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Why You Need to Write Your Memoir

A story.

In 1943, when my grandmother, Margarita, was 34, she was living in Bandung, Indonesia with her husband, 12-year-old daughter, and newborn son. At the time, Indonesia was a Dutch colony, but the Indonesian government agreed to let the Japanese army use their islands as a base if they would get rid of the colonizers. So the Japanese rounded up all the Dutch women and put them into internment camps; they put all the Dutch men into work camps.

Margarita’s husband, Wilhelmus, was placed into one of the men’s camps where they were put to work building infrastructure for the Japanese. Do you know the movie, “The Bridge On The River Kwai“? According to family history, Wilhelmus was one of the prisoners forced to build that.

My grandmother, Margarita Blankevoort Binning. I wish I could have written her memoir.
One night, Japanese soldiers showed up to take my grandmother into the women’s camp. In a panic, she grabbed a set of coffee spoons, two left shoes, and a bassinet holding her 3-week-old son.

There were 108,000 Dutch women and children put into internment camps on Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and Timor. My grandmother was one of them; fortunately, her newborn son — my father — was not.

She was taken to a way station camp, a clearinghouse, where she would be sorted and sent to a different camp in the area.

Internees were held in more than 350 camps across the Far East. In the internment camps conditions were severe. Food and clothing were generally in short supply and facilities were basic. Conditions varied according to the location of the camps. Those on mainland China fared relatively well, but conditions in the Netherlands East Indies were among the worst and casualties from disease and malnutrition were high.

— A Short History Of Civilian Internment Camps In The Far East

She had been there for two days when she stopped producing the milk her son needed, which meant he had nothing to eat. She told me once, “He never cried. He just opened his mouth to try to nurse, but there was nothing for him.”

So Margarita went to the camp commander and said, “You need to send my son away. There’s nothing for him to eat.”

“Where do you want me to send him?” the commander asked.

“I don’t care,” said Margarita. “He’ll die if he stays here. Please send him away and save his life. At least if he’s not here, he can survive.” She decided she would rather give up her son so he could live than to keep him with her until he died.

That night, more soldiers showed up at the house where her daughter was staying and said, “Come with us.” No explanation, no details. Just, “come with us.”

Her daughter, who was also named Margarita, had a German father, so she had not been taken into the camp with her mother. Instead, she was living with a German woman. And since Japan and Germany were allies, the Japanese soldiers left German citizens alone.

The soldiers escorted young Margarita to the camp, where she was taken to a fence where my grandmother met her. They didn’t speak, neither of them said a word. She just handed her 3-week-old baby over the fence to her daughter and then turned and walked away, still never saying a word. She spent the night shattered and sobbing, refusing to forgive herself for what she had done, frantic about what would become of her son.

Two years later, when the camps were liberated, she was reunited with her two children and her husband, and they left Indonesia and returned to the Netherlands. She later moved to the United States, and my father was 9 years old when he moved to the U.S.

My grandmother, Margarita Blankevoort, at age 36.
My grandmother told me that story, and several others, as I was growing up.

Stories about how thieves blew sleeping powder under the door of their house and then stole all of their furniture in the night. Stories about how Indonesian militia massacred a convoy of Dutch women and children on their way to a Dutch harbor. How she and her children were supposed to be in that convoy, but couldn’t make it, so they went a day later.

She told me stories about growing up in Chile, her life in The Netherlands, her life in Indonesia, and her time in the United States as a young mother.

She’s gone now, passed away at 101, so I can’t ask her questions or learn more of her stories. It’s something I wish I could have spent more time doing, learning stories I could pass on to my kids and grandkids. They never met her, and now they’ll never know her stories.

I can tell them the stories that I know. I could even write them down, but they would be vague generalities and broad sweeps culled from memories of half-heard tales, not rich details.

We have forgotten our great-grandparents. Our great-grandchildren will forget us.

What are your stories? What are the cool, dramatic, exciting, or emotional things that happened to you in your past? What are the life lessons you want to pass on to your kids and grandkids? Would you like your great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren to know who you are?

