Terhune Copywriting

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The Writing Journey

Don’t Fear the Muse

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I used to think that an artist’s Muse was simply the subject of the project. The painter’s Muse sat before him, even if only in his mind’s eye, as his brush swept across the canvas. The musician wrote music that emanated from his soul when thinking of the persona of his Muse. A writer followed the promptings of the one person, imaginary or real, that most energized and motivated them.

Yeah, I was wrong about that.

A Muse isn’t a person. Not necessarily. And a Muse isn’t a constant; you don’t just have one for your entire life.

Now, it’s true, when you read about many famous authors of the past, you’ll uncover mistresses, lost loves, and unrequited longings cited as that author’s Muse. You’ll see them show up in classic, lusty tales of romance and heroism. As the protagonist in multiple stories in various settings. Or depicted over and over in paintings and sculpture.

But not every Muse is a Goddess of desire – nor is she even human.

A Muse is simply what inspires a particular artistic piece of work. The inspiration of which is so intense and ever-present, that it becomes personified and the artist can “feel” its presence and its impact on the work.

Music

Lyric

Image

Animal

Art

Phrase

Character

Human

Too often writers seek out that end-all, be-all persona that they can tag as “Muse” before they allow inspiration to lead them on in their work. And when they can’t find that Muse, they claim writer’s block and blame it on the lack of said Muse.

It’s a bit of a catch-22 and serves no purpose other than to distract the writer from writing.

For me, my Muse changes. Typically, I take inspiration from “channeling” whatever character it is I’m trying to write. I allow them to show up in the room with me. I visualize them as real and tangible people. And then I hear what they are talking about. I watch their mannerisms. I don’t stop it; I let it unfold. And I write like crazy.

I guess that’s very Charles Dickens of me, though I’d never claim to equal his genius. He distinctly heard the voices of his characters in his head, as well. There are a surprising number of writers who share a similar process. And I, like them, often feel like it’s not actually me writing the story, but the characters themselves. They tell me what to write.

In my current novel, the person I see most isn’t even the protagonist. I see the wheelchair-bound child she has to abduct in order to protect him from his violent, deranged father. He quite literally tells me what his brother is thinking or what Jenna (his “abductor”) is feeling. He tells me what’s in his head, what he sees, and what he fears.

I can remember the first time a character showed up for me like that. It was so weird. I thought I must be losing my mind! But the imagination is a powerful thing, and for someone like me who is also extremely visual, I’d developed an ability to conjure up the characters I was writing about in a near tangible way. I’d opened a deep level of my creative subconscious and allowed it to interact with my conscious self. Because it’s typically while dreaming that I develop a character, or at least a storyline, in the first place. In fact, probably every story I’ve ever written started as a dream.

But in the beginning, because it seemed so weird, I pushed back a bit. I didn’t really want to fully realize these characters in a way that I could actually hear them!

It was unnerving.

And when I began copywriting, there wasn’t a “character” to conjure anyway, so no Muse needed.

Except sometimes there was (is) a need. Even in copywriting one has to understand that “character” of the audience we are trying to compel. Not to mention, pleasing the client, working alongside other vendors (aka: other creatives and their own ideas), and satisfying the almighty Google and SEO. Those are definite reasons to seek inspiration.

So I had to figure that out.

Music became my Go To. It quieted the noise around me, including my own scattered thoughts. It settled me physically. It gave me an anchor. What I didn’t realize was that the mood set by the music I was listening to, played a significant role in the content I produced. It inspired me to write with eloquent, sassy, romantic, or heroic undertones. It took me on a creative journey that was different from what I initially set out to create.

Without even knowing it, music became my Muse.

Many years ago, at a precarious time in my life, I was mesmerized by a painting of a woman in red, her back to me in mid-turn, face obscured by a gloriously oversized summer hat. The mystery of her. The confidence, the strength she exuded; it kept my eyes glued to the portrait. And then I saw myself in her. She became me.

I became my own Muse.

Over the years, I can point to movie characters, book characters, song lyrics, motivational quotes, characters I write, and my own children as Muses along the way.

And I learned to stop pushing back. To just let the inspiration come in whatever form it needs to.

You need merely look around you to find inspiration. Give yourself a calm, quiet moment to breathe. Look more deeply, listen more acutely; ignite all your senses and allow inspiration to find you right where you are.

The Muse relies on you. You do not rely on the Muse.

Skip the desperate search. Just relax. Be open. The Muse will come to you even if from the most unexpected places!

 

Do you have a Muse – or many? What inspires you to create?

The Kid in All of Us

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I recently read a passage in a writing book discussing how just about any childhood game you can think of has been drawn upon in stories, TV, and movies throughout time. As examples, the author cited the romance of Ken and Barbie, the mystery of Hide and Seek, and the boys will be boys “Hangover” antics of pretty much every male at some point in their life.

She then posed a question: how have your childhood games influenced your choice of genre today?

I’d never made that connection before; never even thought of it.

As a kid, my brother and I used to go to the ravine near our house and pretend that we were on the run. We’d have to survive in the wilderness while not getting caught by whomever was searching for us. The backstory didn’t really matter. We just knew that people, and most especially airplanes, would mean our capture, torture, and possibly death.

