sarah ayoub, Freelance Writer

• Victoria Mixon dishes the dirt on the six personality types that will succeed as writers. What category do you fall into? I think I am the sensitive, but I am not entirely sure.
• In something that’s a little more fun, journalist Nicole Haddow tweeted who she writes like yesterday, after visiting http://iwl.me/ Despite plugging in blog posts, a few paragraphs from my novel and a few paragraphs from my latest article in Madison magazine, I kept getting the same guy, one Cory Doctorow. Despite the fact that they are all different types of writing! Oh well, at least it was something to play around with.
• Need a writing tutor? Jan at Writer’s Journey supports writers of all contexts and genres through writer’s retreats and workshops that take you ‘back to your creative self’. Sounds like something I need to enrol in, my head’s a little clogged up with all my tasks at the moment.
• But hopefully not for too long, as Melbourne writer and blogger Megan Burke of Literary Life has just offered her services as an intern with moi. Yes, I know we’re separated by a stately border, but if Megan thinks it will work, I ain’t complaining. Megan is going to help me try and stay on top of wordsmith news and worthy interview candidates, so you’ll occasionally find posts that are either written, researched or inspired by her. She’s also going to help with a little bit of mundane research and admin stuff (such is life of an intern), and in exchange, I will mentor her in any way possible about the foray into freelance feature writing. Thanks for volunteering yourself Megan!
• The pretty, smart and wonderful Corrine over at Frock & Roll (love that title!) has written part three of her series “The Blogger’s Guide to Hustling: Networking, Promoting & Getting your blog OUT THERE”. A good read for all you aspiring wordsmiths who have taken my advice (and that of my fellow writers) and got yourself a web-based shop-front aka blog or website. See parts one and two of Corrine’s hustling series here and here.  
• The NSW Writer’s Centre is running a fiction writer’s critique group on Saturday afternoons from September, which might be a good avenue for this of you who have started writing and are after some workshopping of your work. Other interesting courses include The Business of Being a Writer, Writing for Children & Young Adults and Writing Creative Non-Fiction (get in quick, this last one starts in ten days).
• Ardent glossy-mag girls would know that there’s been a bit of a shuffle in mag land recently, with Sarah Oakes from CLEO taking up a maternity leave position as Editor of Sunday Life, and Gemma Crisp of the Show Pony (and former Dolly Ed and CLEO Features Ed) taking up a spot in the CLEO Editor’s Chair as her replacement. Amelia Bloomfield from Bride to Be has also left her Editor’s chair as she gears up for a move to Byron Bay, with former CLEO Features Ed, (shortlived) Aussie Glamour Features Director and OK! Special Projects & Lifestlye Director Sarah Gawthorne taking up her position. Cealia Corse has also left her job as Cosmo’s Features Editor to take up a spot as the Beauty Editor on Women’s Health, and replacing her is one Melanie Senior. (Of course, you might have gotten all this at Mumbrella and Girl With a Satchel anyway, but on the off chance you have not, here it is from moi).
• Not that my news compares to all of the above, but I’ll dish it out anyway:
  • I’ll be contributing a six-part beauty series to Trespass magazine in the near future, entitled “The Adventures of a Beauty Amatuer”. You might have noticed that I have a few more beauty posts than usual up on wordsmithlane, and that’s because my interest in beauty writing has peaked somewhat in recent weeks. Of course, the likes of these posts will compare not to online beauty portals and magazines like Beauty Haven, Primped and such, but coming from the point of a view of a features writer who has never written style and beauty before in her life, it’s going to be a learning curve as much for you as it is for me. Especially because my interest in beauty writing, or lack thereof, stemmed from my lack of interest in beauty products themselves, which, thanks to my quest to be a beautiful, glowing bride, has also peaked.
  • In other Sarah news, American Journo student and Soccer Blogger Alex Veeneman has written about me on his blog, and I have been featured on girly travel website She Goes.
• And in another bit for mother country, Beirut has yet again been named a must-visit destination by Daily Candy (site which I love moreso because of the book of the same name). My cousins have just returned from there begrudginly, all bronze and high on all-night cocktails and partying and Euro-shopping. I am superbly jealous. Tell me how it is possible for a supposed war-torn, supposedly fundamentalist country to have ZARA, MNG, Bershka, TopShop (yes, the British chain) and H&M, while Australia only has one of the above? If I suddenly disappear, it’s because I have a dual reason to go there other than visiting my grandparents!
• Speaking of Lebanon, Miss Lebanon Australia Daniella Rahme, flies out today to compete in the Miss Lebanon Emigrant Pageant in Beirut. The competition is created to name the queen of Lebanese beauty queens who has grown up in another country to migrant parents of Lebanese origin. Good luck Daniella, we hope you do Australia proud!
• Would you like to see some Wordsmithlane Video Blogs? Any other thing you’d like to see up here that I am not already doing (ahem, not that I do much). Might do some beauty vlogs, me thinks…