We have forgotten the fourth generation before us. Many of us — nearly all of us — have never met our great-grandparents. I’ll bet you don’t even know their names.

And our great-grandchildren will never know us. They won’t know our names, what we did, what lessons we taught our own kids. Any stories they hear about us will be mostly forgotten, half-heard, and lacking the rich detail of the original storyteller.

This is why writing your memoir is critical to preserving your life story and leaving a legacy for the people who come after you.

A memoir is more than just your autobiography. More than “This is my life and what happened to me.”

A memoir is your story of “these are the lessons I learned in my life.”

You can pass your memoir on to your family and friends so they know what you stood for and what you accomplished in your life. They’ll know your history, both good and bad, and they’ll remember you for generations to come.

I’m now working on a book about how to write your own memoir, so if you’re interested in hearing more about it, leave a comment or email me, and I’ll let you know when it’s finished.

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Stop Leaning on These Five Copywriting Crutches

Even the best copywriters use clichés and rely on copywriting crutches. It’s inevitable, but it’s preventable. We’re trying to spit out a lot of copy on tight deadlines, and while our fingers may work faster than our brains, our brains will pop out any old stuff just to keep our fingers moving.

And that’s how clichés appear in our work. We don’t mean to do it, it just sort of happens.

But if you keep a few of the worst offenders in mind as you’re working, you may catch them just as they spill out onto your keyboard. And if you missed them the first time around, you’ll catch them on the edits.

Here are the five copywriting crutches and clichés we need to avoid.

1. Let’s face it

There’s nothing wrong with this, per se.

It fits where it’s used, no one is using it incorrectly, and it conveys a feeling of resigned acceptance of the problem at hand.

But it’s just so overused that it has been rendered completely useless. It’s like the Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes,” which got played over and over and over and over and over to the point that I hate it so much, I will drive my car off a bridge to escape it.

“Let’s face it” is the “Two Princes” of writing. It should be struck from your lexicon, burned to ashes, which you then jump up and down on, before putting them in a lead-lined box and dropping it into the Mariana Trench.

(I really hate this phrase almost as much as I hate “Two Princes.”)

Just pick something else. Anything else. In point of fact. In truth. You gotta admit. What are we even doing here?

In truth, it makes you sound like you’re not trying very hard. Pick something better.

Needs

Probably the most overused word in all copywriting.

You gotta admit — see what I did there? — it’s a versatile word. It’s both a verb and a noun. We have needs. We need things.

Except saying “needs” is like saying “stuff” or things.”

Every customer needs something or wants something. Or they desire it. Wish for it. Demand it. Prefer it. Delight in it. Obsesses over it. Yearns. Craves. Hungers.

There are so many different options available, but the best we can come up with is “needs?”

What you need is a thesaurus. (Let me recommend OneLook.com.)

Being “passionate about” something

How many LinkedIn profiles have you seen where someone is “passionate about” web analytics? Or email marketing? Or tax law? Or artificial intelligence? I saw a job posting that required applicants to “be passionate about short-form copy.”

Seriously? You’re passionate about that? Your passionate about gazing deeply into the limpid pools of Google Analytics reports? I should yearn for the delicate touch of a 280-character tweet?

This thing smolders within your heart like burning coals? You can’t stop thinking about email marketing and it consumes your every waking moment? Whenever the wind blows, you hear its name in the trees — Tax law! Tax law! — and feel its caress on your face, like the touch of a lover?

Either you’re the most boring person on Earth, or you’re overinflating your dedication to this particular job function.

You should be passionate about your family or your partner. You should be passionate about a sports team or an art form. You should be passionate about something so much that you dress up in funny clothes and scream like a maniac whenever you get to do it. That’s passion. Do you do that when you get to send out an email newsletter?

(If you do, please share a video of that.)

If you feel that way about email marketing, or whatever, more power to you. It takes all types to make the world go ’round. But I tend to just roll my eyes and assume you’re exaggerating.

Making history/is historic

Things do not make history. Events are not historic, especially if that event hasn’t happened yet.

Whose history? Who decided it was historic? There were two Black quarterbacks in the Super Bowl this year. So many sportswriters relied on the clichéd crutch of calling it historic, but it wasn’t.

