Time to Write

Want to solve a writing or marketing problem? Ask 'How do THEY do it?'

Let's say you have a problem relating to your writing or selling what you write. You're stuck...now what?

I suggest a brainstorming activity I call, “How do THEY do it?” First you think of somebody who does something that’s similar to—but not exactly the same as—whatever you want to do. Then you look at what are the main things they do and translate those back to what you’re trying to do.

For example, let’s say you have finished writing a book or script and now you want to sell it. First let’s pick a “they.” Who sells stuff? Well, salespeople. Let’s pick the kind of selling that probably is the most daunting: door to door sales.

 WHAT THEY DO

What do THEY do? Make a list of their key behaviours and attitudes:

They go from door to door, calling on many potential customers in a day.

They come up with a first sentence or two that is designed to capture the interest of the potential customer so the latter won’t slam the door in their face.

They have a strong pitch that relates the product to the needs of the potential customer.

They have answers ready for the most likely objections, such as “I can’t afford it right now,” or “I’ll have to ask my spouse.”

They know that most people will say no, but that if they persist, it’s likely some will say yes.

They listen to what the non-buyers say and adjust their pitch accordingly for the next time they might make the sale. They learn from the no's.

WHAT WE CAN DO

Now what can we take away from that in terms of selling our manuscript or script? What would be our equivalents to what "they" are doing?

One is that we would approach a number of agents or publishers or producers, not one at a time. After all, a door to door salesperson wouldn’t say, “Well, Mrs Miller said she’d think about it and let me know next week, so I’ll just wait for her answer before I try next door.”

To get our foot in the door we would fashion a strong first sentence for our query letter or our pitch, so we  capture the interest of our potential customer.

We would think about what objections might come up—for instance, maybe that it would cost too much to produce a certain script—and we’d be ready with an answer. Maybe we could even build that information into the pitch or the query letter itself to disarm the objection.

For instance, if you were pitching a novel right now that features zombies, you’d want to be sure to explain very early in the letter or pitch how it’s different from all the zombie stories out there at the moment.

We would not give up after the first few rejections.

And we would listen to the feedback we get, and if several potential customers point out the same issue, we’d fix it before moving on to the next one.

That’s the “How do THEY do it?” strategy and you can apply it to just about any process that you’re finding difficult.

MORE EXAMPLES

Having trouble building a story? Figure out how the people who build houses do it and translate that back to story-building.

Having problems with a story that seems too predictable but you don't know how to throw the reader off the scent? List how magicians deceive their audience and find out which strategies might work in your story.

Finding it difficult to come up with ideas? Find out how advertising agency people come up with them and apply them to your kind of story-telling.

By getting inspired by people and solutions outsideo of your field you will come up with fresh ideas, not imitations of what everybody else in yours is doing already.

(You'll find lots more creative ideas for solving writing problems and creating powerful stories, in my book Your Writing Coach. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

Writers' Monday Alert: Go green (tea) for increased energy and focus

I’ve been writing about natural ways to boost your alertness, and green tea may be one of the best.

Dutch researchers report that caffeine and an amino acid called L-theanine, both found in green tea, heightened alertness, reduced tiredness, and improved task accuracy. Chinese researchers also found that an organic component of green tea could improve memory and spatial learning.

Additionally, green tea is believed to boost the immune system and has an appetite suppressant effect that can be useful if you’re trying to lose weight. It’s also high in antioxidants.

I don’t like the taste of green tea, but then I don’t like tea in general. Instead, I take green tea supplements, which are available at all health food stores.

PS: Stimulants aren’t a good substitute for a good night’s sleep, but if you, like me, sometimes find it difficult to get energized even after sleeping seven or eight hours, these can help. Nothing here should be construed as medical advice; if in doubt, consult your doctor, especially if you have high blood pressure.

(Need to focus? Get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and available now from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

How to write in your sleep

OK, maybe you can't write a novel or a screenplay in your sleep, but you can certainly generate useful material.

In my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass, I mention several great authors, including Robert Louis Stevenson, who spun stories from their dreams. In her book, Writers Dreaming, 26 Writers Talk About Their Dreams and the Creative Process, Naomi Epel cites some others.

Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, said, ""Sometimes, if I'm stuck on the ending of a story, I'll just take the story with me to bed. I'll let it become part of a dream and see if something surfaces." 

William Styron, author of Sophie's Choice, said he had a "lingering vision" of a young woman with a tattoo on one arm and he "was seized by this absolute sense of necessity--I had to write the book." He said the ""whole concept of the book was, if not the product of a dream itself, the product of some resonance that a dream had given me."

