What’s your process?

I’ve had the opportunity over the last few days to discuss my writing process at length – specifically my process of writing for other people. I talked to interviewers, friends, clients and writers-to-be…

One of those times, the conversation was with a brilliant photographer named Randi Baird. I was asking her about her process of documentation through pictures for a presentation she’s giving. I listened to her talk and wrote this from our exchange:

I marinate in the ideas before I photograph for an article; then, I illustrate the author’s words. Working with chefs, the ingredients become the colors, tools, shapes, textures within an image. Documenting a family, the ingredients are the personalities, the ages, the setting, the history. In each case, we all benefit from collaboration, communication, the strengths of our individual visions…and their fusion.

After she read it, she said, “You’re really good!” And I said, “No you are…you said it!!!” True, I wordsmithed it. But it was her energy, personality, intention, words and phrasing that served as the ingredients for writing the piece.

Here’s my process:

1. Meet with my client in person or on the phone for an hour or two and ask them tons of questions. Making it easy, natural, conversational.

2. Listen to them talk about themselves, their business, industry, goals, mission, philosophy.

3. Hear the words and phrasing that they use and the way that they talk – inflections, emphasis, accent, colloquialisms, industry-isms.

4. Marinate in all of this…especially their personality, energy, essence, je ne sais quoi…

5. Take notes, audio or video record – whatever it takes.

6. Find out what information needs to be relayed and to what audience. I like to do this oftentimes in the form of questions. And I ask the client directly for an answer – let them share their expertise.

7. I answer the questions, solve problems, inform and illustrate in the copy I create.

8. When writing as a ghostwriter / marketing writer, it’s like being an actor in a play – I become the character, channel their voice…and deliver.

What’s your process?

Image credit: Chotda

To throw or not to throw yourself under the bus, that is the question.

Yesterday, I went for an epic rollerblade. Eight miles, bright blue skies, forest all around me. And, ‘they’ (don’t know who they are, just know that I love them) had just come through to clear the path of debris – something they do on a monthly basis. So, I was cruisin’…to the point that I kind of stopped paying attention.

Around mile 4 I glided up a small hill and passed a guy walking – who just so happened to be beautiful – and I was busy being grateful for his smile and friendly ‘good morning’ when suddenly I realized that I had reached the top of the hill…and that it was the hill. The one with a treacherous and steep downhill on the other side.

I know this terrain well. My usual M.O. on this slope is to approach it at a snail’s pace, criss-cross in a horizontal fashion and get to its pine needle and dirt ‘gutter’ as soon as possible, where I then proceed to walk down the hill like the chicken that I am gracefully. But, alas, I wasn’t paying attention and I was going really fast. Really, really fast.

I had two choices:

1. Go for it. Engage my core, tuck down, watch the pavement for rocks and sticks…and fly down the hill.
2. Throw myself on the ground to immediately stop the madness.

I chose #2. In my defense, I did panic a little first. And then, I basically did my most unglamorous rendition of sliding into second base. I got a nasty raspberry with a side of road rash on my leg and a bruise on my tuchus, I gave myself tennis elbow somehow and this morning I woke up and felt like all of my bones were off-kilter – like someone hung my skeleton the wrong way on the hanger.

Anyway, I peeled myself off the pavement and started back to my car – lest you forget, I still had about 4 miles to go. This, not surprisingly, gave me plenty of time to over-analyze the hell out of my decision.

• Is this how I live my life?
• Am I so cynical that I assumed I was going down no matter what?
• Would I rather cause my own pain than let the world do it to me?
• Do I throw myself under the bus?
• Am I cutting myself off from opportunity?
• Do other people do this too?

And, of course, like the answer to all of my questions, there isn’t one. I’ve charged down ‘the hill’ at top speed more times than I can count – hair flying behind me and screaming, ‘WOOHOO!’ all the way down. But, like we’ve just seen, I’ve also hopped off the trail or taken my own dive, consequently not putting myself at risk – not only of failure, but also of wild success.

Sometimes flying down the hill gleans brilliant results, sometimes huge mistakes. Sometimes I can’t believe I dropped out and missed an opportunity, sometimes I praise my intuition and near escape.

There’s ’self-preservation’ and there’s ’self-sabotage’ – and there’s a marked difference and a place and time for each.  One of the secrets of life is being able to tell the difference. Can you?

