Freewriting

Exercising Your Writing Muscles

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One of my favorite books on writing is Beth Baruch Joselow’s “Writing Without the Muse.” You don’t read it as much as write your way through it. It’s a slim volume of sixty creative exercises that help you more closely see the world, stretch your imagination, and experiment with voice.

I’d like to share two of my favorite exercises from the book as a means of giving you a taste.

By the way, if you’ve never done writing exercises before, you’re in for a treat. The key is to approach them in the spirit of fun. As Joselow says: “Play is an important part of creativity. It’s a mistake to approach the task of writing even a serious piece without some playfulness. Wonderful things can happen when you take the risk of just fooling around.” p. 14

Exercise #1: “The Door in the Wall”

Narrow your eyes and stare across to the far end of the room. There, imagine you see a door.

What does that door look like? Is it plain or ornate? Is it constructed  from wood, metal, or another material? Does it have anything written on it?

Write about that door in detail, including the feeling you have as you approach it.

Now that you know what the door looks like, grasp its handle, open it, and step inside. What do you see?

Again, write about the experience in detail. Take ten minutes and tell us everything.

Exercise #2: “Every Day for a Week”

Every day we repeat certain activities, like brushing our teeth, drinking morning coffee, walking the dog, and the like. Your assignment: Pick one of these repeated activities, and write about it for ten minutes each day for a week.

When you’ve completed the assignment, you’ll have a seven-day log that describes a single, small aspect of your life. Look over your work:

How does your writing differ from day to day? How does it stay the same?

Look, too, at the activity you’ve been writing about. How have you  changed the way you’ve approached the activity itself, because of the scrutiny you’ve given it?

Try these two exercises on your own, or consider doing them with friends. They get the blood in your brain pumping, and can trigger some excellent conversations.

If you’d like to share the results with me, I’d be pleased to hear about them.

Freeing Yourself From Gurus

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A consultant named Tim was telling me about the field he worked in. He, in fact, wanted to write a book about it. Tim admitted, though, that he was intimidated by a famed guru who has spent years speaking and writing in that same field as he.

What, Tim wondered, could he possibly say that hadn’t already been said by the guru?

I’ve heard that lament before. What it comes down to is this:

Tim was confusing the guru’s contribution to the field with the totality of that field. He was looking at the guru’s opinions, excellent though they might be, as the only ones  possible. It was as if the guru’s smarts, charisma, and accomplishments were blinding him to all the alternate ways of approaching the subject.

“Let the work of this guru inspire you.” I said. “Be grateful that such a vivid thinker has shared so much. Celebrate him and parade his work to others. But don’t let the strength of his voice stop you from using your voice.”

Each of us has something distinctive and interesting to contribute if we give ourselves the freedom to do so. We have experiences, stories, and ideas that can add texture to a subject, or take it in new directions.

At times, though, we must free ourselves from the magnetic pull that we’ve let others have on our thinking.

One way of giving yourself distance is by studying the subject you want to write about more comprehensively. You may, in fact, be unduly influenced by a guru’s work, because you’re focused too narrowly on their thinking to the exclusion of others.

Another way of giving yourself distance is by examining your career, not at first for abstract ideas, but for concrete success stories. Once you’ve jotted down a few stories, study them and see if any insights appear organically. You may be sitting on an unusual approach or helpful anecdote, and you don’t even realize it. Let the facts lead you.

Remember, each of us can contribute. We have knowledge and perspective that could help others if only they knew about it. Don’t let others’ outstanding work blind you to the value of your own gifts and experiences.

Uncovering Your Own Career Biases

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One of the readers of the first edition of my book, “Accidental Genius,” is Allan Bacon. Allan told me the story of how he used exploratory writing to change the course of his life.

With a PhD in Physics, Allan was working as an R&D engineer for a defense contractor that built lasers which, in his words, “knocked things out of the sky.”

The contractor encouraged its employees to stay up to date on their learning and seek out advanced degrees.  Allan decided to go for an MBA — figuring it would help him become a better manager of people and projects.

