Anne H. Janzer's Blog, page 8

AI and Writing: Should you prioritize speed?

Back when microwaves were a new thing, people got sucked into the initial exuberance about how they would change cooking forever.

For example, I had a cookbook that breathlessly extolled the microwave’s time-saving virtues for nearly anything:

Scrambled eggs!

Roast beef!

Vegetable casseroles!

Alas, microwave cooking doesn’t work well for everything. In a microwave, the ingredients in a casserole or stew cook independently, without the lovely co-mingling that defines the dishes. And don’t get me started on roasting meat.

We’re seeing similar excitement about using Artificial Intelligence in writing. People are extolling AI to do nearly everything—write their emails, outline and draft books, and so on. Like those cookbook authors, they’re thrilled about how much time we will save.

Yes, you can use generative AI programs to write things for you. But should you? And do you even want to?

Understand its limits and possibilities

The New York Times carried the story of a lawyer who submitted a brief generated by AI. The brief cited related case law to support the client’s claims. Alas, the cases didn’t exist.

(The lawyer explained to the judge that he asked the AI program whether the cases were real, and it said they were.)

You can experience this issue firsthand: ask ChatGPT for quotes on a subject. It will return great quotes, but many will be mis-attributed or simply made up.

AI is not good with detailed facts and citations, just as a microwave is not good at slow simmering.

Large language models like ChatGPT are excellent at detecting patterns in language. So, consider situations where language-based pattern matching will be helpful.

For example:

Brainstorming titlesGetting unstuck on a word or metaphorIdentifying the words people use to talk about a topic (great for keyword research)Spotting grammatical and stylistic issues

You can also use AI programs to jump-start types of writing outside your comfort zone, like marketing copy.

If, however, you let AI actually write in your place, what it creates will probably sound like the amalgam of what other people write like.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather my words represent my own voice.

Gazing into the future

To anticipate the future of AI, let’s return to the humble microwave.

People love microwaves for reheating leftovers, melting butter, and many activities in which they genuinely save time. Some people avoid them altogether, but most of us appreciate having one in the kitchen or break room.

But given a choice, few chefs would choose to cook everything in the microwave. Imagine getting this invitation: Come have Thanksgiving dinner with us—we are microwaving the whole thing!

I suspect that AI-based writing will evolve (at microwave speeds) to fill a similar valued role in a writer’s toolbox.

However, when you use AI to write for you, you may create the microwave-re-heatable frozen dinner of writing. Sure, it will satisfy someone’s hunger, but is that the kind of writing you want to do?

Experiment. Find the best time-saving uses, but don’t sacrifice quality. And don’t delegate your voice to the machine.

Welcoming the Weak Words

Eighty-nine.

That’s how many times the word some appeared in my current manuscript of just over 21,000 words. And while not a huge number, 89 is far too many for a word like some.

Some isn’t a terrible word, but it’s not great, either. It represents a certain mental laziness as I get my thoughts down on paper. It’s an artifact of the drafting process.

If you’ve heard me preach against using weak words, you might think I’d be embarrassed to admit that high number. But I’m not.

Lesson one: Everyone’s first drafts need work. That’s part of the writing process.

Because I am aware of my over-reliance on this vague word, I often seek it out and use it as an entry point in sharpening the prose.

In my book manuscript, I replaced several occurrences of some (or its relatives someone and something) with specifics.

For example, I changed:

We speak tenderly to someone ailing …

To

We speak tenderly to an ailing child.

One of those is better, don’t you think?

For others, I rephrased the sentence altogether. I got those 89 occurrences down to 25—a much more reasonable number.

Lesson two: Treat weak or repetitive words as an invitation to improve.

Entry points to revision

When you know which dull words clutter your first drafts, you have a great opportunity to jump in and tighten the work.

What are your overused words?

We all have them, and you’ll benefit from learning yours. A grammar checker may help you find your overused words. If you suspect you’re using a word too much, do a global search online and see how many occurrences pop up.

Here are a few weak words that clutter up my early drafts:

Dull adjectives: big, new, differentDull verbs when overused: look, see, change, different forms of to beWeakening or vague words: some, just, a bit

Your list will look different than mine, but you’ve got them.

When you write in the workplace, you may adopt too readily the words that everyone else uses, like solution, engagement, and other abstractions. How much more interesting would your writing be if you replaced half of those with sharper or more specific options?

Don’t be upset if your first drafts swim in those go-to, repeated words. Welcome them as entry points into revision. Grab a thesaurus and go word shopping for better alternatives. It’s fun.

