Entries Tagged 'How to write' ↓

If like me you’re ready to take your holiday break then I’m sure it will come as a welcome relief from the challenges of the year.

So how do you make the best use of it to prevent loss of momentum in your writing?

The 5 stage writing process

I divide the writing process into 5 segments and believe you need a different mindset when you approach each segment.

1. Research
2. Writing
3. Pause
4. Editing
5. Proof reading

It’s the pause stage you can enjoy while you celebrate the holiday and feel virtuous that you’re doing something positive while you loll back in your chair.

Robert Louis Stevenson talked about ‘my little brownies’ by which he meant those unconscious procesess that play far more of a part in our writing than we give them credit for.

How can we use this Pause stage?

By focusing on where we want to go with our writing.  Assess the now position, make notes on your progress or lack of it and specifically ask your unconscious for ideas on certain topics.

With guidance it will stir the pot for you while you forget your work and enjoy the holiday with family and friends.

And when you start writing again, you’ll be amazed on how much progress you can make… and how fast.

Most people would have me down as a disciplined worker and I can power through projects.

Last week was different because we had the builders in the house and so many chances for distraction.

How are you when your routine is upset?  If I’m tired because of the upset, I’m also hungry.  Which is a temptation to hit the chocolate biscuits – my excuse is I’m burning up nervous energy at twice my normal rate.

So creature of habit that I am, it took me till Friday to establish a different kind of routine.  What I found though was that despite the upset, distractions and noise, my productivity rate didn’t drop too much.

Instead I worked in shorter and more concentrated periods.

Conclusions?  That sometimes we need shaking up to keep a flexible response to changing circumstances.

And that I do love chocolate biscuits!

Have you ever written a piece of text for your business and when you’ve finished been dissatisfied with it?

Your intentions were good.  You thought you you had it clear in your head what you wanted to say but somehow . . . it doesn’t hit the target.  Instead of winging straight to the gold mark, it’s somewhere off at the edge of the board.

Well a few moments thought might do the trick.  Especially if you ask yourself these three magic questions:

What do you want to do with your piece?

Who do you want to do it for?

Why do it now?

The thing is that often we start to write in a passion to ‘get the thing written’.  Then we run out of steam and the piece dies on us.

Enthusiasm’s important because without that you don’t have the slightest chance of connecting with your reader.  Enthusiasm plus strategy is better.

That equals a plan.

What do you want to do with your piece?

Knowing what your aim is makes it so much easier than a catch all piece trying to please everyone.  You can include precise details that will make all the difference to your target audience.

Who do you want to do it for?

Do you have a picture of the person you want to reach?  Do you know what they like to eat, what car they drive and their favourite movies?   The more you can drill down into those details means again that you can make it a real fit instead of hanging off everyone like a huge sack.

Why do it now?

If you’re writing it now, how does it fit into your overall marketing strategy?  Does it follow on from a blog you’ve written or an email you’ve sent out or an ad you’ve run?  And what comes after it?

The great Jay Abraham says that you might need as many as 23 pieces of communication before someone decides to take you up on an offer.  So which number is your piece of text?

The best marketeers think carefully about how to craft a message, whether it’s a Tweet, an email or a book.

Give yours the power it deserves by taking time with it.

Had an interesting discussion this morning with a client.  They are a voluntary organisation wanting a marketing booklet.

Now I’ve written for the voluntary sector several times in the past few years and what generally drives me mad about the jobs is the jargon they use.  It’s bad enough when it’s contained in annual reports and such.  But when they want to use it in marketing documents I really struggle with the jobs.

That’s because people on the whole don’t speak all the time in jargon.  And often when they do, they couldn’t define accurately many of the terms they use.  If you’re writing to people whose first language may not be English, or they’re not too confident in written English, jargon can be offputting at best and terrifying at worst.

The audience for any writing is key.  If you have to impress them by including the jargon so be it.  But please for the rest of us, clear, simple, English please.

Catching up with Writer’s Almanac (www.writersalmanac.com) which is full of fascinating facts and quotes from and about writers from all over the world.

One item caught my eye about Jennifer Egan an American author I have to confess I hadn’t heard of.

She’s the  author of The Invisible Circus (1995), based on her travels in Europe; Emerald  City and Other Stories (1996), a short-story collection; Look at Me (2001), a finalist for the  National Book Award; and The Keep (2006), a best-seller.

What intrigued me though was the fact that she writes in longhand.  Because she started writing before the advent of computers (she was  born in the 1960s) she thinks that her writing on the computer is inferior to her other writing and needs more fixing.

One of my exercises when I studied business writing was to write out successful sales letters, by hand. Not once, not twice but three times.  The logic was that you picked up the rhythm of the writing much easier that way.  I have to admit that I do most of my writing on the computer but if I’m trying to pick up how another writer works then I do go back to the exercise.

