Words Really Do Matter

When not thought out – such as a carelessly worded e-mail, words can annoy, hurt or wound the spirit. When they are spoken or written with the full feeling of our hearts, they can heal and even transform. That was what I’ll remember most from attending the third annual Wellness & Writing Connections Conference on Oct. 23 at Georgia Tech.

The conference’s keynote speaker was someone who touched me with her sincerity -- a “sister in spirit” -- author, journalist and 33-year writing professor Julie Davey. A two-time cancer survivor, Julie gives back by teaching cancer patients how to use writing to heal at the City of Hope Medical Center in Los Angeles.
To our group of 100 writers, she shared the stories of some of her students to demonstrate the power of directed writing (as opposed to journal writing) for people needing to face their sadness, fear, frustration, pain.
She told the story of Linda Bergman, a famous Hollywood producer with 26 films to her credit, who got cancer on her 50th birthday as she was filming “Michael Landon: The Father I Knew.”  Julie recalled how Linda was about to give up with the chemo treatments that weren’t making her better. She was ready to check out of the hospital and go home to die. Her family and oncologist at the City of Hope convinced her to try one final trial. Four months later she was cured. Linda donates one day a week at the City of Hope, serving as an anonymous greeter to arrivals at the cancer center. Linda wrote about her victory and how much she loves serving others facing cancer in “Free at Last:”

I have reached my goal – I am no longer the victim.
I am assisting those who have come behind me.
I see it on the patient’s faces when I get the opportunity to say, ‘Oh you have leukemia. I had that, too.’
I see the light in their eyes as they search mine for answers.
No, we don’t always have the same disease, but they know I speak their language.
They know I can be trusted.
They know I have faced the demons and lived to tell about it.
They know I am disease-free and standing in the midst of the storm, shining a light to them.
They know I love them because I am them.

Julie also spoke about her favorite student of all time – Violet Wightman, who began taking her writing classes at Fullerton College at age 91. Violet’s ice-breaker introduction was that she was a friend to both Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff and the famous aviator Amelia Earhart – statements that she later proved were true. Violet was a former concert pianist who raised her four children alone after her husband, a Hollywood dentist, died tragically in a car accident in Europe. Always outspoken and colorful in class, Violet had aspirations to write her life story. Upon learning she had terminal cancer, this desire became urgent. Julie and others at the college helped Violet pull together her writing collection, Sitting on a Cloud, before her death.

Each of us attending Julie’s talk got to experience directed writing. We were given an envelope with the message, “Please wait to open.” When it was time to open my envelope, it read: “The day I would like to relive (or live over) would be the day…."

I didn’t have to think for long. I wrote, “The day my terminally ill mother asked if I could spend the day with her because it was a good day (she was feeling okay), and I didn’t because of work deadlines. I thought there would be more days but they became fewer in number as her condition deteriorated. I would love to have that day back, because she’s gone and the work wasn’t important.”

My mother died on Aug. 3, 2004, three weeks after my son was born. This brief episode in my mother’s nine-month struggle with stage four lung cancer has always haunted me. I bitterly think about my absorption in work –and I hated myself for not taking a break from the daily grind of client expectations to realize that time was short – that soon I would no longer have my mother to talk with, share confidences with, to be with for those mother-daughter moments that were such a fabric of our relationship. I admit I cried as I wrote those words. Getting them down on paper helped me accept that I am human and most importantly, that my mother knew how much I loved her...that our bond is unshakeable, unchanged no matter how many years pass.

I did my own form of healing through narrative by penning A Breath Away: Daughters Remember Mothers Lost to Smoking 10 months after my mother's passing.  I poured out my pain through my own remembrances and those of other daughters who lost their mothers too soon, using my skills as a storyteller and interviewer. It was a healing experience, and one I hope to continue as I explore adapting some of these stories for the stage.

So, how do you get started? Consider these exercises, suggested in Julie’s book, Writing for Wellness, when you have a quiet moment and want to get in touch with your feelings:

Tribute Letter

• Write a letter to someone missing in your life. Write about the good times you shared and describe why you miss them today. Share your letter with a person who knew or was related to your loved one or friend.

Unfinished Business

• Is there some event in your life that still makes your angry or sad? Finish this sentence: When (describe the incident) happened, I felt….

Lessons Learned

• What lessons have you learned so far in your life? Make a list of five to ten – explain in a few words how you learned these lessons, or finish one of these sentences:

I learned the hard way that….

I wish my parents had told me…

I would like to tell my children or friends to always…

Facebook’s Allure

Earlier this month, my client, EMS Technologies, Inc., launched its Connect In-flight page on Facebook at the World Airline Entertainment Association conference in Palm Springs, Calif. The online community, launched to bring individuals together to discuss the future of in-flight communications, was the first corporate-driven foray into social media for EMS, a technology supplier of avionics gear that enables airlines to offer WiFi services on Blackberries and iPhones. As a corporate communicator, I am a fan of social networking as a way to reach influencers and create stronger ties to partners, customers and of course, employees. In these tough economic times, social media channels, whether it be a company blog, a Facebook page or tweets by key executives at a tradeshow, are cost effective to deploy, are easy to try out to determine if they are an effective channel before committing additional resources to maintaining and growing the social channel.

