Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 27

An Author’s Guide to Being a Good Podcast Guest: Part One

Being a podcast guest has turned out to be one of the unexpected pleasures of publishing a book. Through showing up on podcasts, I’ve made new friends with podcast hosts. Recently, I even connected with a second cousin, who listened to a podcast I did!

But aside from being fun, chatting about your book on a podcast can help you reach potential readers and followers. It’s a book marketing strategy.

According to Edison Research, 26 percent of Americans over 12 listen to a podcast at least once a month. More people are starting podcasts, and they’re looking for guests.

Why podcasting is good for authors

Many writers are introverts. Although they are perfectly happy to chat with individuals or small groups about their subjects, the idea of public speaking leaves them cold.

Podcasting is a perfect solution for the introverted author.

You don’t have to leave the comfort of your own home.
It feels like an in-depth, one-on-one conversation – exactly the kind of thing you’re good at – while in reality, it’s a one-to-many way to reach people.
Listeners get a much better feel about you and your book from listening to you speak than they would by simply reading the book description alone.

Setting up and running your own podcast is a significant time commitment. But, lucky for you, there’s a small army of podcasters out there who need guests. That’s where you come in.

Podcasts are a wonderful book marketing strategy – but only if you do them well. Being a good podcast guest requires a little research and preparation.

Since starting on the podcast circuit, I’ve spoken with several of my favorite podcast hosts about what makes a good guest. This three-part blog series shares their advice on how to rise to the top of the guest pile.

Part One: How to find and query the right podcasts

The world of podcasts is huge and growing larger with each passing minute. The first question you might ask is this: where do I start? Where do I find out about podcasts that might have me as a guest?

Do the work.

There are services that will do this research for you, of course, but you can do it yourself. It’s not that hard.

Make a list of potential podcasts

Start by coming up with a list of possible podcasts. These should include:

Podcasts related to your book’s topic or your area of expertise
Book-related podcasts for authors in your genre

Remember that this is a book marketing strategy: ideally, the podcast’s audience includes people who might be interested in your book.

To find entries for your list, open up iTunes, select Podcasts, and choose your category. Browse through those. When you choose a podcast on iTunes, find the website link to visit for the next step, shortening the list.

If these results are too overwhelming, try a few other tactics:

Google “podcast about ” to find curated lists
Search out other authors like you and find out what podcasts they’ve done
Ask people in your core audience about their favorite podcasts

Create a short list

Listening to podcasts take time, so first narrow down your list. Visit the podcast websites, look at past episode descriptions, and use the following questions to eliminate podcasts from your list.

1 – Does it accept guests?

It seems obvious, but it’s worth saying. Eliminate any that don’t regularly have guests. Don’t try to be the exception.

2 – Does the podcast site include a page for potential guests to query?

Some podcasts only invite guests. Others describe precisely what they’re looking for.

If the host has gone through the trouble of putting this information out there, read it and see if you fit.

3 – Would you be a good guest for this audience?

Do you have something to say that this audience would want to hear? Is there an overlap between your readers and these listeners? Look for clues about the listeners of the podcast.

Listen strategically

Now it’s time to do your homework.

I know, I know, but it must be done. You can do it on the treadmill at the gym, if necessary.

Pick two or three of the podcast you want to query. Pick a couple episodes that most interest you, with guests similar to you or with high popularity ranking on iTunes. Then listen.

You might listen to one episode in full, and bits and pieces of a few others. Turn up the speed if you want to save time. (Written transcripts are great, but still, listen to an episode to get a sense of its mood and pacing.)

Take notes, paying particular attention to the following:

Beginnings: Most podcast hosts speak directly to their listeners at the start. You may learn something about their general approach and who they think their audience is.

Host questions: The questions are more important to you, right now, than the guests’ answers. How familiar is the host with the topic? What kinds of questions do they ask? Not all interviewers are equal – some want to talk mainly about themselves. Some, however, clearly advocate for their listeners, so pay attention to that.

Endings: Listen to the last two or so minutes of every episode. Does the host have a regular closing question? If so, make a note of it.

