Writers write words that speak.

Everyone is a writer. Seriously. We all have to write every day. Whether it’s an e-mail to a co-worker, a to-do list for your spouse or a check to the guy who just fixed your car, you have to put letters together into words and make sentences to convey your point. That’s writing.

Me? I actually write for a living so I have to do a little more than that. Actually a lot more than that.

Without question, I have to have my facts straight. I have to tell things truthfully because I represent my co-workers to our clients and our clients to their customers. That is a huge responsibility that I take very seriously.

The other side of writing for a living is that I have to make said facts interesting.

There’s an ongoing joke inside advertising that most copywriters laugh at on the outside and silently jab their co-workers with forks in their minds. That no one ever reads the copy. Ah ha ha. Real funny, huh?

Well, it’s true. If you don’t engage people right off the bat, they’re never going to read that stinger ending you edited and re-edited for 25 minutes just to get the cadence right. But even that’s not the hard part.

You can get your facts right and make what you write interesting. But you can still fail if what you write doesn’t move people or show them that you truly understand what you’re talking about.

Case in point. Early in my writing career, I wrote an article about a new piece of mammogram technology. The nurse who looked it over for me actually laughed when she read it and said, “Honey! How old are you? You have obviously never had a mammogram!”

I hadn’t. And it obviously showed. Which is not good when your target audience is all too familiar with the annual pain and discomfort that is the price for potentially lifesaving images.

Her good natured ribbing that day was a humbling experience that taught me a lot about my job as a writer. It’s one thing to write to get a point across. Anyone can do that.

It’s quite another to write things that actually speak to other people. That’s my job.

Every word. Every sentence. Every project. Every day.

An Advertising Teaching

Before I went off on that pharmacy rant a few weeks ago, I actually intended to make that whole post about things I've learned in advertising. I thought this one would finally make good on that promise but now I'm not so sure. I'll give it a shot though.

Probably the number one most interesting thing I've learned is sort of a no brainer. But an interesting one. I came across it researching for a pitch a few years ago. I was trying to learn what makes a business or company decide to locate in a given community. There was a whole list of criteria (way more important than this one thing and I am guessing related to tax breaks and monetary incentives) butI cannot recall any of them except this one.

One of the things some companies look at when assessing a community is whether or not people leave their shopping carts out all over the parking lot. At the grocery store, Wal-Mart, Target and other stores. That simple action says a lot about what people think about their community. Nothing says I don't care like shopping carts all over the place when there are plenty of proper places to put them. I don't care if this cart causes someone to have to park somewhere else. I don't care if it rolls into another car in the lot. I don't care that this parking lot looks like a minefield. I can't be bothered to either put it in the corral (even though I am close enough to it to comfortably walk there) or walk it inside. Other people have left theirs, so I will too. I don't care.

I am a rule follower, so I have never been the type to leave my buggy out in the lot. I don't care if I have a baby in tow or if it's raining or both, I put that thing in the corral. And if I am two spaces away form the entrance, I actually walk it in back to the store. Ever since I learned this little nugget it always makes me sad to see buggies out in a parking lot. I'm sure those people really could care less about what they've done and it may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

But to other people an action like that is very significant. It says something. About you and what you think about the community you live in.

I can't really do much about other people's actions and there will always be people who will leave their buggies out in the lot. Such is life. But I hope there will always be plenty of other people who care enough about where they live to grab the handle and push those wayward buggies where they belong. Even if no one is watching.

If I Had a Dollar

How many times I have I stood on my soapbox and blasted those who don't update their web content in a timely manner? Too many to count. And now here I am, one of them. Maybe I should have called this the Semi-monthly Grind.

Anyhow, I've been stewing over a post about things I've learned over the years in advertising. Hear me out, though. It's not what you think. I hope it's more interesting than that.

The first, of course, is about pharmacy. I write a lot about pharmacy management software. Not being a pharmacist myself, that means I have to do a lot of research. Have I ever learned a lot in the past few years. Now I know what a PBM is and now that my family's prescriptions are at the mercy of one, I have felt the pain firsthand. But that pain is nothing compared to the pain that many pharmacists are feeling behind the counter.

You might think your pharmacist is busy doing important medication related stuff all day. But he or she is not. There's hardly any time.

They are coping with the aftermath of Medicare Part D ... explaining the doughnut hole and the jillions of different plan co-pays, and all that jazz that really has nothing to do with prescriptions per se. They are getting yelled at by customers because of the cost of their medications and copays when they have absolutely nothing to do with that. They are on the phone with third payer and PBM help desks trying to understand absurd formulary requirements and idiotic error codes that tell them what they are required to do even when they know it makes no sense. Especially frustrating when you consider that your pharmacist knows way more than the person on the other end of the line who has absolutely zero clinical training.

Pharmacists are dealing with the people who call in prescriptions from doctor offices (here's a hint: your doctor is not the one calling them in and the person who is probably calling them in seems to think that task makes them some sort of pharmacy expert). And electronic prescriptions, which have cleared up the handwriting issue on prescriptions, are still error prone when the person filling out the prescription lets go of the cursor in the wrong window whether for patient, medication or dosage. An error that a pharmacist will probably help clear up.

And not to mention the strains of the environment. In some pharmacies there is no time for bathroom breaks or lunch. The days are long sometimes 10 or 12 hours at a time. The phone is ringing. The drive through is dinging. Customers are talking on their phones and ignoring the person at the register whether it's a pharmacist or tech. I could go on and on because we haven't covered independent pharmacy versus chain giant or prescription drug addicts who shop doctors and pharmacies.

