Accidental Genius

You Have Twenty Books in You

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Whether you are planning a book, or are in the midst of writing one, I have some advice that could be a life saver. That is:

Don’t look at this current book as the only one you’ll ever write. If you do, it’ll mess with your head.

How so?

If you’re convinced this is your only book, you’ll stuff it with everything you know – and it’ll grow unwieldy. You’ll try making it perfect – and it’ll end up dull. You’ll want it to be a permanent monument to your very existence – and it’ll turn into an embarrassment.

Trust me, I’ve seen it happen. The harder a writer presses, the more their work suffers.

When I’m coaching a would-be book writer, I put things in perspective. I tell them: “You have twenty books in you. This is merely one of twenty. Treat it that way.”

If the book you’re working on is only a twentieth of your eventual output, that’ll change your approach. Your writing will become focused, your words will flow more easily, and most importantly you’ll be willing to take chances, because your entire life isn’t resting on this one throw of the dice. HiRes

Now, you can take my word that you have twenty books in you, or you could give yourself a dose of proof.

Suppose, for instance, you’re a strategy consultant. What books might you write?

You could write a general book on strategy, but you could also write a dozen separate books on strategy’s subcomponents, such as market selection and business unit strategy.

You could write books for different audiences, such as strategy creation for the CEO and strategy creation for a team.

You could write books on capturing different markets, like winning business in newly industrialized countries and winning business with members of Generation Z.

You could write books in different formats, such as a primer, a field guide, a workbook, a 30-day guide to building a strategy, a six-month diary on execution, a 365-day guide of strategy wisdom.

And those are just for starters.

Since we’re looking ahead, you’ll be learning methodologies that don’t exist yet, and you can write about those. You’ll be having experiences you haven’t had yet, and you can write about those.

What’s more, you can write books that are outside the realm of your current business, or that intersect with it indirectly.

If I gave you a couple of hours, your list likely wouldn’t be twenty books long. It would be double or even quadruple that number.

Of course, listing books and completing them are two wildly different matters. Still, taking a stab at this exercise will show that you have a lifetime’s worth of information and expertise to write about — and when you write one book, you build the capacity to write the next.

I have two questions for you, then:

  1. What are your twenty books?
  2. Which one will you work on today?

 

Writing a Sticky Title

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Let’s begin with a quiz. Below you’ll find a list of book titles. All are genuine titles from published books – except for one. See if you can spot that lone non-book-title.

1. “Theodore Roosevelt on Leadership”

2. “Curious George and the Pizza”

3. “Soon I Will be Invincible”

4. “The Confident Leader”

5. “Virtual Learning”

6. “Sixty Stories”

7. “Apathy”

8. “The internet isn’t that big a deal. Neither is the PC. Abandon all technology and live in the woods for a week and see if it’s your laptop you miss most. In fact, the technologies most important to us are the older ones – the car and telephone, electricity and concrete, textiles and agriculture, to name just a few. The popular perception of modern technology is out of step with reality. We overestimate the importance of new and exciting inventions, and we underestimate those we’ve grown up with.”

Think you know the answer? We’ll get back to the quiz in a moment, and see if you’re right.

Two Methods of Titling a Book

As a book-writing coach for businesspeople, I’m often asked about how to come up with a sticky title. I have a bag of titling tricks, but here are two of my favorites:

Sticky Trick 1. If the writer has written a book draft or proposal, I ask that they print it out, and underline all the interesting ideas and turns-of-phrase they see. We then comb through their work and make up dozens of titles based on every promising phrase they’ve highlighted.

The advantage of this approach: The titles we create are  based on the writer’s organic material. That is, rather than focusing everything on the book’s generic idea (for instance, how to be more productive), we can look for how the writer makes their point  in distinctive ways (how to be more productive by being “unreasonable”).

Distinct ideas and phrases are what’s going to make the book stand out in the marketplace when it’s published, so why not start titling it from there?

Sticky Trick 2. The writer and I visit bricks-and-mortar and online bookshops, and we see which book titles catch our attention. Those attention-grabbers act as thought starters, and inspire us to come up with fresh titles.

