Some years back, I knew a guy who started a business making puppets. This was long before the ‘Being John Malkovich‘ movie put puppets on the map (even if it didn’t really set out to make them cool again).

To this day, I don’t know how he hit on the idea. But making puppets was something he could do, and he seemed to enjoy. So he thought he could turn his hobby into a business.

Guess what? He didn’t sell any puppets. They weren’t bad puppets, you understand. That were probably pretty good, hand made and all that.

But there just isn’t a market for hand made puppets. Or any kind of puppets really.

He had made the classic business mistake: make something because that’s what you want to make, and then try to sell it to someone.

In business, you do market research, find out what people want, what they will pay money for, and provide it. That’s a business.

Making puppets blindly, then hoping there is a market, that’s a hobby at best, or more likely, a recipe for disaster.

Years later, the guy is an architect, so he’ll probably do OK in life. I think the experience really, really put him off puppets as well, which is probably a good thing.

So, writing? Well, similar principles apply. And I’m not just talking about writing for money, or in professional environments. Even if you write only for pleasure, you still need to consider the reader. In fact, scratch that. You don’t just consider the reader. You have to put them first.

Whatever you are writing, it’s not about you. It’s not what you want to say that matters, it’s the reader that’s important. How will they benefit from reading this? What insights will they take from it? What will they learn? Why should they care?

Take poetry. You know what marks out the ‘amateur’ poet? Emoting. Writing about their feelings.

Now, a ‘professional’ poet uses words to recreate a feeling, to help the reader share that experience. The poet creates an emotion, a feeling within the reader, using words. Everything is geared towards creating that effect: it’s all about the reader. Whereas the ‘amateur’ is just writing about himself.

So, in business, writing, or most other areas of life, it’s not about you. It’s about them.

Related posts:

1. When is a ‘business opportunity’ really just a pyramid scheme in disguise?
2. Is your writing a waste of time?
3. Beware the curse of ‘zombie’ copy: does your writing lack the spark of life?

Ideas are essential for any writer. But how do have ideas on a regular basis? How do you keep coming up with strong ideas in a professional environment, where they are needed every day, not just now and then?

There is no one easy answer, although there is a formula. The five step process outlined by James Webb Young in his book ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas’ is outlined in my original post on how to have ideas.

I’ve now developed two further steps, to create a ‘7 steps to creativity‘ formula, which I’ve set out in a guest post on Write to Done.

WTD is a great site for writers, so if you’ve not been there before, be sure to check it out.

My seven steps are:

1. Gather the information
2. Sift it
3. Let it percolate
4. Let the ideas flow
5. Shape and mould the ideas
6. Share them with others
7. Put the feedback into the loop; and repeat the process to strengthen your ideas.

There’s more detail on the guest post. Let me know what you think, here or over there on Write To Done.

Photo: Brain scan by Reigh LeBlanc

Related posts:

1. How to have ideas
2. Beware these five creativity killers
3. Ideas for blog posts – five sources of inspiration to last a lifetime

Does your writing lack the one vital ingredient?

Whether you’re writing blogs, advertising copy, a novel or a sales letter, there’s one essential element you must have: without it, your words will fall flat, and no amount of editing will be able to reanimate the lifeless corpse.

The key is enthusiasm. If you’re not enthusiastic, it’ll show. It’s hard, if not impossible, to fake it. Without it, your words will do no more than trudge along, a pale imitation of more passionate writing.

Your words will do no more than trudge along, a pale imitation of more passionate writing.

Enthusiasm, as they say, is infectious. If you are enthusiastic when you write, it will transfer to the reader. You will probably write fast, with an urgency to get the words down before the moment passes, before anyone can interrupt, before you lose your flow.

This is good. As John Caples points out, in his copywriting classic ‘Tested Advertising Methods’:

‘The human brain is like an automobile engine. It works best when it is hot.’

So how do you get your brain warmed up? How do you get into flow? How do you get enthusiastic and fired up?

