ExcitingWriting Advisory

Clean Up Your Act, I

2012-01-23T11:26:00.000-08:00

Regular readers of my newsletter know that since last August I have been issuing monthly EWAs designed to help you improve your search engine optimized (SEO) web-writing skills. With this issue, I shift to writing best practices that have application in many areas including web writing.

A mistake I see commonly made by practitioners of corporate communications, especially investor communications, is using the possessive pronoun ''their'' to refer to something belonging to a singular noun.

First, read the following four sentences:

GM reported improved earnings on their overseas operations.
In some cities, the public does not support their schools.
The company issued an explanation, but investors found their response inadequate.
The medical team based their decision on proven science, not emotion.

What problem do all these sentences have in common? Their subjects are singular:
GM
Public
Company
Team

However, the possessive pronoun used later in the sentences is plural, ''their.''

If you start with a singular subject, you should use a singular pronoun, for example, ''its.'' That's the rule. The corrected sentences will then read:

GM reported improved earnings on its overseas operations.
In some cities, the public does not support its schools.
The company made an explanation, but investors found its response inadequate.
The medical team based its decision on science, not emotion.

Why do so many communication professionals use ''their'' when doing so is ungrammatical? (I've noticed that on-air reporters on CNBC commonly make this mistake.)

I have a theory: We shy away from using ''its'' in reference to a company or a public because it is gender neutral. We know that a company or corporation is comprised of and directed by people. We hate to deny their humanity.

We have no problem using ''his'' or ''her'' when referring to personal possessions:

She reported poor earnings on her overseas operations.
He improved on his personal-best time.

We hate to refer to a company as an ''it'' even though, in this context, that is exactly what it is. Likewise, we hate to think of a team of people as an ''it.'' After all, they're human beings, not a bunch of ''its.''

That's the reason investor relations specialists always refer to ''the company'' instead of ''it'' in their communications.

Complicating matters further is Mitt Romney's statement last summer that ''corporations are only people.'' I think I know what he means by that, but he's incorrect. Corporations are not people. Corporations are legal constructs created by people. I can't imagine Mitt himself having any difficulty agreeing with me on that.

Now that we know what is grammatically correct, something tells me you still don't feel comfortable using ''its'' in these cases. Actually, neither do I. There's another way around the problem that avoids the grammatical error.

One can change the subject to the plural in order to use the plural possessive pronoun, ''their.''

Read these transformed, ''their-friendly'' sentences:

Many companies reported poor earnings on their overseas sales due to the dollar's strong showing in currency markets.
In some cities, the citizens do not support their schools.
Companies can try to explain their results until they are blue in the face, but one fact remains:
The doctors based their decision on science, not emotion.

If you don't feel comfortable using ''its,'' you can simply leave the personal pronoun out, or replace it with an article. Then you have:

GM reported improved earnings on overseas operations.
In some cities, the public at large does not support schools.
The company issued an explanation, but investors found the response lacking.
The medical team based the decision on science, not emotion.

So now you know! If the subject is singular, don't use ''their.'' If you don't like ''its,'' make the subject of the sentence plural, or leave out the personal pronoun. There is no reason you ever have to use ''their'' even if it is their idea!

Note: I was amazed to learn that in the UK people commonly refer to possessions of newborn babies as ''its.'' For example, ''Look at its face! Look how cute it is!'' In America, our aversion to using a neuter pronoun would have us saying, ''Look how cute he is!'' or, ''Look how cute she is!'' Don't you agree? I believe this is the case.

Next month: Clean Up Your Act, II: How to shorten and strengthen your sentences.

As always, I appreciate your comments. Feel free to drop me a line any time.

Selecting the Best Keywords for your Website

2011-12-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

First, a short review of what we've already covered in past EWA issues regarding key words.

Two key terms you should be familiar with:

Search volume refers to the number of times any keyword is searched. You're looking for key words with high volumes because those are the ones a lot of people are searching on. They're popular. In a past EWA, I likened high search volume key words to busy street corners when selecting the location for a brick-and-mortar store. You want key words that get high traffic.

How do you determine the search volume of any key word or phrase? Go to Wordtracker.com (at http://www.wordtracker.com) and enter in any keyword or phrase. You'll see the number of searches per month.

Keyword difficulty refers to how many websites use any given keyword or keyword phrase. You don't want a very high difficulty score on your keywords. Why? It will indicate that you would have stiff competition from other websites using that same keyword.

You can use the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool (at http://www.SEOmoz.com) to determine level of difficulty.

Key thought: You want your key words to rank high in volume but relatively low in difficulty score. That way you'll be offering what a lot of people want but relatively few are supplying. In the world of websites, that's a competitive advantage.

Another fact: We may often think of keywords as single words, but they are usually combinations of keywords, called keyword phrases, rather than individual key words.

Okay. Let's assume you have come up with a list of key words you want to use in your website content. Should you use them all? Not necessarily. You may want to finesse your key word phrases. Here are a few best-practice rules you can follow in choosing the best ones:

Method 1: Try using longer, more specific keyword phrases. For example, not just cars, but used cars; and not just used cars but foreign used cars. To quote The Yahoo Style Guide, a good resource in these matters, "The smaller your website and the fewer the links pointing to it, the more likely you are to need longer keyword phrases for optimal success." Another example: a doctor (a high volume term) might consider localizing with the town where he or she practices; for example, "doctor in Richmond, VA"; or even better, "general practitioner doctor in Richmond, VA," or "GP in Richmond, VA."

