it’s probably not a blog post…

…it’s probably your About page. (Also known as your bio).

And the thing about most bio pages is this: they’re almost always boring.

And ineffective.

Here are The Most Common Sins of The Boring Bio:

• CV-ism: contains a lot of distant, bland, professional language and chronological rather than competency-demonstrating sentences like “and then I went to this school, and then I got this job, at which place I performed these duties…”. If this bio wore clothes it would be clad in beige khakis. Utterly inoffensive, utterly unmemorable, utterly unacceptable.
• Third person: come on, we all know you wrote it. (Or hired someone to write it!) Own it. Say I. Aye? Aye.
• Self-deprecating: if you’re Oprah Winfrey, Desmond Tutu or Bill Gates; if you have a gazillion dollars, a Nobel prize or are a household name; then and only then may you mock or be modest about your qualifications, competencies or history. (Unless said self-deprecation demonstrates your abilities as a case-in-point.) So the bio that suggests a lack of confidence and that you’re not convinced that you deserve business? NO. No matter how quirky and cute.
• Overstating and empty: “We aim to be global leaders in the knick knack industry”. What does that even mean? And is it true? Do people who say those things really want to be global leaders? Or do they just want to build a profitable business in dust collectors? Please don’t do this. Be real. Say what it is you aim to accomplish.
• All About Me-ism: Actually, your bio is about you  but it’s also not about you at all. It’s about what you can do for your people. It’s a sales page (but only in the heart-centred, non-smarmy sense).

And that’s why it’s a great idea to INVEST in a screamingly effective bio. Because your bio is often the last thing a client reads before deciding yes, yes, YES, I must work with this person. Your bio is the pivot point between yes and no, between you and the other guy.

And when someone else interviews you extensively (which is what a great bio writer MUST do) they see the patterns in your history, practice and skills and can articulate your abilities and qualifications in a gracious, compelling, convincing way…

…a way that often you’d be too self-conscious or modest to do yourself.

Whilst avoiding the most common sins of the average bio.

Because you’re not average nor are you running an average business.

So that’s why you need a bio writer. Because your bio must not be average. It must be miraculous.

And bold, badass, beautiful bios are my specialty. If I do say so myself.

(Call or e-mail me and I’ll show you some samples of badass bios I wrote for other bold ‘n beautiful people.)

So please go ahead and hire me to write you a bio that rocks your (online) world.

Badass Bio (includes extensive interviewing but it’s fun, fabulous and totally effective) $450

As I type this from my station on the sofa (AKA “my home office”), my newborn Love Child is sweetly snuffling and stirring in the bassinet a few feet away. And my loverloverman has my feet in his lap AND HE’S MASSAGING THEM.

———————–

My life is an endless orgasm right now.

I am all full up. Blissed out. Fulfilled. My spirit, my psyche, my sexuality – as a woman, lover, mother – is utterly, entirely nourished. I am nourished.

Which is what divine wise woman/life poet/coach/heart friend Liane Raymond tells me orgasm actually means: the sanskrit root of orgasm means “nourish”.

And that is EXACTLY what I’m trying to get at with The Two Orgasm a Day Diet. I want all of us to be our most luscio us, fulfilled, nourished selves. I want us all to revel in the pleasures of our skin and flesh and imaginings and action and use that place of pleasure and power as fuel for every adventure and aspect of our lives.

AND I want us to know that  being sexy doesn’t have to be a bit part in a Girls Gone Wild loop. You don’t have to flash titty to be titillating (but you can if you want to but please make sure it’s you who wants to and that it gives you pleasure ). You don’t have to fall within the cultural parameters of “hot” to be hot. You don’t have to be the thinnest or most conventionally pretty woman in the room to be the sexiest woman in the motherfucking building.

Now let’s talk about “motherfucking”. I lovehate that phrase. It makes me uncomfortable. It delights me. The very fact that this phrase is used as a curse tells us so much: that it is a slip, a degradation, to have sex with a mother. And that, in turn, tells us that mothers are unfuckable, not sexy, not sexually desirable…and given the conflation of attractiveness with a woman’s worth in our world, that means that women who are mothers are themselves not valuable.

(MILF denotes much the same thing. There’s implicitly surprise built into the acronym. Like, WHAT? My dick gets hard for a mother?! Can’t be!)

———————

OMIGOD now my loverloverman just told me loves my feet, that they’re soft and cute.  Could this moment, this life, get better?

(I’m totally tipping the pedicurist more next time.)

———————

Which, I think, is one of the reasons we worry about our appearance and our sex lives after mothering. Beyond just the physical challenges and constraints of mothering – dear Reader, I am currently inhabiting a restless place about 60 wretched miles past exhausted and my sexiest fantasy involves eight hours of uninterrupted sleep – we grapple with the cultural message that now we are unfuckable. And therefore un-valuable.