Writing mentor and novelist John Gardner has said that a work of fiction should read like "a vivid and continuous dream," so to some degree you can use your own dreams as a model for what you write. Naturally dreams are much more chaotic than novels or scripts, but they're raw material that you can shape, edit, and combine. 

Dreams are especially useful for people who want to write children's books because their surreal elements can be adapted for picture books or fanciful fairy tales.

If you don't remember your dreams you can train yourself to do so. Every morning jot down anything at all you remember, even if it's just one tiny fragment. Over time you'll begin to remember more and more. You can dicate rather than write, if you prefer, using a digital recorder or your smart phone.

If you have writer's block, remind yourself before you go to sleep that you'd like to dream a solution to the problem that's blocking you and see what comes up.

Give it a try; if it works for you, you can have a good sleep and still say you were working all through the night.

(There are lots more great tips in "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

 

 

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How to challenge your excuses

In the last post I featured a quote that makes the point that we all make excuses. 

My favorite response when somebody says “I can’t” is “OK, but how would you do it if you could?”

Example: “I’d like to learn another language, but I can’t.” (Followed by lots of reasons—no time, not good at languages, etc.).

“OK, but how what would you do if you could?”

“No, no, I can’t.”

“OK, but what would you do if you could?”

Usually this evokes repeated denials and requires repeating the same question. Eventually the answer is something like this:

“Well, I guess I’d get a language app for my phone and learn a word a day while I’m on the train.”

Bingo! The first step. The hardest step.

However, excuses have a way of coming back. Sometime down the line you might hear, "I''ve learned quite a few words and I'd like to figure out how to put them together into useful sentences, but I can't (no time, etc.)"

That's your cue: "OK, but what would you do if you could?"

By the way, use this tool only with people who really want to overcome their excuses. There are people who use excuses to cover the fact that they don't really want to do the thing being discussed. In those cases, save your breath.

If you’ve been making excuses that you'd like to overcome, you can pay for me to come to your place and ask you that question over and over until you give in and come up with a good way to start to vanquish the excuse. However, that would be expensive (I’d charge you for first class travel).

The alternative is to get a friend or family member to do that for you. If you have kids, they'll love being your inquisitor.  Or you can do it for yourself.

I can hear you say, “Interesting, but this wouldn’t work for my problem.”

OK, but what would be the answer if it could?

(You'll find many additional innovative ways to manage your time and yourself, in my book Focus: Use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

For writers and others who make excuses (that's all of us)

If you’re a writer--or maybe just if you're human--there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to relate to what James Altucher wrote about excuses in an essay on mindpowernews.com:

Everyone says, "I can't."  I can't be a medical professional unless I go to medical school. I can't be a movie maker unless I raise $10 million to make a movie. I can't marry a super model because I'm ugly. I can't I can't I can't. For every "can't " you should send me $10. I can do all those things. Particularly if I have your $10.

By the way, just notice when these things come up. It's not like you're going to get cured of paranoia. But notice when it appears.  Water withers the rock away. Every time you notice, the window clears a tiny bit. A smudge is gone. You get a glimpse of the light outside.

 

What I like, especially, is his acknowledgment that these kinds of things don’t just magically go away through positive thinking. They do go away eventually if you challenge them when they come up. For example, for years I’ve been helping people convert their inner critics into constructive inner guides.

It works.

But from time to time, somehow my inner critic kidnaps my inner guide, puts on an inner guide mask, and sneaks up on me. It happens less and less, but it’s a process. Don't give up, just keep on keeping on.

NEXT POST: HOW TO CHALLENGE YOUR EXCUSES

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Overcoming Procrastination (The Lesser of Two Evils Method)

Writers' Monday Alert: why to write and chew at the same time

Your teachers may have told you to throw away your chewing gum but it turns out it might be just the thing when you want to activate your brain and get writing.

Researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Radiological Sciences report that regular gum chewers experience increased alertness, more thinking power, and faster reaction times.

The theory is that chewing may lead to a temporary increase in blood flow to the brain. Their scans showed that chewing gum affected up to eight areas of the brain.

If you decide to try it, you might want to go sugarless, but don’t overdo it—some dentists have warned that the sugar substitutes can increase mouth acidity, which can be bad for your tooth enamel. The fruit-flavored gum is the worst offender.

(Need to focus? Get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and available now from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

Can you tell a story in six seconds?

Have you read about (or experienced) the success of Vine? It’s a free  iPhone/ iTouch/ iPad app that’s like Twitter for video. You have only six seconds of screen time to tell a story and there’s no going back to edit.

The trick for many of the Vines on the site is not to record six seconds consecutively but take, for instance, six shots lasting one second each (or even less time each, for stop-motion animation).