Method 2: Use a high-volume keyword together with a low-volume (high difficulty) key word in a single phrase to achieve a balance of volume and difficulty. For example: If you're selling science lab protozoa you might combine the common word, "free" with the less common term "protozoa." In the same way for a very different website, you might combine the high volume term "quality" with the higher difficulty term "dessert toppings" to create the keyword phrase "quality dessert toppings."

Method 3: Always consider what page you're on when deciding what key words should appear on it. Put your highest volume keywords and keyword phrases on your homepage. Put individual subject keyword phrases on your category pages. For example, a used foreign car parts website might optimize the entire site for "used foreign car parts," but it might optimize the BMW parts page with "BMW used foreign car parts" as a keyword phrase.

Next Month: How to clean up and pare down your web writing for optimal SEO results.

Why You Should Choose Chuck Lustig to Write All your Marketing Communications

2011-11-22T13:45:00.000-08:00

I've been issuing these ExcitingWriting Advisories once a month for more than ten years. Faithful readers will attest that I rarely use this forum as a platform to directly hawk my wares. I would rather demonstrate mastery through thought leadership, and anyway it's a little unseemly to yell, "Chuck for sale" in a crowded, public place. It might cause a riot.

This is important: I've observed a tension between SEO web copy requirements and branding copy requirements, a tension that I am perfectly suited to leverage for the benefit of my clients.

What is this "tension?" Simply this:

SEO copy requires conventional words and groupings of words that consumers, clients or customers are likely to fill into Google search boxes. Think of them as generic words or phrases. The better the key words on your website align with the terms or words in the minds of the people you are serving, the higher your website link will rank in search engine results.

Branding often requires creative groupings of words, taglines and headlines, that are not necessarily the first words a consumer, client or customer is likely to think of when doing a Google search. This creative words often contain a surprise or secondary meaning that people commonly relate to as "clever" or "creative."

To give a few current examples:

A headline for a Korean Air ad: "Experience global networking on a whole new scale." The Google search engine doesn't know that the word "networking" is being used here as a pun—a network of aviation routes—so it throws it in with Cisco and throws it out when someone enters "networking" into the Google search box.

A headline for BNY Mellon Wealth Management: "What's that ticking sound in your portfolio?" What is a Google search engine to make of that? Will it classify BNY Mellon Wealth Management as a watch manufacturer?

My view is stark and simple: SEO web copy favors plain, straight, "uncreative" descriptions. Branding often involves superiority claims and metaphors, which are often lost on SEO search engines.

When you select Chuck Lustig as your website content creator, you get the benefit of a strategically-focused branding expert combined with the talents of an SEO web-content expert. Who better to manage the competing needs of branding and SEO content on the web? Answer: No one.

Correction

My October EWA incorrectly stated that a search engine ranks a website based in part on "the number of links to other websites" and "the websites it is linked to." Harry Lennard of Advance Web Promotions (LINK: http://www.advance-web.com/) reports that "…the linking information…is almost reversed. In fact, what is really important is the number, relevance (subject matter), and importance of the sites that are linking to your site. Anchor text, the words that are hyperlinked, is also very important. Outbound links may play a small role in SEO, but the inbound links is what really counts and everybody focuses on."

Here's the lesson: You can't boost your search engine results very much by linking to other web sites. The true test of influence and relevance on the web is how many websites link to your site.

Also, Pat Rosson questioned my use of the word "methodology" (also in last month's EWA). Why use a complicated word like that when the simpler form of the word, "method," gets the job done with fewer letters.

It seems the word "methodology" is preferred today over the word "method;" yet, unless an author is talking about a study of methods, using the word "method" is a better choice because it is a simpler word.

Next month: Keyword selection strategies.

How to Write SEO Content, Part III

2011-10-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

This month I begin with a few facts about SEO copywriting, and then give you a best-practice methodology for brainstorming a long list of relevant key words. Next month, I'll describe how to select the best keywords from the list. The month after that I'll cover best practices for weaving those keywords into your web copy.

A few facts
SEO stands for search engine optimized. SEO web writing ranks high in search engine results. The higher its rank the more likely your website will flag down potential customers; the better its business value.

When a search engine decides where to rank your website given your key word choices, it may take into account more than 200 factors, some of which have nothing to do with the copy itself:

The number of links to other websites
The websites it is linked to
The rankings of those websites it is linked to
The subject matter of those websites
The ages of the websites it is linked to

In order to determine which keywords are best for your website, prepare a keyword spreadsheet with the following headings: keyword, search volume, keyword difficulty and current ranking.

Keyword does not mean that you should only list single words here. Most of the time when people do a Google search, they enter in two or more words. Your keyword spreadsheet should reflect that fact.

Search volume refers to the number of times any given keyword was searched. You want a high-volume keyword that is relevant to your website. It's just like picking a location for a brick-and-mortar retail outlet: You want to place it on a busy corner so you have more traffic. Keywords with high search volumes are just like busy street corners.

Keyword difficulty refers to how many websites use that keyword. It is an indicator of how difficult it would be for your website to rank high in search engine results when using those keywords. You don't want a very high difficulty score on your keywords. Why? It indicates you will have stiff competition from other websites when using that keyword. You can use the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool (at http://www.SEOmoz.com) to determine keyword difficulty.

Current ranking means exactly that: When you fill in any keyword on your current website, where does your website rank in the listings.

Important: You want your keywords to rank high in volume but low in difficulty. Finding those keywords and weaving them into your your copy gives you the best chance of materially improving your search engine rankings.

