Road Trip to a Better Blog
I had the privilege this morning of talking to an interesting group of business owners, authors and non profit organizers at the Enterprise Center at Salem State about one of my favorite topics: building better blogs. I was impressed with the caliber of ideas coming out of the audience and I’m hoping both for your sake and mine that they come to fruition. I’m ready to learn about vacation homes in England, organic gardening and reclaiming tossed off furniture, just to name a few. (If you were there and are stopping by, send me an...
read moreAnnouncing a Blog to Change the World
How do you change the world if you are just 11 years old and you have to study for MCAS while preparing for your end of the year dance recital in between walking the dogs and emptying the dishwasher? Maybe it’s impossible, but I work with a group of 15 Girl Scouts who refuse to believe that and now they have the blog to prove it. At the beginning of this year, we set out to find a project that would make a difference in our community. There was a long list of groups they’d like to help including soldiers overseas, children in the...
read moreJust for fun – another way to break out of a writing rut
Stuck on a paragraph? Bored with your sentence? Not sure if the piece is going in the right direction? Try doing something totally different with the subject. Take a shot at writing about it in a completely different voice. Use the same information but take a whole new tactic. How would you write it for a five year old? What if you were for your best friend? How would it sound if it were headed to the desk of your former sixth grade English teacher? You can get as wild and crazy as you like because this isn’t something you would...
read moreEditing like mom
I think my house is the site of a truly bizarre and under reported but not uncommon weather phenomenon. I’m quite sure a tornado hit my daughters’ room over the weekend. On Friday, it everything was on the shelves and in the drawers and it could safely be described as orderly. Then sometime over the weekend this thing happened and nothing is where it should be. I will tell them to go in there and stay in there until order has been restored. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth and almost serious threats of television deprivation...
read moreWriting Goals
You want to be a writer? Then write. It’s that simple. Hah! No it’s not. A) Writing a lot doesn’t necessarily make you any good and B) Finding the time to write when you’ve already got a full life can be next to impossible. So does that mean it’s hopeless? Absolutely not. It’s just not quite as simple as we’d like it to be. Let’s start with this – while it’s true that writing a lot on its own won’t make you any good, it will do a whole lot more to improve your writing than not...
read moreForget about Facebook?
Do you want to be one of the cool kids? Do you want people to read what you write or buy what you have to sell? Yes? Then you need an audience. And how do you get his audience? These days its a no brainer to say the quickest most effective way is on line. But what does that really entail? The most obvious answer is Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and blogs. But how and how often? That’s when the answers get a lot less obvious. A new report indicates that Facebook may be losing its mojo and that’s means it maybe time to rethink your...
read moreWant to Write a Book? What’s Stopping You?
Just six months ago, CurtisCompany founder Eric Curtis decided he wanted to write a book to support his growing business consulting practice. You can now buy Collecting Dust (8 Reasons Nonprofit Strategic Plans Fail) on Amazon. It would have been easier to put it off. Eric already has a pretty full schedule running his business and keeping up with a young family. So, why now? “It was important enough for me to do it,” Eric said. “I want to focus on consulting, coaching and training.” The book helps define what he does as well as serving as a...
read moreAre You Ready to Write that Book?
Do you have a story running around in your head looking for a way out? Are there characters in your mind trying to break down walls to escape? If you are looking for some incentive and some structure to get moving, join us starting Thursday for an affordable three-week online work shop. We’ll talk about how to get those great ideas out of your head and onto paper. We’ll cover finding the time and motivation to write as well as the structure of story. The work shop is limited in size to ensure that participants get plenty of...
read moreStory telling from the story tellers
Certainly story telling is an art and it can’t exactly be boiled down to a basic of set of rules like a paint-by-number painting. But the folks at Disney’s Pixar have done just that. They’ve come up with to 22 “rules” to write by. Maybe it’s more like the Pirate’s Code: “Dems just guidelines.” But they sum it up pretty well. My favorite is #12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th — get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself. I like #9 too:...
read moreTime Tracking for Better Writing
There is a great, oft-repeated maxim for becoming a great writer: Butt-in-chair; hands on keyboard. You can’t become great, or even write at all if you don’t adhere to that very simple principle. Recently, I discovered a great tool that can help. It’s called Toggl. It’s a time tracking program designed for consultants and other business types. But it’s so easy and fun to use, that it works well for us writer types who don’t like to be bothered with administrative details. And it’s free! (There is a premium version, but it cost less than a...
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