(As opposed to invaluable, which is actually the truth of the matter.)

And it’s not just a cultural message. That’s the thing about cultural norms and media messages: there’s no way to know ourselves outside of them. They are outside of us and inside of us. They are part of us and we are part of them. They’re ingrained into our memories, expectations, flesh and spirit.

But the one that says mothers aren’t sexy is just not true.

Or at least it doesn’t have to be true.

(Don’t let it be true for you.)

self portrait entitled "I just had a baby six days ago. Yes, I did."

Because mothering can be miraculous, divine, and empowering. As an extraordinary woman I know says, ”Superman can leap tall buildings in a single bound. I can nourish small humans using only my breasts”. And so the physical, biological side of mothering – being pregnant, giving birth (or, alternately, having an entire human carved from my abdominal cavity WHILE I AM STILL CONSCIOUS), breastfeeding - divorces me from twenty years of bodily doubt and marries me to marvel at my own physical prowess. All my suspicions or long-held convictions that my body is flawed dissolve in the soup of awe and wonder. I am a wunderkind. A wonder woman. I make people, people!

And then I do the real work of mothering, which of course isn’t necessarily embedded in the physical viscera of wombs and boobs and birth (there is so much more to mothering than fertility and biology). I rise four times a night to feed a hungry little person. And then I get up at 6am to feed two more hungry little people and get them to school. And then I feed them several more times a day. And that’s the least of it all.

I digress.

My point: becoming a mother and marveling at what my body is capable of – what I am capable of – freed me from physical insecurities, insecurities which inhibited the sexuality of my early adulthood.

And I suspect that this is true of other physical experiences that might (erroneously) be presumed to be sexually catastrophic. In any woman’s life there are other accidents, occurrences, scars, diagnoses and recoveries that apparently devastate our attractiveness while actually connecting us to our physical strength, sensuality and life-reverence and relish.

And so the very thing that probably “ruined” my body – the stretch marks, the c-section scars, the weight gain (I have baby weight that is now school age) – made me sexier. In my own mind. And that’s where The Two Orgasm a Day Diet starts.

———————–

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to remove my feet from the lap of my loverloverman – I’ll straddle it instead – and kiss him ’til he can taste how much I love, adore and desire him.

Or until the baby wakes up.

———————–

There’s a story in those numbers, of course.

Dori laughed and smiled except when she talked about her husband, who didn’t much delight her. I got the impression that he was overbearing, patriarchal, bossy, old-world; but I’m mostly surmising because she never said a lot about him. She was a talker, so there’s a story in that, too.

Dori talked a lot about her children, and when she did, she did the proud-mama-keep-on-glowing thing. I was nineteen. I’d never been friends with a mother of teenagers. I’d never seen anything like her indulgent maternal joy and I wondered if all mothers were like this. (They’re not.) I wondered if my mother talked about me like this but I doubted it. With good reason. For example, I also doubted that Dori’s daughter came home from university at Christmas and told her mother “You’re just mad at me because I’m smarter than you and you know it.” I didn’t know much about mothering – or even about my own mother, really – but I knew it had to be hard to wax proudly poetic about that kind of kid. And I was that kind of kid.

But Dori treated me like an adult. Like a woman. Like a peer. And so she was peerless in my eyes.

I’d do things – like really, truly execute every single closing duty at the deli if I knew she was opening the next morning – for her that I wouldn’t do for anyone else. And she did something for everyone else, too. She told the truth.

Like the time our deli manager, Laura, came to work wearing tinted glasses. Not sunglasses, exactly, but not exactly not sunglasses, either. And it was December. And she had two black eyes. And she was avoiding eye contact. I immediately assumed her boyfriend was an asshole and was wildly concerned which made her wildly uncomfortable. She calmed my fierce imaginings with the real story: a tumble off her bike – right over the handle bars, actually – on the sea wall. Freakin’ rollerblader came out of nowhere.

I believed her. Hell, last week I’d almost been her. Those rollerbladers really were out of control. And so it was good story. I told Dori the story later and that’s when I learned it was only a story.

Dori laughed ’til tears streamed down her face. “She didn’t have an accident. She had her eyes done!”

And so she had. And everyone knew except me, which made me wonder why I needed to be lied to – I was wounded, truth be told – and why women lie about cosmetic surgery. If I ever have anything done, I would (will!) laminate and carry and flash the receipt with proud abandon.

So I could trust Dori to tell the truth. About other people’s eyelifts and the secret of her spinach dip (it’s really good) and her marriage (not so good, and who ever admits that outside their circle of intimates?) and about her children.