Your video goes onto the Vines site immediately and you can share it via Twitter or Facebook, or embed it on the web. The six-second clips loop (repeat). You can follow people to see their Vines, and people can follow you.

So, what do people do with their six seconds? Here are a few examples:

A man looks uncomfortable, starts to choke and then ejects an entire orange from his mouth… (119,214 “likes”)

A dog dressed up in a robe and with (apparently) human hands feeds itself little treats…(113,110)

A hand draws an egg that then careens around the page and then turns into a real egg. (11,363)

One of the few that has a story as such shows a baby playing around with a mobile phone. It presses one of the buttons and we cut to a car blowing up (shot of a TV screen playing a scene from The Godfather, I think).

Is Vine another demonstration of our shortening attention span? (You’re still reading this, aren’t you?...Hello?) Or just a bit of fun? Or both? I don’t know, but if you want to challenge yourself to tell a story in six seconds, check it out. It's harder than it looks.

(If you need some guidance for telling a story longer then six seconds--perhaps in a book--get a copy of my book, Your Writing Coach. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Are online ads driving you crazy? Try this before Gooface gets involved.

Writers spend a lot of time sitting down which, according to several recent studies, is not good for you. That's why the other day I went online to see where I could buy a laptop stand that I could put on top of my desk so that I can spend a bit of time every day writing standing up. That's when the trouble started.

It's the internet. It thinks I'm still in the market for a laptop stand, and it won't stop hectoring me to buy.

I was looking at an article on the Psychology Today site. Off to the right side of the page there appeared a looping slide show of laptop stands. Every two seconds or so the picture changed, making it hard to concentrate on what I was trying to read.

I moved the page to the right so that the slide show was off my screen...that's when I noticed there was a banner at the top also displaying laptop stands. The images were not moving but below each one was a "buy" button. Flashing on and off. 

I felt like I was being hounded by digital Mad Men who wouldn't leave me alone until I bought at least one more laptop stand, maybe more. 

I admit that the Kafkaesque quality may have been enhanced because I have insomnia and am writing this at 5am, after waking up at 3am...but even in less stressful circumstances having what you're trying to read surrounded by dancing ads is annoying.

I use Chrome as my main search engine and I've just installed Adblock Plus. It's free and it removes ads from most sites.

The parade of laptop stands has ended. Nothing is flashing at me to buy. Sweet relief!

I believe similar plug-ins are available for the other popular search engines. If you're being dogged by over-active ads, I recommend these highly.

I know it's a stop-gap measure. Targeting us based on our internet activity is big business. Also, private companies soon are going to be able to launch their own drones. It's clear that in a few years each of us will be followed everywhere by a personal drone that exhorts you to buy stuff based on the searches you've done and the web sites you've visited. This means quite a few people will have drones following them, shouting, "Buy porn! Buy porn!"

Gooface (Google and Facebook will have merged by then) will know who your favorite movie stars are, via on the tickets you order online, so the exhortations will sound like it's Leonardo di Caprio or Emma Watson telling you to download "The Housewife Hookers of New Jersey."

For the more reluctant buyers, drones made by Blackwater will be equipped with Taser-Lite technology that administers a mild shock (guaranteed not to be fatal, usually) until you buy the item in question.

I'd better get some sleep.

(image copyright Universal Studios)

How writers can be more objective about their own work (good for rewriting)

A member of my Raindance workshop emailed me to ask whether I could recommend any ways to get over being too close to one’s own work to see its faults.

The most useful approach is to treat the draft as though it had been written by someone else and they’d asked you for constructive criticism. The ways you can get that distance include:

• Print the draft in a different font and/or on different color paper (pale yellow is good—easy on the eyes);

• Read the draft in a different room (or a different place altogether) than the one in which you created it;
  
  
• Sit back as you read the draft—this is the critical posture, whereas leaning forward tends to be the creative posture (which is why most of us writers have terrible posture);
  
  
• Note the problems you see with it, but resist the temptation to come up with solutions at this point. That will be part of the creative process.
  
  
• Experiment with the time of day that seems to work best for you in terms of making constructive criticism. I find in the first hour or so after waking up, my creative juices aren’t flowing but my critical faculties are. The opposite may be true for you—experiment to determine this for yourself.

(Did you know that Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, and many other great authors left behind excellent advice for aspiring writers? I've collected it and suggested how you can apply it to your own writing--all in the book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass. You can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

A part of rewriting your book or script you won't like (but it'll help)

In a post on the Raindance site, Stephanie Joalland included a rewriting tip that I also advocate and that most screenwriters and novelists resist: before you start on your second draft, write a new outline of your first draft.