Image credit: The Rocketeer

Un-Selfishing your Presence

When I was about 7 years old, we got my dad the best Christmas presents ever…three new Atari games: Frogger, Pitfall and Space Invaders. The brilliance of our gift was that we looked like great kids, my older brothers and I, but we weren’t at all because my dad didn’t play with Atari - we did. So, in effect, we bought the games for ourselves.

They weren’t really the best presents ever, they were the most selfish presence ever.

Cheesey as it may be, this little fable teaches us an important business lesson – and it’s simple. Whether you’re a company or a freelancer or a whatever you are, you have to do some marketing, right?

When you (and your copywriter) create your outreach message – make sure that you:

• Listen to your audience first.
• Find out what they want.
• Answer their questions.
• Solve their problems.
• …as opposed to yours.
• Because this isn’t about you.

If we’d listened to my dad, for example, we would’ve found out that he really wanted cheesey music a Loggins & Messina record (literally vinyl), a toy for his mid-life crisis Mazda RX7, Cardinal’s baseball tickets or a cigar…not Frogger. Not even close.

The result for us was lousy allowance rates, fewer trips to get ice cream and some eye rolling…what’s yours?

Image courtesy of sokabs

Can you take a look at this for me?

I believe it was Ben Stiller in the 90’s romcom Reality Bites who coined the phrase ‘non-practicing Jew’ – I’m one of those too, and right now, I’m a ‘non-practicing yoga teacher’ as well. But just like my Judaism, the yoga teaching is still running through my veins. I find myself thinking like a yoga teacher – wanting to lead, make hands-on adjustments, practicing alongside my students, clients, whatever they may be.

My beautiful wife, Patti, however, is a ‘practicing yoga teacher’ and while she does teach traditional classes, her focus is on teaching privates only. Someone asked me why anyone would want a private yoga class. “Wouldn’t that be so weird,” she asked, “to have the teacher just sitting right in front of you, staring at you?”

Yes, that might be weird…it might not. Traditionally the teacher/student relationship was one-on-one with the teacher paying single pointed focus to the student, guiding them along their way. And it usually didn’t look like our yoga classes. When you work with someone in this way, you’re able to look at their body in their postures, talk about injuries or unique physical and mental limitations, etc.

One of my favorite exercises that I used to to with my students, was this (you can totally do this with me right now…):

1. Stand up (somewhere with enough space that you can swing your arms and legs without hitting anything).
2. Close your eyes.
3. Shake your arms and your legs out (like you were trying to get water off of them after the shower – really spiders is a more appropriate example but then you’ll be freaked out about spiders crawling on you and won’t be able to concentrate – so pretend you shake water off, post-shower, ‘kay? Thanks.)
4. Keep your eyes closed.
5. Now come back to standing in stillness. If you practice yoga, come into the Mountain Pose. If you don’t practice yoga, bring your feet hip width apart, make them parallel to each other, arms down by your sides.
6. Now, open your eyes.

Look down at your feet…most people, with their eyes closed, think their feet are parallel and hips distance apart – but the reality that many of you might find is that one or both of your feet is turned out or in (either a little or dramatically) and that your hips distance apart more like a foot or two apart.

And trust me, this is only the part that you can see. Chances are one shoulder is higher than the other, your head is pitched way forward and your right ear is curiously close to your right shoulder. In my case, and Patti always finds this hysterical, my body is rotated a good 15 degrees to the left from my waist up. But I, and you, think we are standing perfect straight, totally symetrical.

It’s fascinating, jarring really. And a fantastic lesson. When I have someone standing with me, they can guide my body into alignment – as often as needed, in whatever post I’m in – until my body releases the habitual holding patterns and learns the alligned way.

So my question is, why wouldn‘t you ask someone to look at all of your stuff? Business plans, new boyfriend, marketing strategies, new suit, tagline, dinner party menu, web copy, first home, logo…

A new set of eyes is likely to find the flaws. You know, when you’ve looked at something so many times, they just seem natural and right to you. I don’t know about you, but I love to be straightened out.

Image courtesy of northstander

Chewing for discovery, part 2

It occurred to me this weekend, while I was getting gas for my car – if you must know – that there is a second part to the post I wrote last week about chewing your food (or completing your tasks) before moving on to the next bite.