Was it notable? Absolutely. Was it important? You bet. Was it long overdue and a wrong that should have been righted years ago, ever since Doug Williams became the first Black QB and the first Black Super Bowl MVP in 1988? You’d better believe it.

But was it a thing that historians are going to be writing books about and discussing at length in 100 years? No. That’s the historic stuff.

What’s the difference between HISTORIC and HISTORICAL?

A quick note on the difference between these two terms. Historic refers to things that are important that everyone should be aware of: the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War, the first Black president.

Historical is anything that’s from a prior period in time. A book published in 1776, a letter from a Union soldier, the first football game between Harvard and Yale.

While we’re on the subject, please GOD stop saying “an historic.” It’s not AN historic, it’s A historic. Sure, I know you heard the news people say it, but they’re bandwagon-jumping idiots who try to sound sophisticated and miss the mark. There’s absolutely no reason ever that you should say “an historic,” unless it’s to mock someone else who does it.

We use “an” before any word that starts with a vowel sound, and “a” before any word that starts with a consonant sound.

  • An umbrella, an MBA, an hour.
  • A unicorn, a university, a European.

Historic — unless you’re from Boston or are a 19th-century chimney sweep — is pronounced with the H sound very much intact.

Using adverbs and adjectives for EVERYTHING

There’s a very good chance you’ve sung the praises of a colleague, collaborator, or frenemy and you do so in the most glowing terms possible.

“I had an amazing, mind-blowing lunch at this delightfully cozy little bistro with my wonderful, delightful, mind-bogglingly creative friend, Churlington Beescoat.”

We gush, extol, glorify, and heap exaltations on our dear friend, Churlington, and we can’t say enough nice things about him because he is simply the Best Person Ever.

At least until next week, when we have lunch with our dear friend, Powderkeg Malone.

There’s a reason we don’t use a lot of adverbs and adjectives in writing. They’re a tool that new writers overuse, but they keep us from writing our best work. (Adverbs do, not new writers.)

If you have to describe a verb, then you’re using the wrong verb. Too many young writers try to wring out as much emotion as possible to tell you that their goldfish’s death made them cry really, really, really terribly loudly.

That’s not very sad at all. Maybe if you added another “really?”

What’s wrong with adjectives though?

They’re less problematic than adverbs, but there are times when you need to describe a noun. However, that’s not always necessary.

“A nutritious lunch” tells us what kind of lunch it is, but it’s not very interesting. “A lunch that would make my nutritionist nod in quiet approval” paints a more vivid picture. We get the sense that the lunch is sensible, solid, and even a little boring.

Instead of using adverbs and adjectives, come up with better verbs and nouns. You’re writers, for God’s sake! Expand your vocabulary. Come up with new words or use old words in new ways. (Just no business jargon, please.)

Recently, I saw Garrison Keillor talk about “purpling one’s thumb with a hammer,” and I thought that was the very best way to describe whacking your thumb with a hammer, because the word not only contains the action, but the result. You didn’t just hit your thumb, you hit it so hard that it bruised and bled underneath the nail. But those previous 12 words are contained within the single word “purpling.”

As content marketers, we need to use powerful language like that. We want to write powerful, persuasive copy that causes people to reach for their credit cards and purchase orders. And they don’t do that for really amazing, terrific, stupendous products.

As a writer, no matter what you write, you need to focus on the mechanics of your writing. Your word choice, your sentence structure, and your tone are just as important as your story, your narrative, and your characters. Maybe more so.

So avoid these copywriting crutches. Find a new way to say things and to be more interesting.

Let’s face it, your writing is going to flop otherwise.

Photo credit: Stocksnap (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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How to Find Your Client’s Voice as a Writer

If you’re a ghostwriter or freelance writer, it can be difficult to find your client’s voice. It’s not as important if you’re only doing a small one-off project like an email, but it’s critical if you’re ghostwriting a book, a speech, or a series of blog articles for a corporation.

Here are a few ways you can find your client’s voice, and one secret to finding it when the client doesn’t even know what their voice should be.

