Mary Martin, Ph.D.

What Are You Waiting For? Write!

I've received several e-mails (you can reach me at mary@marymartin.net) from people who know, deep down, that they are writers, but who haven't tried to write anything (for publication or otherwise), and haven't tried to get a job that involves writing.

I have nothing to say other than: What are you waiting for? Do you need permission? And if so, from whom? Is some person in your life supposed to acknowledge your writer-ness, after which time you'll find it acceptable to write? Do you feel like if your job involves writing that doesn't make you a real writer (I suffered from that one for years)? Is it that the sheer quantity of writers in the world is so intimidating that you can't possibly imagine anything good coming of you beginning to write (when there are already millions of writers)?

First, let me say that you're not writing for anyone else, unless your job is to write. And if you are actually getting paid to write, you should consider yourself lucky because for every job you do and get paid for, there are writers who would agree to do the same job without pay, just for the experience.

If you are writing for yourself, you aren't in competition with anyone else. It doesn't matter how many romance novelists there are. If what's screaming to get out of you is a romance novel, What are you waiting for? Write!

An exercise I'm fond of doing with my clients is The Excuse List. List all of the reasons you haven't begun (or finished) writing whatever it is you want to write. Then, play devil's advocate with yourself and address each of your excuses. I promise you, it will be very easy to debunk all of the myths you've created for yourself that allow you to not pursue what you say you want to pursue.

Confront all of your excuses and, next to each one, write the objection to your excuse that makes it look ludicrous (that's how it usually happens). No one else is watching. Be honest with yourself and put all of your excuses to rest, once and for all (or at least for today). Finally, ask yourself: Am I able to devote 20 minutes to writing today? No? How about 10? Whatever number you come up with, write for that period of time, today. Then tomorrow write for that period of time, as well. If you can't, ask yourself why not? Repeating The Excuse List exercise will take at least a couple of minutes. Wouldn't you rather use that time to write?

What Are You Waiting For? Write!

Some of My Favorite Writing Books

Whether writing is a hobby, a passion or a career for you, it would behoove you to read about writing. I was recently asked to list some of my favorite books about writing, grammar, punctuation and style. Without further ado . . .

• Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh (who has a great blog at TheSlot.com.
• The First Five Pages and A Dash of Style by Noah Lukeman.
• Woe is I by Patricia T. Conner (who has some great grammar myths here).
• On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.

The dominant theme in most of these book is that they're funny, and I like to laugh. There's a decent amount of overlap in the material, but considering repetition is the mother of mastery, the overlap can't hurt and is likely to help.

On Style Guides

If your job is to write or edit, chances are you have been given a style guide to help you make important decisions such as which words should be capitalized in a title or headline.

Or whether to hyphenate if you're writing in industry that could easily be overrun by hyphens, such as the financial services industry (or financial-services industry, wherein you'll find estate-planning attorney or estate planning attorney and wealth-management specialist or wealth management specialist).

Or how to punctuate and capitalize the information in bullets.

If you're ever unsure about, for instance, whether you should put a period after the information in a bullet point, here's a tip: Ask if there's a style guide for your work. All publications either follow a style guide or have one of their own (e.g., the New York Times Manual of Style is for the obvious, while most other journalists will follow the Associated Press' Stylebook). Depending on the field, you may have be governed by the Chicago Manual of Style, the APA (American Psychological Association, and it's not just for psychologists) style, or the MLA (Modern Language Association).

If you're writing for yourself, hoping to be published someday, write in the style of the field and genre that you'll soon be a part of. If you're writing for someone, let's say a small company, who doesn't have a stylebook, you should at least always be consistent when it comes to style. Make sure all of your bullets have the same format, punctuation and capitalization. If you use hyphens, make sure you use them in the same way throughout the document.

And if you want to try to make a couple extra bucks (I've done this, by the way), ask your client/employer if you can (for a fee, of course) create a style guide to prevent future streams of questions by allegedly nitpicking writers and editors.

What? You Don't Have A Blog?

A baby boomer client of mine has a great business card and a fabulous logo she paid thousands of dollars for. She also has a website, thank heavens, which gives her another place to show everyone how fabulous her logo is.

But she doesn't have a blog.

Now, that might be fine if her website was interactive and she was constantly in touch with her clients and the site had some kind of mechanism for communication back and forth--not to mention a built-in reason to communicate.

But that's not quite her reality (at least not today, but by next week I'm hoping her reality will change).

Twenty years ago, you needed a great business card and a great logo to be up and running and get the word around about your services. Ten years ago, though you needed a business card, it should have had your website address and e-mail on it. That's what made you cutting edge.

Now, if you're a writer or offering writing or editing services, you'd best have a blog. Why? So you can communicate--daily if necessary--with your audience and/or clients. In this impersonal, global world, they want that vehicle that allows them to feel like you're in their living room. They want the possibility for intimacy.

And if you want to nurture your relationships with them, you need to work on your end, just like in any other relationship. You need to be in touch with them.

People work with people they like and trust. People buy from people they like and trust. Someone might even buy your book despite the fact that the subject matter doesn't interest them--because they like you and trust you.