The book, The Power Eating Program, maintains that if you take on the practice of chewing your food to liquid, you’ll find yourself actually choosing healthier food. Because when you eat food made from chemicals (processed, with ingredients you can’t pronounce, fast food, etc.), after the first few chews – when you actually dive down into the ‘food’ – you start to taste the chemicals or you taste nothing at all. Yet, if you chew a carrot, homemade lasagna, a piece of 70% organic dark chocolate, and chew it well, you’ll see that the flavors expand, transform and multiply right there in your mouth.

In effect, good and real food is the gift that keeps on giving and it just gets better. While bad and fake food is revealed and exposed to be, well, gross.

When we complete many tasks at once, we might lose the vision to see that some tasks are really fruitless, wasters of our precious time or simply not enjoyable because they’re just lumped in with everything else. But when we do one task at a time, we can really explore each task – and have the luxury to discover if it’s rich, complex and effective…or timeless, tasteless fluff.

Hmmm…food. for. thought.

Image courtesy of girlguyed

Did Shakespeare have an editor?

As I walked this morning, I was thinking about the book I was writing and the books other people have written (specifically Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book which is outstanding and masterful) – and the editing process that surrounds them. I pretty quickly made the leap to the copywriting work that I do – and the editing process that surrounds them.

In each case, the writer/artist begins with a pure moment of production unfettered by anyone esle’s opinions. Or does s/he? Are there thoughts always lingering in the back of the mind about what the editor, readers, customers, clients, boss wants? And if not, certainly the inner editor is there.

Many of us have been lucky, we’ve had those moments. Those beatific dips in the space-time continuum when the words gush in a direct beam from mind to paper (er, keyboard). And in those moments, the editorial thoughts are silent.

Which got me thinking about Shakespeare. He didn’t have an editor at Harper Collins breathing down his neck or telling him that the story would work better if only Juliet was hanging out of her window instead of standing on her balcony…right? Of course, he did have the Queen and the theater owners to contend with (yes, I saw Shakespeare in Love, too).

But imagine him before he actually became Shakespeare. For that matter, imagine us before we had bills to pay or dreams of fame and repute.

Is this what we should be striving for? Writing for the love of writing? Purely that?

Of course we should…

When I got to my computer, post-walk, I had an email directing me to Chris Brogan’s latest blog post (actually he wrote it yesterday but I only got it today because Feedburner sucks). In it, he urges us to “work backwards” – it’s a wonderfully inspiring article that supports the wackiness of my work life. He writes:

In the beginning, you might feel a bit uncertain. Try things out. Build secret labs. Run things by friends. Then, don’t listen to what they say. You think visionaries have safety nets and advisory boards and case studies?

Someone had to hunt the first mammoth.

That’s right, I thought. Someone, or some people, wrote before there were bosses and editors and clients and customers. When they wrote because they were called to create and share. Because they couldn’t resist.

So. Can we clear our minds, in whatever pursuit we’re engaged, and – essentially – go back?

Image courtesy of gadl

Irony. It’s so twisted.

As my good friend, Sarah, likes to say, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

Irony, according to my favorite dictionary (courtesy of Apple) is ‘a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.’

Miss California, by way of irony, has recently given us quite a bang for our buck. While preaching against gay marriage in the name of the holy church and bible, it’s been uncovered that:

• Her bible and religion don’t scoff at young women taking off their clothes and posing for nude photographs, but do oppose loving people making a lifelong, serious commitment to one another and raising families.
• She lied when she said the first set of nude photos that were released on the internet were the only ones.
• The breasts God gave her simply weren’t good enough and she had to get new ones.
• She violated her Miss California contract by not revealing her nude pictures to the pageant committee.
• Her declaration against gay marriage (the rights for which somewhere around half the population of her state support) does not toe the line of representing fully the state she has been honored to represent.

And then…Donald Trump lets Carrie Prejean keep her crown. My head is spinning.

Personally, I’m not into this plot at all. It has politics and loud ick factor…but no substance. You’re right, Sarah, we would never make this up – it’s just too…banal.

Writers, we can do so much better than this…can’t we?

