Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 28

How to Talk about Tone, Style, and Voice in Writing

Tone, style, and voice – what do we mean by those words? Is it worth being accurate and distinguishing between them?

In the past, I’ve tended to use the words together, writing about “tone and style” although they are clearly different things.

So I started looking for more precise definitions.

Merriam-Webster Online is my go-to dictionary when writing, because I don’t have to find the physical dictionary and am less likely to become distracted by adjacent words. (I can spend a lot of time in a dictionary.)

In searching for a decent definition of tone in Merriam-Webster, what do I find? Style.

4 – style or manner of expression in speaking or writing

Okay, then what is style, relevant to writing?

Why not check The Chicago Manual of Style? One sits on my desk, its bright orange cover faded almost white along its spine. In addressing style, it covers writing mechanics and conventions from the structure of a book to the detailed questions of whether the footnote superscript appears inside or outside of punctuation.

So, style is all of this?

There are other camps. The book Clear and Simple as the Truth, by Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner, takes as its subject the concept of the classic style of prose. The authors describe this style as an amalgamation of attitude, approach, philosophy, and other attributes. There’s not a single mention of how to format footnotes in it.

Gah.

Here’s the problem: this vague overlap makes the whole issue of tone and style seem amorphous and difficult to control. How can I possibly manage tone and style in revision if I don’t even understand what I’m talking about?

For my own peace of mind, I decided to stake out a few practical definitions – ones that we can use in writing and revision. I started with three simple observations:

Some part of this equation is instinctive. Without giving it a lot of thought, you adjust your writing style automatically when drafting an email to a friend arranging a weekend dinner versus your manager asking for a raise. Somehow, you understand how to write to create a different effect and feeling.
Instinct is only the starting point – you can make changes in revision that have a major impact.
You don’t control everything; people may misinterpret what you write. Ultimately, what matters is what the reader perceives, not what you intend.

So, let’s create definitions that differentiate between what happens automatically in our writing, what others perceive, and what we can control in revision. Here’s my pass.

Voice Is Your Own

Your voice is how your thoughts appear in writing naturally – your writing voice is unique to the way that your brain assembles thoughts and words. Just as your loved ones can recognize your spoken voice, your written prose may bear your unmistakeable signature – at least in first drafts.

You don’t have a lot of control of your innate voice, but you can adjust it in revision.

Tone Belongs to the Reader

Let’s use the word tone to refer to the emotion or attitude projected by the writing, including:

The writer’s attitude toward the subject
The overall feeling the reader experiences while reading
The reader’s interpretation of the writer’s attitude toward the reader

Tone is decided during reading, not writing. It’s subjective – what matters is what the reader feels, not what the writer intends.

You may be excited about your topic, but if you ignore the reader’s needs and interests entirely, you may come across as condescending, pedantic, or boring – most likely not the tone you were hoping to achieve.

Style Controls Tone

Style is the amalgamation of writing techniques by which you communicate a desired tone. Style is the part that you can control, often in revision and editing. It includes everything from sentence structure and word choice to grammar conventions (and when to flout them.)

Putting this all together:

Your voice is the starting point, and is mostly out of your direct control when writing freely. However, you can influence voice by imagining the reader when you write and revise.

The tone is how the readers judge the writing – did it seem like a conversation? (See this post for my take on the conversational tone.) Was it hard to read? Was it formal or informal, exciting or dull?

Style refers to the means by which you achieve the desired tone, and includes everything from sentence structure and word choice to playing fast and loose with grammar. In a future post I’ll cover some of the ways to influence your tone in style.

What Do You Think?

I recognize that countless people have defined these terms, so my suggestions may be too little, too late. But I find them helpful in my own work, and share them in that spirit.

Let me know what you think.

If you’re interested in ways of tuning your tone through revision, see the course Revising Your Writing.

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Who’s Feeling Bullish about Subscriptions?

Welcome to April. It’s time for another subscription marketing update – and the Subscription Economy has been making the news lately.

Subscription IPOs are Well Subscribed (ooh, play on words!)

Zuora started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on April 12. While it’s too early to predict how the stock will do over the long run, this company is more attuned to the Subscription Economy than any business I know.

My favorite story of IPO day comes courtesy of Twitter. (I know, Twitter.)

