Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 17

3 Reasons to Repeat Yourself

You’ve written something good. Return to it.

If you’ve been blogging for a year or more, you’ve probably covered many topics. Good news: ideas don’t get used up. In fact, they’re probably due for a refresh and repeat.

It’s time to revisit the things you’ve already written.

If you’re resisting this idea, I get it. When I tell myself to revisit topics of previous posts, part of me immediately protests. But I wrote about that three years ago! I’ve already covered it!

I’ve got to get over it, and so do you. Here are three good reasons to rework the things you’ve already covered and to give yourself permission to repeat.

1. We didn’t see it the first time

How many of your readers only subscribed to your blog or found your content in the last several months? Chances are, it’s quite a few. They never saw that blog post you published two years ago.

Even if your total number of followers remains constant, people have cycled through. They always do. You’re reaching different people today than you were before.

Readers come and go

Even your long-time subscribers may not have seen what your wrote the first time it came out. We’re all bombarded with a fire-hose blast of content every day. Your post may have landed on one of those days, and people missed it—people who would value what it says.

If you want to test this theory, try sharing an older post on your social media or with your email list and see who responds. It may well be people who have been following and interacting with you for some time.

2. We didn’t pay attention the first time. Or we’ve forgotten it.

Maybe we just skimmed it the first time, but it didn’t sink in. Maybe we were tired.

When did you send it?

Or, the ideas you covered never made the transition to our long-term memories.

Even your most loyal readers won’t remember what you wrote three years ago. (Heck, sometimes I don’t remember the posts I’ve written a few months back.)

It’s the spotlight effect in action: we assume that people are paying much more attention to us than they are. If you’re worried that people will think you’re a one-hit wonder if you keep returning to the same topic, let it go.

Realistically, most of us should worry whether people remember who we are. In her book Brag Better, Meredith Fineman suggests, “Online, you should be introducing yourself all the time. Consider an introductory post in each medium at least once a month.”

(Yep, I haven’t gotten to that advice yet. But I should.)

3. We weren’t ready to hear/believe it.

You know the saying “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear?” I suspect the reality is more like this: the teachers are always there, but we don’t notice them until we’re ready to be students.

Sometimes an idea doesn’t sink in until we’ve seen it a few times, or events in our lives have shifted such that it now makes sense or is relevant.

We’re all different people than we were a couple years ago. Heck, with this pandemic, we’re different than we were only a few months ago.

Your audience has changed or grown, so offer your insights again.

For those who were paying attention

If you’re worried about being boring, try repeating with a difference.

There’s an entire chapter on repetition in Writing to Be Understood, but I’ll repeat here a few ways you can artfully reiterate your points within a blog post or book chapter:

Repeat with a difference. Vary the wording with new iterations.Tell a story. Embody your concept in a story to give it more air time.Repeat in structural elements. Include core concepts in headings and call-outs.Use quotes. Reiterate the concept in a someone else’s voice.

Repeating across time is even easier. If you’re looking for content ideas, cast fresh eyes over what you have already done.

Can you find a new story to illustrate the same point?Does an apt metaphor now present itself?Can you rephrase a core idea in a memorable or pithy way?



Revisit and Go Deeper

By revisiting and working with the topic, you may find new insight. Even if the topic remains the same, you have changed as an author. The world around you has changed. 

My challenge to you: Find something you’ve written a while back and see if you can resurface and repeat it from a new perspective.

I’ll be trying this myself. Let me know how it works for you.

Related reading

Read my review of Fineman’s Brag Better .

Don’t wait for an original idea to write.

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Don’t Wait to Start Writing

“If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?”

Author and publisher Brooke Warner posted that question on social media recently.

Without a doubt, my answer to that question is this:

Don’t wait for good ideas, just start writing.

A lesson I learned the hard way

Although I have been writing my entire career, I only started writing books in my own name in the last six years.

Decades ago, I started working on a nonfiction book idea. After one interview, I was overset by doubts. My idea wasn’t well-defined or marketable. I abandoned it and returned to writing for clients.

I kept waiting for the great idea, and the great idea never came.

Finally, about six years ago, I had another half-formed idea I wanted to share with the world, and started writing my way into it.

