Blog Writing Tips – How To Tap Into Your Creativity and Stay Motivated

Virtual Blog Writing Day
Denise Wakeman, Founder of The Blog Squad

A Special Presentation
By
Debra Mars, Writing Coach

http://DeniseWakeman.com

Virtual Blog Writing Day
Special Presentation
by
Debra Marrs

Denise: Hi, this is Denise Wakeman, your online visibility mentor. The following
is a special presentation by writing coach Debra Marrs.

This 30-minute presentation was done as a bonus for participants of the
first virtual blog writing day I hosted. Grab a pen, paper, and get ready
to take some notes as Debra shares her excellent advice for bloggers on
staying on track and motivated to consistently create content.

Enjoy!

I am very, very honored to introduce you to Debra Marrs. Debra and I
have been connected, she reminded me, since 2006. I know there are
some long time people on this call. Connie Green is another person I’ve
known for a very long time.

We met in 2006. Of course, virtually. I’ve never met Debra in person,
but I feel like I know her very well. If I ever get to Florida, I’ll be seeing
her.

Debra Marrs helps busy writers define, organize, and refine writing
projects for publication through her popular online writing courses and
2 © Copyright 2012. Denise Wakeman. The Blog Squad, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

coaching programs. She teaches a unique approach to writing, one that
honors both the masculine left brain and strategic energy, and feminine
right brain creative energy as the quickest way of getting unstuck and
being really clear about your message. Writers leave her program hyper-
focused with a strategic formula to write more and write often to get
words on the page, ready for publication.

Debra believes in the power of the authentic voice and teaches the
mechanics of creative, non-fiction for business owners, as well as
memoir, short story writing, essays, personal journaling, and blogging.

Debra shares her writing and creativity tips at www.yourwritelife.com.
That’s a link to her website and she is also giving you a gift today.

Debra, are you on the line with me?

Debra: I’m here Denise.

Denise: Thank you for being here with me today.

Debra: Thank you for inviting me. You did such a great job at setting things up
in the first session. I hope most of the people on the call are here
because I think when I look at today and as I thought about what today
represents, I’ve participated in these virtual writing days myself and
actually host some of them for me and my clients.

Actually all of us on this call today, because I’m also participating with
you, it’s all about moving your writing forward. I think if we can always
approach our writing that way, it helps us not to be stuck. It helps us to
prevent being blocked if we can approach it with, “I’m moving my
writing forward today in any manner possible.”

Over at www.yourwritelife.com we say everything counts. I really mean
that. Sometimes it means taking a nap. In naptime we dream and
generate other ideas. We’re not napping today. We’re focused. We’re
hyper-focused.


It all starts with setting an intention, which Denise invited us to do in
session 1. By the sounds of the check-ins, this idea has really resonated
with everyone.

I loved hearing all the success stories. Some of you may be feeling still a
little bit stuck. Maybe you’re thinking that you came to this because it
was all about getting things done and being strategic and organized and
publishing those blog posts.

That’s great. In fact, what that is, you’re using your masculine energy
when you’re in that mindset. The masculine is the part of you that loves
order, loves strategy, and loves being committed to getting things done.

On the other hand, we all have this creative side to ourselves. As a
writer, you have these two components whether you’re a male or female.
We both have this kind of energy. I want you to just go with me today a
little bit and shift your brain into what part of you are you approaching
your writing with today.

The creative part of us is the part that’s really juicy, needs time for
things to gestate, it’s more about birthing, it’s a feminine energy, and
creating.

I’m going to share with you, some broad categories today about idea
generation and then approach your writing with some other ideas around
complete awareness for your drafts and editing your drafts to get them
ready for publishing.

Then if there is time I’d like to share some tips on writing from your
authentic voice.

When I work with people I find there is an early question that comes up
for people. Do I sound like myself? I want to share some tips on that too.
How does that sound Denise? Are you still there to?

Denise: I am. That sounds fantastic.


Debra: Okay. A little bit more about the masculine and feminine energy.

Sometimes when we stall it’s because these two energies are in combat
and struggle with one another. What happens is one shuts down the
other. As I said, the masculine wants order and organization and wants
things to be done and published.

The masculine in you is the person who loves to outline and see
everything in a row. The bullet points, and know that one idea follows
another. It’s logical. It’s that left brain part of ourselves working if
you’re familiar with that terminology.

