I stink at branding.
I heard about The Writing Cooperative’s 52 Week Writing Challange late last year. I decided to join. I certainly have plenty of material — even if I had less time to update tales I had written, hence the weeks gap in publishing these tales, which I called Diary of a Gen X Mom. (That was the challenge, write on one musing for 52 weeks. I chose real domestic stories because I like writing them. Plus I have a bunch in need of updating because I’ve been writing for a while now and am better at it.)
One of the things taking my time is turning my old blog into a portfolio and hub for the wide range of things I am doing — like family law reform advocacy and local politics. The site is my home on the web and my web designer had the idea to make it warm and inviting, visually. Like my living room, he said.
Anyway, one of the things to come out of that exercise is my too many voices. I sound different depending on where I’m writing. That was by design. Different sites have different audiences. But I’m already swinging wide with topics, so should aim for consistency in everything else.
Other advice I had recieved from an editor, my husband, a few readers but had not understood suddenly made sense. It was one of those breakthough critiques that writers crave.
This started a chain reaction of revelations, one of which is why did I call this series Diary of a Gen X Mom?
I am An American Housewife in London. Even though I’m formerly in London five years now, it is what people remember. That’s what stands out in their minds. Even long time editors for whom I’ve written on other things over years remember AHLondon. “Leslie Loftis — the expat housewife writer, teapot gal?” An American Housewife, that’s my thing. I recognized that when I named this pseudo-blog publication, Tales from An American Housewife, so why didn’t I use it for this series?! Because the boilerplate advice that a woman on-ramping a career after motherhood has to check all the the ultra professional boxes? I got that memo and tossed it a long time ago, yet here’s that idea doing its creepy influence thing.
Forget Diary of a Gen X Mom. That’s just another voice I’d have to introduce everyone to. I am changing the series name from here on out to A Tale from an American Housewife.
Incidentally, this is the second time I’ve made this mistake. The whole reason I have two Twitter accounts, @ALondonTX and @LeslieLoftisTX, was the felt need to be more professional and use my real name. I regret separating my professional and casual personas on Twitter. It’s confusing for me and followers and is a downright pain in the back end. But there isn’t a lot of overlap between the two and I would hate to lose 500–700ish followers by closing one. Social media and PR — I seem determined to learn it the hard way.
