As you may remember, I recently wrote a post inspired by the great Darren Rowse. Something he said inspired me to refine and restate my mission, or rather, the mission of this blog. Said mission turned out to be the telling of stories in all their different facets and mediums: written or told stories, stories in pictures, on film, and the stories that our lived-in spaces tell about us.
I left it at that. It was a nice long post in which I waxed poetic on how stories are at the basis of everything in our lives and how much we all enjoy telling them and hearing them (or reading or watching them unfold on stage or on a screen). A few days went by and I realized, Dammit, I forgot to mention another really important part of my mission! So, drum roll please, seat yourselves so as not to be taken by surprise. Here is part 2 of my mission statement:

To bring the untold stories I find into the world, disseminate them, give them light and air, allow them to be enjoyed by any and everyone.
This includes unpublished novels, such as Scarborough Baby, by Amanda Ackroyd, which I am publishing serially on a weekly basis, short stories that may have won awards but never been published, poems that have been hidden in shoe boxes in the bottom of closets… you get the idea.
So my desire is not merely to tell stories that belong to me or that are already well known but I think merit another word or two. No, I long to help orphaned stories find the light of day. Or help people who are a little timid bring forth their stories.
There, that is the other half of the mission.

This brings me to today’s mission. The great Darren Rowse has launched a project (he has done it twice before, but it’s slightly different every time) called the 31-Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge.The title of the challenge is self-explanatory. The way it unfolds is that the participants receive a daily email for 31 days, linked to a blog post on Problogger, with instructions for the day. The registered participants may receive a few odd tidbits that the regular readers of the blog do not, but on the whole you may follow along by reading the blog every day almost as well.

So I registered for the challenge, and today is Day 1! Today’s task is to write an Elevator Pitch for our blog. This too is fairly self-explanatory. Imagine you get onto an elevator and you bump into someone whom you’ve been trying to reach but who never gets back to you, or someone you have never had the courage to approach (we’re talking about networking here). Well, this person is now your captive audience, but only for as long as it takes to ride the elevator up to whichever floor he is going to (if your floor comes first, you will of course skip your floor, get off with him, and then find a way to slink down the emergency stairs back to your original destination floor).

It’s a great idea to have this pitch ready, so that at a moment’s notice you can regale your audience with a 30-second spiel which enlightens them while also tantalizing them. They should get off the elevator feeling that they get the general idea, but also intrigued, thinking, I’m going to log onto my computer and check this blog out, it sounds interesting.

The main and best reason to have an elevator pitch is, of course, for yourself. It will help you become laser focused on your mission, so that everything you do is guided by the Primary Objective (I know, I watch too many TV shows). Over time, and not even too much time, this practice will give a shape and direction to your blog which will make it immediately identifiable to your readers. And this is good, because it begins to establish your BRAND.

Darren says all this and more in his post, but I want to add just one little thing. Another great reason to have an elevator pitch is to increase your ability to believe in yourself and what you’re doing. Blogging is only a little less lonely than writing books. There is some interaction with readers and other bloggers, but when you are writing in your own little room, you are all alone, and having the elevator pitch that you can repeat to yourself when doubt starts creeping in helpt tremendously. It makes you think, oh, yes, this is real. I am doing a real thing for a real reason. Lastly, but not leastly (hee hee), the elevator pitch, though brief and to the point, is not usually actually delivered in an elevator. So if you learn to deliver your pitch in 30 seconds (and you should really practice saying it out loud, because it is meant to be spoken, like epic Greek poems, and not read), without requiring a paper bag to gasp into at the end, then when the time comes to say it to someone you have just met at a conference or party, the pitch will be able to breathe, will come to life, and will make perfect sense to the person you are speaking to.

After all this, would you like to hear my elevator pitch for turtle^haus? Well, hang on to your hats, here it is:

Nice to meet you, my name is Ilaria and I write a blog called turtle^haus (that’s H-A-U-S). It’s all about stories. I focus on three mediums of expression: writing and speaking, architecture and design, and film and theater. If you like to hear, watch, read stories and look at people’s houses to understand something about their lives, then you should become a reader. I also help un- or little known storytellers find an audience.

I can deliver it comfortably, with pauses for expression, in 24 seconds. Please let me know in the comments what you think! See you tomorrow!

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When I first started blogging, I followed quite a few blogs, without much of a strategy. In other words, rather than following blogs that might help me become a professional blogger, I followed blogs I liked, for pure enjoyment, and from which I derived inspiration in the beginning for various posts. As my interests span Architecture, Design, Literature, Writing, Reading, Stories, People, Art, Film, etc., I followed a variety of blogs centered around these topics.

