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Published on September 09, 2024 14:46

Write Your Mythic Adventure

September’s Writing Yoga exercise

For September’s Writing Yoga, I challenge you to write a mythic tale from your own experiences.

Choose an event from your life you’d like to write about, and see if you can match it with a myth, legend, or fairy tale. Or, choose the legend and look through your life for an event that has something structurally in common with it.

For example, you might compare your job search to the Goldilocks fairy tale. Or, perhaps something about your life makes you think of the tale of Sisyphus, doomed to push a large boulder up a mountain until, at the last moment, it rolls back down.

Now try writing your story by alternating between the two tales: your own life and the legend.

Braided Storytelling

I learned about this technique from Jessica Piscitelli Robinson, who uses it to great effect in her upcoming book Stages: Stories from My Life. (I read a pre-release copy.) Jessica even teaches a course on braided storytelling.

Of course, braided storytelling is much more powerful and sophisticated than what I suggest here. However, I think it could be really fun to play with, even in your journaling.

By comparing our life to well-known stories, we can see narrative structures and story arcs that might otherwise escape us. This might just open up new ways of creating the narratives of our lives, or expand our storytelling skills.

If nothing else, I hope it’s fun!

Try it out. If you’d like to share your results with me, go ahead! I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

AI, writing, and herding goats

A few years ago, my husband and I met a woman and dog herding goats in a park in the middle of San Luis Obispo. Yep, goats. On a hill in the middle of the city.

A conversation with the herders (cleverly named the Goat Girls) enlightened us. Goats clear shrubs from hard-to-access spots like steep hillsides or ravines, reducing potential wildfire fuel without sparking fires on dry brush. They reach spots that equipment cannot. They only need a little guidance, provided by dogs and temporary fences, and occasional repositioning.

Given the right conditions, nature does its thing. Goats even restore the soil by breaking up the top crust and depositing, um, unprocessed fertilizer.

Natural processes often yield the best results.

Is writing like herding goats?

The goat analogy matches my writing process pretty closely.

When I set out to write about a topic, I start by setting my mental processes loose on an area—often through freewriting or journaling. My thoughts wander over the terrain, nibbling tasty bits here, exploring over there, finding a delightful morsel tucked in by a creek.

The whole process is messy and imprecise. The results may be uneven at first. But it’s fun to see what happens.

Using AI to outline and draft for you is more like showing up with a giant ride-on mower. Sure, it’s faster, especially if the field is flat. But the mower won’t easily handle those hard-to-reach, rugged spots.

We can debate all day long about the quality of AI-generated writing, and it’s getting better all the time. But when machines write for us, we lose the beauty of the process.

The many uses of AI in writing

I’m not anti-technology. Far from it. Nor were the Goat girls, who set up electrified wire fences to keep the goats in the right area until they completed their tasks.

That’s kind of how I use AI in my writing; creating boundaries, herding the Muse. Tools like ProWriting Aid catch mistakes, thank heavens. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity can help with the herding. By writing crafting my prompts with care, I use AI to:

See if I’m missing important insights or questions that people might havePoint me toward fruitful areas for research or explorationHelp me brainstorm with far-flung suggestions for titles or descriptions

Sometimes AI simply helps me remember what something is called. Last week I asked it: “What’s the name for a type of survey question where you rank something between 1 and 5 on a spectrum?” Oh, that’s right: Likert scale.

AI functions a bit like those electric fences around the goats, keeping me on task and preventing me from wandering off into a black hole looking for the name of something!

Other authors and writers I know used generative AI in more expansive ways, feeding it entire manuscripts and research notes to:

Help them get unstuck when draftingCull the insights and stories from hours of interview transcriptsEdit the draft, streamlining the prose

AI assists their creative processes without replacing them. One friend fed her manuscript into a custom GPT and asked it to suggest a tighter structure and rearrange the content into it. Doing that got her unstuck on her book and she’s writing again. She suggests that it helped her get past her inner critic.

What about using AI for creating first drafts? I am neither panicked nor completely at ease with it, but I resist drafting with it in most cases. One exception? Anything I really don’t want to spend time or mental energy on, like a letter of complaint to a company. AI can draft that for me.

