The Word Leader Podcast: Recent Episodes
Leandre Larouche
The Word Leader Podcast is for thinkers who want to lead with words. We discuss how to get your wisdom out in the world through book writing and publishing, how to improve your communication, and how to use writing as a leadership tool. Every weekday, podcast host and founder of Trivium Writing Leandre Larouche shares strategies, tactics, mindset hacks, and philosophical approaches to writing and communication. Visit https://www.triviumwriting.com to get more details about Trivium Writing and to learn how you can write a nonfiction book or improve your writing.
Very few things bring people as much meaning as building. Whether it be a brand, a business, or a portfolio… we humans love building. That’s why we’ve seen the rise and fall of empires, the growth and collapse of multinational corporations, and the advancement of the arts and sciences. In this episode, I’d like to suggest that rather than thinking of building something specific first, start by thinking of the body of work you would like to create. What would you like to leave behind? In this episode, I give you the keys to understanding and beginning to build your body of work.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. To learn how to write like a leader, take our short course, The Architecture of Writing.
In this episode, I share with you three ways to use writing as a means to achieve more happiness and wealth. Writing, in its essence, is a tool for business success and personal development. It's a craft you can use not only to communicate with other people but also to understand yourself. I personally recommend writing every single day—regardless of how much you write. A simple journaling practice can make the world of a difference in your life.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. To learn how to write like a leader, take our short course, The Architecture of Writing.
In this episode, I talk about a writing paradox you may have never thought about. Writing is a skill necessary for success, yet its economics are far from great. Why? Because there are more writers than there is demand for writing. Still, writers can make a great living by choosing a profitable industry and by honing their craft. The people who truly make fantastic money from writing, however, are those who have expertise outside writing. After all, writing is an amplifier. It amplifies what already exists.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. To learn how to write like a leader, take our short course, The Architecture of Writing.
ChatGPT is a free, new, and revolutionary AI technology that generates “original” text within seconds after being prompted by the user. Since its release in November 2022, people have been contending that ChatGPT is bound to replace writers. But what are the implications of using ChatGPT? Might ChatGPT be a scam? This is the question we answer in this episode, and the answer might surprise you.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. To learn how to write like a leader, take our short course, The Architecture of Writing.
I was at a bar on Friday. And as is often the case when meeting new people, I was asked what I do for a living. So I said, as I commonly do (unless I decide to be cheeky), that I write books and help others do the same. So far so good. But my interlocutor was a curious one. So I was pressed to give more details and was asked one very interesting question. "Léandre, can anyone write a book? What is the level of skill needed?" I wanted to share my answer here because someone might need to hear it.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
In this episode, I interview Maida Celedón M., a life coach based out of Toronto, Canada, who recently published her first personal development book, The Road to Fck It: An Unapologetic Guide to Standing in Your Power* with Trivium Writing's help. During our conversation, we talked about the book writing process, personal development, coaching, and what led Maida to write this unconventional book.
The Road to Fck It takes a bold approach to personal development. Straightforward, narrative, and full of personality, the book takes readers on a journey to "Fck it" —the moment they get off the passenger's seat of their life and finally take the wheel.
Connect with Maida through her website or her Instagram page.
To purchase a copy of her book, click here.
Have you ever wanted to become an author? If so, this episode is for you as we interview Dr. David Diehl, a retired educator from Houston, TX, who worked with Trivium Writing on his very first book The Umbrella: Your Personal Guide to Weathering Life Storms. During this interview, we talk about Dr. Diehl's book, which is all about creating better ways of thinking to navigate life situations. We also discuss the process of going from an idea to a published book.
To purchase your copy of The Umbrella, click here.
To connect with Dr. David Diehl, find him on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
To learn more about Dr. Diehl and his book, visit The Umbrella's website.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
To be persuasive, you should avoid certain words and phrases. One of them is the phrase "it's interesting to note that..." The reason this phrase hinders your persuasion is that it forces a conclusion onto the reader. Your readers are capable of making their conclusions, and if they come to the same conclusions as you do, they will be persuaded. But if they feel you are pushing your conclusions onto them, they will not hear you out.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
There is a large difference between speaking and writing as far as persuasion goes. When we speak, we can use tonality and body language to show confidence. But when we write, we have to double down on the power of our words themselves, and we can do so by revising and editing our words.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Can any type of content be persuasive? The short answer is "yes," but it depends on the writing goal. In Trivium Writing's Architecture of Writing methodology, there are 4 writing goals: description, narration, narration, and persuasion. These 4 goals contribute to content being persuasive, but in the end, for content to be persuasive, there must be an intention for the content to be persuasive. For example, a biology textbook isn't persuasive; but Darwin's On the Evolution of Species was very persuasive when it was published.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
From time to time, you will find yourself faced with an unconvincing sentence. The rest of the text may be persuasive, but one sentence in particular sounds off. To fix an unconvincing sentence, you have to ask yourself the following question: is the problem inside or outside the sentence? In other words, is the problem the words or the content? If the problem is inside the sentence, you must revise the words and choose them more carefully. If the problem is outside the sentence, then you must revise the paragraph's content.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
How can you tell if a sentence is persuasive? Sure, you can know if a text is persuasive. But how can you tell if one sentence in particular helps the text being persuasive? The answer lies in the certainty of the language. Some words and phrases such as "I think" and "I believe" insert doubt in your writing. Unless you actually doubt what you are writing, in which case you perhaps should not be writing it, do not use doubtful language. The more doubt you insert into your writing, the less persuasive you are.
This episode is the first in a series of podcasts on the topic of persuasion. I would like to thank you Carlo Cabrera for asking me questions about writing and persuasion.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
What's interesting about Hollywood movies is they follow a specific structure. Not only that, we can know the structure and have studied and still feel emotionally compelled by it. Why is that? That's because humans are completely wired for story. We understand the world through storytelling, and we crave stories. So, when writing and communicating, make sure you are telling stories.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
The other day, I was reading the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and noticed something particular. What was it? It was that the top 5 books on the list all had one thing in common: their title was one word only. Of course, that fact does bear significance: it means these words are very strong and capable of drawing the audience in. In this episode, we look at these book titles and how powerful a single word can be.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
It can be hard to stay focused and productive when working on a long piece of writing. One thing I have noticed about myself is that varying where I write helps me a great deal in staying focused. I enjoy being in different environments, in different positions (sitting, standing), and using different devices. I have three different locations where I write in my apartment, and I also frequently go to coffee shops. I also have three devices I use to write: a mac mini, a Macbook, and an iPad. Having these different devices helps me vary where and how I write, which is extremely valuable.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Not very long ago, I was reminded by a lawyer that the written word is more persuasive than speech. I should know better since I talk about the importance of writing every single day to anyone willing to hear me out. But I may be excused this time as I was under pressure and looking to avoid a legal dispute. What had happened? I was speaking with an attorney hours before a scheduled meeting with the other party. When I told the attorney I thought I should simply speak with the other party during the meeting, he interrupted me. He said, "no, the written is more persuasive. Write an email, then go to the meeting." I thought, "well, if people won't believe me, they should at least believe the attorney."
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of The Architecture of Writing guide.
I was driving down in Toronto when suddenly I was struck with a sense of sadness and nostalgia. What had happened? I was driving by an avenue where an ex-lover was living when we were seven years ago. I associated that specific corner of the city with the heartbreak that occurred because it was around there I last saw that woman. But how could my emotions be triggered? It was because of the words written on the buildings on that corner. ICICI Bank and Intel. These words, with the image of these buildings, were carved into my mind in association with these feelings. This should all teach us a lesson, which is that words can trigger emotions in the subtlest of ways. When we write, we must be aware that words trigger emotions, and we can use this to our reader's advantage.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
The Word Leader Podcast is back from a longer-than-expected break! Today's episode is an interview with author and social engineer Ben Bressington. Benjamin is a speaker and author of multiple books. His latest book People Ignorant: Unlocking Success, Confidence & Influence.
Ben has a Law & Criminology degree from Australia. Ben spent 10 years helping Fortune 1000 companies apply gamification principles to their sales and communication process. Now he spends his time helping people improve their sales conversations. Specifically, he helps people close deals faster and discover the hidden opportunities in their daily communication. With his company, Behavior Sales, Ben designs algorithms for persuasion.
To learn more about Behavior Sales, visit behaviorsales.com Behavior Sales Social Media Linkshttps://www.facebook.com/behaviorsaleshttps://www.linkedin.com/company/behavior-sales Ben’s personal social media pageshttps://www.facebook.com/benjamin.bressingtonhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminbressington
It’s hard to believe, but we have passed the 300th episode of The Word Leader Podcast. We are going to take a short pause until the end of the year, and we’ll be back strong in January 2022.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Stories sell, but how do you write a story? Not every piece of information in your hand is a story, but it can become one if you make it so. Remember that a story is made of someone doing something. There needs to be a character and an important action. These two elements create a journey, and the journey creates a change. The character’s action is made in order to solve a problem. But the character can’t resolve the problem right away. He or she needs to change and become better to do so. By the end of the story, the character is a new person, which gives people the hope of transformation for themselves.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
You don’t need to be in love with writing to be a good writer. You simply need to be observant and analytical. You can identify the patterns of good writing. Learn some writing concepts and identify them in texts you love. Start implementing these patterns in your own writing, one at a time. Slowly but surely you’ll be implementing most of the patterns found in good writing. You can guess what good writing is, but that’s going to take you a long time. Looking for patterns is the perfect shortcut to improve your writing.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
The best and easiest way to improve your writing is to cut words and sentences. The less words you have, the more impact each word has. The same goes for sentences. Shorter and more concise texts require more from readers. The more engaged the reader, the more power your writing has. When you strike someone’s imagination, you leave a mark on their mind. Less is more, always.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
You can educate people all you want, but nothing comes close to letting them come to their own conclusions. Your job as a writer is to connect facts, ideas, and stories for readers to make their own minds. You can try to force a perspective down their throat, but you likely won’t succeed. Your job is simpler than that. Connect the right information in the right order with the right transitions, and the truth will become obvious. It will shine. It will glow. You’ll be rewarded as a thought leader.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Some books contain knowledge that will change your life. Knowledge is power, as the saying goes. But power can kill you, too—or at least leave you incapacitated. Knowledge is empowering if one knows how to use it. There are many unfortunate things about the world we live in, and knowing all about it without the ability to change anything is soul-crushing. You need to grow to handle the truth. If you read more than you grow, you may become jaded and miserable.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
If you’re writing and publishing a book, one of your goals is to sell copies. To sell copies, you must be cognizant of what’s been done before you because success leaves a trail. In the end, you have to find a compromise between what you really want (which doesn’t necessarily sell) and what works (what sells). One of the biggest mistakes we make both in writing/publishing and business is giving the market what we think it wants—not what it actually wants. Whether for your title, content, or book cover, look at what’s worked before to get some inspiration. But remember to stay true to yourself!
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
What’s hard about writing a good book is keeping the quality consistent. All too often, when we write our first draft, the quality of our content and writing vary between chapters and sections. Although it can be avoided through solid writing foundations, it’s not completely abnormal. Writing is a difficult task, and writing well is even more so. But that’s why you should always have people to review your work—whether or not they’re professionals. The more pairs of eyes, the better. These people may not know how to fix the issues in your book, but they can at least point them out. You can also work with a professional writer to make sure your book is consistent. If the quality of your book isn’t consistent across the whole book, you risk letting down your readers.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
It’s tempting to believe that we can only learn how to write well by reading books on writing, by writing a lot, or by taking a graduate program. But the reality is that the mechanics of writing are only one aspect of writing—and it’s not even the most important. The most important aspect of writing is human psychology. How well do you understand how people think and process information? That makes the biggest difference in your writing. That’s why a lot of non-trained writers have become successful writers. At the end of the day, you can learn how to write anywhere—just look at the world around you and pay attention to how people behave.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Books take time to write, and that’s a good thing. You’ve probably been in a situation where you spoke too fast and regretted it. Or perhaps you’ve sent a text message and didn’t take the time to evaluate whether you meant what you wrote. That happens to the best of us. But that happens because we don’t take the time to review ourselves. Books are great pieces because they afford you the ability to review yourself. So, by writing a book, you can give your message more credence. And by reading books, you can get your hands on better, more thoughtful information.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
When I was in university, I used personal branding to get good grades on my paper. I developed a very unique way of writing papers, and they usually involved mixing cultural politics and humour. The reality is that you can brand yourself through the way you write and the way you communicate. Branding can be found in everything, and everything can be branded. In the end, your branding is simply how people talk about you when you’re not in the room. It’s how you’re remembered by your audience. Use branding to your advantage.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Two important needs humans have are certainty and variety. Though certainty matters because people need to trust you to take them somewhere, variety matters a great deal because people get bored if they can predict what’s next. At every level of your writing and communication, you need to offer variety. You do so by changing the variables you are using. Variables can be themes, paragraph length, sentence types, and much more. Once you understand the variables of writing and communication, you can vary them and make your writing engaging.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Conceptual thinking is the ability to connect ideas and turn abstract thoughts into compelling concepts people can visualize. This skill is highly profitable and highly underrated. We don’t talk a lot about conceptual thinking, just as we don’t talk a lot about writing. Yet it is so important. Conceptual thinking produces best-selling books, billion-dollar brands, and paradigm-shifting thought leaders. Conceptual thinking is the very core of what makes information compelling. If we can feel it, and conceptualize it, we can see it. If we can see it, we can believe it.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
If you feel you’re struggling with writing, you need to ask yourself why. You need to assess your expectations and vision. You also need feedback. The truth might be that you’re doing just fine, and that your expectations are too high for where you are. High achievers have a way of always looking ahead and wanting to improve. But you can’t get ahead of yourself. Perhaps the only problem you have is perception. Because, after all, your main question should be, “is my writing achieving its goal?” If it’s not, you need to understand why so that you can solve the issue. This can only happen if you evaluate what the actual goal is.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
A client asked how to bridge the gap between being structured and being generic. The truth is that structure doesn’t need to be generic. The problem with book and content coaches is they put a bandaid on the problem of structure. They say, “put these elements in this order” when in fact the order doesn’t matter much. Sure, some things need to go at the beginning and others at the end. But, if you want to write something compelling, you need to trust your creative instincts and let the structure come to you.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Writing is the key to a successful life because writing is formalized thinking. Good thinking leads to a good life. But why is that? There are two ways writing can be useful to lead a good life. First, writing helps us figure out what we want. Writing about the future helps get a crystal-clear picture of what we want out of life. Second, writing helps us reconcile ourselves with the past. By writing, we can better understand how we feel about the things that have happened and we can improve our relationship with the past. If you write both about the future and the past, you’ll be set for success no matter what happens to you.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today. Buy the Self-Authoring program at https://selfauthoring.com/ (I am not affiliated with them and am not receiving a commission.)
One of my mentors once told me, “No. Stop. You’re growing too fast and not slowing down for your audience. Teach one simple nugget at a time, and your audience will be better off. Stop letting your expertise be your biggest shortcoming.” Damn, he was right. He was completely right, and it was tough to accept. Unfortunately, this happens to everyone—even the people who teach communication. We get so immersed into our field that we forget the world outside. But we need to come back to reality. We need to eat our dog food. So remember to slow down; you may be going to fast for your audience.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
If you write a book for the first time, you’ll quickly notice that it’s like opening a Pandora's box. You’ll find a lot more than you thought you would. In fact, you may wonder whether you have more than one book. You may wonder if you should be expanding your thoughts—or not. You may wonder if you should be blogging, if you should be writing articles, and the like. It’s normal. You have more than a book. You have a content library. Your thoughts are not just many, they are evolving. Your substance changes over time. Think about your book as the beginning, not the end. Your book is the beginning of a web of knowledge.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
While writing your book, you’ll get feedback from other people. But chances are that you’re attached to your work and taking criticism (even if constructive) can be difficult. I catch myself every so often wincing at the feedback I get when it’s not what I want it to be. Of course, I’d like to get everything perfectly the first time. Don’t we all? But, in those instances, I remind myself that I’m not doing this for myself. I’m not writing for myself. I’m writing for other people. I’m trying to lead, and as Simon Sinek says, “leaders eat last.” I swallow my pride and evaluate the feedback objectively. This is the only way to handle feedback.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
We often dismiss theory on the basis that it’s not as useful as practice. We often believe that “practical” books—how-to books—are inherently better. I think that is because we live in the era of personal development. But let’s not dismiss theory because we need theory to get to the practical stuff. We need to lay out theories about the world because we don’t have all the answers just yet. We need to form theories because they guide us through our investigations of the world. We need theory as much as practice, so let’s not dismiss it.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
We often talk about all the beautiful things that come with writing and being an author. Of course, writing is a potent way to make a mark on the world and impact other people’s lives. But writing can also backfire. Words have lives of their own, and so do texts. Think of how Karl Marx’s work was appropriated by various revolutionaries who killed millions of people. The truth is that most people who write are well-intended. They believe they are doing the right thing. But their writing can be appropriated nonetheless. Your responsibility as an author is to be crystal clear about your prescriptions. You can’t stop people from interpreting your work, but you can at least make clear what you stand for and what you stand against.