Plenty of aspiring female wordsmiths, or feminist/women’s interest writers, have started out writing for lip magazine, including writer and researcher extraordinaire Rachel Hills and Trespass Editor-in-chief Liv Hambrett. This week’s wordsmith spotlight looks at this time-tested publication for girls who have a lot to say, and how to get published in it.

lip magazine is a Canberra-based publication that comprises of a regularly updated website and two print issues per year.  It was started with the view to provide an alternative magazine for young girls, inspired by the likes of Sassy and other overseas publications (the founding editor, Rachel Funari, moved to Australia from America).  lip gives young women an opportunity to read about real issues that are relevant to them, while also providing a place where they can get published and share their own thoughts and opinions. It recognises that feminism isn’t a “dirty F word,” and encourages young women to think, feel, create, speak out and live. (More about that here).

The magazine has been around for a number of years, but right now is a particularly exciting time for the publication: it recently came under new editorial control, which inspired some changes, namely a move to becoming a predominantly web-based publication.  
 
lip publishes articles about women’s mental and physical health, political and social issues, the environment, culture, and life – as long as its relevant to females aged 14 – 25.  lip accepts freelance contributions from both established and up-and-coming writers with fresh voices and interesting perspectives.  Reviews and articles should be based around the writer’s opinion, not merely a re-hashing of the plot and/or relevant facts.  Content on the website usually is usually of a shorter length (reviews between 400 – 600 words, articles 800 words). See writer’s guidelines here, and contact details for the editorial team here.  

Perfect for all you aspiring writers, not just because its recent expansion means new opportunities for getting published, but also because of its fantastic reading material.

Good luck, and happy pitching!

This week, we’re spotlighting on She Goes, a great site for girls who love to explore, take on new adventures and travel (Olivia Hambrett, I am looking at you).

The beauty of She Goes – apart from the fact that it is simply fabulous in terms of both aesthetics and content – is that it takes contributions, which means that aspiring wordsmiths like yourselves now have an additional outlet to add to your list of potential places to start writing for (new wordsmithlane readers take note that Wordsmith Spotlight exists solely to alert us all to new avenues or outlets where we can pitch or publish our work, as well as new courses and events and the like).

The lovely lady behind She Goes is Emma Gardiner, a freelance journalist and lifestyle publicist based in Sydney. Increasingly frustrated at having to ‘stay on message’ and get the angle right everytime she wrote a feature article, Gardiner decided to start a blog.

“Blogs allow for a freedom of expression that goes well beyond what is acceptable in normal working life”, she said. “SheGoes is a blog for adventurous people who find themselves desk bound in between trips. It exists to better connect with, and help form a happy little community, for all the travel obsessives around the world”.  

Although it is medicine and not cure for her itchy feet, (“there more I travel, the more I want to travel”), She Goes is quite a comprehensive place for women travellers who want information from fellow trekkers, travel-worthy products and destination musings.

