12/26/2008

But in any other situation, OF COURSE I'd write two paragraphs about the cowboy hats

Recently, I had to get a letter of recommendation from a faculty member. I wanted to ask my writing teacher (who was also my creative advertising teacher last semester) not only because she’s a writer, but also because I was pretty sure she’d write something a little more specific than “bebe Me is a fine student in a fine program.” Of course this is also the teacher who will still look at fifty of my taglines and approve ONE of them. With reservation. Fortunately, she seems to genuinely like some of my other writing – most recently, a humorous essay that she assigned and that I wrote in the style of this blog. Oh yes, that would be a four-paged, single-spaced essay of COTTON CANDY FOR THE BRAIN. But it was her response to my cotton candy for the brain that gave me the courage to ask her to recommend me as someone who could maybe one day have a scintilla of potential to write for advertising.

And the Gods of Advertising must have been looking out for me because she was happy to write one for me. My feeling that she’d write a thoughtful letter was confirmed when she asked me to write two paragraphs for her: one about my greatest strength and one about my greatest accomplishment. Since owning two cowboy hats with attachable tiaras probably doesn’t count as a strength or an accomplishment in this situation, I sat down at my blank laptop screen and tried to figure out my greatest strength.

I’d answered this questions plenty of times for job interviews so I had a short (very short) list of things I usually said: annoying optimism, the ability to see the “big picture,” the ability to see many possibilities for every problem and that I can write pretty well. But as I considered all of my options, I realized that this past year had quite possibly killed all of my strengths and their little dogs too. All I could think about was last spring, when I told everyone that it would probably be best for me and all of my creative partners if I died before critique because I couldn’t think of any more possibilities to solve the problems in our campaigns, because I didn't seem to have even one smart headline coming from wherever it is that any of my mediocre headline writing comes from and because any future for me in the “big picture” of advertising was about as real as a three-headed dragon.

And for a minute or so, I felt a bit sad. But then, like any good eternal optimist, I remembered that this was a different semester and a fresh beginning. Surely, something had changed for the better. And then it hit me - I now thought that any future for me in advertising was about as real as a one-headed dragon. And everybody knows that a one-headed dragon is way more realistic than a three-headed one. And maybe the next semester, it would be a green dragon instead of a spotted teal one. Glorious! So, feeling relieved and much more like myself again, I wrote her a paragraph about my optimism.

It must’ve been believable because my teacher really did write a lovely letter for me. And on the last day of class, when she wished us luck on our careers as advertising copywriters, I’m sure it was pure coincidence that she looked straight at me when she added, “or a career as another kind of writer.” I’m absolutely sure of it. Because I am an unrelenting optimist. Either that or an extremely good blonde. And bloody hell, I’m damn proud to be both.

12/19/2008

Quote of the week

I kind of like my boobs.


-My art director (different one from this art director)

Ok, ok. So it was the end of a loooong week before final critique during which we all spend too many stressed hours in the creative lab, saying and doing stupid things. Also, she wasn't actually talking about HER boobs so much as the ones she implied in one of her executions. But how were we supposed to know that?

12/07/2008

P.S.

Here I am pursuing a future of writing in some sort of professional capacity and the only adult books that have influenced my life in a significant way are chick lit and an out-of-print self-help book. Clearly, I need to take myself more seriously. It’s time to start reading and writing about things that will change people’s lives. Very, very serious things.

So I’m going to start now with a thought-provoking piece on a very current event, that event being the celebration of National Cotton Candy Day:


It all began in the 1400s when Italians discovered that they could make a fantastic dessert by melting sugar and spinning it with a fork. Over the next four years, spun sugar emerged as a popular dessert for very rich people. In 1899, a couple of guys from Tennessee decided it was about time that all the regular people be able to enjoy a little sugar. So they invented a big machine that would use centrifugal force to turn sugar, flavoring and coloring into what they decided to call Fairy Floss. In 1904, the guys took Fairy Floss to the St. Louis World Fair and the sugary star was born. In 1920, someone decided to start calling it cotton candy. Cotton candy comes in pink, blue, rainbow and probably a lot of other colors and if you were to eat it for every meal, every day, you’d have a lot of cavities.


Serious. I used the word centrifugal.

The last time I'll post an assignment from my writing class

A short list of books that have had a significant impact on my life

1. A Light in the Attic (Shel Silverstein)

Oh how I loved this book when I was little – these crazy stories/rhymes made me laugh and laugh and it was my first experience with words that were used not only to tell a story, but also as devices (rhyming, assonance, onomatopoeia, etc.).

2. Ramona the Pest (Beverly Cleary)

This was the first “big book” I read. “Big books” were interesting! Ramona was my girl for years – I was just as frustrated with grown-ups and even though I was more shy and less impulsive than her, I shared some of the same urges to make trouble.

3. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Judy Blume)

Every girl’s rite of passage! This was only the beginning of my love for stories that center on the inimitable experience of being a girl. But as I read it over and over again as I got older, it also helped me figure out that one of things that makes Judy Blume’s writing so engaging is her ability to use ordinary details to illustrate reality.

4. Jobsmarts for Twentysomethings: A Street-smart Script for Career Success (Bradley Richardson)

When I thought I was going to die because I had no idea how to find a job as a recent graduate with a ridiculous degree, this book gave me the courage to start networking and to feel confident about finding a job I liked and knowing how to act professionally. The language has just enough attitude to speak to twentysomethings, but the content is solid and helpful. Everything this guy said would happen happened. I bought this book for all of my friends and family until it went out of print.

5. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)

There is plenty of badly written chick lit out there with appallingly cliché characters and stupid plots (which I admit to reading anyway), but Confessions of a Shopaholic is not one of them. Even if the content seems fluffy (shopping), the characters have depth and the writing is never awkward. Either that or I just really identify with British, self-deprecating humor.

6. Sloppy Firsts (Megan McCafferty)

I am possibly the oldest teen fiction enthusiast on this Earth – well, besides the authors who write it. When I was a teen, I read serious adult books (like Chaim Potok novels or biographies about classical music composers), but as an adult, I started reading young adult novels because I love the concept of self-discovery – this thing that teens are doing every day. There is something really invigorating about immersing myself in reading about the painful and exhilarating feelings surrounding it and Megan McCafferty does it best. I vividly remember the first time I read this book because I’d have to keep putting the book down and saying (out loud to myself), “How the hell did she get inside my brain?”

7. Dreamland (Sarah Dessen)

I read this teen novel right at a time where I was grappling with a situation in which a good friend of mine was about to marry her horrible, toxic, abusive boyfriend. I was so frustrated because I just couldn’t understand how someone got to that place. This book offered an interesting perspective from a girl that let herself be abused for a long time. My friend still married the bastard and I still couldn’t reach her, but I felt a little more settled that I understood at least some of the reasons why girls fall prey to that poison.

12/06/2008

I’d pay with cash, but then I wouldn’t get my advantage miles

It’s that time of the semester. When I have so much to do that the more I try to motivate myself to do it, the more I want to sit in front of the TV and watch Frasier reruns. The time when my usual love of knowing that there is not just one answer is replaced by my wanting to scream at my creative professors, “IS THIS IDEA RIGHT OR WRONG? I HAVE A DEADLINE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!” And it’s also the time when I start going to a lot of print shops. I wish I could say that I’m cool enough to go to the funkier, less-known, independent print shops. But once an art director sends me a file that’s ready to print, I will immediately go to the nearest shop that’s open at the time so that I can print and mount my ads as soon as possible. Just in case on the day before critique, the universe decides to curse my hands with an uncontrollable shake as I try to cut straight, clean lines with that damn X-ACTO knife.

So I often find myself at a 24-hour Fed-ex Kinko’s. Which is all fine and good until it’s time to pay. Because the credit card machines there don’t let you sign outside of the box. Every single time, it makes me start over. The first time the girl behind the counter said matter-of-factly, “It doesn’t like it when you go outside the box,” I felt so stifled by the bloody box and the girl’s bored expression that I almost threw down the stylus so that I could run outside into the parking lot and tell all the people to RUN FOR IT OR YOU WILL NEVER GET OUT OF THE DAMN BOX!

I still get that urge every time I’m there. And the urge is even stronger when I’ve spent the last couple of weeks biting my tongue in front of professors and worrying about eleventh-hour hand tremors. But I don’t ever give in because the last thing I need right now is for a bevy of very controlled, meticulous Kinko’s security officers to drag me into a back room, subdue me and then flag my name on all of their records: WATCH OUT FOR THIS CUSTOMER. CANNOT CONTROL HER OWN SIGNATURE.

12/05/2008

My cousins can beat up your cousins

My mother’s oldest sister had five kids. They are a loud, rowdy, affectionate family who gives a group hug the same way a St. Bernard accidentally knocks you down when it’s just trying to say hello. And just as you’ve managed to get yourself off the ground, they’ll finish it off with an enthusiastic booty smack and a wholehearted “BOOYAH!”

Last month, I spent a week in Canada with my five cousins, my uncle, my grandmother, my parents and other various members of my family because on November 3rd, my mother’s oldest sister, my aunt, passed away unexpectedly. In the days following, our family did our best to understand that this lovely lady who meant so many different things to so many different people was no longer just on the other side of an email or a phone call. But even as our hearts ached for the daughter, mother, sister and aunt who loved learning so much that she got three bachelors of science, our smiles persisted. Because how could we NOT smile at the memory of her being so engrossed in reading whatever most recently caught her brain’s attention, that we could sing and dance around her in big purple cow costumes and she’d never even notice? We smiled because when she and her sisters were all starting to leave their small French-Canadian town for “big cities” like, you know, WINNIPEG, my aunt was the one who educated her younger sisters on the difference between a friendly man and a sleazy perv. We smiled because she was endearingly straight-forward and because she was the only one who knew how to smooth over the occasional collisions that occur in an extended family that includes more than a couple strong and opinionated personalities. And we smiled because she loved to smile.

My aunt made me feel special from the time she’d send me hand-sewn nightgowns with my name embroidered across the front every year to the time in my twenties when she made me feel really special and yet totally normal during a time when I was especially worried that my not-so-conservative choices would alienate my entire extended family. Of course, it didn’t. And in the last couple of years, her kids have made a particularly conscious effort to embrace me unconditionally So I smiled and cried as I watched my cousins say their final goodbyes to her resting body at the funeral home. Shoulder to shoulder, arms embracing, crying, laughing, whispering memories, jokes and love – a testament of their mother’s sweet, funny, loving spirit.

And for the rest of the week, I wanted to lift and support my loud, rowdy cousins and uncle. But as usual, they gave me more collective love (and smacks) than I felt I could give back in return. Because they don’t know any other way to live. And oh, how I love them – as much as one little, sometimes prissy, not especially loud-voiced, non-booty-smackin’ person can.