Zuora understands that to drive the numbers, you must focus on people. Subscription revenue arises from human experience.

In other market news, Spotify (subscription music service) shook up the financial markets with its IPO, valuing the service at $30 billion. Always an innovator, Spotify didn’t use the IPO to raise capital; it merely listed existing shares on the market. Oh, and it announced that it has twice the number of paying subscribers as Apple Music.

Subscription E-Commerce Market Research from McKinsey

For some interesting trends into e-commerce subscriptions, check out the latest McKinsey survey:

More subscribers are women
Men are more likely to have three or more active subscriptions.
Everybody loves Amazon

McKinsey breaks down the core “Why” behind these subscriptions into three categories: replenishment, curation, and access. That’s an interesting way to think about the services you offer.

My favorite bit of advice is to focus on the experience: “Recommendations often trigger subscriptions, but consumers cancel services that don’t deliver a superior experience.”

Read more about the research here.

In Other News, There’s This New Business Model … 

An article in The Economist champions this exciting new development in business – subscribers.

In the context of all the other news about the growth of the Subscription Economy, and subscription-related IPOs, I can’t help but chuckle. The implication in the article is that the subscription model is uniquely American: “A first sign of trouble could be that there are not enough Americans to satisfy them all.”

Read the article here: Subscribers are the new, new thing in business

Procrastinators, Rejoice

It’s not too late to enter the Content Marketing Awards. (I’ll be judging, so let’s see some good stuff to inspire future posts!) The regular submission deadline is April 20, but you can sneak your entry in by the late date of April 27th.

Upcoming Subscription-Related Events

May 22, New York

Subscription Insider’s Payment Bootcamp

May 30-June 1

SUBTA’s Subscription Summit 2018 – My friend Robbie Kellman Baxter will be speaking at this subscription box conference.

 

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How We Talk: Another Book for Writers

The Short Version

How We Talk by N.J. Enfield, offers fascinating insight into human conversation across many languages. It’s valuable for authors who write dialogue and anyone who wants more insight into real-time communication.

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. 

The Long Version

I’ve always felt that the term “conversational writing style” was a misnomer. When we write in a conversational style, we’re trying to give the impression of a friendly conversation, but it’s written, not spoken. The two parties (writer and reader) aren’t present at the same time. Calling it conversational is a stretch.

Having read How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation, I think we may need to come up with an entirely different label for a conversational writing style.

[image error]N. J. Enfield illuminates the obvious, but ignored, importance of everything that goes into making human conversation work, including:

Small words that regulate traffic
Timing and responsiveness
Auditory clues to aid turn-taking
Unspoken but enforceable rules of conversation
Dynamic “repair” of misunderstandings

The importance of these nonverbal factors reinforces the idea that without another person, you cannot have true conversation. Enfield writes of conversation as “an improvised duet.” The book will teach you to marvel at the wonders of human language and cooperation.

Here are a few of the key points you might find useful or entertaining, particularly if you dream of creating realistic dialogue in your writing.

Timing Is Everything

The average time it takes to respond to someone’s question is about 200 milliseconds. The only way we can get there this quickly is if we anticipate the end of the other person’s question while composing a response.

That 200 millisecond average includes variability on either side – sometimes the response arrives at the same time as the end of the question. In most cases, this doesn’t appear to be an interruption, so much as fluid conversation.

“Even the simplest conversation is a collaborative and precision-timed achievement by the people involved,” writes Enfield. Conversation is as much music as speech.

It’s hard to get that timing in written dialog, although you could influence the perception of timing through word choice.

Also, any pause longer than a second after a question carries the heavy implication of a negative answer. How do you do that in prose?

Aside: Aha! This is why podcast interviews and phone interviews can seem awkward. We want them to feel like conversations, yet we also want to avoid mid-air collisions and talking over each other. So, the timing is a little wonky.

Real Conversation Is Messy from a Writing Perspective

The book is filled with illustrative extracts of conversations from Enfield’s extensive research. Not a single one would make the cut in an edited work of fiction. No one wants to read through that.

Our conversation is stuff with verbal fillers and traffic signals (go on, uh-huh, huh?, um.) We rarely speak in complete, grammatically correct sentences. We repeat or correct ourselves, often in as a result of responses or silence from others.

This stuff is boring to wade through in print, but vital in real life.

