I made reference, a couple of blog posts ago, to the fact that I'll be attending Northern Voice, the Vancouver blogging conference, later this month. It runs from Thursday, February 21 to Saturday, February 23. http://2008.northernvoice.ca/
The kick-off dinner is being held this year in the Polynesian Room at Vancouver's Waldorf Hotel http://www.critiki.com/cgi-bin/location.cgi?loc_id=196, and I am really looking forward to it. (Last year's was held in the gorgeous Volunteer Vancouver building on Main Street, I believe - should have gone, I heard rumours of fountains of chocolate or chocolate swans or something equally extravagant.)
I also made a comment, in my previous blog post, that I was going to attend for the second year, despite having had a really miserable time at last year's conference. Some of it was my fault, some of it was a case of 'I should just have stayed in bed today' and some of it rests squarely on the conference organizers, or at least those tasked with event planning.
Northern Voice (the conference itself), is held at UBC's Forestry Building. For those of you who've never visited the UBC campus - it's huge. It's freaking huge. The UBC population is almost 10 times bigger than Kincardine, the small southwestern Ontario town in which I lived for a year before moving to BC in 2002. And I managed to get lost there for months. The estimates I've seen are that UBC has a student, staff and faculty population of 50,000. It is a vast expanse of land. What can I say - they didn't call it the Wild West for nothing. The only place I can really find with ease at UBC is its marvellous bookstore, and that's only when the roads aren't completely torn up and I don't have to take six detours.
It was pissing rain on the Saturday of Northern Voice 2007. Yes it's Vancouver, and I am actually one of the few people I know who don't mind the rain here and don't complain about it much, even though I've always thought snow was the smarter form of precipitation. Snow doesn't get you wet and it's - well - it's usually much more scenic than rain. Still, it was Toni Onley's dreamy coastal landscapes I had in mind when I moved here. This was unusual rain for Vancouver though - hard rain - big drops that really got you wet. I think of this as Eastern rain rather than Western rain. Mean rain. Purposeful rain. Its purpose being to mess you up in a quest to replenish the water table as quickly as possible.
For some inexplicable reason, the bus driver I had was not familiar with UBC campus and couldn't help me find the Forestry Building. This is the point at which I step up to the plate and acknowledge that I could have done my 'how to get there' research instead of just glancing at the map and assuming the bus driver would know his or her route. And that I could have left the house earlier.
As it happened though, I ended up wandering in the aforementioned pissing rain, waiting for another bus that would actually take me to the Forestry Building, getting myself into a completely foul temper, and arriving an hour late for the conference.
So - off to a bit of a rough start. I ran into a few people I knew and attended two sessions, both of which were interesting. Then it was lunch time. I quailed at the prospect of heading back out into that mess, so armed myself with the map listing all the area lunch venues. Most of them were at least a quarter-mile's hike from the Forestry Building. Many of them were much, much further away. I had already noticed that the Tim Horton's in the building itself wasn't open weekends, and thought it odd that they hadn't made an exception for a weekend when a conference was going on. Surely it would have been worth their while to open up on a Saturday just this once? While I'm not a fan of Tim's, some hot soup and a sandwich would have been really nice. I might even have been able to forget my wet socks in the convivial atmosphere of Tim's.
But no. Muttering to myself about it being one of those days I was going to get soaked four times (to and from the conference, to and from lunch), I headed for the next-nearest provision-providing venue, Starbucks. A latte and a pumpkin scone would have been just fine. On the way to the Starbucks I noticed an independent corner store and thought, oh, I don't care what their sandwiches are like, this is a better idea than Starbucks. Apparently not. The store had been robbed earlier in the day and the police were still conducting their investigation. Even though I had cash, the store owners had been forbidden to conduct business until the police wrapped up their investigation. Starbucks it was, then.
Obviously I wasn't the only person who had taken public transit to the conference, and great minds do think alike (fools seldom differ). I've never seen a Starbucks slammed the way that one was. And no one looked happy, which is most unusual. Didn't take long to figure out why. There was no food. I mean, there may have been one of those cinnamon straws. But other than that, the glass display case was pretty much empty. The Northern Voice organizers had failed to notify Starbucks that there was a conference going on. The staff were bewildered and embarrassed. Run off their feet too, since they'd been unexpectedly slammed.
