Seeking for the right words

Photo by: Destonian_istockphoto

Write is something that I really like to do. I like to think about my audience (Who they are? What do they want to read about? Will they enjoy my text?). I like to think about the words I’ll use to make my texts more readable. I like to seek for synonyms. I like to rewrite a sentence, just to see in which way sounds better.

For this passion, I started (encouraged by a friend) to register what my toddler (2 years old) girl does and speaks. I’ve placed amusing situations executed by her in a journal that I called “Eva’s news”.

After I’ve sent one of "Eva’s news" edition to my friends and relatives, some of them answer my e-mail to tell me how they like the way I write. And that they have pleasure of reading my texts. 

So, I started to think about that: when you do something that you like and you love; and when you worried about the final results, probably you are doing something that will give compliments for you back.

I know that these compliments my friends have given to me are results of years of studies in the field that I love: write! But all of this is happening in Portuguese. I know that I don’t have the same experience in English. I’ve done my best for one day I have the same knowledge in English as I have in Portuguese. I've attended some proofreading seminar, and I've read a lot to understand how English language works. 

Write this blog is one of my exercises to reach my goal.

Entry #6

I am not a superwoman

It has more than twenty days since my last post, and I’ll tell you that I don’t have sure if I've overcome the “writer’s block”. During these past days lot of things happened, I wrote some sentences, but I don’t feel that these "things" were interesting enough to publish here.

Well, one event touched me those days. One of the most important brazilian journalist Ricardo Boechat back to work on Thursday, after to stay ten day at home, recovering from severe depression. In the day he went back to television he published a post talking about how he thought to be unbeatable. While I was reading his post I started to think how right was my idea to go back to the therapy.

I am proud of myself because I've had the humility to realize that I couldn't pass by my adaptation in Houston by myself. I realized that I am not a superwomanI realized that I really feel bad when even a store doesn't offer me a job, for instance. And how important is to my family see me good, physically and psychologically.

Ask for help is not a simple decision, as well as tell everyone about this. But maybe, this post can encourage someone to ask for help. It doesn't have to be a therapist help, can be a help from a friend, from a relative or even from your neighbor. And It can be a help for anything. The big mean is see that we try, but we can’t do anything alone. Together is easier and funnier.

Entry#5

Writer’s block

I am sure that everyone who works as a writer once in your professional life has written a text talking about the day when the ideas didn't come. For me, this is not my first time. I can remember to write about that subject when I was taking classes to write short chronicles in Porto Alegre. It was a long time ago. But, now it’s my first time in English language.

Once I read two different interviews with two big Brazilian writers: Jorge Amado and Clarice Lispector. And both said that the worst incentive that a writer can have is the obligation to have to write. Even if you love writing and work with this, sometime the ideas will run away. On the other hand, having a dead-line to deliver a text can be very motivating.

Actually, the ideas disappear in the exact moment that I need them: when I sit to write a post. I have some ideas during the week, the problem is that if I don't write them, they will disappear. 

In 2008, I attended a small course with Charles Kiefer at Porto Alegre Book Fair and he said that one day, he was driving his car in the road and had an idea to write a text. Immediately, he stopped his car in the road shoulder, picked his notebook up and wrote the idea. I think I should do this.

I know that the one of the goals of this blog is to show for the americans recruiters how creative I am. It is not good, for me, publish a post talking about the day that the creativity is gone. I am sorry, recruiters, but this kind of situation happens more frequently than you can imagine, even with big authors!

#entry 4

Olfactory memories

Let’s talk about food, but not in traditional way. I mean, this is not an article about diet or how to be the new Rachel Ray! I want to talk about how food can bring good memories, and we don't even need to eat it. Just feeling the smell makes us recall important moments of our lives. And I didn’t know that until I left my home town.

I can remember the exact moment that I had my first “olfactory memory”. I was leaving the Unisinos campus and I passed by the cafeteria when I felt that magnificent scent! And I didn’t feel not only the food’s perfume, I felt like I was a child again. That evening, in the cafeteria menu there was chicken soup. My mammy and my grandmother used to cook chicken soup at least once a week (but I could eat it every day).

I also remember that I didn’t know that this feeling had a name. A friend who was walking with me and witnessed my reaction, immediately spoke: “This is a olfactory memory”. Since that day I have been having a huge quantity of “olfactory memories”!!! And they have been so good!

I can have “olfactory memories” when I smell coriander handful or when a cake is baking… I think I am a lucky person by having good things to recall. 

Today I went more far than olfactory memory. I decided to cook one of my mammy’s specialties: chicken risotto. It is not a sophisticated recipe. It is so simple, so simple that I guess that is this simplicity that make this risotto so good. In my lunch time today, I felt not only my childhood scent, but I also tasted the flavor.

