Just What Change Do I Want to See?

Be the change you want to see in the world.
- Mahatma Gandhi

The above quote fuels a dozen blog posts a day, many of them trying to rally their readers toward the writer's pet cause. Whether it's eco-consciousness or stamping out Twilight, most people have a cause that's dear to their hearts. Some causes have a thousand voices crying out to champion them, others have millions, and some are important only to a handful of people, but everyone's got something.

I don't have a pet cause. No one I know has ever been afflicted with some terrible tragedy, and the troubles I've had have all been fairly ordinary and -- though quite angst-ridden at the time, I'm sure -- nothing I couldn't get over without an army of people rallying to my side. I've never had cancer or some obscure, uncurable disease; I've never been assaulted or even mugged; I really don't have the mental energy to indulge in outrage for the sake of itself when I could be using that energy to make art (or play Mouse Hunt).

So I found myself wondering, what change do I want to see?

• I want to see more beauty where people are creating ugliness.
• I want people to have more compassion where there is now callousness.
• I want more kindness, instead of deliberate or thoughtless cruelty.
• I want to see people actually respecting each other, instead of grabbing at superiority under the false label of respect.

Some of these are easier than others.

As an artist, I create things every day that, I hope, add beauty to the world. From the paintings on my walls to the work I do for clients, I try to make things which are pleasing to the eye and the soul, even while they sometimes serve another function.

Compassion is harder for me. While my cynical apathy protects me from spinning myself out into nothing trying to help every person who needs or thinks they're in need, it also keeps a lot of things from really touching me. Every person's pain is deeply individual, and it can be very hard to resist the urge to play a rating game -- your pain is your own fault so it doesn't count, your pain isn't as bad as his pain, your pain is fleeting so it doesn't deserve as much. It's hard to figure out, too, how much or how far to be open to things -- my lines right now are pretty harsh, but if I move them too far I'll just end up raw and useless in other ways.

Kindness seems easy, but thoughtlessness trumps it a lot. Kindness requires attention, being in the present and recognizing when someone needs you to give them something, a moment or a dollar or a smile. It's a lot easier than compassion, though, because there's a ton of small ways to be kind, and being thoughtful and kind can even help develop compassion. Someone deserving of kindness seems to us then to be more deserving of compassion as well.

The hardest thing to remember is that everyone is deserving of kindness and compassion.

Respect is the last one, and that one's really hard on so many levels, because so much hides under the umbrella of respect these days. So many people equate "do what I say" with "respect me" and that's just not the case. I can totally respect you as a human and an equal, and still have my reasons for doing things my own way. What's ironic is that when people push it, shoving their way of doing and being down your throat, they're disrespecting you while demanding you respect them. A lot of authority figures run into this issue -- they want you to respect them because of their authority, but refuse to respect those who are answerable to that authority.

It's such a thorny issue, and it pokes into every sensitive place in our society. I'm not intending to write a whole essay here, either, though, so I'll let what I've said stand.

So, there's the things I need to work on, if I want to be the change. Beauty and kindness, compassion and respect.

What change do you want to see? How can you take a small step today to become more of what the world needs?

The Value of Staying Small

I have a confession to make: right now, as of this writing, I only have seven clients. One of those clients has been working with me since I first started out as a lowly desktop publisher back in 1996. One of those clients just hired me at the end of December for a single project. One hired me back in August for a single project that's just now finishing up, but another hired me for a single project in 1999 and has been with me ever since, so you never know.

The thing is, I never wanted to have so many clients that I needed a CRM and invoicing software just to keep track of them. My needs are, in all honesty, pretty modest -- though that's a confession for another post -- and I like having a lot of free time to do whatever I like, whether it's play Facebook games or participate in NaNoWriMo, make art or read books. It's that quiet time that gives me the energy and space to incubate my client projects and create something unique, or at least as good as I can manage, for every project.

This small list of clients means that when someone asks to have something changed today, pretty please, I can usually accommodate them. It means I can send out handmade holiday cards, and write something thoughtful and sincere in each one. It means every one of my clients is a person to me, and many of them start as or become friends. It means sometimes I can take a whole day off to go visit someone in their office so we can brainstorm their next big idea together.