This method harkens back to the quiz I asked you to take. You looked at eight choices and picked the one that wasn’t a published book title. The answer, of course, is choice 8 (“The internet isn’t that big a deal . . . ,“ which is from Bob Seidensticker’s excellent book, “Futurehype: The Myths of Technology Change”).

I’m certain you selected the correct answer, but how did you know it was correct?

Obviously, book titles follow certain rules of thumb. Perhaps you’ve never articulated these rules, but you know many of them inherently. They’re a part of you.

You know, for instance, that a title must be short. While choice 8 was a powerful piece of prose and encapsulated the main idea of Bob’s book, it violated the brevity titling rule.  Therefore, it couldn’t have been the title. (A number of books have had lengthy titles for novelty’s sake. The longest title on record, which celebrates the career of “Harry Potter” actor Daniel Radcliffe, is 4,805 characters.)

What are some other rules for titling a book? Again, an easy way of reminding yourself of rules you already know, or of finding new ones, is by studying existing books and extracting the concepts they use.

Look, for example, at my book, “Accidental Genius.” The title was inspired by a quote from Samuel Johnson. One rule, then, might be, “Title your book using a full or condensed quote.” A second rule could be, “Put together two conflicting words (like ‘Accidental’ and ‘Genius’) that intriguingly point to your book’s main premise.”

Tweetable Titles

Roger C. Parker, a smart and prolific writer who has penned 38 books, has collected dozens of titling rules, and has published them in a book called “#Book Title Tweet.”

The work’s central premise: for a title to be effective, it’s got to be able to “communicate at a glance.” The discipline of training yourself to write Twitter-friendly titles, then, is a useful one. Roger’s book, in fact, dispenses its wisdom in approximately 140 tweet-sized chunks, including:

  • “[P]osition your topic by making it obvious whom you are not writing for, e.g., ‘Design for Non-Designers.’”
  • “Target your title to a specific circumstance, e.g., ‘How to Sell When Nobody’s Buying.”
  • “Position your book by projecting an ‘attitude,’ – ‘Mad Scam: Kick-Ass Advertising Without the Madison Avenue Price Tag.”
  • “Issue an engaging command and explain it, e.g., ‘Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.”
  • “Ask a question while stressing your unique qualifications, e.g., ‘What Can a Dentist Teach You about Business, Life, & Success?’”

Besides titling tactics, Roger shares bite-sized research and survey tips, and cautions.

At 130-odd pages, “#Book Title Tweet” is a speedy read, the information in it is first-rate, and the importance of its concept is undeniable.

After all, without a strong title, it doesn’t matter how good your content is — no one will read your book, white paper, or article, click on your video, or attend your event.

You owe it to yourself and your work, then, to devise titles that stick in the mind or prompt a click.


Creating Content the Frankenstein Way

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I was in the library doing research on Viktor Frankl — the concentration camp survivor who went on to write one of the world’s most influential books, “Man’s Search for Meaning” — when I punched his name into the automated inventory system. The titles of  his books appeared on the screen . . . along with a suggestion by the computer. It read:

“Searching for: Viktor Frankl. Did you mean: Victor Frankenstein?”

I was so pleased by the machine’s out-of-left-field suggestion, that I thought of calling over a few random library patrons for a look. Instead, a better idea came to me.

Since one of the principles of freewriting (and improv) is “using what you’re given,” I decided to employ “Frankenstein” as serendipity. That is, rather than devoting the day’s research to Frankl, I wondered if I could derive any creativity principles worth sharing by researching the famed horror story.

Thanks to Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s fascinating volume, “Frankenstein: A Cultural History,” by day’s end I’d found dozens of such principles. In particular, the tale of how the novel came to be written is rife with ideas that would be helpful to any content creator.

How “Frankenstein” Came to Be Written

In 1816, Lord Byron, his traveling companion, John William Polidori, Percy Shelley, and Shelley’s soon-to-be wife, Mary Godwin (later, “Mary Shelley”), were all staying near Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

The four spent much of their time debating controversial issues concerning life and death, particularly in the realm of science. Among other things, they likely discussed Joseph Priestley’s experiments with vegetables and mold, Luigi Galvani’s work with “animal magnetism,” and Luigi Aldini’s exhibitions using electricity to animate dead frogs, oxen heads, and the body and features of an executed killer.