Interview length: Is it a 20-minute interview? 60-minutes? Are there commercial breaks? These are things you’ll want to know when constructing your pitch.

Ask politely

Now you’re ready to reach out and ask if you can be a guest. This is like inviting yourself into someone’s home, so be polite.

If you haven’t done a podcast before, consider starting with a smaller podcast and working your way up to the more popular podcasts in your category. You’ll get better at this as you gain experience.

Write a short email to the host (or use the contact form on the podcast page.) Communicate the following:

Who you are: Offer a one-sentence background, framed in a way that is relevant for the podcast listeners. For example, I might use this introduction to a podcaster focused on entrepreneurs:  “I’ve written a book about marketing strategies that are fueling successful subscription-based startups.” Include a link to your author web page and/or book.

Potential topics: The podcaster has no incentive to sell your book. Unless this is a book-specific podcast, the topic is almost never “my new book.” Find one or more conversation topics related to the book, for which you can offer valuable, practical information or insight.

What you can offer the podcaster: Offer to help the podcaster in one of two ways:

Bringing them new listeners (for example, sharing the podcast with your email list or social media following)
Providing valuable information to their existing listeners (helping them maintain audience loyalty)

If you can do both, you’ll probably be a guest!

Make it easy for the podcast host to say yes, and don’t waste their time with requests that don’t fit their format.

Even if you’re accepted, expect a delay. Popular podcasts schedule up to 90 days in advance.

Before we finish this part, there’s one more topic to cover:

The Unknown Podcast Invitation

If someone invites you to appear on their podcast, you might jump at it. Preparing for and doing the podcast consumes time.

If you get an invitation from a podcaster, do some research to determine if it’s a fit.

Who are the listeners? Does the podcast audience align with your book’s audience?

Can you add value?

There’s nothing more uncomfortable than being on a call and realizing that you and the host are coming from entirely different angles. I’ve been there. Save yourself from that situation.

Coming Up in Part Two:

You’ve got the gig – up next is how to prepare to be a welcome guest.

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The Shrinking Reader Attention Span

“We are moving from a world where computer power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention.” Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft

It’s almost a truism that our attention spans are dwindling. What does that mean for writers?

First, let’s get our minds around the issue – starting with the goldfish myth.

The Great Goldfish Myth

In the spring of 2015, The Consumer Insights group of Microsoft Canada published a report report entitled “Attention Spans.” The report, for a marketing audience, included the quote from Nadella reinforcing what many of us feel: attention is the new currency.

Coming from a technology marketing background, I understand how these research reports work. Marketer researchers gather interesting insights and package them to meet the objectives of the organization funding the research. This isn’t the theory-testing type of research that advances science. Take these marketing-focused research reports with a healthy grain of salt.

This particular report generated a larger wake of online responses than its origins would suggest. The media was on a salt-free diet when it came to this report. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Major news organizations, including Time Magazine, jumped on the findings – specifically, the idea that the dwindling human attention span is now less than that of a goldfish.

The goldfish takeaway came from one simple graphic in the report showing three bubbles:

A large bubble representing the average human attention span in 2000 as 12 seconds
A much smaller one showing that same attention span shrank to 8 seconds (I’m not convinced that the proportionality of the bubbles is correct)
A third bubble between the two representing the 9-second attention span of the average goldfish

Unfortunately, none of that data comes from the actual research in the report. A little digging reveals that the data originates from a self-reported survey of 2000 Canadians, as well as a bit of research hooking up 110 people to electrodes. (Again, no goldfish.)

This is not a peer-reviewed research journal. Yet the mainstream media jumped on it like hungry koi at feeding time.

Saner voices debunked the headlines after a while. (This Ceros blog post does a great job of rebutting the original report.)

Like all good Internet memes and urban legends, the idea of our sub-goldfish attention span lives on. It still appears occasionally in materials for marketers, who are not known for rigorous vetting of sources.