Why do writers not want to do this? Well, it’s extra work and they feel that they’ve gone past this stage. Sure, probably they made changes to their original outline (I’m assuming there was one), but they don’t seem big enough to warrant re-doing the outline.

That's often wrong because some of those changes may have derailed the logic of your storyline, or started strands that you didn’t pay off, or involved incidents that you didn’t set up early enough. By this point you will have been wrapped up in this story long enough that you can’t see the forest for the trees.

An outline forces you to step back and look at the major events of the story. With that in hand you can ask yourself some painful but necessary questions:

• Does every step of this story makes sense?
•  Is there a clear cause and effect sequence?
• Are there at least one or two surprises for the reader?
• Are there “orphan” scenes that should either be cut or integrated better?
• Is the overall flow of the conflict escalating?
• Have you chosen actions and settings that reveal character as well as advancing the plot?

The answers to those questions will make rewriting the second draft much easier.

In the next post I’ll suggest some ways you can get the necessary distance from your own work to be able to critique it more objectively.

(Do you want friendly guidance for writing your own book? Get a copy of Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

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If you write anything, someone will not like you

When former Spice Girl singer Gerry Halliwell heard that Margaret Thatcher had died, she Tweeted to the effect that Mrs T had been an advocate of Girl Power (the Spice Girls' motto).

It didn’t take long for a huge outpouring of “Oh no she wasn’t!” comments to flow in—most of them stated a lot less politely than that.

Halliwell removed her tweet and apologized. 

I’m wondering whether she took her Tweet down because she realized she’d been wrong or because she didn’t like getting negative messages from fans.

My guess is it’s the latter.

Very few people like it when somebody, much less loads of others, disagree with us or call us names. As you know, the anonymity of the internet can bring out the worst in people. Reading the comments on newspaper sites or blog posts on which anonymous comments are allowed makes you despair for the human race.

This is relevant here because when you write something—a book, a blog, an article, a short story—it will bring out the haters. With luck it’ll also bring out some people who like what you do, but they’re less likely to express themselves. Anger and frustration are stronger drivers than appreciation.

This is an aspect of writing that I’m having to get used to myself. I don’t like being disliked—and negative comments on the internet seldom make the distinction between an opinion or a creative project and the person who created it.

If you’re going to put something out into the world you’ll have to get used to it, too. 

A useful method: Think sympathetically about how much bile the person who makes these kinds of comments must have in their system for it to overflow so easily.

PS: I just spotted this article on Reuters: "Rudeness and throwing insults are cutting online friendships short, with a survey on Wednesday showing people are getting ruder on social media and two in five users have ended contact after a virtual altercation."

The article quotes Joseph Grenny, co-chairman of the company that conducted the survey: "...manners haven't caught up with technology.What is really so surprising is that so many people disapprove of this behavior but people are still doing it. Why would you name-call online but never to that person's face?"

How to solve the problem? The article says Grenny suggested "three rules that could improve conversations online were to avoid monologues, replace lazy, judgmental words, and cut personal attacks particularly when emotions were high."

 

Writers' Monday Alert: How to feel energized for your writing session

Feeling a little sluggish at the start of your writing session? An espresso or energy drink helps, but if you prefer to energize via your nose, try sniffing rosemary oil.

Researchers at Northumbria University found that rosemary oil made test subjects feel more alert and enhanced their long term memory by about 15%. Other essential oils that have a similar effect:

• Peppermint
• Basil
• Sage – one study showed an improvement of ten percent in short term memory
• Juniper Berry
• Frankincense

You can use an oil diffuser, but I just take a couple of deep whiffs from a small bottle of peppermint oil I bought at my local health food store. You can also put a few drops on your hands and smell them, or apply a drop or two to the back of your neck.

PS: Stimulants aren’t a good substitute for a good night’s sleep, but if, like me, you sometimes find it difficult to get energized even after sleeping seven or eight hours, these can help. Nothing here should be construed as medical advice; if in doubt, consult your doctor, especially if you have high blood pressure.

(Need to focus? Get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and available now from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

Why some people shouldn't self-publish

I really liked what Guy Kawasaki said recently about good reasons and not-so-good reasons to self-publish a book. He pointed to the trend for people to write non-fiction books as a means to an end—typically to get more speaking engagements, more consulting clients, etc…rather than because you have something to say.

I’m on a lot of mailing lists (note to self: cut down!) and lately there has been a glut of people offering courses in “how to write a best-seller in a weekend” and similar topics.

They don’t dedicate much attention to whether or not you’re going to add anything valuable to the discussion.