Don’t be accurate when writing conversation.

If you’re a fiction writer doing dialog, please, don’t use this information to write truly realistic dialogue. However, you might gain insights into how to make your dialogue sound more authentic.

For all of you who like to dictate your way to a conversational style: Be careful if you record yourself talking. This might help you get to a rough first draft, but then edit, edit, edit. Reading and listening are entirely different things.

Storytellers Need Engaged Listeners

The book shares research about what happens when people are asked to tell a story, and their listeners are instructed to secretly do something else (like count the words beginning with the letter T.)

A disengaged listener has a devastating effect on storytelling.

In describing the study, Enfield writes, “Distracted listeners couldn’t produce the normal subtle cues that listeners should produce. This had a direct effect on the behavior of the people who were narrating their stories. They became less fluent. They doubled back and repeated themselves.”

For writers: If you’re writing a story, you have no listener at all. You’re fighting against your natural instincts of looking to the listener for feedback and responses. It’s probably best to try out your stories on real people, or to at least imagine an engaged, inquisitive listener.

Other Fun Facts About Conversation

Here are a few insights about the unspoken rules and behaviors of human conversation:

The average time it takes to respond to a question is about 200 milliseconds – with little variability across languages
There’s a longer delay before a negative response to a question than a positive one
We tend to interpret the lack of a response to a question as negative
On average, every 84 seconds, someone says “huh” or “what?” or something to check or correct the other participant
One out of every 60 words uttered is “um” or “uh”
Uh and Um are both ways to signal a pause – a pause following the word um tends to be longer)

If you’re interested in language and conversation, check out the book. You’ll think differently not only about writing with a “conversational” tone, but also about the actual conversations you have during the day.

Related Posts

When by Daniel Pink

How We Learn by Benedict Carey

Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray

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Recovering from Destructive Writing Feedback

Accepting edits, feedback, and constructive criticism of our writing can be uncomfortable – but to grow as writers, we need to be open to changes that improve the writing. That’s how we work on our craft.

Sometimes, however, feedback doesn’t serve the reader or make the work better. Instead, it targets the writer, shaking their confidence and inhibiting creativity. The effects of this feedback may linger long after the critic is gone.

The Lasting Damage of Misdirected Feedback

I regularly ask people about their writing challenges. A few people share with me stories of carrying around the negative, diminishing comments of thoughtless critics from their past.

A workplace writer tells the tale of supervisor at work so scathing and “snarky” about her writing that she eventually left the job, beaten down. Although she now has a successful writing career, “the experience haunts me to this day,” she writes.
A fiction writer hears the voice of a writing coach from his past saying that his stories were “beneath him.” That must help when setting out to write a novel.

My blood boils when I hear these stories. These people abused their positions of power (the supervisor) or trust (a coach).

Reviewers or editors should have their own hippocratic oath: First, do no harm to the writer.

Both stories come from professional writers. They are still writing, with success. No dents or scrapes are visible to the outside world. But these comments from the past hold them back and cause them pain.

These individuals are strong enough to get through it. Other writers may not be so lucky.

How to Handle Destructive Feedback

Many of us have heard this kind of feedback, whether about our writing or some other creative endeavor. You’re no good at this. Don’t give up your day job.

How do we recover from it and keep writing?

On hearing their stories, my first instinct was anger. A supervisor who belittles and demeans employees doesn’t deserve the position. A writing coach who sits in judgment on stories (rather than the execution of them) should reconsider careers.

My second instinct was to argue the facts of the situations. Your stories are fun and told well. Your business writing is clear and effective.

But neither anger nor logic would have much of an effect. The writers had already tried these approaches, and still wrestled with the cloud of negativity. The beast remains on their backs.

It turns out that human beings aren’t entirely rational beings – who knew? We cannot be persuaded of emotional truths by reason alone.

These writers don’t need more positive feedback. They need to change their own narratives. And happily, they have the skills to do that – with writing.

Writing Our Way Out of Problems

We are the stories we tell ourselves.

That’s not merely a profound saying – it’s cognitive reality. Our minds create narratives, which we inhabit. We can use fact that to our advantage.

In 1986, James Pennebaker demonstrated a link between writing about traumatic experiences and physical health.  This evolved into the practice of expressive writing, in which people write about traumatic event for four days in a row, about 20 minutes at a time, to process the event, with remarkable results.