Remember: The best keywords are usually not a single word, but rather a combination of two or more words. It would not be just cars, but used cars; and it might be foreign used cars.

Here are the steps to follow in compiling your keyword spreadsheet:
1. First brainstorm a list of relevant keywords for the website. It might be helpful to go on direct competitor websites to see what keywords those organizations use. Note what words appear in the headines and subheads on each page. They are important.
2. Go on either Trellian's Keyword Discovery, Google AdWords, or the Wordtracker Keyword Research Tool. Trellian's is good. They have helpful video tutorials explaining how to use their service. http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
3. For each keyword you enter, the tool suggests other keywords and gives a data volume. Use it as a brainstorming tool.
4. As you are brainstorming keyword possibilities, remember to think as a client, consumer or customer would when filling words into a Google search engine. For example, avoid using technical terms unless you are selling to a technical audience.
5. Chart each possible keyword or keyword phrase on your spreadsheet. This way it will quickly become apparent which keywords are searched the most and have the highest search volume but, at the same time, the lowest search difficulty.
6. Test the difficulty of your potential keywords. A common word like ''coin,'' will have a very high difficulty score, however the name of a specific coin, for example, ''Buffalo head nickel'' will have a much lower difficulty level. A website that is optimized for specific kinds of rare coins will get better results than those that use only the general term.
7. Based on the results from Keyword Discovery, begin to put together longer, more specific keyword phrases. Instead of birdcages, try ''designer birdcages,'' or ''elegant birdcages.''
8. After extensive brainstorming, look through your list of keywords for those that may be low in volume but that repeat throughout your list.
9. See if you can combine keywords that are high volume with keywords that are low volume to create just the combination you are looking for: a balance of relevance to your business and frequency of use.

Note: I've found The Yahoo! Style Guide to be an excellent resource when it comes to keyword selection methodologies.

Next month: How to select the best keywords for your website.

Novel Writing News: Over the last four months, I have rewritten my first novel and changed the title. It is now entitled, One Hour of Passionate Kissing. Literary agents have been far more receptive to my rewrite. A number have expressed interest in reading it. At this time, however, no agent has chosen to represent it.

How to Write SEO Content, the Sequel

2011-09-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

Last month we covered some SEO web writing basics. A key thought: The business value of a website is directly proportional to how high it ranks in key word search engine results.

Example of SEO Business Value

Let's imagine you are a travel agent in Phoenix, AZ: If you enter ''travel agent phoenix'' into a Google search box and press enter, a key metric of your website's business value is where your link appears among the results. This is called ''PageRank.'' If your link is among the top ten, directly below the sponsored sites, then you've hit pay dirt. Your website is likely to attract hits. If it appears between link eleven and twenty, it's not as likely your website will get any hits, unless someone already knows of your travel agency and is doing a Google search in hopes of being reminded of your business name. That often happens. If the link to your website comes in twenty-first or worse, forget it. Your website has negligible business value beyond being a domain placeholder.

What are sponsored links? Businesses engage with Google for a fee to purchase certain key words and be guaranteed of getting first, second or third place listing at the very top of the search results when someone enters those key words in the Google search engine. You can think of sponsored links as paid advertisements. Anyone can purchase them.

Organic Results vs. Sponsored Results

When I'm discussing copywriting strategies designed to get your website to wind up in the top ten links, I'm talking about ''organic results,'' not ''sponsored results.''
By the way, Google Search is the search engine most often used on the World Wide Web. That's why I always refer to it.

The Role of the Spider

The question I've always wondered about and never seen explained: How does Google or any other search engine know how to spit out the correct links after someone fills in a specific key word? The answer is the spider. Google sends out spiders that search the web, randomly crawling over websites, so to speak, annotating which key words are associated with which links and storing them in a database. A search engine is nothing more than a lightning fast database that offers up its spiders' findings the instant you click on your Google search box. The World Wide Web would be virtually unusable and meaningless without search engines.

Here's an important fact that relates directly to effective web copywriting. A spider only analyzes the first 65 words on any given web page. So, make certain your key words appear within those first 65 words. You should pepper key words and key word phrases throughout the first few sentences on each web page. When key words appear 66 or more words into the page, they have no impact on PageRank.

Best Practice Methodology

Let's discuss web writing best-practice methodology for a moment. When writing a website, the first priority is to assemble a list of key words and a list of the pages the website will include. Before writing the first word of the website, the writer should understand which key words are expected to appear on each page, and, if possible, in what priority order of frequency.

Data about the frequency of use of search terms is available on Goggle Analytics, Google Adwords, Google Trends or Google Insights for Search. It makes no sense to use a key word in your web copy that is infrequently used. And it makes every bit of sense to use popular key words.

For example, my EWAs appear on the web in the form of both my Blogger blog and Wordpress blog. I know that ''SEO'' and ''web writing'' are popular key words used by folks looking for useful information and freelance copywriters. Notice which words I use in the first 67 words of this EWA.

Interesting fact: Data about the frequency of use of search terms used in Google searches have been shown to correlate with flu outbreaks and unemployment levels. Key word searches provide statistical information faster than traditional reporting methods and government surveys.

Interesting fact: The ''I'm feeling lucky'' button on the Google Search page was always meant to give users a quick method of getting results but bypassing the search engine results page with its sponsored links. I always assumed it was a branding tool designed to give an alternative to selecting a Google branded search. About one percent of the time, people prefer ''feeling lucky'' and skipping the sponsored links. In 2009 Google removed the ''I'm feeling lucky'' button for a time, and its absence sparked a public uproar.

