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Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #39 With Debbie Greig
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Debbie Greig is a blogger, contracts lawyer, and professional triathlete. As of August 2018, she is the current sprint, standard, and long distance Scottish women’s triathlon national champion. Sponsored by Speedhub and Aqua Sphere, she recently raced for Team Stirling in the UK Mixed Cup Relay triathlon in London. She’s been invited to international triathlons and ironman races, placing in most and winning quite a few, while retaining championship titles year after year across the British Isles. Not bad for a woman who was on a training ride four years ago, got hit by a car, and ended up with a blood clot in her leg that moved to her lung and caused permanent damage.
Debbie has been writing and sharing her training, her racing triumphs, and her losses openly for years, originally on her own site, Debbie Moore Tris, and now on Kyle Runs & Deb Tris, a blog that she shares with her husband, Team Great Britain runner Kyle Greig.
How to Use a Rubber Duck to Beat Writer’s Block
It’s writer’s block: the moment you run into a mental wall while writing and can’t think of a good idea or a way to continue your story, paragraph, or even a single sentence. All creatives run into this problem at some point. Most run into it rather frequently. Sometimes it gets so bad that people give up on their creative pursuits entirely.
Thankfully, there’s a solution to the problem. It’s well-known in computer programming circles, but writers can use it, too: Talk to a rubber duck.
How To Define and Use Your Brand Voice
In a world filled to the brim with different products, services, and brands to choose from, it can be difficult for a brand to stand out. Yet, many companies have managed to break out of the masses, sometimes even creating cult followings. So what are they doing right?
A critical element of successful brands is their voice. Take Apple, for example. Its ads, with concise sentences, minimalist presentation, and a strong emphasis on “cool,” set Apple up as having modern, innovative, and must-have products, and the audience eats it right up.
You may not be aspiring to be a tech startup of Apple-like proportions (or maybe you are!), but one thing that is consistent across businesses of all kinds is the need for a strong brand voice. Small businesses, especially, can benefit from how a solid and consistent voice maximizes their marketing efforts.
Brand voice is what a brand says and how it says it; it’s how a brand conveys its personality, attitudes, and values to its audience. Brand voice creates an image for the company that will stick in the consumer’s mind and make them more likely to choose that product or service.
This is how you build brand loyalty—it’s how your audience recognizes you, and an important part of creating a brand that they know, like, and trust.
Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #38 With Abdi Nor Iftin
Or listen on: iTunes| Stitcher| Spotify| Google Play| Download
Abdi Nor Iftin is a journalist, translator, and author living in Maine. But his writing journey didn’t start there. Abdi’s recent book, Call Me American, chronicles his life growing up in the African country of Somalia, and the transition from the peaceful pastoral place it was to the war-torn area it became. One of the escapes he found early on was learning English through American movies, which eventually led him to master the language well enough to become a legit secret war correspondent for outlets like National Public Radio and others.
After fleeing to Kenya to further escape the violence and military recruitment, he earned a green card to the U.S. through the Diversity Visa Lottery. Here, he was interviewed on This American Life about the program and his life as a refugee, and the conversation touched so many people that he eventually came to write about it in his memoir, which debuted earlier this year. When he isn’t touring parts of the U.S. as a respected and published author, Abdi works with the Somali refugee program in Maine, serving as a translator, to help others find similar opportunities to what he’s been able to find through his own storytelling and writing career.