Getting Bogged Down in Revision

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Published on May 16, 2023 12:20

May Writing Challenge: Permission to Explore

Welcome to May!

This month, let’s focus on the name of the month, which can also be a verb: May.

The word suggests possibility: “I may choose to start a new writing project.”

It also implies permission, as in: “Yes, you may take time to relax.”

So, let’s treat May as a month of both possibility and permission in our writing.

Embracing possibility in May

Every week this month, pick one kind of writing that you’d like to explore, even for fun.

Write a song lyric or a poemTry humor writingWrite a story from your childhood

Don’t worry about whether it will be any good. Just give it a shot and see what you learn from it.

Does it feel self-indulgent? Frivolous? That’s where we get to the permission part.

Yes, you may write

Exploring your writing and trying new things—that’s how you grow as a writer. If you cannot easily grant yourself that permission, you officially have mine.

You may write. Write what you may.

A blessing

Sometimes we use the word may as a kind of benediction. So, I’ll close with that.

May you flourish as a writer.

Did you miss the last monthly challenges?

Here are the months so far:

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Published on April 30, 2023 11:21

Emotional Keys to Creativity

You know the joy of writing when the ideas flow freely? When your Muse shows up, supplying words and images as you draft? Set yourself up for that delightful state by embracing a sense of fun.

Putting yourself in a positive mood before you write pays off in creativity. Today, I’ll share scientific support for the idea that writing should be fun.

Positive moods enhance creativity

A significant body of research shows that positive moods boost creativity.

In one study, researchers asked hundreds of young adults to report on their moods and their perceived creativity each day. In the results, positive moods correlated with creativity. The more energetic the mood (excited, energetic, and enthusiastic), the stronger the link with feeling creative.

Negative states didn’t work the same magic.

What does this mean for you in your writing?

Experiment with setting your mood before your work. One friend told me he played positive music before he started writing. Our emotions often leak through into our writing, so pay attention to how you approach your work.Don’t give up on writing if you’re in a bad mood! Showing up on the tough days builds resilience and maintains progress.

However, it’s not as simple as “Happiness breeds creativity.”

First, researchers in that study found that the emotion/creativity link was stronger for people who have more open-minded personalities. (Openness is one of the standard personality traits.)

Second, the correlation isn’t perfect, because we are complex creatures. Other factors affect our creativity—including motivation. Oddly, too much motivation can work against us.

Cute cats or delectable desserts?

According to a series of studies led by Professor Eddie Harmon-Jones at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, another factor contributes to creative moods: motivational intensity.

This report measures productivity by “cognitive scope” — how narrowly we focus our attention. Of course, creativity flourishes with a wider cognitive scope.

To wildly oversimplify the findings, the more intensely you want something, the more attention narrows around that thing.

As an example, the research suggests that watching adorable cat videos might put you in a good mood without motivating you to take any action. Watching videos of delectable desserts, however, focuses your attention on food, leaving less for creative ramblings. Stop watching the Food Network before writing!

Intense desire can narrow, rather than expand, our focus. And a narrow focus shuts down creativity.

This might explain why working for a much-needed payment may take some of the creative joy out of a project, or why it’s harder to do wonderful work when the stakes seem high.

How do we bring this to our writing practice? Watching a few funny cat videos doesn’t hurt, as long as you put on a timer.

More importantly, lighten up on your attachment to the outcome as you write. Trust in your future self to fix whatever comes out as you draft.

The more you focus on finding the perfect word as you draft, the narrower your overall focus becomes. The focused attention of the Scribe shuts out the creative contributions of the Muse.

Adding these ideas to your writing practice

How can you implement this research in your writing?

Experiment with setting your mood before your work. One friend told me he played positive music before he started writing to inspire creativity. Having a pre-writing ritual may help you clear out the negative stuff.Don’t give up on writing if you’re in a bad mood! Showing up on the tough days builds resilience and maintains progress.

As for attachment, it’s okay to be excited about your creative project. As you work on it, give yourself permission to do something less than perfect. Trust that you can fix it later. You may find that creativity shows up.

Lighten Up with Details

Magnifying glass over code, showing a smiley face

“This doesn’t seem as light as the earlier chapters,” said my coaching client as she showed me the first draft of a chapter. She has a wise, witty voice that she captures well in her writing. But for this chapter, she wasn’t feeling the fun yet.

Being fun and light consistently is a challenge, especially when you’re writing about topics that aren’t inherently entertaining.