I do want to do a little big of expansion this year, and some of that has to do with expanding my own skills. That free time I mentioned above has helped me develop my illustration style on the side, so I can offer some new services. I read marketing blogs as much for the advice I can give to my clients when we're building their sites as for my own business. What I aim to do is find a balance between money stress and work stress, so that each client gets the best of me, and knows that they're on a very short list of people who can say that.

Some designers do a wonderful job putting out a site in short time, for a wide variety of clients, and I even sometimes envy them, but that's not who I am. Every website, every logo, every cartoon requires thought and creativity, trial and error, and time to burble through the creative distillery in my brain until it comes out as refined as I can manage.

With a list the size of mine, each client gets individual attention from me, and while I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I get tired of hand-holding, most of the time I wouldn't have it any other way.

How is a cartoon like copywriting?

I'm Holly, and thanks to Amy, I am now a cartoon. I am also proud to call myself both a client and friend of Amy's. So, while I could easily spend all day telling you how awesome Amy is, if you're reading this, you probably know that already. So, what I'm going to talk about today is going to sound like one of those Alice in Wonderland riddles, but it's really a simple concept: How is a cartoon like copywriting?

For some background, I'm a copywriter. In particular, I'm a copywriter who specializes in capturing voices. Clients come to me with a sales page, and then a process starts. I listen to them talk, I read their material, and I find out as much about them as I possibly can. All so I can write the wordy equivalent of one of Amy's cartoons. Which is quite honestly why I wanted a cartoon for my website. Her cartoons capture people in the same spirit as my copy does.

But rather than sound like an ad, I really want to talk about how cartoons and copy are similar, and can serve the same purpose on a website. It's a whole different way to express yourself on your site, and equally valuable and interesting. Cartoons, by nature, reflect the truth of a person. Cartoons, by nature, are also exaggerated for effect. People are larger, louder, and more colorful in a cartoon. It's still them, but maybe not the person you'd meet in a business setting, or at the park on a weekend. But that's great, because if you're a business, part of the key to making money is being yourself. Not just in a quiet way, but in a loud, colorful and powerful way.

Good marketing copy does the same thing. It captures the essence of you, and then exaggerates it in a way that draws people in, and shows off your personality loudly in the best possible light. Like a cartoon, this doesn't always equate to loud and obnoxious writing. The true sell is in the details. On my cartoon, it's the little sweater on my dog that has a royal crest, because he's named after the canine knight from the movie Labyrinth. Someone is going to see that on my site and know what kind of person I am, just from that little detail. In the amazingly fun world of the internet, I would bet real money that someone would make a copywriting inquiry on that detail alone. That wasn't something I planned or requested: it was something Amy added from her knowledge of me, and of my love for muppet movies and my dog.


In an ideal world, that's what great writing does too. It captures the small details that make up who you are, and presents them in an intriguing and marketable way. It's not about neon orange and green, or about large bold text with yellow highlighter. When it comes down to it, good marketing, in whatever form is always about people.

That awful overused saying that a picture is worth a thousand words? Sometimes, in marketing, it's really true. And sometimes, you need the words too, but they need to paint their own picture; one that is equally real, and equally cartoony.

Holly is the founder and chief pirate queen of Cottage Copy, along with her canine co-manager, Sir Didymus. You can find her on twitter as @copygeniusgirl, and on her blog.

It's Coming Right for Us!

OK, not really, but I couldn't resist.

My new site, Antemortem Arts, is on its way! There's nothing up there yet (hence the lack of a link), but the CSS is done and then I have to slog through my Very First WP Theme Creation, and it'll be ready to go!

Antemortem Arts is going to showcase my fine art the same way Not Dead Yet Studios (seeing a theme here?) showcases my design work. There'll be a gallery of finished pieces (for sale and not), information on how to commission your very own art, and posts that show how some of my pieces have grown from a blank canvas into a finished work.

To kick things off, I'll even be having a commission sale -- just in time to think about getting that hard-to-please person something for Christmas. (Yes, I know it's months away, but good art takes time!)

I've already got 2 or 3 people in my holiday queue, so if you're interested, drop me a line -- I'll link you to a secret gallery and a few other commissions, and we can talk!