Visit www.triviumwriting.com to learn more about writing, read our blog, and grab our resources. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
In the traditional publishing world, books are the fruit of a collaboration between an author and an editor. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the editor. The editor acts on behalf of the audience and the publishing company. After all, giving a book deal to an author is a business decision—it’s an investment. From the publisher’s company, the book needs to yield a return, and the editor helps in ensuring the book will yield a return. But if you’re not going to take the traditional publishing route, then you still need someone to help you with your book. Arguably, it’s even more important for you to have someone to help you.
Join The Word Leader Facebook Community to learn more about writing, connect with like-minded fellows, and get support in your writing journey. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
I am not an artist. At least, I don’t consider myself one. Sure, I do like poetry and like to put rhythm in my writing. Still, I don’t consider myself an artist because I don’t think like one. The way I approach writing is closer to architecture. Over the past decade, I’ve dissected writing and broke it down into its different elements. When I write, I write through an approach I’ve created. That approach is called “The Architecture of Writing.” It’s logical, methodical, and surgical. The idea behind “The Architecture of Writing” is that writing a book, or anything else, is like building a house.
Join The Word Leader Facebook Community to learn more about writing, connect with like-minded fellows, and get support in your writing journey. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Almost every aspiring author thinks they need a destination when, in reality, they need a direction. You don’t need to know precisely where you’ll land to get to the place where you need to be. It’s just like life. (Ouh!) The people who carefully plan every aspect of their life and their final destination miss out on the richness of the world. In other words, they stifle opportunities and kill spontaneity. You can plan your book while also leaving room for creativity. The truth about writing is that it’s a humbling and enriching experience.
Join The Word Leader Facebook Community to learn more about writing, connect with like-minded fellows, and get support in your writing journey. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
“Assumption” is a dirty word. We’re told we shouldn’t make assumptions about people, how things will go, and just about anything we can think of. Assumptions are the opposite of empirical evidence, so the story goes. And the story is true — in certain contexts, at least. For example, you shouldn’t assume someone’s behaviours based on their ethnicity, nor should you run online advertisements based on your assumptions about the market. But writing is a different context, and the process requires a healthy level of assumptions. After all, when you’re publishing content or books, you can’t know for sure who’s going to buy it.
Join The Word Leader Facebook Community to learn more about writing, connect with like-minded fellows, and get support in your writing journey. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
Let’s be honest: The people who open their mouths simply because they like the sound of their voice aren’t worth listening to. Neither are the people who interject because they think they’re smart and know it all. People of substance talk when they have something valuable to say, namely, when they know something that’s missing from the conversation. When they don’t, they listen to what other people have to say, and they learn. The same is true with writing. You should start your book from what’s missing in the conversation your community is having. You should look deep within yourself to find what you can contribute.
Join The Word Leader Facebook Community to learn more about writing, connect with like-minded fellows, and get support in your writing journey. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
So, what do your people talk about? That’s the general topic. Within a group of people, there’s always one (or many) recurring conversation topics determined by the group’s identity. For example, when mechanics get together, they don’t talk about philosophy. That doesn’t mean mechanics aren’t interested in philosophy; it just means that’s not what they generally talk about together. What makes the world beautiful is that we live our lives in different communities. If we only hang out with one group of people, we’d miss out on the richness of life and valuable opportunities.
Join The Word Leader Facebook Community to learn more about writing, connect with like-minded fellows, and get support in your writing journey. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
As an individual, you are multifaceted. You have different desires, interests, problems, and pains. This means you are part of different communities. Communities have different bodies of knowledge and different understand- ings of the world. As an individual, you contribute to your communities in different ways… Which is an exciting opportunity for you! But here’s the kicker: Those communities are hosting dinner parties every night, and you can only attend one. You can’t be at two dinner parties at the same time. This leads to a very important idea: At any given time, there is only one book you should be writing.
Join The Word Leader Facebook Community to learn more about writing, connect with like-minded fellows, and get support in your writing journey. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
I always talk about how everything starts from your identity, but the tools also matter in the writing process. The tools matter because they influence your identity. You need to love the way your tools make you feel throughout the writing process—otherwise, you won’t stay motivated and you won’t enjoy the journey. For example, I recently bought a Lamy fountain pen. One of the reasons I wanted one was that I knew a nice pen would help me take journaling seriously and do it more often. It would also force me to treat my handwriting seriously, too.
Join The Word Leader Facebook Community to learn more about writing, connect with like-minded fellows, and get support in your writing journey. Get your copy of Write a Book That Matters today.
You always hear me talk about writing on this podcast, but writing is just the beginning. Writing is a tool you can use for your life, your business, or your personal development. But once you’ve written and published something, you need to stand by it. You need to live up to its promise. By writing, you’ve made a commitment to the world about the type of person you are and the type of world you want to live in. You have to act accordingly. In the end, you can be the best writer in the world, you can use the written word compellingly, but if you don’t live by your word, you haven’t accomplished anything worthy with your writing. Your writing becomes a part of you, and you must honor it.
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Even if you haven’t published anything yet, you are someone’s favorite writer. Someone somewhere is craving for the way you articulate your experience as a human. Someone somewhere wants to hear your deepest thoughts about who we are, what we’re doing, and why we’re here. We have intellectual sister souls—people who feel the same things we do, people who think similarly—and frankly, there’s nothing better than meeting them. There’s nothing more satisfying than being told by someone we’ve articulated something they’ve thought for so long but couldn’t.
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There is a word I love in the English language, and that word is serendipity. That word means an unexpected discovery or finding something different than what you were expecting. There exists book serendipity, and there also exists writing serendipity. And the latter makes writing frighteningly beautiful. Book serendipity is finding a book you need at the library while picking up another one. Writing serendipity, though, is writing something you otherwise wouldn't have because you sat down and wrote at a specific moment. Writing serendipity is real, and it’s uncanny. You should see it as a jealous God, something to be awe-struck by and also afraid of.
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There are very few things that are going to make a bigger difference in your writing than certainty. Certainty, or the state of being certain, means that you do not let other people’s doubts bring you down. Of course, it’s a state that’s difficult to achieve, and you won’t achieve it by “faking it until you make it.” You’ll achieve certainty by focusing on the things you are knowledgeable about. You’ll achieve it by saying things that you know are true. The world needs more certain people. Especially in the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of chaos and uncertainty in the world. It’s your time to be the leader you can be, and to show the world the certainty you have about your ideas.
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It’s extremely rare to find an excellent writer. People who know what to communicate and how to communicate are rare, and all other things being equal, these people always win. The job. The client. The girl. The list goes on. That’s because good writing breeds trust and trust is the foundation of our society. Why does writing breed trust? Because it’s a sign of confidence and competence. We trust those who can lead. The good news is, becoming an excellent writer is possible for everyone. It just requires some time, practice, and self-awareness. So, knowing that being a great writer can be a game-changer in your life, why would you not want to become one?
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When writing or speaking, you need to be aware of which words you use and why. It’s not enough to know what a word’s definition means. You need to know how it lands with the people you’re talking to. Different people have different ways of thinking about words. What may be a positive word for one may be a negative one for another. For example, while on a run downtown Toronto, I saw a sign that read Portland St. This sign made me think of Portland, Oregon, a city that’s been ravaged by the excess of ideology. For someone else, Portland might mean a city where people are principled and taking action toward social justice. Whatever you choose to say, you need to be deliberate about it.
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If you’re thinking of writing a book or have started writing a book, chances are that you’re doing so out of a mission to change the world. Chances are that you’re solving a problem or a need for other people. Chances are, too, some people are starving for the book you’re writing or are about to write. As such, you should talk about your book publicly. You should let people know you are working on your book. Talking about your book is positive for two reasons. 1) It makes people anticipate it. 2) It keeps you motivated and helps you grow. By talking about your book, you can tell people’s excitement about it and you can collect important feedback on your angle. You can find new perspectives and approaches to your topic. Writing is a dialogue, not a monologue.
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Life happens. Sometimes you stop writing for a few days or a few weeks, and then you need to get back in the groove. But by the time you’re back, you’re often no longer in the mind space to do it. So what do you do to get back to your writing? First, you need to familiarize yourself again with your work. Read some previous chapters to see where you left. Second, spend long enough writing that you can write several pages in one sitting. Write for two to three hours to really immerse yourself again in the writing.
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Writing isn’t easy. It's a physiologically demanding task. You have to sit down, you have to concentrate, you have to know your topic, and you have to know how to write. There’s so much more than writing that goes into writing — be it a book or an article. To be successful in writing, you need to listen to what your mind and body tell you. You have to do the tasks before, during, and after writing when and where is best for you. What does your biology tell you? Write in the morning? Write at night? Break down the writing process and spread its components across the day the way that works the best for you.
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Writing is a skill that takes a lifetime to develop. You should strive to develop your writing a little every single day. The reality is that you have the opportunity to do so all the time. Whenever you read or write, you have the opportunity to be self-aware of how something is written or how you’re writing it. Plus, you can take some of your spare time to learn new things about writing, which you can then apply. By improving your writing a little every day, you’ll be in a great position to move closer to your dreams.
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Last week, I made a quite humorous post in which I talked about something that happened to me at a bar. In the post, I also made a sales pitch for my new grammar book and I also invited women to apply to be my girlfriend. People had a good laugh at the post, and we all made banter in the comments. After reading one of my hilarious comments, one guy said, “May I rent a room in your mind, it’s a beautiful place.” To this, I answered that his mind is just as beautiful of a place and I am sure so too is your mind. But to show how beautiful of a place your mind is, you have to let it free when writing. You have to let it free from the fear of judgment and all the other things that inhibit you from being who you are when writing.
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If you want to write but aren’t quite decided to take the leap, consider this: If you knew writing would make you richer and more successful, would you do it? The truth is that writing will make you richer and more successful, but only if you make it work for you. To make writing work for you, you have to evaluate what you already have going. What are your current assets? What are your current projects? You will make writing work for you if writing complements the other areas of your life and the other areas of your life complement your writing.
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The beautiful thing about the English language is that there is a word for every possible nuance. The more precise your words, the better your writing. As such, there are million-dollar words—words that show exactly what you mean and create an image in your reader’s mind. These words will make you an unforgettable writer. The problem, however, is that some members of your audience may not understand these million-dollar words. As such, you should use the million-dollar words only when you know they convey so much meaning that it’s worth sending your reader to the dictionary. In other words, assume your reader won’t know the word and ask yourself if it’s a word worth knowing.
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Repetition in and of itself isn’t good or bad. There are two types of repetition in writing: deliberate and unintentional. Deliberate repetition can be used powerfully for rhetorical effect: you can repeat a word, a phrase, a clause, a sentence, or an idea to create emphasis. Unintentional repetition is negative because it shows a lack of focus and conciseness. While the repetition of ideas can improve retention, any repetition should be deliberate. When writing, make sure you remember what you’ve written before to make sure you’re not accidentally repeating yourself.
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Whether you’re someone with dim job prospects or the CEO of a multinational corporation, writing can make you richer. Writing is simply a means to express ideas. And because of its nature, writing makes ideas more compelling. If you master this art, you can express your ideas or those of other people. Whatever you choose, you will become powerful. Writing is an in-demand skill; every person and every organization needs it. Master writing and you will become rich.
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Many people don’t write or postpone writing because they think the process is very complicated. For example, how do you structure your book, how do you get it edited, and how do you get it published? These are legitimate questions, but these are questions that have long been answered. What’s more, these answers are simpler than you would think. People earn a living making these answers simple. What you need to realize is that any complexity can be solved by time or money. You can hire experts to help you or you can figure things out on your own. The question is what do you have more of? Time or money?
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Vivid description is the hallmark of great writing. It’s what stays with your readers after they’ve read your piece. They may not remember every word you wrote, but they remember how you make them feel. Description plays an important role in making your readers feel. You have the power to throw your readers into a scene, into a story, and to make them the heroes who undergo the quest. There’s nothing more powerful than that. To write powerful descriptions, you need to think from a story perspective and you need to use fresh, crisp, visual words.
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If you can write a good paragraph, you can be an excellent writer. A paragraph is simply a block of information that takes readers from Point A to Point B. These points represent statements, and everything between these two points serves to create a logical, substantial transition. In the end, writing is a series of statements, and the goal is to prove these statements in the most substantial and persuasive way possible. A large part of writing effectively is writing paragraphs because paragraphs make statements.
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Humor is a powerful tool to use in your writing. You can use humor to give your readers an experience or simply to make them feel. Beyond knowing what makes your audience laugh, there are four key components you need to write in a way that will make your readers laugh: pattern interruption specificity, complicity, repetition, surprise. You always need to interrupt the current pattern to insert your humor, but you also need to use specific elements that your audience relates to. By doing so, you create complicity, and you can come back to that complicity through repeating pattern interruptions. However, always make sure you don’t become predictable. Use surprise.
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Back in university, I had a job that required me to write over 600 cover letters for job seekers. Because of this job, I developed a very simple way to structure cover letters, and it influences the way I think about writing to this day. In every cover letter, I would strategically place three elements: where the job seeker is coming from, why he’s a good fit for the job, and why the company is of interest to the job seeker. This framework works well because it provides context, it provides authority, and it provides relevance. Good writing requires these three elements.
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The single best way to improve your writing skills is to teach other people what you know about writing. You may not be a writing expert. You may not be where you want to be with your writing. But you can improve your skills by sharing what you know because it strengthens your current understanding. It also shows your current limitations and pushes toward the areas where you need to improve. For example, you might be great at text structure, but you might not be the best at sentence structure. By teaching other people, you’ll find out where your weakest links are and how to grow.
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We often talk about whether it’s better to write or to type. Put practicality aside, it’s a complicated question because both have benefits and inconveniences. On the one hand, writing is better because it’s freer and less mechanical; it’s also a more creative process because you have to pay attention to your handwriting. On the other hand, typing is great because you can easily go back and revise your ideas. Although we don’t advise revising and edit while writing the first draft, being able to modify our text as we write can be very useful for our creativity.
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Many people write like they speak. While some people criticize the practice, some others welcome it. Today, many books self-published through Amazon are written as the author speaks. Is it right or is it wrong? Should you do it or not? The reality is that it’s not writing like we speak that makes a book professional or not; it’s how sentences and paragraphs are structured. You can write a very professional book like you speak; the trick is to give it enough meat and write sentences that sound nice. Unless you are writing an academic or another formal piece, you can absolutely write like you speak and it will make your writing fresh and authentic.
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Writing is a wildly underrated skill. It is underrated because we take it for granted. We all do it, but all too often we perform the act without being deliberate. In the end, writing is a big cornerstone for a successful life because it is communication at its finest. There are four types of communication—verbal, nonverbal, visual, and written—and they all rely on writing to some extent. To speak eloquently, we need to prepare what we’re going to say. To create a compelling visual, we need an underlying story. What’s more, writing isn’t just useful to transmit information to other people; it’s useful when receiving information, too. Writing when consuming information improves retention, comprehension, and synthesis.
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There’s no denying writing is hard. In fact, it may be one of the hardest intellectual tasks we humans can perform. We can think easily. We can speak easily. But writing—and writing clearly—is another challenge altogether. In a nutshell, writing is difficult because it’s a one-way conversation, which means the reader can’t ask questions while reading. As a result, writing needs to be ultra clear and organized, and most minds are naturally inclined toward clarity and structure. Therefore, writing requires that we stretch our intellectual capacities to their fullest and create something fully coherent.