The Real Proof Is Found in the Persistence of the Myth

The spread of this comparison illustrates the very thing that the researchers were studying: our attention spans. The popularity of the goldfish idea reflects three core truths:

Sometimes we look at the pictures and don’t read the text. The bloggers, journalists, and others reporting on the data couldn’t have carefully read report itself. Once you do, its limitations and purpose become clearer.
Unexpected visual images are powerful. Because we can picture a goldfish, we remember “less than a goldfish” even if it’s not precisely accurate.
We remember things that confirm our internal experiences. This research simply felt right.

All of us are skimming through online sites and articles, multi-tasking across devices, leaving browser tabs open, and probably doing less focused work than we remember doing in the past. So when we read about our overwhelmed, shortened attention spans, we believe it.

It Might Be True After All

One of the great advances in neurobiology in recent decades has been the idea of neuroplasticity – the ability of the brain to ‘rewire’ itself based on our behavior.

If you’ve seen the study about the London cabbies who study for “The Knowledge” and change their brains, then you know that behavior can affect the pathways in our brains. The more we do something, the more we wire our brains to do that thing.

To use an analogy from an entirely different set of human processes, consider the track athlete. If you specialize in the hurdles and spend all of your time training on sprints and hurdles, you’ll do well when running those events, but your performance on the 10,000 meter race will slip.

Like the hurdler’s training, the track analogy doesn’t get us very far (sorry). Brains are way more complicated than muscles. But like muscles, they respond and remodel themselves based on our behavior. Start doing an unusual task frequently and persistently enough, and you will experience minor chemical changes in the brain to support that activity. Do it even more, and you’ll start hard-wiring the neurons to support that activity.

In other words, your brain at this moment is a creation of not only your genetics and your environment, but also your ongoing actions.

What does this mean to writers?

Writers, Readers, and Attention Spans

Like everything involving human cognition and behavior, attention is complicated.

However, we can the fact that technology is significantly changing our reading environment. We now read things differently than we used to.

In his Pulitzer-Prize nominated book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr argues persuasively that technology is changing the way that we read. He bemoans the loss of “deep reading” in which the reader is absorbed in a text, taking it in at their own pace, without distractions.

When we do sit down to engage in deep reading, we’re unaccustomed to it. It’s more difficult, because our brains are out of shape, having spent so much time doing short bursts of attention switching.

Context matters as well. If you are publishing online text like blog posts, then you’re reaching the reader in a situation in which they expect to be distracted. When they read a book, however, they may dedicate more uninterrupted time to reading. Maybe.

This post, for example, is probably too long and detailed for many blog readers, especially those of you reading on phones. Sorry about that.

Take-aways for Writers

Technology is changing the ways that readers consume information and news, and those changes are both rapid and pervasive.
More things are competing for your readers’ attention than ever before. Some people are more selective about what they will spend time reading.
Technology presents more multitasking opportunities when people are reading.
When writing for the distracted reader, make it easy for people to find the key point, and to leave and return to the work. Use subheads for navigation. Repeat yourself if necessary.

Finally, remember this: some of the online panic about shrinking attention spans comes from media businesses that make their living on owning or claiming that attention.

Remember the Microsoft study about attention spans? It was written for marketers and advertisers — the people most likely to interrupt your reading and grab your attention. Protect your attention and evaluate your sources.

Related Posts

Books for Writers: The Shallows

Battling Distraction When Writing

 

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Subscribed: The Subscription Economy Has Been Waiting for This Book

The Review: Short Version

Finally – a comprehensive guide to the Subscription Economy, told from a viewpoint at the center of this tectonic shift.

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Long Version

When I wrote the first edition of Subscription Marketing (published January 2015), I tried to get my head around the scope of the changes happening to businesses as they shifted their revenue models to a subscription pattern. Then I tried to communicate what I saw to others. Plenty of people didn’t get what I was talking about, but Zuora was always there, trailblazing. I’d show up at their events just to have other people to talk with!

In building a company supporting subscription-based businesses, Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo has become a champion of this Subscription Economy model. Now he’s teamed up with Gabe Weisert (another Zuora insider) to create a fun and informative guide to this emerging economy. The book is called Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future – And What to Do About It.

Seriously – if they had done this three years earlier it would have saved me a lot of work trying to explain what I meant by “subscription marketing.” (No, I’m not just talking about magazines…)

This book answers all of the questions I had about the world beyond marketing, including:

How do you make the cultural shifts to support this business model change?
How does the financial model work?
How do sales teams respond and adapt?