Private Myths

As I was cleaning my kitchen today, I had to move my knife block around, dust him off, and think about him as I rarely do when I'm just snagging a knife. He's shiny and red, and yes, he has a name -- Stanley, which is, for the record, not a name of anyone I know.

Stanley's a little too tall for my kitchen, but I love him too much to replace him.

The thing is, I realized that part of why I love him is that I have a private myth around Stanley, that I built at some point in the past. I think that, in the absence of useful group myths, and even in their presence, sometimes we make up stories around our things and our surroundings and our lives, myths that are only for us. Or at least I do -- maybe I'm the only one, but I doubt it.

I tell myself that Stanley actually likes his knives, and that he only hurts when when one is missing, like the ache where your wisdom teeth used to be, dull and hollow. Of course, the down side is that if they're ever all missing for too long, he'll come looking for them -- and for me, to remind me never to do that again. Except for the bread knife, which is often out on the bread board with the bread, I do mostly keep him full up.

Especially that big one right in his heart -- I wouldn't want Stanley to have a heartache, after all.

Inner Creative Fairies

The incomparable Havi Brooks wrote on her blog about her inner Writer Havi (she said "Writer Me" but you can see how that would be confusing), a Tinkerbell-sized fairy with a prim pencil skirt and her hair held up in a bun. She was also laughing hysterically, and the image of her, proper and delicate and spinning around while she giggled helplessly stuck with me. In fact, it brought up the idea of my own inner Artist Me, the svelte, together artist who actually paints more than once every week or so.

Inspired, I managed to eke some time out of a busy week to draw!

First, we have Writer Havi.

She's in black & white (on a "fluent blue" background) because all photos I see of Havi are b&w. Selma gets full color, but Havi's always tastefully done in shades of grey.

Next, we have Artist Amy.

She got a little color, and a t-shirt I've decided I need to find or make on Cafepress. She also has a non-black version of my Jolly Roger pajama pants on, and something resembling my current hair color, so go her!


Let's hope that Havi & I can both bring these fairies out to shine more often!

Working With Me

One of the questions that I've been asked recently is what it's like working with me -- not just the personality things, but the actual process from start to finish, so I thought I'd see if I could outline the stages a little bit.

Step 1: Finding Me

Most of my clients find me through referrals. I don't actually have a big client list -- maybe 4-6 active clients at any one time -- but I've kept a few of the same clients for most of the time I've been freelancing, which helps a lot. I've also been doing some in-person networking lately. I've never actually connected with a client through my website, but part of that is because I prefer to work locally and personally with people, and thus haven't done any SEO to get a wider audience looking at it.

If you're looking now, and thinking of contacting me, please do!

Step 2: Getting a Quote

Once we've found each other, the next step is to talk about your project! I can often give you a rough quote right off the bat, and then once we've really gotten down into the goals for your project and the needs you have for its design, I will write up and send a proposal. There are lots of questions to be asked at this stage, and I really like to have an in-person meeting to talk, look at what marketing collateral you already have, and get a clear idea of the scope and purpose of your project.

After that, I'll email you a proposal that includes a tentative schedule, and a firm price.

Step 3: Getting Started

If you've accepted the quote, then I'll send you a contract with firm due dates and an invoice for the first part of the fee (I request half down on most projects). There will be due dates in there for my work -- but also for you, in getting me whatever content you need. And a guarantee that if you hit all your due dates but I miss one of mine, you'll get a 10% discount at the end.

What comes next is... more questions! And working up a design idea for you (or more than one, if I think there's a few directions it could go). A lot of times we'll have worked out a sketch, color palette, or organization scheme during our initial meeting, which makes this next bit go faster. This is also the stage where I need to get any logos or other images from you, so that I have them for making your mock-ups.

You will have gotten or will be getting together any content for the project during this time, as well -- copy written, or a copy writer hired, along with any custom photography that needs doing. I can help you find other creative professionals to dovetail along with my work, too, if that's what you need.

If it's a website you want, we'll make sure you're all set up with a domain and hosting -- either by getting that info from you, or setting it up for you. If it's a print piece, we'll lay out the specifications and decide on a printer, or start to get quotes. If it's an ad of some kind, I'll get the specs directly from the vendor so I know I'm making just exactly what they want, and what you need.

