Now that I’m home, I’m glad to be back to focusing on writing.
Motivating me further: I just finished the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, which has been recommended to me so many times in the past few months that I was surprised to learn it was originally published in 2002. Good if you have a creative or entrepreneurial project and need a strong push to get to work already.
Merging blog and newsletter
I’ve been debating whether or not to merge my newsletter and my blog. The fact that I feel like I should say “yes, I have both a newsletter and a blog for some reason, and they’re different,” is already a bad sign, isn’t it…
My newsletter was meant to be once-weekly content, delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribers only.
Meanwhile, my blog posts were whenever-I-felt-like-it content, delivered to whoever was watching on Substack or Medium, or checking out my website. In any given week, I might post once, a few times, or not at all. They didn’t come to you by email unless you had Substack or Medium send them to you.
But the lines between email and blog are blurry. What content belongs where? And my writing was split into two places, only one of which was hosted on my website.
I was spending a lot of extra time each week managing content distribution. I’d rather spend the time creating content.
It just makes sense for me to merge them.
Here’s the deal
Here’s how it will work going forward. I will publish all my long-form content on my website first. Starting with this post 🙂
My newsletter is set up to watch my blog for new content.
We’re going to find out what happens with photos when I include them. Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash
Current email subscribers will get a weekly digest on Thursday mornings, so it won’t look too different, although I’m still figuring out how to make the formatting look good by email. If you’d rather get email for every post instead, let me know (or check your newsletter preferences).
New email subscribers will get an email for every post, with the option to switch to the digest.
The content will be duplicated on LinkedIn, Substack, and Medium, and linked on Bluesky. (Facebook too, for now, but I’m not a fan and I may discontinue that at some point.)
Less time managing content distribution, more time to write.
Also, welcome to [checking current numbers…] 170 subscribers so far who signed up this week on LinkedIn. Glad you’re here!
I’m a writer at heart, so enjoying speaking at conferences is a bit of a surprise for me.
Speaking at LeadDev StaffPlus went even better than I was hoping, and it’s got me thinking about what works for me as a speaker.
This was a bigger audience than when I spoke at Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit in 2024, and I actually felt more comfortable.
I had some signs while I was speaking that the talk was landing, like a gasp from the audience when I revealed a surprise. And I got kind comments and great questions from people who approached me afterwards.
I know the cheerleading from the conference organizers and my fellow presenters helped. Such a supportive group!
Group photo with other StaffPlus speakers. Photo from LeadDev
I’m also starting to settle on an approach to speaking that works for me as a writer.
What to speak about
Deciding what to speak about is the first hard part. For me, it’s about identifying a story from my life that illustrates a point relevant to my audience.
Let me break that down:
A story – there are great presentations that don’t involve storytelling, but putting the story front and center helps me connect with the audience.
From my life – if I’m talking about my own experience, it’s easier for me to remember the details. And nobody in the audience will challenge me on the facts!
Illustrates a point – yes, but the point I wind up making may not be the point I originally planned. The process of crafting the talk often leads me to a new place.
Relevant to my audience – I’ve got plenty of stories, but not all of them are meaningful for that audience and context.
From there, I’ll start either with the end of the story or with the moment of transition.
Where do I want to end up?
If I start with the end, I have a few considerations:
What’s the main takeaway?
In the case of my LeadDev talk, I wanted people to have a sense of when a conflict might not be theirs to resolve and when it might be time to focus on something else.
How do I want them to feel after the talk?
I like my audience to feel seen. I want them to feel like the talk went to a deeper place than they might have been expecting.
That was especially true on the StaffPlus stage, because I was third on the program. I wanted to help create a sense of “this conference isn’t esoteric, it is relevant to me.”
Moment of transition
Stories are best, I think, when the storyteller emerges changed by the experience. Something like “this happened and now I see things differently” beats “this happened but otherwise everything’s still the same.”
The moment where things change is a great place to deep dive for a few seconds to make the moment more vivid. Add detail. Slow down a bit to let that moment play out. Bring the audience along for the transition.