The idea isn’t just to stew on the trauma or wrong. That would be ruminating, which is never healthy.

No, the idea behind expressive writing is to construct the narrative around the event. (For details on the method, see the book Expressive Writing: Words That Heal by Pennebaker and John Evans.)

So, could this kind of expressive writing work for writers who are carrying around the after-effects of destructive feedback?

Rewrite Your Story

Olivia Fox Cabane offers an exercise in her book The Charisma Myth that seems like a simplified version of the expressive writing exercise. Try it yourself if you’re carrying around resentment from someone’s harsh or painful words:

Write a letter to the person who has wronged you with destructive feedback. Outline everything you’d say to them about what happened and how you felt. Don’t send it. You might rewrite the letter for two or three days, if that’s what it takes to gather your thoughts on the situation.
Next, write a responding letter from that person to you, with everything you wish they would say in it. Go ahead, give yourself a full and complete apology.
Read through both letters, in sequence. Does it change the way you feel about the situation?

Now you’ve changed the narrative of this experience, writing a different story in which your wrong has been redressed. Even though your logical mind knows that it’s fiction, the emotional part of you may feel satisfied. It sounds crazy, I know. But human beings are kind of crazy.

Although you may still hear the negative critic in your head when facing a new project (and don’t we all), that critic’s voice won’t have the power of resentment or anger behind it. It will be one more bothersome gnat that you can swat away, to get back to writing.

Related Posts

How to Give Effective Writing Feedback

Shut Your Monkey: A Book to Keep You Writing

 

 

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Press Release: Foreword INDIES Awards Finalist

MARCH 23, 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: CUESTA PARK CONSULTING

INFO@ANNEJANZER.COM

 

The Workplace Writer’s Process Named 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist

Recognizing the Role of Writing in Career Success

[Mountain View, CA]—Cuesta Park Consulting & Publishing is pleased to announce that THE WORKPLACE WRITER’S PROCESS has been recognized as a finalist in the 20th annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.

In a business environment in which people are expected to blog, post, and write on behalf of their businesses, effective written communication skills are more valuable than ever. The Workplace Writer’s Process offers concrete advice for people who write in a workplace situation, whether as the sole writer in a group or one among a team. The book is a finalist in the “Career” category.

“People who can communicate effectively will go further in their careers – yet so many people struggle with problems writing on the job. This book aims to correct that, by providing proven processes for the working writer,” said Anne Janzer, author and publisher. Cuesta Park Consulting also offers a companion book about the inner process of writing, titled The Writer’s Process: Getting Your Brain in Gear.

As part of its mission to discover, review, and share the best books from university and independent publishers (and authors), independent media company Foreword Magazine, Inc. hosts its annual awards program each year. Finalists represent the best books published in 2017. After more than 2,000 individual titles spread across 65 genres were submitted for consideration, the list of finalists was determined by Foreword’s editorial team. Winners will be decided by an expert team of booksellers and librarians—representing Foreword’s readership—from across the country.

The complete list of finalists can be found at:

https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/finalists/2017/

“Choosing finalists for the INDIES is always the highlight of our year, but the job is very difficult due to the high quality of submissions,” said Victoria Sutherland, founder/publisher of Foreword Reviews. “Each new book award season proves again how independent publishers are the real innovators in the industry.”

Winners in each genre—along with Editor’s Choice Prize winners and Foreword’s INDIE Publisher of the Year—will be announced June 15, 2018.

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About Cuesta Park Consulting & Publishing publishes books and online courses for writers and marketing professionals. Books are available in print, ebook, and audiobook formats from a wide range of retailers. For more information, visit AnneJanzer.com.

About Foreword: Founded in 1998, Foreword Magazine, Inc. is the only media company completely devoted to independent publishing. Publishers of a Folio: award-winning bi-monthly print review journal, special interest products, and daily online content feeds, Foreword exclusively covers university and independent (non “Big 5”) publishers, the books they publish, and their authors. Foreword is based in Traverse City, Michigan, USA, with staff based around the world.

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The Curse of Purpose: Writing with Too Much Passion

A local news broadcast the other night showed a clip of a woman being dragged away from the audience at an event discussing immigration. It looked like she was given the floor to pose a question, and then launched into a diatribe that led to her removal.