But for work I care about? If AI writes the first drafts for me, I’d lose out on that lovely grazing and exploration experience. Who would reach into those distant, overgrown corners of my brain? That’s where creativity lies, and I don’t want to give it up.

What’s your call?

This conversation won’t stop soon, as AI improves and more people experience its possibilities. If you haven’t already experimented with generative AI yet, you might try it out simply to see what it does.

Look into ChatGPT, Perplexity, or any of the large number of AI options embedded in tools in smaller writing tasks. Use them to generate ideas, polish up an email, or even draft a paragraph or two. Experiment with what works best for you.

Then figure out your personal guidelines for using AI, to see if it has a place in your writing process.

If you’re writing for human connection, make sure you hold up your side of the conversation. Ann Handley, something of a GOAT in marketing writing, suggests that if the writer themself doesn’t really matter to the content, you can use AI. But, she writes, “Does the writer matter a lot? Is the goal memorable, personal, persuasive insights? Use AI for research (if at all).“*

And if you enjoy the goat-herding of creative work, stick with it. Don’t worry about feeling like a Luddite. You’ll have the pleasure of the process.

* Ann Handley’s quote comes from issue #168 of her Total ANNArchy newsletter (in Myth #7). When I refer to Ann as a GOAT, I of course mean Greatest of All Time!

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Published on August 20, 2024 11:02

Writing Yoga: Short Words

Here’s the writing yoga exercise for August—and it’s a fun one!

The challenge

Pick a topic. Here are two options:

An event you’re looking forward to in the near futureA visit to a favorite park

Write a substantive paragraph about it—a couple hundred words. Here’s the challenge: use only one-syllable words.

This is much harder than it seems at first glance. It’s the basis for a game called “Poetry for Neanderthals.” In the game, you’re speaking under time pressure, which makes coming up with single syllable words much harder.

When we write, we have time to think about how to rephrase until we land on something that works. We might even consult a thesaurus to find ideas for substitutes and alternate phrasing.

When you’ve written your paragraph, read it aloud. Does it like a children’s book? If so, give it another try. See if you can write a paragraph that does not sound like the result of a prompt like this. You may find that short words can pull their weight.

What this exercise show us

When we think of improving our vocabulary, we usually look for longer, more impressive words. This exercise prompts us to look for shorter ones. You may find that you can glance at something else that you’ve written and swap in short, punchy words for longer dull ones.

This exercise comes from my book, The Writer’s Voice: Techniques for Tuning Your Tone and Style. If you enjoyed it, you might check out that book. August is its one-year anniversary in the world.

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Published on August 06, 2024 09:38

How to Celebrate a Book’s Anniversary

The Writer's Voice book cover on yellow balloons

A year ago, I published The Writer’s Voice: Techniques for Tuning Your Tone and Style.

And what a year it’s been! The response to the book has been rewarding and positive. A few of the reviews:

If you’re looking for a guide to help you find your writing voice, Anne Janzer is your muse.

I’ve added The Writer’s Voice to the list of books I recommend for people who want to take their writing to the next level.

I raced through the first time. Then I turned back, did the exercises and tested out the ideas in my projects. That made a lasting difference in my writing.

How do you celebrate the anniversary of a book? Cake seems … messy. Balloons? Nah.

I know—a sale!

Grab it at a steep discount this week only

In celebration of its birthday, the ebook is only 99 cents through this weekend. Get your copy today and start expanding your writing voice.

The Writer’s Voice on Amazon Kindle for 99 cents.

The Writer’s Voice on Apple Books, Nook or Google Play for 99 cents.

Sure, you can’t write in an ebook, but you can work through it using your own notebook. And for less than a dollar, it’s worth trying!

Want something you can write in?

If you’d rather have a PDF to write in, I’m also discounting the PDF version from $14 to $3.99 during the sale, if you use this link:

Writer’s Voice PDF for $3.99

If you try it, let me know which exercise is your favorite!

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Published on August 06, 2024 09:26

The Pleasures of Pruning

Many nonfiction writers want to include everything related to their topic: each detail, observation and fascinating fact.

