I’ve heard a number of communicators lament the fact that corporate approval processes tend to erase every whiff of creativity from internal communications documents. I get that there are a lot of reasons for that. Creativity can lend itself to ambiguity and as communicators we need to be strategic, accurate, methodical and professional. Keeping within a specified word count is usually important as well, and in the drive to get the most information across in the least amount of space, we often..

I’m a little slow getting up to full speed this year owing to a record-setting three-week Christmas holiday. It was fun! I spent most of my time hanging out with my family but I did set some goals for 2012 and these will help me filter my activity through the lens of success. As new opportunities crop up, I will be asking myself if they will bring me...

A year ago in this space I set out my goals for 2011 and I think I did fairly well. I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions anymore but I’m a big fan of setting and achieving goals since I believe that creating the life we want is a process that takes commitment and an action plan. And I’ve become comfortable with

I’m celebrating in Technicolor today as I greet the arrival of my novel, “Shades of Teale” on amazon.ca. I began writing the book in the late 1990s to bring my dream of becoming a published author to life and it never occurred to me that writing one book could take such a long time. Granted it wasn’t my full time gig. During the past 13 years I’ve also worked on business writing projects for Crossman Communications, given birth twice, moved numerous times, walked my terminally ill hus

Like many other people I know, my professional path has been anything but a straight line from start to here. Opportunities and surprises have cropped up unexpectedly and the best laid plans have sometimes gone awry. But my years of experience as a journalist, government communicator, marketing copywriter, PR professional and creative writer have given me an interesting perspective on how to hire a freelance writer and I’d like to share a few thoughts.

Much as I am a writer I am also a businessperson and I’m always on the lookout for new ways to do what I do better, more efficiently and more profitably. With that in mind, I attended a three-day business building conference in Arizona last week that proved to be a powerful immersion in mindset, strategy and processes for boosting business success. It was an amazing experience! The conference, titled “Passion, Purpose and Profits” was run by Laura Gisborne, a successful businessperson who has b