The debate over immigration is heated, and the current administration draws many protests in California. So, there was nothing surprising about this news clip. But, it got me thinking about effective communication strategies.

Writing lessons can be found everywhere – even on the nightly news.

Could this have played out differently? What might have happened if she had attempted to pose a thoughtful question, rather than shout an opinion?

I don’t question the woman’s commitment, her passion about the cause, her right to speak, or her values. But in that moment she chose protest over dialog. She forfeited effective communication – knowingly or not – because of the strength of her passion about the subject.

If her goal was to change anyone’s mind, or even to spark reasoned debate, she did not succeed.

The moment encapsulated the reality of communication presented in the name of “public debate” that never manages to get past the surrounding group of people who agree with us, or to penetrate people that hold different, or unformed, opinions.

In some situations, passion interferes with effective communication.

The Curse of Purpose

By all means, write about the subjects that matter to you. But when dealing with topics near and dear to you, be careful.

Too much passion can make your writing less effective.

A previous post here, Finding Purpose Through Writing, discussed what to do if you didn’t have a strong sense of purpose driving your writing.

This post is the necessary companion to the first. It’s about what happens when you approach your writing with too much passion, or when your sense of purpose overrides your understanding of the reader.

I call this the Curse of Purpose – and you can see it all around you.

The Curse of Purpose is my (admittedly made-up) counterpart to the Curse of Knowledge – a cognitive bias in which we assume that other people know the same things we do.

The Curse of Purpose happens when we assume that our audience shares the same general values or ideals that we do, the same sense of purpose.

When we suffer from the Curse of Purpose, we believe that all we have to do is remind people of a cause – the suffering of animals, destruction of the coral reef, or unfairness of a particularly policy – and they will immediately embody the same feelings as we do.

The world doesn’t work this way.

When you do a frontal assault on purpose and your reader does not already agree with you, you can do more damage than good.

The strength of your commitment to a purpose can shut down your compassion for the reader. You can become so intently focused on the subject of your writing that you forget its object – the person with whom you want to communicate.

Do You Want to Cause Change?

Effective communication requires two parties: the writer and the reader. If you don’t penetrate the reader’s attention or understanding, you won’t be effective, no matter how passionate you are.

There’s a place for impassioned writing. Use it to inspire those who already agree with you.

When you need to reach beyond your existing crew, temper purpose with compassion for your reader. Take a deep breath and look at the world from your reader’s perspective, if you dare. Then find a way to balance your beliefs and excitement with the reader’s needs.

If you truly want to make a difference, write with compassion for your reader as well as your purpose.

Related Posts

Three Reasons It’s Hard to Write for Your Audience

Finding Purpose Through Writing

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Subscription Marketing: March, Women, and the Amazon Masterclass

Women Get a Seat at the Subscription Table (from #WOCinTech Chat)

Welcome to the March issue of this Subscription Marketing update.

So much happens in March – March Madness, the Ides of March, Daylight Savings Time (in the US), St. Patrick’s Day, the first day of Spring … the thematic possibility are almost endless.

We have to pick one, so let’s focus on women, because March is Women’s History Month and the month of International Women’s Day (now past.) It’s not a random connection – if you pay attention, women are all over this subscription business model trend.

Women as subscription entrepreneurs

Have you noticed that many of the subscription box businesses are founded or co-founded by women? To name a few of the big ones: StitchFix, Birch Box, FabFitFun, Ipsy …

Perhaps it’s because this model is bootstrap-friendly, letting businesses get off the ground and prove themselves without outside capital. If you don’t have the same access to capital as the other gender, then you look for alternatives.

OpenView Ventures has an interesting article on the subject: Propagated by the System: Why Faulty Models Could Be Keeping Women Out of Tech Leadership Roles. As an investment company, OpenView is trying to do something different. And a growing class of VC firms and angel groups led by women are actively working to support women founders, including BBG Ventures, Female Founders Fund, and more. (See a list here.)

If you’re looking for an optimistic assessment of the future of women in tech, check out the book Geek Girl Rising by Samantha Walraven and Heather Cabot. The paperback comes out May 1 – timely in this #MeToo spring.

What’s Amazon up to lately?