Next month: Tactical web writing rules.

How to Write SEO Content

2011-08-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

As most of you know SEO stands for ''search engine optimized.'' A website is search engine optimized when it ranks high in results after people do a Google search and fill in a key word or words relevant to that website.

The business value of a website is directly proportional to how high it ranks in key word search engine results. Search engines list sites top to bottom in order of relevancy to any given key word or set of key words. The goal is to have your website place among the top ten results. The closer to the top of the list your website is in search engine results, the more likely it is to get clicked on and score a visit from a prospect.

You can't paste a list of key words on each page of a website and hope that a search engine will rank it very high. Search engines are smart enough to spot those techniques and discount them. The key words you use on each page must be carefully woven into the copy. They should be evenly distributed throughout, not just at the beginning.

Here is a list of best practices you can follow when writing web pages:

Focus on your audience first. Think about the people who will use your website, as well as the people you want to land on your website. Consider their interests and their state of mind as they fill a key word or a set of key words into a search engine. Think about their age (in some cases the size of font can matter), whether they are more likely to be men or women, the level of their education, their life situation and their attitudes, values or beliefs. (For example, are they stressed? Financially secure? Relaxed? Enjoying themselves?)

Write each page so it engages your audience. Web writing is no different from any other kind. It is supposed to provide meaningful content that informs and educates your readers so they feel they have gotten great value. It is also supposed to be your content, not someone else's. If you think you can copy from competing websites and change up one or two words and get away with that, think again. Your competitors routinely do Google searches on their own key words in order to assess their rankings and look at their competitors' websites. If they see content that is similar to theirs on your website, you may find yourself the recipient of a letter from that company's legal department. Make certain your content belongs to your company, sounds like your company and uses your key words. Make certain it is consistent with your brand and speaks to your website visitor in the voice of your brand.

Keep a key word list and sprinkle those key words on as many web pages as possible. The key word list comes from what you offer your website visitors, but it also should be a result of what your website visitors are looking for when they visit your site. That's why it is so important to begin by focusing on your audience, your prospective visitors and their state of mind as they perform a key word search. At the same time, remember this: When you Google your key words, you had better pull up your website or your competitors' websites. If the websites those searches pull up have nothing to do with your industry or service offerings, you should re-think your key words.

Make every website page different. Search engines and people are smart enough to realize when a website uses the same content on two or more pages, even when the heading is different. They ''mark off'' for that. So don't do it.

Boost rankings using key words in various ways. Place key words in:

Headlines
Italicized words
Bullet lists
Opening sentences
Conclusions
Related links

But don't repeat key words so often that they sound repetitive, or give visitors the impression you are just listing the key words one after another.

Improve rankings by using different forms of key words. Use verb present participles or past tenses of verbs. For example, if one of your key words is ''engine design,'' consider using ''When designing an engine…'' and the phrase, ''…a well designed engine…'' in the copy.

Think of your site as part of a community. Link your site to other logical sites and encourage the owners of those websites to link to you. Logical sites might include industry groups that your company belongs to or expert sites, for example, the sites of authors and other experts in your field. The more links of this kind that a search engine detects in a website, the higher it will rank it in its findings. Think in a new way. It is not just you vs. your competitors; it is you and your company as part of a connected community.

Finally, optimize your writing for search engines by optimizing it for prospects. If you get the impression that ''all this key word stuff'' is just for search engine rankings, then I haven't been direct enough: The true purpose is to provide best value to the people who you want to visit your website; best value in the form of valuable content, content that is valuable to them.

Tune in next month for more web writing tips.
In regards to my artistic writing: I am rewriting sections of novel #1 (I have also re-titled it) and am continuing on novel #2. And I am writing a new short story for my collection.

The Agony and Ecstasy of Writing

2011-07-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

I readily admit I am hooked on writing. Yet there's pain involved. What's up with that? Masochism?

The lyrics to Cold Play's song, ''Fix You'' contains clues:

''When you try so hard but you don't succeed/
When you get what you want, but not what you need…/
Lights will guide you…/
And I will try to fix you.''

In my twenties (after graduating from Rutgers and serving in the Peace Corps) I tried to become a novelist, what I needed, and failed utterly at it. I found work as an advertising copywriter in New York City and got what I wanted.

I was living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on West 87th Street, a block or two off Central Part West. A ground-floor apartment with a garden in the back. Riding my bicycle to work at an ad agency at 59th just off Madison Avenue. I was in therapy because I wasn't happy. Now I would say I must have been crazy.

I applied to The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. I had heard it was sort of a half-decent place. My application was rejected. My wife at the time believed in my writing abilities more than I did, bless her soul.

''Let's move to Iowa City,'' she said. And she was a New Jersey girl. ''But they rejected me,'' I whined. I'll bet I pouted and sniveled, too. ''We'll move. You'll apply again. You'll be accepted this time,'' she said. That was precisely what happened. (I never thanked her for believing in my writing abilities. She changed my life.)

My years at the Iowa Workshop were profoundly inspiring and transformative. I had brilliant teachers including Angus Wilson, John Leggett, John Irving, Gail Godwin, Ben Santos, Vance Bourjaily and Fred Exley, among others.

It seemed I was on the verge of a dream come true, but that was not to be. I couldn't finish novels that I began. Great beginnings flamed and petered out. Writing was agonizing. The short stories I did complete were underwhelming to editors and agents.