Paradoxically, this generous and diligent impulse often reduces the value of the work if the purpose extends beyond sheer entertainment.

Books, articles, and blog posts that explain ideas fill their purpose only when someone learns and remembers the content. Adding “more” simply crowds out that process; not only does the extraneous stuff slide right past us, but we lose our grasp on the essentials. Or, we simply stop reading.

Learn to love the pruning

I have this tendency myself, whether writing a book or creating a course. I want to share everything I know.

Most people are happy to internalize a few key concepts from anything they read. That’s why editing and revising usually involves a lot of pruning.

When writing for blog posts and newsletters, it pays to be ruthless. When writing books, we have more latitude, as people settle in for a while. Still, we must consider the reader and their needs.

For many writers, this pruning seems painful. I’ve come to consider it a magical moment when the project really takes its final shape. My challenges are many: How much can I eliminate while keeping the core? Can I make it more effective by paring down the prose?

Sometimes, editing is like creating a topiary animal from shaggy shrubbery—it requires planning and precision.

Plan before you prune

First, of course, know your goals. If working in your yard, are you clearing a path through the garden? Are you pruning trees for height or fullness? Getting rid of dead stuff?

In you writing, are you clearing a path for the reader? Shaping ideas for impact? Going for depth?

Identify the key concepts you want people to retain. You can, of course, include more. But remember, the reader may have limited capacity. Make sure your core elements shine.

All that’s cut is not lost

Pruning the rosebush is a great reason to bring some blooms indoors for a vase. Similarly, sections you cut from your writing may find a new home in blog posts or other work. When working on a book manuscript, I recommend creating a companion file of “things that need a new home.” When something doesn’t serve the manuscript, you simply relocate it so it can wait for another home.

To prove the point, this post originated in a section that I pruned out of my latest work-in-progress. I added the pruning metaphor and turned it into writing advice.

If you’re not sure where to cut, you might consult a reader or editor. Or, run your work through an AI model like ChatGPT and see what it suggests. Here are a few simple prompts you might use.

First, describe the ideal reader and the purpose of the piece. Then ask:

How would you make this passage/post more concise? Do you have any suggestions for how to reduce the word count by 10 percent?How would you edit this piece to support the following three key ideas:

Please note, you can observe its suggestions and learn from them. You don’t have to act on them!

Admire your work

Take pleasure in this work. By sacrificing words, you’ve made those that remain work better for the reader. You’ve revealed the underlying structure or brought the key concepts into sharp relief.

And, at some point you have to stop pruning and let go. Don’t get stuck trimming until there’s nothing left but a few sticks.

Writing Yoga: A Mountain of Metaphors

This month’s writing yoga is a fun technique: build a mountain of metaphors.

Metaphors and their cousins similes (explicit comparisons) are wonderful tools in the writer’s toolbox, no matter what you write. They add imagery to our words. They help us understand new ideas by comparing them to existing knowledge.

Metaphors also create a sense of poetry.

The Exercise

Choose an abstract idea: democracy, freedom, happiness, summer, vacation, family.

Then, come up with a pile of metaphors describing the subject. Try for at least ten.

Dig deep and come at the topic from different areas: sensory images, things that you can smell or taste or touch. Include emotional situations. Think about moments in time. Create a rich variety of metaphors.

You may end up with a piece that is chaotic and unstructured, but also poetic and profound. It might sound like a poem or a song lyric.

This exercise loosens and stretches your metaphor-making skills, which are useful for all kinds of writing, not just poetry and song lyrics.

Give it a try this month and let me know how it goes for you.

A Few Examples

Read E. B. White’s riff on Democracy from The New Yorker (published during WWII.)

Here’s a quick metaphor mountain on the topic of vacation:

Vacation is listening to an audiobook on the road. It’s a roadside milkshake blended with chocolate, cherries, and anticipation. It’s sitting on a deck and staring at the trees. It’s that mystery you’ve been waiting to read. Vacation is drinking an iced coffee without worrying about falling asleep at night. It’s walking in the woods on a path you’ve never seen before. It’s warm breezes and sore legs, moon rises and star gazing.