As part of his MBA application, Allan had to write a personal essay. He’d never written much about himself, but tried freewriting as a means of thinking about the jobs he most enjoyed. When he looked over what he’d written, he saw a pattern he’d never noticed before.

All his favorite previous jobs – including the work he did as a volunteer and as a representative for his college at career fairs — in one way or another involved selling.

Allan hadn’t thought of himself as someone who liked to sell. He had spent his career to that point in an academic culture that looked down on salespeople. In fact, if you had approached him before he did the writing and suggested Sales as a career for him, he’d have been offended. Why go into sales when you have a PhD in Physics? He always considered the field beneath him; it was something you went into when you didn’t have other skills to fall back on.

The exploratory writing woke him up, and exposed a perceptual block that kept him from doing something he loved. As Allan says: “We tell ourselves emotional stories about who we are. I was telling myself one. Making that perceptual shift from engineer to sales professional is probably the biggest shift I ever had to make.”

Since then, Allan’s career has taken off.

He began working for high-tech start-ups as that rare sales expert with a PhD who knows how to speak to and persuade engineers. He’s also an author, and is working on a book on how to use experiments to create a more fully realized life. The working title is “Start Something You: How to Discover, Develop, and Fund Your Own Version of the Good Life (Without Quitting Your Job).” It’s due out in the next few months.

Allan’s choice has been happy and lucrative, and was triggered by writing. Perhaps you’d like to try a similar writing experiment?

For the next week, take twenty minutes a day to explore your work life through writing. For each session, set a timer, write quickly (as Ray Bradbury says, “In quickness there is truth”), and don’t stop for any reason whatsoever.

Write about every job you’ve had – even those you normally think of as inconsequential. Talk to yourself on paper, or through your computer keyboard, about who you worked with, the tasks you accomplished, the things you enjoyed, and the things you hated. In particular, jot down any stories or images that come to mind.

At the end of a week, read over all your writing. Do you see any patterns? Can you make anything connect? Have you had any insights that might suggest a new way forward?

The Power of a Writing Prompt

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If you’ve done any freewriting before, you may have heard the term “prompt.” A prompt is a common freewriting exercise. Instead of beginning a session with whatever appears in your mind, you begin with a predetermined phrase (called a prompt) that guides the direction of your writing.

How would using a prompt work?

If you were about to loosen up with a ten-minute freewrite and wanted a prompt, I might say, “Complete the following sentence: ‘The best part of my workday is . . . ’

You’d answer that question, at least initially. You could stay on it for the entire ten minutes, or you move to another subject minutes or even seconds after beginning. Your choice.

The number of prompts you could use are endless. You can come up with them on your own. A few more examples:

“Yesterday I saw a curious thing . . . “

“If I didn’t have to work I’d . . . “

“I threw a stone and it landed . . . “

Now, I’ve used prompts many times, but have never considered them part of my regular repertoire. After speaking with Robyn Steely, though, I have a new admiration for the technique.

Steely is the executive director of a non-profit organization, “Write Around Portland,” which works with social service agencies to build community. According to its website, the organization runs no-cost writing workshops for “people living with HIV/AIDS, veterans, survivors of domestic violence, adults and youth in addiction recovery, low income seniors, people in prison, homeless youth and others who may not have access to writing in community because of income, isolation or other barriers.”

The central principle driving Write Around Portland’s workshops is freewriting.

Participants sit in a circle with pad and pen, and a facilitator begins the session by offering up two prompts, such as “The thing about you and me . . . “ and “The night smelled like . . . .”

Each participant chooses one prompt to kindle their writing. Later, they share what they’ve produced and offer feedback to other writers. In giving feedback, participants keep their comments on the parts of the writing that are strong.

Steely says prompts don’t hem thinking in, they open it up. Given the same prompt, one participant might write about what they eat for breakfast while another might write about a battle they fought in during a war.

Prompts, then, can help people approach material that they may not have thought to write about. They can give a small push in an unexpected direction.

When I asked Steely about what makes for a superior prompt, she gave the following advice: “Make your prompts short and open-ended. For instance, ‘After the storm . . . ’ is a good one. It’s only a few words, and it could be about a childhood rainstorm, a thunderstorm, a fight, or it could have nothing to do at all with storms.”