Her thirteen year old son played soccer and was a joy. A joy. He made her laugh. He was affectionate and a mama’s boy and comical despite his precocious rigidity. He liked things a certain way. He was his father’s son. But, unlike his father, she talked about her son endlessly and was endlessly emotional about him. She loved him.

And then there was her daughter. If she glowed about her son, when she talked – or thought – about her daughter, her radiance was nearly nuclear. It was a daily day-glow love. She called her daughter her ‘love child’.

Because she really was. Dori’s daughter was not her husband’s child. In Poland, as a young woman, Dori had an affair with an older, Catholic, married man. And it was love. It was really, really love. And it couldn’t be. What came to be was that she became pregnant, left Poland, came to Canada and gave birth to her lovely little girl made from love.

Nearly two decades later, she softened when she told the story. She still loved that older, Catholic, married businessman. He visited yearly and every year her daughter went to Poland – presumably discreetly – to visit him. And even though he never left his wife, never made a life with Dori, left her to raise a child on her own, it had been love. It seemed like it was love, still. She talked about that man. She rarely talked about her husband.

Then, that was hard for me to grasp: I was a very young woman with polar, magnetic ideas about love and life. Like, if it was love then you made a life together. If you had a life together, you didn’t make love to – or love – someone else. So, if Dori’s lover was married, then he didn’t – couldn’t – really love her. It wasn’t really love. That’s what my dichotomized romantic morals and total lack of life experience told me. And that’s why I was stunned at the way she freely – proudly, romantically – “admitted” her transgression (the affair with a married man) and her mistake (the unwed pregnancy).

That was my reality. That’s probably most of the world’s reality. But it wasn’t Dori’s. She walked in the memory of her one true love. She looked at the living incarnation of that love, every day. Her daughter was her love child.

I wish everyone was a love child.

—————-

Our love child is Theo. He’s two weeks old, today.

And entranced.

Because I’m human. I like to wonder, invent their backstories, know things about them and about humankind.

(Writers, I suspect, are both unrepentant voyeurs and compulsive oversharers.)

I like to watch people. I like to watch.

Which is exactly why the whole tedious film was redeemed by Sharon Stone’s last line:

You like to watch, don’t you?

Yes. I do. Even when it’s a very bad idea.

Especially then.

It’s the same with conversation and secrets.

One of my friends has the most delightful conversational technique. She invites people beyond small talk. Someone – a stranger on a train, an acquaintance passing the time with chit-chat – will ask her a question, something seemingly innocuous, and she’ll reply:

Do you want the polite answer or do you want the real answer?

And because we hairless apes are voyeurs, we always want the real answer.  And that leads to real conversation and connection and maybe even truth.

But, referring (sloppily) to yet another cheesy 90s flick, Can you handle the truth?

Sometimes, I can’t handle the truth. Lots of times, in fact. Or, maybe I can handle the truth from a stranger on a train who tells me about his tragically empty marriage; maybe I can handle sex confessions from bloggers; maybe I can read truth in the lines and lyrics of ballads and ballers and bestsellers.

There’s distance there. There’s no danger. The secrets – and secret lives – of strangers and sages are safe.

And then there’s this, from a friend or a family member:

Can I tell you a secret?

Do you want to hear a secret?

This kind of secret is sacred. This kind of secret is not safe.

Most of us say, yes, we want to hear the secret; we can and will keep that secret; your secret is safe with me.

But it’s not. On average, we keep secrets for 47 hours and 15 minutes.

Not because we’re ‘gossips’ or weak of character or women (don’t EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THAT). But because we’re human.

We need to watch each other, talk about each other, understand each other. And our desires, the way we truly live, our secrets, reveal us. To ourselves and each other. To the world. Our secrets make the world: when we camouflage events and behaviours and desires, we bow to the rules. Truly we bow to the rules. We prostrate ourselves to the demigods of society. We offer them propriety. We sacrifice our individual reality at the altar of respectability.

Sometimes rightly. Sometimes we are wrong. And so we lie. We keep secrets. We live multiple realities, none of them real, all of them real.

We keep secrets. And then we summon the desperation or the courage to share a soul-secret…and it won’t be kept.

Which brings me to the other side of us, the other side of secrets. To the hearing of a secret.

As much as I want to hear the secret, I don’t want to hear the secret. The voyeur in me wants to see, hear, know. The communal monkey in me wants to be invited in. But if I can’t keep the secret, honour the secret, then I can’t allow myself to hear it.

Because it’s not about the secret. It’s about the space for the secret. It’s about the person trusting me with the secret. It’s about honouring up.

Imma gonna honour up. I’m either going to keep the secret or deny myself the vivid, vicarious pleasure of the secret, entirely.