LBJ's Writing

In the words of singer Beyonce, if you like it, put a ring on it. When it comes to writing a book, put pen to paper.

I wrote my first book in 30 days and no, I did not attend a workshop and or training to learn how to write my book. What I did do was use two model books to provide a foundation for structure purposes and as a road map for book development.

The bottom line is this, writers write and no matter how much technology there is out there, in the end one has to put pen to paper if they want to write and finish their first and or next book.

I highly recommend you decided on what type of book you want to write, will it be fiction, non-fiction and or a novel? The choice is yours and the primary thing you must do is clear your head of any doubts, because they do not help you write and ultimately publish your book.

You must be determined, set a schedule for writing and carve out quiet time for writing. Avoid any and all distractions as best you can and I am confident you will be able to write a book in a month, like I did. I wrote Living on Higher Ground: How to live with passion, motivation and joy in 30 days.

The bottom line is, I had said on more than one occasion that I was going to write a book. I removed all of the excuses I placed before me and wrote a writing schedule, reviewed my book models and started writing. The approach I took and recommend is to write one chapter per day.

My book has 13 chapters and on the days I did not feel up to writing, I would proof read, correct typos and review my progress. After a short break I would start writing again and before long, the first draft of my book was written.

After finishing the first draft of my book, I hired a book cover designer, interior designer, copy expert and book printing expert. All in all, if you look at my book you would automatically think a major publishing house did the work because my book looks great.

The look and feel of Living on Higher Ground is an extension of my brand and thus I wanted it to look professional and position me to become an author of several books over the course of several years. Guess what, I want you to become an author and do what I do, here is to your success as an author.

Story telling is a very effective way to get your point across. Here are some tips to help you develop a dynamic powerful story.

• Decide on the purpose for the story. What is the main point you want to make? Slant the telling of the story so that that point is clear.

• Create the backdrop. Describe the scene so that the audience can picture it in their minds. What is the time, location, weather? What is going on emotionally, physically, or spiritually?

• Introduce the main characters. Help your audience to picture the important characters through detailed descriptions. Become them; describe their relationships, quirks and personality. Add character voices or mannerisms to make them different from your own.

• Begin the Journey. What is the task, the goal, and the journey to take? What are the challenges that need to be faced?

• Meet the obstacle. To avoid boredom something must happen to get in your way and make it interesting. This could be a person, a self limiting belief, or a challenge to overcome. Exaggeration will add humour.

• Overcome the obstacles. What had to be done to overcome the obstacle? What inner resources did you have to summon? Did someone help you? A hero? Or you? Be specific. Break your solution down into a few steps in sequence. This is where the teaching happens.

• Resolve the story. How did everything turn out? Tie up the loose ends-what happened to the other people? To your hero?

• Make the point. A story needs one clear point to have more points confuses the issue. Write out and memorize the point, work on the words to make it simple and easy to remember. Find “the phrase that pays”.

• Ask the question. Make your story personal to the audience. “Has that ever happened to you?” Turn the main point into a question. Push their buttons!

• Practice, practice, practice. Tell your stories to anyone who is willing to listen. Get feedback, make adjustments, and tell it again. These steps will ignite the WOW in your audience.

Remember the best story you will ever tell is your next story!

Barbara White helps speakers develop dynamic
speaking skills
through workshops, training and coaching. For more articles on speaking skills
visit
http://www.livingbeyondbetter.com and

http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com

Assuming you’ve read my rants on articles, you may want a checklist of items to consider for future articles. I am at your service.

Checklist

This checklist is going to be short and to the point. Remember, I’m lazy. Go back and read the original article if you need more information.

1. Headlines – Keyword phrases should ALWAYS be the first words. No exceptions.

2. First Paragraph – No more than 38 words. Two to three short sentences with the keywords from your headline included near the beginning.

3. No one sentence paragraphs.

4. Cut up long sentences into shorter ones. If a sentence is over two lines, it can be cut down.

5. Linking In Article – Don’t. Just do it in the byline.

6. Body Headlines – Break up the article with headlines in the body. Just keep them short and capitalize the first letter of each word.

7. Last Paragraph – Sum up the point of your article. Don’t include links or a plea to go to your site. Use the byline for your begging. I do.

8. Bylines – Keep them under four lines. Try to include the keyword phrases you are using on your site. If you are linking to an internal page of the site, use the keywords on that page, not your home page.

Eight stinking guidelines. Is that too much to ask? I think not! Besides, I’ve already had laser surgery and can’t afford a second session of smelling my eyeballs smoke. Please follow them. If you do, I will publish your articles and so will others.