The feminine, on the other hand, she hasn’t finished. She likes the
creative part. She really dwells very well in the area of discovery.
Discovery comes to us through reading, research, and synthesizing.

I’ll be speaking a little more about synthesizing later when we talk about
idea generation. Sit with that just for a minute yourself. Can you
recognize in yourself those two energies that drive you?

There’s this part of you that needs order and then there’s this part of
you that wants to be creative and fluid and even messy.

Let’s look at idea generation through that lens of the masculine and the
feminine. I always ask people first when they are saying, “I need to
write more. I want to write more.”

We’re all here today because we’re focusing on getting more blog posts
out, right? We’re doing that because it’s important to attract more
clients for our business and to increase our profitability. What inspires
you?

In literary terms, we talk about this idea of stimuli and response. What
that really means is when you read something or see something, how do
you react to it? Most of us immediately come with some ideas. Right
away, there is some inspiration right there. That’s a way to generate
some ideas is to read and react to it.

I encourage you to start and keep an inspiration file that is both a
physical file, paper file from print documents, articles you read from the
newspaper, even TV shows you watch and can jot down a few notes.

Also keep an electronic file where you can save urls, blog posts, articles
as well as eBooks that may, I think almost all of us, at least I do, when I
read something I go, “I could write about that.”

I have a reaction to that. I love her tips. I could to add to that and I’d
like to give her credit for those 7 tips too.” Ask yourself this, “What can
you teach?” Our readers, when they come to our pages, want to not only
be inspired, that’s the other thing to ask ourselves, how can you inspire
others or motivate them, what can you teach them?

People come on the Internet and read blogs because they want one of
two things usually. Really, it’s one of two things.

They want to be entertained or they want to be educated.

I think we all can do both. When I get to the part on authentic voice, I’m
going to talk about and share some ideas about where you can come
through with that with some personal stories.

Besides the two parts of “what can I teach, how can I inspire or motivate
my audience?” you may simply want to be a sharer, a person who is an
aggregator, a content curator. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact,
we should mix it up.

Right there I just gave you some ideas, I hope. Help people get what
they want when they arrive there. Show them how you solve their
problems when they get to your blog post.

A great way to get started with that is you fill in the blank, headlines
that ask a question that you can answer. Stimuli-the question is the
stimuli. Your response is the answer.


Some great ones are:

“Are you afraid of _____?”
or
“How to deal with _____?”

To get that generated again the masculine likes order. He’s going to
really like lists and focusing in on the content for that. The feminine is
going to still be out there looking for more ideas.

One of the things that I highly recommend is coming up with a system to
park your ideas. For those of us using WordPress, we love WordPress (at
least I do) because I can park ideas in there and save them as a draft. I
can just go to my draft column and look at all the posts I have started.

As a matter of fact, today as part of this accountability program I went
in and went, “Boy, I have plenty to write and finish up.” It was the
feminine part of me that did the juju and got it down, got something
down. Now I need to go in and give it some more juice.

That may mean I need to do a little bit more research. I may need to
synthesize.


The two great tools that I teach folks is (1) the working table of contents.
Besides perhaps going ahead and parking your ideas in your WordPress
site, I don’t think there’s anything better than having a menu that you
can go off of.

It can be a simple template. If later you don’t want to do it now-go to
my website right there on the first page is a post about the working
table of contents. It’s basically where we park our ideas or our started
articles and that’s any kind of writing that we’re doing.

If we’re writing articles, chapters for a book or a Kindle eBook, no
matter what you’re writing you would park this on your working table of
contents. This becomes a menu then that you can come back to to select
ideas on your writing days.

Denise shared earlier about batching and doing things all in one day. I’m
so on board with that. A lot of people I know who are really successful
bloggers, set aside a whole day and that’s what we’re doing today,
that’s what we do.

Denise shared during segment one that she will only probably get 4 blog
posts done and that’s a stretch. Yet, we’re looking at 8 hours today.
That’s typical. That’s common. Setting aside one day and if you’re on a
schedule to post 2 blog posts a week, you’ll have that just by setting
aside a whole day from your business to do that.

The second tool I really like for parking ideas is actually a plug-in. Many
of you may know this. For those who don’t, it’s called WordPress
Editorial Calendar. That’s a free plugin that you can get at
www.WordPress.org/extend/plugins. What this does is adds a calendar.