After graduating with an MFA in creative writing, I put my dreams of being a novelist away in a desk drawer along with a colorful collection of rejection slips. I returned to New York City, working for ad agencies. Black Flag Roach Motel and Aarid Extra Dry were two accounts I worked on (wrote TV commercials for) but they might as well as well have been addresses where I lived.

I immigrated to Dallas. Finally, finally - I was still unhappy. I was the recipient of many gifts: A home, two beautiful children, a thriving freelance writing business. I learned to write speeches, white papers, case studies and the like. I kept trying to improve my writing skills; however, I was inconsistent. Sometimes I started strong but flamed out; however, most all the time I left clients jumping up and down for joy. I wasn't good at proofing my own work. Typos were my bugaboo. (Only I might have written in those days: ''Typoos were my bugaboo.'' I'm going to write a children's book someday entitled Typoos. ''The baby manatee sat on the typewriter and made a typoo.'')

I was diagnosed with adult ADHD and began taking medication for it. I responded well. Being inconsistent, impulsive and oblivious of your blessings; also, being unable to finish projects you start, and making typos are all symptoms of ADHD. They can also be symptoms of immaturity.

I met Paula Joyce, a creative coach, who in one forty-five minute session helped me breakthrough a creative block I never knew I had. Later that day I began writing Redemption, the novel I completed in November of 2010. Finishing that novel has been the greatest triumph of my life. It's key to why writing is such a joy for me now. Because it's the novel I was never able to finish in my twenties. Everything since has been so much fun.

Within a week of the session with Paula I e-mailed issue #1 of Chuck Lustig's ExcitingWriting Advisory to about 240 friends. You are now reading issue #110. I sent this one out to an opt-in list of more than 2,100.

I was able to concentrate. Every day was a revelation. I fell in love with a wonderful person; someone who deeply believes in me and in my writing abilities. After we were going together a few weeks I wanted to go out and she said to me, ''Didn't you say you were writing a novel?'' We've been together since 2005 and plan to be married next year. (Thank you, Gina.)

My mother gave me a copy of Driven to Distraction by Dr. Edward Hallowell, the world authority on ADHD. I came across a sentence in that book that gave me pause: ''Usually, adults who have undiagnosed ADD have some dream, some forgotten hope, that treatment can revive and help turn into a reality.'' My heart quickened. Can you imagine my excitement? (Thank you, Mom.)

I learned how to proof my work effectively. (Thank you, Kris Kozamchak.)

My strategy has been and remains to continually improve my writing skills. That strategy is at the heart of my ExcitingWriting brand as it applies to novels, short stories and marketing communications.

So now we're up to the present.

I was able to write this particular EWA issue, the hardest one I've ever written, because just last month I attended the 75th Anniversary Celebration of the founding of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and went through a soul bending experience as I connected with my tribe. My heart will always be in Iowa City.

I'll definitely be publishing my first novel, Redemption, the story of love lost and found in the dark days after 9/11. I'm now writing my second novel, Revolution, the story of a Peace Corps volunteer in the jungles of Colombia in 1967 who falls in love with a FARC revolutionary soldier. I'm also writing Unfinished Business, a collection of short stories I would have written in my twenties had I been able (only now they're a lot better because I've had a few years to rewrite them.) And I'm a freelance writer again with a thriving business.

And finally, finally, finally I am truly happy. Truly, truly, truly happy. I'm no longer a prig, although sometimes I'm still an asshole. When you try so hard but you can't succeed… You know the lyrics now. I've followed the lights for decades, and they have guided me home.

My love and gratitude to everyone who has helped me along my journey. That's quite a crowd. And it is about the journey, the agony and the ecstasy, and not about the arrival. I bet you know that. Thank you.

My Novel, Revolution, Develops Characters in Conflict

2011-06-23T04:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome back. I once wrote an ad for Keds that had images of Bugs Bunny and other cartoon characters on them. My headline: ''Shoes with a little character, $9.95.'' This month's EWA is about developing characters in fiction. Over the last month, I spent five days in Iowa City attending the 75th Anniversary of the Iowa Writers' Workshop (an inspiring experience), I wrote a short story (one of a collection of stories I'm calling ''Unfinished Business'') and I spent literally weeks moving to a loft in downtown Dallas (a trying and arduous journey with a happy ending). Still I made excellent progress on my novel, Revolution. I've now finished the first four chapters, and I can't wait to move deeper into the story.

As I mentioned last month, my novel Revolution is about a Peace Corps volunteer who, while serving in Colombia, S.A. in 1967, becomes friendly with a FARC revolutionary soldier. Through a series of events, he gradually becomes radicalized and in a moment of truth has to decide whether he wants to be a member of the Peace Corps or the ''War Corps.''

Writers have always been challenged with making their characters complex and multi-dimensional with flaws, obsessions, dreams, and redeeming qualities readers can identify with.

Telling a story that makes a character plausible is one thing; telling a story that causes readers to deeply care about a character is quite another. It is the sine qua non of novel writing; if you get the caring thing right, there's not that much you can do wrong.

There's a well-worn formula for enticing readers to care: Make your characters intensely likeable but let circumstances place them in horrible circumstances. Here's a variation that can be made to work just as well: Make your characters seriously flawed but place them in horrible circumstances that call forth their redeeming features.

Notice the common denominator: horrible circumstances.