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There is an abundance of writing courses online, but the question is: Are they worth it? The answer largely depends on your current writing level and your goals. Courses vary based on the writing type they tackle as well as the level of experience they assume. However, most courses do not offer hands-on help and feedback, which are necessary to become a better writer. If your goal is to learn new techniques, some courses may be valuable to you. But if you are trying to become a professional writer or an author, you will need more hands-on guidance.
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It goes without saying that books are a form of intellectual property. Books are protected by copyright law. But beyond copyright law, books are a great way to create intellectual property. To be compelling, books require you to create unity around your ideas and to create intellectual property. What do I mean by that? Remember that intellectual property is the unique expression of ideas. By writing a book, you are creating frameworks and themes. You can use these frameworks and themes in your business to sell other products and services at a higher price thanks to your intellectual property.
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Innovation comes from connecting different ideas from different fields and making them into something new. Writing is the best way to achieve innovation of thought because writing is formalized thinking. When we write, we have the opportunity to blend different disciplines together. By doing so, we can create something fresh and new. Because we’re knowledgeable about different things, we can easily create something original.
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If you have a book idea, you need to realize your book has an expiration date. The selling force of your product or service, Schwartz wrote in Breakthrough Advertising, comes from the market alone. Demand cannot be created. Your book is a product. It’s the most powerful product you can create, and it’s a product you have to put your heart and soul into… but it’s still a product. And it doesn’t escape the law of the market. If you write your book the right way, you establish the problem or the gap in your market. But markets do change, and your idea may not be as relevant tomorrow as it is today. Audiences change. Needs change. Don’t wait to write your book.
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Writing a book is the ultimate meritocracy. Why? Because no one can keep you from writing a book. There are no gatekeepers—and today, you can publish without a traditional publisher. This means that even if no one believes in your idea, you can write it. And if the book is well done, no one can argue with you. That’s why many people have changed industries through books. That’s why people break into new industries through books. It doesn’t matter who you are and where you’re from. With writing, you have a fair chance.
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Writing a book isn’t just something for the people you want to serve. Nor is it something you do just for your business or your brand. It’s something you do for yourself as the book will impact you for years to come. In fact, it’s fair to say that when you write a book, you write a new chapter in your life. Becoming an author is no small feat. If you take the writing and publishing process seriously, you’ll become a different person. You’ll have access to new people, new opportunities and new places. Your mind will expand as will your life. Writing and publishing a book is a truly life-changing experience.
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Today there is a wealth of alternatives to reading. Your job as a writer is to make your writing so compelling that people would be foolish to ignore it. Your writing needs to make everything else irrelevant by showing urgency. You are never competing for people’s book budget. You are competing for their attention and the overall budget. If you wrote the book people have been dying to read, your audience will ditch going out and watching Netflix.
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People read you for your wisdom. They want the universal lessons they can apply to their lives no matter who they are and where they live. The best writing is universal. It speaks to people and their problems regardless of their identity and geographical location. When writing, you want to extract the golden pieces of knowledge you have so you can feed an audience hungry for wisdom.
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Ideas don’t change over the centuries. People have thought the same thoughts and ideas for a long time. What matters when expressing ideas isn’t the WHAT as much as it is the HOW. Reading is a journey, and the journey to one conclusion is different depending on who creates it. You can’t get too caught up thinking, “do my ideas matter?” The right question to ask is, “how can I create the most compelling journey to my conclusions?”
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It’s always tempting to believe we aren’t enough to write on our chosen topic. It’s always tempting to believe we’re not enough of an expert to be writing a book. But everybody feels this way at one point or another, and this feeling only stems from fear. The truth is, we develop and refine our expertise by writing. We revise and polish our thoughts, which gets us ahead in our thinking. You can’t be enough before starting to write. No one ever is. You become enough by writing.
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Does everyone have a book inside of them? If not, who should write a book? In theory, everybody has a book inside of them. However, only those willing to take responsibility for their ideas and express them in the best way possible should write books. Writing a book should not be a vanity project. There is no pride to take in having published. There is pride in having produced something that will last. The world does not simply judge a book by its cover and can see right through shallowness.
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What is tone? Although there are many definitions of the term, tone is most commonly described as the style in which a piece of writing is done. Tone can be serious or playful, formal or informal. In order to write a piece of writing that is both engaging and informative, it's important to understand the tone of your work. For the writer, this means that you have to be aware of how you want your audience to feel when they are reading your work. Do you want them feeling angry at injustice in society? Or do you want them feeling enlightened about a topic that they didn't know much about before?
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There are so many ways we can make an impact on people, yet one and only is capable of reaching the millions — if not the billions. Books are priced as commodities, they are sold everywhere and to everybody. Yet they contain million-dollar ideas, life-altering pieces of advice, and they can radically change the course of our existence. Once you realize this, you can no longer procrastinate on your book. Once you realize this, you understand the awesome power books have in the world.
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There are three components to a great book: style, substance, and aura. You need to engage your readers with the way you write and present content. You need to show the depth of thinking to reassure your readers they are being led in the right direction. You need to create a sense of relevance around your topic and your personal brand. With these three elements, you have a book promising to be successful. The good news? You already have these components inside of you. You just need to apply them to your writing.
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It’s easy to get emotional when we get feedback. But we must remember that feedback is subjective and should be carefully weighed. When you get feedback on your writing, take a step back and wait before you do anything. It can be tempting to make a lot of changes after getting feedback, but it’s a bad idea. Collect more feedback, think about the feedback, and make up your mind about it. This way, you’ll avoid wasting, time, energy, and focus.
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Writing professionally means writing not just when it’s fun but also — and especially — when it’s challenging. To be a prolific writer, you need to ritualize your writing. You need to schedule your writing time, prioritize tasks, and use cues and rewards. A good book on the topic is James Clear’s Atomic Habits. Writing won’t always be fun, but it always will be necessary for your life. You must find ways to make it happen even when it’s difficult.
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If you’re wondering whether your writing can make an impact, remember that people are more like you than you think. The pain, the grief, the desires, and the dreams you have—other people share them. The things that make you feel embarrassed—other people struggle with them, too. Start sharing your pains and struggles, the deeply personal things you think you should never share. Once you do so, you will notice that people relate to you more and engage with your writing increasingly.
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One of the few things all humans have in common is the need to be loved and accepted. Love and acceptance drive almost everything we do—whether we consciously realize it or not. The best way to be loved and accepted is to become a leader. To become a leader, we need to step into our identity, figure out our lane, and rally people around a goal or a destination. By doing so, we find ourselves loved and accepted. There are hundreds of ways of being a leader. We just need to get started and be relentless in the pursuit of our vision.
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Life goes in two directions: inward and outward. To live a good life, you need to look inward, get to know yourself, and figure out your direction in the world. By going deep into your identity, you will become a better, deeper, more ethical person and will find happiness and fulfillment. However, it won’t make you successful by society’s standards. In other words, it won’t make you rich or famous. It won’t give you more notoriety. If you want to achieve these things, you need to play with perception. You need to show you know what you’re doing. On this earth, no one really knows what they are doing and there are no strict rules, except those of human nature. But the world belongs to those who are confident enough to pretend they know what they’re doing and to formulate rules for others.
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If you want to be a leader and a communicator, there are two questions you need to consider. These two questions are the essence of your leadership and your work. They might seem simple and self-evident, but if you take them seriously, you will find that the answers are not obvious. We spend our lives clarifying our purpose, our vision, and our message. Answering these questions should not come easily unless you’ve been pondering them (directly or indirectly) for a long time. These questions are: 1) What are you doing, 2) Who do you do it for?
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There is only one thing you should know about creating an audience. Almost everything else is irrelevant if you don’t have this dialed in. You create an audience by rallying people around you and your gift. By owning your gift, you can appeal to people by appealing to one or many parts of their life (health, wealth, relationships, etc.) and offer them something of value. There are many leaders in the world, and they all appeal to different people, to different desires, and in different ways. Explore your identity and find out what it is that you can rally people around.
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“Show don’t tell,” is a classic writing advice. The rationale is that if your readers can see, they don’t need to be told. That advice is certainly sound. I would also add that you should feel more than think. Of course, this is not absolute. Logic is necessary for good writing. But the more you can make your readers feel, the better your writing becomes. There are things we do not fully comprehend until we feel them. Rational thinking is limited in its ability to inhabit us. Feeling, by moving us, creates an entire experience that lasts a lifetime.
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Personal development is a book genre, but all books are arguably about personal development. After all, reading is personal development. Writing, too, is about personal development. When we learn, we develop ourselves intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. When we write, we do the same thing. Personal development encompasses anything and everything, including books. We need to start looking at every book as an opportunity for personal development regardless of its genre. Every book is a personal development book.
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Authors are leaders because they stand up and put their ideas in the spotlight. You may not consider yourself ready to be a leader just yet, or you may not consider yourself ready to be an author. What you need to realize is that once a leader, you can be an author. And anybody can be a leader. We all have a gift that’s unique to us. As individuals, our job is to 1) find that gift, 2) pursue that gift, and 3) make the best out of it to live a life we love. You’ll find your gift by looking at the intersection of the things that define you. Once you’ve done so, you can pursue it and rally people around your gift, which in turn will make you a leader.
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Writing, in its simplest form, is communication. And while it’s different from other communication forms, it abides by the same laws. It should be clear, it should be outcome-oriented, and it should be organized. Writing, because it lasts forever, forces us to arrange our ideas in the most logical way possible. Writing can help you with speaking, selling, marketing, and so on. There’s nothing that writing doesn’t help you with if you do it well and understand its fundamentals.
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How do you write a book about your life? Is your life interesting enough to write about it? The first thing you need to understand is that you live at a specific time. The things that have happened to you (or for you) did not happen in a vacuum. They happened at a specific time and a specific place. They happened inside a culture. When writing about your life, think about the culture and how your experience makes a statement about the culture. There are cultural conversations happening at any moment in time, and your job is to enter one of these conversations to make your life relevant in writing.
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Let’s do some real talk today: There is no such thing as being ready to write a book. You cannot be ready if you’ve never done it before. You become ready by engaging with the process. Most people who want to write a book spend more time making excuses than taking action toward realizing their dreams. That said, there’s only one question you should be asking yourself. That question is: Do I want to write a book? Why? Ask yourself why enough times so that it hurts, and then you will be faced with the inevitable fact: You are ready. You were ready all along.
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The easiest way to write a book that makes you a leader is to write it before breakfast. You don’t need more than 50 minutes a day to write a compelling book in a few months. You need to make sure you block off time, get in the right environment, and that you’ve done your homework prior to the writing process. By writing every day before breakfast, you can write the book that will change your business or career in only a few months.
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We live in the era of leadership. People no longer make decisions based on price and quality of a service. They are looking for leaders they can follow and feel inspired by. The best way to connect with prospects is through writing and storytelling. While all writing allows you to connect with your audience, a book is the best medium because it shows clarity, confidence, and competence — exactly what people look for in a leader.
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McKinsey & Co is well-known for its emphasis on writing and liberal use of PowerPoints. One thing you can learn from this consulting firm is that writing is a critical skill you need to master. McKinsey & Co encourages its staff to write a lot and effectively; it teaches them strategies such as the Pyramid Principle and the Rule of Three. McKinsey & Co is one of the giants of consulting, and it’s not an accident. They focus on the fundamental skills that bring success — like writing.
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Your job as an author is not simply to make your reader fall in love with your writing. It’s also to fall in love with your own writing. In fact, falling in love with your writing is the requirement for others to fall in love with it. You need to write what you wish had been written; you need to write in a way you wish other people wrote. You need to fill the gap left by others. It is okay to be infatuated with your writing. If you love it, other people will love it as well.
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Every one of us has a light inside of us. We all have the ability to entertain, educate, inform, and enrich other people. All we need to do is turn the light on. We are a bulb. Whether or not we’re turned on doesn’t change the fact we have the ability to shine. But it does change whether we shine or not. Always remember that, in times of darkness, you can turn on the light and inspire other people. As a result, you will be inspired yourself.
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The reason books are so important and so powerful in your life is that they are foundational. Whereas social media posts and blogs are short and narrow, books can be long and broad, which gives them breadth and substance. Your readers want to be changed and transformed, and in many cases, only through a book can they fully grasp the significance of your work. Sure, they can work with you, but not everyone is going to be able to do that. By publishing a book, you are able to reach more people and reach these people deeper.
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It’s easy to feel intimidated by the task at hand when writing. But you must remember that your book will be part of your orbit, and they play a role in promoting the rest of your activities and projects. You should never see writing a book as isolated. If done right, your book should complement everything else that you do. You shouldn’t see the book as an enemy; you should see it as an ally.
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Writing one book is great, but writing multiple is even better. As you write more books, you are producing a body of work, which can be interpreted. Think of authors like John C. Maxwell. They have an entire body of work they can rely on. They are not just authoritative; they are omnipresent. Books compound and create more value, authority, and credibility. The more books you have — provided they are quality books — the more influence you have in your field.
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There are three types of books that can grow your business. Which one you should do depends on where you are and what you want to achieve. The first type of book is the short lead magnet. These books are typically between 20 and 100 pages and they provide mostly the WHAT and the WHY. They do not offer much value and are typically used to get leads. The second type of book is the longer lead magnet, which is typically between 100 and 200 pages. These books provide more value and insights into the HOW. The third type of book is the philosophical/leadership book. These books tend to be around 200-400 pages and provide a broad overview of the author’s philosophy. These are the quintessence of nonfiction books.
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Entrepreneurs often worry about how long their book should be. A book can be 50 pages like it can be 500, and it makes no difference. I have read 100-page books that were more meaningful than 450-page volumes. Size makes no difference in how compelling the book will be. Sure, the longer, the more substance—which means the more information. But information isn’t the end-all, be-all of writing nonfiction. Transformation is. If you can transform your reader in 20 pages, then your book should be 20 pages. If it takes 500 pages, then it should be 500 pages. Size doesn’t matter; value does.
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One thing we often forget about bestselling books is that the authors are not professional writers. Most of them in fact have ghostwriters or writing partners. This should tell you something about what makes a bestselling book; it’s not the author’s ability to write, it’s the author’s knowledge and content. You don’t need a degree in English literature to write a nonfiction book. Nor do you need years of writing experience. All you need is what you already have—your raw knowledge, expertise, or expertise. With this, you can find a writing partner, coach, or ghostwriter, and you too can become a bestselling author.
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There are very few things that change your life as much as publishing a book does. For better or worse, being a published author is like a smokescreen. People will give you more respect; people will see you differently. One thing that publishing a book does is change your environment. As a published author, you now have access to more and better stages; you can get more media exposure, and you can meet people you perhaps wouldn’t have been able to in the past. This only makes sense because if you do something that changes peoples’ lives, then your life will be changed as a result, too.
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If you’ve been in business for a long time or have had a tumultuous life, there’s a lot you can write about in your book. But you shouldn’t be putting everything in it. The question is, what exactly do you put in your book? Well, you need to put the big ideas that will help your audience understand the depth or the breadth of what it is you’re talking about. Just as in business, you have to ask yourself, “will this move the needle in my book?” If something doesn’t move the needle, then you shouldn’t include it. Perhaps it’s something you should keep for yourself. Perhaps it’s something for another book. Brevity and simplicity always win when it comes to writing books.
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A mediocre book will serve you for a few months, a good book will serve you for a few years, but a great book will serve you for a few decades. How do you write a great book, though? How do you write something that endures and stays relevant? Talk about the things that most people won’t. There are a lot of things people don’t dare talk about because it’s too controversial, too complicated, or what have you. But in an age where everyone tries to grow your platform, you have to be more original. You have to talk about the things people won’t and go deeper than most. This is how you become a leader other people look up to.
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One consideration future authors have is how much money they can expect to make from their book. The answer is that if you can do a decent launch and a good marketing campaign, you can expect to make about $2,000-$5,000 in the beginning. You may make more or less, but that’s an estimate. Remember, you’ll keep selling copies after that—and you always have the opportunity to sell to organizations and institutions. That said, the real money is to be made with products and services that accompany your book. For example, if you’re a coach, consultant, or service-based entrepreneur, the book will help you generate more clients—and that’s where you can make a lot of money.