1) Start writing – write anything
Get writing something, anything. If you’re writing an advert or piece of marketing copy, just start putting down thoughts and words around the product. If it’s a blog post or chapter of a novel, start out with practice copy or dummy copy. Write for the trash can. Tell yourself you’ll write for ten minutes and then throw it away.

2) Don’t start at the beginning
The start of any piece of writing is critically important because the opening sentences have to be good, or you’ll lose your readers. That makes is intimidating to start at the beginning. So flesh out the middle sections first, or even start at the end. You might just come up with sentences or paragraphs good enough that they can later be used in the introduction.

3) Write fast and furious
Write fast and furious with little thought to how good it is, then go back later and edit, edit, edit – while making sure you keep that enthusiasm and energy within your writing.

4) Forget critics
Forget about other people and critics. Don’t worry about anyone who might be judging your copy at a later date: clients, editors, account managers, and so on. Forget about them, and write with style, pizzazz and enthusiasm.

5) Forget rules
Forget about you can and can’t say, what you must or musn’t include. Write fast, let the words pour out of you.

The big benefit of writing in this way is that you’ll include more emotion in your copy. And it’s emotion that will stir a reader into action.

It’s emotion that will stir a reader into action.

Remember, if you write with fire in your belly, you can always tame the copy later, taking out any excesses, correcting any errors. But if the beast is dead to start with, you’ll never breathe life back into it.

If you’re faced with zombie copy, it’s time to break out the shotgun, chainsaw or old vinyl LPs, and put it out of its misery.

Then get fired up, and try writing it again, this time with feeling.

Related posts:

1. How to give your writing the spark of life
2. Writing to persuade – get to know the structure of advertising copy
3. 7 golden rules of marketing – how to be sure your copy works

Imagine, for a moment, that you’ve just met some incredibly attractive person, someone you’d really like to get to know much, much better.

Would you rush up to them, blurt out all your strengths and qualities, give them your entire life history, and invite them back to your place?

Or would you try to be more subtle than that?

I hope, for the sake of both your love life and your sanity, that you would use the subtle approach. Perhaps you would try to intrigue the other person, engage with them, yes, but leave lots of mystery, things for them to find out about you in the future.

Well, social media is the same really. Web 2.0 is a bit like a blind date at times.

Seduction on your profile page

You don’t want to put everything there is to know about you out there on your Facebook page, because if you do, readers have no reason to click through to your website.

Treat writing as a game of seduction: after all, it makes the writing side of things much more fun.

You don’t want to go rushing up to people on Twitter and invite them back to your place (blog, website, whatever), on the first encounter.

You need to establish some form of relationship, with plenty of trust involved, before you try to close the deal, and get them onto your sales page, or reading your blog posts, or subscribing to your RSS feed.

You need to write profiles and about pages on social media sites carefully. Entice people to come and find out more, create an irresistible urge to click through and explore your hidden depths.

You have to be open and honest, for sure, but don’t lay it all out on the table, leaving nothing left to discover.

Treat writing as a game of seduction: after all, it makes the writing side of things much more fun.

Related posts:

1. Puppets: the no 1 worst mistake you can make in your writing … or your business
2. Beware the curse of ‘zombie’ copy: does your writing lack the spark of life?
3. Four ways to take your writing to another level

To master the craft of writing, you need the right approach, the right mindset. It’s no different to mastering archery or martial arts, or tennis, or yoga.

You don’t dabble at it, jumping like a monkey from one project to another, never settling down for the long haul. The dabbler doesn’t finish things, doesn’t see them through. Once the initial thrill has worn off, once that first enthusiasm has gone, once the excitement has given way to hard work, they get bored and restless and mooch off to something else that has caught their attention.

The way to succeed is to master the process. That means practicing the fundamentals, every day.

The dabbler probably has dozens of books they almost started, or got going but never finished. Or they might have a string of blogs they own, but hardly ever post to. (I know, I know, pot and kettle. Be quiet at the back).

