This has been an amazing day for me and my first book writing project. For over two years I have been blogging. It started with posts that were nothing more than words that were laid down and most likely never read by anyone other than me. Over time, those posts became more targeted and meaningful, not just to me, but to my audience - entrepreneurs and small business owners. This learning experience took more than weeks or months, it spanned at least a year.
When you write on a consistent basis you begin to build the communication and presentation skills that work for you. In a few words, you get better at connecting with your audience. I began to develop my skills by by finding what my friend John Reddish refers to as your groove. He made the comment on one of my previous posts that there is a huge difference between a rut and a groove. Well said John!
Just because blogging has become easy for me doesn't mean that I can easily write a book, or does it? This is something that has been puzzling me the last few days. So, today, I said to myself: "Look Jeff, if it looks like a blog, and feels like a blog, then it must be a blog; so make it a blog." So that's what I did. I restructured my approach to be more blog-like, and viola - breakthrough!
Here is what I did. When I am blogging within the Typepad platform that I have become intimate with, there are a number of things that give me the right feeling. I usually choose a meaningful title up front and write from that. And I also have an idea of the image that I will search for, usually using Flickr's Creative Commons. This is an awesome resource for high quality images that you can use by simply providing attribution to the creator of that image.
You may now be getting a visual of how I create my jumping off point. When I get these two things set, I'm usually off to the races. Then I just start writing and everything evolves from there. I attempted to put this into practice today but something was missing. Hmm...? As I sat in front of my computer screen, staring at some of the words I had written, I realized something just wasn't right.
Here is the aha moment that created my breakthrough. It's so simple, yet in some way, profound too. Ready? I wasn't quite into the groove. Why? Well, the font that Microsoft Word sets you up with is typically an 11 or 12 point font. When I see that font, my eyes just glaze over because it feels like work. This is the visual of reports, articles with deadlines, and so many other things that I am doing because I have to. For me, this is the font of responsibility, not creativity.
All I had to do was adjust that font down to 9 points and, voila again, everything suddenly looked like a blog post to me. That's all I needed to get into the groove. Amazing.
How can something so simple be so significant? My honest answer is I have no idea. I'm just glad I discovered it. Today I wrote 5,000 words like it was nothing. I accomplished that in less than 3 hours. Now that's groovy baby!
After years of teaching meditation, a practice that is predicated on developing new patterns of conditioning that lead to productive results, I should have realized that there is also a reason to follow and reinforce those patterns that take you to those places where you want to go. I'm not sure if this insight makes sense to help you, but I hope it does.
Human beings are an interesting species. We are all the same and different at the same time, like individual waves in the same ocean. If we are writers, we want to write well, just as every wave seeks to eventually roll onto the beach in its own unique way. The trick is evidently understanding how to be part of something that is common, call that an ocean of humanity, while also expressing yourself in a way you know will work for you.
Go with what you know.
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Photo Credit: Felix63