This work eventually led to my first book, Subscription Marketing. And that launched my author career, and my next book, The Writer’s Process.

The inner game is the most important part of writing.

Everyone can learn grammar and fine-tune their phrasing—once the ideas are down on paper.

To be a better writer, you must write.

You need to rattle around in the attic of your head, loosen the ideas, and find the discipline to get the words out.

How do you do that? How do you make writing fit into your life, in a creative and enjoyable way?

That’s the subject of The Writer’s Process: Getting Your Brain in Gear.

It’s the most important book I’ve written, because it’s about the most important part of the process: the inner game.

A pandemic is a great time to write.

We’re living through remarkable times.

Let’s write down those stories. Let’s process what we’re going through and find the meaning in it. Let’s put together our thoughts for a better future.

If you’re like me, you may also need a long-term, future-facing project to distract you from the present.

Write. Write for yourself, and write for others.

The Writer’s Process is on sale for 99 cents.

There’s no better time to add this to your ebook collection.

Pick up the book right now for chump change, and you can do something wonderful with the rest of your summer.

If you’ve already read it, consider giving it to someone else who needs to be doing some writing right now.

The sale runs through the rest through July, so pick up your copy today.

Download the Kindle version on Amazon.



Use this universal link to find the book on the ebook platform of your choice: Kindle, Apple Books, Google Play, whatever.



It’s also available as a print book and an audiobook, but those versions aren’t on sale. (You can pick up the audiobook for only $8.99 on Chirp Books.)

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Writing Your Way from Suffering to Serving

An Interview with Kelly Fitzsimmons, author of Lost in Startuplandia

What would you do if you lost your ability to read?

Writing a book probably wouldn’t top your list of projects. Yet that’s what Kelly Fitzsimmons did, and the result is Lost in Startuplandia: a generous book of advice and wisdom for entrepreneurs of all kinds.

As a serial entrepreneur herself, Kelly woman knows a thing or two about getting through hardship. The book recounts her health struggles and startup crisis. This is a woman who clearly doesn’t back down from a challenge.

We admire that grittiness in entrepreneurs. (Authors benefit from grit as well.) But resilience often comes at a significant cost.

In an interview, she shared with me her experience in writing the book, as well as her advice for entrepreneurs facing stress and uncertainty.

Finding Wisdom in Personal Experience

If you know anything about the startup world, you know that the failures far outnumber the survivors. The pressure can take an enormous physical and mental toll. As a survivor of that experience herself, Kelly wants to help those who are in its throes. But first, she had to help herself. Writing was key.

When she first started on her book, she could only dictate into her phone. As difficult as it was in her state, writing was a way to process her experience. She says that she started writing for herself, and what it meant to be an entrepreneur. For her, writing “was an act of slowly peeling apart my persona and getting underneath it.”

The first draft was a personal journey. But it wasn’t the book she wanted to share with others. She reports that the first draft was terrible. After reading it, she had her epiphany: “I’m trying to help people. I don’t want anyone else to feel the pain I’m feeling right now.”

This insight helped her rewrite the book from scratch. She says, “Suddenly then I had a narrative thread I could pull through. I knew who I needed to talk to. I knew what kind of advice was helpful and what wasn’t, at least on my own journey. And I tried very hard to write from that point of view.”

She wrote first to figure out her story and process her experience. With that insight, she was ready to write something that served her reader. She layered in research and interviews, distilled her guidance and lessons, and created something that can help her serve her audience of entrepreneurs at scale.

The experience taught her something about creating art, which she is bringing into her next ventures, making documentaries and writing music. She (wisely) says:

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Interview Transcription: Is Software the Answer?

The Magic, and Limits, of AI-Based Speech Recognition

If you interview people, on a podcast or for research, you have probably faced the problem of interview transcription: turning that audio format into a written form.

Do you take notes? Transcribe the interview yourself? (That’s only advisably if you’re an excellent typist.) Hire a transcription service?

There’s another option: using speech recognition technology to transcribe the audio for you.

If the term “speech recognition” makes you remember screaming futilely at an automated voice mail system (“SPEAK TO AN AGENT!”), it’s time to think again.

Technology has come a long way with understanding human speech.