The first part of the book outlines the impact of the subscription shift in industries as diverse as railroads, electric guitars, power tools, and more.

But the meat of the book is about managing that transition in your business. It describes the changes that have to happen in product development, sales, finance, IT, and of course marketing. The final chapter reveals how Zuora itself manages growth sustainably in this business model.

Of course, I’m partial to the marketing chapter. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes:

“When the data wonks get together with the writers, that’s when the cool stuff happens.”

And this one:

“Today you communicate brand through experiences, not ads.”

If I’ve piqued your curiosity, check out the book. It’s a fast and entertaining read, and I guarantee you’ll finish inspired.

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The IndieReader Discovery Award for Nonfiction

The Workplace Writer’s Process wins second place in the overall non-fiction category for the 2018 IndieReader Discovery Awards!

Of all of the books submitted, the judges choose three fiction and nonfiction entries for special recognition. The Workplace Writer’s Process came in second in the overall nonfiction category.

Check out the book here.

 

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Catching a Flood of Writing Ideas

How do you cope when writing ideas rain down faster than you can catch them? How do handle a creative Muse that delivers batches of writing ideas at inopportune times, like packages that pile up on your doorstep while you’re on vacation?

Like summer fruit, inspiration can spoil if left unattended too long.

The Creative Writer’s Challenge

Sometimes inspiration hides from writers, other times it comes all at once. While this may seem like a good problem to have, when you’re in the midst of the flood, it can be overwhelming.

My new friend Peri described the situation as follows:

“I awakened this morning after a night of fitful coughing, vowing that I would surrender to the demands of a miserable cold and just rest. Moments later, I got up to drink some water and got caught in a rainstorm. Ideas were pelting me so hard and fast that I couldn’t capture them all for a morning free write or the so-called future (sometimes aka ‘never’) file.”

Although these downpours are rare for me, I understand her problem. My personal Muse likes to pipe up with ideas at awkward times, like:

5am in the morning, when I need another two hours of sleep
While I’m in the shower
During a long drive

The problem isn’t having too many ideas – it’s retrieving them later, when you’re ready to write.

How do you store those ideas so they are available later?

The standard advice is to carry around a notebook or use a note application on your phone. It’s good advice, as far as it goes. But sometimes, those little reminders you make for yourself aren’t enough. As Peri writes,

“Sometime the notes I jot down are vague or strange, and I have no idea how to return to the particular and nuanced threads my busy brain was following.”

Yep – I’ve been known to scribble words on paper, only to be completely mystified by them a few days later.

The half-life of a creative spark is remarkably short.

Here are a few ideas for preserving your creative inspiration.

Capture the Outside Details

Writing down a single word or two may not be enough to restore the full inspired idea to your head. Memory doesn’t work that way.

According to Benedict Cary, author of How We Learn:

“The brain does not store facts, ideas, and experiences like a computer does, as a file that is clicked open, always displaying the identical image. It embeds them in networks of perceptions, facts, and thoughts, slightly different combinations of which bubble up each time.”

Take advantage of those networks of perceptions to retrieve the memory of the idea. When jotting down the bones of the idea, also note other things about the context in which it occurred. Where were you when you thought of this idea? How did you feel? What other things had you been thinking about or working on?

These contextual details may help you retrieve the complete idea later. If nothing else, they can put you back into a similar state of mind.

Use a Voice Recording

Instead of writing your insight down, turn on the recorder on your phone and talk about. Dedicate one minute to capturing the thought. You will probably record more detail and structure than you would simply writing down a few words.

As a bonus, talking through the concept before you put it aside makes the memory of it easier to retrieve.

Change Your Surroundings

Creative insights are the products of associative thought processes that link disconnected things. You may need to get into a similar state of mind to recall the entire concept.

When sitting at the desk in “hard work” mode, you’re in a different mindset than you were when you came up with the thought. So change it up. If your scribbled notes leave you cold, try changing your environment.