It features:
- Travel Tales profiles of journalists, travel industry luminaries, SheGoes readers – anyone interesting really!
- Destination features covering everything from food, accommodation, shopping, transport and cultural activities
- Where am I Wednesday photo comp – guess the country and win a totally random prize
- Giveaways
- Travel product and book reviews
- Philosophical musings about travel
- Lisa’s Travel Deal of the Week
- Tipster Tuesday where readers get to ask the community travel-related questions

She Goes accepts contributions from fellow travellers and loves nothing more than hearing other people’s zany stories about their time spent abroad. If you would like to write for SheGoes, please email emma[at]shegoes.com.au and if you want to make Emma extra happy, comment on her blog posts (she loves hearing your voice).

Got a website /writer’s job/ internship/ magazine/ short story that must be shared with wordsmith laners for their benefit? Spotlight is here to shine on it! Email wordsmithlane[at]gmail.com for inclusion.

This week, we spotlight on the lovely Megan Burke’s blog, Literary Life.

At Literary Life, Megan:

• reviews books,
• interviews authors/journalists/agents,
• attends, photographs and reports on literary events (like book launches, lit festivals etc) take photos and then write about them,
• holds competitions,
• talks about the publishing world and her own life (she volunteers at a lot of lit organisations) and work,
• and, above all else, ramble!

About her blog, Megan says: “People usually think in terms of status updates, saying, ‘This’ll make a great Facebook update!’ when they see, hear or say something funny or witty. I definitely think in blog updates – ‘This’ll make a great blog post!’ I travel with my camera and inspiration from the most random of things can make a great post, such as the time I saw Sportgirl’s window display had books in it!
 
Literary Life is definitely a labor of love. It’s my baby – I am so proud of it and everything it’s done for me. I blog because I like having an outlet for all my opinions – and I have a lot of opinions! I started blogging because I read blogs while working in a bookstore, and finally I thought I might as well make my own.
 
One of the most rewarding things about it, I think, are when I’m at a literary event and people I don’t know come up to me – authors, readers, whoever – and quote back to me something I’ve written, saying they loved it. I still can’t believe people read it. It’s just my little blog, where I ramble on about stuff. And people like reading it?
 
Readers can expect an easy-to-read, informal blog about publishing and all its facades. I specialise in YA lit, but that’s not certainly all I talk about. I’d like to think myself some grand blogger but really I’m just a girl who loves to read. I have more books than I know what to do with and my collection grows almost daily.”

Megan’s a full-time student studying professional writing and editing, and in between her studies, she writes Young Adult fiction as well as opinion pieces and reviews. She is currently working on her first novel (about a group of friends in their first year out of high school), and volunteering for companies like Express Media and The Melbourne Writers Festival. Megan is also available to editor manuscripts (see more on her website). Next on her agenda is a BA in Creative Writing, a move which would hopefully fulfill her ultimate dream: “to spend the days writing and dreaming inside [her] head”.
 
If you like what this wordsmith is about, please don’t hesitate to join her on her literary life.  

Aspiring Melbournian Wordsmiths, take note! Frankie is looking for an editorial intern to help out their Victorian-based ed, so hurry up and apply!

frankie editorial intern

(2 days per week, unpaid, based in VIC)

We’re looking for a smart, organized, up and coming journalist to intern part-time alongside frankie’s editor.

Role Outline

• Conducting and transcribing interviews, email, face-to-face and phone
• Answer phone queries, redirect emails, mail sorting and postage
• Research and follow through story ideas
• Editorial follow-up – fact checking product names, prices and contacts
• Help out at events
• Conduct vox pops
• Keep office tidy/organize supplies
• Writing stories

Full details and application information here. Good luck!!

Applications Close: Monday 5pm, June 28th, 2010

Hey Hey Wordsmith Laners,

Back from Canberra and back into the busy scheme of things, even though I am absolutely exhausted. Due to a whole host of unforeseen circumstances like issues at work and a grandfather in hospital that have spun my schedule upside down, I have had to push Wordsmith Weekly to Tuesday for this week.