Why I love that tool is it does something else that I teach my writers and
that is we must, must, must tie our to do’s to a time to do them. If we
just have a lot of drafts out there like I’m sure that I do, they’re not
going anywhere. I need to use my own best medicine and tie them to a
time to finish them.


Those are some tips about idea generation and parking those ideas and
helping keep them organized. I bet you’ve already intuited there’s some
of that feminine energy working because feminine energy is the one
that’s thrown up the blog posts. The masculine is saying, “When are we
going to finish these things? When are we going to get focused?” We’re
honoring those.

My point about the masculine/feminine is again honor and know which
one you’re in, which phase, how you’re feeling today if you will, or
during the hour or two that you commit to work on your writing in any
regard, what kind of energy do you see for you right now?

Is there a strong need to organize? Is there a strong need to synthesize
and do more research and reading? Those will always be at play.
Sometimes you have to reign in the one that’s causing you to drag off
into a far corner and not get it done.

Does that make sense Denise?

Denise: Yes it does. Absolutely.

Debra: Good, good. I hope it does for everyone listening too.

Let’s move into, this is going to be more about being efficient when we
write. I have a model that has 6 phases of writing. Again, it’s all about
knowing which phase you’re in as you approach your writing. It’s so
important to recognize that.

I notice so many writers fail when they fail to really name it, name
where they are in the 6 phases of writing. For the purposes of today and
because this is about posting to our blogs I’m going to cover just 3 of
these really. Actually, 4. I’ll give you 4 of the 6 phases today.

The first phase is prewriting. That includes any kind of research and idea
generation. It may mean creating a series. I want to tell you-I’ll share
that in a second. Idea generation, sometimes what prewriting also
includes is de-cluttering. I’m a really, really big fan of de-cluttering.

That can mean de-cluttering your desk. It can be de-cluttering and
organizing little snippets of paper that you’ve written, post-its for these
ideas of blog posts. It may be organizing some of that content into these
inspiration folders. Again, we are all about moving our writing forward.

Whatever you need to help with that, that’s what we’re doing today. It
doesn’t necessarily always mean you’re going to be in, I don’t want you
to feel guilty and beating yourself up if you’re not inside actually writing
words. Sometimes this prewriting phase needs to be taken care of in
order to honor the energies.

The second phase of writing are down drafts. Down drafts are just like it
sounds: get it all down. A lot of times this is about just writing to your
audience. I recommend you find your authentic voice; we’re going to get
into that now.

Gather together 3 to 5 people who are your intended audience. Make
them really friendly people that have smiles. You can go on Facebook,
go on their websites, copy and print their pictures. Make a little collage
or montage to put above your computer or writing desk.

Then when you sit down to write, write a down draft. Get it down as if
you’re talking to them. Part of your authentic voice is going to be write
like you speak.

Don’t try to sound like an authority. Write like you speak. Share personal
segments in there, it doesn’t have to be that you dump out your whole
world. It could be something like, “On my walk today I saw something
that reminded me of the 5 tips of how to do x, y, z,” and what you’re
going to talk about.

So, people understand that you have a life outside of the business life.
This helps them connect to us too.

I want to tell you a really quick tip about down drafting. You’re writing
down things, a lot of times we stop. We have our ideas flowing, we’re

typing or handwriting. Then we get stuck or we want more to go so
here’s what you do.

In your draft, when you’re handwriting (this works really best when
you’re typing) put in the letter TK. Why you put that in is those are two
letters that are never in any word in the English language. You can use
your search and find in anything that you’ve typed for TK.

I like to think of TK as “to come.” Whenever I’m stuck or don’t know
how to finish out an idea or a thought because I’m just down drafting,
dumping things, I type in TK and keep moving. That will help you stay
inspired and moving.

The next phase of writing is up draft. What you want to do here is go
back in and look at whatever you have and add to it. You’re going to go
back into the TKs and put in what you have left out. Sometimes it means
taking out some things.

Let me just say folks, I see people erring on the side of content that’s
too long. You don’t want your blog posts to be long. People’s interest
wanes. Actually, you want them to come back. Generally, when I look at
blog content, I can break it down into three articles or at least two. Part
I and part II will keep your readers coming back.