Despite the tone of these articles, I am trying to help you get more bang for your buck with your articles. Okay, I am also trying to make my life easier, but there isn’t any reason why we can’t both benefit. If you want to get published more often, follow these guidelines. Publishers, webmasters and editors will love you.

The again, I could be wrong.

Okay. Occasionally you can use one-sentence paragraphs.

Just not very often.

The main task of a newsletter publisher is to select and package quality content of direct, practical relevance to its specific readership audience.

This might sound quick and easy, but it is not.

Publishing a quality newsletter is more than just cutting and pasting quality content into your newsletter. A quality newsletter is more than just the sum of its parts. The more the different sections in a newsletter support each other, the more benefits subscribers can get from it.

A quality newsletter makes sense out of the Internet chaos. A good newsletter editor understands the Internet big picture and is able to pick out relevant information which is packaged into one newsletter issue in a way that makes sense for its readers.

A poor quality newsletter is easily produced in less than 15 minutes of cutting and pasting quality content text. One issue of a good quality newsletter takes one day to produce – it might also select from the same content pool as the poor quality newsletter – but it takes more time in selecting the right combination of available free content for each issue.

Extremely high quality content, randomly aggregated into a newsletter makes a poor quality newsletter. Somewhat lower quality content, expertly packaged and organized make a high quality newsletter. Your editorial note (that introduces each newsletter issue), shows how much understanding and effort you put into this critically important step.

Publishing a quality newsletter is a creative process. It does not involve following three easy steps. Good editors will find this article packed with value, others will consider this article as utterly useless.

Quality newsletters gets edited by the most senior, experienced people in an organization, not on a rotational basis by anyone with some free time on their hands.

The following are some concepts that help a good newsletter editor in his or her task:

Integration: combine the value content of several experts in their fields into one newsletter issue. Each of these experts can only contribute expertise on their topics. However, when these standalone expert contributions are combined into one newsletter issue, all their contributions grow in value because it is part of a larger solution. Your newsletter subscribers can possibly get all your newsletter content easily elsewhere, but come to you because of the way you package and present it to them.

Position: by publishing a newsletter, you position yourself as the central point where they go to get quality Internet content, nicely packaged to address their exact needs.

Team: your newsletter will be more valuable if its content is produced by a team of people. This team of people consists of: guest article authors, contributors of tips, subscribers that provide questions and software products authors that ask you to review their software.

Benefits: your newsletter is only about providing benefits to its subscribers. The more value content you have the more benefits your subscribers get from you. Value content like: feature articles, guest articles, questions and answers, link to value resources, product reviews, your editorial comments, tips.

To summarize: you, as newsletter editor and publisher, use your newsletter to combine the content of your team of contributors into a logically-arranged, benefit-rich newsletter for your subscribers.

Your newsletter is benefit-rich when it is packed with useful, practical content that is directly relevant to the needs of your readers.

A newsletter is not benefit-rich only if it contains detailed, step-by-step articles.

A newsletter that helps its readers understand the bigger-picture meanings and implications of the Internet on a more philosophical level also has benefits. Such a newsletter should focus on educating its readership on how to apply their insight practically and on a daily basis to their business.

A newsletter that focus exclusively on step-by-step articles makes its readers work harder.

A newsletter that focus exclusively on philosophical, Internet bigger-picture visions make its readers think harder.

In my opinion, a combination of these approaches is best. Such a combination will make your readers work hard – smarter.

There are two main (opposite) approaches to packaging a quality content newsletter:

Your write all the content yourself … very time-consuming.

You select and package content created by others … the more practical and realistic approach.

Most editors choose a middle road where they contribute some original content and get the remainder of their content from other contributors.

If a good newsletter editor’s main task is packaging value content, a good newsletter subscriber’s task is to read, understand and ACT based on the insight the gain from this content. A good newsletter is your personalized to-do list for the week.

Image by sophiea via Flickr

Nicole Rivers is alone again.  The man she thought she was going to marry and spend the rest of her life with has bailed on her, leaving her alone to grieve for the precious baby they lost.

Losing this child has brought back horrible memories of Nicole’s childhood.  Memories long buried and forgotten.  Now, in addition to losing her child and her boyfriend, a new journey of healing must begin for her.

Join Nicole on her journey of healing with her closest friends, her psychic guides and the new man that just may be the one that shows her how strong she can really be.  Find out if Nicole can overcome her legacy of abuse and lonliness to find the joy of being a wife and mother that she so desperately desires.

Subcribe now to read how Nicole’s journey turns out!  Subscriptions are $2.95/month until the end of July when the price will increase to $4.95/month.  Don’t miss out on this incredible story!