She’s not alone in craving a lighter tone. In a survey of over 250 writers about writing voice, nearly a third said that they wished their voice was “funnier or lighter.”

That’s my wish, too! So, how do we get there? How do we go from merely wishing to be funnier to actually making our readers smile, at least inwardly?

Here’s one idea that I share with her, and now you.

Delight in the details

You know the saying “the devil’s in the details?” Delight lives in the details as well.

Too often, we load up our writing with abstractions. Nonfiction and business writers struggle with abstractions, and even fiction writers can fall prey to over-generalizing. Too many abstract concepts lead to heavy, dull writing.

Our readers’ brains want to visualize or imagine something as they read. Details give them something to work with.

For example, you might write: They had dinner together last weekend.

Or this: They braved the Friday night crowd downtown to share a platter of tacos.

Which one is more interesting? Which one seems “lighter”?

Adding specific details magically makes abstraction-heavy writing lighter. And it’s easy enough to do in revision.

Your lens on the world

The details you choose show the reader something about how you view the world. They contribute to your writing voice.

Ellen Cassidy is a great example of a writer with a unique lens. I met her when researching Writing to Be Understood. She was working on a teaching guide for the logical reasoning section of the LSAT text. That book became The Loophole in LSAT Logical Reasoning.

That sounds dry as dust, right? But not on Ellen’s watch.

Rather than loading up with legal terminology, she created sample questions about pretzels that eat people, or microphones that drink coffee. Using crazy scenarios prevented people from relying on prior knowledge rather than sheer logic, and made the book more fun.

Details are a great place to express your personality or have fun.

Do try this at home

Lightness of tone doesn’t always arrive in the very first pass at something. Try taking this simple action when revising.

Look for any bland abstractions or dull verbs. (Having dinner. Going for a walk. Talking to customers.) See if you can add details, or replace the abstraction altogether.

This works in anything—a book chapter, a report, even an email. For example, you might send an email with: I met with a major customer this week.

Add the details to make it more interesting and memorable: I visited our customer Acme, which accounts for a whopping ten percent of our revenues.

Choose a detail that conveys the mood or tone you hope to set. (The word whopping above shifts the sentence toward lightness.)

Don’t go overboard—too many extraneous details will make your writing long-winded. A few well-placed specifics can make the work sing.

Want to Dive Deeper?

Here’s a related blog post: Writing in the Workplace: Abstract Concepts

Read about Ellen Cassidy in Writing to Be Understood.

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Published on April 04, 2023 16:22

April Writing Challenge: Lighten Up!

We’ve passed the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. Things are getting brighter, so the writing challenge this month is simply this:

Lighten up.

What does it mean to lighten up your writing? Try to have fun with it.

Add a humorous aside to an email.

Slip in unexpected, playful words like nincompoop or hijinks.

If your subject is too serious for hijinks, try visually lightening up the text: break up long paragraphs and sentences. Add white space.

If you want to take this challenge seriously, try putting yourself in a positive, playful mood before writing. Research shows that positive emotions enhance creativity. Listen to fun music, do a little dance, make it a game, whatever works for you.

Try it all month. Everyday as you write anything — blog post, email, book chapter — remind yourself to lighten up.

Then, please let me know how it works for you by the end of the month!

Did you miss last month’s challenge? It’s never too late.

March writing challenge

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Published on March 30, 2023 15:11

The Reading Game

How to Win Your Reader’s Attention

Join me in a quick thought experiment about reading and writing.

Imagine that you’re strolling through an old-fashioned arcade with a few tokens in your pocket. At this arcade, each game costs a token, but most dispense tokens as you play and meet goals.

Some games only cost one token to start but don’t pay out much. Others may cost a few tokens to play, but return more tokens if you continue.

Are you with me?

Let’s say the person strolling through the arcade is your reader, and the games are the articles, books, reports, and other content clamoring for their reading attention. The tokens represent their mental capacity or attention available to spend on your writing.

Assume that you lure them over to your writing with a well-crafted headline or fantastic book cover. Here’s how the game works:

The player wins a token whenever any of these things happen:

The work tickles their curiosity.The writing satisfies that curiosity.They discover learn something new.The work resonates with their own experience.They encounter a beautiful image or memorable passage.They smile or laugh.They get caught up in a story.

Sounds good, right? Your brilliant work will spew out tokens!

