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Community, Inspiration and The Muse

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A self-made dock of a summer cottage at a lake...
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Today is the first official day of summer, an appropriate day to trade hard cover tomes of business and industry for deliciously just for fun paperbacks.  This post is lovingly for all my writer friends who inspire and challenge me in every season. Grab your flip flops and come build sand castles with me for awhile.

Writers block had spread like some weird epidemic of creative flu. Suddenly pens were silenced and blogs languished untouched for days and weeks at a time. Gripped in the throes of my own angst I told myself we had matured, had outgrown the incessant need to publish and be read but deep down I wondered if I had infected the parasite into the space I had inhabited. The community that had fed my creative soul had vanished around me.

My writing life was as barren as the stark naked trees with icicles dripping from their limbs. My body felt heavy with ideas but I was unable to do more than store them away for future use. It was a long and desolate winter with an occasional breakthrough of creativity like the sun which hid for months and then shone brilliantly high in the sky reminding you that it was there behind the thick blanket of clouds, before it disappeared again.

And then as magically as the virus had struck there was a fresh bloom of posts dripping with intensity and raw emotions.  The virus had stripped away the self doubt and left the bare and naked souls of the writer. Pens were no longer stilled and blogs were humming with the low thrum of activity like tourists descending upon a beach town for the season. The townies quietly blended into the background while the tourists explored with wide eyed curiosity. The community was abuzz with their chatter and questions about the local culture.  The locals pretended not to care but our hopes were renewed. Could we recreate the magic of that first summer, would word spread beyond the borders of our small town? When the summer sun set would the tourists return to the fast paced motion of their lives and tuck away the visit to the small blogging village as a quaint little side trip?

Fueled by the visitors and the locals emerging from self-hibernation I allowed myself once again to be swept away on the waves of their creativity. I drank it in like one who had wandered in the desert unable to command the rocks to yield a droplet of life giving water.  I drank until bloated fearful of letting a single drop escape me, inhaling and tasting the sweet nectar that suddenly was in abundance everywhere. But I did not return to my own shop, eating in secret fearful of being discovered and called out for my gluttony of the precious morsels that were plentiful in the space I had come to love. Tucked away in my corner I filled my baskets with the manna of inspiration, piling the storehouses for the inevitable winter.

When the doors of neighboring shops closed for the night I sat on their doorsteps inhaling the aroma of the day and the soft sounds of gentle laugher mixed with the gentle waves floating upward on the iridescent night sky. I had been here before and knew how quickly the lusty headiness of muse could evaporate. If held too tightly I would crush her fragile beauty so I cupped her gently accepting that she could and would fly off again when she chose. Muse is fragile but surprisingly strong in her will to come and go as it pleases. Even now as I try to distill her beauty into words I know that it may elude me causing my words to spin dizzily like the ranting of a woman gone mad. So I simply sit quietly enjoying the beauty of muse and her ability to come to each of us in her form and on her own terms. Together we, this community of writers who dare to hit the publish button, reflect a tapestry of shapes, sounds and colors more beautiful than any that would have been created by just one. I lean back against the sand thankful for this moment for I know that muse is fickle and fleeting and may soon simply dip beneath the moonlit sky once again out of my reach.

Before you leave the village be sure to check out a few neighboring shops:

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FTC Guidelines on Endorsements and Testimonials

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Zhuzha - Spy Cat
Image by Marcus Vegas via Flickr

The internet is buzzing with the pros and cons of FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION, 16 CFR Part 255, Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.  You can read the full text by downloading the PDF .

The revised guides are effective December 1, 2009 – Merry Christmas from the U.S. Government.

While many have focused on the impact on bloggers who do product reviews, the guides cover television, hidden camera endorsements, expert endorsements and much more.

A few things that caught my eye:

“Results not typical” statements are no longer acceptable. The FTC tested the statements and found that the disclaimer was ineffective.  You should report the general results not the outliers.

You can be liable for making false statements, even if you’re reading a script.

We may never see another celebrity endorser. Lesser known working actors can rejoice, because there may be a few more roles for you to play. Celebrity endorsers must disclose a paid relationship whether they are talking about a product on a talk show, on their personal blog or website or in a company sponsored ad.

Advertisers and bloggers are held responsible for misleading statements. Advertisers must train and monitor bloggers doing reviews. Note the text below that follows one of the many detailed examples (Example 5) in the guide:

“In order to limit its potential liability, the advertiser should ensure that the advertising service provides guidance and training to its bloggers concerning the need to ensure that statements they make are truthful and substantiated. The advertiser should also monitor bloggers who are being paid to promote its products and take steps necessary to halt the continued publication of deceptive representations when they are discovered.”

Experts must exercise their expertise in comparing products and offering testimonials. Many information marketers  use testimonials and endorsements from “experts”  in their product advertisements. This too is being held to a new standard:

“…the expert must have concluded that, with respect to those features on which he or she is expert and which are relevant and available to an ordinary consumer, the endorsed product is at least equal overall to the competitors’ products. Moreover, where the net impression created by the endorsement is that the advertised product is superior to other products with respect to any such feature or features, then the expert must in fact have found such superiority.”

The FTC uses very specific examples to point out acceptable actions and those that will be called into question.  If Tiger Woods endorses a golf club, he is held to a different standard because he is a well known celebrity who is associated with golf. A spokesperson doing the same endorsement not associated with golf is held to different standards.

Before reading the guides, I believed the issue to be as simple as disclosing financial relationships.  After reading them, it will impact my actions going forward in providing testimonials and endorsements.

Have you read the guidelines? If so, do you have any concerns or is this a good thing?

By the way, I was not paid to write this post!

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The Friendship that Ignited a Blog

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Cake and candle

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Written by Karen D. Swim

This time last year, I was an occasional blogger. I had done a fair amount of ghostblogging for clients and had tackled a few posts for my own blogger blog. I started blogging in 2005 – well kind of, I wrote 7 posts that year and 3 in 2006. In 2007 I wrote a little more but I still had not embraced the full experience of blogging. That all changed on December 17, 2007.

I received Copyblogger in my email, it was at that time my first and only blog subscription. The Copyblogger post was about drawing headline inspiration from Cosmo magazine. It was a writing challenge (at the time I had no clue about group writing projects) and Brian posted the round-up with links to everyone’s post. I dutifully visited each one, eager to learn headline techniques (my weakness). I clicked on Joanna’s link and here is the comment that started a wonderful friendship.

I was inspired and the next day wrote a post with bullet points! I continued to flirt with posting, but became more fascinated.  Joanna hosted a group writing project and I participated with this post. People visited my blog from her link and actually commented.  Blogging is fun but man it gets even better when you’re not talking to yourself! Joanna not only befriended me but selflessly shared her community and writing tips with me.  Her support gave me the confidence to keep blogging. I stumbled, experimented and did my first meme. I won and lost readers as I found my way.

As I look back on these past twelve months, the greatest gift of all are the friendships made along the way.  All the stats in the world can never communicate the value of meeting, connecting and sharing with all of you. I may not have 5000 subscribers (that’s next year’s goal!) but I could not ask for a better group of friends.  So, today is my Joanna Young Anniversary but I truly am celebrating all of you!

Do you remember what it was like to read your first blog? How about writing that first post? Share your own memories or funny moments in the comments.  I would also be pleased as punch if you’d tell a friend about Words For Hire. Introduce a newbie to the awesome gift of blog reading. Remember you don’t have to be a blogger to join the conversation.

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