The challenge, as with any social networking outlet, is how to engage your fan base so they will want to share and debate…and reach out to their friends to get others to join in the conversation. Clearly, for those of us who write for a living, taking time to become part of these online networking sites creates opportunities for us to be an “in-the-know” resource on how to create fresh content to drive interest and buzz to these sites.

While external customer-driven sites are great, the timing has never been better to pursue social networking as part of your employee communications efforts. The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) finds that employers faced with reduced communication budgets and resources are turning to social media to keep their workforce engaged. IABC’s survey, co-sponsored by Buck Consultants, found that company blogs are the most popular social media tool currently in use (47 percent), with discussion boards ranking the highest for future planned use (33 percent).

Current use of social networking sites such as Twitter (21 percent), Yammer, or Twitter inside a corporate firewall, (20 percent), and Facebook (18 percent) is significant, but organizations are planning to use those tools even more in the future.

Based on what I am seeing within my own clientele and what I am reading and hearing from my communications colleagues, it's a trend that will continue --count on it.

Top 10 Broadcast/Webcast Writing Tips

Expert Interview: Russ Jamieson -- Partner, Broadcast Solutions, Atlanta

A 30-year, regional Emmy-award winning TV correspondent and documentary producer, Russ Jamieson knows how to bring the magic of words to the video medium. Considering that the growth of webcast traffic has roughly doubled, year on year, since 1995, Russ’s video prose insights have great relevance to communicators.

Below, he shares his Top 10 Broadcast/Webcast Writing Tips.

1. Focus on your audience

2. Do your homework

“The more prep you do, the better the interview script – and story – will be.”

3. Use simple language

4. Keep the soundbites short

“Talking heads are generally not that interesting unless they say something profound, so keep your soundbites short.”

5. Write around your “nuggets”

“I know what my story is, I pick the best video nuggets to lead it off with and then I use soundbites to emphasize or punctuate aspects of the story.”

6. Marry the video and words together

“If you have great pictures or video then let it have its impact – words move to the background.”

7. Use music and natural sound

“It can really help convey a mood. Sometimes you can use natural sound to bridge to the next part of your story.”

8. Take a second pass

“Don’t assume that first script is perfect – always go back and make your story better. After about 10 years I became very, very good doing two-minute stories. But that’s an acquired skill because I was doing it every day, three times a day.”


9. Read your script out loud – or have someone else read it out loud


10. Keep in mind – it’s a brief medium

“Even though you may have done a 20-minute interview with this expert, only one-tenth of that interview is actually aired or web-casted. Particularly in TV, you make the assumption that the story you craft reflects only the most important things your audience would come away with.”

Natural Communicators

As someone who writes scripts on a regular basis, it's always refreshing when I uncover presenters who are natural communicators. These folks know their subject intimately, and speak to it from a place of authenticity. They get their point across well, engaging their audience with their own experiences, relevant statistics and, above all, a call to action.

Earlier this week, I attended a breast cancer golfing event in Atlanta called Agile on the Green. The event has raised more than $130,000 in its six years of bringing Atlanta's IT community together to make a difference in breast cancer outcomes. The event's founder, Tricia Dempsey, started her IT staffing company and the fundraising event six years ago while recovering from Stage 3 breast cancer. Both she and Kelly Dolan, executive director of Komen Atlanta, spoke passionately about the need for more awareness and support for affordable mammograms in a state where one in three Georgians has gone without health insurance over the past two years.

Everyone's ears perked up when Tricia shared a comment from her recent oncologist check-up. When she asked, "How is the cancer business going?" her doctor replied, "The cancer business is terrible." That was her segue into an alarming trend of job losses leading to lost health insurance, which in turn, has led to fewer clinical exams and later cancer diagnoses. Kelly stood up and urged everyone in the room to break the 1,000 mark of company participation next year, and provided undeniable stats on the pervasiveness of breast cancer (one in eight women will be diagnosed with the disease at some point in her lifetime). What I found most memorable was Kelly's personal tribute to Tricia, saying, "To have started the tournament the way Tricia did out of the adversity of breast cancer is a great testament to Tricia’s strength and commitment to this cause, and that is what motivates this entire cause."

These ladies are inspiring role models who have mastered how to speak well to get their message across memorably.

Beginnings

Wow, I actually did it - I am a "blogger." It took most of the evening to narrow down what I would call my blog. Given my focus on writing, storytelling and communications, I had tried "The Scribe's Life," "The Wordsmith" (of course), and even "Write Now," only to find that others had beat me to the punch. I am glad I stuck it out and decided on The Writing Well. It's fitting, coming directly from my favorite writer Ernest Hemingway. As Brian Clark (Copyblogger extraordinaire) puts it so well, "Who better?"

While I am no Hemingway, I hope that my experiences as shared in upcoming postings will provide a perspective on writing well -- especially from my unique experiences as a journalist, memoir writer, technology PR strategist and public health writer.

For my part, I am just glad to be a part of a community where everyone can have a voice, a perspective, a story to share. It's an exciting milestone for me -- and I know I am going to learn a lot from all of you who are established in this medium.

Good night.