The group also talked  literature. One book they’d brought along was a badly-written story collection about the supernatural, “Phantasmagoriana.”

“After listening to a few of these tales,” writes Hitchcock, “Byron challenged his companions. Any one of them could do better.” An impromptu contest was arranged, Each member of the group would write a ghost story. The result?

Shelley, who’d soon be recognized as a great poet, apparently never wrote a word of his yarn.

Byron, who was already a rising star in the literary sky, wrote a two thousand word piece about two men in a cemetery, and stopped before it was finished.

Polidori, Byron’s traveling companion who had more of a background in medicine than he did as a writer, wrote two stories; the second of which, “Vampyre,” became a sensation in Europe and later helped inspire Bram Stoker to pen “Dracula.”

Mary Godwin, whose parents were renowned authors but who, like Polidori, was not yet considered a writer, struggled for days in coming up with an idea. She was blocked.

Godwin Heeds an Image

One night, as she lay in bed with eyes closed but unable to sleep, a scene appeared in her mind. She saw, in her own words, a “pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together,” which she soon recognized as a “hideous phantasm of a man stretched out.” Then, “on the working of some powerful engine,” the phantasm showed “signs of life.”

Godwin was so unnerved by the image that she opened her eyes and looked around her darkened room as a means of distracting herself. When that didn’t work, she decided to think about a plot for her ghost story. “O! if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night!,” she later wrote.

The answer to her ghost story problem suddenly hit her. Hitchcock writes: “Soon the two thoughts merged into one: her waking dream was her ghost story.” Months later, the first version of her novel was completed.

The Takeaways

Some of the lessons I take away from this story, and that might be of benefit to you, include the following:

1. You needn’t be a noted expert to write something that shakes up and sticks with an audience. Lord Byron and Percy Shelley are considered poets of the highest stripe, yet few read their work today. The characters and influences from Mary Godwin’s and John William Polidori’s work, however, continue to fascinate us.

2. When it comes to creating, arrange for a little friendly competition. Godwin did indeed write “Frankenstein” and Polidori’s effort inspired “Dracula,” but the unsung hero of the affair is Byron. Without his good-natured challenge it’s unlikely that either writer would have written a supernatural tale – then or ever. Said differently: Had Byron not been playful and competitive, the world may never have heard of “Frankenstein” or “Dracula.”

3. Learn from other fields. “Frankenstein” is a work of fiction, yet Godwin wrote it by combining the ideas she and her companions were discussing from the fields of science and philosophy. She didn’t limit her interests to poems and novels. She let the whole world in.

4. Pay attention to images. Godwin didn’t know why the “hideous phantasm” image appeared to her, and although she tried to forget it, she quickly learned the power of paying attention to such a vivid and unexplained flash of insight.

Our minds aren’t neatly ordered, and important ideas at times bubble to the surface in ways that are seemingly illogical and non-verbal.

If you want to write deeply about a topic, I can’t give you better advice than to do fast, exploratory writing about the scenes and snapshots that drift through your mind as you consider it.

Breaking a Solution Ahead of Time

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When it comes to business practices, what you’re confident about today may be proven wrong tomorrow. I’ll explain.

When I was a kid, I’d go to the candy store and spin the squeaky, revolving rack of comic books to see if it held a new issue of “Sergeant Fury,” “Captain America,” “Iron Man,” “Spider-Man,” or “Thor.” If I spotted one, I’d stare at its cover for a minute or two to get a sense if the story hidden inside promised to be worth twelve cents (or twenty-five cents for a double issue).

Why didn’t I judge the comic by thumbing through it? If I tried, the store owner would lean over his counter and shout: “This isn’t a library. Are you looking or buying?”

I’d be forced into buying, because “looking” was akin to theft.

When I was growing up, most stores dissuaded you from sampling a product. Their reasoning? Maybe they thought if you got even a taste for free you wouldn’t value the product enough to pay for it. Maybe they wanted customers to absorb the transactional risk and judge the quality of a product on their own dime.

