how to be an original (part one)

1

I met President Clinton last week, at a cocktail party in the presidential suite in an ex-pat hotel in Haiti. Later, I was part of a group that had dinner with him, and the next day a small number of us got to tour the Academy of Peace + Justice with him. (The Academy is a free school sponsored by Artists for Peace + Justice for kids from especially poor and troubled parts of Haiti. They get three meals a day along with an education. You can't nourish the mind if the body is suffering. The body is the mind and vice versa. But I digress.)

"Nice bracelet you're wearing," Clinton said to me at one point, referring to a Haitian-made bracelet I'd bought for ten dollars at the hotel gift shop.

"Thank you. It's made out of safety pins."

"I know!"

What strikes me about Prez Clinton is his singular and distinctive voice. We were at a table with extremely accomplished and high-powered men (they were mostly men), but as soon as that throaty, smoky voice rose through the conversation, people were instantly and eagerly attentive. You could be blindfolded and not even know that Clinton was in the room, and you'd recognize that voice, and you'd immediately wrap your sense of Clinton's personality around it, as well as all the history and associations the name 'Bill Clinton' has for you and whether those associations resonate with you or piss you off. Chances are, you would not have a neutral or indifferent reaction to it. That voice would immediately get under your skin. Love him or hate him, you wouldn't – or couldn't – ignore him.

The power of voice.

2

Around the same time, entrepreneur and brand editor Abby Kerr posted this piece on her blog analyzing the "bigger-name online voices" of Danielle Laporte, Marie Forleo, Chris Guillebeau, Havi Brooks, Charlie Gilkey, Laura Roeder – and me. (And how delighted am I to be included in such company? Thank you, Abby, you rock. Plus you have wondrous taste.)

Glancing down that list of names, of people whose online work I am familiar with and in a few cases know extremely well, I was struck by – how singular and distinctive their voices are. Unlike the above example with Clinton, they convey those voices through writing rather than talking – but as Abby notes, there's often

a direct and very cozy link-up between how people write and how they speak. Google 'video' plus the name of any person I profile below and you'll see what I mean.

So I started thinking (again) about voice. So many creatives are turned off by the concept of 'brand' – and its old-school corporate bullshit associations – that I don't think they understand that, at least online, your voice is your brand.

(You may not believe in your brand – but darlin', your brand believes in you.)

The reason why Danielle LaPorte could charge $150 for her self-produced digital program called The Firestarter Sessions – basically an ebook, a few downloads and short videos – and experience the kind of success she could then channel into a quarter million dollar deal with a major publisher, has everything to do with her voice. Her voice is what sets her apart from some anonymous online marketer who packages similar information. (I bought Danielle's program, so I can speak directly to this.)

People who were already fans of Danielle through her popular blog eagerly purchased this thing because they wanted the information, yes – but they also wanted to hang out with the sense of personality and identity they have constructed around Danielle's unique writing style. They have an emotional connection with Danielle's brand. (I use the word 'brand' very deliberately here, to stress the difference between connecting with the idea of Danielle vs actually connecting with Danielle herself. I am talking about fans, not stalkers.)

When people fall in love with your voice, they will follow you anywhere.

The above is paraphrasing something Dean Koontz said in an interview in Writer's Digest that I read a loooooong time ago. After twenty years of writing fiction in several different genres, he noticed how his fans would follow him from genre to genre once they learned to recognize him through the multiple pseudonyms his publisher(s) advised him to use. Which is what led him to say – and I am definitely paraphrasing here – that that advice about using pseudonyms was actually pretty stupid.

But for people to follow your voice – or even want to follow – it has to be the kind of voice that they can recognize – instantly – through the great din of online conversation, including constant online static as well as the ongoing signals that other powerful voices are sending out to their people.

It has to be singular, distinctive. An original.

3

I would say – I mean, I am saying – that a compelling, original voice has four things.

(I would list the four of them here…except I want to keep you in suspense.)

4

A compelling online voice has relevance.

You talk about things that your audience cares about: that helps improve their lives in some way or connects to their interests, goals and passions. You serve your audience through your content.

This is why I don't think it's (usually) very effective to post excerpts of your fiction on your blog (except in certain cases, which I won't go into here). It's not just because a blog is a very different form than a novel, with its own learning curve and advantages for an audience.

It's because it's actually rather difficult to get strangers to read your work. You may not be asking them for money, but you are asking for their time and attention with no real guarantee that there's anything in it for them (how do they know that they'll find the experience worthwhile, other than your unproven untested word for it?). Your creative work doesn't yet have any relevance for them, at least as they perceive it.

But when you know your audience – and you learn them better and more deeply as you go – you learn what they care about, and where that overlaps with what you care about. That overlapping place is your place of service.

I gave a workshop in which I had the attendees do the "I am…" exercise in which they pretend to be that person's Ideal Reader. They write a first-person stream-of-consciousness description of Ideal Reader that includes her hopes and fears and tastes and what keeps her awake at night and anything else that comes up.

One guy said, "Is it normal for your Ideal Reader to sound a lot like…yourself?"

I think it is. I think that choice between 'writing for an audience' and 'writing for yourself' is a false one. There's power in writing the kind book – or blog – that you yourself want to read but can't find because it doesn't exist yet.

It's your job — your destiny, if you will — to bring the damn thing into being.

As individuals, we have a heightened sense of our own differences (which we are consciously aware of) rather than our underlying commonality (which acts as an unconscious frame of reference for those differences).

We're more alike than we are different.

The bad news is: you're probably not as unique in your tastes and longings as you think.

The good news: you're probably not as unique in your tastes and longings as you think.

You can find a way to serve yourself as well as your audience (and vice versa); you find the point where you and your audience are one and the same.

Which is why you can't form a deep understanding of your audience without also forming a deep understanding of yourself.

– to be continued tomorrow –