When I first started the challenge on 1 January, I was sure I’d get bored and give up sometime around March at the latest. But I’ve made it halfway through now, and not only have I not missed a day (though there have been a few close calls!), I’m having more fun with it than when I started, and I’m seeing the improvement in my photography skills.

At the start, I was very much a point-and-shoot, centre-your-subject ‘oh, that’ll do’ photographer. Slowly, though, I’m learning some of the rules of composition and how to look at things in a more interesting way. I expected to take a whole lot of photos of my cat: there have probably been more than I’d like, but of the last 180 days only four have been of him (and only five more are of other furry mammals). I’m also slowly getting to grips with Lightroom and Photoshop, which has been a bigger challenge than taking the photos themselves – the photos are the easy part.

It is a pain in the butt some days, especially because I work from home so often have days where I don’t go anywhere, and it’s pretty obvious which ones are of the oh-crap-I-forgot variety. That’s something I’ve learned: you get better results if you take your time and consider it carefully rather than quickly get it done because you’re out of time, which equally applies to copywriting (and just about anything else).

I’m keen to see how I go for the second half. It helps that my partner has upgraded his camera so I have full use of a Nikon DSLR, a big upgrade from my Fujifilm point-and-shoot, and a whole new learning curve.

Sometimes I think we expect to be great at something immediately. I know I do. This is a good reminder that that doesn’t usually happen, but incremental improvement will happen if you keep at it, and it’s nice to have visual proof of that.

Image: Perfect Man Facebook page

Since I became a copywriter, I’ve had to train myself to pay more attention to advertising. Ads in magazines and newspapers don’t tend to be a problem, and nor do billboards, but thanks to current technology allowing me to skip ahead whole minutes when I’ve recorded something, I don’t often watch ads on the telly.

Until TVNZ wised up to that and started putting on a short ad after the promos that usually herald the end of the ad break.

Anyway, for the last year or so I’ve been very taken with the Perfect Italiano ‘Perfect Man’ ads. If you haven’t seen them, the protagonist is a very earnest and sterotypically attractive (pseudo?) Italian guy who loves to cook and listen to the problems of your friends while painting and practicing his listening face. They’re quite hilarious – and they’re that rare type of ad that I don’t seem to tire of.

This is why I think they work:
1) They’re intentionally silly. It’s very humanising when a company doesn’t take itself so seriously.

2) They do a good job of appealing to the target demographic: women. It may sound sexist, but by and large, women are still the ones who are often in charge of the cooking and shopping (where are those hunter-gatherers?). This guy is the polar opposite of what most women expect of their partners: and things are usually funnier when they lean towards the extreme.

3) They have a character. Having a character is nothing new in ads; two examples that spring to mind are the American banker Goldstein from the ASB ads, and the Anchor family from the early 90s. But people are more inclined to buy when they can associate a person with a brand – that’s why I have a photo of myself on my homepage – and this guy is especially memorable.

4) They do social media. Because these ads give me a good giggle, I follow the Perfect Man on both Facebook and Twitter. Then I get to see new gems outside the TV ads, like this: “Today I put a cast on a kitten to mend his broken leg. He was brave like a tiny lion.” Show me a woman, or even a man, who won’t laugh at that. The best thing about the Facebook and Twitter feeds is that they’re so beautifully in character; you can hear the Perfect Man’s voice when you read them. That’s damn hard to do.

Do you have a favourite ad? And what is it that you like about it?

But – and yes, this is one of those blog posts where you relate your topic to something apparently unrelated – I started thinking about ways in which writing, especially copywriting, is like sewing. Some of my thoughts:

- The preparation takes longer than the project. Like the rigmarole of washing fabric, pressing it, cutting out your pieces, and pinning or basting them together before you stitch them, there’s so much to be done before you start writing. Research, planning, brainstorming – but do it right, without cutting corners, and that’s how you do a good job.

- There’s a lot to learn at the start, then it’s just building on what you know. Once you know about seams, grains, tensions, fabric types, interfacing, and machine feet, it’s just a matter of practice. Copywriting is a different beast from other types of writing – but once you learn about target audiences, the power of persuasion, how to think like your reader, and what’s most appropriate for the job at hand, all you need to do is use those skills until they’re second nature, and never stop learning.

- You’ll start paying attention to examples everywhere. These days, I can’t look at a top someone’s wearing without taking note of the seaming, dart placement, and tailoring. I also can’t read a billboard or sales letter without looking at how they’ve phrased their sentences, and figuring out why. And I’ve learned a lot by doing that; it’s perversely fun to find an example of poor writing and pick holes in why I wouldn’t do it like that.