But wait. They will have to pay extra tokens to keep going when certain things happen, such as:

They run into an unfamiliar word or acronym that they must decode based on the context (1 token) They run into an unfamiliar word or acronym they cannot figure out by context (2 tokens)They wade through three consecutive sentences with multiple clauses or delayed verbs (1 token)They get lost in a sentence and have to read it twice to make sense of it (2 tokens)They read 300 words about abstract ideas without a single concrete detail (1 token)

Once they run out of tokens, they’re done.

Words Game Over in pixelated font, like on a video game.

Cognitive burden and reading

This thought experiment offers insight into the cognitive burden that our writing imposes on readers. The game tokens represent the reader’s attention, or the cognitive capacity they bring to the reading. When your writing resonates with people, they have more attention to give it.

Good writing creates a positive feedback loop that keeps the reader involved. And it explains so much.

For example, why do I keep reading some books with unfamiliar words and put down others? Because sometimes books are paying me back with beautiful writing or fascinating concepts.

Or, why am I perfectly happy to navigate through long sentences from some authors and situations, and not others? Again, if the writing makes me curious or entertains me, it’s like a game spitting out tokens. I’ll keep going.

How many tokens do your readers have?

Return to the arcade image once again. Two people approach your game. One has ten tokens in their pocket, the other has only two—and must pay one to read.

The ten-token reader may slog through a long sentence to get to the payoff, but the other may run out of tokens and walk away.

As a writer, you don’t know how much attention readers will bring to your work. If you assume everyone will read deeply, you might make them work for your insights. You’ll lose those readers who simply don’t have the attention budget available.

How many tokens do your readers have? How much attention?

Rigging the game to favor the reader

How would your latest blog post/article/book chapter play as a game in this arcade? How does this change the way you think about your writing?

You can rig the game in their favor in many ways:

Eliminating unnecessary costs, like long sentences or unfamiliar wordsCreating earlier payoffs. A well-crafted introduction might dispense a token of curiosity or resonance

What would you do differently in your writing when thinking of this analogy?

Want to dive deeper?

Read more about cognitive burden and ease in these posts:

Writing for overloaded readers: It’s not dumbing down

Revising for cognitive ease

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left","show_help":0,"help_text":"","show_desc":0,"desc_pos":"none","desc_text":"","processing_label":"Processing","element_class":"","label":"Sign Up","key":"submit_30","type":"submit","container_class":"","id":22,"beforeField":"","afterField":"","value":"","label_pos":"above","parentType":"textbox","element_templates":["submit","button","input"],"old_classname":"","wrap_template":"wrap-no-label","default":""}];nfForms.push(form);

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Published on March 21, 2023 12:47

Clear the Weeds and Make Time to Write

Do you have problems finding the time to write? If so, you’re not alone.

A few years ago, I surveyed hundreds of current and aspiring nonfiction authors. The biggest barrier people reported was finding the time.

Why is that? If writing is important to us, why do we struggle to do it?

You might as well ask why we let weeds invade our gardens—they are very good at it.

Weeds are prolific and persistent

You plant and nurture a lot of seeds to harvest blooms and vegetables. As the seedlings grow, you must protect them from weeds that steal moisture and sunlight. If you ignore the intrusions of weeds, you end up with a garden of dandelions instead of dahlias.

Not all weeds are unwelcome or ugly. One person’s week is another’s cherished wildflower. My mother struggles with bindweed in her garden—and it has delicate, rosy white blossoms.

Flowering field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) in a garden

Left unchecked, the bindweed entangles the lilacs and strangles the flower and other plants.

What weeds grow in your writing garden?

Think of activities that steal time and attention from your creative projects. Like weeds, they sneak into your life and take root without you noticing. Some may be fun or rewarding. But they crowd out the work you want to do—writing that will bear fruit.

Common writing weeds include:

Social mediaBinging NetflixListening to every new podcast on our list (they all sound fascinating!)Constantly stopping everything to deal with the latest email or message

Some weeds look convincingly like other plants, and you keep caring for them until you realize they have fooled you. The same is true of writing.

You might go down a path that seems easier than the creative work you want to do. Someone may tell you that activity is important. (Oh, I’ll build a big social media following before I start writing my book.) That, my friend, is a weed that chokes out writing.

Even research, taken to extremes, can become weedy. (I have become “stuck in the weeds” of research.)

Where are you spreading the sunshine of your attention and time?

Making room for productive writing

Here’s the secret to clearing writing weeds: Stop feeding them.

Shut off the attention and time, and they should shrivel, at least for a while. (They’ll always be there, ready to pop up when you’re not paying attention.)

Perhaps this metaphor will help you figure out how to clear more time for writing.