When I got to this moment for LeadDev, I just let myself go off script and relive a little of the emotion. I let there be some unfinished sentences.
Where to start the story?
This is a Matthew Dicks storytelling tip: the story starts with the opposite of where it ends.
My story at StaffPlus ends with my realizing that the conflict I was describing was not mine to handle. Therefore, it starts in a moment where I was determined that I was going to handle it.
The first few lines (and the last few) are the only sentences I outright memorize. This is a Moth Radio Hour storytelling tip from their book How to Tell a Story.
I want my opening section to do several things:
Start strong. No “so” at the beginning.
Acknowledge my welcome. “Thank you” is good.
Get the attention of the audience. More on a “hook” shortly.
Introduce myself. Specifically, why should the audience listen to me. Quick recap of my credentials.
Bring people into a moment, with some details.
Introduce the stakes. Why should anyone care about this story?
Hook?
I heard a Rory Vaden podcast recently where he explores what a “hook” is.
People say you should do three things during a talk:
Tell people what you’re about to tell them
Tell them
Tell them what you just told them
I’ve also heard this called bad advice, and it might be, if you’re interpreting this as just repeating yourself three times. That’s not how I interpret it.
At the top of this section, I told you what I was about to tell you (“what a ‘hook’ is.”) I haven’t actually said what a hook is yet. I just told you what to expect from this section.
And that is the hook: it’s the first “tell people what you’re about to tell them.” You aren’t giving all the info away the first time. You’re just letting people know the plan.
I did this in my talk right here:
The hook.
Then you can execute the plan (“tell them”) and at the end, recap the takeaways (“tell them what you just told them”).
Once I saw how “tell them what you’re about to tell them” can be the hook, I can’t unsee it.
A map, and no notes
Once I know where I’m starting, my transition, and where I’m ending, I have a map of sorts for how I want to get there. What points do I want to visit along the way?
I don’t bother with speaker notes, for the most part.
I’ve got my opening line and closing line memorized.
I know my story path to get from A to B to C.
I’ve practiced enough to have learned some key phrases I will pull out along the way.
I don’t want it to sound like I’m reading. So I don’t read.
I practice to find out where I get lost. I also sneak clues into my slides to make sure I always know what’s next.
For example: I had several slides in a row with multiple bullet points. I needed to know when I was on the last bullet point, so that I could change my intonation to match. But the number of bullets varied from slide to slide. Solution: the last bullet on each slide starts with “and.”
The only speaker note I had at LeadDev was on one of the last slides: “If you have at least 2 minutes remaining, you’re on time.” It’s an early warning if I’m running over, and it lets me relax if I am on time.
Slides
I try to put as little text as possible on the slides. Text should be close to what I’m saying, but not necessarily exactly (I don’t want to read my slides to the audience). Text should reinforce key points.
I do a lot of animation, mostly making bullet points appear as I talk. Ideally, they appear just after I’ve said them.
I don’t want my audience reading ahead, so I don’t give them any way to do that. I want them curious and listening to me.
But it’s also good for them to have some info on the screen in case they space out for a moment. Notes let them get caught up.
This time, I also discovered the joy of the “replay” animation for drawing. I drew an org chart and then drew some annotations… The end result looked like this:
It all made sense with the narrative.
Closing
The closing section has several jobs:
End strong. No “anyway, so… that’s all I have, I guess…”
Recap the takeaway(s)
Call to action. What do I want them to do? At LeadDev, it was “find me here, and find me on beyond writing code dot com.”
Another thank you. Gratitude’s nice. It also lets the audience know the talk is over.
I used to put the “thank you” at the top of my last slide. Now I don’t, because I don’t want to signal that I’m done until I’ve said everything.
You might be able to get away without a signal that you’re done if you have a really strong and decisive ending, and you slow down a lot to deliver. Maybe something like this:
“And that… is why you should never… get into a pie-eating contest… with the Dalai Lama.”