They want to learn, but in the end they hit the plateau where they are working hard but they don’t seem to be making breakthroughs or getting any better. They look at the short term and they don’t see anything happening there.

The dabbler is always looking for a breakthrough, the next big thing, but will probably never master the craft of writing – or any other craft for that matter.

Unless they have a change of mindset.

Then there’s the stressor – the person who throws themselves at a project, determined to get it all right, to learn everything, to control everything, leaving no stone unturned in their determination.

They charge at it. They read everything, buy every piece of kit or software they can find. They do all the self help books and writers’ groups. They read all the forums and the blogs (except this one. No one reads this one).

They push and push and push – until they hit the plateau. Then they push and push and push some more – pushing until they burn themselves out. Ultimately they crash and burn because they have exhausted their mental or emotional or physical energy. Or maybe all three.

Stress can do that to you. What you need is a change of mindset.

The way to succeed is to master the process. That means practicing the fundamentals, every day. Every day.

The basics of writing – keep at it. The stuff you already know, the things you can already do, you need to make sure you can do them perfectly.

Yes, perfection isn’t possible in writing. But the principle remains. Just as the zen archer will perfect the art, not of hitting targets, but of picking up the bow in precisely the right way, so the writer perfects his craft by paying attention to the details. By getting sentences right, whole paragraphs.

By being in the right frame of mind to write.

By being patient, and going slowly, and going in the right direction, steadily and with a calm assurance.

Daily consistent action towards getting something written.

Related posts:

1. How to have ideas – the 7 steps to creativity
2. Puppets: the no 1 worst mistake you can make in your writing … or your business
3. 3 places you can start writing

Writers are motivators. Whatever you write, the chances are that you are trying to motivate someone either to do something – or not do something.

A headline motivates someone to read the first sentence of an advert, a blog post, a newspaper article.

The first sentence motivates them to read the second.

The opening sentence of a novel persuades someone to read the first page. The first page motivates them to buy the book.

A business report motivates someone to allocate funding to a project. A website motivates someone to email you, or call, or subscribe, or buy.

A love letter is a motivation tool, an instrument of persuasion. Same goes for a facebook profile, or the ‘about’ page of a blog.

People are motivated by two fundamental factors: pain and pleasure.

So how do you motivate and persuade people?

There are two powerful factors at play. People are motivated by two fundamental factors: pain and pleasure.

Look at any advert. It will either sell by focussing on the pain felt when you don’t have product X. Or it will focus on the pleasure you get from product X. The really clever ads include both.

The carrot and the stick. They are the fundamentals of human psychology.

Just about everything you do in life is motivated by these two factors. You don’t do the things you know you should, because you associate them with pain. You indulge the things you shouldn’t because of the pleasure.

You don’t exercise because you’re focused on the effort involved. You eat chocolate instead because it brings pleasure.

If you’re writing to persuade someone to take an action, you need to remember these two core motivating factors, and use them.

The carrot and the stick. They are the fundamentals of human psychology.

If you’re promoting a product, you start with the stick. Show how not having the product will bring pain for the reader.

Not having this fancy car in your life will make you feel inadequate.

Then you use the carrot. Show how having the product will bring pleasure and joy.

Cut to close up of the reader at the wheel of said car, with a beaming smile on his face. (Really… who smiles like that when they’re driving? Those ads look freaky).

You might, for good measure, want to add a beautiful girl into that picture, perhaps in the passenger seat, just to complete the pleasure principle.

If you’re writing adverts, marketing or any other form of persuasive writing, these are the two fundamental motivators you need to keep in mind.

And when you are on the receiving end of advertising and marketing, being aware of how they are tugging at your basic psychology might help you to avoid being swayed.

Related posts:

1. How to write your own sales copy: a 5-step formula
2. Beware these five creativity killers
3. The seven golden rules of copywriting

Sometimes the words won’t flow. You don’t know where to start. The prospect of actually writing something and committing to it, getting it right and good enough, is so daunting that it freezes you.

