It’s us. Hi. We’re the Wordshop. It’s us.
Yeah, we need a new light fixture.
When I started writing marketing copy for The Wordshop last spring, I found myself writing in the collective first-person, or the “we” voice. That’s not super unusual; when I was laid off from my advertising job in 2009, some of my first freelancing jobs were for high-end mail order catalogs and Sears. (Please ask me about the time I sold myself a very expensive necklace based on the catalog copy that I wrote. I have worn it twice.) “We” makes sense in that context because you expect a catalog to represent the efforts of many people. But I’m just one lady. Who was this “we” I kept throwing around in emails? “We’re so excited to meet your student!” “We can’t wait for class to start.” It certainly didn’t include Daisy, who was very busy barking at the babies next door.
I struggled with that for several weeks. The “we” sounded right but it felt really wrong. I tried reverting back to “I,” but that didn’t sound confident or professional enough. I needed parents and guardians to trust me to know what I was doing. “We” embodied that much more than “I.'“ Still, the “we” made me feel gross every time I used it.
Then your kids walked through my door. I welcomed the sweet-natured fantasy book club who (laughingly) accused me of being a witch by summer’s end. I refereed the Wild Girls as they knocked my socks off with their insights and vied to be The! Winner! Of! Book! Club! I met my first group of Murder Girls (and the one who wasn’t), who created a god that’s a cross between a mermaid and a buffalo., the Mermalo. I hosted the first Night Writes, back when the middle schoolers were too scared to talk to one another. And I spent hours upon hours hanging out with my high school A-Team, the group that helped me test my first class and have since become part of my family.
Your kids and I: we’re the “we.” To riff on a conversation I had with a writer and her dad a few weeks ago, I guess when I started writing all that marketing copy last April, i knew that i would eventually have partners in this endeavor. I just didn’t know those partners would be the kids.
So from the kids and I, thank you. We have had a wacky, hilarious, and explosively loud seven months. This time, we’re going to try for an entire year.
Love,
Mrs. Kristin