No two writing projects are alike, and the differences don’t always show up in the statement of work.

Much of what determines a writing project’s success comes from the chemistry between writer and client. Differences in personality and working style make each project unique.

You might think, then, that the most important questions to ask before hiring a writer would relate to the writer’s character, experience, and approach. While those questions are important, even more critical are the ques…

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of delivering a workshop for the Native Women’s Association of Canada. Our topic was writing web copy, so of course, our first order of business was to discuss the challenge of zeroing in on your target audience.

Through our conversation about that, I came to recognize something I’d long felt in my bones but had never really articulated: the whole notion of “niching down,” defining the target market as a narrow segment, has always felt wrong to me. And now…

Hope, we know, is not a strategy. And yet too many startups anchor their marketing efforts in web copy that’s based on mere hope. They hope that mimicking content they admire on someone else’s website will produce jaw-dropping results. 

But there’s more to crafting compelling web copy than trying to keep up the Jones’s. Just because a site features content that reaches out and grabs you by the collar doesn’t mean that copying it will work for your company or your audience. 

Some of the most en…

This is the chicken-and-egg dilemma faced by many startups. With limited resources at hand, where should you invest your few marketing dollars? If you don’t have the in-house capacity to produce your own website, whom should you call first—a web developer who can design and build the site, or a web copywriter who can flesh out the copy?

The answer is neither. Before you start to create your startup website, your first step should be to find a conceptual thinker who can help you envision your si…

Let’s play a game of Truth or Lie. I’ll share three statements about myself, and you try to guess which one is the lie:

• I am a woman of below-average height.
• As a child, I scored above average on IQ tests.
• My weight falls within the average range.

A few weeks ago, I believed all three of these statements to be accurate. I’m 5’2”, the public school system (which loves labels) tagged me as “gifted,” and I exercise just enough to balance out my intake of brownies and ice cream.

Now, after …

Today is a typical day. Before sitting down to write this short post, I managed to procrastinate by achieving the following tasks, which suddenly pressed themselves upon me as undeniably urgent: hung up a load of wet laundry, paid a Fiverr invoice, inflated an exercise ball I ordered from Amazon three weeks ago, made a pot of tea, listened to a Marie Forleo podcast, ordered a desk lamp from Ikea (because if my writing desk were better lit, I would be more productive), made a note to buy a birthd…

To answer this question, we first need to understand what “tone” means when it applies to a piece of writing,

Your writing tone is your attitude toward both your reader and your subject. Many writers mishandle tone in business writing because they think about their relationship to just one of these elements. This tends to happen when the subject is deemed so serious that it’s more important than the reader.

But here’s the key thing to remember: in a business context, nothing is ever more impor…

Coaches preach it, counsellors teach it, yogis reach for it. The practice of gratitude creates such potent benefits that it has spawned whole product lines of journals, home décor items, and corporate training programs.

Gratitude, you might say, is the grease that lubricates our day-to-day activities. When you’re grateful for your child, you can change their diaper without holding your nose. When you’re grateful for clean, fresh-smelling clothes, doing laundry becomes a pleasant ritual rather t…

My husband recently gave me one of the most beautiful gifts I’ve ever received, a Waterman fountain pen with a body satin-finished in two shades of jade green.

Just holding this gorgeous instrument elevates my daily journaling. I may just be scribbling in my pj’s, but the pen makes the activity feel special. 

Each morning now begins with a micro ritual: I slide the pen from its case (where it rests like a sacred object), smoothly open a page in my journal, and take a slow sip of water.  Then I…

Some startups grow up to be unicorns, but before that, in the early phases, all of them are butterflies—fragile, beautiful business concepts. As Stephen Blank so eloquently puts it, “A startup is not a smaller version of a large company. A startup is a temporary organization in search of a scalable, repeatable, profitable business model.” (The Startup Owner’s Manual)

When my daughter was in Grade Two, her classroom featured a butterfly incubator. For weeks, she and the other children watched ea…