I like to say that we’re all enrolled in masterclass in subscription marketing, and Amazon is the schooling us. So, let’s keep an eye on what they’re doing. Here are a few things I’ve noticed:

Upping the “customer success” pressure for Prime users. My son is an Amazon prime member who has the temerity not to watch Prime streaming videos. Amazon has started sending him letters in the mail.

Read my blog post on LinkedIn: How Far Do You Go to Nurture Value.

Prime Samples. One of the problems with buying consumables online is the risk – if you don’t like them, you’re out of luck. Amazon Prime Samples addresses that problem while adding value to the Prime subscription. Prime members can purchase individual samples or boxes of samples, and the cost of the sample is applied as a credit to your future purchase. See the Samples home page.

Discounted membership for Medicaid recipients. Amazon goes after lower-income households (and Walmart?) by offering discounted Prime memberships to Medicaid recipients.

Whole Foods delivery. I’m in the Bay Area, and Amazon just sent me an offer to get my groceries delivered. And so the Amazonification of Whole Foods continues!

These are a few lessons we can draw from Amazon’s continuing masterclass:

It’s worth investing in increasing the value your customers experience from the subscription.
Be creative about using subscriptions to drive non-subscription sales (Amazon Sample, Whole Foods)
Search out new markets with tiered pricing

Subscription boxes appropriate for March

The subscription box for female entrepreneurs: Female entrepreneurs have to support each other, so Sacha Pinto started FEoNA BOX, which stands for  Female Entrepreneurs of North America. The box includes everything from self-care items (skincare, snacks) to books, business worksheets, planners, and discounts to services like coaching and webinars. It’s a fascinating idea!

Subscription Irish Whiskey: In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we cannot neglect the Celtic Whiskey Club – subscription Irish Whiskey.

Podcasts (something else you can subscribe to)

Everyone’s starting podcasts lately. Here are a few that I’m listening to:

Daniel Pink’s 1-3-20 Podcast (Hubspot-sponsored). Each episode profiles one book, three questions for the author, in 20 minutes. And it’s hosted by one of my favorite authors. 1-3-20 Podcast

OpenView BUILD Podcast: If Software-as-a-Service is your game, tune in to OpenView Venture’s new podcast, BUILD. The first four episodes cover a wide range of important topics, including storytelling (Episode 4).

Duct Tape Marketing – John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame has long been an advocate of nurturing customers after the sale, to build and sustain business growth. So, we had a lovely conversation when he invited me to join him on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast to talk about How to Tap Into the Subscription Economy.

Give it a listen here.

Upcoming Subscription-Related Events

Wednesday, April 11th

Retention Point – a Web Seminar from SubscriptionInsider

How to help members reach the “retention point” – the point at which they remain. This shoudl have some great advice.

May 30-June 1, Denver Colorado

Subscription Summit

This is the big Subscription Box conference – growing wildly each year. If you’re at all interested in subscription boxes, this is the place to be.

That’s all for March – I can hardly wait to see what April brings!

–

Image via #WOCinTech Chat

There’s an Amazon affiliate link in here for the book.

 

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Finding Purpose Through Writing

Follow your passion.

That advice is thrown around like beads at Mardi Gras. But catching the passion – well, that can be much trickier.

The advice is not terribly helpful. Worse, it makes people feel like they are somehow empty, meaningless beings if they don’t know what their passion is.

If the lack of ‘passion’ is keeping you from writing, then that’s something we should address.

“I lack passion”

I ask new subscribers to my Writing Practices email list to send me their writing challenges. One honest subscriber responded with this.

“I have plenty of time, plenty of ideas. However, I lack passion. There’s no energy, no sense of making a difference.”

Plenty of ideas but no passion! Let’s dig into this problem for a moment, because I suspect many of us may have felt it at some point.

Passion By Any Other Name

In the context of writing, passion might mean many things:

A sense of purpose (my writing makes a difference)
Sheer love of the thing that you’re doing (if I don’t write, I’ll explode)
Excitement about the subject (this subject gets me fired up)

I think that my subscriber meant #1 – the sense of purpose. She wanted to do writing that had meaning to the world, that made a difference.

Don’t we all?

Create your own passion and purpose.

