How Can You Tell If You Have a Good Copywriter

Cure for Writer's Block

Downtime Abbey

"What is a Weekend?"

It's one of the most quotable lines uttered by the imperious matriarch Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, on the smash British mini-series Downton Abbey, airing on Masterpiece Classic for American audiences. For the aristocratic Violet ("Granny" to her family), a life of leisure before the first World War meant everyday was a Saturday. Or a Sunday.

It's also a line that many a busy freelancer might utter.

In the freelance business, it can be feast or famine - insanely busy months or weeks followed by the sometimes dreaded/sometimes relished downtime - and workdays can lose their distinction between time off.

When in feast mode and the work is pouring in, the nature of the freelance business is such that jobs almost always have a way of coming in late on a Friday at, say, 4 p.m., accompanied by a request that they be finished and delivered first thing the following Monday. Therefore, I and others like myself are behooved to work on Saturday and Sunday - and thus we are well inclined to ask, "What is a Weekend?"

After a good long stint like that, slow time may be well deserved and even wished for, and when it comes, we may wonder ever-so blissfully, "What is a Weekend?" or better yet, "What is a Vacation?" The thought being we've no need for planned leisure time off - we are pretty much there already.

With my Masterpiece Classic viewing obsession of late (and the last show of season two to air Sunday), I like think of any lulls in my business activities as time spent upstairs at Downtime Abbey, where the aristocrats live and love. I spend my afternoons sipping tea, reading novels, taking walks along "the grounds," refilling the well of inspiration and creativity, possibly doing some charity work, and ... well - you get the picture.

Then, when it gets busy again, I go downstairs, to the servants quarters, to get things done.

Either way, the lines between the days of the week and the weekends can tend to blur.

And that's just fine with me.

I Heart the 2012 Love Ribbons Forever Stamp!

A stamp is forever, if it's a forever stamp.

Mail a Valentine. Help save the post office.

A suggestion:  why not use the new 2012 Love Ribbons Forever Stamp? It's not just appropriate for Valentine's Day; it's a nice touch anytime.

 

You can view the Love Ribbons Forever Stamp, as well as many of this year’s other stamps, on Facebook at facebook.com/USPSStamps or on the website Beyond the Perf at beyondtheperf.com/stamp-releases/2012. 

Speaking of stamps ... Molly Rausch paints beyond the borders of ordinary postage stamps to create works of art out of her New York studio. A stunning example ...

By: Postage Stamp Paintings

My Valentine's Day Message For You

Send your Valentine's Day cards and letters early, folks

Sorry, USPS - I can't make it. Thanks, but no thanks.

USPS sent me an invitation to attend their Eastern Area Periodicals/Standard Focus Group Meeting ... an event slated for February 9 (which is today) on letterhead dated January 20 (which was last month) and with an RSVP date of February 3 (which was last week) - which arrived in my mailbox yesterday.

Hello.

Not to bash the service that I have relied so heavily upon for my career dollars over the past 20 plus years ... but when the venerable service touts the safety and security of "ye ole' snail mail" over e-mail (as in their "A refrigerator has never been hacked" commercial), they forgot to compare speed and timeliness.

And it's a shame, too, because I would have liked to attend that meeting.

Ironically, on the very same day that the aforementioned meeting invitation arrived in my box, USA Today runs a front page article entitled "Anything good in the mail?", with the more telling (albeit biting) subtitle that reads, "Postal service may be near its end as e-mailing grows and mailboxes just fill with 'junk.'" The paper's page one part of the story may spell all doom and gloom, but page two of the article gets all teary-eyed on us and spends a full five columns recounting the history of the U.S. Mail - from colonial times up to today, ending with a poignantly romantic story about a college student whose boyfriend was a medic in Afghanistan and sent her love letters in the mail. A quote in the article goes on to say, "'Nothing better may carry and connect sincere hearts...than a travel-worn letter with you name and address, handwritten.'"

Aw, so sweet.

So this year when I send my Valentine's Day cards and letters, I'll be sure to send them well in advance. Like tomorrow. Wait, is that enough time? (Counting on my fingers ... six days, minus Sunday, five days ...) Yeah, that should do. Least any hearts be broken. Unless, of course, I decide to e-mail or tweet my love and save the stamps. But a stamp is forever, if it's a forever stamp, that is.

Maybe I'll crash that USPS meeting today.

Nah.

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