So I had a latte, which I think I consumed perched on a cement planter in a courtyard that provided some shelter from the rain, and thought about going back to the conference. And I decided not to. The wet socks were starting to get to me, and I was beginning to feel murderous thoughts.
This year's going to be different. A lot different. For one thing, I'll be driving or being driven. For another, I know where the Forestry Building is. I'm also going to give the Starbucks a call myself and make sure they know there's a conference going on. I might even call the Tim Horton's and suggest they open up on Saturday. I've already done the feedback thing* for Northern Voice 2007 and mentioned these issues, so perhaps my phone calls will be reminders only, if the organizers took my advice. If they didn't, I'm not taking any chances.
Which brings me to the third reason why I blog. In my post 'Columnists I Like' I talked about the joy of writing freedom. That freedom doesn't matter much until and unless you have truly found your voice as a writer. When I first worked in public relations I was amazed at how difficult it was to master the right tone and style of PR writing. I'd written poetry, short stories, book reviews, magazine articles, ad copy, research and non-research essays, part of a screenplay...this writing thing wasn't really a problem for me. I've kept a copy of my first case study, which went through about 45 drafts before it was finalized, as one of my writing samples. I had significant editing help from at least two of my colleagues. A red pen was used, until my always expressive face assumed a rather stricken look. A black pen was substituted for the red. That didn't really help my ego much. And then, finally, something clicked for me and I was able to rewrite the case study myself and get it approved. Everything became a lot easier after that.
Looking back, this is how I'd describe it. Have you ever worn cowboy boots? I've only owned one pair, and I'm not sure what happened to them, but I'm quite sure I cried when I got rid of them. I loved them. I loved them when I first saw them in the store and I loved wearing them. There was a two-week period when I first started wearing them though, when I actually contemplated cutting off my feet. I've never had blisters on the tops of my feet before. I've never had blisters on my heels that bled. I've never stacked bandaids one on top of each other to try to prevent further damage and a little cushioning just so I could get through the breaking in process.
Mastering another form of writing - and a difficult one - was like breaking in those cowboy boots. Ultimately it was worth the struggle. Much to my surprise, writing is a skill that continues to develop the more of it you do. I'd add, 'as long as you continue to read good writing,' as my one caveat. A couple of years after my first case study, the receptionist at work got a call from someone asking to be put through to the company's best writer. My boss wasn't in, so she directed the call to me. Turns out it was a headhunter, and while the lovely Diana was outraged at being tricked this way, it was pretty hard for me not to giggle with sheer joy at the compliment she'd paid me.
I remember a client objecting strenuously to a press release and demanding to know why we'd chosen to use each and every phrase and structured it the way press releases are properly structured. I'm not sure what possessed me, but I do know we'd sweated over this release (our 'best teams' approach wasn't quite working in this instance, I'm afraid). I couldn't help myself. Even though I was the most junior person there, I had to be the one to justify our approach. And I did, mounting an extremely convincing case for why the release needed to be left alone if the client's goals were to be met. That release and the subsequent media relations we did with it led to the longest feature coverage I've ever helped generate.
And that was the point at which I realized I had found my voice as a writer. While I may not understand it on a conscious level when I begin to write, whatever method I have, whether it's research or an outline or that weird form of subconscious analysis that happens when you absorb a new form of writing by osmosis from reading, reading, reading...I now know there's no form of writing I can't master. One of the best things I learned at my former agency was to stop being neurotic about my writing. The collective writing approach used in a PR agency means you can't be too proprietary about your work. If you were to have a hissy fit every time something you wrote got changed, you wouldn't make it through the probationary period. There's no room for that sort of journalistic ego in PR writing, and there's also no time for it. The sort of jockeying for position (front page, please, and if not that, I'll settle for a section front page) that goes on at newspapers won't cut it. The learning process may be painful. Hair may be pulled. Tears may be shed. Paper may well be crumpled and flung. (Gee, I manage to make a pretty much silent activity seem quite melodramatic, don't I?)
Then, of course, once you have found your voice, you must use it. Or lose it. And so, I blog....
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