In the mean time, I suggest you all enter a great social media competition run by the amazing Rachel Hills on her blog. Hills says:

“The event I’m most excited about though is Media140, the latest in a series of over the past couple of years that have dealt with the thorny – but exciting – question of what lies ahead for future of journalism. Named after the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter and the old-school SMS, it’s part of an international collaboration – think London, New York, Bangalore, Dubai and Rome – that sets out to answer the question: “What is the future of journalism in the social media age?” 

The event will feature writers such as Caroline Overington, Mia Freedman, Jonathan Green and many many more. Rachel Hills is giving away a two-day pass valued at $250, and the comp closes at 8pm EST tonight (Monday 21st September). I’ll be trying to get there myself, so you can be assured it will be worth it. Enter here, and good luck!

Beauty Writing. It’s everywhere. Make-up Manuals are hitting our bookstore shelves in waves, making it easier for us to learn the tricks of the beauty trade without having to store all our old copies of Cosmo or memorising tips we learnt at the Clinique Counter. Beauty portals are making it easier for us to network with other women whose interests in beauty mirror our own. Beauty websites and blogs mean that we can ask whatever questions we want when it comes to our regimens, our tastes and whatever suits us – meaning that we have a beauty expert on hand 24/7. What’s more, these beauty blogs also ocasionally come with beauty tutorials, so we have on-demand demonstrations that take us from desk to date, and frumpy to fabulous, in no time.

And then there’s the writers behind the beauty boom. Where the world of beauty was once a sophisticated, almost secret society that rendered magazine power-women even more inaccessible than a coveted, limited-edition perfume, it is now an access-all-areas arena for us to all absorb. Take Zoe Foster’s Air Kisses. Although it was a work of fiction, it did look into the role of the beauty editor – complete with product avalanches landing on desks quicker than copy, PR mayhem, manic launches, and as main character Hannah seems to experience, a no-need-for-training-and-practice-before-you-start-telling-us-how-to-apply-lipstick kind of life.

And to keep up with the rapidly evolving industry, magazines aren’t relying on their fun and flirty pages to keep themselves going anymore. Take ACP’s 30 Days of Fashion & Beauty, which comes with a whole host of interactive things to keep you firmly in tune with the industry, as well as its gatekeepers. We can finally have access to overseas products within moments, and find out exactly what looks our fave celebs are chanelling and how we can emulate them. We can literally be part of a new world.

With so much to keep you in the loop, beauty writers are working better and harder than ever before. Which means that critics of beauty writers might have a lot more to answer to. In addition to reviewing the latest products and dishing out noteworthy advice, beauty has also moved to an increasingly holistic approach. And with the onset of new technologies that offer a whole range of treatments for a wide array of conditions, beauty writing has taken on a scientific angle that is peppered with research into the skin, hair, and body. A lot more serious, don’t you think? And what’s more, men are getting in on the action – in fact, David Smiedt has ocasionally done a beauty write-up or two (albeit funny, sarcastic ones) for glossies such as Madison and Shop.

So for the aspiring beauty writer reading this post – don’t dismiss beauty writing as a solid career. It is rapidly growing, and evidently going places. I’ve always discussed that writing is an art form and a labour of love, and personal experience has shown me you’ll never be happy unless you are truly writing what you want to be writing. And with bigger audiences lapping up your work, and the opportunity to turn your expertise into books and personal ventures, you can never go wrong. Plus, at least there’ll always be a pretty package of goodies landing on your desk to keep you satisfied!

In other news, new writing forms in the land of beauty aren’t restricted to editorial either. When a Model Co press release landed in my inbox earlier this week, I was mightily impressed. It was the most gorgeous press release I had ever seen, it was hard to remember that it was marketing material! So you see, even PR is getting innovative, making beauty a jackpot worth buying into – especially considering it’s cheaper than the It-Bag!