Such thinking now, of course, is considered unenlightened. It hinders sales. Instead of keeping products away from customers, businesses try hard to get them into people’s hands.

Want to play around with a software program? No problem. Go for the free ninety-day trial and see if you like it. Want to know if a certain car hugs the road? Don’t sweat it. Take the auto home for a few days and test it.

Going from the “no sample” strategy to the “try the complete product for free” strategy is a radical about-face. But you and I have seen other strategy reversals just as drastic.

Years ago, it was assumed that the smartest person in most companies was the leader. After all, the leader was in charge of the organization for a reason. In many organizations, that thinking has now changed. They believe in the genius of the group, and think its people are smarter in the aggregate than they are separately. These organizations put collaboration tools in place, so people can more closely work together.

Along the same lines, many organizations used to assume that their employees couldn’t be trusted with sensitive information; the hierarchy, therefore, hoarded data. Now, thanks to the influence of practices like Open Book Management, certain leaders share financial and strategic information with the company, so employees can take responsibility and make better educated business decisions.

I could go on recounting business strategies, like Reengineering and Management by Objectives, which were once thought to be best approach to solving a particular problem, but are now looked upon, at best, as one tool in a diverse strategy toolkit. But I won’t. I know you get the picture.

The point I’m driving at is this: Right now, you and I are using strategies in our business that will, one day soon, be thought of as wrongheaded. We’ll look back and think, “How could I have wasted so much time believing that?” or “focusing on that?” or “doing that?”

Rather than waiting for that day to come, get a jump on uncovering those strategies and on hatching alternate ways of doing things.

Think of it as a game. Look at how you prospect and sell. Look at your products and services. Look at your infrastructure and how you get things done. Look at your pet philosophy and manifesto ideas.

Even if what you’re doing is working, pretend it’s not. Pretend it’s broken and you’ve got to come up with something new – you have no option.

What would you try?

Is there a way, even a small way, of trying it now?

Developing a Thought

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We’re told attention spans are shrinking, so if we want people to read what we write for the web, we have to be concise.

That’s sound advice . . . up to a point.

Lately, I’ve coached some bloggers who each suffer from the same dilemma: They want to write longer works — more fully realized posts or even a book — but they’re not sure how. They’re so practiced at condensing their thoughts, that they can’t, out of habit, bring themselves to expand them.

If you’re in that situation, consider the following exercise.

Grab a pen and print out your last post (or any piece of your writing). What I’d now like you to do is mark spots where you, or another writer working on the same piece, could have expanded the work in a different direction.

You might, for instance, have described a scene using one or two words when someone else would have described it in five hundred words.

Or, you presented one argument, and neglected mentioning any counterarguments.

Or, you spoke about an idea without giving an example of it in action.

Once you’ve marked all the potential development spots, pick one and write about it.

That is, write it as if you were going to insert it into the post, or use it as a way of writing a new standalone post.

Remember, for the most part, writing is an unnatural act. Whatever writing style you have is learned. If you want to take your writing in a new direction, you have to force yourself in that direction so you can learn as you go.

To expand your writing, practice expanding it.

Come Attend the “Accidental Genius” Book Launch Party

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On Wednesday, July 21st, the wonderful Lolly Daskal and I will be hosting a party in Manhattan to celebrate the release of the expanded edition of my book, “Accidental Genius.”

There, I’ll be signing books and talking about freewriting and creativity.

A bunch of cool people from the worlds of business, publishing, social media, and entertainment will be stopping by.

If you’re in the area, I’d love to meet you. It’s a meet up/tweet up type of thing. Informal, and should be lots of fun.

The details:

Date: Wednesday, 7/21/10

Time: 6 pm to 9 pm

Place: Lily’s Bar at the Hotel Roger Smith (501 Lexington Avenue, New York City, which is 47th Street and Lex.)

A cash bar will be available

Freewriting and "Accidental Genius"

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Yesterday, straight from the bindery, I received a couple of hundred copies of my latest book: the revised and expanded second edition of “Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content.”