Want to share yours? Leave it in the comments, or send it to me. With your permission, I may include a few in my newsletter.

New to the Writing Yoga?

Find the other posts here. Or, watch the YouTube playlist.

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Published on July 02, 2024 09:56

Nothing is Wasted

I’ve recently started swimming laps for fitness. As I cycle back and forth, lulled with regular breathing and the peace of the water, my mind floats back to earlier versions of my swimming self.

The young girl learning to swim the length of the pool so she could earn a badge that let her use the pool in long, hot summer days.A teenager swimming in a cold, bog-lined lake in northern Wisconsin on summer afternoons.A mother-to-be relishing brief periods of weightlessness in a YMCA pool in the later months of pregnancy.

Each of those past swimmers shaped the swimmer I am today. I am all of them, and someone different, adding my extended life experiences and well-traveled body into the mix.

How does this apply to writing? Everything I write contributes to who I am, and will be, as a writer.

The same is true for you.

Nothing is wasted, in writing or life

Do you have any abandoned writing projects, unpublished novels or poems, or notebooks of writing sitting around, unused and unread? You’re not alone. We all do—from the distant or recent past.

We can either cling to past writings, or let them go and move on.

It’s easy to become attached to the words we’ve already written. They can weigh us down, like soggy shoes when you’ve fallen into the lake. (Another swimming-related method I learned in childhood.) Let them go, and you’ll go further.

Sometimes we write ourselves onto a new path, leaving our past works behind. We might mine them later, or perhaps they are simply the price we pay to get to our present writing selves. Today’s experiment may develop a skill we’ll use in the future.

Sure, we all want to write with total economy—every word a gem that stays. But I’m willing to bet that no one writes that way. We try things. And we change and evolve.

Nothing deleted is truly wasted.

By internalizing that fact, you free yourself to cut loose those things that aren’t working and to take larger risks.

Give yourself permission to write for fun, for joy.

For yourself.

How will you use this lesson?

Is there something new you’d like to try in writing? If so, what’s stopping you? Not everything you write has to serve a purpose. Write first, then figure out what to do about it.

Conversely, look through old writing kicking around. Is there anything that might serve as a springboard to something new?

Want to go deeper?

Check out the book Heart. Soul. Pen. for insights into mining past experiences in writing. (See my review on YouTube.)

Want to work on your craft? Check out The Writer’s Voice—it has plenty of exercises for stretching and strengthening your voice.

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Published on June 18, 2024 13:06

Writing Yoga: Power and Respect

This month’s writing video is about how power and respect flow through our words to the reader.

This exercise applies to almost any kind of writing that you do: emails to colleagues or friends, reports, blog posts—anything in which you’re giving advice or directions to the reader. Let’s look at two simple cases.

Making a request over email

When we need to ask someone for a favor or action over email, many of us start like this:

I’m doing [my project] and ran into a problem, so I need you to do [requested action] for me.

Look at where power resides in that request: with me, the one requesting.

What if we start with granting the reader power? The request might look like this:

Can you please do [requested action] for me? Here’s why I need your help: I ran into this problem….

It’s the same content, but now the reader has the power to make a judgment and act on it, while understanding the reason why. This gives the reader agency, which shows respect.

Offering “important” advice

We also need to pay attention to power and respect when offering advice, whether in an email or a nonfiction book.

When I work with authors of business advice books, their first drafts are often filled with phrases like “It’s important to do this thing,” or “This is critical.” As a reader, this feels a bit like lecturing, as if the writer doesn’t really trust me to absorb why these things are important.

Grant the reader agency and involvement by giving them the chance to recognize importance when they see it.

As an example, imagine you’re leaving a note for house guests.

It’s really important that you lock the door because of thefts in the neighborhood.

You could write it that way. But you make a stronger impact by simply writing:

Lock the door, please. There are a lot of thefts in the area.

They have the reason, so they know it’s important. And if that sounds too dictatorial, you could try this:

Check that the door is locked when you leave because we’ve had a lot of thefts in the area.

Instead of lecturing guests on the importance of locking the door, you’re assuming they’ll do the right thing and pinging them to check.