1. Listen to how they talk

You should not — absolutely never — just start writing without talking to your client. You’ll want to do a discovery call at least, to find out what the client wants and to identify your scope of work.

More importantly, you want to talk with the person whose name is going to go on the work. That means if you’re writing for a CEO, make sure you talk with the CEO. Not their staff, not their go-betweens. Your client may have a certain turn of phrase or favorite word they use, and you want to know what they are; the go-betweens will not.

Several years ago, I helped the CEO of a Fortune 500 insurance company ghostwrite his book on CEOs and social media. We met in his (gorgeous!) office to talk about the project, and he said a few words and phrases that I came to learn were his way of talking. He used, not bigger words per se, but unusual words — like “per se.”

I wrote those in my handy-dandy Moleskine notebook to refer to later. They actually never came up again, but it helped me understand that he chose his words carefully and had a particular speech pattern, so I needed to remember to follow it when I turned his words into text. We also spoke by phone every two weeks, so I was exposed to his speaking style more and more.

Also, he and his social media director noticed my note-taking and commented on it. They said they felt good about their choice because I was clearly conscientious. I had never thought of it that way, but who am I to turn down accidental recognition?

So, always take note of the little speech patterns your client has. Whether they know it or not, they have them and will feel good that you recognized it.

Plus, even if you never refer to it again, it makes you look like you know what you’re doing.

2. Read your client’s past work

This is what they think they sound like. It may be conversational, or it may be instructional. It may be light and airy or it may be serious and business-like. It may have a lot of second-person references — “what would you do?” — or it may be cold and impersonal — “Apply the lotion liberally to one’s epidermis and return it to the basket.”

Make sure you read a lot of your client’s work, because their regular ghostwriters may have changed over time. Or they use a lot of different writers all at once, which may allow for a little more flexibility. Still, all those writers may have a similar voice as well, so follow the crowd.

3. Ask them what they think their voice is

Make sure you can match up what they think their voice is and what you’ve read and heard. Maybe they say they want to be friendly and approachable, but their past work reads like it was written by a child-hating robot.

Or they want to have a tone and voice that conveys seriousness and stability, but they can’t stop sounding conversational.

Ultimately, what they tell you what they want is what you should strive for, but you should also feel confident enough to point out the inconsistency. Just say, “I understand you want X, but your past work sounds more like Y. Are you changing from your past voice?”

If they don’t agree with your assessment and they think their written work sounds like their desired voice, and that you don’t know what you’re talking about, do two things:

1) Try to match their past work rather than what they tell you. They think the past work sounds like their desired voice, so they’re looking for that. Let them tell you otherwise.
2) Make sure you get paid upfront.

4. The secret to finding a client’s voice when they don’t know what it is

What do you do when your client doesn’t have a voice, or when they’re not really good?

Years ago, I was an aspiring speechwriter and was asked to write a speech for a candidate for the U.S. Congress in my home district.

The candidate was running unopposed in our party’s primary because no one wanted to run against the opposition incumbent as he always won. Still, she needed the backing of all our party’s county chairmen, 12 in all, and she was in danger of not getting it.

She had given a speech at a district dinner that was a 45-minute vomit of anything she could think of; she was supposed to speak for 10 minutes on healthcare.

I got a call from my own county chair telling me that this woman needed major help, and could I help her with her speech? If she blew it again, the party wasn’t going to back her at all. They would rather run nobody that year than endorse her. So my speech was going to make or break her candidacy.

No pressure.

I called the candidate and we chatted on the phone for nearly an hour. She was really nice and fun to talk to, and she told me about her views. I took notes, but she rambled and I wasn’t sure what she actually wanted to cover or how she was supposed to say it. She didn’t have a voice in particular unless it was just one long, rambling sentence.

But I knew about this trick, and I thought I’d better use it.

I knew her speech had to be under 10 minutes, which equaled 1,000 words. That’s because the average person speaks between 100 – 150 words per minute. And she spoke a little fast, but I wanted to make sure she didn’t go over. So, 100 words x 10 minutes = 1,000 words.