As a short exercise, why not try a writing prompt now? Choose one of these two, and do a ten-minute freewrite that starts with it:

“The project I’m proudest of is . . .” or “This sounds inconsequential, but . . . “

Lean-in Moments

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A few months ago, the publisher of my book, “Accidental Genius,” asked if I’d like to revise my ten-year-old work. I figured revising it would be easy. The book, after all, already existed. Reworking it would be like cheating off myself. I said sure.

They emailed me the original manuscript, and let me have at it. I opened the file, clicked out after three minutes, and didn’t open it again for weeks. Why? In scanning the text, some questions hit me:

What if my skills have deteriorated, and I was a better writer then than I am now? What if I’ve been fooling myself all these years, and the book wasn’t as good as I remembered? What if I couldn’t think up enough new material to warrant a revised edition? What if the book comes apart in my hands while I’m revising it, and I make it worse than when I began?

I didn’t have answers nor the mettle to return to the manuscript to hunt for them. Instead, I moved the project forward through the best way I knew how: through freewriting.

“Accidental Genius” is a book about freewriting so, as you can imagine, I’ll be writing about the technique at length in future posts. For now, though, I want to mention what my earliest freewriting sessions centered around: images of unusual client interest, concentration, and surprise.

What I call “lean-in moments.”

Through my writing, I tried conjuring up every scene I could think of where a client leaned forward in their chair, because what they heard me saying intrigued, startled, or delighted them.

  • What had I told them?
  • What had I asked them to do?
  • What insights did they have?
  • How did they build on what I said in a way that excited them?

You could say I was looking at my consulting past for moments of intense client reaction and emotion. I figured these moments might lead me to stories and ideas for the book. They did. In the forthcoming edition of “Accidental Genius” you’ll find these moments seeded throughout.

Thinking about your own lean-in moments is a great way to develop books, posts, talking points, speeches, products, and services for your business. The key?

Don’t think about your material first. Instead, think about your clients. See them in your mind’s eye. Hear their voices on the phone.

They experienced surprising moments that made them laugh, clap, or focus on what you were saying with an almost supernatural intensity.

What did you say? What did you do?

Start from there.

Make Your Elevator Speech Distinctive

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When people ask what I do for a living, I can’t help but smile. I tell them the following: “Consultants and entrepreneurial companies hire me to help them increase their fees by up to 2,000%.”

I must have delivered that elevator speech a thousand times, and every time it’s gotten me that treasured response: “How do you do that?”

I didn’t always have a good speech. I used to talk about how I made people memorable or compelling or made them stand out. Now, there’s nothing wrong with saying those things. I still say them. But I was uncomfortable making claims without supplying facts to back them up. So I went hunting for the facts.

Using the freewriting technique I teach in “Accidental Genius,” I typed into my computer as fast as I could for a couple of hours about who my clients were, why they hired me, and how I’d helped them. I wasn’t straining to find the exact right thing to say. I was merely talking to myself about my business while doing a freeform information dump.

One of the things I wrote about was what had happened once my clients adopted the positions I created for them. Did  they become  famous? Find more prospects? Work on better  projects? If so, where was the proof? What were the facts?

I happened upon fees. A client who used to charge $1,000 for an engagement, now charged $20,000. Hmm. A second client, who used to charge $350 an hour, now made $25,000 a day. Huh. A third client, who had been asking $3,000 for a keynote speech, now commanded $20,000. Hah. A pattern was forming.

I was a positioning consultant and writing coach, sure. But I was also the guy whose work helped clients “raise their fees by up to 2,000%.” My assertion was an attention-grabber, in part, because it wasn’t based on some notion I cooked up. It was based on facts.

The right facts make you distinctive.

When people ask me about creating their own elevator speech, I tell them to first list as many facts as they can about their business. Facts about their clients, process, services, products, results, philosophy, guarantees, and background, among other things. Obvious stuff. A long undifferentiated list.

I then ask that they look through that list for distinctive facts. In other words, which items on the list stand out? Which are interesting? Which are unusual? Which tell a story?