There are ways around this. Here are eight of them, discussed briefly. Many of them are areas which warrant a deeper examination, and I intend to return to them in the coming weeks (and maybe months). Let this serve as an introduction.

1. Write the easy bit
Whatever you are writing, be it an essay, a business report or a novel, there will be some parts that seem immensely difficult, while others will be much easier. It’s an easy pit to fall into: you stare at the cliff face in front of you, the hard climb, the difficult part, and wonder how you will ever get up there.
Turn away from it, start with the gentle slope. Write the easy parts first, and once you are warmed up, once you have got some words under your belt and you are acclimatised to the altitude, then you can tackle the rockface.

2. Write lots now
Try writing as much as you can in one sitting, without a break and without editing or concerning yourself too much with quality. Get lots down, and some of it will be useful and useable.

3. Stop at the right time
When you’ve had enough, take a break and a rest. Think about the best place to stop too. Some writers choose to stop in the middle of a sentence, so that when they come back to their writing, they know exactly where to start. You could also consider stopping at a point where you know what comes next, you know precisely where you are heading. Then, when you come back to the draft, you can get started easily.
If you stop just when things look difficult and you don’t know which way to turn, then returning to the draft and getting going again will be hard. You might even keep putting it off, because you know you have that tricky problem to solve right from the get go.

4. Freewrite
This is a tried and trusted technique. There’s actually quite a lot to it, and I’ll return to in more depth soon. But it is essentially a kind of writing game in which you set a time limit such as five minutes, ten minutes, whatever you feel like. During that time you write continuously, letting words pour forth, writing as much as possible. Pay no mind to whether it is good, or useful, or right. Just get as many words down as possible. It’s a terrific warm up exercise.

5. Loop back
If you get bogged down while writing something, loop back. Go back to a point where things were going well, pick a sentence from there, and start again from that point. This time your writing may lead you in a different direction.

6. Write a summary
If you don’t want to write the whole thing now, write a summary instead. It takes off a lot of pressure. Summarise your argument, or the information you want to get across. It’s a good way to get the writing juices flowing, and it might just clarify your thinking too.

7. Paraphrase
Don’t write what you want to write. Paraphrase it instead. Give a different version, not the one you intend to use or publish, or submit. But a version which says what you want to say, in a totally different way. It can lead to new ideas, new approaches, and can free you to write in new ways.

8. Write blind
This is similar to freewriting above, where you are not supposed to look back over what you have written. But this approach takes a slightly different tack. The idea is to actually cover up your writing so you can’t even see the words going down on paper or appearing on a screen. You can achieve this by putting a piece of light material over your writing hand, making sure it covers the paper too. On a computer, you may need to experiment to find a way to make the window in which you are writing invisible. Simply turning the monitor around so it faces away from you works (though you might get some odd looks if you try this in the workplace).

I’ll be exploring these and other techniques in more detail in coming weeks.

Related posts:

1. 3 more reasons you find writing difficult
2. Democracy, dictatorship and anarchy: who makes the rules of good English?
3. How to communicate

Don’t let these mental minefields blow holes in your creativity:

Fear of failure
If you’re afraid that things might go wrong, or not turn out perfect, then chances are you’ll never get started in the first place. And if you keep imagining scenarios where everything goes wrong, or reminding yourself about times when you feel you failed in the past, then things will keep getting worse. Fear can be paralysing, and is pretty sure to kill your creativity.

Being cautious
Being too cautious can be fatal for your creativity. Perhaps you try to stick to techniques or ideas you already know – or which you think are tried and tested, so good to employ one more time. You might find yourself bowing to authority and not wishing to stick your neck out, trying to fit in and go with the opinion of the majority.
Creativity requires boldness and audacity. Break rules when it suits you.