In the course of researching my next book, I’ve been interviewing a bunch of authors. I have hours and hours of interviews and wanted to make clean transcripts of them as fodder for my book research. I also wanted to share excerpts of some of them publicly, because there’s much more in the interviews than can land in the book. And along with the recording, I want to share the transcript, as not everyone has time to listen to 20-minute interviews.

I quickly discovered that interview transcription is hard! It takes time. I started by doing it myself, listening to the audio track while typing furiously (and hitting pause all the time to catch up.) Even though I am a fast typist, a 25-minute interview might take well over an hour to transcribe with any accuracy.

AI-based speech recognition to the rescue!

Experimenting with Otter’s AI-based solution

Productivity coach Judy Dang recommended that I experiment with Otter.AI, an online platform that uses artificial intelligence technology to create text representations of conversations.

Otter can transcribe conversations live, as they happen, or work with audio files that you upload to the platform. It also integrates with Zoom to record those endless Zoom meetings.

Otter offers both free and premium, paid services. I experimented with the premium service.

The software does a remarkably good job of creating an interview transcription in near real time, as a conversation occurs. It makes excellent guesses about words, even assigning them to different voices. (Although, it often missed the handoffs between me and my interview subjects, also women.)

As you might expect, it was easily confused by unexpected or unusual words.

When transcribing a webinar on finding your book’s niche, it changed many of the niches to nice.I used it on an interview I did with April Rinne about her upcoming book Flux Mindset. April, Otter suggests that you write a book on a flex mindset instead. It was befuddled by the way that Michele Wucker kept dropping the phrase “gray rhino” into conversations about books, risk, and finance. (Michele has a book of that name.)

I almost felt bad for the AI bots trying to sort through our conversations.

But those issues were easy to fix. The larger challenge with using speech recognition technology has nothing to do with the technology, and everything to do with human speech.

Speech and conversation are different

Because these interviews took place over video, they felt like a personal conversation. (That was intentional on my part.)

Human conversation is messy.

There’s a huge difference between issuing short commands to Alexa or dictating text messages to Siri and a having a lively exchange with another person.

None of us speak in perfect sentences. We interrupt ourselves, wander off …. And we repeat ourselves. We interrupt each other and laugh at each other’s jokes.

Many small exchanges grease the wheels of conversation—little check-ins (right?) and confirmations. We deploy verbal space-fillers while our brains process how best to phrase a complex idea.

An accurate, word-for-word transcription is filled with clutter.

Although I don’t edit that clutter out of the audio files, I do want to clean up the transcript, to serve many interests:

Interview subjects: To honor and respect the time they spend with me, I can at least clean out the conversational clutter and let their ideas rise to the top.Readers: The reader shouldn’t have to wade through small byways, repetitions, and interruptions.Myself: I want to sound pithy and wise as well. Believe me, after listening to these transcripts, I am well aware of my conversational tics!

It takes me many revision passes to clean up the automated transcripts to meet my own standards.

Human vs. automated interview transcription

After several interviews, I had a surprising realization: the software didn’t save me time, it merely changed how I spent my time on these transcriptions.

When I transcribed manually, listening and typing and hitting pause, I could clean up the text as I went. I’d listen to a sentence, then type it out (and perhaps double-check it.) I made a few mistakes, but they were the type easily found with spell checking. I wouldn’t even type in the false starts, the repetitions, or speech mannerisms.

In contrast, Otter gave me complete scripts requiring extensive editing. That felt harder to do. In editing out the excess verbiage, I introduced new errors, which were then difficult to see. Each of these efforts required multiple revision passes.

Typing the transcript myself took about the same amount of time as fixing the automated transcript overall. But working on the text directly yielded other benefits:

In transcribing, I re-live and internalize the conversations. I identify the main themes and organize the ideas for my book research.Typing the transcript gives me the chance to discover and highlight quotes that I want to use, either in the interview post or as potential fodder for the book.

When I’m done, I have a better understanding of the content. For me, it’s worth the effort of typing.

A blended approach to interview transcription

If you’re wrestling with this issue, experiment and see what works for you.