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Many people fear they might get sued because of what they want to write about in their book. This is mostly the case for memoirs, biographies, and stories based on real-life events. The reality is that writing and publishing are two different things. If you want to write to make sense of events that happened to you (and which involve bad deeds committed by other people), that’s one thing. If you want to publish that book, that’s another thing altogether. What you need to remember is that when you publish a book, it’s not about you—it’s about your audience. So you don’t have to be accurate, you don’t have to reflect reality one hundred percent, and you don’t have to name people or say everything. You should focus on what is useful for your audience.
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One thing I constantly hear about is the fear of getting ideas ripped off. You may have noticed I always talk about my books: I talk about the titles, I read excerpts, I disclose my angles, etc. The reason I do is that I am not afraid of getting my ideas ripped off. And the reason I am not afraid is that my ideas are too close to my identity for anyone to rip them off successfully. Remember that copyright doesn’t protect ideas; it protects the expression of ideas.
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Your big idea for your book is easy to find. But what of the smaller ideas you need to expand your book and develop your concept? Well, the ideas you need for your book are found in the periphery of your life and of your expertise. That is to say, you will find ideas by exploring new frontiers, by doing things you’ve never done before, and by giving yourself some grace and letting go of the burning desire to figure out everything right now.
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One of the most important questions about book publishing is how to publish and where. Of course, Amazon is the most popular self-publishing platform? But is it the best one? The reality is that, no matter how you publish, you’ll likely end up on Amazon. After all, Amazon is one of the largest search engines. However, you don’t need to publish exclusively on Amazon and directly through Amazon. There are other alternatives that have great benefits and that also allow you to sell your book on Amazon.
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There’s a counterintuitive truth about writing which continually floors people when I talk about it. You must alienate a portion of the people with your writing to be successful. It’s not just “nice to have.” It’s actually necessary. If everybody can more or less agree, you’re not making any impact. If no one’s pissed off at what you write, no one’s feeling magnetically attracted to it. Attracting and repelling happen at the same time. What attracts some people is what repels others. You have to take a stance. You have to pick a side. Do so strategically, but do it—no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
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The 2 biggest writing mistakes are by far writing for oneself or writing for everyone. When writing a book, we need to focus on one audience and on one idea. Everything else that doesn’t fit the audience and the point should be aggressively dismissed. This is hard for most of us because we have so many ideas and we want to express them all. However, we need to remember that writing isn’t about us—it’s about our audience. We need to make sacrifices in order to satisfy our audience and make the point we need to make.
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It took me 3 years to write my first book. It took me 8 months to write my second one. It took me 3 months to write my third one, and it took me 1.5 months to write my fourth. What changed? I didn’t start writing shorter books—in fact, my books are getting longer. As I grew as a writer—and as an individual—writing became easier and more repeatable. I’ve built writing frameworks for myself, and I’ve started repurposing my content. It took me 1.5 months to write a 250-page book because I already had written about the topic on other mediums, because I knew what I was doing, and because I had a deadline. Writing is a repeatable process. Once you’ve figured it out, you rinse and repeat.
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Today marks the 200th episode of The Word Leader Podcast. Over the past year, many of my friends told me they admired how consistent I am with the podcast. Some have asked me how I never run out of things to say. The truth is, I believe consistency beats perfection. When I started this podcast, it was hard to put out so much content. But by forcing myself, the process grew into me, and now I’m essentially addicted to it. My episodes aren’t perfect. Many of them aren’t even good. If you go back to the beginning, the episodes are horrible and I have no clue what I’m doing. But consistency beats perfection, and today I’m in a better place because of this philosophy.
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If you’re trying to write a book, or if you’re just getting started writing, it might be painful. You might feel mentally sore after doing it. It’s normal. Writing is always hard in the beginning—it’s like working out. Recently I started a new home full-body workout. The first few times I completed it, my body was obliterated. I barely could move the days after. But I forced myself to do it over and over again. And now I’ve been doing it every day and the pain diminishes every time. The same is true of writing. The more you write, the easier it gets.
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When writing, you’ll face all kinds of dilemmas. Some may be about the content, some may be about the audience, while some may be about the title. Remember that this book doesn’t have to be your last book. Yes, you should pick the book understanding that it may be your last book. But understand that, in all likelihood, it won’t be your last. So you can write other books, expand on the topics you can’t right now, and build a body of work. If you’re playing the long game, you should be thinking about writing multiple books anyway.
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If you want to publish a book to grow your business or brand, remember that generosity is the best policy. You can give away almost everything you have for free without affecting your bottom line. After all, the value of information rises along with the price you charge for it. If you want to improve your authority, however, consider being overly generous because it is what will actually attract clients to you. People should think, “if that’s what I get for free, then the paid service must be amazing.”
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If you want to write a terrible, low-value book, like thousands of people do every year, follow these simple steps. First, pick whatever topic you are knowledgeable about and gather what you would like to see. Second, do no research about what other authors have said before you. Third, write the book with next to no outline until you’re out of ideas.. Fourth, have your draft edited by the cheapest editor you can find. Fifth, drop the book on Amazon to tell all your friends. It’s amazing how many people follow this process and fail to realize how terrible the books this process produces.
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When thinking of writing a book, we often run into the problem of having too many ideas. We don’t even know where to start because we have too many thoughts and too little structure. In those cases, I like to ask the “shotgun question.” If I put a gun to your head and gave you no time to pick what you’re going to write about, what would you pick? To take the question even further, I could tell you this is the only book you’ll ever write, after which you will be dead. This raises the stakes and forces you to think about what matters the most. Always think about writing from the point of view of impact? What can you have the most impact with right now?
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One of the biggest mistakes people make when writing is they use buzzwords trending in their field. Buzzwords are popular words we use and abuse, and although there’s a reason they’ve become buzzwords, we need to stay away from them. Why? Because it telegraphs we are typical and are not using our own language. Even the people who agree with you might roll their eyes as they hear you use buzzwords in your field. Instead, use vivid descriptions that make your audience feels you understand them. A good description is worth a thousand buzzwords.
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The best writing routine is the one you can stick to for a long time. Writing is like working out. You have to put in place a process you like and are happy to go through. If not, you won’t stay consistent and your efforts will go to waste. It doesn’t matter if you like to write in the morning, in the afternoon, or in the evening. What matters is that you see yourself keeping your writing routine for many years. I’ve made the mistake of writing at random and inappropriate hours or in bursts, and all it’s done is burn me out. Your best writing routine is the one you love.
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How long does it really take to write a book? Of course, the answer depends, let’s look at the numbers. A normal nonfiction book is about 50,000 words. Nonfiction books, especially those self-published, tend to become shorter and shorter, but let’s take 50,000 words as an example. If you have a good writing process in place, you can write about 900 words an hour. If you write an hour a day, you’ll have your 50,000-word book completed in about 2 months. Now you can play around with these numbers by changing how much time you want to write every day or by changing the length of your book.
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Writing a book is a comeback of sorts. Most people agree that writing and publishing a book is the ultimate achievement. Although this isn’t necessarily the case, most people see having published a book as “having made it.” One of the hidden benefits of writing and publishing a book is to be able to rub it in the face of those who said we wouldn’t make it. Of course, this comes from a place of dark energy—but we all need a little dark energy from time to time, don’t we?
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The conversation about writing often tends to be hijacked by the conversation about technical skills. But in reality, what you need to write a book is ideas, knowledge, expertise, a story, or a message. These are the things that matter—the raw material. No technical prowess in writing can make up for a lack of ideas or deep knowledge. No technical prowess can save a book without solid foundations. Before you focus on your writing, focus on your ideas and what they mean in the world. The WHY always beats the HOW, always.
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The best writing approach is to start with questions, not with the answers. This can be hard because, if you are an expert, you know the answers. But the problem with the answers is that they don’t provide direction. Questions, however, do provide direction. It’s easy to set up a narrative by asking the right questions at the right time. And at the end of the day, this is what writing is about—answering the right questions at the right time. If you remember this, you will become a successful author.
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Writing a book can be daunting because once published, your book will be around forever. For some people, it’s a scary prospect because they think they might change their mind or they might look silly down the line. The reality is, yes, you will change after your book is published, but that’s not a bad thing. Books are contained in their period of time and they only represent who you were at the moment of writing it. Moreover, you can do like many authors do and relaunch an updated and revised version of your book. You can always hit refresh on your book and make it better—whether to improve it or to make it more aligned with who you are now.
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Not every form of communication allows you to flesh out your philosophy the way writing does. For example, speaking is a great way to tell stories, captivate your audience, and get a real human connection with them. But because of the nature of the medium, you can’t flesh out nuances the same way as in writing. The only limit to how much you can write is how long you’re willing to write and how long your audience is willing to read for. Use this medium to flesh out your philosophy and allow people to understand what you stand for and what you stand against.
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If you can’t seem to find the time to write, you must ask yourself the following questions: “What is it that I’m trying to get from writing this book? Can I get elsewhere? If so, how might it be different?” These questions will help you prioritize your book if that’s what you should be working on right now. Remember that we never write books in a vacuum. We seek certain things from writing books, and we must be honest with ourselves as to what these things are. Asking ourselves the right questions about writing helps us get our priorities right.
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If you give yourself three years to write a book, you’ll take three years. If you give yourself three days, you’ll take three days. Of course, some books can’t be written in three days. But the point is that we humans can stretch time. Working under pressure is, for many of us, an opportunity to achieve more in less time. Such is the case with books. The biggest mistake we can make as writers is to be too flexible with our deadlines. The more time we give ourselves, the more time we will take—even when it’s unnecessary. Some topics are timely, so we need to be quick in writing and publishing.
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One of the best ways to ensure your success as a writer is to build a team to surround you. You need to have a team of people who can help you in your writing endeavors and support you during the tough seasons. It’s one thing to have an audience that reads what you publish, but it’s another to have a group of people who help you through thick and thin not only by reading and critiquing your work but also by giving much-needed perspective. Everyone in your inner circle can bring something different to your work. Make sure you leverage the people around you to become a better writer.
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What if your book gets bad reviews? Nothing changes, truly. Bad reviews don’t matter. Good reviews don’t matter. No reviews don’t matter. One review doesn’t matter, nor does one hundred. You must remember that it’s often the most vocal who write the reviews. They don’t represent everybody. The people you can have an impact on don’t necessarily write reviews. You can’t take too seriously a bad review like you can’t take too seriously a good review. Write for yourself and for your audience and forget the reviews.
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What’s the best way to write compelling books fast? Equip yourself with a number of smart people who can review your work and offer suggestions. It’s hard to see the frame when you’re in the picture—even for the best writers in the world. Recently, I was working on a grammar textbook and one of my reviewers pointed out serious flaws in the organization. The funny part was, I was sometimes failing at using my own method. It’s hard to eat your own dog food all the time. Your best writing ally is an outsider perspective.
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How long should your book be? That’s a tricky question, but there’s an answer to it. If you’re just trying to get a short message out, 5,000 to 15,000 words will do it. However, such a book won’t be taken very seriously by avid readers. 30,000 words are the baseline for a serious book, and 50,000 words is a reasonable amount. 60,000 words and over are the norm for serious nonfiction books by reputable authors. You shouldn’t worry too much about your word count as much as you should worry about adding value through your book. Unlike in high school, you won’t be penalized as long as you’re aligned with your audience.
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The power you have when writing and speaking is to create images people envision. By using similes and metaphors, you can shift someone’s perspective on a topic. Metaphors are implicit comparisons while similes are implicit. Don’t be afraid to pepper your writing with metaphors and similes. Your readers will enjoy writing even more, and you stand a better chance to change their minds about your topic.
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The beauty of writing a book is that you have more room to tell the true story of who you are, what you’ve accomplished, and what you stand for. Whereas conversations and social media posts are limited, books give you the freedom to write as much as you want and to structure your content in a way that appeals to your reader. There are many 80,000+ word books that have become bestsellers. Writing is a conversation, and the longer the conversation, the more your readers learn about you.
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A hook is a line that grabs your reader’s attention and makes them want to continue reading. How do you create a good hook? First, you need a clear picture of where you want to take your readers past the hook. Second, you must determine how to grab their attention through curiosity or intrigue in a way that connects to where you want to take them? Where you are taking your reader is the promised land, and you should tease the promised land with intrigue in your hook. In other words, you should tease a counterintuitive way to get to the promised land.
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The definition of doing something professionally is doing something with excellence even when we don’t feel like it. If you want to write like a professional, you need to get rid of the notion that writing is always fun. Writing is not always fun, and sometimes you must labor for it. But in the end, every minute spent on writing when you found it difficult will be worth it. And over time, writing will be less difficult even for difficult writing tasks. You don’t need to become a writing professional to write like a professional. You simply need to change from a mindset of fun to a mindset of growth.
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Albert Einstein said, “Creativity is intelligence fun while having fun.” If you want to be creative, know your zone of genius and make sure you enjoy your work. Never dwell on projects that don’t fire you up. Creative success comes from solving problems you love, and it’s especially true in writing. Problems require you to stretch your intellectual limits; they require you to answer difficult questions. Writing is problem-solving, but you need to solve problems you love.
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Every writer has a different way of getting from point A to point B. Some writers take the scenic route, some writers just jump right in, and others stop every few feet to take pictures. The journey is up to each individual writer — but it's important that they are thoughtful about how they get from one place to the next. In order to be thoughtful, you need to craft effective transitions between the different parts of your text. If you fail to do so, your reader will get confused and they won’t understand what you mean. When writing, always make sure you use words that create bridges between your ideas. The connections you find obvious may not be to your readers.
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It's not always easy to tell what the difference is between a fact and an insight. The truth is, there are some similarities - they both offer valuable information that can help make sense of the world. But just because there are similarities doesn't mean these two things are interchangeable. The simple way to distinguish fact and insights is by thinking about information vs. transformation. Facts give us new information about the world whereas insights don’t. Insights, on the other hand, give us new ways of looking at the facts we already know. In other words, facts are knowledge and insights are understanding. To make your writing powerful, find the right balance between facts and insights. Do present new knowledge, but present more new perspectives on knowledge.
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Many people have the unfortunate tendency to write confusing sentences. They put too much information or the information is in the wrong order. As a result, readers are confused and don’t feel convinced by the argument, if they get the argument at all. You need to remember that a sentence starts with someone doing something. If you don’t have someone doing something, you don’t have a sentence. Every time you write a sentence, ask yourself “who does what?” Then you can add as much context as is necessary, from the WHY to the WHEN to the WHERE, etc.
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Writing a book based on true events can be tricky. You want to avoid legal actions, and you want to avoid hurting people you know and love. If you are writing based on true events, you need to remember that it should serve the audience, not you. Focus on what others can learn from these events, and take out details that don’t drive these lessons forward. People are more interested in what they can learn from you than they are in their life. Plus, if you focus on your audience, you will avoid a lot of the heartaches that come with choosing what to say and what not to say.
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The title is by far the most important part of a book. It doesn’t matter if the book is brilliant; the title is mediocre, the book won’t have the impact it can. Your book title should do things: it should provoke your readers to think, and it should invite the reader to continue the conversation. The first part of your title, usually short and witty, serves to provoke your readers’ thoughts. The subtitle, on the other hand, is there to tell who the book is for and what readers can expect from it.
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Once you’ve written your book and are ready to publish it, you need to sell it. One of the most important aspects of this process is writing your book description. Sure, you need to market your book and get the message out there. But if your book description isn’t appealing, no one will want to buy it. To write a good book description, you need to distill your book down to its big promise. What can people expect from your book? And what can’t they expect? You need to set expectations and pique your reader’s interest so they want to read more. Be clear. Be concise. Be compelling.
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It's not easy finding the time and energy to put into writing a book. There are so many other demands on our lives, and we can’t predict the unexpected things that happen. If you truly wish to write a book, though, you need to make writing a non-negotiable. You cannot find time; you need to make it. Ruthlessly reevaluate your schedule to see where you can save some time. Delegate as much as you can, too. More important, get clear on why you want to write your book. Is this part of your vision for the future? What about the other things on your schedule? Are they getting you closer to your vision?
