writing skills

July 23, 2012 By Erik Deckers

Another Blog Writing Secret: Write Like You Speak

I’ve talked in the past about different blog writing secrets — write list posts, write an email to your mom — but I’ve thought of one more secret you can try:

Write how you speak.

Imagine you have to present the content of your post to a small group. How would you say it? Hopefully you won’t be stiff and overly formal. Hopefully you won’t try for the lofty language of a presidential inauguration speech. Imagine presenting the material in a casual, laid back manner, and how it would sound.

Then write that almost as a script.

If it helps, close your eyes and visualize yourself giving that talk. Think of the vocal inflections, the pauses, the emphasis, the important points, and the stuff you would gloss over.

If you can write it this informally, as if you were giving a 5 – 10 minute talk, you can come up with 200 – 300 words for a blog post.

As you write it, try to hear yourself speaking the words. If it helps, read it out loud with the same inflection and delivery as if you were actually giving the talk. You’ll near the places where you take a breath, you’ll hear the words you want to emphasize, and you’ll even hear the paragraph breaks.

And since a lot of people tend to read things as if they hear a narrator in their head, your post will seem conversational in tone, and as if it were being delivered in person. That makes it easy to digest and enjoyable to read.

July 9, 2012 By Erik Deckers

3 Ways to Write a 30 Minute Blog Post

Want to write a 30 minute blog post, but you’re not a writer? Do you struggle with getting anything written in under an hour? I once knew a PR professional who couldn’t write a press release in less than three hours, yet I wrote the same release in 20 minutes.

Why?

Because most of this stuff, like it or not, is formulaic. Formula doesn’t mean boring or lacking quality. But it does mean following a few of the same steps over and over and over. The end result doesn’t have to be formulaic, but the process does. And if you can get the process down, you can write a blog post in 30 minutes or less.

Here are three ways you can write a 30 minute blog post.

1. Write When You’re Not Writing

Good writers write all the time, but they don’t necessarily do it with a pen in their hand or a laptop under their fingers. You can do write while you’re driving, showering, standing, sitting, commuting, cleaning the house, cooking, or staring out the window. In fact, staring out the window is a great way to write.

This kid is off to a great start as a writer.

The Lance Mannion blog (which is the macho-est dude’s name since Dirk Facepunch) had a great description of what writing is.

“Standing, that’s working. Sitting is working. Pacing is writing. I do my best thinking then. Looking out the window, that’s writing. Brushing your teeth is writing. Anything’s writing,” Rob says. “The hardest writing is showering.”

Just turn off your radio or TV and start writing your next post in your head. I wrote this post while I was driving to lunch today.

2. The List Post

Bloggers everywhere are rolling their eyes at this, but tough shit. List posts are awesome. List posts are easy. And whether you like them or not, list posts bring in readers. (You’re here, aren’t you?)

Chances are, everything you want to say about a particular topic can be summed up in a few key points. After all, we’ve been taught to write and speak with three main points. And we’ve been trained to skim and read in bullet points by USA Today and many magazines (check out Cosmo the next time you’re in the supermarket checkout line). Like I always tell people, “I’ll quit doing list articles the week after Cosmo does.”

So break your post into 3, 5, or even 10 reasons/secrets/tips/tricks. Write them in outline form, and then give a brief explanation of each point, and move on. Later, develop each point into its own blog post and explore the idea more thoroughly.

3. Write an Email to Your Mom

First of all, you have to stop writing for posterity. You have to stop writing as if your blog posts will be pored over in 100 years by scholars as evidence of your great thinking. You have to stop writing as if you’re going to say something profoundly awesome that will change the face of your industry.

(This is also true of people who buy new notebooks, write two pages in them, and then abandon them.)

Instead, write an email to your mom.

We all love our mom, but she never quite gets what we do. She sort of does, especially if you explain it in simple terms without all the jargon and insider knowledge.

So start your blog post with these 10 words: Dear Mom, Let me tell you what I learned today.