For interviews in specialized fields, find a transcriber who is familiar with the vocabulary used. If you want to publish the transcription with speakers appearing in a positive light, use a human transcriber (or do it yourself). Let the transcriber know that you don’t the repeated words and mistakes. Even if you end up editing, you’ll be starting with something cleaner.The automated transcription works well for files you’re using solely for research, as you can ignore the clutter. Highlight the bits that interest you most, and disregard the rest.

My personal approach: I’m manually listening to and writing up the interviews I plan to publish. When I want to turn an audio file into notes for internal research, the software is terrific!

Have you experimented with automated interview transcription? Or speech recognition for drafting? I’d love to hear about your experiences.

You might also like:

Check out the interviews I’ve been doing here: Interviews with Inspiring Authors

If you’re interested in speech patterns, here are a couple posts that you might like:

Review of How We Talk by N. J. Enfield

Speech Patterns that Threaten Authority in Writing

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Define Your Revision Function

In business writing, book authoring, and software coding, revision is how we get to our best work. But the act of revision challenges many writers. They either want to rush through it to get to the finished product, or they get mired in doubts whether the work is good enough. Having a well-defined process might be the answer.

If you have a hard time with revision, try thinking about it like a coder: as a recursive function.

It’s been many years since I studied programming, but recursive functions stick in my head because they caused me some grief in homework assignments.

Quickly, a recursive function is a segment of code that executes multiple times, each time working with the output of the previous pass. The code keeps cycling back through the loop until a condition has been met and the code continues.

Why do I remember this so clearly from programming? Because if you haven’t created a careful exit plan, your program can get stuck in an infinite loop. That’s generally best avoided.

Recursion and Revision

Using recursion as a metaphor for revision can be useful. To revise your own work, you want to cycle through it a number of times, each time working with the improved version from the last time. And you need to clearly delineate either the number of passes or what success looks like, so you know when to exit the process.

Where the metaphor falls apart, alas, is what happens during each pass through the manuscript. A program executes the same code. As the author/reviser, you want to do different things in each revision pass, working from the highest level to the most detailed, granular one.

I advise writers to define their revision process from the top down, or outside in. For a major blog post, for example, your revision process might look like this:

Structural pass: Start with the big-picture analysis: Does this make sense for my objectives? Does it include what the reader wants or needs to know? Does the structure serve the reader’s needs?Reader’s flow: Approach it from start to finish, as your reader might. Do the sentences flow, or does the reader have to double back to make sense of them? Does the logic work? Are there too many details, or too few? Is it repetitive? Language: Make the text more beautiful or pithy by tightening the wording, choosing active verbs, eliminating repetition, and scrubbing out jargon and unnecessary abstractions.Proofreading: Look for typos, duplicate words, grammar glitches and punctuation problems.

Some writing won’t need four passes. You can often combine the first two and second two for short posts. And a book manuscript may require extra passes for things like fact-checking.

You decide what happens in your revision function.

How This Can Help You

If you’re not yet convinced, here are three reasons to try this out on your next piece of writing:

It’s efficient

Like the programming technique, structuring an iterative revision process is efficient—if you work in the right order. Fix the structure first, so you don’t spend time proofreading and polishing a section you need to cut.

It provides a roadmap

Instead of asking, “Is this piece any good?” you can ask smaller questions as you improve your work:

Does it have the right structure? Does the writing flow? Is it concise and clear?

It’s much easier to correct these issues than to assess whether the work is good enough (whatever that means).

You have an endpoint

If you’re working on something like a book manuscript, you can create a spreadsheet and track your process through the various passes. When you’ve done your passes, it’s time to move on to the next phase, whether that’s hitting the Publish button or sending it to a professional editor.

If this sounds like a lot of work, remember that great writing is born in revision. It’s worth the effort.

Other Resources

I cover this approach to revision, along with other revision exercises, in a short online course Revising Your Writing. Use the coupon code BLOG to get the course for $20. (Enter the coupon on the payment screen.)

Business writers can find more advice in The Workplace Writer’s Process.

You might enjoy these posts:

Revising for Cognitive EaseFinding Your Revision Groove (and Staying Sane)

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Brag Better Book Review: Advice for the Qualified Quiet

Do you have a hard time owning your expertise and authority? Meredith Fineman’s new book Brag Better challenges you let the world know about what you’ve done.

