Should I stay or should I go?
Before I sat down to write this, I moved a big glass patio table from the back to the front deck. I got a sponge with soap and cleaned off the top and bottom of the table, grabbed water and sat down.
The front yard of our house is just better than the backyard. Partly because the backyard as of late has been a construction site. Our neighbour friend is redoing our raised soil bed. There is dirt everywhere in piles. …
Your words are more valuable than that.
Are you hiding behind exclamation marks?
It’s not just you.
If you ask copywriters, majority of them will tell you that exclamation marks are the subpar punctuation.
Words are powerful. Exclamation marks are not!
The problem is that exclamation marks have the opposite impact you wish for. Instead of adding emphasis to your words, they detract from them.
Watch this:
I was furious.
I was furious!
The tone of the sentence changes drastically when using an exclamation mark. In the first example, I can focus on the word furious and let that wash over me. In the second, I’m caught up with the idea that the…
Get some perspective.
There is a Swedish Youtuber I watch called Jonna Jinton.
The first thing I noticed when I found her channel is that she has 4 million subscribers and about 1 million people that watch each one of her videos.
She is wildly popular for a few reasons: she is warm, personable, and takes breathtaking cinematic shots of Northern sweden. She lives in a place where, for a few weeks of the year, the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon.
She documents all of it. The snow, the darkness, the Aurora, and the coming of Spring, summer, and her life as a jewelry maker, painter, and filmmaker.
Objectively, her life is…
I hope things improve. The last 6 months have been discouraging. I used to LOVE medium and even built a course around it, am basically your #1 fan, until the last half of a year. I got my name out there as a writer and it gave me so much confidence.
Today, I don't even know where I belong. I hope Medium comes back to 2018 times ASAP.
My views are in the garbage dump
As you’re probably aware, views are down across Medium.
I’m in that camp.
And I have to say — it’s extremely demotivating.
I used to get at least hundreds or thousands of views on my work.
Now, even getting published in P.S I Love You doesn’t help me out.
My poems there are getting 70 views. Over 4 weeks.
Yes you read that right.
That’s pretty bad.
And so here we are. If no one sees my work, did it ever even exist?
For context, here are my views over the years.
2018
a poem
at home, there are journals and scrapbooks from years gone past
pages filled full of coloured hand scratch
changing each line with the smudge of the pen
names of boys, sometimes girls; some of them friends
at home, there are stories, hand-holds, and adventures forgotten
there’s a long winding driveway and a gravel grass path
there’s a sprinkler running to save the dry grass
there’s a bedroom unchanged, walls slanted and dark
still a tiny door that squeaks when you start
at home, there are bits and pieces of living once lived
paintings and sculptures hand-made at one time
artifacts representing both…
If you do, it’s causing the opposite to happen.
I like feeling good. Powerful. Spiritual. Free.
I don’t like feeling small. Nor suffering. Nor feeling hurt, empty or bored.
I’d really just rather not.
If I feel some less than pleasant feelings showing their faces ‘round these parts— despite doing a lot of work to acknowledge them, accept them, and let them be — I STILL to this DAY resist the heck out of them.
Then I do an extra-meta thing and I feel sad about feeling sad, or I feel shame about feeling sad. Welcome to being a Millennial, lol.
If you’re not a Millennial and you’re reading…
And a look into my stats over the past 3 years
“On average, 5x as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” — Coschedule.com
When I start writing, I write the headline first, in my head.
Experimenting with headlines in my head helps me determine the angle of what I’m writing well before I sit down to write it.
I ask myself:
- What is my main takeaway?
- If I distilled this into one core message, can I explain it?
- Do I prefer the way this angle sounds, or this angle?
- Does this represent what I’m getting at? Can I be clearer?
Thing #1: Headlines are a handshake agreement between you and reader
As Writers, we are in a…
’tis the damn season
Did you catch the Tswift reference above? If you got it, we’re both knee deep in the new album.
Now, for a *hot* minute, let’s talk about 2020. Christ, I know. Everyone is on social media discussing their year in review, and I hate to add to that, but, well…I’m about to.
Long story short, I survived.
(Yes, another TSwift reference).
I started the year in a breakup with someone I still saw at work daily, a trip to Los Angeles, a reconnection with that partner, a month together, another 1:30AM breakup, and then….a lockdown. It almost feels like the space before March 19th 2020…
A poem for last year’s lover
Dear last year lover,
I know you, you’re like this.
You’re excited by nice things
Pretty things
Young things.
Is it their energy you need?
Their heart to fill your holes?
Their innocence to replace what was ripped away?
Last year’s vibration — was it mine or yours?
When we collided, who spoke first?
Who broke first?
That night in December we went to a comedy show, we laughed. You wore that purple v neck shirt and we drove home. We played some piano, then you cried. You cried hard. Not saying much about why. But the words you spoke…
Julia Rose
I write about relationships, self-development, growth (& sometimes writing, how meta). Canadian. @juliarosewrites