Finally, someone who caught on to the Beauty Boom Bandwagon pretty early in the game (and it’s paid out for her) is online Beauty Queen Jackie Maxted, who is the founder and CEO of Australia’s number one beauty website www.beautyheaven.com.au. We caught up with her online (is there any other way to do it when you’re discussing new ‘booms’ in beauty writing that have mainly taken place on the web?) to discuss all things reflective of this boom. Maxted’s expertise sheds light on the launch and running of her own beauty information and beauty marketing networking portals, why beauty is such a big deal to women, and why we’re seeing it in more ways than one with the onset of new technologies.

I hope you enjoy this insightful interview. And do tune in tomorrow and Friday, because we’ll be reviewing Bobbi Brown’s make-up manual (and giving two lucky readers a chance to win a copy each), checking out some new releases in beauty land courtesy of Planet Earth, Sebastian Hair and Invisible Zinc, and interviewing the lovely beauty editor-come-beauty blogger Katrina Lawrence of Beautyeditor.com.au

Do you think that the beauty industry has gone through a significant boom in the last year or two?

The beauty industry undergoes constant change – it’s an exciting place to work because there are always new products to launch, new ingredients to learn about, new trends to follow and an ever-growing number of brands from around the world with great stories to share.  In the last year or two, with the growth of online media, it means that products, news and general beauty information is now globally available, so Australian women can be as ‘in the know’ as the rest of the world.

Would you attribute this to the rise in digital media (most of this boom seems to be online), and the fact that we are part of an increasingly image-dependent culture?

I think the growth and success of digital media has enabled women to enjoy the freedom to participate in the beauty world from a global perspective.  What I mean by that is that Australian women are now connected to beauty trends and beauty news from around the world  – which also gives them round-the-world shopping freedom.  Overseas brands that were once highly-coveted and could only be snatched up on overseas trips, can now be purchased from the comfort of your own home online. This development has totally opened up the market by making everything accessible.  Women are developing an expectation that if a product is available in the US or in Europe, then we in Australia are entitled to it as well! 

What roles do you think beauty manuals, like the ones by Bobbi Brown and Natalie Bloom, and fictional books about beauty editing (like Zoe Foster’s Air Kisses), have in this boom?

Many women now have amazing depth of beauty knowledge – and this can most definitely be attributed to the availability of beauty information.  While beauty manuals like those from Bobbi Brown and Natalie Bloom would certainly be contributing factors, the growth and diversity of expertise has arisen for two reasons – first, women want information about beauty because they see it as their right to know and second, the information is widely available through so many different sources.  You can visit a cosmetics floor of any department store and consultants, brochures, samples and product trials are instantly available. Many thousands of beauty product reviews are available online (beautyheaven has 30,000 already and this is growing everyday) as well as the amount of printed material in glossy magazines, it’s no surprise that we now have a generation of beauty experts.

You publish both Beautydirectory.com.au and beautyheaven.com.au . What is the difference between the two publishing platforms?

Beautydirectory is a research tool designed and developed by beauty editors to access beauty product information online as they write their beauty stories.  It was launched ten years ago and now has more than 600 brands and 20,000 products in its database.  Beauty companies join the website to have their brand and product information made available to this powerful group of influencers.  Beautydirectory now has a team of nine people working with the beauty brands and writing daily updates as well as reporting on all the beauty social events that take place each day. This enables its members to stay in the loop and keep in touch with what’s happening in the beauty world.

Beautyheaven is a consumer version of beautydirectory – an online beauty community of more than 100,000 women each month who come to the site to share, learn and do their pre-shopping beauty research.  With daily beauty updates and an ever-growing bunch of beauty-fanatics it’s the online beauty hub where chatting about beauty is the main focus, but chatting about anything and everything is also the norm.  beautyheaven is like an online magazine, but very different in that we don’t tell women  how to do beauty, we share our beauty experiences and they do too!

What made you establish them, and did you encounter any criticisms from the outset?