It shows you all the quirks of punctuation, breathing in the writing and sometimes if you do enough of one writer, almost the thought processes that got them to the way they write.

I’ve just been reading a blog from John Carlton about stealing other people’s writing.  He rants more than I do but I couldn’t agrre more with what he says.

It’s become the norm for people to expect free stuff and be allowed to do what they like with it.  At best it’s flattery but at worst it’s stealing.  And for sure it takes time to learn the rules and guideline behind anything that works.  But that’s the case for any skill you want to acquire.

The bottom line for me though is do you want to always be a copy of someone else in your writing or do you want to have your own personality?  Understanding how good writing works is the first step to real independence and your own writing identity.

Yes it takes longer but it’s worth it in the long run.

If you want to see how John Carlton writes then just Google him.  He calls himself the most copied writer and he’s certainly one of the most successful.  And that didn’t come from him just copying other people.

If you’re not sure about how to write your Tweets, here’s a walk through of designing a Tweet by Jakob Nielsen, web marketing expert.

http://www.stnx.at/a0lj

And a link to his website for info and help on website design.

www.useit.com/

Have you ever thought that you could create a miracle?

Every child born is a miracle and acknowledged as such.  Aside from that most people would deny that they could create anything else described as a miracle.

What if your words could touch people all over the world?

What if you could start a conversation that led to people you didn’t know creating positive change in their lives?

At a recent networking event I was talking to someone in business about writing books. Now I’ve known this businesswoman for several years and she’s always struck me as confident and capable and very talented in her field.

But… she seemed to lack that confidence to write her experience down in the form of a book.

Think about the books you’ve read in your life.  I’m sure that some of them have had an impact on you.  Maybe they helped you pass exams, open a door into a new career, dulled the pain of unhappiness.

When you write your book, you will have no idea what ripples it will cause in your own and others’ lives.  But is that any reason not to do it?

And if you’re worried about the experience of writing a book, then I’ve a downloadable pdf on Writing A Book: 5 Strategies to reduce the stress.  You can find it at my other site, www.writerslittlebook.co.uk

It’s an ethical bribe to tempt you to join the Writer’s Little Book Club.  It’s FREE to join the Club and that way you’ll find out what we’re up to first.

And think about it – what do you know that can help someone change their life?

Writing projects: the inspiration stage

Recently I was speaking to a man whose wife loved reading fantasy and magic books. She’d read widely in that genre for years and had from time to time said to him “I wish I could write a fantasy book, but I don’t have any imagination.”

He was asking me if I thought that anyone could write and if so how did you get around the not having any imagination challenge.

I asked him if they had children, which they did now grown up. And then I asked if his wife had made up stories with the children when they were small. Which she had.

So the problem really isn’t lack of imagination. If we watch children, I have a 5 year old great niece, they are full of it. Somehow it often gets beaten out of us as we get older because we have to be sensible and not in my mother’s words, “tell fairy stories”.

But the fairy story was real to me. And I’m sure that to the lady who reads fantasy, the stories are real to her.

I love the quote by Jack London, “I don’t wait for inspiration, I go after it with a club.”

Our imaginations/inspirations are there and simply shifting our focus can open up a whole new world for us. For that man I offered a very simple stimulus for his wife.

“Tell your wife to start with the words, As I walked down the street…”

I’ve used this phrase or a variation of it so many times to kick start my writing. And it works just as well if you’re writing non-fiction. It’s the physical act of writing that generates the inspiration that then generates the writing.

If that doesn’t seem to work then try writing your name and keep writing it until some words come into your mind. Doesn’t at this stage matter much what the words are. What’s important is that you allow them to come uncritically.

Once the flow has started – then you’ll be onto the next challenge.

How to stop!

I’m in the middle of writing the next book – this time on writing web copy.

There seem to be 3 problems with business owners writing their own copy for websites:

1. They don’t do it.  If I had a pound for every person who says to me. “I know I should but…”
2. They take forever to do it.  It’s a common moan when I talk to website designers.
3. They won’t sell.

We seem to understand other forms of selling but not when it comes to websites.  And if I can have a small moan, the people who seem to hate the thought of selling most are complementary therapists and coaches.

I was talking to a therapist recently who had a background in a large corporate before she became a therapist and it was a pleasure talking to her about selling because she didn’t shy away from the topic.  She was in business – her vehicle was doing something she loved, i.e. the therapy work and her focus was on how she could do it better to offer her services to more people.

I shared with her something from Jay Abraham “If you know you have a product or service that can help people live easier, richer or better lives, what right do you have to keep it to yourself.”

Great quote.

That’s why most websites need radical overhauls.  Oddly enough some of the best sites I’ve seen for selling are charity websites.  People like Age Concern or Help the Aged have really good focused sites using all the latest techniques.

I’ll keep you posted on when the Web Copy book will be available.  We’re launching this one as a digital download so that will be exciting.