If you’ve been wondering what their secret method is, I can save you a lot of money:

1. Pick a topic.
2. Look at the tables of content of similar books to get your chapter headings.
3. Reword what you’ve read, add a dash of Wikipedia, mix at high speed.
4. Bang out your rehash.
5. Get somebody at Fiverr.com to make you a cover for five dollars.
6. Create the e-book and list it on Amazon.
7. Get as many people as possible to all order it on the same day. You may have to bribe them with something they get when they send you the Amazon receipt as proof they bought it on the right day.
8. If enough people have done number 7, achieve number one ranking in your niche or sub-niche for several hours
9. Tell everybody you’re the author of a “number one best-seller”

The more people that do that, the more cluttered things get and the harder it is to find the books that do actually have something new to say or at the very least a fresher approach to what’s been said before.

(If you do want to write a book, you'll find friendly guidance from my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite books seller.)

 

A phrase I often use in my writing workshops is, “Write what only you can write.” This trend is based on “Write what anybody could write if they have a free weekend.” I hope more people will adopt the former.

 

By the way, this kind of thing isn’t so typical in fiction, but recently I encountered a clever internet marketer who is coming up with plots for horror books and outsourcing the writing. He’s even using Fiverr, paying people five dollars to write a chapter. I’m not optimistic that this is a great way to get a well-written book, and I can’t imagine that it brings any creative satisfaction. I could be wrong…but I doubt it.

Things that make a story fail (as shown in the film "Oblivion")

One of the best ways to improve our own writing is to figure out why a novel or screenplay written by someone else works or doesn’t work.

I just saw the Tom Cruise film Oblivion which looks great but, in my opinion, doesn’t really work on the story level. What are the lessons to be learned from it (I don’t think any of these points involve serious spoilers):

• A good hero deserves a good villain. Here most of the time his opposition is deadly metallic beach ball drones. Not a lot of personality there.
  
  
• A good hero deserves a good cause. The ultimate beneficiaries of this hero’s efforts never go beyond stereotypes.
  
  
• You’re in trouble when a secondary character (in this instance, played by Morgan Freeman) makes you wish the story had been about him instead.  I was also disappointed that the character of the hero’s handler, who we see only on a TV screen but whose sweet Southern accent is enticingly menacing, doesn’t get the reveal she deserved at the end.

• You’re also in trouble if the audience doesn’t feel an emotional connection with the protagonist. In  this case, probably the three points above account at least in part for that lack. It could also be that I don’t find Tom Cruise an emotionally vulnerable enough actor for there to be much of  a connection.

• If in doubt, cut. Despite the explosions and battles, this movie drags in places, and it almost feels like two movies glued together in the middle.
  
  
• Twists are good, and this has a couple of nice ones, but it isn’t enough just to surprise people. The best twists are the ones that make us feel that we could have seen them coming (e.g., Sixth Sense).

Having said all that, I don’t think Oblivion is a bad film, just that it falls far short of what it could have been if the people concerned had spent as much time and effort on the story as they did on the special effects and the rich look of the film. 

The Amazing Kickstarter result for this writer

Ryan North set a goal of $20,000 on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter for an illustrated “select your own adventure” book, To Be or Not to Be (yes, based on Hamlet).

It took him only six days to get to over $120,000, at which point there was an article in The Guardian about it. By the end he raised…wait for it….$580,905! That’s about £381,000. 

Why was it so successful?

1)   He is already well known for his work on Dinosaur Comics, the Adventure Time comic series, and for co-editing the best-selling short story anthology, Machine of Death.

2)   He recruited a stellar line-up of illustrators, each of whom has their own followers, to do the pictures.

3) The article in a national newspaper couldn't have hurt

4)   People liked the project.

Of course there are many projects that don’t reach their goal in the time the creators set for raising the money, in which case no money is turned over to the artist or writer at all.

For instance at the time of this writing Momma Love: How the Mother Half Lives, a proposed hardcover book with “portraits and 40 mothers’ moving personal stories (that) provide an honest look at the highs and lows of the motherhood experience”, has raised only 66% of its desired $35,000 goal with six days to go.

The Barefoot Diaries, by Verity and Stu McLellan, described as “A journal of roots, rhythm, reverence and relationship", still has 19 days to go but has raised only $37 (1% of the goal) so I’d say things are not looking good.

Even though it really helps to arrive with a following, there are writers who worked very hard to push their Kickstarter project and reached their goal.

What about you? Any projects kicking around that you might like to try to finance this way?

(If you want to discover 100 creative, low-cost ways that people have used to market themselves or their product--and that you can adapt for your marketing--see my book Do Something Different. It's published by Virgin Books and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)