When looking for distinctions, some people freeze up. They think that finding distinctions is a special skill. It’s not. Most of us already know how to do it perfectly. We could do it in our sleep. It’s no harder than when we talk about a movie.

If a friend asked about a movie you just saw, you wouldn’t hesitate until you found just the right thing to say. You wouldn’t recount every scene. Instead, you’d head straight for something distinctive:

  • “It’s about a robot that travels back in time to protect its inventor.”
  • “It’s a horror film in 3-D.”
  • “It’s based on a play that won the Pulitzer.”
  • “It’s the new Daniel Day-Lewis film.”

Finding business facts to talk about is no different. Let yourself experiment. Look over your fact list, search it for distinctions, and write elevator speeches around those distinctions:

[For a business development consultant] “I design sales pipelines for small businesses that bring in, on average, an additional two hundred thousand dollars in revenue during the first six months alone.”

[For a productivity consultant] “Organizations like HP and Proctor & Gamble hire me to set up their employee rewards programs.”

[For a fitness trainer] “For eight years, I was a Marine Lieutenant. Now I teach people how to be as fit and tough as a combat Marine.”

The purpose of an elevator speech is to get the right people interested in you. It’s to start a conversation.

You may not find the proper speech right away. As you do more projects, come back to the exercise and add facts and distinctions to your list, and see how those might change the elevator speeches you’ve written.

Telling the Same Story Differently

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A few years ago, Matt Madden wrote and illustrated a book of cartoons called, “99 Ways to Tell a Story.” In it, he tells a single story 99 times – in 99 different ways.

The single story is itself uneventful. A man, working on his laptop, gets up and heads towards the kitchen. A voice at the top of the stairs calls out, “What time is it?” The man glances at his wristwatch and says “It’s 1:15.” He opens the refrigerator and scowls, because he’s forgotten what he was looking for. End of story.

Madden first tells it as a monologue. He then tells it from the man’s point of view. He also tells it as a how-to, a flashback, a comedy, a calligram, a public service announcement, a political cartoon, in silhouette, in close-ups, from the refrigerator’s point of view, as if it were overheard in a bar, and as a homage to Marvel illustrator Jack Kirby, among other inventive ways.

Any story can be told from dozens of angles, in countless styles. Each angle and style reveals something previously hidden. It’s an important principle to remember, and doesn’t only apply to cartoons or even fiction. The idea of differing angles and styles is something to think about for your business communications.

Two weeks ago, Kristen Frantz from Berrett-Koehler Publishers asked me to make a video about the forthcoming edition of my book, “Accidental Genius.” The reason: Berrett-Koehler uses a prominent outside sales rep group, Ingram Publisher Services, to sell its books to bookstores, and Kristen thought it would be good if at sales conference the group saw how committed to selling the book I am.

I never before made a video. The result was too long, even though I had left out some important information. I’d have to reshoot it. The thing puzzling me, though, was this:

How could I make a shorter video while giving my audience more information?

Kristen and I came up with a simple strategy. I divided all my information into talking points. Some of those talking points seemed like they should come from my mouth: the book’s main idea, the philosophy behind it, the story of my eighteen years as a bookseller and my understanding of what a crucial job the sales rep has in the selling of a book. Those I filmed, and are in the video below.

Other points, like who’s in my network and how I plan on supporting the book, were important, but didn’t seem like they needed to come directly from me. Kristen, we decided, would talk about those points live at the conference.

Our solution wasn’t a complicated one, but it did the trick. We took a video with too much information, and made it more palatable by breaking its points into recorded and live moments. An optical illusion of sorts.

Take a look. Perhaps my video or performance skills aren’t what they should be yet, but the idea is still valid: Don’t think you’re stuck with one or two ways of delivering information to your audience. Try a different angle. Graft together uncommon styles. You may be surprised at the result.

By the way, near the end of the video you’ll hear me say, “I told you I’m a magician,” and then I perform a small trick. Unfortunately, I had edited out an earlier part of the video where I discussed my background as a magician and professional illusion inventor. Kristen told me not to sweat it. She’d add that to her talking points during the live session.