Check the flow of power

This month, look at emails or posts you write for other people and pay attention to whether your words demonstrate respect and trust. Where should you look? Check places that you write about me and I versus you. Look for words like important and critical, and see if you can show the reader more respect as you write.

Also, notice power and respect in the emails, blogs and books you read as well. How do these different things make you feel as a recipient or reader?

Want to dive deeper?

This yoga exercise was partly inspired by Erin Lebacqz’ wonderful new High Value Writing Workbook, in which she offers a lot of practical exercises for understanding power and authority in your writing. So I suggest you check that out if you found this exercise useful.

Find earlier Writing Yoga exercises here.

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Published on June 04, 2024 12:41

Dangerous distractions

Feet standing by two arrows on pavement, one pointing forward and one off to the side—to illustrate the concept of a sidetrip

“Maybe I should polish up an old manuscript and crowdsource the funds to publish it.”

An author friend suggested this in an author group discussion of crowdfunding. At first glance, it sounded like a fine idea.

But wait. This author is taking his career in an entirely new direction—one that has nothing to do with his old novel. Right now, that manuscript sitting in his drawer is a dangerous distraction.

An attractive nuisance.

A seductive sidetrip.

These distractions call to us when we’re embarking on something new or uncertain—like struggling with that next book. They tempt us away from the writing that we would find most rewarding.

What’s luring you away from your most important work?

The danger in the detour

In any writing or author marketing group, you’ll hear dozens of exciting things to try. Offered with the best intentions, these projects might not serve your best interest. Only you can decide.

In my friend’s case, publishing an older manuscript sounds like a fine idea—and that’s why it’s so risky.

You can spot obvious time-wasters easily. (Or, I hope you can!) The most dangerous distractions are those that sound logical or “pretty good.”

Your inner warning system should go off whenever you contemplate a project that is slightly off your usual course but…

It sounds quick or easyIt promises the possibility of a small financial return in the short termEveryone else is doing it.

To channel Steven Pressfield, these diversions are Resistance dressed up like Business.

I’m not immune to distractions. My writing career is littered with detours. Here are a couple obvious ones:

I published a third edition of Subscription Marketing well after I’d decided to stop writing about marketing and was addressing a different audience. I developed an online course on running discount book promotions—fun, but not the core work I want to be doing at the moment.

Each of these would have been great projects had I been on a different path. But they didn’t fit my current goals, my most important work. They aren’t losses or mistakes … merely delays. And, because my heart wasn’t fully engaged, I couldn’t muster the excitement to support and promote them.

My friend decided to focus on his core effort and let the older manuscript sit for now. Its time may come later. Or not.

Distraction? Opportunity? What’s the difference?

What about those people who preach saying “yes” to possibility again and again? Won’t you miss a lot of wonderful opportunities if you put blinders on?

I’m not suggesting you reject all other activities out of hand (unless you’re in a sprint on a manuscript.) But, before saying yes, check in with yourself.

Anyone can suggest a wonderful project—only you can decide if you really want to act on it right now.

Ask yourself: Would I rate this higher than the thing I most want to do right now? Or am I attracted to it because it seems easier or faster?

Listen to your gut. I’ve always known, deep down, when I was starting a detour to resist the work I truly valued.

Already on a detour?

Are you looking around you right now thinking, Oops! I’m on a detour! I’m not doing the thing I value, not yet.

Don’t beat yourself up. The world pulls us all off course, and you are not alone. Sometimes we don’t realize which direction a path takes us until we’re partway down it.

Take a moment to ask yourself what success look like for you. What do you dream of doing with your writing? For example, is writing a book the most important thing this year? If so, does this project take you closer to that goal?

If you’re not heading in that direction, figure out how to change course.

Should you abandon the current project? Hard to say. If there’s value in finishing it and the finish line isn’t far, go ahead. But don’t let the sunk cost fallacy keep you pouring effort into something you don’t really want.

Keep exploring

Need help focusing on just a few things to work on? Cal Newport’s new book Slow Productivity may help. Read my review here.

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Published on May 14, 2024 14:35