In my novel Revolution, I want to show characters in intense conflict with each other; I want to show characters creating horrible circumstances for each other. And I want to let the conflict and the turning points forced by the conflict delineate the story while they define the characters. I want to show my characters not just trying to overthrow governments and trying to keep governments from being overthrown; I also want to test and overthrow the most basic belief structures and most profound notions of what we are as human beings, workers and lovers. Yes, Revolution, like my first novel, Redemption is at its core a love story.

In writing Revolution, I am allowing myself to be influenced by Donald Maass and his book, Writing the Breakout Novel. Maas writes that ''escalating stakes'' in a breakout novel (escalating what is at stake for a reader) requires being ''willing to make your characters suffer.'' (And trust me, you can't get a reader to care about a character until something is at stake for him or her.)

Writes Maass: ''Trials and tests are the stuff of character building, of conflict. Ask yourself, who is the one ally your protagonist cannot afford to lose? Kill that character. What is your protagonist's greatest physical asset? Take it away. What is the one article of faith that for your protagonist is sacred? Undermine it. How much time does your protagonist have to solve his main problem? Shorten it. Push your characters to the edge, and you will pull your readers close… and add dimensions to your novel that will lift it above the crowd.''

This is the approach I've taken in planning Revolution. I've created two mind-maps of the novel, each more than 20 pages long, that visualize the conflict and events that heighten the conflict. I've also filled in a worksheet of Don Maass' that starts off with basic questions such as, ''Who is the main character and what is his main goal, conflict and problem?'' and ends with complex questions that demand a fuller conceptualization of the novel than many novelists begin with, such as, ''What are the five turning points toward the solution of your protagonist's main problem?'' and, ''Delineate the psychology of place with respect to the setting of the novel's climax.''

As I answered the questions I realized I was much better prepared to write Revolution than when I embarked on writing Redemption nine years ago. I think that the planning I've done will ultimately add tension and depth of character, and make the novel more exciting to read.

Next month: Why I think it's so much fun to write novels.

My Second Novel, Revolution, Begins to Take Shape and Acquire a Writing Style

2011-05-23T06:41:00.000-07:00

Some of you wanted to know the status of Redemption, my first novel. I'm currently looking for a literary agent to represent it. A number of agents have expressed interest in it based on a one-page pitch letter I sent them. So far I've had no takers. Just last Friday a very fine agent requested that I send the first 75 pages of Redemption to her. She will give me an answer in four to six weeks. Keep your fingers crossed. (By the way, I've already decided my third novel will not be entitled Renovation.)

As I told you last month, my novel Revolution is about a Peace Corps volunteer who, while serving in Colombia, S.A. in 1967, becomes friendly with a FARC revolutionary soldier and gradually becomes radicalized. (That's as much as I'm saying about it. I don't want to give the story away.) There is an autobiographical angle to my novel: The story was prompted by events I experienced while serving in the Peace Corps on the northern coast of Colombia directly after I graduated from college in 1967.

As I wrote last month, I'm using revolution as a metaphor for human transformation. At its heart, my novel will be a love story.

I've now written about 40 double-spaced pages of the first draft. I'm on chapter four. Before beginning to write I spent months outlining the story, breaking it down into chapters, developing the characters and the themes, writing biographical sketches, visualizing the turning points and the unforgettable scenes—understanding the story as deeply as possible before beginning to write it. I expect the first draft will run about 300 or more pages.

It's interesting to me to notice how my novel is taking shape and particularly how the style of writing is developing.

What is writing style?

According to Jerome Stern in Making Shapely Fiction, "Style is how you tell your story. People often talk about the style and subject of a work of art as if they were separable. But if you think about it, the real subject of Van Gogh's landscapes is how he painted the landscapes and the subject of Cézanne's still lifes is how he painted the peaches.

So, too, in literature—the subject of Hemingway's stories is not fishing, but how he wrote about fishing, and the subject of Faulkner's novels is not the South, but how he wrote about the South."

Writing style is the most important element in artistic writing; it is one of the more important elements in business or academic writing. Why? Because style is about so many elements: word choice, length of sentences and one's choice of images and metaphors and the way one writes descriptions; it's also about subtext lurking below the surface and the ineffable feeling one gets from reading a single sentence or a paragraph. Once you decide how you want to tell your story, you can write it more effectively if the style you write it in elucidates the themes you are writing and the story you are telling.

I've known for some time that I want the language in Revolution to be as lush as the Colombian jungle and the narrative to be as open, magical and fable-like as possible, creating a syntax, a place in the novel, if you will, in which anything can happen, perhaps even events outside the physical laws of the universe.

I want to call upon the exotic animals of Colombia and the birds of breathtaking beauty in that land, and I want to contrast them with the characters in my story trying to make sense of their world-views under horrible conditions. In the midst of all that beauty, I wanted to describe revolutionary events pushing people beyond the breaking point.

And you might be thinking, "Oh, magical realism. Isn't that what Gabrielle Garcia Marquez is known for?"

His novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, has its roots in Marquez's childhood memories when he lived with his grandparents in the village of Aracataca, which is located about 150 miles away from the village of Manaure, my Peace Corps site. I visited Aracataca once while I was in the Peace Corps, before One Hundred Years of Solitude became a bestseller and Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Let me talk about influence: I think one writer chooses to let another writer's style influence him or her.

I read a number of novels in order to help me decide how to write Revolution:
The Island Under the Sea by Isabella Allende
The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Brief Encounters with Che Guevera by Ben Fountain
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabrielle Garcia Marquez

I'm not trying to write like any of these extremely gifted writers, but I am open to letting their styles, their visions of the possibilities of their language, influence me. As a writer-friend said to me, "Read Marquez. Use what you can use. You'll be surprised: No one will think you're copying."