Get away from the office. If it’s convenient, return to the activity you were doing when you first got the idea. Otherwise, take a walk. Put your mind in a state of open attention while gently pondering the words or idea.

Be patient, but don’t wait too long to do this.

The research on learning shows that even when we try to memorize something, it fades pretty quickly – a day or two for your first exposure to a fact.

Even if you write down a word or two, don’t rely on those notes for too long. That leads me to the next idea:

The Daily Writing Practice

Here’s another reason to have a committed practice of writing each day – you can use the regular session to write down and explore those bits of inspiration that popped up since the last time, or to explore the results of a flood of creativity.

You may find that some of the ideas that seemed brilliant are not worth pursuing. That’s okay. The act of working through them reminds your creative self to keep the flow of ideas coming.

Related Posts

How We Learn: A Book Review

Video: Saving Your Best Ideas for Later

Managing the Muse

 

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Finding Your Revision Groove (and Staying Sane)

Revision – people love it, people hate it. They forget to leave time for it, or get stuck in it forever. Revising and self-editing can bring out a writer’s worst qualities:

Perfectionism: It’s never quite good enough to show people.
The imposter syndrome: Who am I to write about this topic? What was I thinking?
Impatience: Who has time for revision?
Irrational exuberance: It’s brilliant in the first draft, I’m done.
Boredom: If I look at this one more time, I’m going to scream.

When revising a lengthy work (like, say, a book), you might experience all of these mental states, occasionally at the same time. It’s enough to drive you nuts, or to keep you from doing the revision work that your writing needs.

I think I’ve finally figured out the secret of staying sane in this process: divide and conquer.

The Cycles of Self-Revision

Like writing, revision can overwhelm you when you try to do it all at once. Compartmentalizing keeps you sane.

In The Writer’s Process, and in my course on Revising Your Writing, I extol the virtues of revising from the outside in, dividing the process into several phases:

Start with the big-picture, structural revision – does this piece meet its objectives? Is it missing something important, or do you need to cut parts? Cutting is often the first and most important work of revision.
Next, read the piece front to back for the reader’s flow. Fix anything confusing, fill in any gaps, and structure the sentences to reduce the reader’s cognitive load.
Next, revise for writing style, to achieve the tone you want.
Improve word choice, if you have the time, replacing lame verbs with stronger ones.
Finally, proofread.*

Revising in this way makes the most efficient use of your time. You don’t spend time polishing words that you later cut. But while revising my latest book, I realized the more valuable benefit of this approach: sanity.

Why Revising in Phases Keeps You Sane

When I’m revising one of my books, I alternate between thinking Hey, this is great, and Oh no, this is lame.

Reality lies somewhere in the middle. The draft may be messy, but it has merit and will improve through revision — if I do the work.

If you’re like me, you may feel similar mood fluctuations when working on a long or important piece of writing. Having a revision plan offers protection from these mental extremes.

Resisting the pull of the negative

While you may banish your inner critic during drafting, it comes back in full force during revision. You need that critical eye to guide you to make the work better. But it can go too far.

Dividing the  the revision process into phases keeps that inner critic strictly under control, because it only gets to pick apart one aspect of the work at at time – the content, the flow, the tone/style, the word choice, etc.

If you’re doing the first read-through of your work and hear the inner critic harping on about boring sentence structures, say to yourself I’ll fix those in the second pass. Right now I’m looking at the big picture. Make a note of things to correct in the next pass. This helps.

Resisting impatience

When you feel irrationally pleased with the draft or impatient to be done, you may be tempted to skip self-editing altogether. Again, having a plan ensures that you don’t bypass essential revision work because you are, momentarily, thrilled with the words. You can tell yourself, If it’s good now, think of how much better it will be with a few editing passes. 

Letting the work go

If you have a hard time letting go of your work, a revision plan may give you the courage to publish. Once you’ve done the requisite number of passes, the work is probably good enough. It’s time to move on to something else.

I’ve sketched out my basic revision plan above, but you’ll need to decide what goes into your personal revision plan. Perhaps you’ll do one read-through for flow, another to seek and destroy the writing mannerisms that bother you, a third to add stronger verbs, and a final proofing. The number of passes the work needs depends on what you’re revising.