Here’s me opening a box. (My wife, by the way, hates that I take photos in our kitchen. I’ll remember next time.)

The book, which is published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, hits bookstores over the course of the next two weeks.

Early readers enjoyed it.

David Meerman Scott said he devoured it “in one sitting, even though I had to pee really badly near the end.” He went on to say that he “couldn’t work without the ideas in this book.”

Michelle Davidson, the editor of RainToday.com, got caught up reading it, too. She told me she was on an airplane, and planned on watching her favorite show on the miniature TV embedded in the back of the seat in front of her. She started reading my book, though, became absorbed, and forgot to catch her program.

What’s the book about? It teaches readers a liberating, freestyle form of writing, called freewriting, that does two things for them:

1. It acts as a problem-solving tool, which helps them think through business problems.

2. It serves as a tool of thought leadership, which enables them to write one-of-a-kind books, posts, speeches, and anything else they need to stand out.

Here’s a piece of the introduction:

“Freewriting is one of the most valuable skills I know. It’s a way of using the body to get mechanical advantage over the mind, so the mind can better do its job.

“As expansive and impressive as the mind is, it’s also lazy. Left to its own devices, it recycles tired thoughts, takes rutted paths, and steers clear of unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory. You could say one of its primary jobs is to shut off, even when there’s important thinking to be done.

“Freewriting prevents that from happening. It pushes the brain to think longer, deeper, and more unconventionally than that it normally would. By giving yourself a handful of liberating freewriting rules to follow, your mind is backed into a corner and can’t help but come up with new thoughts. You could call freewriting a form of forced creativity.

“The technique will work for you even if you don’t consider yourself a gifted writer or thinker. The writing itself generates thought, which is why some refer to this technique as automatic writing. It often produces intriguing results without labored effort on the part of the writer. At times, the thoughts seem to pop up on their own.”

I’ll be writing about “Accidental Genius” and its techniques in many of the upcoming posts.

If you get a copy and try freewriting, please let me know how it works for you.

Freewriting and the Internal Editor

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Fast Company Expert Blogger, Tom Clifford, posted the second of a two-part interview he conducted with me. In this last part, I talk about freewriting: how and why it works, and when to use it.

If you’ve tried freewriting, you’ve likely experienced the technique’s considerable value.

I’ve seen people use it to create a strategic direction for their company, brainstorm ideas for a personal branding campaign, plan a product launch, think through employee engagement problems, rehearse ways of handling a negotiation, write books and blog posts, and more.

What’s behind freewriting’s effectiveness? It temporarily rids us of our internal editor. As I describe it in the interview:

“Inside each of us is an internal editor that does an important job. It edits what we think, say, and write — as we think, say, and write it — so we sound smart, confident, and consistent.

“ . . . There is a time, though, when our internal editor gets in our way.

“ . . . Since the editor wants us to always look good to others, it’s going to tell us we’re being stupid or impractical if we try thinking thoughts that are radically different for us. It’s going to order us to push aside the new and go with the familiar. It’s going to anchor us to what’s not working.”

Freewriting, then, gives us mechanical leverage over our editor because, as we use the technique, our editor can’t keep up with the deluge of words that hit the page. While  the editor is backing off, we can reason with vigor and abandon.

During any given freewriting session, much of what we write will, out of necessity, be boring or confused.

A portion of what we produce, though, will likely stand among our best work.

Through my book, “Accidental Genius,” as well as through my consulting and workshops, I’ve taught freewriting to thousands. I’ve seen people take to the technique instantly, and I’ve seen others try it and struggle. When they struggle, it’s almost always for one of three reasons:

1. They wrote without timing their session. In doing freewriting, use a timer set for five, ten, twenty, or thirty minutes. When the timer starts, you start. When it finishes, you finish. By using a timer, you can forget about logistics, and spend your attention and energy on flat-out writing.

2. They stopped writing throughout the session. While freewriting, it’s important to keep writing no matter what’s happening in your mind. That means, if you’re stumped, write about being stumped. If you’re feeling sluggish, write about your lethargy. If your thoughts are choppy, put them down choppily. Stopping for more than a second or two gives your internal editor a chance to reengage and disrupt the process.