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Journaling is one of the most common and effective ways to improve writing skills. It can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be, and you don’t need to show your writing to anybody. If anything, journaling is a great way to build a writing practice and to collect events and practical insights.
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Being quotable is a writer’s ultimate goal. It means that other people quote you and link to your work, sharing your nicely worded insights. To be quote-worthy, you need to make sure your writing has a universal appeal, that you use golden words and write golden sentences, and that you make writing short, sweet, and concise.
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Persuasive writing is an essential skill for anyone who wants to be a successful writer, but it can seem difficult and overwhelming to learn. In this episode, I am giving you an example of persuasive writing by reading the essay “I Want a Wife” by Judy Brady. This short essay is a very persuasive one, and part of its strength lies in its simplicity.
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It can sometimes be hard to know when to use formal writing in our work. Social media requires us to be informal, but it’s important to understand the difference between an informal essay (such as a Facebook status) and a formal essay (such as an academic paper or business memo). The tone you set for your work will determine whether it is more appropriate for business documentation or just everyday conversation with family members on social media.
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One of the biggest writing challenges consists of establishing our credibility as an author. One way to do so is through ethos, which involves using writing style, word choice, tone, content choices, and other methods to show readers we are credible. Ethos can be established by first establishing common ground with the audience and then by presenting yourself as someone who has knowledge or expertise on a certain topic.
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On Writing Well by William Zinsser (1922-2015) is one of the best books on nonfiction writing. In 300 pages, it goes over writing principles, methods, forms, and attitudes. Zinsser was a master of writing, and one of the people who taught writing with gusto. He leaves an immense legacy, having influenced an entire generation of writers. In this episode, I read some excerpts from the “Principles” section in On Writing Well to give you an idea of the golden pieces of advice you’ll find in this book. You can get your copy of On Writing Well here.
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An outline is a form of prewriting that helps you plan your book before writing it. It's like a roadmap for your book, and as the author, it helps you stay on track with what you want to say. The type you choose will depend on how detailed you want to be in order to organize your thoughts. You can also make an outline by using mind mapping software or even old-fashioned pen-and-paper diagrams. The type of outline you use doesn't really matter as long as the end product is easy enough for you to stay productive, motivated, and coherent.
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The feeling of accomplishment when you finish a book is hard to describe. The sense of fulfillment it brings you, and the immense gratification that comes from seeing your thoughts on paper in front of you, well, they’re worth every hour spent on the writing process. The most common obstacle to writing a book is getting started. Once you have a few chapters, it’s easy to see where the book is coming and you enter a virtuous circle. But how do you get started in the first place? You have to start with an introduction that hooks the reader and creates a mini-map of your book.
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What is tone? Although there are many definitions of the term, the tone is most commonly described as the style in which a piece of writing is done. Tone can be serious or playful, formal or informal. In order to write a piece of writing that is both engaging and informative, it's important to understand the tone of your work. For the writer, this means that you have to be aware of how you want your audience to feel when they are reading your work. Do you want them to feel angry at the injustice in society? Or do you want them to feel enlightened about a topic that they didn't know much about before?
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Have you ever had an experience that was so powerful, it stuck with you for the rest of your life? Maybe it happened when you were young, or maybe it's something that just occurred to you in the last few years. Regardless of how long ago the event took place, the experiences from our past are a part of who we are as individuals. Whether they're good memories or bad memories, personal narratives can have a lifelong impact on us and shape our characters and outlooks on life. They can also provide readers with insight into what makes us unique as people — what pushes our buttons and what we care about most deeply — and teach them valuable lessons.
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Can anybody write a book? We live in an era when anyone can publish anything easily, but can anybody write? The answer is almost. Almost anybody can write a book. To write, one needs something to say and the ability to stick through the writing process. Unless you are severely disadvantaged, you can always go out, experience the world, acquire skills, and observe the world. Unless you are severely disadvantaged, you are able to improve your writing craft and to learn to write until you have a book finished. That said, the writing process involves multiple parts of the brain. Someone who has damage to these parts of the brain may not be able to write. This is why the answer is, “almost.”
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The true obstacle getting in the way of getting your message out isn’t your story or your writing skills. It’s the story you tell yourself about your writing skills. Maybe you’ve been told by a teacher you’re not good at writing. Maybe you’ve bombed an English class. Maybe you’ve struggled hard for little results. Whatever it may be, you must ask yourself what is the story you are telling yourself about writing. You must also ask where that story comes from, and whether it is helping or hindering you. Question your own writing story and you will find your true writing block.
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We all have an inner critic, and it can be particularly loud when it comes to our writing? How do we tame our inner writing critic? How do we keep it from getting in the way of our writing goals? First, we need to acknowledge what’s good about our inner critic. When used properly, it’s a positive source of feedback for improvement. For that, we must thank it. But after we have thanked our inner critic, we must ask why it is so important. We must come to understand that not all feedback is useful, and we must tell our inner critic, “thank you, I appreciate you, but this isn’t necessary right now.”
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There is one way you can beat writer’s block forever. It is by understanding the three main writing roadblocks. These three roadblocks are 1) Ideas, 2) Structure, and 3) Language. Every step of the writing process requires a different effort and a different attitude. To find your best ideas, you must eliminate them. To find your structure, you need to start from where your audience currently stands and switch their beliefs. To find your words, you must nourish your vocabulary by reading widely and reading as a reader.
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What is the best book writing software? That’s a question many people have, and it’s an important one. After all, if you’re writing a book, you’re going to spend a lot of time using a book writing software. So it only makes sense you would use one that serves you well. There are a lot of book writing softwares, and some are more sophisticated than others. The bottom line, however, is that you should choose one that gives you the options you need and that keeps you away from distractions. I personally go old-school with MS Word and Pages on Apple devices.
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There are three components to a great book: style, substance, and aura. You need to engage your readers with the way you write and present content. You need to show the depth of thinking to reassure your readers they are being led in the right direction. You need to create a sense of relevance around your topic and your personal brand. With these three elements, you have a book promising to be successful. The good news? You already have these components inside of you. You just need to apply them to your writing.
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You need two elements to go from an idea to a book. You need a destination (outcome) and you need a journey. It should be clear for your reader where they can expect to land after reading your book. They should be excited about the destination they are headed to. But it’s just as important that they enjoy the trip. You should surprise them with unexpected spots with beautiful scenery. Your readers should feel that they’re on a roller coaster, and they can’t predict what’s going to happen next. This is how you leave your mark on your readers.
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We often see the publishing process as a daunting endeavor. But the truth is that it’s not very complicated. Once you have a publishable manuscript, there are a few tasks that need to be done: cover design, interior layout, upload, distribution, and marketing. There are professionals who can help you every step of the way, and their expertise is going to make your book even better. The publishing process isn’t as costly as it used to be, and it’s one of the most rewarding things you can do.
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The story of my upcoming book is the story of why you should never give up on that book idea you have. Years ago I was acutely aware of the political division going on in the Western world. I was also acutely aware that things didn’t need to be this way and that we as individuals can help make the world a little less polarized. But I didn’t know what I meant to say and how to articulate it. That was until I found myself on a Zoom call with a client and, as we discussed ideas that were vaguely related to the topic, I had a ha-ha moment. Ideas sometimes take time to materialize and talking through questions with smart people helps. Give yourself a chance. Talk about your ideas.
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Are you being selective with your reading? There’s only so much time in a day, and there are so many books to read. If you’re anything like me, you buy book after book making time for reading every single day. But if you’re not conscientious about what you read and how you read it, you’re missing out on impact. It’s better to go deep into certain topics and to be able to contribute than to know just a little about a lot of things. What’s more, not every book is even in its relevance. You don’t need to read books cover to cover to benefit from their contents.
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Let’s do some real talk today: There is no such thing as being ready to write a book. You cannot be ready if you’ve never done it before. You become ready by engaging with the process. Most people who want to write a book spend more time making excuses than taking action toward realizing their dreams. That said, there’s only one question you should be asking yourself. That question is: Do I want to write a book? Why? Ask yourself why enough times so that it hurts, and then you will be faced with the inevitable fact: You are ready. You were ready all along.
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There is no better writing success strategy than starting with the introduction. The introduction forces us to create the skeleton of our book. If written correctly, an outline includes an opening, the raising of stakes, and the breakdown of what’s to come. Once you’ve written your introduction, you’ve planned out your book — then you just need to write it. It’s really that easy. If you need help with your writing, visit our website, Trivium Writing, and book a call to see how we can help.
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We all know how a good brainstorming session can bring forth some of the best ideas. But what exactly is brainstorming and why does it work? And what is the most effective way to brainstorm? Brainstorming is a process where people come together in order to generate as many ideas as possible. The key to successful brainstorming for a book is to do it with other people who have a broad general culture. People with broad general culture will help you identify fresh, new, and original ideas, and they will help you connect the dots and create concepts. Your success relies on whom you surround yourself with.
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So you want to write a book, but you’re probably wondering if you need to come up with an extensive plan or an outline. Although I do advise most of my clients to start with a plan, you don’t necessarily need one. What you need above anything else is directional certainty and an intention for your readers. Your audience doesn’t come to you for your conclusions. Your audience comes to you for the experience. You should focus on providing them the best possible experience.
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Amazon is a company that has been disrupting industries for decades. They have made the shopping experience easier, cheaper, and more convenient than ever before. They have also revolutionized the book industry since its early days. As an author, you can use Amazon to do your writing research and development. You can find all your competitive titles on Amazon’s search engine, you can browse its contents and, more importantly, you can analyze reviews for your own improvement.
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Anything good comes with a certain amount of pain. Writing is no different. There will be times when you feel doubtful, confused, and uncertain. There will be times when you will want to give up. But these times make you who you are, and they determine whether you are worthy of your goals. You must withstand the pain of writing to become a writer. There is no other way.
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You may be wondering whether you should focus more on style or on substance when writing. The truth is, both are important — but the substance is more important. If there’s urgency, passion, and relevance in your writing, your readers will excuse a mediocre style. However, the best of style will not make for poor content. If people cared about style above anything else, more people would be reading poetry.
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The key to selling more books is to sell to a third party who either gives or sells the book to the reader. When you sell books directly to your reader, you are competing with a lot of distractions and expenses. When you are selling through a third party, you are bypassing this competition and you are doing somebody else a service. If you want to sell more books, you need to figure out where your target readers hang out, who they do business with, and make a plan to get your books to them indirectly.
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There are so many ways we can make an impact on people, yet one and only is capable of reaching the millions — if not the billions. Books are priced as commodities, they are sold everywhere and to everybody. Yet they contain million-dollar ideas, life-altering pieces of advice, and they can radically change the course of our existence. Once you realize this, you can no longer procrastinate on your book. Once you realize this, you understand the awesome power books have in the world.
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Logic and rhetoric are both necessary in the making of great writing. You cannot convince your audience simply by telling stories and using rhetorical figures. Nor can you convince your audience simply by laying out rational arguments. The truth is, humans are emotional creatures. You need to appeal to emotions before you appeal to logic. Once you’ve met your audience where they are emotional, you can make a rational case. This is how convincing writing works.
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The key to sell books is to craft a solid concept and make a mouth-watering promise to the reader. Although we can think critically and rationally, we human beings are emotional creatures and make buying decisions as such. The best thing you can do as an author is to sell an identity your readers will get from reading your book. Take the 5 AM Club, for example. It’s more than a book; it’s a club, a movement. To sell books without having to sell, craft a solid concept, make a promise, and sell an identity.
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In marketing, the more sophisticated market we have, the more we need a unique mechanism to convince our audience to buy. The same is true in writing. When we enter saturated conversations, we need to think about how to provide a quality angle and contribution. Oftentimes, the progress we’ve made in a contribution comes not only with gains but also with losses. To position yourself as the leader, the philosopher, and the historian, investigate what was lost in the conversation and bring back the conversation to its original concept. Old is often better than new.
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People often ask whether you need to blog before thinking about writing a book. The answer is no. The truth is blogging doesn’t teach you how to write a book, but writing a book teaches you how to blog. What you need to write a successful book is clarity, confidence, and competence. Undertaking the book writing process brings you these qualities. Once you’ve written a book, it’s easier to make sense of your expertise and to write compelling blog posts.
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The easiest way to write a book that makes you a leader is to write it before breakfast. You don’t need more than 50 minutes a day to write a compelling book in a few months. You need to make sure you block off time, get in the right environment, and that you’ve done your homework prior to the writing process. By writing every day before breakfast, you can write a book that will change your business or career in only a few months.
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We live in the era of leadership. People no longer make decisions based on the price and quality of service. They are looking for leaders they can follow and feel inspired by. The best way to connect with prospects is through writing and storytelling. While all writing allows you to connect with your audience, a book is the best medium because it shows clarity, confidence, and competence — exactly what people look for in a leader.
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Your writing is your house when it comes to establishing your authority and credibility. Just like your house, you need to clean your writing for it to be presentable. Put every word on trial for its life, as Stephen King suggested. Remove the fluff. Keep the words that carry meaning only. Some words are like dust, and they need to be cleaned away. Adjectives and adverbs are often unnecessary. So are “that” and “very.”
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You won’t get that advice often, but it is a good thing to focus on the negative when looking for inspiration. In other words, you must focus on what’s missing from the conversations you are engaged in, and you must think about the negative consequences that ensue from this lack. From there you can start writing and position yourself as a person of relevance, value, and substance. The best, most compelling writing always starts with what’s missing and makes a large contribution to the conversation.
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Writing is an interesting discipline because everybody writes, and there are many different types of writing. The fact there are so many types of writing causes one major problem: we often fail to differentiate between writing styles and genres. When writing, you must not only follow the universal laws of writing, but you must also follow the laws of the genre in which you are writing.
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So many people think they need to be in a certain place before they can write their book. They think they need more time, more money, etc. But the decision of writing a book shouldn’t come from external factors; it should be internal. Writing is a tool to get where you want to go by affecting positive change in the world. If you wait until you retire to write a book, you will miss out on the benefits it can have on your career or business.
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Not long ago, a lawyer reminded me that the law is the law and that it’s always better to be prudent. This got me thinking about the writing mistakes people make which result not in lawsuits but rather in staying invisible or hindering their credibility. I reflected on the three laws of writing, which are: 1) The writer shall be of service. 2) The writer shall be learning through the process. 3) The writer shall be invisible.
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It’s easy to get emotional when we get feedback. But we must remember that feedback is subjective and should be carefully weighed. When you get feedback on your writing, take a step back and wait before you do anything. It can be tempting to make a lot of changes after getting feedback, but it’s a bad idea. Collect more feedback, think about the feedback, and make up your mind about it. This way, you’ll avoid wasting, time, energy, and focus.
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Writing is nothing but numbers. If you want to write a book, you need to make an outline and figure out the mathematics. How do you go from A to B? How many words do you need to write to get from A to B? What are the stops in between? How many words do you need to make these stops? By knowing the number of words you need to write each day, you will make progress much faster. By knowing how to structure the length of your book, you will be more effective in writing your first draft.
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Writing professionally means writing not just when it’s fun but also — and especially — when it’s challenging. To be a prolific writer, you need to ritualize your writing. You need to schedule your writing time, prioritize tasks, and use cues and rewards. A good book on the topic is James Clear’s Atomic Habits. Writing won’t always be fun, but it always will be necessary for your life. You must find ways to make it happen even when it’s difficult.
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Memorable authors are built, not born. It’s curiosity that makes them who they are. It’s impossible to find the right answers without the right questions, so you should focus on questions, not answers. Good answers are solely the byproduct of good questions. People who solely focus on finding answers typically come across as shallow. We need to take a step back, be humble, and accept we have so much more to learn. Then and only then can we start getting good answers.
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Writing a book isn’t so different from moving to a new house or apartment. When we’re moving it’s a mess, the boxes are everywhere, and we can’t see the contents. But once we’re settled in, all our belongings and furniture are laid out perfectly and aesthetically. It’s important to remember we are writing for our guests, and that we should unbox and sort out everything before inviting the guests in. Our writing, after all, is the house of our ideas.
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Today's episode is a conversation with Terry McDougall, an executive and career coach, speaker, leadership consultant, and author of Winning the Game of Work. During this conversation, we talk about the writing process as well as career and business success.
