Birthdays + Aging + Why I LOVE Getting Older (and you should, too)
Today is my birthday. Woot! I’m 36 and SO happy to be getting older. Beyond the fact that I’m so over 35 at this point, I’m just generally in love with aging.
So this week I did something I’ve never done before in the name of vanity. You see I don’t typically engage in a lot of activities that have me working real hard on my looks. I like to throw around facts like this:
- I’ve never dyed my hair.
- I’ve never permed my hair.
- I’ve never tanned at a tanning salon.
- I’ve never gotten my ears pierced.
- I’ve never had braces.
- I’ve never had glasses or contacts.
- I’ve never plucked my eyebrows.
Super boring, I realize. But this week was a big step for me because I had a modeling headshot coming up the day before my birthday and it was recommended to me that I try whitening my teeth.
Um, excuse me? My teeth are totally white? You think they need to be whiter? Read More
HOW TO PLAN YOUR OWN WRITING RETREAT (based on the awesome one I just had)
I have just returned from an epic writing retreat. Maybe it was epic because it was my first one, ever. Or maybe it was epic because of what happened at the end of it. Suspend the next eight minutes with me as I take you on my writing retreat and you might get some tips to create your own writing retreat that will have you on a spiritual high like I was at the end of mine.
The punch line is this: I FINISHED MY NOVEL! “Now, wait,” you say, “didn’t you already finish it?” Yes and no. Yes, I finished the bulk of it but I was clear there were holes I needed to fill AND I received feedback that suggested the beginning needed work.
I wrote 100 pages over the course of my 72-hour writing retreat. I filled all the holes and revised the beginning and rocked the end.
1. Prepare your literary landscape
What do you want to see while you’re working? I wanted to see my big W diagram that charts the major plot points and events in my novel. I made that chart years ago in a class I took from Mary Carroll Moore. It has served me very well…and…in the midst of writing my novel things changed. My characters would surprise me and suddenly they were not sticking to the W and that was okay.
I surrounded myself with my favorite authors. I loaded up books I had on the shelf and went by the library, too, and was sure to gather the authors that move me. I wanted inspiration—I wasn’t planning on reading them…it was a writing retreat, after all. But, because a literary agent in New York responded to my query and first 100 pages with positivity and feedback about the beginning of my story, I wanted good beginnings around me.
I read the first two or three pages of about 5 different books to get a feel for the kind of rhythm and detail I needed to inject into my own work.
2. Buy your favorite foods
I stopped by The Wedge Coop and Whole Foods to get all my favorite foods. I don’t know about you, but I am much happier eating healthy, delicious, simple foods. That kind of reward at the end of a 6-hour writing session is so needed. I bought a few treats, too, like carob covered almonds and raisins (neither of which my family considers a treat), but moving on.
Here’s what I brought:
Carob almonds
Carob raisins
kumquats
Passionfruit Skyr
Purely Elizabeth granola
dried sweet potatoes and beet chips
organic, uncured ham
baby carrots
organic Havarti
premium ginger brew
organic blackberries
lime rice chips
organic apples
cashews
raspberry fig cookies
La Croix sparkling water
3. Thank the people in your life
Truly do this. My husband gifted me this writing retreat as a Christmas present. I could not thank him enough. His gift to me meant I could focus on my creative pursuits.
I am clear it also meant he would have a full weekend with the kids. I knew my daughter would be called upon to be more helpful than she already is with her little brother. I knew my freelance clients would need to wait a day to hear from me.
Thank your peeps for making your retreat possible.
Here Darren took a picture of me just before I left and with all my gratitude:
4. Get to work
I arrived at Glengarda Cottage at Villa Maria Abbey in southern Minnesota at around 5:45pm on Friday. The grounds were truly lovely. It was relatively quiet there as the retreat using the facilities that weekend was wrapping up Saturday night.
My little cabin was more like a house. It was situated across the street from the main property. The backyard went straight down to a beautiful stream and on the other side of the stream was Frontenac State Park land. The bench at the bend in the stream is where I would spend most of my days.
But that first night I set up my work zone on this huge awesome table: Read More
LEADERS: DO THIS, DON’T DO THAT.
I wrote this post as an article for the Leadership column of The Mennonite magazine’s most recent issue.
There are powerful leaders and humble leaders, horrible leaders and questionable leaders.
Throughout my adult life of working under various leaders—from churches to places of employment, from neighborhood associations to my children’s school board, from nonprofit organizations where I’ve volunteered to my own family—I’ve had varying experiences of leaders and come to understand that everyone is a teacher. They teach me what to do and sometimes what not to do.
1. Do this: Get your hands dirty
When I was a professor of English, I was impressed with the department chair because he always made a point of sitting with the new adjuncts while we graded papers during midterms. He was right there in the lounge grading his papers at midnight, too, coffee breath and all. Read More
CONTENT MARKETING // MINNEAPOLIS INDUSTRY EXPERTS DISCLOSE THEIR SECRETS FOR SUCCESS // CLAIRE DEBERG’S INTERVIEW WITH SNAP AGENCY
I was honored to be the only woman interviewed (even though I fall last in the line-up…at least there was ONE woman, right?!) in the Snap Agency column on Content Marketing. Snap decided to get details of how other professional marketing experts handle, work with and manage content for their clients.
It is a wonderfully in-depth piece which I encourage you to read if you have time and an affinity for all things marketing. The author, Mike Frahm, also created a nice little SlideShare with the highlights from each expert which I’ll post below.
Here is the Snap Agency interviewing me:
As the owner of your own content business, what are your biggest challenges in producing outstanding content for clients?
I’ve been running a successful freelance business for nearly a decade. I’ve been the direct writer for agencies, I’ve worked as project manager for national CPG brands, I’ve worked with a suite of other writers, I’ve led teams and I lead teams of writers. The single largest challenge I have faced time and again in regards to producing content for clients is convincing them of its worth.
Far too many clients believe in the Field of Dreams motto when they enter into design and logo conversations: If you build it, they will come. No matter how slick and creative a logo is, if there is no content that bolsters that beauty high up into the din, which is future potential customers, you may as well peel money out of your wallet and drop it down the garbage disposal because people do not come for new logos.
I work hard to show clients the synergy that spins up from distinct branding coupled with powerful content. Once clients can see the energy that can be garnered for their products, ideas or services from the simple marriage of smart branding and rich content, they’re sold.
Then that delicious content has to be produced, which can seem daunting…because it is. There is a lot of online noise and by a lot I mean an overwhelmingly, sickening amount of noise on the Internet. How does a brand create an engaging voice among the cacophony? Read More
Claire DeBerg // Writer 