It'll take a couple of weeks to get through this stage, depending on my schedule and yours. At the end of it, I'll be able to give you a first draft of your design, and you'll be able to assure me that the copy is on the way.

Step 4: Revisions

Next, you get up to 3 rounds of revisions on that first draft. This stage can take a long or short amount of time -- some clients spend a long time with the drafts before they get back to me, and some turn things around right away. At least a few weeks should be allotted here, and more if you've got a committee at your end who needs to approve things.

Step 5: Build

Here's where I must have your finished copy, and any other final materials (like high-res logos for print jobs, or finalized photographs).

If we're doing a print piece, this is probably mostly about making sure the job is within the printer's specs and popping in your final copy, if I didn't already have it.

If it's a website, this is where we go from jpgs of what your site might look like, to a real live proof with buttons that work and pages that have actual content on them.

Step 6: Approval

Whatever we're making, I'll require a final approval, and the final payment, before it goes live. Files will go off to the printer or advertiser, or the website will launch, and we're done!

Step 7: Aftercare

You've got your site up, but you need some edits? I'll be here to help you out with that. I have a 'program' for those small edits that need to be done, but don't need to cost an arm and a leg -- instead of my usual $40 (half hour) minimum, I allow existing clients to send me small changes, and when they've racked up 5 changes I bill them for an 'hour', or $80.

Not sure if the email you got requesting a renewal payment is legit? I've got all your info saved, and can tell you if that's a real provider for no charge at all.

Need another order of business cards or brochures? I'll have you files on hand, and can help arrange it with the printer. If there's no changes from you or the vendor, this, too, will be gratis.

Got another project? Hopefully you'll think of me fondly, and bring it my way.

The Exercise Conundrum

I've been slowly coming around to an idea that's so simple, and yet so hard to face -- it's part of what Havi would call my "Stuff," no doubt about it.

I am overweight and out of shape -- yeah, big shock, someone on the internet who isn't in perfect health. And every day I think about how I'd like to feel better, have more energy, get all those supposed benefits of being healthy. And all you have to do to get there is eat well and exercise, right?

Except here's the conundrum:

I have never, ever associated exercise with feeling good.

Everyone who talks about exercising says it'll give you more energy, that exercise is the key to feeling good, that you can just find that one magic thing you love to do and it'll make you thin and svelte and awesome.

But I'm not actually any good at any of those things. I'm awkward. I have bad knees. I was always picked last in gym class, and it's the only class I was ever in danger of failing.

Exercise is a bad thing to me. It's humiliation and incompetence and that horrible sick feeling you get when you're forced to try to do things your body isn't ready for because some authority figure thinks it should be. It's being the worst at something, and being forced to do it over and over again anyway.

This is not something that makes me think I will feel good and have more energy. In fact, it makes me feel tired and a little sick just contemplating it.

How can I solve this conundrum? I don't know. I have been walking a lot more, but in that way where nothing is ever good enough, that's not really helping much anymore. It's been a couple of years since I made the change, and so I've long past reached that plateau where I'm supposed to "up the intensity" or some shit. But my errands? Not that intense.

I could try to relate this to work -- how still you have to do the parts that aren't your best thing in order to do the bits you're really good at, how a lot of businesses hit a plateau where you have to work a whole bunch more if you want to keep seeing growth, and all that. And it's all true.

But I never had a gym teacher yell at me for not doing my marketing.

How I Learned to Stop Wembling and Found my Niche

I've been looking into Marketing lately. And by lately I mean for the last year, and by "looking into" I mean "desperately trying to figure out."

Every single bit of marketing advice I found started with one thing: choose your niche.

And that's where I'd get stuck, every single time. So no matter how clever they were about leveraging your online presence or developing a marketing strategy, I never got that far, because I'd be over there pondering the niche issue.

Cue the recession.

Now, a lot of marketing and small business coaches will tell you there is no problem with the economy, that small businesses and solo professionals all over the place are doin' it for themselves just fine. To those people, I say, "Bite me."