Connect with Terry on LinkedIn: Terry McDougall
Visit her coaching website: terrybmcdougall.com/
Buy Terry's book here: Winning the Game of Work
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When getting started writing, it’s important to understand what type of writer we are. Are we the chaotic type? The orderly type? It’s important because, in the end, we need to find the sweet spot between order and chaos. You can’t plan everything from A to Z because it will stifle your creativity and suck out the joy of writing. On the other hand, you can’t simply wing it because you will produce incoherent, inconsistent material. When creating a process for yourself, you need to respect who you are and your predispositions without giving up to your primal instincts.
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Rejection matters. Failure matters. You can’t do anything without rejection, and you shouldn’t fear it. You should embrace it instead. If you don’t fail or get rejected during your writing journey, you’re doing something wrong. It either means you got everything right the first time, which is impossible, or the people you trust for feedback are lying to you. It is impossible to get everything the first time and, if you did, it would be detrimental to your growth. Reaching goals without growth in the process is like dying without having lived.
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One of my clients once asked more or less directly for validation. Although I wanted to make him happy, I couldn’t give him the validation he sought because he wasn’t far enough into the process. The truth is, you don’t need validation before you start writing; the writing process provides such validation. If you follow the steps, do the work, and stay humble, there is no chance in the world your audience won’t appreciate what you have to say. Everyone has ideas, a message, or expertise to share; the problem is not the WHAT, it is the HOW. By expressing ideas compellingly, which can be learned, your ideas will be worth reading.
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Writers and aspiring authors often feel confused about their ideas. They don’t know where to start, they’re not sure how their ideas connect with one another, and they’re not clear on what the point of their text is. There exists a simple framework that helps you make sense of your ideas: at any given time, there is only one idea you should be writing about. After all, not all ideas are equal, and some ideas are more significant than others. You want to make sure you know which ideas are statements and which ideas are details supporting statements. By doing so, you will be able to create a hierarchy of ideas, which you can use to create a clear, simple structure for your writing.
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People wrongly assume good writers are born talented because they only see the tip of the iceberg. They see the books, they see the prizes, the book fairs, and the interviews. But what they don’t see are the years of practice. Writers become good at their craft by practicing the craft, and most writers spend years working on their craft to become good. With the right frameworks, however, you can shortcut the process. Most writers choose hard work and guesswork over frameworks. With frameworks, you can improve your skills and master the process much faster than if you choose to learn on your own.
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In today's episode, we're talking to THE Jason Goldberg, coach, comedy aficionado, and best-selling author of Prison Break: Vanquish the Victim, Own Your Obstacles, and Lead Your Life. During this conversation, we talk about writing, creativity, comedy, and why Jason's bank blocked his credit card trying to buy socks in 2009.
You can learn more about Jason's work on his website
Check out his podcast: Jason Goldberg is Ruining Podcasting
Buy Jason's book: Prison Break: Vanquish the Victim, Own Your Obstacles, and Lead Your Life
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Some people spend more time worrying about their ideas getting stolen than writing. Most fear of getting ripped off is unfounded and ludicrous. If your ideas are worth stealing, that’s a sign you’re doing something right. But the reality is, it’s hard to steal ideas. Even if someone succeeded, they could never pretend to be the author long enough. The best authors have their voice, their style, their brand, and their themes — and they are impossible to imitate without being found out. Spend your time writing, not worrying that someone will rip you off.
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The first step in becoming a writer is to become an investor. You invest time, emotions, focus, energy, and money in writing. The most important, non-renewable resource you have is time. Therefore, you must spend it wisely. Pay close attention to how you spend your hours throughout the day; too many are the people who glide through the day, unaware of the distractions robbing them from the ability to produce, and who wake up 10 years later with little accomplished. Be a steward of your time, and invest it wisely to yield the greatest results.
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We live in troubled times, and some of the concepts that often come up are personal and collective responsibility. These, too, apply to writing. When writing, you must take personal responsibility for the claims you are making. Writing has great power and can be dangerous. That said, you cannot control your audience’s interpretation and cannot assume collective responsibility for what you’ve written. When you read, however, you are part of an audience, and you need to take collective responsibility for the interpretation of texts. History teaches us things can spin out of control based on texts’ interpretation.
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A manifesto is a piece of writing that makes a statement to the world. Often poetic in style, it aims to stir emotions and create a vivid picture for the author’s message. Manifestos are brilliant pieces of work; though they can be either constructive or destructive, they are always eloquent. They are always powerful. They can change the world in ways beyond our imagination. You too can write your manifesto and make an eloquent statement to the world. But if you do, make sure to take responsibility for it and accept the consequences.
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To be a prolific writer, you must wage war against yourself. You must trick yourself into thinking certain things to motivate yourself and write as much and as effectively as possible. In this process, no trick is below you. It doesn’t matter how stupid the trick might be; it doesn’t matter how silly it sounds to other people. This process is yours and yours alone, and you must do what you can to defy the odds. The reality is, it’s challenging to be a prolific writer. No trick is below you.
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Some writers don’t know their topic well enough, and some writers know their topic too well. You want to avoid lacking depth and substance, but you also want to avoid assuming too much knowledge from your readers. It is your job, not theirs, to know everything about the topic and to be able to synthesize, analyze, and summarize information. You are the leaders, they are the followers. It is not your readers’ job to know everything; it is yours.
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Editing is not simply nice to have; it is a necessity. Good editors help you avoid looking like a fool. But the editing business is a confusing one, and hiring good editors can be a challenge. What you need to know is that there are three types of editing: structural editing, copy editing, and proofreading. Each and every one of them has a different purpose and a different skill set required. Make sure you hire accordingly.
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One of your most important duties as a writer is to create vivid pictures for your readers to see. Without pictures, you readers cannot understand the significance of what you describe — and the more vivid, the better. Lately, I have been reading Barack Obama’s memoirs, A Promised Land. A strong and compelling writer, he does a fantastic job of describing what he saw and felt before and during his tenure as the 44th President of the United States. Remember to always do your best to create vivid pictures.
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For the past ten years, the biggest conversation topic in the self-publishing world has been making it to the best-selling list. But best-sellers don’t matter in the end. For one thing, selling a lot of books doesn’t mean greater impact — and you can hack your way to the Amazon best-selling list without actually selling a lot of books. Instead of focusing on being a best-seller, why don’t we focus on being a best-reader? Why don’t we invest our time and money in writing something so compelling people would be crazy not to buy?
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As the expert, you know things your audience doesn't, and you have the power to make things happen for them. But people know what they want, not what they need. And these two things often conflict, so you need to shift their beliefs. And it might involve bribing them. Is it ever okay to bribe them? The answer is yes — if you do it for your audience’s benefit. The reason I talk about this is that I want to bribe you: If you leave a review for this podcast and send a screenshot to leandre@triviumwriting.com, I will get on the phone with you for 15-20 minutes and you can ask me anything about writing. How’s that for a bribe?
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As a non-fiction writer, you need to realize that inspiration can harm you. It’s counter-intuitive, but the truth is, you don’t write books in a vacuum. There are other areas of your life you need to take care of to be the best writer you can be. By writing at the expense of the other areas of your life, you indirectly hinder your writing. For example, if you stay up all night to write because you were suddenly struck with inspiration, then you ruin your momentum for the next day. You don’t need the inspiration to write books; you need systems!
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Today I was reflecting on my journey as a writer and an entrepreneur, and the thing that stood out the most was this: To get extraordinary rewards, we must endure extraordinary pain. It is the failures, the pain, the discomfort, and the stress that makes us worthy of what stands on the other side. To achieve great goals, you need to overcome great obstacles. There is no way around it. As Ray Dalio said it, “Pain + Reflection = Progress,” and progress is the key to being successful in anything.
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When writing your book — or anything else for that matter — you always have two target audiences. You have the people who need your book and you have the people who want your book. The difference between these people is a necessity. Those who need your book have a problem to solve whereas the people who want your book have an interest they would happily indulge in. That said, you want to write for the people who need what you have to say. If you can write for those who want it as well, that’s great — but make sure you don’t do so at the expense of those who need your writing. If you do, you reduce your impact.
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It’s tempting to slow down or back down when we realize that writing our ideas has consequences. But I want to remind you that you can’t be wrong if you’re looking for the truth. There is a difference between facts and truths; facts can be verified empirically whereas truths cannot. But there is a greater Truth, which consists of understanding the world as it is. If what you are pursuing is Truth, you can only be wrong at lower levels. Being wrong and failing collectively as part of a long conversation is what gets us to Truth. Your contribution is important.
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There are different levels of communication: high level and low level. In writing as in conversation, high-level communication gets us from Point A to Point B without getting caught up in the details Low-level communication, however, gives us all the specific, in-the-weeds details. While sometimes necessary, low-level communication often hurts clarity. Imagine you’re driving on a highway and the only gas stations are in peripheral small towns. Would you stop in every town? No, you would only stop when you’re about to run out of gas. Stopping at every small town doesn’t get you from Point A to Point B.
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This episode is a recast of the interview given on the Awakening Leadership Podcast with Yollana Shore.
Léandre Larouche is a Canadian author, Fulbright program alumnus, and writing coach. He helps people who have a message to share improve their writing skills and master the writing process so they can become the author of their dreams. He has lived, studied, and worked in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.
Visit www.triviumwriting.co to learn more about Léandre’s writing coaching services. You may also check out The Word Leader Podcast, which he uses to share insights on writing.
You can also tune in to the Awakening Leadership Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Google Podcasts, on Spotify, or on Stitcher.
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The other day I jammed on a drum, and it made me realize that percussions, of all instruments, have a lot to do with writing. When writing a book, we use tens of thousands of words and phrases. But some things don’t change. The pace and the rhythm stay fairly consistent. Like a song played by a live band, your writing should have a rhythmic unity, that is, cohesion in how the sentences and paragraphs feel. Is it a fast read? A short read? How should we feel? Smooth? Energized?
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By doing a lot of writing and editing, I have recently realized we often unknowingly undermine ourselves with our usage of words. We use a lot of auxiliaries such as “may, might, and can,” words that carry with them uncertainty. It’s tempting to use these words because they seem to provide us with a shield in case we are wrong. But you need to ask yourself: Are you certain of what you are asserting? If not, why not? If so, why? Are you simply afraid of being wrong? Using words that carry uncertainty sends the message you are not confident about your ideas, and it tells readers they cannot trust you. Get rid of uncertain words in your writing, and ask yourself the hard questions.
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Laying out the structure and the architecture is no easy task. In fact, it’s what keeps most aspiring authors from starting. But here is one strategy you can use to get started structuring your book: Think about how your book is meant to be consumed. Where should people read your book? How long should it take? What should readers take away from your book? These questions will give you clarity around the number of chapters, the length of your chapters, and the concept you should employ to build your chapters. Be intentional with your writing; make your book a success by design.
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Just as experimenting with your writing itself, it’s important to experiment with how you write. Where do you write? When do you write? How do you write? I recently had a problem with my computer, which forced me to run my business and do all my writing from an iPad. Through this debacle, I realized that changing what I use to write and where I write can impact my creativity and productivity positively. I want to invite you to reflect on where, when, and how you write and to mix things up so that you can find ways to improve your creativity and productivity.
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The other day I ordered a quesadilla at a Mexican fast-food restaurant, and I made a rookie mistake while ordering it. Everything looked delicious, so I put almost everything in the quesadilla. It turned out the quesadilla was not as good as it could have been because there were too many flavours and it overwhelmed my senses. The same is true in writing. If you put everything in a book — if you put all your good ideas, that is — you will quickly overwhelm your reader and you will dilute the effectiveness of your message. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, as Leonardo Da Vinci famously said. It is better to put fewer ideas and to better show its nuances and intricacies than overwhelm your readers with all you know.
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Words are extraordinary tools for creation. We think our ideas through words and we share our ideas through words. However, leading through words is not easy by any means. In order to lead through words, you need imagination, courage, and humility. In this episode, we talk about how you can lead through words and become a better leader.
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Writing with wisdom is what will make your writing endure. We often say that transformation is better than information, which is true. But a simple transformation may not be enough. You need to transform into the wisest version of yourself, extracting the essence of the world you see around you and turning it into a capacity to make good judgments. In this episode, I discuss the DIKW pyramid framework and how it can be used to write with wisdom.
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Your writing is a mirror — a mirror of you and a mirror of reality. In life, when you look in the mirror, you should love the person you are and are becoming. In writing, when you open your word processor or print out a manuscript, you should love what you see. In life, you need to be the person you wish you knew. In writing, you need to write what you wish had already been written. Make sure you always feel great when you look at yourself in the mirror — or when you open Microsoft Word.
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Emotions are what connect authors to their readers. Without emotions, a piece of writing is a missed opportunity to connect with people and truly convince them of your point. What are emotions? They're psychological experiences caused by the interaction of internal and external influences, resulting in strong feelings such as love, joy, anger, etc. To showcase emotions through writing, you need to pick the right words and only the necessary words. You need to tap into the universal to allow your readers to picture themselves in the situation you are describing.
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Most traditionally published authors will tell you that traditional publishing is the only way to become a serious author. Many book coaches, meanwhile, will tell you that the traditional publishing model is outdated and constraining. Both are a little right and a little wrong. The true value of traditional publishing is that you're kept accountable by a team of professionals that will make sure your book is the best it can be and is as successful as it can be. If you go the self-published route, you need to make sure you get the services and the accountability to create a great book. This episode is about the pros and cons of traditional publishing and self-publishing.
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Your impact as an author is not limited to your audience. Your impact extends to your audience’s audiences. When you write and publish a book, you are influencing a generation of people, who in turn will influence a generation of people. It is your chance to plant a seed and contribute to the world. You can never underestimate your impact because one thing you wrote may become an important pillar in someone’s life. That person will keep further planting the seed. That is how the impact compounds through writing.
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To craft your writing style, you need to ask yourself what you want people to feel when they read it. The easiest way to do so is by using other forms of art—such as music—and analyze the way they make you feel. You can even have a comparative model of what you want your writing to feel like. You can aim for your writing to give feelings similar to a certain song or a certain movie. This will help you create the writing style of your dreams.
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Coffee has an aura that tea doesn’t have in Western culture. There are a lot of coffee enthusiasts around the globe, and these enthusiasts get really excited about coffee. While less mainstream, tea also has its appeal. But it’s enthusiasts are not as many—or at least, they are not as loud about their passion for tea. As an author, you need to ask yourself whether your writing is like coffee or like tea. Do you want to write for the masses? Or do you want to write for a smaller group of readers?
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One of the smartest things an author can do is have an ideal reader critique their work as they write it. Not before they write it. Not after they write—as they write it. Authors are bound to make mistakes that include insulting the audience. We need to know how we are doing as per the audience, and having an ideal reader critique our work as we write is the most effective to do. Find someone who is your ideal reader who can read chapters as you write them to give you productive feedback that will help you move forward.
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People read to get certainty. They want to feel as though the author knows what they are talking about. If you are using a lot of uncertain words, such as auxiliaries (may, might, can, etc.) you are coming off as uncertain and missing out on the opportunity to be persuasive. You need to use uncertain words only when you actually are uncertain. Otherwise, these words make you weak and they hinder your writing.
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It is a normal part of the writing process to change your mind about your ideas. You can change your mind about your argument like you can change your mind about one minor aspect of it. In any case, you are likely to change your mind about one or more ideas because the writing process is a thinking process. You should not be afraid of having to change your conclusions. Although it may involve some rewriting, changing your mind makes you stronger and more articulate. Writing has a way of exposing your logical gaps, blind spots, and biases. Embrace it.
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The author’s worst enemy is the impulse to start something new. There is always one thing and only one thing you should be writing. Your audience asks nothing more than what you should be writing. You must understand that, whenever you give in to the temptation to write that next big idea, you are failing yourself and your audience. You are wasting your time and your audience’s time because you are not providing the value you should be providing.
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The best way to create trust and connection between you and your reader is to create a sense of complicity. Your readers feel complicit when they feel they have access to secrets you share with them. In other words, they are the only people who can understand what you are saying because you have a special relationship. To create such complicity, you need to utilize pieces of information you’ve previously shared with readers in such a way that readers have a ha-ha moment that other people could not if they just tuned in.