Part of building rapport in 2008 is maintaining a blog or at least adding an interactive component to your website AND letting your audience know they have a reason to return to it weekly. After all, you can have a complex interactive site, but if no one knows that your site is anything but a showcase for who you are and what you do, it won't help you.

Your goal is for your website and your blog to work for you. To drive you business. To increase your exposure. To build relationships, if for no other reason than to connect with like-minded individuals.

On Help with Achieving Your Goals

Check out Joe's Goals (and Joe's Logbook) for a free, easy way to keep track of your goals and vices (and also check out the tips and tricks on the blog). It's the simplest format ever, with positive things you want to increase represented with yellow smileys and vices represented by gray frowning faces. You can even weight your goals with point values. The logbook or journal has plenty of room for notes about, say, what foods you ate or how far you ran and what your mileage was per hour (or however you measure your progress).

If you're looking for a job, writing a book, keeping a blog, losing weight or trying to create a habit (e.g., meditating daily, exercising, eating more fruits and veggies), there's nothing like staring at your progress (or lack thereof) to remind yourself of how you're doing.

Being accountable to yourself is one thing, but you can also share your progress with friends or post your score via a badge on your blog or website or MySpace page (do people still do MySpace?). I recommend using Joe's Goals with at least one partner to give you an added level of accountability. Actually, the more people you're accountable to, the better. And luckily the site has a mechanism to sending automatic updates to your partners, so there's no excuse to not create a little accountability team for yourself.

If you have even one goal that you haven't achieved after multiple previous attempts, it's time to get serious and position yourself to achieve that goal by using a ready-made system of private and public accountability, such as Joe's Goals.

On the Urban Dictionary

A reader of my other blog directed me to the Urban Dictionary when I mentioned a slang usage of the word "tool," and I had no idea what it was supposed to mean (in this case, it was meant to be an insult, meaning "poser," as in definition  #2).

I realize I just advised against using slang, but if you're writing dialog or trying to make a point about popular culture or the vernacular, the Urban Dictionary is a great place to go to make sure you're using your slang properly.

You can subscribe to the word of the day to keep current on what little and big kids mean when they say Williams (today's word) or moneymoon.

Obviously, this site is most useful to those writing dialog or dealing with young people. But I find it useful because I love words and enjoy seeing what has happened to individual words over my lifetime (or at least for the last 20 years--since I started paying attention).

Check it out; it's money (the tertiary definition, which I became familiar with after watching Swingers).

On Slang and Style

Check out "Tracking Slang," about a study on slang used by college students. I have a couple of clients who use slang in their nonfiction work, and most of it is unique to the field they work in so it's considered "jargon," which is like saying: the slang of money managers (or whichever group you're talking about).

People will usually say that it's their style to use jargon or slang, and if we're talking about fiction, that's fine. But when it comes to nonfiction, and your goal, presumably, is to have the most people possible read and understand your work, slang and jargon weigh down your style and subvert your goal. If the subtext of slang and jargon is that you have to be a member of some secret or privileged or otherwise special group to be able to decode it, using it is akin to intentionally alienating everyone outside your group.

Do you really want to do that?

Here's a tip: If you're feeling the need to use slang or jargon, remind yourself who your audience is. Define your audience. If your audience is indeed a small, niche group who appreciates its secret language and you have no desire to reach beyond that group, have at it. But if your desire is to get through to those outside your niche, think twice about using slang and/or jargon. Say what you mean using words most people know, and not only will you be clearly communicating, but you won't be excluding anyone in the process.

Do You Need a Blog?

If you're an entrepreneur and/or an expert in your field--or someone trying to position yourself as an expert in your field--the website is a no-brainer. Everyone has to have a presence on the Internet in order to be taken seriously in 2008.

Whether your product is a CD, a book, a widget or your consulting services, a simple, clean website that tells the world who you are and what you do is like a business card or brochure. Anyone, anywhere can find out much of what they need to know about you, on their own time.

What about a blog, though? Do you think a weekly blog (don't do it unless you can commit to writing once a week) can help you and your business? Here are some things to think about:

• Can you commit to blogging regularly?
• Do you want feedback from your customers? (The comments section of blogs is great for that.)
• Would it help you develop relationships and build your prospect list if you could answer questions or give away free advice? (Readers can subscribe to your blog by e-mail.)
• Would you like a way to be a regular presence in the lives of your customers and prospects?
• Is what you do or what you sell something that generates a lot of questions or has an air of mystery (that you can demystify, which is a great service)?
• Are you willing to give away a lot of advice, particularly if you're accustomed to getting paid handsomely for what you know?

If you answered yes to the first question and then yes to any of the others, a blog might be a great idea for you. You can link your website to it easily, and here's what you might expect in terms of results:

• Knowing more (and faster) about what your customers need and what they think about your products and services.
• Building more relationships with more prospects than ever before, without ever leaving the house.
• Appreciation from people who are used to paying a lot of money for the advice of an expert.
• Time efficiency with new clients, as their learning curve about you and what you offer will steepen because you're offering so much timely, valuable information for them before they ever hire you.
• Improved ranking, as hits to your blog translate into hits to your website.
• Your writing will improve.

It's 2008 and I don't think it's aggressive of me to say that every person offering themselves as an expert and/or consultant needs to have the finger on the pulse of their industry and their customers by utilizing three vehicles: a website, a blog and a book.