When your biggest client is in the financial industry, there is an economy, you cannot stick your head in the sand and deny the recession, and those people make you want to hit things. Preferably them.

So there was more panic and more soul-searching and even a brief flirtation with renaming myself, but in the end it was all just me being a big avoidy-pants about choosing a niche. I was Wembling -- waffling, panicking, flailing and wailing, all to keep from having to make this one decision.

It turns out, I was doing it wrong.

The thing is, from all the vague hand-wavey instructions I'd seen about choosing your niche, it was Really Important to be marketing just in one narrow market, because that gets you the best results. And I was interpreting that to mean I had to pick one industry, and start marketing just to them, which is what most marketing gurus either implied or explicitly stated. Except that wasn't what I wanted, didn't feel genuine, and thus I encountered this giant block of resistance. To the point where I was considering a whole host of other, stupider options, just to avoid making this one decision.

So I sat myself down, and opened up the Destuckification Sampler I'd downloaded. And calmed myself the heck down, so instead of imitating Wembley Fraggle, I had more of a Mokey thing going on.

Then I paid Naomi from Ittybiz a ridiculously paltry sum to join her new program, and she kindly carved out some time for me that wasn't on the phone, and wasn't email -- she actually got onto Google Chat with me, which is my brain-fueling format of text and waiting and getting to go back later and see what the other person said. Except with much more immediacy than email.

And in less than an hour, I had a niche. And you know what? It was exactly what I'd been doing all along -- a little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of helping out small businesses who didn't know where to look for help.

Because here's the thing -- Naomi is smart. She knew that a niche could be "design for monster truck rally promoters," but that it could also be "one-stop shopping design for small businesses on a budget." Which I did not know. But now the latter one is my niche.

Even as I type this, cogs are whirling and things are in motion to solidify my niche, including a convenient package of services for a single up-front price. Because I forget that the hardest part about starting a business is as much bracing yourself for scary sticker shock as it is finding a designer whose work you like. And apparently, unbeknownst to me, there's a million web designers but not very many of us left who are comfortable doing print, too. And a brand new small business needs more than just a website, which of course I knew, because I work with small businesses all the time.

And soon, more of them will know that I know it, and hopefully pay me to do it.

What doing chores taught me about doing work

It's just me and my cats here, so I tend to do household chores on a pretty simple "as needed" schedule, with a few things that get done every other day.

Putting this schedule together has taught me a lot about my work habits, and when my brain will get in the way of getting stuff done.

For instance, the cat boxes. Gross chore, right? Stinky, heavy, dusty, ick. But here's the thing -- I had worked it up in my mind that it was also a time-consuming chore, lots of hard work! And so I tended to put it off until the last possible moment, to my cat's utter disgust. (Bella got revenge by barfing on things. It was not good for either of us. And that was before the kitten!) Then one day, I sat down and sent an IM to a friend -- brb, going to do the cat box. I trudged around, cleaned the box, washed my hands, and sat back down to IM -- all done, back!

Much to my surprise, less than two full minutes had passed between messages.

I had spent far more effort avoiding this chore than I the effort it took to just get up and do it. So now when it comes in the schedule, I don't drag my feet and put it off, because I know that it only takes two minutes. And when it's done both my cats and I are all relieved.

How does this get applied to work? Well, if I get an email from a client asking about something I know will take less than five minutes, I do it right then. And then, instead of them waiting for my reply until it coms around on the to-do list, and me putting it off or forgetting about it in a ton of other emailed requests, we're both relieved. And my clients think I'm awesome, and are more inclined to forgive when something else takes an extra day or two.

The second chore I tend to put off is dishes, and this one is where I found the really hard lesson.

I am really, really prone to overwhelm.

When I've been eating at home from leftovers and pre-prepared foods, then two days is just about right to have a sink full of dishes and use up one good squirt of dishwashing liquid, with most everything fitting in the drainer. I find the process itself kind of Zen, warming and soothing at once, letting my mind wander (well, as long as I don't drop anything).

But if I've been cooking, or had people over, then there's extra dishes. And that's when I hit Dish Overwhelm -- as soon as there's more dishes than I can readily wash in one go, I start putting them off, feeling powerless and overwhelmed, and then more dishes pile up and nothing gets done.