When we started beautydirectory the industry welcomed the idea and thought it was an amazing innovation. Since then we have been asked many times where the concept came from – but it actually was original!  We were lucky enough to have a good idea at the time when digital was just starting to happen.  At the outset, in 1999, email and internet access was only just starting to be widely available so we were asking for a fairly significant behaviour change if the idea was to work.  Ultimately it did work because the technology matched expectations of those using the site – we got there early enough and established ourselves as trusted experts in the online environment. 

Beautyheaven was simply a natural progression – we took all the learning’s from our early digital participation with beautydirectory and used it to create a ‘next generation’ site – using web 2.0 technologies – to deliver a mix of high-quality information, a huge product database and combined that with social networking features including the forum, real women’s product reviews and the ability to share and chat about our content.  Beautyheaven is as much the product of our business and the people who work here as it is of the members who spend time with us.

What do you think it is about your work that makes you one of the country’s 50 most influential women in the digital media industry?

Probably that we started early, made our mistakes and learned the hard way – but always looked for innovation and quality in the online environment.

Beauty has so obviously moved from just make-up counters in department stores and pages in magazines.

In your opinion, what are some of the directions that the beauty industry will go in, now that there are wider publishing platforms and opportunities? What do you think is of utmost value to audiences in this day and age?

The industry will probably have to accept that if you want to keep in touch with women and talk to them about beauty, they can no longer afford to remain only in the realm of print publishing and television. 

Many beauty companies are already embracing this and are delving into lots of exciting activities in new media – we have recently run some great campaigns for beauty clients like Nivea, Palmolive, and Neutrogena – but brands like Clinique and L’Oreal have been venturing into online for a few years now. 

What beauty companies are challenged with is how to deal with the unknown potential for online shopping.  But online is not all about shopping!  What the digital age has created is the amazing opportunity for companies to understand their consumers better than ever before.  And what is of value to audiences is the chance to share experience and information with other consumers and with the industry too.

Why do you think beauty is important to women?

Most women want to be the best they can be – and beauty is one of the ways that we judge ourselves.  The beauty industry offers women the opportunity to enhance natural features using clever and innovative tools and techniques.  It’s actually quite sophisticated and it constantly amazes me that women of all ages have all these incredible skills in make-up, hair or body products to create the best look for themselves.  What I love about this is that they also share that knowledge and expertise with their friends too. It’s also important to remember that while looking beautiful can be important to women, it is also a way of having fun as well!

Do you think beauty writing is a credible form of journalism? Why?

Absolutely!  There are many aspects of beauty and hundreds of different product types – but the differences between these and the benefits of using them requires in-depth knowledge of some very technical ingredients and an understanding of what makes them work.  This is especially true of age-management skincare products – which is probably one of the most fast-growing parts of the industry.  Even once you have grasped the technical side, the journalistic challenge is to explain this in a friendly and interesting way to the audience.

You also have loads of experience (and success) in public relations – why did you decide to branch out into web-publishing?

I have a short attention span! While I loved my PR career and had great clients too, I love a new project.  Actually, it’s ten years since we started now and must be time for pastures new……

Although fashion writing has been around since the early half of the 20th century, beginning with the onset of women’s fashion and lifestyle journals and magazines, the last few years have seen a massive surge in fashion writing outside its traditional forms.

Digital media has allowed blogs and fashion e-zines  to redefine fashion editorial, in the sense that we get things quicker, and in a very different format and style, than ever before. Suddenly, the mediums that encaspulate trends, catwalk inspiration and celebrity dress are far more accessible, and we’re constantly fed a diet of what’s hot, what’s not and what’s worth looking out for.

But the thing about fashion writing is that it is always about style just as much as it is about trend. In fact, most women who consider themselves stylish live by the wise words of Yves Saint Laurent – that fashions fade and that style is eternal. Couple this with the fact that we live in an image-obsessed culture [fittingly, boyfriend and I are right in this present moment arguing about my lack of initiative when it comes to getting made-up everyday] and that we would all like a stylist on a less-then-celebrity budget, and you have the perfect market for the style guide.