Whatever your revision plan looks like, try it out. Create a checklist and work through it. It will keep your focus solidly on the words, not yourself.

*Note to authors: For my book manuscripts, I also engage a professional copy editor and proofreader after doing the revision and self-editing steps above. That takes pressure of the revision process, while putting more attentive eyes on the draft.

Related Posts

Two Reasons Not to Revise as you Draft

Revision and the Art of Letting Go

Revising Your Writing: An Online Course

 

 

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Why GDPR Is Good for Subscription Marketers: May Updates

 

Welcome to the May 2018 Subscription Marketing update. The main topic this month is, of course, GDPR.

Why GDPR is good for subscription marketers

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, May 25 is the implementation data for the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It’s the reason for the flood of notices in your inbox saying “We’ve updated our privacy policy.”

In many ways this policy is good news for subscription marketers, as it requires businesses to be more transparent about how they’re collecting information and what they’re doing with it.

Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners makes a compelling argument that GDPR simply puts an end to “generally dickish practices” in marketing. Read it on the the Velocity Partners blog.

Subscription marketing success, remember, is built on trust. By enforcing transparency and good practices, and taking aim at those who abuse customer information, this regulation is going to reinforce trust.

On a related note … I’ve updated my privacy policy

Some of you are in Europe and beyond, so I’ve updated my privacy policy to (I hope) comply with the gist of the regulation. Here’s the link to the Privacy policy (also found in the About menu on my site.)

Consider yourself notified!

The latest Amazon delivery vehicle is … your car?

In a move to get ever closer to the customer, Amazon will now deliver to your car. Seriously. Read up on Amazon Key: In-Car delivery. Or, watch this video:

Amazon Key already had an option for opening your front door, now it can unlock your car trunk. These services aim to defeat the package thieves who grab deliveries left on doorsteps.

Does anyone else find this slightly disturbing? I realize that a successful subscription is built on trust, but does this take “trust us” too far? Everyone will answer that question differently.

If the potential for Amazon’s intrusion into your life disturbs you, I suggest you do not read this New York Times article about the Amazon Echo (and other home speakers) acting on stealthy voice commands that you cannot here.

Subscription pricing is hard

Pricing can make or break subscription success.  Getting it right is tough. Here are a few resources you might find helpful:

The CXL blog has a comprehensive post on different models for pricing subscription products.
OpenView Ventures has updated its SaaS Pricing Resource Guide.
Don’t forget the revolutionary FairPay model, by which subscriber negotiates a fair price with the provider. Learn more on Richard Reisman’s blog, the FairPay Zone.

How Amazon raises prices

If you think pricing is tough, try raising prices! Current subscribers will never be happy with a price increase – they may feel like they’re losing something. You’ve got to counteract that.

Amazon is upping the price of its Prime Membership (its main subscription offering) from $99 to $119. As a Prime member, I got the email about it and must say, the company is once again modeling effective subscription marketing practices.

The email did two things:

It notified me of the increase six months in advance. So, Amazon isn’t trying to sneak an increase past anyone. They now have six months to convince me of the higher value. Also, from a cognitive science aspect, the advance warning separates the “pain” of the price increase from the decision to renew.
The email reminded me of the value that Amazon is constantly adding to the Prime subscription:

“We have expanded Prime Free Same-Day and Prime Free One-Day delivery to more than 8,000 cities and towns and we will keep expanding. The number of items eligible for free two-day shipping increased in recent years from 20 million to more than 100 million items. Members also enjoy unlimited streaming access to millions of songs and thousands of movies and TV shows, including popular and award-winning Prime Originals.”

If you need to raise prices:

Add value before raising prices
Let people know in advance rather than surprising them at renewal time
Remind subscribers of the added value

If you’d like to get this monthly update in your email, sign up below.

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Boredom and Creativity: A Review of Bored and Brilliant

The Short Version

If you’re a writer, you probably realize that your best ideas pop up during unstructured time, when your mind wanders. In Bored and Brilliant, Manoush Zomorodi offers a seven-day challenge to detach yourself from your devices, so that you can experience boredom and its companion, creativity. Read the book and take the challenge – it may inspire you to make room for creative mind wandering in your life.