Let me give you a two-sentence excerpt from my novel that is written in a style infused with the lushness of the Colombian jungle:

"On a map of Colombia the Magdalena River appears to be like an immense slithering boa constrictor. With the eye of the snake at the city of Barrenquilla on the coast, where the boa constrictor's mouth is splayed open wide, as though about to swallow a field rat, the river snakes southward for hundreds of miles through jungle and eventually grows numerous tails which transform into lakes and rapids, some areas marked by picturesque waterfalls."

Having lived in the Coastal Region of Colombia, I can say it is both strange and beautiful and unexplainable how living there puts one's mind in a magical mood. And that is why I want the characters and the events described in my novel Revolution to be informed by a magical and lush style of writing.

Next month: Keys to character development

Welcome to my Unfolding Revolution

2011-04-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

Starting this month, in addition to the usual ExcitingWriting topics, I'll take you along with me as I write my second novel, Revolution. Each month, I'll tell you the progress I've made and point out relevant writing principles.

Before we get to that, let's cover a topic that befuddles many: If someone asks after your health and you are okay, do you say, good, fine or well?

Good is an adjective. It could relate to one's behavior in relation to an ethical norm or to the degree of skill one has.

Well is an adverb. It describes how one feels and is the word one usually uses to communicate that one is in good health.

Fine is an adjective that means of superior quality, admirable, consisting of small particles, refined and delicately fashioned. It has other uses, as well. For example, a fine musician is one of excellent quality. That is where it approaches one use of the word good; however, a fine musician is clearly better than a good musician.

So, when someone asks you how are you, how do you answer? If you are feeling chipper, the standard answer is ''I'm fine,'' picking up on the superior quality meaning of that word. However, if you want to emphasize that you are in good health, you could say, ''I'm well.'' The answer ''I'm good,'' is not really appropriate. However if you are a baby sitter you could tell the parents when they return home that their children were good to indicate they were well behaved.

My novel, Revolution.

Revolution will be a work of fiction, but the story was prompted by events I experienced while serving in the Peace Corps on the northern coast of Colombia directly after I graduated from college in 1967.

Here is the story I wish to tell: In 1967, a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, S.A. meets and becomes friendly with a FARC revolutionary soldier, and what happens next. (Trust me: I'm not giving the story away. I would not be that cruel.)

Che Guevara was killed in the mountains of Bolivia with the help of the CIA about a month after I arrived in my little village of Manaure. In the summer of 1967 many revolutions were in process around the globe. Parts of major U.S. cities went up in flames.

I'm using revolution as a metaphor for human transformation. At its heart, my novel will be a love story.

Here's an important point: In business writing, as in fiction writing, the whole point of the effort is the solving or the working out of a problem. A novel can work out a character's problem as much as issuing a press release can solve a business communication problem.

In Revolution, my Peace Corps volunteer and principal character, Jake Lancer, has a problem: How to stay in the Peace Corps for the next two years so he won't be drafted and sent to fight in Viet Nam. As he is exposed to the on-going revolution in Colombia and struggles with his own conflicting desires, he increasingly experiences his personal Viet Nam where he is in Colombia.

I will tell you more about my novel next month, and share with you the process I went through in getting it to its current state of development.

No one can say whether Revolution will ever be published, and, if it is, whether it will shoot to the top of the best-seller charts or molder on the remainder tables. That's the fun of embarking on this journey and taking my 2000+ ExcitingWriting Advisory readers along with me. One thing I know for sure: If Revolution is successful, you will be able to say, ''I remember when Chuck was writing it.'' See you next month.

On Business Writing & Fiction Writing

2011-03-24T20:39:00.000-07:00

Some people are amazed that I can write marketing communications by day and fiction by night. I tell them it's just like being a werewolf. Fiction requires a different relationship with the night and with full moons, too. Sometimes it requires night vision, spiritually seeing and penetrating the darker side.

Or think of it this way: Business writers exude a sense of confidence, competence and control in their writing. Fiction writers do the same, of course, but they simultaneously create an environment of carefully controlled chaos. It's called a story. They manipulate or seduce their readers into feeling fear, terror, horror, loss, grief, irony or humor.

The requirements of business writing are vastly different from those of fiction writing, but both require manipulative skills. Yes, I admit it openly: Writers manipulate or attempt to manipulate their readers' emotions. The good ones are heartless.

Whether it's day or night, the first business of being a writer is drafting. And that's why in this EWA, I'll be giving you a few tips for drafting success.

What is drafting? Why don't we just call it writing? Drafting means getting those first words down on the page. It is a special circumstance with rules of its own.

I'm now drafting my second novel, so I know whereof I speak. Writers often talk about getting a draft ''out'' as though the writing gestates inside. At a certain point we must externalize it. The birth metaphor reigns.

Montaigne, the innovator of the essay in the 1500s, talked about the need to test out our ideas by writing them in the form of essays, using the French word that means ''attempt'' or ''try.'' Norman Mailer went further, saying he writes in order to find out what he is thinking.

With no further delay, here are a few tips for drafting success:

Do yoga or exercise first. Writing is action. Getting your body in action is good preparation. Yoga or exercise can help you stretch the mind and shake something loose. That something can be your writing. I always exercise first thing in the morning, then meditate, and do my best writing in the morning. Some other preliminary activities: Take a shower. Consider this: The shower is the only place you can't write (or can't write very well). Ideas can be shy about showing up. They may purposely decide to appear where you can't easily write them down. Make sure you capture them in the shower. For example, you can place them inside a soap container until you towel off. Sleeping can sometimes work, too, if you can capture your visions upon awaking. Keep a pen and paper by your night table.

