From the friendly caves of Pixie Hollow.
The witch had a cat
And a very tall hat
And long ginger hair
That she wore in a plait.
How the cat purred
And how the witch grinned
As they sat on a broomstick
And flew through the wind.
But how the witch wailed
And how the cat spat
When the wind blew so wildly
It blew off the hat!
So, besides the centuries-old construction of a witch being a woman who flew on a broomstick through the air, with her "familiars" (which is a call-back to the discrimination of the witch trials)...
Despite the age-old construction of the witch with warts, wearing black and tall pointy hats (which is a call-back to the ghastly and horrifying practices of the witch trials)...
And despite the so-old-we-don't-even-notice-it-anymore construction of redheads as witches, which results in disgusting treatment of gingernuts like me even today (yeah I could curl your toes with stories)...
Room on the Broom is a pretty cool book. I know it by heart after reading it aloud so much.
It was written by Julia Donaldson, an English author who has written over 200 books.
Now if you're an Aussie and you've got kids, then you'll know her name. Her book Superworm is a new series on ABC Kids. The series, like the book, was a collaboration with Axel Scheffler, an illustrator who has illustrated 26 of Julia's 200+ books.
In Room on the Broom, the witch keeps dropping her gear.
She drops her hat. A new friend (a dog) finds it for her.
She drops her bow. A new friend (a bird) finds it for her.
She drops her wand. A new friend (a frog) finds it for her.
And when her latest friend jumped for glee and snapped her broom snapped in half, the witch discovered a dragon chasing her (and he wanted witch and chips for my tea!).
Eventually she, too, fell to the ground.
Luckily for her, her new friends formed themselves into the shape of a big, scary, squelchy beast and frightened the (frankly spineless) dragon away.
And then to celebrate, she got them all to chuck a thing into her cauldron so she could whiz up a fantastic new broom. It ended with them all knowing they'd never be in that kind of trouble again. They were off!
It reminds me of communications projects that are led by the inexperienced.
They run into some minor trouble once, twice, three times...
But then someone will do something kinda mindless, silly even, and it will break the entire project.
Not only will it snap the project in two, but everyone will go tumbling down into a bog.
The guy with the budgets starts looking for his own version of witch with chips and it's only when the team manages to pull itself together - often by making the project look like it's nothing at all what it's really like - does the dragon bugger off.
Finally, with the freedom to create what they are required to, and without the hungry, fire-breathing micro-budgeter looking over everyone's shoulders, the outcome is magnificent.
You wanna know what the real kicker is?
With the right management, and a little bit of foresight, the project wouldn't fall to pieces in the first place.
And that brings me to the editorial support that I mentioned the other day.
It's cheap, sure.
It seems like a ridiculous add-on for small teams, granted.
It even seems like the kind of thing that any seasoned professional would laugh at (lawyers in particular love to dot is and cross ts, but they tend to be way too micro to be good at it).
But it's literally the thing that's going to stop your broom from breaking into two parts when you've got:
- no dedicated content and communications person
- a dragon of a budgeteer, who is always threatening to eat up what you've got
- people who screw up your timelines because they insist on rewriting everything
- a seriously important brand that can't be seen to screw up anything.
In professions like law, accounting, and engineering, this (☝️☝️) is more common than uncommon.
So if you're keen to bring in something that is fast, simple, and effective (or you're simply tired of being the person Herding Cats), let's talk.
xx Leticia "flying a Nimbus 2000" Mooney
Please let me know what I can do for you.
Leticia Mooney is a consultant with decades of experience writing with and for people like you. Her company Brutal Pixie casts the the kind of spells your customers love. It consults to businesses in content strategy, content writing, ghostwriting, content operations, communication strategy, audits, investigations, training and coaching. Leticia is also the mother of an intelligent, engaging, and curious boy, who is named after a character created by J.R.R Tolkien. You can learn more about
her at
https://biodagar.com/about, and her business at
https://brutalpixie.com.
Leticia Mooney
PO Box 1190
Pasadena SA 5042
Australia
Phone/Text (Signal/Telegram) +61 421 925 382
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