I hit the three major points she wanted to hit, and stuck only to the important information without all the little tangents and tidbits she had shared during our call.

And, most importantly — and this is the big secret! — I wrote in short, punchy sentences, like a newspaper writer. Why? Because we all like to think we speak that way, at least when giving speeches. We all like to think we give speeches that are easy to hear, easy to read, and use lofty, soaring language about big ideas.

So I wrote short, punchy sentences about the big ideas.

When the dinner came, she gave the speech, and everyone loved her. Best speech of the night, very inspiring, blah blah blah, and the county chairmen all agreed unanimously to support her candidacy for the Congressional race.

(Narrator: She got 33% of the vote, just like every other candidate had ever done in that district.)

After she got home, she called me and gushed about the speech. “It was great. Everyone loved it, and you captured my voice perfectly!”

Well, no, I captured my voice perfectly. That was already my writing style, so I just wrote to my strength. It just happened to be the style that most people prefer to speak in.

I didn’t tell her this, of course, because that would be dumb.

Instead, I wrote several more speeches for her throughout her campaign, all using the same short, punchy style. And she rocked it. People loved her speeches and she was able to make her points without confusion or droning on.

All because I wrote in “her” voice.

Final thoughts

When writing for a client, you absolutely need to do everything you can to find their voice. Record them talking, have conversations with them, take notes in a notebook, and read their past works.

But if all else fails, write short, punchy sentences in the same way a newspaper writer would do it. If you don’t know what that sounds like, read Ernest Hemingway’s Big, Two-Hearted River.

It’s a short story, about 7,00 words, written at a 3.4-grade reading level, and has 17 adverbs in it. It’s my favorite Hemingway story and one that I model my own writing style after.

Write in that manner because it’s what people think they sound like when they give speeches. And it’s the way they think they write.

If you can capture your client’s voice, they’ll be happy, and they’ll keep you coming back for more.

And if they piss you off, just make them sound like a drunk pirate instead.

Photo credit: Caleb Oquendo (Pexels, Creative Commons 0)

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Book Authors, Your Publisher Will Not Handle Your Book Publicity for You. Only You Will.

A few days ago, I spoke with two different people who were ready to publish their very first book. They wanted to know how to find a publisher that would handle their book publicity for them.

“Oh, your publisher won’t promote your book for you,” I said.

“Really? I thought the publisher handled all of that!”

“No, not at all. Unless your last name is Grisham or Patterson, your publisher won’t do shit for you.*”

* (Technically, that’s not true. Your publisher handles all editing, page layout, and cover design. You pay for that if you self-publish.)

It’s inescapable: When you write a book, you need to do your own promotion, or you need to hire someone to do it for you. Your publisher won’t do it, your agent won’t do it, your friends won’t do it. (Hell, they’ll barely buy your book!)

And people will not flock to your book just because you wrote it.

Your book may be great, but no one will care.

That’s because there are close to 1 million books published in the US each year. And if you count self-published books, that number is closer to 4 million.

Also, if you do manage to find a publisher, there’s only a 1% chance that your book will reach a bookstore.

Out of the 1 million books published this year, only 10,000 will make it to a bookstore. (My last edition of Branding Yourself was not placed in Barnes & Noble, even though they carried the last two editions plus my other book, No Bullshit Social Media. My publisher said Barnes & Noble just wasn’t a viable partner for them anymore. One of the biggest biz-tech publishers in the country, and they no longer worked with Barnes & Noble.)

So, your book is not going to magically sell just because you wrote it. If it did, we’d all be rich.

Which means you need promotion and publicity.

But your publisher is publishing dozens, if not a few hundred, books per year. Do you think they have the time to devote to your book and ignore all the others?

Absolutely not. If your publisher can put any weight behind the promotional efforts, it will be a few hours of sending a generic press release to all the same media outlets, blogs, and podcasters they send all other book announcements to. And then it’s on to the next book. And the next one. And the next one. And soon, your book is forgotten along with all the others they just promoted.

In fact, when you submit your book proposal or manuscript to a publisher, they’ll want to know the size of your social media footprint and newsletter subscription list. And if it’s not “a lot,” then they won’t publish you. It doesn’t matter if your book is the second coming of Confederacy of Dunces, they will give you a hard pass.