Making a difference on a global scale may be out of the realm of possibility for most of us. But making a difference in another person’s life, touching a reader, offering a moment of insight or transcendence? That’s within reach.

You’ll never discover those possibilities unless you dive into the work.

To Find Your Reason, Write

Like inspiration, a sense of purpose or passion doesn’t usually descend on us while we’re sitting on the couch. It arrives once we are involved in the work and begin to see its possibilities.

Waiting for passion to strike is a fool’s game. Passion for your writing is discovered and cultivated.

Action triggers passion. Work reveals purpose.

Find an Other-Focused Purpose

As you dive into the writing, focus on the ideal reader for your work.

Focusing on the reader keeps me going when the work is tough – and always makes the end result better.

If you’re writing fiction, imagine a reader who would love reading what you’re writing, or feel  a connection with the story.
If you’re writing nonfiction, what problems are you trying to solve? Why is someone going to read what you offer? How can you help someone?

Find a greater good beyond yourself that you can serving with your writing. It makes your writing better while delivering much-needed motivation.

A Purpose Exercise

If you lack a sense of purpose, try this: Write every day for 30 days.

You don’t have to publish your work, or polish and refine it. Commit to writing something – a draft of a blog post, part of a book, an idea for an article – every day for 30 days.

Some days will feel terrible. Other days you may feel a spark of inspiration. You might start to accumulate ideas. You may even find yourself getting excited about some of them.

If you find something interesting at the end of the first month, commit the next 30 days to developing the idea.

It’s okay if your focus shifts and changes. In fact, that probably will happen. Keep thinking about the readers you want to reach and what they need.

You get the idea. Start writing and see if you find something that gets you fired up, gives you a sense of purpose, or makes a difference.

Perhaps you’ll start to find joy in the learning and discovery of writing. Or when you share you words with others, you may discover that you can have an impact.

You’ll never know unless you’re writing.

Want to Share Your Writing Challenge?

Send me your writing challenge using the Contact form on this site. I can’t guarantee that I can solve your challenge, but I will try to propose a workaround. And maybe you’ll inspire another blog post that helps others facing the same situation. How’s that for giving you a sense of purpose?

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Books for Writers: When by Daniel Pink

 

The Short Version

Daniel Pink’s latest book, When: The Scientific Secrets to Perfect Timing, may help you be more productive as a writer.

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. 

The Longer Version

I always enjoy reading Daniel Pink’s book, and his latest may be my favorite so far: When: The Scientific Secrets to Perfect Timing.

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As is his habit, Daniel Pink turns extensive research into intelligible, enjoyable prose and actionable insights. He makes it look easy.

As a choral singer, I relish the insight into the joys of synchronizing with others. As a chocolate lover, I vow to embrace the advice about treating each piece of chocolate as my last.

But let’s stay on-topic here – this review highlights a few insights that the book offers for writers about:

When to write
How to get through long projects
How to craft a satisfying ending

When to Write

One of the first thing that comes up in any discussion of writing process is timing. Successful authors tend to have their own preferred schedules, such as waking before dawn, or working through the night. Some have steady, office-like hours, working from 9 until 2, with a break for lunch, then reading in the afternoon.

(Read Sarah Stodola’s book Process for a fascinating recap of famous authors’ habits.)

If you adopt someone else’s writing schedule, it may not work for you. Here’s why:

Our body clocks are different. The person who can rise at 5am is clearly a different animal than the one who waits until 1am to start work.

The lark and the owl metaphor turns out to be a real attribute of human biology.

Each of us has patterns (our chronotype) that influences our mental acuity, mood, and energy during the day. Pink writes, “Our cognitive abilities do not remain static over the course of a day. During the sixteen or so hours we’re awake, they change-often in a regular, foreseeable manner.”

For most of us (everyone except those die-hard owls), our best analytical thinking happens in the first part of the day, until about midday. But – and here’s the interesting point – we may have more creative insight late in the day. (That rings true with my experience. The evenings often find me running into the office to jot down one more idea for the next day.)

Pay attention to your particular internal clock and personal experience and try to schedule your work accordingly.When you find yourself flagging, or working in suboptimal times of day, restorative breaks can make all the difference: a walk outside, a visit with someone, even a short nap.

Getting Through Long Projects

Beginnings and endings are critical, but we spend most of our lives in the places in between – the Long Middle. That’s particularly true for those of us writing books.