A Review of Brag Better by Meredith Fineman

Are you a member of the Qualified Quiet: the people who keep showing up, doing great work, and waiting for others to notice their contributions or excellence?

If you want to make an impact with your work, you have to step out of the Qualified Quiet. You need to speak up for yourself and let other people see you.

Meredith Fineman offers detailed advice for how to do that in her new book, Brag Better: Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion.

Brag Better by Meredith Fineman



Why You Might Need This Book

As someone who has spent much of her life as a card-carrying member of the Qualified Quiet, I find the advice in Brag Better invaluable. Fineman gets to the heart of a problem that many people face, particularly women: not knowing how to talk about their own accomplishments in a way that others need to hear.

The title might put you off for a moment. Bragging? Self-Promotion?

Many women, of a certain age and in Western cultures, were brought up not to brag. Don’t be braggy. Don’t put yourself forward. We have internalized those values.

But there’s a difference between bragging, with all of its negative connotations, and letting others know about your accomplishments.

You’ll note that the subtitle is Fearless Self-Promotion, not Shameless Self-Promotion.

What You’ll Find

The book begins with the why and how of “bragging” or speaking up for yourself. Here’s a hint:

Being a member of The Qualified Quiet is a good thing. It’s not a weakness, it’s a strength. We need you.  You are essentially the backbone of our society and workforce. We just need to hear from you.

Meredith Fineman in Brag Better

She outlines four key elements of effective bragging: gratitude, pride, presentation, and showmanship. Be thankful for the opportunity. Take pride in your accomplishments. (That doesn’t sound too boastful, does it?)

Fineman asks that we redefine bragging:

“Bragging Better requires cultivating pride in your work and then taking small actions that help you share it with those around you.”

She offers advice and exercises for talking about your accomplishments. Then, she looks at how to apply these practices in various situations. There’s solid, practical advice on a range of topics, including:

What to put in your bios and personal websiteHow to pitch mediaPublic speakingSalary negotiations

Fineman includes plenty of stories and inspiration to help you take the next step, as well as how to deal with negative reactions or pushback.

If Not For Yourself, Then for Others

If you’re still uncomfortable with the idea of promoting your accomplishments, learn how to promote others. She suggests that you use these skills to elevate the voices of those around you.

“Raise your voice because others cannot. Raise your voice because it is your duty to others whose voices can’t be heard or aren’t allowed to be used.”

Meredith Fineman in Brag Better

Find the book on Amazon or on Bookshop.Org

Other resources:

Listen to my interview with Jennifer Dulski, author of Purposeful.

Read my review of Talking from 9 to 5 by Deborah Tannen.

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Nonfiction Writing Lessons from the Planet Money Podcast

If you write about complicated topics, start listening to nonfiction podcasts—popular ones about science, the economy, or current events. The best podcasters know how to keep an audience’s attention while explaining abstract concepts.

Since the pandemic started, months, I’ve become a loyal, consistent listener of NPR’s Planet Money podcast. Why? Because it does an excellent job of explaining complicated topics in a fun and engaging way.

Recent episodes have covered topics such as:

What the Federal Reserve is doing (and why it’s a huge deal)How those small business loans are getting through (and the people working nonstop to make them happen)What it means when the price of oil becomes a negative number

Complicated, abstract topics come alive in a short audio format.

On May 15, the Planet Money team shared their methods in their 1,000th episode. If you write nonfiction, you can learn a lot from this episode.

The Structure of a Planet Money Episode

Over a thousand episodes, we have developed a kind of formula for what makes a PLANET MONEY episode a PLANET MONEY episode. And we thought—you know what?—for the 1,000th episode, why don’t we just share that formula with you today?

Kenny Malone, Planet Money

The Top

The start of the podcast grabs your attention with a quick story or scenario.

The episodes often begin with the voice of a colorful or important character talking about the subject. It’s all about intriguing the listener, inciting curiosity about the content to follow.

The Shoulders

Having captured your interest, the Planet Money team then lays the groundwork for what follows in a part they call the shoulder. Often, they deliver a brief history lesson to set a context. (Apparently, they harken back to the Great Depression quite often.)