See where this is going?

I made beer bread yesterday -- it was delicious, btw -- and now I have extra bowls and dishes piled up around my sink, overflowing the area and causing both physical and mental clutter. But I don't want to wash them. Just looking in there makes me all tense and unhappy, driving away that warm, sudsy dishwashing Zen I was talking about earlier. The pile is too big and it feels like I've let it go too long (even though it's dish day by my normal schedule), and so my instinct is to avoid it, let the pile grow even bigger, and blow my schedule completely.

Enter work, and the power of the to-do list.

Productivity blogs everywhere will tell you to have a master to-do list, and a daily list. My problem is, as soon as I start looking at that master list I get a big case of overwhelm and I don't even want to think about how I'm going to get it all done with only five measly slots per day and more things coming in all the time.

So I procrastinate, play Facebook games, and generally let the problem get worse until I run out of dishes -- well, okay, until deadlines force me into last-minute rushing. Or they whoosh past and guilt piles on with the overwhelm. That's always extra fun.

How do I avoid this? By not keeping the master list.

I have deadlines noted down in my calendar, and I keep those in mind when I make my daily to-do list, but that master list is kept out of sight. I just deal with the small pile in front of me, 5 tasks per day (I slack on weekends and only do 3, or count things like "relax" and "hang out with friends" as tasks), and then tomorrow there'll be another pile. The overwhelm is still there sometimes, looming especially when I sit down to make a daily list, but it's not as scary as it would be if I had a giant list.

The thing is, a 5-task to-do list is a bunch of items I know I can succeed on today. The giant list of everything I need to do in the next few weeks/months/whatever is just an invitation to think of all the ways it can fail to get any of them done.

One sink full of dishes? I know I can do that. When it overflows onto countertops and starts to really pile up, that's an invitation to dropped glasses, unwashed corners, and failure.

For next time, perhaps we can manage a pithy commentary on how taking out the trash is like marketing (my two most hated things in life), and how to outsource the stuff you shouldn't be doing (like, say, vacuuming). Not to mention the bigger chores, like cleaning the bathroom and updating your website.

Until then, I have dishes to wash, cat boxes to clean, and the trash to take out. Wish me luck!

Why Design?

The original reason I went into graphic design is because I had the skills, and the job was available. I'd taken some related classes in art school, I had some programming experience and a lot of computer savvy, and most importantly, I needed a job. As an artist, I have an eye for making things visually pleasing, balanced and attractive. As a former programmer, I learned how to think logically, and while html is a very simple language, it still helps.

The reason I've stuck with it is because I like to make things look good that might otherwise be plain, or just plain ugly. I think the world is a better place with the purple house in the middle of a street full of white, with gargoyles and decorative cornices on the otherwise boring banks, and beautiful earrings on power-suited businesswomen. I prefer to see, and create, a business card with a little bit of flare, a website whose form and function works for the eye as well as the mouse, or a book cover that has more than just the title and author name to offer.

Another thing that's kept me in the web design business is my own internet addiction. I love the web, and I want everyone to be on it! I want all my favorite businesses and people to have sites where I can look up their info, so I can refer people to my dentist, do my banking online, or just help my friends find each other with just a few clicks of the mouse. A lot of small businesses think the web is out of reach, that it takes thousands of dollars that they don't have, and I like to think one of my niches is helping small businesses find the web presence that works for them.

I enjoy the process of working to spec. I know that might sound strange, but it can be really enjoyable to have a client come to me with their fuzzy concepts, and give them back a sharp result that makes them say, "That's just what I wanted," -- or my favorite, "That's even better than I imagined." When I can find a client that really clicks, the design experience becomes enjoyable, as well as profitable, for both of us.

Finally, I like the flexibility of freelancing. I like being able to plan vacations without asking my boss for the days off, to be able to wake up a little late, commute 10 feet and answer work emails before I've eaten breakfast. I think that the ability to work outside of a schedule -- or in one, when I need to -- can enhance the creative process. Not to mention giving me a chance to bake cookies in the middle of a slow Thursday afternoon, if that's what I want to do.

So, why design? Because I like making attractive, functional things for other people. And this pays the bills better than freelance cookie baking.