(more…)

Fashion-themed writing has come to Wordsmith Lane for the week, and as such, it has never been a more fitting time to spotlight this pop cultural icon. Despite the fact that she is a fictional character, who hails from the TV series and film Sex and the City, she seems to have inspired a generation – a small number of women writers, and a massive number of fashionistas.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the show or this character, Carrie writes a regular newspaper column on sex and relationships for the New York Star. But it is in the later seasons of the show that her writing begins to mesh her love of fashion – especially when she starts writing for Vogue. In fact, one of my most memorable episodes is when she is attempting to break into that writing-for-vogue mould, and is taken into the Vogue closet. You can immediately tell that fashion is the deity at whose altar she worships, for when the publisher who brought her to the closet drops his pants in an attempt to get into hers, she looks at him shamefully – saying that his behaviour is unworthy of the place in which they stand. In that very same scene, albeit a little earlier than the afore-mentioned pant-dropping scenario, Carrie sees a pair of Manolo Blahnik Mary-Jane’s, and gasps: “I thought these were an urban shoe myth”.

This love of fashion is peppered throughout all the episodes, so much so that Carrie is now synonymous with fashion in pop culture, and the show’s stylist, Patricia Field achieved similar fame – and fame that saw her produce her own line for Aussie department store MYER. Although I was not much of a fan of the range (it would have looked great on Carrie, not on me), the handbag addict in me could not resist the token clutch – a bright, snazzy number emblazoned with NYC connotations.

And speaking of fashion addictions, it would have been so very interesting to see a shoe associated with the line, to see just how much it would incorporate Carrie’s character. Especially because it is the shoe that keeps her standing before the altar of fashion. Gotta love the episode when Carrie, deemed an unsuitable client for a home loan, calculates that she has spent $40,000 on shoes, remarking that she will “literally be the old woman who lived in her shoes”.

A peek inside her closet does not disappoint, and throughout all six seasons, we see a Prom Princess Carrie, a bohemian Carrie, a preppy Carrie, a sexy Carrie, among others. Her personality, work and the city in which she resides define her through her outfits, and in my opinion, it is this mix of writing and fashion that makes her appealing to some of the women writers who model themselves on her, and the audiences who seem to think that all freelance writers want to be her.

No matter what way you look at it, one thing is clear: Carrie Bradshaw is a woman who equates taking her boyfriend to mum and dad’s with taking boyfriend to the sales assistants at Prada. She is a woman who remarked that she invest her money in a place right where she can see it – hanging in her closet. She is a woman whose taste in clothes is often so outrageous you could cringe, but she magically keeps you from doing that.

And when a woman inspires you to buy a pair of knee-high argyle socks to wear with your own mary-janes (though, unglamorously for me, these are from the likes of Tony Bianco – and must I add, they are not of the same colour scheme as this picture) you know she has something going for her. And if that same woman keeps that writing career going for you, then you just can’t help but continue to write and shop with her down the Wordsmith Lane. Just don’t make do what she does and buy Vogue instead of dinner, because we like to have our energy well-stored for when inspiration strikes.

Hey Wordsmith Laners! I’m a little delayed with my posting today (do you ever feel like you work, work, work  and still don’t get anything done?) so I’m sending out massive apologies. Not that I blog everyday anyway, but lately, I have been a little more inspired than usual (I think it’s theme month doing this to me).

Anyway, today I am extra frazzled trying to finalise an application for a university conference or other, so my next posting is a little behind. That said, I have checked out two pretty great posts today on News Frontier and Girl With a Satchel.  Although only one of them is wordsmith in nature, the other one is very much life-related, so I suggest you busy yourselves with some good reading until I’m up and running again.

Hope you enjoy – and please tune in later for my second-last pop-culture week post – a spotlight on Miss Lois Lane no less!

News Frontier: What should Journalism Students be Learning

Girl With a Satchel: Domestic Blitz

Plus there’s loads of good reading over at Trespass too.