Rehearsing
I practice standing up, out loud, with a “clicker” in my hand to advance the slides.
I listen for where I forget what’s next, where I stumble over the words, and where I get sidetracked. Places where I say “and—” only to switch slides and discover that the next slide needs a “but,” not an “and.”
After I rehearse, I think: what were the best moments of this talk as it stands now? Get rid of other moments as much as possible. Keep only those that are required to tell the story.
I make notes of any phrasing I like, and then I’ll try to rehearse using that phrasing.
Rehearsing for an audience is useful, even better if they can give me feedback about what was strong, what wasn’t, and how I can improve.
Presentation time
I did some walking shortly before I was due on stage. That helped me burn some excess nervous energy.
I gave myself a few presentation-time reminders:
Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. If I rush, I mess up, and messing up makes me slower.
Breathe. I practiced this while rehearsing, and noticed the difference it made.
Look out at people.
Don’t get clever. No improvising, adding content, or going off script.
Have some energy. Try to sound as if you were saying it all for the first time. Like you just now thought of it.
With this plan, I feel surprisingly comfortable on stage. Here I am, a writer enjoying speaking. Who knew?
I’ve used my writing skills to craft the story from start to finish. I have a story from my own life, so I know what I need to talk about. And I have the slides to help reinforce my points and keep me from getting stuck.
And that… is why you should never… get into a pie-eating contest… with the Dalai Lama.
Some of the best writing tips I learned were from a summer class I took as a teenager. I’m still adding to my writer’s checklists, decades later.
However, I have mostly kept these checklists in my head. Whenever I realize that I have documentation stored in my head, I want to write it down.
First of all, the information in your brain is not searchable! Make it useful to others, and write. Part of why I’m writing a book, after all!
And second, the brain is a much better processing unit than it is a storage unit. Get all that excess knowledge out of your head and onto a more reliable “external drive” (like paper). Then you can free up mental space for things you can’t just go look up.
Here’s my basic checklist:
What’s sillier than putting “make to-do list” on a to-do list? This. Photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash
Vary sentence beginnings. “She did this. She saw that. She said something. She blah blah blah.” Change it up!
Similar: vary sentence structure. Subject-verb, subject-verb, subject-verb… gets boring after a while.
Break up long sentences. If you’ve got more than one and/or/but, start to get suspicious that a sentence is perhaps too long.
However, it’s trendy these days to write entirely in short, choppy sentences, or even sentence fragments. I’m not a fan. Again, vary that sentence structure.
Avoid the passive voice. I don’t try to eliminate it entirely, but I often like my writing better in the active voice.
Use tenses deliberately. I tend to switch between the present and the past tenses, unintentionally. But people do that naturally, and it can invite the reader to relive a specific moment with you. It’s only a problem if I don’t like what I wrote.
Drop extra words. Instead of: “That is one of those things that I find myself doing a lot.” Try: “I do that a lot.” The tipoff: a group of words such as this, that, what, which, something, or one, hanging out together in a sentence. “This is one of those things which…”
Watch out for weak words. “Very” and “really” are rarely doing me any favors. I use them, but sparingly.
Clarify “this.” I learned this tip recently. Even if it’s pretty clear what you mean by “that” or “these,” it can be even clearer if you just say it. “That guideline is so useful,” vs. “That is so useful.” Or, “I learned this tip recently,” instead of “I learned this recently.”
Instead of “you should,” try “I learned.” Rather than telling people what to take away from my writing, I find it more helpful to share my takeaways and let readers draw their own conclusions.
A bulleted list helps break up blocks of text.
Read it out loud
I often read my writing out loud. If I can’t bring myself to read out loud for some reason, I’m reading silently, but imagining how it sounds. I think of this as reading something to myself loudly. 🙂
Here’s what I’m listening for as I read out loud:
Words I’ve repeated. “Oops, I say ‘unintentionally’ twice in this sentence…”
Does it sound like me?
Do I get lost, or bored? If I do, my reader will.
