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April 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The power of good craftsmanship

My friend Freddy Clarke plays the guitar–very well. VERY well:

There is so much for a book writer to learn from watching Freddy’s fingers. They do the right thing at the right time. This kind of musicianship doesn’t just happen; it is the product of many hours of practice, good genetics, and talent.

In some ways, writing is easier. You can become a writer of good books by following my method (get my free book, see tab above). But to become a good writer of good books, you have to refine your craft.

Freddy’s performances inspire me. (See him perform in the SF Bay Area.)

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April 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Perspective

Got an email from my friend: “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, I’ve been given a great opportunity to focus. The bad news: Cancer in my liver, spine, and brain.”

The prognosis is pretty negative–a few months, perhaps.

Because my friend is a private person, I won’t share my friend’s decisions about plans for the remaining time. (Notice I’m avoiding gender references.) Suffice it to say the plans are inspiring, brave, and loving.

Whenever I hear this type of news, it makes me think of my own mortality. I’m 62. I expect to be around for a while yet. I feel good.

But I have to ask myself: What do I want to do in the time that is left to me? What message do I want to share with you, with my family members? What impression do I want to leave here, when I move on?

I want to encourage you to ask yourself these questions. I think they help us leave more congruently, so that our intentions match our actions and values.

Take some time. Think. Write. Express your love.

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March 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Write your book: Learn from improv

Improv–improvisational comedy–has become epidemic. Classes and performances pop up all over the place. Improv is taught to corporate teams as team-building.

It’s fun. It builds intimacy. It works.

Like I wrote in an earlier post, we had several young people in our Passover Seder on Monday night, and we wanted them to get involved in the Seder. These are people who are happy to be Jewish, but have little or nothing to do with synagogues or Jewish life in general.

Now, the central part of the Passover meal is the retelling of the coming out from Egypt. “We were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt…and the Lord brought us out, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.” The preservation of Jewish culture and spirituality hinges on the telling and retelling of this and other stories.

But it’s also important to know that it was Moses, not Charlton Heston, who led us out of Egypt. And reading through the traditional story, we felt, would not make much of an impact.

So my wise wife, Dalia, suggested we improvise. “Everyone can take a role, and tell the story from their point of view.” We did that.

At one point, one of the participants suggested we use the improv technique of telling the story sequentially, where each person says a sentence. That’s when it started to get really funny. (I think it helped that we served Pisco Sours as the “first cup”….)

A good time was definitely had by the diverse group. And it occurred to me that my book writing–and yours–could benefit from improv techniques:

  • Make statements, not questions; questions put too big a burden on the other party, unless they are simple, yes/no affairs.
  • Accept all offers. Take the context created by the person working with you and work with it. If you are writing alone, as most of us are, take your “offer” from the news, from blogs, from random people you engage with, from Twitter. Go from there.
  • Go with the flow. “Yes, and…” is an improv term; embellish what is given to you, rather than fight it.
  • Be generous in your own offers. Inspire your readers with big thoughts, lots of possibilities.

Improv is still kind of new to me. Can you think of other ways it can be applied to book writing? Comment below.

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March 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Telling and retelling

Storytelling: If you have small children, or remember being one, you know that they love to hear the same books read to them and the same stories told to them over and over. And if you skip something in the story, your four-year-old will be quick to point it out, and will insist that you rectify it.

Table set for the Passover Seder
Image via Wikipedia

While young parents are driven to the edge of madness by the demand for storytelling repetition, us book writers should pay close attention to this need. It teaches us something about a fundamental human “itch” that needs “scratching.”

In a larger context, culture is preserved through storytelling. I was reminded of this last night at our Passover Seder. “Seder” is a Hebrew word meaning, ”order.” This is the one meal on the Jewish holiday calendar where the order of food, drink, blessings, readings, songs, and more is prescribed. And it’s done at home, amidst one’s family and friends, not in a house of worship.

Central to the Passover meal is the Haggada, the telling of Israel’s coming out from Egypt. Storytelling. “We were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt…and the Lord brought us out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” We recite the plagues visited upon the Egyptions. We sing songs in praise of God, whose grace preserved us.

This year we had several thirty-somethings among us, whose interest in the full seder was polite but not deep. So my wise wife suggested we do a storytelling “improv” version of the Hagaddah. We went around the room–having first substituted a Pisco Sour for the first cup of wine, which helped to loosen tongues–and had each person tell a portion of the story, as they remembered it–no holds barred.

The result was hilarious, delightful–and profound. Feelings and thoughts came out that would not have been heard in a standard Seder.

The lesson for book writers: Make your storytelling personal. Tell a story, preferably one that has meaning in the context of your tribe. That is what will grab everyone’s attention, and enable them to hear what you are saying.

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March 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

4 things you can do today to get your book going

  1. Stop writing. If you’ve been filling pages, online or off, just stop. Don’t throw it out; it may fit in your book. But that’s not on the critical path to getting your book done.
  2. Identify your audience and their pain. If you don’t know to whom you are writing, you are unlikely to have a successful or even passable book. You have something to say to someone. It should address a specific point of pain, an ache your reader is desperate to get rid of. Who is that audience? Who is, in fact, your ideal reader? Write out a clear description. Test it! Find someone like that, and interview him or her.
  3. Name your book. The title and subtitle of your book articulate a promise to the reader. The promise is that they will be relieved of the pain alluded to in your title and subtitle. That’s what will get them to pick the thing up.
  4. Create your “diamond” structure (read about it here). Know the question and answer for the book, for each chapter, and for each subchapter. When that’s nailed down, you are ready to write.

For more details, read my free book.

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March 25, 2010 By 1 Comment

I woke up to a rainbow

Rainbow from my bedroom window

Rainbow from my bedroom window

It rained last night. When I awoke around 7:15, the sky was battleship grey. I decided to shut my eyes for a few more minutes.

When I opened them again, at about 7:30, the sky was even a bit darker. But there in awesome glory was a rainbow. I sleepily raced for my camera and caught it.

Somehow, the experience of a rainbow is so much more than the picture. There is so much promise in it. In Genesis, God gives Noah the rainbow as a promise that the world will never again be destroyed by water. But to me, there seems to be much more. It seems to say to me, “Spontaneous beauty is all around you! And you have no clue as to how or why it works. And it’s ok! Be grateful.”

Why is this important to book-writing? I want people who read my books to feel that way. I want to inspire a sense of awe and gratitude in people–not to me or for me, but for their lives, for the beauty and goodness that are theirs.

In this blog, I focus a lot on how your book can serve your business. But with all its utility, a book is your child. You love it because it is your child. You want it achieve its full potential. You want it to do well by doing good.

And you know that it is a mysterious creation, one whose totality is beyond your grasp.

On a recent visit to Israel, I saw a play, “The Same Sea” (“Oto Hayam”), based on a book by famous writer Amos Oz. He appeared on stage before the play to speak about his experience of writing the book, which was unlike anything he wrote before or has written since. “I feel like a cow who discovers she has given birth to a seagull,” he said.

Rainbows. You can’t see one whenever you want, but they are around us.

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