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When you’re unclear on what you’re writing, whether it be a book or a blog, you need to break things down. You need to layout all the pieces that make the whole. You do not get clarity from looking at the whole; you get clarity by looking at the pieces and how they collectively create the whole. Structure matters. Cohesion matters. A micro-perspective will help you see your blind spots and clarify your argument for the readers.
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Which author do you want to be? What would you like your style to be like? In order to develop your author’s voice, you need to understand both your primal state and your ideal state. Your primal state is how you write without deliberate practice. Your ideal state is how you would write if you could be any author you want. The way you craft your author’s voice is by finding the sweet middle between your primal and ideal state. While you do not want to write without deliberate practice, you do not want to simply copy your favorite authors. The process of developing your voice is the process of taking and leaving from those who inspire you.
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Today we are joined by Mel Shipman, an international mindset coach, author, and speaker. Through her work, she encourages, empowers, and equips women to shift their thinking so they can walk into their destiny. Mel has coached women in the US, Canada, Australia, and Africa as well as written three books.
Her second publication, "When the Soul Cries: Trauma. Tears. Triumph" in collaboration with The Fearless Storytellers Movement gave her the opportunity to become an executive producer of its follow-up documentary available on Amazon Prime. As the creator of the Life & Ladle brand, Mel aims to bring coaching, cooking, and community on one platform to help others live well, eat well, and love well.
Check out Mel's websites and social media:
FB: @MelShipman, @nextlevellifellc, @lifeandladle
The Fearless Storytellers Movement:
https://www.facebook.com/thefearlessstorytellers
IG: @lifeandladle, @thefearlessstorytellers
LI: Mel Shipman
https://www.facebook.com/thefearlessstorytellers
Websites:
www.lifewithcoachmel.com
www.thevoiceofmel.com
www.lifeandladle.com
The Fearless Storytellers Movement:
www.thefearlessstorytellers.com
Documentary:
https://www.amazon.com/When-Soul-Cries-Trauma-Triumph/dp/B08QZVXFDF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KLCYRQPRMFRF&dchild=1&keywords=when+the+soul+cries+documentary&qid=1609781663&sprefix=when+the+soul+cries%2Caps%2C257&sr=8-1
Trailer:
https://www.amazon.com/When-Soul-Cries-Trauma-Triumph/dp/B08QZVXFDF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KLCYRQPRMFRF&dchild=1&keywords=when+the+soul+cries+documentary&qid=1609781663&sprefix=when+the+soul+cries%2Caps%2C257&sr=8-1
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No matter how well-meaning we might be, we always run the risk of being inauthentic in our writing. We can exaggerate or say things that are simply not true. Such is human nature. However, we need to keep ourselves in check and make sure we only write things that are true because our actions follow us. If our actions and writing are incongruent, we lose our readers’ trust, which means we lose our audience not only as an author but also as a person. Truth matters—and it is our responsibility to keep ourselves accountable to the words we write.
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As you grow as a writer and author, you need to study not only great writing but bad writing as well. While great writing shows us the gold standard and can inspire us, bad writing teaches us what to avoid. We cannot know and understand what we need to avoid if we do not see it in context. We can study grammar books all we want and look at their examples, but doing so will only get us so far. We need to be able to identify bad writing, and we need to be able to identify why it is bad. Only by doing so will we avoid the traps. Study bad writing!
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The better you understand the internal architecture of writing, the easier you’ll find writing and the better you’ll be doing it. Writing is made of components, and these components are similar from one language to another. The best way for you to understand the components of writing is to study a foreign language. Most of us take our mother tongue for language, especially if we only speak one. By studying a foreign language, you will be forced to establish linguistic points of comparison between your native language and your target language. This process will give you great insights into how your native language works and how you can use its components to make your writing effective.
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factsThe philosophy of the enlightenment is more than a collection of thinkers and ideas. It is a way to engage with philosophy and it is a system of thought. As Ernst Cassiner shows in the introduction to his book The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, we cannot do justice to this philosophy by simply summarizing the ideas that came out of it. We need to look at how it radically differs from other philosophies. This reminds us that the best writing is writing that offers not simply a collection of information but rather a system or a framework. When you write, make sure you give your readers more than fact and that you give them a way of understanding the world.
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We often talk about positioning ourselves as experts and using our story. But what does this really mean? It means we need to show our journey from struggle to authority. We need to show people we understand where they are and that we are exactly where they want to be. This way, we build both trust and connection, which puts people in the right frame of mind to want to learn from us. In the end, we need to show our audience they can trust us both emotionally and intellectually.
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Today we are joined by coach Michael Taylor. Coach Taylor is an entrepreneur, author, motivational speaker and radio show host who has dedicated his life to empowering men to reach their full potential. He is an irrepressible optimist with a passion for the impossible! He’s authored 8 books, including Don’t Believe the Hype of the Negative Media and Shattering Black Male Stereotypes.
You can connect with Coach Taylor here.
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Stoicism is a philosophy that emphasizes detaching our emotions from our life so we can live better. Stoicism is a perfect way to look at writing because we should detach our emotions from the writing process. That does not mean we should write without emotions. Rather, it means we should keep the emotions for the text and not get too emotional about the process. Getting emotional about the process ultimately hinders our chances of success. Moreover, the Stoics emphasized four values: wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. These are all values we can and should apply to our writing.
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Titanic offers us great insights into writing with the scene where Cal gifs Rose a beautiful diamond necklace. Cal is trying to bribe Rose into loving him. However, we know that Rose’s heart will go to Jack, even though he is poor and cannot offer her anything Cal can. What Jack can offer, however, is a glimpse into a world Rose doesn’t know. He can draw lessons from his life in Paris. He can show her his art. He can teach her how to spit. These things are much more interesting to Rose than any material possessions Cal could give her. The same thing goes with writing. Your readers don’t want to hear about your accomplishments and what you can do for them; they want you to deliver the goods and make them live an experience.
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Retaining moral authority is critical in writing. Without moral authority, you cannot convince your readers of your point, nor can you effectively achieve your goals. Moral authority comes from standing over the melee and being aware of the current debates in your field. It comes from offering a clear, objective view of other positions while making the case for your own view. Moral authority is as much about rhetoric as it is about demeanor. You not only need to know what you are talking about, but you need to project that you know what you are talking about and will not back down.
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Writing consists of transmitting information from one community to another. The world is made of individuals, all of whom belong to communities. What makes you unique as an individual is the combination of groups and communities to which you belong. More often than not, writing consists of connecting ideas and communicating them to those who need it. In a sense, your duty as an author is to find out which communities need which ideas and to communicate those ideas in a way that makes sense and is compelling to the target audience.
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It can be hard to know when to stop writing. However, remember that it is better to be timely than to be perfect. Perfection is an infinite game, timeliness is not. It is better to be timely than to be perfect, and it is impossible to be perfect in any case. When you gauge quality versus speed, you must consider whether what you are writing is time-sensitive. If it is, you must consider speed first. But it is always better to write about topics that are not time-sensitive. The universal always wins.
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This episode is the first of many weekly interviews to come. Our first guest is John Neral, a nationally recognized keynote speaker, an executive and career transition coach, and the author of the self-help book “Show Up: Six Strategies to Lead a More Energetic and Impactful Career.” In today’s episode, I’m talking to John about his work, his book, and his writing process for “Show Up.”
You can connect with John here:
Website: johnneral.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/johnneral/
Facebook: facebook.com/johnneralcoaching/
Instagram: instagram.com/johnneralcoaching/
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McKinsey & Co is well-known for its emphasis on writing and liberal use of PowerPoints. One thing you can learn from this consulting firm is that writing is a critical skill you need to master. McKinsey & Co encourages its staff to write a lot and effectively; it teaches them strategies such as the Pyramid Principle and the Rule of Three. McKinsey & Co is one of the giants of consulting, and it’s not an accident. They focus on the fundamental skills that bring success — like writing.
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One thing you can do to better edit your work is to read your work out loud. You may not be the world’s best editor, but you know what sounds right and what doesn’t. Reading something out loud allows you to notice if the flow is right. It allows you to spot grammar mistakes and typos. If you choke on your breath reading a sentence, it means that sentence needs to be rewritten. Reading out loud uncovers a text’s imperfections.
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When writing, most people are either very orderly or very chaotic. But neither of these extremes are good as one leads to stifle creativity and the other to confusion. The Hybrid Planning System, developed by Stellar Writing, is a planning system that acknowledges individual differences and mitigates the damages caused by our temperament. It allows anyone to plan just enough that they have something to work with all while preserving their creativity.
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The best way to write about your life is to treat your existence as an experiment filled with lessons. People can learn from your experiences. You can extract the lessons, knowledge, and wisdom from your life and turn it into something compelling that will help others move forward. You must ask yourself who has a problem you can solve. You must ask yourself what is the problem for which you have a solution.
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Your job as an author is not simply to make your reader fall in love with your writing. It’s also to fall in love with your own writing. In fact, falling in love with your writing is the requirement for others to fall in love with it. You need to write what you wish had been written; you need to write in a way you wish other people wrote. You need to fill the gap left by others. It is okay to be infatuated with your writing. If you love it, other people will love it as well.
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This episode is a recast of an interview given to Stephanie Nielson, host of the Victory Lap podcast. You can check all Victory Lap episodes here.
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Creating a relationship between the characters of your story and the reader takes time. You can say who your characters are all you want, but readers won’t believe it. To believe your characters, readers need to see them in action. A man of integrity can’t simply say so to be believed. A man of character and integrity has to say he’ll do something and proceed to do it. Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, you need to show instead of telling.
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Today there is a wealth of alternatives to reading. Your job as a writer is to make your writing so compelling that people would be foolish to ignore it. Your writing needs to make everything else irrelevant by showing urgency. You are never competing for people’s book budget. You are competing for their attention and the overall budget. If you wrote the book people have been dying to read, your audience will ditch going out and watching Netflix.
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People read you for your wisdom. They want the universal lessons they can apply to their lives no matter who they are and where they live. The best writing is universal. It speaks to people and their problems regardless of their identity and geographical location. When writing, you want to extract the golden pieces of knowledge you have so you can feed an audience hungry for wisdom.
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Ideas don’t change over the centuries. People have thought the same thoughts and ideas for a long time. What matters when expressing ideas isn’t the WHAT as much as it is the HOW. Reading is a journey, and the journey to one conclusion is different depending on who creates it. You can’t get too caught up thinking, “do my ideas matter?” The right question to ask is, “how can I create the most compelling journey to my conclusions?”
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It’s always tempting to believe we aren’t enough to write on our chosen topic. It’s always tempting to believe we’re not enough of an expert to be writing a book. But everybody feels this way at one point or another, and this feeling only stems from fear. The truth is, we develop and refine our expertise by writing. We revise and polish our thoughts, which gets us ahead in our thinking. You can’t be enough before starting to write. No one ever is. You become enough by writing.
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Does everyone have a book inside of them? If not, who should write a book? In theory, everybody has a book inside of them. However, only those willing to take responsibility for their ideas and express them in the best way possible should write books. Writing a book should not be a vanity project. There is no pride to take in having published. There is pride in having produced something that will last. The world does not simply judge a book by its cover and can see right through shallowness.
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When getting started writing, it’s important to understand what type of writer we are. Are we the chaotic type? The orderly type? It’s important because, in the end, we need to find the sweet spot between order and chaos. You can’t plan everything from A to Z because it will stifle your creativity and suck out the joy of writing. On the other hand, you can’t simply wing it because you will produce incoherent, inconsistent material. When creating a process for yourself, you need to respect who you are and your predispositions without giving up to your primal instincts.
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Writing is like money. It’s important, yet society never says anything about it. Money’s always been important, yet we weren’t taught financial literacy and entrepreneurship at school. Writing is the most powerful skill in the world, yet schools teach it in a way that makes people resent it. Writing has not only the power to give you clarity on who you are and what you stand for, but it also gives you job prospects in any economy. If you can write, you can never go hungry. If you can write, you can’t get replaced by automation. If you can write, the world is your oyster.
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Most people can write a 1,000 to 2,000-word piece without too much struggle, yet they will be the first to say they can’t write a book. Why is that? Why do most people think they can’t write a book? The truth is, it’s not more difficult to write a book than a 1,000- to 2,000-word piece. It takes longer, but it’s not more difficult. In fact, it doesn’t take more time than writing 10 to 20 short pieces. What makes a book daunting to most people is the fact that it requires unity. It requires unity between the contents, the themes, the chapters. Hence it requires big-picture thinking. It requires planning and deliberation.
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How do you know whether you should hire a ghostwriter? This question is easily answered. Do you want to be an author or not? Though you will get the author status with a ghostwritten book, you won’t be an author. Authors are born through the writing process. They grow as a result of the work they do writing, revising, and editing. There are people for whom it makes sense to hire a ghostwriter, people like Elon Musk. There are people whose ideas we should read about, yet who have neither the time nor the interest to learn the writing craft. That is fine. However, let’s not kid ourselves. These people are not authors.
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Too many people feel like they need to look at their ideas and figure out which ones are worth writing about and which ones are not. That is not how writing works. Writing is like doing a puzzle. You open the box, put the pieces on the table, and look at the image on the box. From the image on the box, you start picking the pieces you need to recreate the image. You don’t just pick pieces at random and hope it makes sense in the end. Writing is not random. It’s engineering; it’s architecture. You need to start with the end in mind.
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There is a popular misconception that an editor can fix anything. Many believe that writing in a structured, coherent, grammatically correct way is unnecessary because a good editor can clean up any mess. That is everything but true. A good editor’s job is not to fix any mess; it’s to make a writer’s work shine. If you leave it up to the editor to make your writing be structured, coherent, and grammatically correct, you will soon lose your voice and purpose. You cannot rely on somebody else to produce quality work.
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McKinsey & Company for its emphasis on PowerPoints. Underlying the PowerPoints, however, are the writing process and argumentation. McKinsey & Company encourages its employees to write because writing clarifies thinking. They also encourage their employees to use the rule of three, which states your argument should comprise three reasons—not two, not four. The number three makes your argument look convincing, concise, and coherent. It’s the number that has the most impact on people.
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Many aspiring writers and authors choose to figure everything on their own when it comes to writing. They read the books, they take the courses, they practice on their own. They try everybody’s process. Although it’s important to explore different methods and processes, you cannot reach your goals rapidly without focus. Guesswork is hard work, and hard work is not the best investment of your time. Smart work is, and smart work comes from the framework. You don’t need every writer’s method for writing. What you need is a framework that allows you to develop your own process.
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Rejection matters. Failure matters. You can’t do anything without rejection, and you shouldn’t fear it. You should embrace it instead. If you don’t fail or get rejected during your writing journey, you’re doing something wrong. It either means you got everything right the first time, which is impossible, or the people you trust for feedback are lying to you. It is impossible to get everything the first time and, if you did, it would be detrimental to your growth. Reaching goals without growth in the process is like dying without having lived.
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One of my clients once asked more or less directly for validation. Although I wanted to make him happy, I couldn’t give him the validation he sought because he wasn’t far enough into the process. The truth is, you don’t need validation before you start writing; the writing process provides such validation. If you follow the steps, do the work, and stay humble, there is no chance in the world your audience won’t appreciate what you have to say. Everyone has ideas, a message, or expertise to share; the problem is not the WHAT, it is the HOW. By expressing ideas compellingly, which can be learned, your ideas will be worth reading.
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There are three sure ways to sabotage our chances of finding success with writing: perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and shiny object syndrome. It is not enough to know that perfection is unnecessary on the first draft; we also need to act accordingly and create an experience that reinforces our belief. As far as imposter syndrome goes, we need to realize that our value lies not in how much we know about a given field, but in our capacity to connect ideas from different disciplines. Finally, we need to realize that there is always just one idea we should be writing — the idea we have been obsessing over for years.
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If there is one thing all writers share, it’s the necessity to have a fresh pair of eyes available. Such a fresh pair of eyes can be yours like it can be somebody else’s. However, you do need somebody who can take a step back and put themselves in your readers’ shoes. When we write, we often end up in a place of flow, which makes it impossible to ensure clarity.