Do I trip over my words or have to start over mid-sentence? Red flag. Look for grammar errors, stray words, sentences you can break up, or unnatural phrasing.
How are the pieces fitting together? Does the flow from one idea to another make sense?
What’s my tone? If I’ve veered off into “smug” or “judging” that’s a warning flag for me.
Am I repeating myself? Does it serve my purpose to do so, if I am?
Did I say something other than what I wrote? If so, did I do that because it sounds more natural the way I said it? For example, I wrote “I do use them.” But when I read it aloud, I said “I use them” instead. It sounded better shorter. I changed it.
If you’re struggling to read something you wrote, or if you read it and have the fleeting thought: “huh, I have no idea what I just said,” that’s your brain trying to tell you there’s a problem.
I’m sure there are others that I’ve forgotten to list here! I might edit this as I think of more.
Was this helpful to you? Did you pick up something new?
I’ve been listening to books on storytelling recently, including three I recommend highly.
Book 1: How to Tell a Story
First: How to Tell a Story is by the team from the Moth Radio Hour. Seek that show out, if you’re not familiar with it. Among the takeaways… strong stories have:
A change or transformation. Show how the events of the story changed things, changed you.
Stakes. Why should the listener care.
A strong start and ending. No “so, yeah” at the beginning. No “uh, well, that’s it I guess” at the end.
And when telling a story on stage, look for the sweet spot between memorizing and improvising. Know your story arc, what details you want to include or leave out, where you want to speed up or slow down.
But memorize only the opening and ending. Beyond that, memorizing can make you sound unnatural. And if you lose your place in something you memorized word for word, recovering is hard.
Second, Stories that Stick, by Kindra Hall, provides a framework for how to approach storytelling. Her tips:
have a recognizable character,
use vivid and relatable details to connect to your audience,
bring in genuine emotion,
and identify a turning point (the change or transformation mentioned above)
Stories that Stick then explains how most businesses have four main stories to tell: the value story (what’s the value of the product), the founder’s story (how did it all start), the purpose story (vision and values), and the customer story (testimonials). Each one serves different purposes.
Given how good those two books were, did I really need another five-star book about storytelling?
Yes, yes I did.
I found that the lessons from each book complement the lessons from the others. Combined, they made a powerful course in storytelling. And it sure doesn’t hurt that all three books feature engaging stories as examples.
But the third book I read, Storyworthy, by Matthew Dicks, might be my favorite.
Even better: itgave me a rule of thumb that I’m already putting into practice. (I thought I was already following it. I wasn’t.)
Book 3: Storyworthy
So many of us were taught to think of an academic style as “good writing.” It’s how we learned to write essays for school.
Problem is, it can be a little boring.
In the Book Academy, Luvvie Ajayi Jones encouraged students to ditch the scholarly tone. “Write like you talk,” Luvvie said.
And sure enough, whenever someone set aside their fancy word choices and just wrote as if they were speaking, their writing came alive.
I already have a pretty conversational style of writing, so I thought I had this covered. But, in Storyworthy, Matthew Dicks takes this a step further. He calls it the “dinner test.”
With the dinner test, you’re not just writing like you talk. You’re telling your story the way you’d tell it around the dinner table with friends.
So now, as I write, I keep going back to imagine saying all this to you. Does it sound like something I’d say? I’m surprised by how often the answer is no.
Storyworthy recommends another practice I plan to adopt. The author calls it “homework for life.”
Homework for life consists of pausing at the end of each day for ten minutes to identify any “story worthy” moments that happened during the day. Just jot down enough to remember what the story is. You can also make a note of anything that happened at another time but which you happened to remember in that moment.
This practice can build a list of stories worth telling, which is great. But even more than that, it can get you to pay more attention to small moments in your life that might be worth remembering.
Matthew Dicks suggests that since he’s been practicing this habit, he’s had a sense of life not passing him by so quickly. That alone makes it a worthwhile practice for me, even if I never use the resulting list as a source for stories.
Have you read any of these books about storytelling? Are you incorporating storytelling into your work or your life? What have you found useful when crafting your stories?
