This piece was originally intended to be final, ultimate article in the Drag Race Marketing series. I burnt out before I got there. And frankly, this was the only thing in that series that truly needed to be said.

When I was in grade 8 my then-best-friend (who didn’t have cable) got me into a show called Joan of Arcadia.

It’s unsurprising that she liked it. She was a pastor’s daughter after all — watching a show about a girl who could talk to god was very normal for her.

But I also liked it, which surprised me.

There’s one…

Sometimes, we struggle to write about the things we love the most.

I’ve started and stopped this post a million times.

(Okay, not a million. Definitely at least a dozen though.)

And I could never get it quite right.

So you’re not getting an article today.

You’re getting a lyric essay.

Coda #2. Snatch Game.

Coda. noun

anything that serves as a concluding part.1

~~~~~•~~~~~

RuPaul’s Drag Race. Season 9. Episode 1.

The sixth queen walks into the werk room dressed all in black. Beaded detailing sparkles on her dress and drips from the (deliberately) jagged hems.

The black felt crown on her head is perched at a jaunty angle. Fun…

My favourite joke of all time is one of the nerdiest things you’ll ever hear.

It’s a Shakespeare joke.

William Shakespeare walks into a gay bar…

Exit, pursued by a bear.

Now, if you get this joke, it’s hilarious.

But unless, like me, you live at the intersection of “lit nerd” and “queer culture”…odds are you don’t actually get this joke.

Don’t worry, this isn’t rule #2.

You’ll get that next week.

Rather, this is the coda to rule #1.

And I’m using the word “coda” for a reason:

Coda: a more or less independent passage, at the end of a composition, introduced to bring it to a satisfactory close.

Caveat: a warning or caution; admonition.

(Thank you dictionary.com)

This is a warning, yes. But like any good marketing blog post, this post has a single idea behind it, and can stand on it’s own.

However, it has the most meaning (and is the most clear) when placed in conversation with…

As a creative writer, I never really got the obsession with voice.

Voice was just how you wrote…wasn’t it? Different people had different voices. That made sense and seemed 100% normal to me.

Then again, I never struggled with voice. I could always write distinctively in my fiction, and I never questioned how I wrote or what it sounded like.

I just wrote, and let the words flow out of me as I needed to.

In my marketing…not so much.

Because fiction was me spinning a tale. Telling a story. Stepping into the shoes of storyteller — shoes I’d been…

You know what my least favourite part of internet marketing is?

Something I dislike even more than the hard-sell sleeze-ball internet marketers who will guilt trip you into parting with every last penny for their new miracle cure for everything that ails you?

It’s the entrepreneurs who make it sound easy.

The ones who use phrases like “three years later” and “fast forward to today”.

Because they give the impression that this stuff is easy.

They do it deliberately, so that you believe their product will work for you. (And it probably will, if you do what they say.)

But the way they sell it makes you believe…

This is for all the freelancers and service providers out there who are currently struggling to get by.

For the business owners sitting there, paralyzed by fear and doubt. Needing to take action, but terrified to.

This is for every work-at-home hopeful, looking a that sales page for a new course, thinking maybe this will be it. This will be the one. This time, I’ll fix it. (And by it, you mean your business. But by it you also mean “me”.)

This is for everyone who is hustling and hammering away and seeing only mediocre results.

This is for everyone…

I was standing at the platform at dusk, yellow-orange letters stark against the black of the information board.

Ealing Broadway 1 min

West Ruislip 3 min

No biggie. I pulled out my phone and waited.

When the train pulled up, I got on with everyone else.

Except, as they announced the next stop, I realized I’d made a horrible mistake.

“This stop is…West Acton” the cheery lady on the tube announced.

I facepalmed in the middle of the train. Maybe it was the dregs of jet lag or all the people getting on around me, or the fact that I’d…