Then I became a little more serious, and realized that 1) I could not spend all day reading other people’s blogs — there would be no time left to write my own, and 2) I needed strategy, as well as content. It’s true that most blogging gurus will tell you that content is king, and it is, but I have so many interests and there are so many things I consider of vital importance, that for me the hardest thing was zeroing in on what I cared about most, or rather, what I wanted to share with others in a way they might find helpful, entertaining, inspiring, engaging and might want to subscribe to so they wouldn’t miss anything. In other words, I wanted to create something other people would care about as well.


So I became much more selective with the blogs I read. I unsubscribed to almost all the blogs I was following, and in a way started over. I chose blogs about blogging, about strategising, and about making your blog into a business. I don’t know whether my two blogs (this one and Life plus Web) will become full blown businesses, but I want them to be professional, to be set up as businesses. Whether they themselves generate income or lead to something that will generate income, in either case they are part of my online business presence. A big part of it.

In essence I did know that the overall “theme” of my blog was stories, and in a roundabout way, I did express this in my “About” page and in my initial posts.  Recently, however, I read a post by Darren Rowse, the author of Problogger, Twitip, Digital Photography School, and a founder of b5media, that made me stop and think. Darren is definitely one of my mentors and gurus.

In this post, which I admit I can’t seem to find right now, Darren spoke about being asked as a young man to write what he would like his obituary to say, many years from now. In other words, how he would like to be remembered. The implication for a blogger is not nearly as dramatic, but can be stated as: what is your blog really about and what would people say about it?

As my regular subscribers and more or less regular casual readers may have noticed, this is the first post in a while. I took a brief hiatus because I was deeply and furiously involved in the setup and organization of a joint online venture with my dear friend and business partner Mario Kluser, an author featured in this very blog, a blogger, and a discerning and clever internet marketer. During the time that he and I have been feverishly setting up our joint venture, and I have therefore not been blogging, I have been meditating and thinking about the blogs, about their importance to me, and their potential importance to my readers. So today I am restating my mission with this blog.

There is no such thing as objective reality. When I was younger I used to fight this notion with all my might. After all, it was an objective reality that my childhood had been miserable, that I left home at a very young age, that I had to fend for myself in this cold, cruel world, and so on and so forth. Or was it? More importantly, does it matter if it was?

The Rashomon quality of life is what makes it so fascinating. For each of us, what we remember is real, our version of what happened is an objective reality, but as we have seen time and time again, no two people experience anything in the same way. This is why the same book can elicit so many different reactions. We each project onto it, interpret it, react to it according to our own personal bias. We see everything through our own personal filter. And yet, so many stories are universal, in the sense that many of us identify with them, see ourselves in the protagonists, recognize them as our own, or partially our own.

I have a quality that I can’t quite name, but something about me induces people to tell me their stories. People open up to me, mostly spontaneously. It’s true that I ask questions, but the key is, I am truly interested. I love people, young and old, rich and poor, of all creeds, colors and extractions. And I can’t get enough of their stories. I can empathize with almost anyone and anything (except extreme violence and hatred). I am keenly aware and convinced of the fact that as humans the things we share greatly outnumber those that separate us. These days everything makes me cry, a mother’s love, the loss of loved ones to war, a child’s gesture, heartstring-tugging commercials, and this is because I am immediately transported to the root of the matter: how much hard work goes into being a mother, the struggle of raising those children knowing they may be killed in warfare, the fragility of the child’s happiness and contentment.

So, stories — this is what this blog is about.

And there is another aspect to this core theme of story. The way, or the medium, through which these stories are told. Each human being is an artist. Whether or not we think of ourselves as artists, that is what we are. We are each the creator of our life’s story, and we each do it in our own way. Those of us who embrace the inner artist and choose to follow the artistic path, however, are the ones who grapple with the impossible task of expressing their unique and special story.

Another thing I am fascinated by is translation. I have been a professional translator my entire life and therefore have had a long time to think about this subject. The truth is that every single utterance, every expression, every telling, is a translation. Each artist chooses the medium in which he feels that what he sees inside his head is most accurately translated for other people to decipher.

So speaking is a translation of our unworded, unformed thoughts.

So is writing, drawing, painting, sculpting, music, theater, film, and so are the buildings we build, the gardens and landscapes we create, the cities, the interiors… everything is an attempt to translate what we see with our mind’s eye into something other people can see, hear, touch, taste with their physical senses.

The eternal struggle to bring out what we have inside and communicate it to others, this is what I find endlessly fascinating and what I want to share with you, my readers. At this very moment I am attempting to translate my own message so that you can understand it. How am I doing?

I hope you will come with me on my journey, while I explore the many ways in which I and the people I encounter along the way tell our stories, and the story of what it is to be human.

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