As I mentioned recently in my post about pressure and resistance, I’ve had a hard time getting started lately. I’ll sit down to work, and then I get distracted. At the end of the day, I’ve accomplished nothing on my to do list.
I feel like an engine that won’t “catch.” Turn the key, it makes the right sounds to indicate that the engine is surely starting. But as soon as you stop turning the key… silence.
Another piece of the resistance, in addition to rebelling against the pressure: I fear doing it wrong or not being able to finish.
I dread writing for a while on a blog post and then losing enthusiasm and giving up.
I’ll think about a section of my book proposal but then worry that it won’t go well or I won’t be able to complete it.
You know what guarantees that I will fail? Not starting.
It makes no sense. Not starting feels safer, even though it guarantees the outcome I don’t want. Why should it feel safer?
And yet, I’ve spent several days this month with the engine turning over but not catching.
Fortunately, yesterday was a good day. Got a (fairly long!) newsletter email written. Yay! And today has been good so far too. Taking the pressure off is helping.
Blank is easy, but not useful
I had to laugh when I saw this. Here are the search engine optimization (SEO) ratings from Yoast for a completely blank blog post:
I had to laugh. That post (or book!) you never write? Sure, as a blank page, it might be incredibly easy to read. And, not having any words, it is unlikely to offend.
But it’s not exactly going to be engaging to your readers. With driving, to get somewhere, you have to actually start the engine. In order to connect through the written word, you must start writing.
Okaaay, I guess the pressure I put on myself is a known fact here in our house. Not just for work or writing, I mean for everything. Even on the weekends, lately, I feel pressured to make the best use of my time, get things done that aren’t work-related.
Sheesh, I just started taking a workshop to improve the quality of my sleep. And I can already feel myself ramping up to put pressure on myself to sleep better.
As if that will help.
Resistance is arising
Resistance is coming up a lot for me lately. I sit down in the morning on a weekday, intending to write.
Instead, my motivation to write goes completely out the window. The last thing I want to do is write.
So instead, I listen to an audio book. Or I draw. Or I get sidetracked by something shiny. Anything but writing. Anything that isn’t on my giant to-do list.
Motivation then returns sometime later, when I’m planning to do something else. For example, it might show up after 8 pm on a Monday night, when I really ought to be doing some of those getting-ready-for-sleep practices. [looking at clock warily]
Well, what’s an efficient, organized, driven person to do when faced with this unwillingness to just get to work already? Clearly I should figure out what’s blocking me and put even more pressure on myself to get past the block.
No. Turning up the pressure when I’m not getting stuff done sounds like it should work. But it absolutely doesn’t.
Why doesn’t pressure overcome resistance?
When I turn up the pressure, all I’m doing is pressing against the resistance that has come up. And when that resistance encounters pressure, does the pressure overcome the resistance? Does it just decide that my motivated self should prevail and yield?
Of course not. Instead, the resistance just increases. It’s getting pushed more, so it pushes back more.
The resistance is arising because the pressure is too much.
How do I know? Because in moments like this, when there’s no pressure to write, the words just flow.
What helps, then?
I’m not sure what will help, honestly. But it isn’t turning up the pressure.
I’m thinking self-compassion is probably a good start.
Setting smaller goals for the day.
Acknowledging the things I’m getting done that aren’t writing.
After all, I didn’t quit my job only to write a book. I also intend to use the time to focus on my health and wellbeing: cooking more meals at home, getting outside for walks regularly, clearing my space of clutter, managing stress, and yes, sleeping better.
I’m definitely making progress in those areas.
Let’s see if taking some of the pressure off helps me return to the joy of writing, rather than pushing myself into the chore of writing.
I keep reading that there are two keys to connecting to your people online: consistency and content. Show up regularly, and keep creating content people want.
Great, but show up where? Should I be building my Substack audience? Enhancing my creator profile on Kit? Keeping things on my own website?
I’ll tell you where you can find me, in a moment. But where do I find myself?