We start off with an outline, proposal, and a sense of excitement. Near the end, as the day approaches to send the manuscript to the editor, we are energized. But many books languish somewhere in the middle – we cut corners, lose steam, and stop showing up every day. Other things take over.

The book surveys multiple studies about how we react to midpoints or push toward endings. For example, being a little behind at the halftime of a game may inspire better performance. A slight sense of panic can spur motivation.

What can writers take from this?

Create multiple interim goals, so you have many endpoints to pull you forward. Acknowledge the midpoints as they arrive. Master the middle and you can win the game.

Endings

Although I love a happy ending in general, Pink makes a strong case for the power of poignancy, adding bittersweet to the resolution, and focusing on insight rather than storybook success.

“The best endings don’t leave us happy. Instead, they product something richer—a rush of unexpected insight, a fleeting moment of transcendence, the possibility that by discarding what we wanted we’ve gotten what we need.”

And I’ll leave you with his last comment about endings: “In the end, we seek meaning.”

If mastering my timing can give my writing a boost, I’m all in. That’s why When earns a place in my Books for Writers list.

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The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

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The post Books for Writers: When by Daniel Pink appeared first on Anne Janzer.

Revision and the Art of Letting Go

The other day I was working with a writer who was struggling to revise a short, online marketing post with a strong call to action.

The draft started with a catchy opening line – one that had worked well in another campaign.

This specific post needed to communicate several ideas to set up its call to action. No matter how hard the writer tried, she struggled to cover that ground gracefully. Everything sounded clunky.

After several iterations, the source of the problem became clear: the terrific opening line.

It was catchy and clever, with a subtle emotional resonance. But it pulled the text away from the job it had to do.

Once she replaced the opening line, the rest came together quickly.

The art of revision is knowing what to cut, and then having the courage to do so.

Ruthless Revision

Every revision process typically involves slicing and dicing – eliminating needless words, choosing strong verbs instead of lame adverbs, and so on.

But streamlining the words is the easy part. Deleting your ideas is tougher.

Sometimes, if we want to serve the reader, we must  remove content that we have grown attached to. You know, stuff like:

A favorite opening line – the one that sounded so clever when it landed in your head like a gift from the muses
The brilliant metaphor that almost works – not quite, but almost
The story that isn’t necessary

That’s when the famous writing advice rings in your head: “Murder your darlings.”

That advice apparently originated in Sir Arthur QuillerCouch’s 1916 book on writing. It’s been quoted and refined by authors sense. Here’s how Stephen King phrases it in his wonderful memoir  On Writing: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

I love that book, but the advice sounds extra creepy when coming from the author of The Shining.

Murder, kill … These are strong verbs indeed. That’s because it takes fortitude to let go of sections that you’ve worked on.

The more attached you are to the words, the harder it is to cut them, and the more you’ll try to make them work.

That’s one reason for waiting between drafting and revising: we need distance, detachment from our words.

If you’re not the murderous sort, take a different approach.

Don’t kill your darlings – relocate them. 

Create a Home for Unused Excerpts

The process of writing a nonfiction book is filled with false starts and digressions, even when I’m working from an outline. The first drafts end up filled with extraneous content, such as

Multiple stories and anecdotes to illustrate a point
Impassioned diatribes about things I feel strongly about
Thoughtful analyses of abstract topics

Before publishing, I have to cut a great deal.

Instead of trashing these sections, I cut and paste them into a special file, which I keep alongside the other project files. It’s like a home for unwanted prose.

This way, I’m not throwing the words away. Instead, I’m putting them aside for another time.

Relocating the words, rather than trashing them, takes the sting out of cutting the ideas you love.

The next time you’re faced with the pain of paring down your prose, try this strategy instead. Keep a running file of things you plan to use again – the stories, lines, or ideas that need a different home.

Often, the content in this file ends up being useful fodder for a blog post, an interview, or another work. If you’re a fiction writer, perhaps it will contain the germ of a short story.

After time has passed, you may return to this content and find that you don’t love it like you once did. That’s fine, too. Channel your inner Marie Kondo (author of the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up). Thank the content for serving you in your writing process, then let it go.

Related Posts

Two Reasons Not to Revise As You Draft

Recording As Revision

 

 

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