They also introduce a key character at this point. For example, they might call on someone who is processing Paycheck Protection loans or someone who regularly trades crude oil futures. The story now has a human voice and dimension.

The Body

In the body of the episode, the explanation and exploration begins. As Sarah Gonzalez says in this episode:

This is where we earn our paychecks. This is where we have to get creative to explain things like dramatic shifts in year-over-year parcel-specific housing prices.

Sarah Gonzalez, Planet Money

You might notice one technique right there: adding a concrete example (housing price shifts) to an abstract category (things they have to explain). Concrete details make abstract concepts come alive.

As podcasters, they cannot show you graphics or charts. They rely on your sense of hearing alone. But they find creative ways to invoke other senses.

Setting the scene by describing a locationDropping a pile of paper to give you an idea of its heftHaving someone taste something (like crude oil) and recording their reactionsRecording themselves walking somewhere to give you a sense of movement

Once they hired an opera singer to “sing” a chart. I must find that episode!

The Wrap

Each episode concludes with some kind of reflection, often circling back to the voice from the top of the show.

What to Apply in Your Writing

The Planet Money podcast structure works well for a blog post. Start with a hook, lay the groundwork, then do the heavy lifting. Remember that your audience may be distracted: don’t go on for too long.

Beyond the structure, pay attention to how the podcasters talk about their subjects. The methods that work for listeners also apply to readers.

Activate the audience’s curiosity before you head off into explaining things. Stories or scenarios serve both to hook people’s interest and to put a global concept into a human scale.Bring in other voices beyond your own so your readers benefit from varied perspectives.Even though you’re dealing in words, include the other senses. Sensory metaphors ground abstract topics in the real world and make everything more interesting and vivid.Be human, not “expert.” The hosts and reporters are skilled journalists, but never seem condescending or distant. They show up as people who are eager to share the stories that fascinate them.

Each of these strategies earns a chapter in Writing to Be Understood: What Works and Why—the book I wrote about effective nonfiction writing. It’s cool to find that the strategies translate from the written word to audio.

(Use the form below to get a summary of all of the strategies from Writing to Be Understood.)

If you’re interested in writing podcast scripts, check out Jay Acunzo’s post Writing for Audio, Not Articles.

Listen to the entire 1000th episode of Planet Money.

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How Nonfiction Writers Can Use Their Powers for Good

What does it mean to be a nonfiction writer in a time of violent social unrest, soaring inequality, and widespread suffering? What can you do to make a difference?

I’m not asking what you can do as an individual: as a member of your community, a citizen, a neighbor, a person of faith, a parent or child, or any of the many roles you fill. That’s up to you.

Specifically, I want to think about what we can do as writers. 

The Power of Writing

Writers form connections with other people through words. We share thoughts with readers, connect with other people’s insights, and reinforce our common experience. That’s a superpower.

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Nonfiction writers deal with the world in which we live, and that world is flawed in fundamental ways: racism, extremes in inequality, climate crises, and more. Even if your usual topic has little direct connection with the unrest in the world today, you may still have a role to play.

We can choose to ignore issues like systemic racism, or we can use our ability to connect with people through words in a positive way.

Anyone who connects with others through writing has the chance of making an impact, if only a small one.

You may not have anything original to contribute to the discussion. You may wonder what’s appropriate to write about, and worry about saying the wrong thing.

I know I’m struggling. Here are three things I’m doing in my writing life to address the current situation. These actions area available to each of us, no matter our usual subject areas.

3 Things Anyone Can Do Now



1. Learn and reflect

My first step is always research, or in this case, learning and reflection. I’m adding a bunch of books to my Kindle to better understand the historic, systemic, and psychological underpinnings of racism in the United States.

(See my reading list at the bottom of the post, and feel free to suggest works you think I should read.)

2. Choose the voices you amplify

Each of us can amplify the voices of those who need to be heard.

Find those writers and speakers from underrepresented groups, or those with messages of compassion, and make their voices stronger with the power of your platform.

3. Spread compassion, not fear and anger

People are enraged right now. People are fearful. 

Rage and fear spread by themselves—they don’t need your help. 