Listening to your inner critic
There will be a time to scrap what doesn’t work, to throw away the bad ideas, to employ what Hemmingway called the “sh*t detector.” But that’s after the creative process. If you let your inner critic get going before you’ve had time to start generating ideas or getting words down on paper, then it will likely kill your creativity stone dead.

Being humble
I’m English. We do self-deprecating modesty as well as anyone. But sometimes it can go too far. You need to throw off the humble, modest persona for a bit, and be wildly, boldly creative. Other people may be the true experts, they may have had more success than you so far. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be as creative as the best of them. Reach for the heights. You don’t have to tell anyone that’s what you’re doing. But behind closed doors, in the sanctuary of your own writing den, you have the freedom to aim for creativity that ranks alongside the greatest writers there have ever been. Why not? There’s no embarrassment in trying to be good.

Oversimplifying
Creativity is likely to make your life, your art, your writing, more complex. Now, clarity is a good thing. Oversimplifying is not. Embrace the complexity, and ride the wave.

If you feel your creativity is stifled, try this.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider helping me promote it through whatever social media you use (Digg, StumbleUpon etc). Or link to it from your own blog. Or make a comment. Or tell people about it, in person or by email. Thanks for your help.

Related posts:

1. How to have ideas – the 7 steps to creativity
2. Beware the curse of ‘zombie’ copy: does your writing lack the spark of life?
3. How to have ideas

There’s a fascinating piece on a blog site called Study Hacks, which I discovered today because it popped up high in Del.icio.us. It’s aimed at students who need to write papers, but as the article itself points out, the advice applies to just about any form of writing.

The author has dug out a series of interviews with “masters of long form non-fiction” and used the information to create a picture of how professional writers work.

The most striking observations from this study:

The writers work in the morning. They often start very early in the morning.

Five out of ten of the writers described a little ritual before starting their morning writing. A surprising number of these rituals focused on The New York Times.

The writers drink coffee. Lots of coffee.

The writers write in isolation. If they didn’t have families they would push this even farther. Many discussed having no e-mail or phone in their workspace. One purposefully used a “shitty old laptop” to avoid temptations like solitaire. Gay Talese rigged his home office so it could only be entered through a separate outside door.

The whole article, called “How to Schedule Your Writing Like a Professional Writer’” is well worth a read.

Nearly all of the writers questioned said finding a place free of distractions was very important to them. As a professional writer myself, I’d say that is indeed a great idea, but not advice that I’m ever able to follow myself.

There are distractions all around me. I have a phone on my desk because clients might call. There are emails popping up because they might be urgent. Then there’s the dog, the cats, family members, the garden, the sunshine, the internet … you get the idea.

The article points out that magazine writers seem to able to work anywhere. As I started out in an insanely hectic newsroom, perhaps that’s why I’m able to still get at least some writing done.

What do you think of the advice? Is a distraction free writing environment something you have achieved? Do you think it’s even possible?

Related posts:

1. Discover a community of writers – at Scribophile
2. Write like a pro: seven top hints for new writers
3. How not to brief a copywriter

A new writing site has been launched which looks like it could create innovative ways for writers to share ideas and feedback.

Scribophile is aimed mainly at authors, poets and so on. It’s bound to be of interest to anyone involved in creative writing.

It’s well designed and attractive to look at which isn’t always the case with writing sites, many of which look like throw-backs to the early days of the internet.

The people behind the site (one of whom is a regular reader of this site – hi Alex) intend Scribophile to become create a community of authors, who can help each other and provide support and appraisals of each other’s work.

As the site itself says:

Think of Scribophile as a writer’s workshop, but instead of being in a room with 20 or so other writers, you’re on the internet with millions of other writers, each of them eager to read your work and offer helpful critiques. We pride ourselves on our friendly and helpful community. You can meet other writers with similar interests and interact with thousands of other like-minded authors from around the world.

It’s very new so the community is just starting to build. It’s looks like a cracking idea well executed, so please support them and check out the site.

Related posts:

1. How professional writers work
2. 3 places you can start writing
3. How to master the craft of writing