But I'll stop here. Just do me a favor. The next time you go to the pharmacy, look at those people on the other side of the counter and remember that 80 percent of the stuff they are doing, they really shouldn't have to do. They do it because they are health care professionals and it's the right thing to do.

I have learned a few other thing but I'll save those for later.

Mission Statements

I always said that when I started blogging, my first post would be about mission statements. Well, it's not the first but it's close.

Here's my beef. A mission statement is just that. A statement. The most effective ones are usually under 12-15 words give or take a few well-placed adjectives. It is not a paragraph. It is not two statements strung together to sound like one. It does not have any bullets after it tagging around like a third wheel on a date.

Use your mission statement to tell people what you do and give them a little flavor for how you do it. Use it to set your priorities and say a lot about what your corporate culture is really like. It's that simple. Nothing says you don't want to work here like a mediocre mission statement full of corporate-ese. Do you think Google or Trader Joe's use the words synergistic or facilitate in their mission statements? I checked, they don't.

Your mission should not be a wall of words you think people want to read ... you know the words, professional, strategic, visionary, in order to, world class, comprehensive, utilize, blah, blah, blah.

Your mission is an opportunity to stand out from your competitors and give your employees something to strive for on your behalf.

My dad gave me some great dating advice years ago. He said if you don't know whether or not you want to marry someone after dating them for two years, you don't. Maybe that's not right for everyone, but it proved to be great advice that saved me a few times. And I think it applies in this case, too.

If you can't tell someone what your company does in one sentence, then you really need to make some hard decisions.

Facebook

I've been on for about a year now. I am through the initial Superpoke frenzy, movie quizzes and the what 80's movie are you phase. John keeps telling me how useless it is. But today I reached a new level of Facebooking that had nothing to do with Superpoking.

Today, as I was singing Christmas carols in Latin via status updates, the son of my Latin teacher from high school (he is in Chicago) noticed and called his mom to tell her that one of her former students was singing Latin Christmas carols to her friends on Facebook 20 years later.

Now I ask you how is that useless?? That's just cool.

Twilight

I finally saw Twilight this weekend.

And let me go ahead and get this straight up front, too. My son Edward was not named after Edward Cullen. He was named after one of John's closest friends, Edward Timmons, and after my grandfather, Edward Decker. As I explained to no less than ten swooning nurse at Baptist hospital. This morning I was relieved to see that the name Edward did not crack the Top 100 List of Baby Names.

But back to the original reason for this post. I loved the movie but after reading this book and all the others, the movie left me a wee bit disappointed. Only because the book was so much better. This is one of those classic cases where you really should read the book before you see the movie.

Read, you say. I have no time to read. I know because I said the same thing a few years ago. The extent of my reading was the latest issue of People or Us magazine. But a few things happened. I joined a book club. I had a baby. Then I had another baby. Along the way I rediscovered a love for books that had completely fallen by the wayside. I will read anything. I even borrowed a book from Tim about hockey ettiquette last year (and loved it).

While I was on maternity leave this fall, I actually watched very little TV. I read book after book. It was great and I didn't feel like I was wasting what little"me" time I get these days.

But even better, I love to read to my kids. I have rediscovered my old favories like Courderoy, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew and The Little House. And now I'm starting to see that Jack enjoys books and reading, too. That's a huge reward for me.

I hope that one day, when he's ready, he'll pick up the first Harry Potter book and dive right in. I can't wait to hear what he imagines Hogwarts to be like or what he thinks about Draco Malfoy. His imagination will add so much to those books, much more than a movie can ever do.

In the end, I think that's what bugged me about the Twilight movie. As I read and savored the first book a few months ago, I spent hours lingering in scenes and moments, experiencing the evolution of a powerful relationship and meeting and getting to know characters who (though key in the book) were mere window dressing in the movie.

But to be fair, that's something even the best movie can't do. Only you and your imagination.

Creativity

I work in advertising and have now for about 20 years. One of the coolest things about what I do for a living is using creativity to solve problems. Even more fun and challenging? To try and solve the same problem in a completely new and different way. Over and over again.

Another thing that's fun about advertising is the people I work with are also creative. Some are creative with numbers. Some are creative with paper and ink. Some are creative in ways I don't yet understand.

I'm pretty spoiled to be able to work in such a fun and freewheeling place, even when we're really busy. I get to play in a hot-bed of creativity every day. But sometimes out in the real world, I see something really creative that absolutely floors me. Like at Edward's daycare.

Often they have seasonal door decorating contests among the staff. You should see what these women create. Right now on the door to Edward's daycare room, there are these giant "lollipops" with the kids' faces on them. Af first glance, I thought they were cute but when I took a second look my jaw gaped open.

The woman who made the lollipops really thought them through. She took two paper plates and glued them together so the lollipop was three-dimensional. Then she added sticks and colored the lollipops so they looked like they were big starlight mints. She covered them in clear wrappers and tied small red bows to hold the wrappers in place. Then she made one for each of the eight or so kids. Very impressive looking when you see it all together on the door.

Yeah, yeah. So what's the big deal? Well, she could have covered that door in green paper and stuck a Santa cut-out on there and it would have technically been decorated. But Gretchen thought bigger than that.

When I was driving home that night, I kept thinking about that door and how creative it was. And here I am a week later still talking about it. It really stopped me in my tracks.

And everyone knows that's what good creative does.