We’d stay out there from morning till dusk. Making mud pies, hiding, wading in the creek to not leave tracks, fashioning fishing poles to catch our dinner, creating weapons, and figuring out which way was north. (I don’t know why we always needed to head north.)

At night, back home, we’d play Bloody Murder in the yard. I remember the breathlessness and skin prickles of tip-toeing toward safety, knowing I was being hunted while calculating the shortest path to base. On the flip side, when it was my turn to be the murderer, I knew I had to find the right hiding place; one that kept me concealed but also allowed me to leap at a moment’s notice. I could feel my pulse in my ears. I could hear my own breath coming in gasps. I felt my mind race through the pros and cons of running for one victim or the other. I became merciless.

Other days, we’d ride bikes through the neighborhood, having each turn decided by the sight of a car; we must turn the opposite way, because we must avoid cars at all costs. Even if it meant cutting through the woods where venomous snakes and kidnappers alike resided.

During the winter we’d hang sheets with our sisters from the beams in our basement, creating mazes, a wrong turn of which would mean irreparable harm to the wanderer. Or we’d turn the whole place into a haunted house complete with ghostly apparitions, unexplained sounds, and levitating objects. Sometimes it became the lab of the maddest of all scientists. Goo, gunk, and brains.

Once, we snuck into an old abandoned house just beyond that nearby ravine. The graffiti symbols painted on the walls meant nothing to us; nor did the red paint on the table in the kitchen that dripped and splashed down onto the floor. We just thought we were cool to have found our way into the perfect hiding spot from all those circling planes. It didn’t occur to us that we were trespassing in the heart of an Occult-worshiping sacrificial base.

You know how I found that out a few years later?

I thought I saw a little girl looking out of the upstairs window. And I thought she looked just like the little girl on the milk carton at school the previous week. I told my mom. She thought I imagined it and was being dramatic. In her defense, I was always being dramatic. But eventually she called the police. They checked it out and told my mom the awful things going on in that place. Animal sacrifice, and seances, lots of drugs, and who knows what else. There was no sign of the girl and they didn’t believe there was any reason to suspect she’d been there. I probably actually did imagine it given my creative dramatics.

It was my brother who pointed out that the red “paint” was likely not paint at all.

I remember being more floored by how harmless the house looked from the outside than anything else; the juxtaposition from exterior to interior. I shudder now just thinking of it.

So as I ran and hid down my memory lane to answer the never before asked question of me, it became glaringly obvious, that yes, the games of my childhood had most definitely affected my choice of genre. Because today I write thrillers. Stories of people on the run, trying to survive. I write about the supernatural and ghostly visits. I write about evil dwelling in seemingly innocent places. I write about violence and love and all the spaces in between that create the people who perpetuate horrible evil and those that survive and rise up from it.

It seems crazy to me that I’d never recognized the influence of my own childhood antics as shaping my genre choice until today. I guess we often miss the most obvious, though, don’t we? At least that’s what I’m counting on every time a write a plot twist. I bet my brother will still see ’em coming!

What about you? Do you recognize the influence of your game play as a child on the stories you read and/or write today?

The Co-Existence of Copywriting and Fiction Writing: A Blog Shake-up Story

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Here’s the Plan, Man:

I am a writer.

It’s in my blood. It’s in my soul. It’s a life path pre-determined by God, the Universe, or my own eternal being plotting out my “what I want to try this life around” storyboard. I don’t know how writing became a reverberation in my veins, but it did. It is.

Writing is how I sort out my thoughts. It’s how I make money. It’s how I teach. It’s how I create. Writing is (almost) my greatest source of energy. Reading battles hard for that honor. My children and family are always going to claim the actual top spot, although it’s a completely different kind of energy!

I write all day long. Every day. During the week I’m writing websites and marketing material. I’m writing training and speeches. I ghostwrite blogs and craft social media posts.

On weekends, I summon my muse. And for me that can be different things on different days. Regardless, I write fiction. The kind that thrills and messes with your head. Stories that make you hate the bad-guy and blindly love the good guy; until something happens, and you get confused and start doubting all the things you think you know. The kind that doesn’t always have a happy ending, unless it was the antagonist you were meant to root for all along.

The copywriting and the fiction writing are all intertwined within me. My mom used to say she had eyes in the back of her head, meaning she knew the shenanigans us kids were up to without ever having actually witnessed the events. I feel like I’ve inherited her double set of eyes; however, mine are writing eyes and gain me insight from both a copywriter’s perspective and a fiction writer’s one. I see everything as a story. Whether I tell it in the context of marketing or in the context of a thriller, it doesn’t matter – it’s all story worth telling.

So I thought it was about time I bring my fiction-writing self into view within my copywriting business.

The plan is to change my blog about copywriting and marketing, into “The Writing Journey,” which will focus on my fiction work. The posts will sound a bit like I’m writing in my journal, but you’ll get a glimpse into the thoughts (sometimes clear sometimes frazzled), the process (sometimes clear sometimes frazzled), and the lessons I’m learning (hopefully always clear) as I work to finish my manuscript and send it out for publication.

