Jared Dees's Blog: The Latest from Jared Dees, page 46

Proofreading Marks

I spent the day yesterday editing and proofreading a manuscript before turning it into my editor. I went through this draft on paper and made marks in ink.

Years ago I attended a workshop on the Chicago Manual of Style. It made me wish I paid more attention back in high school English class. I learned a lot in the workshop, but the thing that stuck with me the most was the proofreader’s marks. Working at a publishing company, we use these marks as a universal language for corrections to books...

Gospel Meditation: Second Sunday of Advent

The Preaching of John the Baptist (Mark 1:1-8)

Let the following questions to guide you through a process of Lectio Divina:

LECTIO (Reading): What does this passage say that everyone should understand? What was John the Baptist’s goal? What was it about John the Baptist that must have made him so popular throughout Judea and Jerusalem? How does the gospel describe his appearance? MEDITATION (Meditation): What does the text say to me, today, and to my life? How will you prepare the way for...

Stephen King’s “No Adverbs Rule”

“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day… fifty the day after that… and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it’s—GASP!!—too late.”

Stephen King...

Write for an Emotional Connection

“A woman whose son was incarcerated read my own favorite short story of all I’ve written (‘Unconditional’) about a parent whose child is in prison for an unimaginable crime. She told me it had brought her comfort and asked to share it with a support group for parents of children in prison. They read it and she shared some of their comments. Truly moving and reminded me why I write fiction in the first place — to make that emotional connection with a reader.”

Blake Crouch
Author of Dark Matter...

The Job of a CEO

“The job of a CEO is often to come up with a story that enough people believe that you can make something happen in the world.”

Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack
Source: Masters of Scale Podcast

Often we see the success or failure of a startup or company and we think it is due to a bad product or bad management or maybe even bad circumstances.

What if, instead, it all comes down to one thing: the story the leader is telling people to get them motivated? If that story is compelling enough, the...

Write Three Drafts for Three Different Readers

I’ve heard bestselling author Neil Strauss say on a couple of occasions (links at the bottom) that he writes his books in three drafts. As I finish writing another book, I find this advice to be extremely helpful and challenging. Most of us just do the first draft and maybe the second. I think we would all rather just be done with the project and turn it in as soon as possible. The three-draft system, however, pushes you to make the book better especially for the reader.

First Draft: For You...

Gary Vaynerchuk’s $1.80 Strategy for Instagram

When you are first starting out, no one knows who you are. You pick a platform pump out some content and you get crickets. No traffic, no impressions, no likes, no comments, and no shares.

The mistake a lot of people make is just to create more content. Eventually, they will get seen or heard, right?

Wrong.

There are really only two ways to grow your audience with content, Gary Vaynerchuk said on a recent podcast. You can:

Create a piece of content that goes viral. Be a valued member of a co...

Own the Hour: The Most Important Question to Ask Yourself When Developing a Product

It is common practice and advice to identify who your ideal customer, client, reader is when developing your product. In fact, it is surprising how many people don’t have a specific type of person in mind in the development stage.

Identifying what a product does for someone (benefits) is also common practice and advice.

Being able to explain how it works (features) is obvious to almost anyone creating something.

I find, however, that it is the when that is most important.

When will your ideal...

Lessons Learned

Take action and tell others what you learned.

This isn’t just a philosophy to follow, but a system used by NASA, the United Nations, project managers, and engineers of major companies.

The idea is pretty simple. Here’s NASA’s definition taken from the Wikipedia entry on this topic:

“A lesson learned is knowledge or understanding gained by experience.

The experience may be positive, as in a successful test or mission, or negative, as in a mishap or failure…A lesson must be significant in that...

The Two Kinds of Bloggers

I’ve been blogging since 2009. I’ve read thousands of blog posts and written hundreds myself.

I’ve experimented with different formats and found a lot of success in my career thanks to the practice of blogging. If it wasn’t for my “blog,” I wouldn’t be living my dream of becoming an author and professional speaker.

This month I’m running an experiment for NaNoBlogMo to blog every day. It made me realize that up to this point I’ve only practiced one form of blogging (The Evergreen Blogger) and...