Where am I?
Key to answering this question, for me, has been the podcast Own Your Impact, by Macy Robison. Macy breaks thought leadership down into ten archetypes. I’m pretty sure the one that fits me best is “Wisdom Writer,” because the written word comes easily to me. Others include, for example, the Resonant Orator, the Experience Facilitator, and the Research Innovator.
Don’t worry, they’re not thought leadership astrological signs. They’re just patterns of what approaches might work best for a given person. It’s a way of finding out what activities might or might not be a good fit for you.
And the archetypes aren’t meant to box you in – I may not be a “Resonant Orator,” but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t bother speaking. I spoke at Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit last year and I loved it, and I’m excited to be speaking at LeadDev StaffPlus in New York this year. Nobody’s 100% one archetype.
But writing, as a primary mode of expression, is going to work out much better for me than making videos on YouTube or running an in person workshop.
The point: don’t just copy what you see other people doing because you think that’s the only way. There are multiple ways. Take the time to figure out what is a good fit for you, and do that.
Macy just unveiled a quiz that can help you determine what your primary archetype is. You can find it on her website, macyrobison.com.
And I’m paying attention to that exhaustion, to what (good or bad) I get in exchange for my efforts.
What works for me and what doesn’t
When I’m writing for my newsletter, it feels good. And I’m often working directly on the book, which is glorious. This week, I’m also going to start sending an additional issue of the newsletter about art.
When I’m writing for my blog, that’s great too, although I don’t think I have many readers on my website. I need to figure out how to get my website blog posts to post automatically to Substack and Medium…
When I’m posting and interacting on social media, I’m often getting ideas for writing from the interactions I have with others. That works.
However, when I’m just reading social media, I have to be careful. It can be a huge waste of time, or it can be draining, or both. There’s interesting content from time to time to be sure, but it’s in a sea of ads, “suggested” content, endless commentary about AI, and upsetting news. Very easy to be overwhelmed.
And trying to keep up with ALL of the social media? Not gonna happen! I need a tool to go fetch just the best content for me from the sites I’m on. And there’s no way I’m cross-posting everything I write to multiple spaces, not unless I can find a tool to do that for me too.
What works for you? Do you have tools that help you manage all this online content?
If you check out Macy Robison’s archetypes, let me know how it goes!
And if you’d like to sign up for my email newsletter, you can do that below.
I have been importing blog posts from my previous blog at Medium, and I keep losing track of the steps.
And often, when I want to document something for myself, it’s my habit to document it for anyone else who has the same question…
This is exactly what my blog post checklist will look like. I mean, the checklist below — not the ink-on-graph-paper. But graph paper’s cool too. Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
While writing the post
Catchy but short title? (Sometimes I go for an entertainingly long title instead.)
At least one interesting image?
Caption your image(s)? Unsplash doesn’t require an attribution, but I like to add one.
Got sub-headings?
Review: brevity, passive voice
At the end of the post
A short note to sum up
If you’re importing from Medium, did you mention that? “Originally posted [date] on Medium.”
Add the Medium link?
Is it long enough that you kinda wanna add a second photo?
Metadata
(I’m using WordPress, the metadata is all the stuff on the right hand side under “Post”.)
Set featured image?
URL slug? (This one is “blog-post-checklist” which is okay)
Discussion – open or closed?
Categories?
Tags?
Note
I wanted my posts to have a featured image that will appear on the Posts page, but not appear twice in the article. However, barring any customization, setting a featured image that is already in my post will make it appear twice: once at the top where I don’t want it, and once where I put it.
Fortunately, I was able to figure that out:
Appearance > Editor
Click anywhere on the page to make the toolbar appear
Click the black and white circle icon for Styles in the upper right
Select the vertical “…” and choose Additional CSS
Add the following, Save, and refresh your browser
.wp-block-post-featured-image {
display: none;
}
And so…
Here’s the aforementioned “short note to sum up.”
Did this checklist actually prove to be useful to anyone else other than me? Drop a note here if you used it.