Which means you’re on your own.

Which means — and I cannot stress this enough — you need to do your own book publicity.

Let me say that again but in a bigger font.

You need to do your own book publicity!

If you don’t do it yourself, your book will not get promoted.

Oh sure, you could pay someone to do it, but you won’t get good publicity for less than a few thousand dollars per month.

It’s a question of time versus money: If you don’t have the time, then you need to pay someone to do it. If you don’t have the money, then you need to do it yourself.

Without explaining how to do it all (because there are several good books on the subject (affiliate link)), your publicity efforts should include:

  • An email newsletter campaign.
  • A social media campaign (Twitter and/or Facebook, plus maybe TikTok).
  • A book reviewer/blogger campaign.
  • A podcast interview campaign.
  • A paid online advertising campaign.
  • An email-your-friends campaign. (Email each of them, one at a time, ask them to buy.)
  • A convention/conference campaign.

You don’t have to do all of these things, but you need at least two of them — the first two — because they’re the easiest, they can be automated and scheduled, and they’re free. (Sign up for Mailchimp or Moosend; they have free starter options.)

I don’t care if you hate social media. I don’t care if you don’t know how to do an email newsletter. I don’t care if you hate having to email 200 book bloggers one at a time.

You have to do it. You have to do it. You have to do it.

Because your book won’t sell otherwise. Period, end of sentence.

Otherwise, your book will be the greatest thing you’ve ever done that no one will ever know it. You’ll sell it to a few friends and family members, and your partner will secretly buy three copies and give them to friends. But it will be just a tiny drop in 4-Million-Books-Published-Each-Year Ocean.

So let me say it again, but in red: You need to do your own book publicity!

“But I don’t like social—”

I don’t care. Get over yourself.

“But I don’t know how—”

I don’t care. Figure it out.

“But I don’t have the ti—”

I don’t care. Make the time.

“But I—”

Knock, knock.

“Who’s there?”

I don’t care. Do you know who else doesn’t care?

Everyone!

You need to do book publicity to make them care. You need to promote your book until you’re sick of it. And then you need to promote it some more. And when you think everyone else is sick of it, promote it some more.

Bottom line: You’re going to spend 90% of your time writing your book. And you’re going to spend the other 90% promoting it.

Because if you don’t do it, no one else will. No one will care as much as you. No one is invested as much as you.

You can either pay someone to do it, and they won’t spend as much time on it as you want.

Or you can suck it up and do it yourself.

Because your publisher will not promote your book for you.

Final note

All of this is not to discourage you into giving up or not seeking publication. You absolutely should. Submit to agents and publishers and get your book out into the world. You deserve to be published! People should read your work. Just be aware that your work is not done once you write The End. It’s only beginning.

Photo credit: Dimhou (Pixabay, Creative Commons 0)

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Questions About Personal Branding for the Writing Workshop of Chicago

A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Writing Workshop of Chicago about personal branding secrets for authors. We had a great question-and-answer period at the end, but we ran out of time before we ran out of questions.

So the organizer and fellow humor writer, Brian Klems, forwarded the questions to me and I decided to answer them in a blog post. This way, he can refer all the attendees to this page and there’s a permanent location for the questions. But more importantly, I’ll get a bump in web traffic.

First, Yvonne asked, “Are Facebook author pages useful?”

Yes, they are, for a couple of reasons. One, a lot of your readers are on Facebook and it’s easy to point them to that page. Second, it gives you more privacy because you don’t have to be Facebook friends with your readers. You don’t necessarily want them to see your personal stuff, so an author’s page is a great way to do that.

However, keep in mind that Facebook limits the reach of its pages in the hopes that you’ll pay to boost your different posts. Depending on what you write, you might be better off creating a group about your books or topic. Groups updates are not throttled the way a page’s updates are, plus you can encourage more discussion among your readers.

But don’t let the Facebook page/group be your main hub of activity. Try to have a writer’s blog/website as your central hub and treat Facebook and other networks as the spokes.

