{"id":6185,"date":"2010-05-25T14:14:19","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T19:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crowdspring.wpengine.com\/?p=6185"},"modified":"2021-02-27T15:06:59","modified_gmt":"2021-02-27T21:06:59","slug":"12-questions-meet-constance-semler-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crowdspring.com\/blog\/12-questions-meet-constance-semler-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Questions: Meet Constance Semler (Canada)"},"content":{"rendered":"
In our <\/em>12 Questions<\/em><\/strong> blog series, we feature interviews with someone from the crowdSPRING community. For these interviews, we pick people who add value to our community \u2013 in the blog, in the forums, in the projects. Plainly \u2013 activities that make crowdSPRING a better community. Be professional, treat others with respect, help us build something very special, and we\u2019ll take notice.<\/em><\/p>\n We\u2019re very proud to feature Constance Semler (crowdSPRING username: Faustie<\/a>) today. Constance\u00a0 lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.<\/p>\n 1. Please tell us about yourself.<\/strong> <\/p>\n 3. Who\/what are some of the biggest influences on your writing?<\/strong> 4. Please tell us about your favorite projects.<\/strong>
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nI’m American, Canadian, and married to an Englishman. We live in the heart of Toronto, Ontario, on a quiet tree- lined street. We moved here from Montr\u00e9al last year. Until November 2008, I spent most of my professional life in corporate marketing roles and met wonderful people as I traveled around the world in fairly short order. These days, in addition to writing, I’m helping out with an internet start-up. Sometimes I work with my husband on post production of UK and US film and TV productions.
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\n2. How did you become interested in writing?<\/strong>
\nIn some ways, writing became interested in me. I remember having college essays returned to me with terse remarks like, \u201cSee me\u201d, after which the professor would try to persuade me to major in a subject. In graduate school and throughout my career, I recall about a dozen striking moments in which someone pulled me aside to say something like, \u201cListen, you can really write!\u201d Those lightning bolts had little effect on me. I assumed that writing is part of the package of work and most educated people write well. Why I persisted with this false assumption, I don’t know.<\/p>\n
\nI was an English major, so even though I don’t write like some of my favorite writers, they influenced me. I love the elaborate finely-crafted sentences of Henry James. At the same time, I admire the immediacy of Hemingway’s prose. Though I don’t always agree with him, Christopher Hitchens is a great writer and thinker \u2013 and hilarious to boot. I don’t think I could or would want to write with such acid wit. Taming the tongue (and the pen or keyboard) is an important discipline. Hitchens isn’t afraid to write complex sentences. Writing for the Web, we writers
<\/a> get used to creating babyfied bite-sized sentences. It’s effective. It’s absolutely necessary. But it leaves me needing a fix from writers like Hitchens.
\nMy father and my Uncle Herb encouraged me to be interested in words by playing word games with me as a child. It is so important to stimulate young minds in this way. That’s one reason I’m writing a wordplay book for kids. David Meerman Scott’s list of widely-used \u201cgobbledygook\u201d terms is fantastic and shocking. I must mention Professor Sandra Berwind at Bryn Mawr College. She chopped my writing to bits with her critiques, and I’m glad she did. Everyone should have a professor with that degree of interest in their writing.<\/p>\n
\nThere are two kinds I enjoy: one is highly creative, like coming up with a great company name<\/a> or product name<\/a>. I enjoy helping other people be creative and say what they mean. Collaboration is very exciting for me. The other kind of project, and one that lets me shine, requires me to learn new things, dig deep into a subject, and help the client expand on a creative brief. These are often projects in which I bring my years of marketing and business experience to the table. I don’t like to call myself \u201ccopywriter\u201d because that term is sometimes limiting. Some people think you’re a \u201cwordsmith\u201d, as though writing is a last-minute add-on. No way. Good writing is good thinking. If the marketing or business strategy is off target, no amount of great \u201ccopy\u201d is going to save it. The guys that created Ruby On Rails take that point even further in their recent book, REWORK. They say, if you’ve got a limited budget and can only hire one person, hire the best writer.<\/p>\n