This is yet another in a series of reviews of Books for Writers – books that are not, ostensibly, about writing, yet offer important insights into the practice or craft. 

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The Long Version

Dang, I need more boredom in my life.

That’s what I came away with after reading Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi. She sold me with the subtitle: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self.

I’m a big fan of the wandering mind. In The Writer’s Process, I wrote about the importance of finding periods of open attention, when your Muse can make itself heard, accessing brain cycles for nonlinear thought. That open attention happens when we have nothing else going on – in other words, when we risk being bored.

As Zomorodi points out in her book, we rarely let ourselves get bored anymore. Our time for open attention is, for the most part, consumed by technology. Instead of allowing ourselves to space out at the gym, we listen to podcasts. (Guilty!) Instead of waiting quietly for the dentist, we check our phones. In the car, on the plane, waiting in line … you get the idea.

Why does this matter? Because it’s in those unoccupied spaces that we hear our inner thoughts and discover new ideas. Zomorodi writes, “Boredom is the gateway to mind-wandering, which helps our brains create those new connections that can solve anything from planning dinner to a breakthrough in combating global warming.”

The Challenge

Manoush Zomorodi is the host of the WNYC’s podcast Note to Self. In 2015, she crafted a seven-day Bored and Brilliant Project. Each day, listeners were challenged to detach from technology and embrace boredom. More than 20,000 people took the challenge. For many listeners, the results were transformative. She writes about the project, and repeats the challenges, in this book.

Let’s be clear – these aren’t Herculean tasks. She’s not suggesting a fifteen-day digital detox. One challenge is simply to observe yourself using your devices. Another is keeping your devices out of reach while you are in motion. Another: a day without taking a picture. Easy enough, right?

I started out pretty smug, as I have tried to lessen my dependence on my phone. Still, on day one, I realized that I check email WAYYYY too often. Even if some days are easy, others may surprise you.

Why This Matters

For writers, creating time for your mind to wander feeds your Muse, your creativity. Yet the payoff extends beyond writing. Reclaiming a little boredom or time off infuses a certain sense of slowness in our days, opens up possibilities for noticing things. As Zomorodi writes,

“We crave reflective time; we seek balance; we want a life full of joy and curiosity.”

Indeed. Read the book, take the challenge. The next time you feel slightly bored, instead of reaching for your phone, you may start smiling.

Other “Books for Writers” Reviews

How We Talk by N.J. Enfield

When by Daniel Pink

How We Learn by Benedict Carey

Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray

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A Fresh Take on Networking: Friend of a Friend

Short Version

Friend of a Friend by David Burkus is a fresh, research-driven book that will change the way you approach business networking for the better. Grounded in network theory, the book bypasses traditional “how to network” advice with discussions of hidden networks, super connectors, silos, and structural gaps. It offers practical guidance on becoming a more valuable member of your existing, often unseen, networks.

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Long version

First, a little backstory. I’ve been a fan of David Burkus since reading his book The Myths of Creativity, which I referenced in The Writer’s Process. He wrote a testimonial for my book, which made me even a bigger fan.

Last fall year, David ran a book promotion, giving away a bundle of networking books.

Always interested in book promotion strategies, I entered the giveaway and to my great surprise won. (Because the giveaway was run by a separate service, I imagine David was as surprised as I was.) An enormous box of networking books appeared on my doorstep. This photo shows you of most (but not all) of them:

I started reading through the stack with the thought that I’d do a blog review series. It may yet happen, but to be honest, I ran out of steam. They started running together in my head, despite my taking notes. Really, the whole “business networking” topic seemed like it was pretty well covered.

Thank heavens, I was wrong.

With Friend of a Friend, David Burkus takes a different approach. This book isn’t about working the room or eating meals with other people. No, it’s right up my research-geeky alley. It starts with network theory, elaborates with research, and then concludes each section with practical and inspiring advice.

Seriously, this is the networking book that even introverted geeks can enjoy.