Focus on spreading the messages that are slower to take root but will sustain us: compassion, understanding, positive actions, and a vision of a better future.

Will It Make a Difference?

You may be thinking, “This isn’t my audience…” or “I don’t have enough of a following.”

Enough is a relative term. If others see and hear your words, you can make a difference.

And really, measuring our impact isn’t what matters. Jennifer Dulski closes her book Purposeful with this quote:

“Knowing whether we’ve had an impact on others is not the point. Living a life in pursuit of positive impact is what matters: a life of purpose, a life of service, and a life driven by hope.”

Jennifer Dulski in Purposeful

A Short Reading List for Writing for Change

Writing to Persuade – Advice from the former editor of the New York Times opinion page. Read my review here.

Writing to Change the World – Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia, offers her perspective on writing for change

The Righteous Mind – Jonathan Haidt describes our differing “moral taste buds” from a social psychology perspective; this book offers fantastic insight into people with different values than your own.

A Reading List for Understanding

These are a few of the books that I have read already or have loaded onto my Kindle, to better understand the systemic problems we face today:

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson – Stories of 20th century migrations to the north from the south, which explain a great deal about today’s cities

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts – The subtitle hooked me.

Biased : Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice that Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer Eberhardt – A cognitive science approach to bias.

I’ve created a list for all of these books on BookShop.Org (an Amazon alternative for print books that supports indie bookstores.) Visit the Writing for Change page.

What else should I read? Leave suggestions in the comments.

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Adopting a Writing Mindset

Immersing yourself in a writing project changes the way you see the world around you. It shifts you into a writing mindset.

Want to see the world like a poet? Try taking a class on writing poetry.

Some years back, I took a creative writing/poetry class in a continuing education program, to counter-balance my corporate writing work.

The weekly assignments kept me on my toes. Looking for inspiration, I started noticing unexpected connections, mood shifts, and undercurrents to find fodder for a poem.

Committing to write poetry inspired me to pay attention like a poet.

Something similar happens when I am absorbed in writing a book: I see its themes everywhere. (This is part of the immersion that I wrote about in this post on finding one’s pace.)

When you delve into a writing project (or any creative endeavor), it’s like acquiring a set of glasses you can use to see the world differently. That fresh perspective might be a healthy thing right now.

Summoning the writing mindset

If you read the news regularly, you may be ruminating on the state of the world, your personal finances, your relatives’ health, or the local economy. The pandemic may influence your thoughts. Metaphorically, you’re wearing pandemic glasses.

You need to balance those worries with something else, particularly if you aspire to creativity. A writing project is a great way to put on a different set of glasses.

Use writing to create another lens through which to see the world.

When you dive into a writing project, the subject infuses everything and changes your perspective.

If you love your topic, immersion is a joy.

This perspective shift happens most reliably when you commit to writing (or creating) on an ongoing basis. By making the ongoing commitment, you prime your attention to look for related content.

You can slip into a writing mindset with regular journalling. But without the commitment to an external audience, you may not be consistent enough to achieve the writer’s lens. Here are a few higher-stakes strategies to try:

Work on a book: A large project will absorb your attention over a sustained period.
Start blogging: Commit to publishing a blog post (or podcast, poem, whatever) every week. Make the commitment public and then try to live up to it.
Get regular deadlines: Join an accountability group that requires you to submit work regularly. Or, sign up for a course (online for now) that gives you regular assignments.




Choose a rose-colored lens

The best thing about this strategy is that you can select the filter you are adding to your world. With that in mind, here’s one more thing to consider:

Focusing on the positive may open up your creativity.

When we experience fear and anxiety, our attention narrows. Fear tends to “freeze” us, damping creativity and linear, associative thinking.

No matter what your topic, first try the rose-colored glasses. Find a positive vision to work towards, rather than away from. For example:

If you write about pandemic issues, look for stories about resilience and growth rather than the depths of the challenge.
If you write about toxic workplace behavior, make your lens eliminating or reducing that behavior, so more people can find joy in work.
If you write about environmental damage, focus on protecting or improving the environment.

If you want to change people’s behavior, you’re more likely to inspire action with positive visions than dire warnings. The upbeat outlook may make your writing more effective.

