Finding Your Tagline
By: Joanne Reid
Tags: Writing, Mindfulness, Self-awareness, Focus, Creativity

Finding Your Tagline

Who am I anyway?

Photo by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash

In finding a tighter focus for my writing, I hit a brick wall. It began with looking for the tagline for the writing I do. I write about writing. This is a wild open field.

Writing about writing covers topics that range from creating a plot for a novel to finding the time to write to — well you name it. It begins with mindset. That much I know. And exploring mindset can take you down meandering pathways into worlds that capture you and never let you go.

One of my favorite nonfiction writers is Steve Scott who also writes as S. J. Scott. Steve Scott writes about habit development. It’s his special area of expertise. His tagline is “Build a better life. One habit at a time.”

Another writer whose work I have been following for ages is Randy Ingermanson who is “The Snowflake Guy” because of his snowflake method of writing a novel.

Then there is Marla Cilley, also known as the Flylady. Her specialty is teaching us how to keep our homes organized and clean. The FLY now stands for Finally Loving Yourself but it began as a user name she had for a forum she was involved in. She loved to fly fish and taught fly fishing. Hence, she became the Flylady. When her home organizing advice took off big time, she remained being the Flylady.

I have been writing for decades and finally morphed into writing fiction. In the fall of 2020, I did a 30-day Zen Journey, writing about how I could pull my life together and find focus. After the 30-day blogging experience, I began to turn the experience into a book.

Why not? It was a real learning experience for me. Getting the book together was one part of the job. Writing the blurb was another part of it. Then there were the finishing touches which turned out to be challenging.

About Me

The About Me section was where I hit the wall. Who am I and what is my message. Steve writes about habits, habit forming, habit breaking, and assorted other habit related aspects of life. Randy writes about writing. Flylady writes about shining your sink, baby steps, and getting your home under control.

What do I write about? My ‘about me’ ramble is about how I always wanted to write. Yawn. Most of us writers have that in common. I wanted to be a storyteller. Or so I claimed.

So why wasn’t I telling stories?

Part of my Zen Journey involved paying more attention to the world around me. When I did, I recognized that I was telling stories — about telling stories. I was writing about writing.

The most financially successful part of my career has been the part I spent teaching people how to use computers to their advantage. I am good at seeing how systems work and I am reasonably good at explaining how to use a computer program to its full advantage.

I know how stories work. I know how to plot a novel. I can write about writing. The recipes are all there in my head. Somewhere in this is the tagline I seek.

This morning, I watched the crows strutting through the low piles of leaves on the front lawn. Every so often, they would stop and kick the leaves aside and beak around in the grass under where the leaves were. I identified with the crows, poking around looking for my treasure, which in this case is my tagline.

I write, and what I enjoy writing about is — writing. Here are some of my past efforts:

That’s my focusing tagline: Writing about writing. Writing about the struggle to find my tagline sifted away the detritus and revealed the shape of what I do. Writing about writing helps identify the themes in our lives.