Chicken risotto, one of my mammy's specialties

#entry 3

Sabotage

Who did therapy once in the life already heard the expression “you are sabotaging yourself” from the person that is sitting in front of you and has the high capacity to staring at you for forty-five minutes without judge you for even one second. Sometimes they don’t tell in this words, or use the word “sabotage”, but they make you understand that your life doesn't get better because you don't believe in yourself.

When I told my friends about my transfer to Houston, some of them suggested me to create a blog where I could write the humor posts that I’ve post on Facebook. They told me that they’ve liked the way I write. I didn’t take this serious and thought they were being just nice to me.

However, some two months ago I published a book in Brazil after I had been invited for two different publishing houses. When I picked the book up in my hands, I started to realize that I could be a good writer as my friends had told me. I kept this thought in my mind.

Some days ago, I started to read a book that my friend Graziella Caputo indicated me. It is: Lean in - women, work, and the will to lead – written by Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook COO). In this book, Sheryl shows with examples experienced by her and with academic researches that women usually deny their abilities, their achievement … We usually sabotage ourselves! Sheryl says that we don't proud of ourselves because we live in a world where “to feel proud” is a men’s feature.

If a man hears from his friend that he is a good writer and should invest in a blog, I am sure he would feel very proud of his ability and would take the advice very seriously. That was I did, after published a book and after read Sheryl’s book! Ok, I took almost one year to believe in my friends and create this blog.

I hope, I really hope my friends were right about my ability to write. I also hope they enjoy to read this blog as I’ve enjoy write for them.

To read

Lean in: women, work, and the will to lead

Sheryl Sandberg

#entry 2

Are you ready for a change?

It was a quarter to two of one Tuesday in August. And I said to him on the phone: - You have fifteen minutes before my meeting starts. He asked me to go to a private place to hear what he had to say. I went outside the building, down the stairs (the same ones that I had fallen down some months ago – but this is another story) and, with the sea in front of me I waited for the news.

- It is probable that until the end of the year we will have to move to Houston. But, don’t tell anyone right now.

I can’t remember what was my reaction in the exact moment that I heard him. But I can recall what I thought some minutes after: my book. I was performing my dream to have a book and I wouldn’t be in Brazil to gather the credits that would come with it.

I went back to the office for the meeting. Don’t ask me what my boss and my workmates were talking in that moment, because I couldn’t even heard them. In my mind I had so many thoughts about this big change that only my body was in that meeting. We had to wait several weeks for the certainty. And it was terrible because I couldn’t tell anybody, even to my family.

I left my job, that I loved, in November, forty days before leaving Rio de Janeiro to spend some days with my family and, almost, three months after that phone call.

This is not the big change in my life. Actually, this is the third time that I left my job and move to another city because of my family. But it is the first time that I change the country. And I will be very sincere, I thought It would be worse, especially for the language. But now I am here and I don’t feel myself as an immigrant or “like a fish out of the water”, as we use to say in Brazil. I think we were lucky to have been transferred to Houston. The proximity with Mexico and by the quantity of oil and gas companies that have here, it is a city that is used to living together with people from all of the world. Sometimes, at the supermarket I can hear any kind of language except English, and I feel good for that because I think: It is not just me that is far from home.

To finish this long story, I can say that I overcame the fear of not understanding and not to be understood by other people, and from the moment that I realized that, the change became easy. Of course, I still have so much to learn about English. And, see my daughter completely adapted to the city and the food and the weather makes me feel more comfortable with all this change.  So, I can say I am ready for a change. I know that sometimes it won’t be easy, but, for sure, it is possible live a change in a good way.

#entry 1

I present my book

Hello reader!

I'd like to start this blog showing my latest achievement: my book (Magazines for women and their reading contracts in the mediatization environment). This book summarizes all my professional passions: journalism, writing and magazines.

It was launched last May in Brazil by "Editora Appris". In this book you will have the opportunity to read about how two magazines for women (Malu and AnaMaria) have adapted their editorial line to reach their audience in a dynamic environment called "midiatização". Don't worry, if you have no idea what midiatização is, there is a chapter to explain that. Besides that, I've used the "reading contracts" approach, a methodology that was created by the sociologist Eliseo Verón.

In this book, there are two chapter that I really like. The first one is about the history of brazilians magazines for women. The other one is a analyse and a description about how the two magazines studied (Malu and AnaMaria) have created women profiles to been following by their audience.

My book is availabe at www.amazon.com.br and at www.editoraappris.com.br in paper. In some weeks it will be available in ebook too.