I’ll publish an entry weekly, and will likely ask for comments, opinions, and even advice. I hope you’ll help a girl out! And while I know some people won’t understand the melding of my copywriting business and my fiction-writing career, to me, it’s all part of who I am, and it all makes me a better writer.

Are you with me?

Stay tuned next week for: The Kid in All of Us. The post discusses the impact the games we play as a child has in developing our reading and writing preferences as adults. It’s kinda cray.

The Sales Pitch That Fails Every Time and What to do About it

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Today’s the day. 

You run through your mental checklist:

  • Laptop
  • Projector
  • Hand outs
  • Business cards
  • Brochures
  • Sell sheets
  • Contracts 

You’re dressed to the nines in your best suit and new pair of shoes. It’s hard enough keeping your sweat glands calm when presenting to one person, but today, you’ll have a whole room full. As the beads begin mounting their attack on your forehead, you step into the conference room. 

A quick scan of the room tells you that every stuffed shirt is present. 

‘Take a breath; act nonchalant; they all put their pants on one leg at a time, just like me. Maybe I should picture them in their underwear?’ The mental cheerleading does little to slow your heart rate to anything near acceptable. 

But you know you’re even more prepared than in your last 3 presentations. Your lack of sales meant something was missing. But this time you’ve covered everything in the greatest possible detail. You’ve done the legwork and made sure to include each and every point that expounds on the features of your product, its necessity to this group, statistics, market research, and price points that make sense. 

42 slides of irrefutable facts. 

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

See, I hear you already. You’re groaning as you read this because you’re thinking back to at least one, if not multiple times, that you were in that sales person’s audience. And you’re not remembering an altogether pleasant experience.

There’s a reason why you’re plagued with boredom during certain power point presentations and why you promptly forget all the bullet points and statistics slathered across each slide.

Your brain.

Or more specifically, the biological make up of your brain and its intricate inner workings.

You see, our brains have areas for processing information and areas that trigger our senses and emotions. A power point, or any other presentation that simply spews stats and figures, will engage only the language processing areas of our brain. Our brain will merely turn those words into meaning, but nothing else. Without our senses and emotions being engaged, there is nothing to attach that meaning in our memory, and we simply forget.

And that’s why so many sales pitches are met with glazed-over eyes and numb responses. The listeners aren’t asking questions because they aren’t feeling or visualizing or applying any of what’s said to their own personal experience.

If your audience cannot identify with a specific problem, relating to it on a personal level, feeling it, experiencing it, they aren’t engaged. And that means it doesn’t matter what solutions to the problems you present. They are already stuck in language processing centers of their brain and no amount of information you present will have the impact you’re looking for.

And it certainly won’t make the sale.

 

The Power of Story

 

Have heart; all is not lost. The simplest way to engage your audience comes to you naturally every day.

You don’t go home and tell your spouse about your day in bulleted list fashion, do you? You don’t teach your children right from wrong by citing state regulations, prison statistics, and using the “because I said so” method, right? (At least I hope not!) You don’t talk to your neighbor, grocery store clerk, mechanic, or newspaper boy in stats and figures because it’s not natural.

We are, inherently, story tellers.

We are human, emotional beings and we connect with each other on human, emotional levels.

You’ll hear me say this all the time because it boggles my mind to think that we have somehow decided that the best way to encourage someone to trust us and buy our product and services is by shoving a bunch of statistical data down their throats.

Instead, tell them a story. Tell them one that very specifically identifies their problem. Let them picture themselves in the world you’re creating with your story. Maybe the story shows the pain of the problem, or maybe the story paints images of life after the problem is solved. Either way, when your audience relates to the story they begin to feel the story.

And that’s where the sensory areas of our brains begin lighting up. They light up as though we are actually experiencing what’s described. Senses are teased and we can almost smell and taste and hear the sounds. Emotions awaken as anger builds, or fear prickles our spines, or we burst out in laughter.

When sensory and language processing centers of our brain work in unison, we attach to the message on a deeper level and we will most certainly remember it and be much more compelled to act on it.

Graphic with gray background and illustrated image of the brain depicting how storytelling affects it
Credit: Cultural Detective Blog

Power Point presentations can still be very effective, don’t get me wrong. Just reconsider how you use them. Start with a story, maybe even one that seemingly has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Say you’re pitching a piece of software that makes the production line run more efficiently, but your presentation starts out with a story of a man who suffered a heart attack only a year ago, but is now on a tropical vacation with his family. The audience can’t imagine how in the world the two are related and so you’ve engaged them immediately merely through the dissonance of the subject matter. (Maybe you’ll swing it back around to show that his stress levels in dealing with a highly inefficient line lead to his heart attack; the bonus his boss gave him after the huge jump in profits from the new software he had installed is what paid for his family vacation.) That is a story that most people can see themselves starring in and now they are listening, processing, and feeling.

And you’re on your way to a sale!

Check out this infographic showing how writing affects the brain. What is your experience with story-telling to get the sale?