It gives you a way to reach out to them, to remind them on Facebook,
tweeting. Say, “Hey, I’m finished with the article. Come find out the
last 5 tips out of the 10 today over on my blog.”

The final phase that we’re going to talk about today is what we call the
“dental draft.” It’s just like it sounds. It’s where we go in between every
word, sentence, just like the hygienist does and cleans between our
teeth. We’re going to go in and clean and polish up our blog post.

Denise: Going to floss between your words?

Debra: Between our words. Right.


Denise: Floss.

Debra: Floss our words. Right. Clean them up. This is really an editing draft.
The reason why I bring this to your attention, I’ll just back up if you’ve
been taking notes, we have prewriting. This is taking care of business
that’s not pen to page or fingers to typing in the typewriter or the
computer, keyboard.

I’m an old school teacher of writing, Denise. We have that prewriting
phase. We have the down drafts. We have the up drafts. We have the
dental drafts. Don’t mix it up in your mind. Know how and where you’re
approaching.

As Denise said in session one, we can back things. We can do the down
drafts early today and then this afternoon come back in and do some up
drafting on those drafts. Then maybe tomorrow complete them through
some dental drafting.

I said I would share some ideas about your authentic voice. As I’ve
already said, gathering your ideal audience in front of you I think is the
easiest way to do that. Photographs are a great way to do that.
Another way to do it is to speak it but speak it through your fingers,
obviously as you write. Connect with your heart. If you think of your
heart it has a pulse and it goes down into your fingertips. If you come
from the heart then you know you’re going to be coming from your
authentic voice.

Another way to check your authentic voice is to go back and read
anything you’ve ever written. You’re going to recognize your authentic
voice because you smile. You recognize this persona that you like
hanging out with. You recognize in that persona the person who is both
organized and creative. That to me is probably the easiest way to
recognize both in myself and reading that I do from others if they’re
coming from that authentic voice.

Some really concrete tips here about that is to prefer the plain word to
the fancy word. If we write like we speak, then we’re going to write

using shorter words and not big gobbledygook words. We’re going to use
words that are plain and easy for people to understand. In fact, in a lot
of the blog platforms there’s a way to even test and see what the
Flesch-Kincaid rating is. You want it to be in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade
level.

Use contractions. I see so many people writing, “I cannot.” That’s not
how you speak. You say, “I can’t.” Or, “I do not.” You usually probably
say, “I don’t.” Use contractions. They’re okay. Forget that silly English
teacher. Pardon if any are on these calls or listening on the recording.
That’s for school. This is for us connecting with our audience. Using
contractions, writing like we speak.

Those are words and word choices. If we move over now into sentences,
prefer the simple sentence to the complicated. Again, most of us don’t
speak in long sentences. We speak in shorter little clips. Honor that on
the page.

Also, put your words that you want to emphasize at the beginning of the
sentence. This won’t happen in your down draft. This will happen in your
up draft or your dental drafting.

Don’t worry about it as you get it all down. Just come back and take a
look at that later.

I don’t want to run out of time so you can get back to writing. I’m just
going to look here. My last tip here on this is a really strong specific
that’s really going to help you with seeing and hearing your authentic
voice is to read whatever you write out loud.

Read it aloud. If possible, print it out and take it away from the
computer.

What happens when we read it aloud is we hear how we speak. What I
recommend is if you take it away from your computer, take a yellow
highlighter and every time your voice stumbles, tick it with that yellow
highlighter.

What that’s indicating to you is you need to go back in and say it another
way. Say it the way that it comes from your voice and from your heart.
If you weren’t able to read it easily, then you’re probably trying to
mimic someone else or sound more authoritative than you really feel.

Come in with your own way of saying things and be fresh. Be fresh with
it. Use those personal anecdotes. Be creative. Be juicy. Allow that
feminine side to come forth first.

I invite you to come over to my blog and leave a comment anytime to
share with me any of the things that I have mentioned that might be
working for you.

Denise: Thank you so much Debra.

Debra: You are welcome. My pleasure to be here.

Denise: You were great. I love the phases: the down draft, the up draft, the
dental draft. Excellent.

Debra, do you want to tell them a little bit about the 99 Ways to
Jumpstart Your Creative Writing?