- The finishing touches are very important. You can’t just stitch up some bits of fabric and start wearing it. Seams need to be pressed and finished, and threads need to be clipped. Likewise writing – you can’t just stop typing and find it finished. It needs reading thoroughly, replacing words that don’t work, refining sentences that could be that much snappier. Then it’s done.

- You finish one project, you’re itching for the next. Enough said, really.

Taking one photo every day for a year is a daunting proposition for me. I have next to no photography skills (though I can always spot other people’s mistakes!), and quite honestly, learning about apertures and f-stops and Lightroom and Photoshop fills me with something that’s not quite horror, but doesn’t feel good. But I want photography skills. I want to look at an awesome photo and think, I took that. I love looking at photos and am always amazed at the creative ways photographers look at the world. I want to see a world like that.

So, that’s my challenge. I’m blogging about it, I guess, to set out my reasons for doing it so that I have something to remind me why I’m doing it when it gets hard sometime around, oh, 16 January.

But it’ll be cool to look through the photos in a year and see what I did and be proud of my new mad skills.

So, if you’re interested in following my challenge, this is what you should know. 1. I won’t necessarily upload every day. I’ll do what I can but some days it won’t happen; but I will upload all the photos eventually. 2. Expect to see a lot of pictures of my cat, especially at the start of the challenge when I get to 10pm and realise I haven’t taken a photo that day. 3. Comments are welcome, nay, encouraged. It’s more fun that way.

I’ve set up a set on Flickr, if you care to see what I get up to this year

Flickr user: (matt)

One of the joys of self-employment is that when you first feel the niggle of a winter malady coming on, you can launch a pre-emptive strike to ward it off, employing tactics that would be completely inappropriate for a public workplace.

Need to stay warm? Ditch the nice clothes, and stay in your pajamas, or better still, a onesie. Feel like you need a nap? Get a hot water bottle, and snuggle up in bed for an hour. And you can eat foods that have huge benefits for keeping your immune system humming, but which should never enter a public area. I’m talking, of course, about raw garlic.

Yesterday I started feeling a bit more grumpy than usual, my nose started running, and I wasn’t happy with the way the back of my throat was feeling. It’s vital that I stay healthy, because I’m off to a wedding in a week that will involve a plane trip and a holiday. Last time I flew with a cold I was almost in tears from the pain on descent, and nobody wants to be the person coughing all through the ceremony.

So I did some research into what I could do to nip it in the bud fast, but which didn’t involve drugs. I’ve been a fan of lemon and honey in the past, and ginger and garlic, but I was interested to read a bit more about garlic. Anecdotally, it’s been used for centuries for its antibacterial and antiviral properties, and is best used crushed because that releases allicin, thought to be the active compound. More information can be found here.

After an initial dose of two cloves, I’ll take another one tomorrow, and for a couple more mornings before we leave. Hopefully by then I’ll have results that will enable me to stay healthy. And as for my partner, with whom I share the office? Well, he’ll have to put up with me being all garlicky for a couple of days, but better him than an office full of workmates!

Photo: http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o166/jlbyler/FACEPALM.jpg

Got the person’s name wrong at the top of an email
There are variations on this. You might be sending an identical email to a number of people and have left the ‘Dear XXX’ at the top. (Bonus points if it’s an invoice!) Or you might have cut and pasted a previously sent email, and forgotten to change the name at the top. Or, my favourite, you type in ‘Dear wrong-but-very-similar name’ and don’t notice until you’ve hit ‘send’. And there’s nothing you can do but resend the email and hope they don’t notice the name and assume a glitch has caused you to send it twice.

Said the wrong thing at a function
Maybe you had one too many, or you just got a little out of your depth, or you weren’t quite sure if the other person is joking around with you. Whatever, you make a quip or let a naughty word inappropriately slip out, and in that second after, that pause lets you know that you’ve entered Faux Pas country. Time to change the subject or politely excuse yourself.

Answered “Are you busy?” with anything other than “yes”
In a client-provider situation, when the client asks if you’re busy, the only correct answer is yes. This lets them know that you’re successful and well worth the dollars they’re paying you. Telling them “it’s not too bad” or “actually, it’s pretty quiet at the moment” are both wrong answers. When in doubt, treat it like “how are you?” in a social situation – people don’t want to know that you burnt your toast or that you think you’re developing a serious addiction to edamame beans. You always answer “fine, thanks”.

What have you done that makes you cringe?

So I thought I’d share this with anyone who’s interested. My friend Josh Drummond is a comic book artist and journalist (he’s a stinkin’ good writer to boot). While looking for work recently he decided that a boring chronological CV/resume in Arial 10 wasn’t cutting it, so he turned it into a comic book. As you do.

So, for your entertainment: http://maverickcarter.deviantart.com/art/comic-book-resume-157047743