Features and blogging

Plenty is written about love, and double the amount on this day of the year, Valentine’s Day, when hearts and flowers are in every shop window, raining the pink stuff down whether you’re in the market for that kind of thing or not.

Today you may be booking a table for two, shoving a last-minute M&S Valentine meal in your basket, or scratching the date from your calendar and just GettingOnWithIt. There’s a bit of everything going on here at Wordfairy Towers, where my mission today is to finish a self-set project I’ve been working on for a while, and which for some reason hasn’t yet flown off the page.

Writers’ block is something that happens to us all, whether we’re in the business of words or not, and it also forms the basis of an upcoming talk I’m planning about breaking through the blank page. Today I’ve been taking a leaf out of my own blank notebook, because the crux of my message is going to be this: that if you love what you do, the rest will follow.

Life’s not always that simple, though, and when something isn’t quite right we need to unpack the parcel and get to the heart of the matter: what’s at the core and why it won’t work.

I’ve been reading a book about how to clarify you marketing message. It’s the first business book I’ve read and it’s going well so far. It contains a theory that is translatable to any company, where the reader unpacks the ‘noise’ of marketing and gets right down to a basic message.

The whole aim of my project, I found out today, had not been clear and I worked this out by making notes in pencil on paper, digging down until I was able to see the roots. New ideas can now form, encouraging growth in a different – and no doubt better – direction.

So thanks, book, for giving me some clarity this very sunny Valentine’s Day. I’m off to break out the chocolate.