Write good copy by talking to your parents

I find it tricky to talk about work. You want to describe a project that you’ve been stewing in for weeks, if not years, to people who can range from close peers to the general public. How do you get across the essential bits in terms that make sense to most people? How do you know what will excite the listeners outside your daily sphere?

I realized this past week that it comes down to talking with your parents.

Whenever I visit my parents, I have the uncomfortable experience of having to explain what I’m doing in Montreal. I’ve heard a lot of friends gripe about doing this at one time or another. It’s annoying to have to bridge a gap in understanding and communicate what seems so obvious to you.

I stayed with my family in Toronto last week. At various points in the trip, while talking with relatives and family friends, my mom threw in a few cringeworthy updates about my life: “she has a band that plays shows and makes CDs”, “she has a record label with her friends”, and the shiveringly awkward: “she blogs”. All of these comments were meant to provoke explanation from me, which I sighed and went ahead with.

Launching into a brief explanation of Indyish and Fixture, I realized that rather than nodding along absentmindedly, my mom’s friends were paying attention because they actually had no idea what I was trying to describe. Even my mother was eager to hear my response. Because, really, what is the deal with the internet and the blogging and the making art in Montreal?

It’s the same thing with people my own age. “So, what have you been up to since high school?” Though I know people who see these questions as lead-ins to network and talk about their schemes, I usually groan at this sort of thing. Talking with my mom’s friends, I realized the other opportunities that come from responding to people’s questions.

When you have to explain yourself, you learn to articulate your work without the jargon of your field. It’s the perfect opportunity to find out what part of your work people want to hear about. And this is what you should be putting in your press releases and talking about in interviews and writing on your book jackets.

What immediately makes sense to first time listeners? What fascinates them? What do they get hung up on? And what is the hardest thing to make clear?

When I talked about playing in a band, people kept returning to the fact that we all played several instruments and switched roles for different songs. This seemed totally unremarkable and beside the point to the people I see on a regular basis. But to my mom and her friends I’m a “multi-instrumentalist” who recorded a debut album in her apartment, and those are their exciting reasons to listen to my band’s CD.

The first morning I woke up in Toronto, my mom greeted me at breakfast. “What did you get up to this morning?”

“I just finished writing my review of a show I saw on the weekend.”

“Oh good. So you emailed it off?” was my mom’s next question. “Um no, I just published it.” I had hit upon another interesting detail to my work.

I continued, “All the artists write their own articles and publish them directly onto Indyish. We all co-write the website.”

Well, it’s more complicated than that. And that sentence basically ignores the difference between writing a website and writing the content of that website. But the ambiguity actually describes the uniqueness of Indyish’s work. We’re using programming as art and bringing together artists to program their community.

A published multi-instrumentalist living in Montreal? Yeah, that’s me. I’d never be caught calling myself that out loud. But it’s the right angle to start from if I had to write a bio or a cover letter.

More importantly, it gives me a good way to get perspective on the things I’m working on. It’s all about seeing what sticks out in your story and then following up on how the details are retold by the people you share them with.

So, what have you been working on lately?