Here are three questions to help you spot and thin your own writing weeds:

What activities occupy time that you might spend on writing or creating? List at least three.How much time and attention can you remove from those activities and put toward your writing this week?What would happen if you did this for a month? For two months?Want to dig deeper?

This post is inspired by the March Writing Challenge: Sowing Seeds of Creativity

Check out my friend Stu Heinecke’s How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed. Along with great business lessons, it features beautiful drawings and small profiles of how various successful weeds spread. It also helped inspired this post.

Peruse the results of the Nonfiction Author Survey.

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Published on March 07, 2023 11:45

March Writing Challenge

Sowing Seeds

Have you ever planted flowers or vegetables from seeds? It takes a lot of time and patience, and you get fewer plants than the seeds than you started with. Some of them never come up. You thin other ones out. Some don’t thrive.

Eventually you end up with poppies or tomatoes or whatever, and it’s miraculous.

Creativity works like that. You’ve got to plant a lot of seeds. Put a lot of ideas out and see what blooms.

Here’s the March Challenge

Every day this month, sow a seed of an idea. Write it in a journal or a file where you collect thoughts and inspiration. It might be:

An idea for a blog postA scene for a novelA clever story

Don’t make it a full-fledged piece—not yet. Don’t give it the weight of developing it. Just capture a germ of an idea.

We don’t get too attached to the individual seeds we plant—not until they’ve grown and show potential. So don’t get too attached to your ideas.

Go for quantity and let quality work itself out.

By the end of March, you will have developed a “topic-generating” muscle. You may have ideas you can turn into something wonderful.

If have heard me talk about the Muse and Scribe, this exercise is all about welcoming the Muse into your life.

Got plenty of ideas already?

If you’re have a strong and productive Muse and you’re already surrounded by ideas, your challenge is a little different.

Every day, tend to one of those ideas. Do the next step.

Write one more thing.Talk with someone about your idea.Search for related ideas (or ask ChatGPT)

Think of this like providing a new seedling with water and sunlight.

Pick a few ideas and nurture them. See if you can make them grow into something bigger by the end of the month.

I’ll be back in April.

Hearing Yourself as Others Read You

Did you know that your brain has a “mute” button for your speaking voice? When you speak, it dampens the reception of sound waves through the air, prioritizing the sound generated from the vibrations inside your head.

That’s why our voices sound so strange to us on recordings. We grow accustomed to a more resonant voice in our heads. (It’s also why our own singing doesn’t hurt our ears, but the person belting next to us does.)

Is there a parallel in writing?

When we read what we’ve written, we remember the nuanced overtones of what we said, the richness of thought that led us to the words. We know the mood we planned to convey.

But the reader sees only what’s on the page or screen, and supplies their own context and overtones. Often, the prose seems flat.

Worse, the reader may misinterpret mood entirely.

How do others read you?

In a study titled Egocentrism Over Email, researchers found that most people completely overestimated how well others would interpret the tone of an email. On the flip side, readers felt great confidence that they had interpreted the tone correctly.

According to the study’s authors, “People routinely overestimate how well they can communicate over email, particularly when the meaning of the message is ambiguous.”

Yikes. We cannot really hear how we show up in writing.

What should we do?

Get an outside perspective

To get a sense of our writing voice, we need space or get an outside perspective. Editors, beta readers, and can function like tape recorders, letting us know how we really sound.

If that’s not available, try putting yourself into a different mood altogether.

Try on different perspectives

The authors of the email study found a cure for overconfidence about tone: read aloud the message you are writing in an different mood altogether.

Test it yourself.

Write a short email that to colleague about a safe, but ambiguous topic. Like, “there’s cake in the break room.” (Don’t send it and get people’s hopes up, unless you’re willing to leave a cake.)

How might you feel about that topic?

Are you trying to lose weight? Maybe it annoys you.Is there cake in the break room every day? Do you long for pie?Are you genuinely happy about it?

Pick one approach and write it: happy, upset, funny, sarcastic, whatever.

Then, print it and read it aloud in an entirely different mode.

If you think you’re being funny, read it as if it were deadly serious. If wrote sincerely, read it in a flippant voice.

Does it work with an alternate mood? If so, you might need to clarify your intentions.

This small act is usually enough to reset our expectations—and to make us take more care in writing.

Want to go deeper?

Read Can You Hear Me: How to Connect with People in a Virtual World by Nick Morgan

Read the study Egocentrism over Email (which I found cited in Nick Morgan’s book)

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Published on February 21, 2023 12:22