Maria asked, “I’d always heard you should not post the same things on your various social media channels, so you give people an incentive to follow you in different areas. Your thoughts?”

That’s mostly true. One thing to keep in mind is that people will not see all your social messages. That is, my readers don’t see what I post on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at the same time. People have their preferred social networks and probably won’t go to the others just to find you.

Having said that, you can take advantage of each network’s format to post your best message. You get 280 characters on Twitter, but you get 2,200 on Instagram. You may want to cram several #hashtags into a tweet, but stick them in the first comment on Instagram.

If you want to do simple things like sharing Instagram photos to Twitter and Facebook, you can automate that with Zapier or If This Then That. You can set it up so when you post a photo to Instagram, it will automatically be shared to Twitter and Facebook. That’s a real time saver. But if you want to have separate and distinct messages, you can either do it one at a time, or you can use a service like Loomly to post from a single dashboard. You can also use HootSuite, but it costs nearly $50 per month, compared to Loomly’s $26 per month. Which makes me think doing it one network at a time is ideal for most writers.

David wanted to know, “How important in LinkedIn for authors?”

That depends. It’s critical for business/non-fiction authors, not so much for fiction writers. You can find readers on LinkedIn, even if you’re a scifi/romance/mystery writer, but it’s going to be difficult to find them since most people go there looking for work-related content.

If you only have a limited amount of time and energy to focus on one or two social networks, stick with the ones that are going to do you the most good. LinkedIn won’t be that unless you’re writing business-related books.

Howard wondered, “What do you think about #BookTok on TikTok?”

Honestly, I haven’t watched it enough to have a strong opinion about it, but I will say that anyone who’s talking about books is doing important work, and they’re finding thousands of fans.

There are several channels/creators who have gotten very popular on TikTok talking about writing and books. So if you want to join their ranks, go for it. TikTok has become an important platform for a lot of people, mostly Gen Z, so you should take advantage of that.

Clare asked, “How does your intended audience shape how you brand yourself? For example, I write middle grade fantasy.”

That’s a great question, Clare, and almost worth its own blog article, if not an entire book!

Remember, a brand is an emotional response people have to our face and our name. (Or if you’re a company, the emotional response to your name and logo.) When you think about brands like McDonald’s, Nike, BP, or the Chicago Cubs, people have an emotional response to them. They love them or hate them.

So the emotional responses our readers have become our brand. We can shape and hone that brand ourselves, but ultimately, we’re not responsible for how people perceive us. We can do all sorts of great work and people’s emotional response can be “Yay!” “Ugh!” or “Meh.”

Having said all that, you should treat your personal brand almost like a persona or a character you play. That’s not to say you should lie about who you are. Rather, your personal branding efforts should match what your readers and fans expect of you.

If you’re a middle-grade fantasy writer, the kinds of things you share on social media should be about middle-grade fantasy subjects: swords, dragons, wizards, etc. It’s not really the place to write at length about the supply chain crisis or your thoughts on the January 6 hearings. You can do that elsewhere, but not on your author profiles because it doesn’t match what your readers want.

On the other hand, if you’re a political/current events writer, you don’t necessarily want to share your cosplay photos from Dragon Con.

So, in that sense, your audience shapes your personal branding efforts because you should give them what they want.

Cindi wanted to know, “Do you use some of the new social media platforms, Locals, Rumble, Spotify, and Truth Social?”

Not really. For one thing, there are thousands of social networks these days, compared to the few dozen there were when I first started doing all this in 2007. So I can’t even keep up if I wanted to.

Having said that, I’m not against using a new social network, and I’ve joined a few but I never stick with them. However, I’m always on the lookout for new alternatives to the ones I use now. Is there a new Twitter alternative? Where should I go if Facebook collapses? Is there something better than LinkedIn?

Ultimately, if I can find a network that looks like it won’t fail, doesn’t depend on rocket-like growth just to survive, and lets me quickly and easily post updates (this is one reason I haven’t gotten into TikTok yet), I’ll use it.

And finally, Mandy put a smile on my face when she said, “@erik awesome stuff (no question) :-)”

Thank you, Mandy! I appreciate it. I always have a great time speaking to the Writing Workshop classes.