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Writers and aspiring authors often feel confused about their ideas. They don’t know where to start, they’re not sure how their ideas connect with one another, and they’re not clear on what the point of their text is. There exists a simple framework that helps you make sense of your ideas: at any given time, there is only one idea you should be writing about. After all, not all ideas are equal, and some ideas are more significant than others. You want to make sure you know which ideas are statements and which ideas are details supporting statements. By doing so, you will be able to create a hierarchy of ideas, which you can use to create a clear, simple structure to your writing.
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People wrongly assume good writers are born talented because they only see the tip of the iceberg. They see the books, they see the prizes, the book fairs, and the interviews. But what they don’t see are the years of practice. Writers become good at their craft by practicing the craft, and most writers spend years working on their craft to become good. With the right frameworks, however, you can shortcut the process. Most writers choose hard work and guesswork over frameworks. With frameworks, you can improve your skills and master the process much faster than if you choose to learn on your own.
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If you struggle writing consistently and sticking to a writing schedule, you can benefit from implementing the 20-mile march concept. The 20-mile march is a concept developed in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. It states that, in periods of turbulence, companies need to stick to their target consistently regardless of the chaos and the uncertainty. Only by taking action every day, even when it’s inconvenient, will they reach their targets and achieve the desired outcomes. Instead of writing a lot on certain days, you should write a little bit every day — even if the world seems intent on keeping you from writing. Build a scoreboard. Set a goal. Reward yourself.
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One of the most frustrating aspects of writing is that we can never seem to write as well as we wish. We can never write as well as our favourite authors. Why? The best authors have the best words, right? It is true the best authors have the best words — and they use them with powerful nuances — but it is also true you to can find the best words. For every thought, for every nuance, there exists the perfect word — and these words have been used. What you need to do is read widely and pay attention to words and how they’re used. By seeing how they’re used by the best, you will be able to use them like the best.
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If you worry you can’t find new, original ideas and that everything has been written, think again. Blue Ocean Strategy, a 2004 business book by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, has a lot to teach us in this regard. The book lays out a framework businesses can use to create infinite demand for their product or service through value innovation. At the core of the book is the idea that businesses should look at their non-existing customer base and compete across different industries instead of within industries. By creating products and services at the intersection of different industries. The same is true for writing. The best ideas come from combining ideas from different disciplines, and we all have unique sets of knowledge and experiences. Get creative!
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Finding flow is a significant challenge for many aspiring writers and authors. Flow, however, is not complicated. It consists of internal and external factors. You need to make sure you are well-read in your topic, have found your unique angle, and have a good mindset about writing. Then, you need to make sure you are in a good environment to write, you are enjoying yourself, and you are giving yourself feedback. By optimizing internal and external factors, you are setting yourself up to be a prolific writer.
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You may feel as though you can never write the way you wish to. You may feel as though you can never write like your favourite authors. But do you take the language for granted? As a non-native English speaker, I've learned that many native English-speakers — and people who speak other languages as well — take their language for granted. They content themselves with simple explanations if they seek explanations at all. To write in a way that will make you unforgettable, you need to take a step back, look at the language as an outsider, and ask deep questions about the way it works. Then and only then will you be able to fully use writing to unlock new opportunities and reach new heights.
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Like data analysts study data to improve the system, you need to study writing to improve your craft. Writing is made of levels of analysis you can use to zoom in and out. The more you analyze writing — your writing and other people's writing — the more you grow as a writer. Self-awareness is critical in this endeavor. You need to be able to identify what you like and what you don't. This way, you can implement what you like and avoid what you don't. That is the easier way to craft and refine your style and voice. After all, your style and voice are simply the products of how you use what the language has made available to you. The more you read with your writing analyst hat, the better you write.
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Every so often, I pick up a book and start reading it, only to find out within the first few pages that the book is unworthy of reading and the author likely a fraud. The caveat, though, is that the book isn't necessarily terrible. Nor is the author necessarily a fraud. But some rookie writing mistakes make it so I believe so. Many of us use rhetoric — which we should — because it's a powerful weapon. However, rhetoric can be misused and abused, and it often is. If you misuse or abuse rhetoric, you undermine all the hard work you've done. It doesn't matter how smart you are; it doesn't matter how well-meaning you are. You must not only learn rhetoric, but you also must learn how to use it appropriately. It is better not to use rhetoric than to misuse or abuse it — because rhetoric can backfire.
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Logic is the cornerstone of writing. If your logic is unsound while speaking, your audience may give you the benefit of the debt. But if your writing is logically unsound, you don't get a second chance. Writing affords you the opportunity to revise, so you have no excuse. What does it mean to have sound logic, though? Sound logic means meeting your audience where they are in terms of their beliefs and changing their beliefs sequentially through a logical series of statements. If you fail to do this, you lose your audience — and, worse still, they may think you are a fool. You should always ask yourself, "am I paying attention to logic?" and "is my logic impeccable?"
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We should not look at grammar as an annoying, restrictive set of rules. Grammar is a finite collection of patterns and linguistic combinations we can weaponize to get a point across effectively. The problem we have in our society is that grammar is taught negatively, and it makes many of us hate it. Let me remind you, though, that grammar is like culture. Yes, culture can be oppressive. Yes, culture can act like a tyrannical father. But culture also sets us free. Only within the confines of culture can we find a way to express ourselves while serving others. We should not be enslaved to culture — like we should not be enslaved to grammar. Instead, we should learn about it and use it — and sometimes subvert it — to express our uniqueness.
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Inspiration is like success. You can't achieve it by pursuing it out of self-interest. If you want inspiration, you need to stop looking for it. You need to pause, think of something else, and let inspiration come to you. Inspiration tends to come to us when we expect it the least. Answers to our problems tend to come to us when we no longer bother with the issue. Walking, showering, getting distracted are some of the best ways to get inspiration. The best ways to get inspiration are indirect, not direct. You can take actions that cause inspiration to come to you, but you can't force inspiration to come to you.
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Sequence is everything. It does not matter how much time you have to write every day. What matters is how you use the time you have. The mistake many newbie writers make is to use the time to have ineffectively. They start writing right away without any plan or structure. Then, they struggle to sustain writing over an extended period of time and they find themselves stuck. Moreover, they do not produce the best work they can because they haven't followed a process that makes their ideas clear for their readers.
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Writing is not special. Like any other discipline, you need to learn the fundamentals and practice the craft. But you also need mentorship. A mentor is someone who will guide you through your journey, showing empathy and wisdom. A good writing mentor, unlike books and courses, will not simply give you the tactics and techniques. A good writing mentor will give you the strategies, the philosophy, and the identity to become the author of your dreams. In this episode, we discuss how important mentorship is in writing.
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There is one writing mistake that will cost you more than any other. This mistake, unfortunately, will lead people to believe you are not as intelligent as you are. This mistaking is circling back to the beginning of your sentence. In other words, it is writing a sentence that does not have an internal logic. It's a sentence that repeats itself at the end without getting anywhere. In this episode, I show you how to avoid these sentences.
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Clear writing is honest writing. We should not be hiding what we mean behind walls of words and obscure sentence constructions. It is a sad thing that many of today's government officials, academics, and businesspeople write in such an incomprehensible way. It shows they either do not know what they are talking about or that they are not being genuine with us. If you want to serve your culture and your civilization, write clearly, write honestly — and encourage others to do the same.
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Writing is like attending a dinner party. You can't show up and start talking without listening to what people are saying. The respectful thing to do is to sit down, listen to what people are saying, and contribute to the conversation where you can. Unfortunately, many people write as if they're crashing the dinner party. They don't take the time to familiarize themselves with similar books, and they end up repeating things that have been said long before.
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All too many people keep themselves from writing or hinder themselves because they fear rejection or criticism. But you must remember you're not here to please people. You're not opening your mouth to please people. You're not taking the pen to please people. You're not on this earth to please people. Criticism is a healthy part of the writing and publishing process. If you garner no criticism, you're doing something wrong. Criticism should be embraced and even sought. You're not here to please people; you're here to share your ideas, spread your message, and write your truth.
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If you want to write consistently without facing writer's block, you need to realize that writing is not simply about writing. It's also about reading and thinking. The longer your piece, the more reading you need to do. After all, writing is a conversation — both with other authors and readers. But many people think reading and writing are two separate activities — that they should be done at different times. That couldn't be further from the truth. The truth is, reading and writing are not separate activities. Input and output go together. In order to inspire, you need to be inspired. In order to teach, you need to learn. One of my clients was struggling with writing consistently. After asking her a few questions, I realized that she did not write as she read, which made it difficult for her to write consistently.
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We have reasons to write, some self-centered, some altruistic. We have reasons why we want to write, and we have reasons why people want to read our work. But writing is hard. It requires focus and commitment. How do you find that commitment and lock it in? You do so by aligning internal and external incentives. That is, you ask yourself, "Why do I write?" And you ask yourself, "Why should I write?" These two questions will give you the internal and external incentives needed to be committed to your writing.
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To become a good writer, you need to master the fundamentals. But what do you do to distinguish yourself once you've mastered the fundamentals? You need to develop your style and your voice. One aspect of this is to find your wild card. Everyone has at the very least one wild card, something that makes them special and recognizable. By leveraging your wild card in your writing, you are able to stand out from other people in your field and to create a more intimate relationship with your readers. Think about what your wild card might be and how you can use it.
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Writing is investing. When we invest money in our stock market, we get a return on it (most of the time). When we invest in ourselves, we grow into a better person and forge our character. When we invest time into something, we get a result. And when we invest our thoughts into writing, we also get a return in the form of better thoughts. When we write, we become better thinkers, better communicators, better individuals. It's no surprise journaling is so popular. Ideas unwritten are ideas with untapped potential. Writing is one of the most important investments we can make — both for ourselves and for others.
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Translating ideas sentences — especially, good sentences — is not the easiest of tasks. You may struggle to find the exact words and the exact structure you should use for your thoughts. You may also be unsure how to connect sentences together so the ideas flow well. In this episode, we cover a quick exercise you can use to improve your ability to translate ideas into compelling sentences by reverse-engineering writing.
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Focus is an obvious requirement for writing. But is focus really about? What are the different types of focus that exist? In this episode, we discuss the two types of focus and how they really work. It is one thing to be able to focus on the task at hand, but it is another to focus on one topic and to focus your thoughts so you can effectively convey your message. Focus is fundamental to writing, not all types of focus are made equal.
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Rejection paves our way to success — especially as far as writing is concerned. Rejection is something every writer encounters: the faster you get it, the faster you will be successful. Rejection doesn't mean anything else than you are not ready or the publication is not ready. It is not your work's death sentence. Plus, it has never been easier to self-published today. If you are committed to getting your ideas out there, you will find a way.
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Many gifted writers fail to reach their full potential because they miss one thing — diligence. It goes without saying, the only way to write is to write diligently. But diligence goes beyond the task at hand. We should be diligent not just when we write but also when we learn. We should know when we should be learning and when we should writing. Writing is a craft that takes deliberate practice. Diligence is the only way to become a great writer and author.
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Writing is a process not only when it comes to completing a writing task, but also when it comes to growing into a better author. Taking writing seriously means going through different seasons of learning, writing, and having written. Some seasons are fruitful, some aren't. Some are difficult, some aren't. However, we must remind ourselves that every season is the product of the one that precedes it. You cannot have written something before learning and writing. There always is a lag in the process.
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What type of writing do you do? Are you closer to Aristotle or Robert Kiyosaki? Are you deep into the data or deep into the wisdom? Are you looking focused on the past or are you focused on the future? Are you describing or prescribing? These are all questions you need to ask yourself as you develop into an author. You cannot leave your writing to chance. If you don't decide your writing style, others will do it for you. You may as well be deliberate.
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Words are extraordinary tools for creation. We think our ideas through words and we share our ideas through words. However, leading through words is not easy by any means. In order to lead through words, you need imagination, courage, and humility. In this episode, we talk about how you can lead through words and become a better leader.
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Writing with wisdom is what will make your writing endure. We often say that transformation is better than information, which is true. But a simple transformation may not be enough. You need to transform into the wisest version of yourself, extracting the essence of the world you see around you and turning it into a capacity to make good judgments. In this episode, I discuss the DIKW pyramid framework and how it can be used to write with wisdom.
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Your writing is a mirror — a mirror of you and a mirror of reality. In life, when you look in the mirror, you should love the person you are and are becoming. In writing, when you open your word processor or print out a manuscript, you should love what you see. In life, you need to be the person you wish you knew. In writing, you need to write what you wish had already been written. Make sure you always feel great when you look at yourself in the mirror — or when you open Microsoft Word.
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Emotions are what connect authors to their readers. Without emotions, a piece of writing is a missed opportunity to connect with people and truly convince them of your point. What are emotions? They're psychological experiences caused by the interaction of internal and external influences, resulting in strong feelings such as love, joy, anger, etc. To showcase emotions through writing, you need to pick the right words and only the necessary words. You need to tap into the universal to allow your readers to picture themselves in the situation you are describing.
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Most traditionally published authors will tell you that traditional publishing is the only way to become a serious author. Many book coaches, meanwhile, will tell you that the traditional publishing model is outdated and constraining. Both are a little right and a little wrong. The true value of traditional publishing is that you're kept accountable by a team of professionals that will make sure your book is the best it can be and is as successful as it can be. If you go the self-published route, you need to make sure you get the services and the accountability to create a great book. This episode is about the pros and cons of traditional publishing and self-publishing.
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If you want to be a great writer who produces quality material consistently, you need to make a monthly, quarterly, and yearly view — not daily and weekly. Writing is filled with ups and downs, highs and lows, and successes and failures. You need a perspective to look at your averages and to see your long-term growth.
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Writing consists of different layers and different elements that make it more or less difficult. Fundamentally, however, writing is straight-thinking. Writing is the communication of information in a way that's enjoyable for the reader, and it requires coherence and linearity. This episode is a friendly reminder that writing is good old straight-thinking.
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A business mentor of mine once said, "words cast spells; that's why it's called spelling." This is not only true of how we speak to ourselves, which determines our outcomes, but also of the way we write, both for ourselves and others. The words we pick carry certain connotations, certain emotions. We should pick our words carefully because they define us as writers, authors, and individuals. They create the style for which people will remember us.
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In his 1969 text "What is an Author?" Michel Foucault wrote that texts really began to have authors when authors became subject to punishment. It's an interesting statement to ponder as becoming an author involves taking ownership of our ideas. It involves accepting the consequences of sharing our thoughts. When we expose our thoughts, we are exposing ourselves to certain risks — especially when we deal with contentious ideas. In this episode, I discuss the topic of taking ownership of our writing and what this means in the twenty-first century.
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Even if you are writing non-fiction, you still need to create a compelling narrative to present your information and knowledge. Narrative is how we humans make sense of the world; it's how we remember things. A story is much more likely to be remembered than some plain facts that don't stir emotions. In this episode, we talk about why it's so important to understand the narrative. We also talk about how you can create one today for any type of information you want to present.
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If you are only writing for people who share your beliefs, you are missing out on impact. More than that, you are missing out on a powerful exercise that will make you more persuasive. Beliefs aren't all made equal, and beliefs can be changed. Two people can never have the exact same beliefs. By writing for people who have beliefs radically different from yours, you will never struggle again to make good arguments no matter who your audience is.
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Are you writing or are you dreaming? All too often we present our ideas, knowledge, and expertise in ways that make no sense to the reader. We fail to make the necessary connections and transitions, and we have no underlying narrative. To make a lasting impression on our readers, we need to make sure we are writing as if we are writing a movie.
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Unfortunately, our society doesn't value being wrong. In the current political climate, it's easy to get called out and to get labeled all kinds of things. But being wrong is the most important thing we can do as authors and members of society. This is how we get things right in the end. Writing, particularly, offers a lot of opportunities to be wrong. But only by being wrong first can we be right, so we should embrace writing and grow as people.
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There are so many people in this world who think they are not writers. They don't feel confident writing, they think their grammar is poor, or they think they don't have anything the world would want to read. In this episode, we uncover why that is, we go back to the root cause, and we talk about solutions.
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By writing, you are developing your empathy. You are formalizing your thoughts. You are prioritizing your ideas and framing them in a way that will make sense for your target reader. If you aren't using empathy in your writing — as in any other area of life — you are not going anywhere. Empathy is the basis for everything.
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