But mostly, do this for your own mental state. Looking for the positive future may inspire creative thought patterns. If nothing else, it will be a more pleasant way to spend your time.

Related content

Check out my post about finding a pace that brings immersion.

Read an excerpt about writing mindset from my book The Writer’s Process, on Jane Friedman’s blog.

Listen to (or read) my interview with Trista Harris about using a positive vision of the future to pull us forward.

If poetry caught your attention, check out this Writers.com article on finding an online poetry class.

 

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Finding Your Pace When Writing

In many of life’s major, endurance-related endeavors, pacing is the difference between success and burnout, achievement and frustration.

Start a marathon at a sprint, and you may enjoy an early lead but run out of steam halfway through. Start too slowly, and everyone may have gone home by the time you reach the finish line.

Writing a book is like running a marathon. Finding the right pace is key. 

In my experience, a book project requires a more than one speed. I often switch between three general speeds in the course of one project:

Slow background work: Idea collection, research, consideration
Active work: Researching, note taking, early drafting, as well as revision and self-editing
Intense immersion: Serious drafting as the major focus of my work; revision often entails immersion

Authors often talk about the immersion part of the process, sharing stories of their sacrifices. This is the phase that that scares many writers from writing a book. So, let’s tackle what’s going on in immersion and how to make it less painful.

Immersing yourself in your writing

Immersion happens when you’re working on the book long enough and frequently enough that it becomes the main focus of your brain’s thoughts, even when you’re not writing.

Your brain keeps toiling away when you leave the keyboard. You wake early thinking about the book. When you sit to write, you get into the work quickly because your brain has been processing it.

Some people think the only way to achieve this focus is to dedicate all of their time to the book. (That may well be true for them.) Some writers rent cabins and retreat from the world. Others shut their doors to family and work commitments and do nothing but write their books for weeks or months on end.

If you want to know what an author’s immersion process is like, read the acknowledgments section of their book. The ones who need total immersion usually apologize to their loved ones.

Total time commitment is quite effective. But not everyone can do it—and it isn’t always necessary.

Everyone’s immersion pace is different

You might be able to achieve immersion with smaller, dedicated periods of time. Like that marathon runner, find a pace that you can maintain while making progress.

I’ve spoken with many authors who have written their books while holding down jobs. One author told me that she found that she needed a minimum 90 minutes a day, 7 days a week.  (She would write longer more if the spirit moved her.) Another scheduled two-hours blocks three times a week. Some people write for a few hours every evening and manage to publish excellent work.

There is no minimum time commitment that meets everyone’s needs. Find your own combination of length and frequency that tips you into an immersive state.

In my own experience, I know that if I spend at least an hour and a half a day on a project, it begins to generate its own ideas and the work becomes easier. But sometimes that time is spent researching, outlining, or exploring the ideas I want to cover. It doesn’t always look like writing.

There will be sacrifices, but you need not sacrifice everything.

How to make immersion less onerous

Writing a book is a major project, but it doesn’t have to be painful. It might even feel joyful, if you find a good balance.

Here are a couple ideas to ease your path and adjust your pace.

Try sprints: Choose short deadlines and work in immersion on them. Then come up for air for a few days or weeks before diving back in.
Be intentional about incubation: One key benefit of immersion is the offline incubation it delivers. If you become more intentional about incubating ideas, you can reap those benefits with fewer hours in the “struggle” phase. See my webinar on intentional incubation.

You will have to sacrifice something. But don’t sacrifice sleep, sanity, health, or important relationships.

Change speeds when you must

Many of the writers I know are struggling to get their work done during this shelter at home time. Maybe they’re occupied with kids attending school at home, or dealing with anxiety or loss. Maybe they’re simply not able to focus.

Anxiety adds a cognitive load to your day, reducing the cycles available for writing.

When you’re running up a steep hill, on uneven terrain, you may need to walk to get to the top. Keep heading up the hill.

Maybe you’re on an uphill path now.

You may not be able to work as hard, or as long, as you want. But at some point, you’ll crest the hill, and your effort will pay off.

Other Resources

A three-step plan to writing your book
Watch my webinar on intentional incubation.


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