Then, explain what you want her to know in language she’ll understand. It’s even better if you can explain why it’s so cool, too. And keep it short — 300 – 350 words — she doesn’t want to be mired in the details. Save that for a future email.

Then, go back and delete that 10 word opening. You’ve got your blog post.

So, there you have it. Three ways you can write a blog post in 30 minutes or less. As long as you keep it short and simple, and use basic language, you should be able to get it done.

Photo credit: avlxyz (Flickr, Creative Commons)

January 14, 2011 By Erik Deckers

Random Thoughts on Writing a Book

I’ve finished my second book, Branding Yourself, with my good friend, Kyle Lacy, and am working on a third book on networking with Jeremy Dearringer, CEO of Slingshot SEO, an SEO company here in Indianapolis. I also have a couple other writing projects in the works, although those are still under wraps. I hope to have some news about those by Springtime.

But I’ve learned a few things about becoming a book author, things that I thought were easy, and things that I learned are hard.

In all my years, this is the 5th most beautiful sight I have ever seen.

Writing a book isn’t really that hard, if you write on a regular basis. I used to think the advice “write every day” was stupid. “Who has time for that?” I thought. “I have work to do.” Turns out the work I was doing was writing anyway, and when I decided to write intentionally — to focus on new aspects of writing and become better at them — my writing improved.
Have a good editor. I learned a long time ago that while I’m a stickler about grammar and punctuation, I make a crapload of mistakes. Even though I catch them on second and third edits, I still usually find one or two that has to be fixed. Pearson just sent Kyle and me the “gathers” of the book. Individual chapters that we need to read over and mark any errors before the second printing. Believe it or not, with two writers and four editors, I found a couple errors. (What’s worse, they were mine!)
The hard part isn’t writing the book, it’s marketing it. In order to support the book, and sell copies, I’m starting to travel more to promote it during talks. Next week, I’ll be in Northern Indiana one night and Lexington, Kentucky the next day. I’m trying to do some paid speaking gigs, but am thinking about adopting Scott Stratten’s idea when he was promoting UnMarketing (affiliate link). Scott made an offer to any group: buy 100 of my books, and I’ll travel out to you. I’m thinking about doing that for anyone who buys 50 of my books, as long as you’re within driving distance. But compare that to writing. I could write at home, spend three hours, and knock out about 6,000 words, or almost an entire chapter. It’ll take me that long to drive to most of my speaking gigs.
Know your subject matter. Writing teachers love to say “write what you know” (which presents a problem for science fiction or fantasy writers). But this makes life so much easier when you’re writing a book. I remember struggling with a couple of chapters on Twitter Marketing for Dummies because I didn’t use some of the tools we were writing about. I had to spend a lot of time using them before I could write about them, which threw a huge monkey wrench into my writing schedule.
Have a writing schedule, and stick with it. John Grisham’s writing schedule, when he first started out, was to write from 7 am to 8 am, before he opened his law office. Christopher Moore’s schedule involves a lot of screwing around all day before he settles down after lunch and writes for 4 or 5 hours. Mine is to write at night, after the kids are in bed, and go for about 4 hours. Ignore the people who tell you to wake up early because mornings are more productive, or the people who tell you to stay up late because no one is awake then. Do what’s best for your body and your schedule. If you’re a night owl, stay up late. If you’re an early bird, get up and get that worm. But create a schedule and stick to it.
Shut off distractions. I love my Twitter network, and love chatting. But they are also the biggest interruption of my day, because they’re always more interesting than whatever I’m doing (even as I’ve written this post, I’ve sent 4 tweets). So when I’m writing, and have the willpower to do so, I shut off TweetDeck, close my Gmail, turn off the notifiers, and get to work. I can save myself 30 minutes of writing when I do that. My wife once asked me why I didn’t do that more, and I told her to “rephrase your question in the form of a tweet.”

Writing styles and processes are different for everyone. What are yours? Do you do anything special to get your writing done, to be more efficient and effective, or even to avoid distractions? Leave a comment and let me know.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Another Blog Writing Secret: Write Like You Speak