If you have any other personal branding questions, just drop them in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them. Thank you to everyone who came to the event, and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Taken from “10 Personal Branding Secrets for Authors” by Erik Deckers”

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Marketers, Put Analogies, Similes, and Metaphors to Work for You

What’s the difference between metaphors, similes, and analogies? Not a lot, unless you’re a word nerd like me.

Short answer: Metaphors describe an idea; similes do the same, but use “like” or “as.” Analogies are that mystery comparison that we all pretend to know what it means, but we really think it’s a simile.

Ann Handley recently wrote in her Total Annarchy newsletter about the importance of analogies.

In Marketing, analogies pack a lot in a tiny overhead bin space.

They can help us explain convoluted ideas or applications more simply. They can help our audiences understand what we do or what we sell.

And (important!) analogies can help us be more memorable.

When it comes to writing, there are three types of analogies we can use. And they’re so similar, they’re easy to get confused. Hell, I wrote this article, and I’m still not entirely clear on what they mean!

Metaphors:

A metaphor compares two things, one to the other, but doesn’t use the words “like” or “as.” They’re more powerful and almost make a strong commitment to the comparison.

As George Savile once said, “Men’s words are bullets that their enemies take up and make use of against them.”

Or William Shakespeare in As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”

Did you see it? Men’s words are bullets. They’re not like bullets, they ARE bullets. And all the men and women (are) merely players. Not like, are.

Metaphors tend to be more poetic and you can create greater imagery with them.

They’re also morally superior to similes. (More on that in a minute.)

Similes:

The weasel word of the comparison game! I’m not a fan of similes because they are weaker than metaphors. The big difference between a simile and a metaphor is the words “like” or “as.”

“Life is like a box of chocolates,” Forrest Gump famously said. He didn’t want to commit to the image, so he said it’s only like a box of chocolates.

Weasel!

Similes compare two unlike items in order to create meaning at a deeper level. “My love is like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June,” said Robert Burns.

If I were Mrs. Burns (Jean Armour), I’d be worried about that relationship: He can’t commit to a metaphor, but he’s going to commit to you?

(Burns was also a noted philanderer, so this should have been a clue to Armour.)

Other similes include “as blind as a bat,” “as clumsy as an ox,” and “like watching paint dry.”

Analogies:

Part metaphor, part simile, all argument. That is, an analogy is a type of argument or explanation that compares two items but in relation to each other as a way to explain one of the items.

“Our latest company reorganization is about as useful as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” or “Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.” (E.B. White)

But They All Look the Same.

Of course, when you really look at it, it’s hard to make a distinction between analogies and similes. Are similes the shorter aphorisms? “As blind as a bat” and “clumsy as an ox?” And are phrases like “Watching the play was like watching paint dry” analogies because they’re longer?

As I was researching this piece, I found article after article that mixed up the use of these three terms. But I found one explanation that seemed to explain the difference. As Robert Lee Brewer, senior editor of Writer’s Digest, said,

A metaphor is something, a simile is like something, and an analogy explains how one thing being like another helps explain them both.

See? Clear as mud.

Basically, the three terms can be used almost interchangeably and you could argue for days about whether “Life is like a box of chocolates” is a simile or an analogy.

<One of my favorite albums of all time is Tom Waits’ Nighthawks At The Diner, and I especially love the song, “Putnam County”. In it, Waits says the following verse.

And the impending squint of first light
And it lurked behind a weepin’ marquee in downtown Putnam
Yeah, and it’d be pullin’ up any minute now
Just like a bastard amber Velveeta yellow cab on a rainy corner
And be blowin’ its horn in every window in town

There, Waits uses a combination of metaphors and similes as a way to describe the morning sunlight banging on your windows after a hard night’s drinking. And you can see how he uses the devices for a most-powerful effect.

Regardless, the easy thing to remember is that similes (and analogies) use “like” or “as” and metaphors do not.

That makes metaphors more powerful and morally superior, but we’ll argue about that later.

Photo credit: CarbonNYC (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons 2.0)