3. They wrote at a leisurely pace. If you freewrite too slowly, you’re writing, not freewriting. Again, you want to write fast enough so that your editor slackens its grip. That means, if your editor is running at five miles an hour, write at six miles an hour. Your fingers needn’t fly over the keyboard. They just need to move at a clip slightly quicker than your norm.

If you’ve tried freewriting before, I’d love to hear about your experiences:

  • How has the process helped or hindered you?
  • Do you have any interesting freewriting stories to share?
  • What’s your best freewriting tip?

Strengthen Your Business Through Journaling

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When I started doing positioning a decade ago, I didn’t have a defined methodology. I worked intuitively.

I’d hang out with a client, talk to their customers, study their marketing materials, and scan their field. A few weeks, and dozens of phone calls later, we’d have their marketplace position, competitive advantages, elevator speech, talking points, and case studies.

My informal approach worked well. The client got what they wanted, and I was able to conduct business in a way that felt natural.

One day a colleague asked me how I got my results, and I told him about my loose approach. A heavy-duty structure guy, he assured me that clients would be more at ease if they knew I had a codified process with predictable steps.

Since I was relatively new to consulting, I decided to take his advice. What I didn’t want to do, though, was create a process that was phony, mundane, or that got in my way.

That’s when I turned to my old freewriting files.

Freewriting is a way of thinking onto paper that helps you get to your best problem-solving ideas. Whenever I had a client positioning project, I’d open an empty document and would use freewriting to clarify my thoughts and create ideas. It was scratchpad thinking done for my eyes only.

Fortunately, I’d saved much of this exploratory freewriting. It sat in my computer throughout dozens of throwaway documents. I sifted through them.

Not only did I discover that I, indeed, had methods I’d called upon again and again and, therefore, had a kind of rough process; I also found I’d used tactics and had insights I’d completely forgotten about. For me, reading through my rough writing was revelatory. By studying it, I created a process and steps that were based on who I was and what I actually did.

What I stumbled on, you might want to do on purpose.

That is, keep a project journal that you can write in daily or at least a few times a week. The journal can be a physical book, or a file in your computer. Whatever format you choose, use it to talk to yourself about what’s happening in a particular project.

You can, for instance, write about a session you held, a question you were asked, a piece of advice you gave, a discovery you made, an insight your client had, a road block you experienced, a process you created, a list of things to stay away from, a list of things to do again, big successes, small successes, bits of dialogue, or an image that flashed into your mind.

The act of keeping a project journal can help you immediately, as you’re doing the writing. It can also help you long after the fact – as you review it days, months, or even years later.

Consider, too, asking a client to keep a project journal. Doing so will help them work out problems, remind them of strategies and ideas that they can use over and over, and get them focused on how things are changing due to the work you’re doing together.

Each week, you could schedule time to review their journal with them. They don’t have to read the actually writing, unless they’d like to. Instead, ask them to summarize interesting findings.

By the way, make no bones about asking them to look for changes and results in their writing. Say things like, “What problems have you had? What solutions have you tried? And what results have you seen?”

If you do this enough, people start focusing on results. They start looking for progress.

Without a results-oriented focus, some people forget how far they’ve come. When you point it out to them, or when they discover it for themselves, it inspires them to do more.

Make sure you point out all the ways they’re progressing personally, their company is progressing, and their own customers are progressing.

If you or your clients have kept a project journal, I’d love to hear about it. What insights did you gain? What snags did you encounter? What might we learn from your experience?

Crafting Compelling Messages

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Fast Company Expert Blogger Tom Clifford posted the first of a two-part interview he did with me. In this opening part, I offer readers a couple of tips on how to write clear and persuasive sales messages. I say, for example:

“If you want to figure out what to say to prospects . . . ask your clients.

“After all, your clients are your clients for a reason. They’ve already said yes to your offering. Something you did or said persuaded them. Ask them about it.”

By the way, while you’re on Tom’s blog, take a look around. He’s a wonderful video director and organizational storyteller, and I always learn something when I’m there.