Debra: Absolutely. Thank you. This is an opportunity for you to connect with me
and get some juicy ideas. In this book, it’s over 30 pages of literally 99
ways plus other content. Some of the tips in here are things like go for a
walk. For instance, even today, if you're blocked maybe going for a walk
will help you see something in nature that will help you connect back to
your content.

Another tip might be read the front page of the newspaper. A lot of
times we’ll see not only something that we can connect, a lot of times
it’s not applicable, but think outside the box.

Use that juicy, feminine side of yourself to think outside of the box and
bring that back.

What I recommend people do is download this and then just open it to
any page. Don’t read this book. It’s not a book to read. Open it to any
page, point a finger at any prompt and see how you can use it to
enhance whatever you’re writing whether it’s a blog post, a fiction story,
your memoir, whatever. It works for all levels of writing.

Denise: Okay. It’s called 99 Ways to Jumpstart Your Creative Writing.

Debra, I know we’re at 34 minutes past the hour. There’s a couple of
questions, would you be willing to take those?

Debra: Absolutely. I’ll also just throw out that link real quickly since you’re
right, some people won’t be seeing the link. It’s very easy to get to. You
go to the website, which is www.yourwritelife.com/yes. I made it easy
so we can say yes, you want 99 Ways to Jumpstart Your Writing.

Yes, let’s hear questions.

Denise: Okay, Rosalind asks, “What do you recommend as the minimum or
maximum range of words for a short post?”

Debra: You know, 300 words can be short and 500 would probably be like max. I
know a lot of folks are at 1,000 and 1,200 words. If we think about 1,200
words that is 3 to 4 typed, double spaced pages. Just think about that.

Go now and print out anything you have that’s 3 to 4 pages and see how
long it takes you to read it and if you really are attentive and it’s your
own content, so think about if you’re reading someone else’s. Cut it
down to under 500 words, I recommend.

Denise: Okay. It was two of the exact same question. People ask that question
all the time. Personally, my answer to that is however long it needs to
be to get your point across.

Debra: I agree with that and I’ve known you to say that often. I agree with it
and if people want to take the tip that I offered to break that up, if

we’re talking about creating content and what makes you feel successful
is having more, write more. That may be what you want to do.

Denise: Exactly. That too is my advice. What I often recommend to people who
ask is write what you need to write. If it’s really long, see how you can
make it into 2, 3, or 4 posts, a series of posts is a great way. What you
mentioned Debra, it brings people back too. If you feel like you have to
get it out there and it’s long, that’s okay. Then do your up drafting and
break it up.

Debra: Can I add another tip about that Denise?

Denise: Yes, yes.

Debra: What you guys can do is have your masculine side and your feminine
dialogue. I’ll tell you what, the masculine does that long post. He wants
to get it all down and be done. He’s saying, “I want everybody to know
all of this stuff.”

The feminine side is saying, “Dude, you know, I don’t like to read that
long. It’s kind of boring, even though I like your content. I’d have more
fun if I could come back again. I like you and I want to be with you some
more.”

Let those two dialogue. Then let the feminine help the masculine find
those breaking points, the points where you can break it into a series
and make it fun.

Denise: So, let’s let you going. You’ve received some great tips from Debra Marrs.
Thank you Debra Marrs for sharing those excellent tips with us. I think
that probably sparked a lot for people.

Thank you for listening (reading) to this presentation with Debra Marrs.
If you would like to get links to Debra’s resources and her website,
please go to www.denisewakeman.com/resources and that will take you
directly to a post that lists more than 29 resources that were discussed
during Virtual Blog Writing Day.

Hope to see you there. Please post your comments and questions if you
have any about this program and blog on!

Debra Marrs helps busy writers define, organize, and refine
writing projects for publication through her popular online
writing courses and coaching programs. Visit Debra at
YourWriteLife.com

Denise Wakeman is an online visibility mentor and founder of The
Blog Squad. With two decades of business and online marketing
experience, she helps authors, speakers, service professionals, and
small business owners optimize and leverage great business blogs as
well as strategically use social media tools to gain visibility, build
credibility and make more money selling their books, products and
services. You can learn more about Denise at
http://www.DeniseWakeman.com .

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Blog Writing Tips – How To Tap Into Your Creativity and Stay Motivated

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Blog Writing Tips – How To Tap Into Your Creativity and Stay Motivated