Without recapping the book, here are a few of the things you’ll learn:

How (and why) to fill the structural holes in our networks
Why silos aren’t all bad
The strength of multiplex relationships – or why personal ties and interests often lead to business relationships
The power of weak ties – the ‘friends of friends’
How to create the illusion of the majority (something I’m going to work at when I publish my next book!)
Why the most valuable people in a network aren’t the most connected ones, but those who span different networks

This quote, from the end of the book, summarizes the unique perspective of the book:

We don’t have a network; rather, we’re embedded inside a massive network that we must learn to navigate.

This book is a great guide to navigating the networks in which we all participate.

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Tips for a Writing Style Makeover

The revision process is like a beauty makeover for your writing – it turns awkward, ungainly words into elegant prose. If you’re not happy with your writing, you can repair it in revision.

Like a good make-up artist, you need to understand what you’re starting with and where you want to go. Do you want to make the writing livelier? Clearer? More or less formal?

Understand Your Starting Point

“We are trapped by our unconscious styles if we cannot recognize them as styles.” -Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner, Clear and Simple as the Truth

Everything you write has a style, which the reader interprets as the tone of the work. See my post on voice, tone, and style for useful working definitions of these terms.

Some writers deploy distinct styles intentionally, based on the situation. For many people, their default writing style is an unconscious combination of the way their brains work and writing techniques learned over time.

Your default writing style isn’t your destiny – you can change it in revision, if you know what to look for.

The Key Ingredients of the Makeover

You can spend all day tinkering with the style of your writing, but few of us have that time. So, it helps to know which things have the biggest impact. In my opinion, minor changes to the following aspects can result in major shifts in tone:

Paragraph length: The reader forms an impression merely from the visual impact of the text. The simple act of breaking up long paragraphs into multiple smaller ones can change the perceived tone of your writing. Paragraph length is particularly relevant to online reading.

Sentence length and complexity: Long, multi-clause sentences have their place in writing. If you string too many of these together, your writing will become denser and difficult to get through. Breaking up a few long sentences can lighten the overall feel of the prose.

Use of contractions. Using contractions (don’t, wasn’t) instead of spelling them out saves you word count while introducing a smidge of informality.

Point of view: Do you refer to the reader in the second person (you) or in the distant third person (customers, readers, whatever). Do you speak for yourself or your business in the first person (I or we), or stay hidden behind a third-person name (the author, the business)? Typically, the third person feels more formal.

Formatting constructs: Formatting decisions like bulleted lists and subheadings change the way the reader perceives and navigates the text.

Grammatical precision: How strictly do you adhere to the grammatical conventions drummed into your head in grade school? Do you ever use a preposition to end a sentence with? And would you dream of starting a sentence with a conjunction like but or and? Taking a few, calculated liberties with the strictest grammar conventions can generate major shift in tone.

Let’s see how you can put this to work in your own style makeover.

Quick Makeovers For Prose

Let’s say you’ve written something and you want to adjust the style quickly. Experiment with the factors described above to adjust the resulting tone.

Making the writing less formal, more conversational

If your writing style tends toward the academic and you want to be more conversational, try the following:

Vary sentence length.
Keep paragraphs relatively short.
Use contractions.
Replace semicolons wish dashes – like this.
Use the first- and second-person. Refer to yourself in the first-person and the reader as you. That’s what you would do in conversation.

Writing for utmost clarity

When you need to be crystal clear, make the following revisions to your writing.

Use short paragraphs, with one major idea per paragraph.
Use short sentences. Don’t combine multiple points in one sentence.
Translate long paragraph-based lists into bulleted lists.
Use subheads to guide the skimming reader.

Achieving an edgier tone

If you want to project a confident or edgy attitude, start with the guidelines for a conversational tone, then try the following:

Isolate important, emphatic points as one-sentence paragraphs.
Take occasional liberties with grammar. Use sentence fragments to catch attention. Like this.
Search out boring verbs and replace them with unexpected, active ones. For example, you might change “succeed” to “conquer” or “own.” You get my drift.

Take a look at some of your favorite writers and see how they handle paragraph and sentence length, point of view, and others. Experiment.

For revision ideas, see my online class on Revising Your Writing.

 

 

 

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