UPDATE: Like Manna from Heaven – me and Keith Olbermann are one. I just found this and nearly fell off my chair. Thank you, Mr. Olbermann, for speaking up so eloquently:

Image courtesy of Wasabicube

Lessons From an Addict

Once upon a time, I was an exercise addict. Under the guise of being a triathlete (not Ironmans! sheesh. just some local sprints: 1/2 mile swim, 12 mile bike, 3 mile run), I worked out like a fiend. If I had a 7:00 meeting, I biked at 4am. If there was a freak New England blizzard in April, I ran anyway. If the pool was closed, I found a pond or an ocean. Welcome to one of the delights of being me…

And then one day, during a 10 mile road race, I injured myself beyond repair – or at least beyond repair back to where I had been that morning. So I started walking and doing yoga. Religiously and without fail, I practiced yoga every morning. At first I thought I’d been transformed. But really I’d just transferred my addiction.

I’ve continued to do so. I still do yoga and walk most every morning (my children, upon being born, released me from the severity of my routine), but over the last few years, my commitment to writing has grown to effectively hold a prominent place beside my sneakers and my yoga mat.

You know, there really is something positive to be found in my manicopia of exercise. Sure I liked the endorphin high, the fitness, my yoga butt, the health of it all – but what I am really enamored by (and the writing practice has made this abundantly clear) is the knowledge that within minutes of opening my eyes, I have already accomplished something.

No matter what happens the rest of the day, I’m buoyed up by the knowledge of my morning success. I love that it’s totally up to me…and my tools – body, mind and laptop.

Image courtesy of wiccked

Before the Good Stuff

Did you know that the original purpose of doing yoga postures was to prepare the body and mind for meditation? Yes, it’s true, the goal was never tight abs and a rockin’ ass.

Still, meditation does not come easy. For the vast majority of us, it never has. As we add more and more to our lives, it grows even harder. Just ask me.

I used to wake up every morning at 5am to practice yoga – or to lead it. I worked, studied and taught at the largest yoga center in the world…and it was still hard for me to just sit down and be still.

And then, I had children and built a business, and I forgot that meditation existed. The yoga stopped.

Until last week. Something happened and I pulled out my yoga mat and, AH!, did yoga. And then something else happened…This morning, after I finished my postures, my body literally pulled me down, gently closed my eyes and dropped me into a peaceful, restful state of meditation. Block cities were being built around me, a three year-old curled into my lotus lap. But it didn’t matter. I could have sat there all day.

If you must know, I (and several of my family members) have been trying for the last three years to make myself be still, even for one minute. It’s been an unattainable goal. And I realized this morning that it was because I had forgotten the critical step. That I couldn’t just jump from crazy life to meditation, but that I had to prepare my body first.

What I was struck by was that my writing process is the exact opposite. My writing focus, that lucious connection to muse, blasts from the most chaotic and harried of moments. There is no time of preparation. There is just life and then words. Yes, I’ve written that walking in the morning helps stir my brain and stimulate words, but even then my mind is swirling and then boom.

Ah, grasshopper…so maybe my preparation is the chaos? Perhaps there is some method to this madness? Perchance ‘no preparation’ is my gameplan. What’s yours?

Image by Joe Shlabotnik

In the Flesh: Networking in the Real World

Of course this post presupposes that you’re like me – and you spend the majority of your waking hours plastered to your computer.

I’m writing, of course, but I’m also taking advantage of the opportunity that online networking, aka social media, affords me. We, you and I, can connect with people all over the world to collaborate on projects, build project teams, get new work. I’ve built an entire business in this virtual manner.

But, today, are you sitting down? Today, I’m going to a real live networking event. I know! It’s shocking.

You know I love my social media, but I believe high value is still to be found in meeting people live and in person:

• Nothing compares to looking someone in the eye and having a conversation.
• I don’t care how good you are (or your writer is) at crafting copy–charm and personality are not two dimensional. Caveat: Unless you don’t have any.
• As the service/product supplier, it’s helpful to have the body language of your potential customer at your disposal. Does this person need hand-holding, humor, a take charge attitude, old-school professionalism?
• People often come to seminars, workshops and networking events in pairs or groups. How great to have Billy say, “Jack, you’ve got to come over here and talk to this lady.” And then pull him over to you and say, “He needs you so bad!”
• I’ve been told that there are studies out there that say too much computer exposure is bad for our health, that sitting hunched over our desks isn’t good for the back and that a lack of in-person social interaction might make us depressed. That’s what they say, anyway.
• Live events are slower than the speed of, say, Twitter. You don’t have time to craft the perfect response to an inquiry when you’re face to face with it. Keeps us on our toes, right? Makes the heart pound? Love it.

When was the last time you left your computer for an event? How do you compare online versus live networking?

Image by Adactio