Write quickly. Outline what you want to say. Then take each part of the outline and write that part in an intense, fast-writing session. Write as quickly as possibly. Don't waste time trying to find the perfect word out there. There are no perfect words out there. The only perfect words are the ones in here, in your heart. And all those words are perfect. Just express it as best you can. Now. You may find better ways of expressing it when you know it better, but then again, you may not. In the case of the novel I'm drafting: I made a mind-map of the entire story. Think of a mind-map as a visual outline with words and diagrams and pictures. I broke the mind-map into chapters. And now I'm about to begin taking each chapter, reading over what happens in that chapter and then drafting that chapter very rapidly. When you're writing at this speed, don't look back. Don't look to the side. Just look ahead and don't stop until you've finished the chapter. Using this method, I expect I'll be able to finish the first draft in about three weeks.

Don't be afraid of making errors. It's likely one big error anyway. Admit to yourself: It's wrong. Awful. Horrible. Bad. But, at the same time, know that it's your creation. Take ownership of it and all its faults. And remember, it could just as easily be bold, beautiful, right, true and brilliant. Just like you. The point is, it's your creation. It's what you were thinking. And when you're writing that first draft, don't forget to make plenty of punctuation, spelling, syntax and verb-agreement errors. You're free. You're free to be wrong. You're drafting.

Start out by writing down what you want to accomplish. If you don't know how to write it yet, that's fine. Start out by describing how you want the finished piece to read or the impression you want the finished piece to make on the reader. Write whatever you can write. The process of writing it, of being in the action of writing, will help the rest of it show up for you.

Forgive yourself. Be patient. Writing often doesn't work out the first time. Or the second or third time. That's the joy of writing, and of, eventually, getting it right. (See last month's entry on writing revisions.)

War & Peace Was Not Written in One Day

2011-02-25T08:01:00.000-08:00

Writers revise to improve their writing. When you read a finished piece, it's easy to assume you are reading first-draft material. You don't see the hours of toil and the various draft revisions that the writer put into it.

I have a cousin who speaks to her Airedale in grave tones whenever the dog misbehaves, demanding to know, ''What did you do?'' That's the question you must confront head on if you want to become effective at revising your own work.

Ask yourself: What did you do? You have to approach the piece of writing as though someone else wrote it and then apply the same critical eye you might to a stranger's piece of writing, objectively assessing its strengths and weaknesses.

Does that sound cold and heartless? Here's something even more cold and heartless: If you're not willing to approach your own writing as another person would, you'll never be a good writer.

Revising isn't just editing, which can include improving sentence structure or grammar; it isn't just proofreading, which can include correcting punctuation or spelling mistakes. Revising addresses the big questions: Is it any good? If so, what is its value? How could its value be improved?

So the first step is to read what you wrote with a fresh mind. If you're out to materially improve the work, don't be afraid to rip it apart and put it back together again in a whole new way.

Remember, if you don't like the result, you can always put it back the way it was. By the way, before you begin revising a piece, make sure you save the previous version so you can always have it at the ready if you decide you want to go back to that version.

As you're re-reading, you'll find that four categories of concern come up:

Sections that need rewriting: Read through what you wrote critically for logic, structure, tone and style. Think about your audience. Will they get what you are writing? Will they agree with the assumptions you make in the opening? Will they comprehend and be able to follow your organization as you transition from point to point? Will they appreciate the attitude behind the writing? And will they like your manner of writing, what writers call style?
As you read through it, place question marks where you think the writing could be clearer, or where transitions could be made stronger. Find places where the logic falters or where your ideas lack clarity. Then rewrite based on your findings.

Paragraphs that need reorganizing: Go through your draft giving each paragraph a number. Then, on a separate piece of paper, write down what the purpose of that paragraph is in a phrase or a sentence. See if you can find entire paragraphs you can drop or re-order. Then go into each paragraph and see if you can find instances where ideas are not developed logically. Does each paragraph have a topic sentence that reveals the subject of that paragraph? The same goes for sentences. Are there any you can strengthen?

New sections that must be added: In most drafts you'll find areas that need additional development. Maybe in your draft you started with Idea #1 and went directly to Idea #3, but forgot to mention Idea #2 that logically comes between Idea #1 and #3. This is your chance to put Idea #2 where it belongs and develop it.

Parts that should be cut out: This includes areas that on second thought you decide you don't need to include. Delete them.

If all this sounds like a lot of work, it is. This is the work of writing. If you can revise on your own, without supervision, you can work independently, and become a much better writer. One of my favorite mottos that I use in business writing is, ''Revise without being asked to.'' It has served me well, and is just as applicable to my literary novel writing.

How I revised my novel: After writing Redemption for more than six years, I paid an excellent editor, Bridget Foley, to review it and make suggestions. She did line-edits on the entire 620-page manuscript and wrote a 12-page, single-space letter addressing theme, structure, tone, character, plot, subplots, etc., all the elements a novelist must deal with.

Bridget suggested that I combine two characters into one, in one case, and three characters into one, in another case; that I could drop entire parts of the novel if I wanted; that I could drop entire characters I had been writing, living with, so to speak, all those years; that I might consider killing off one of my characters, all for the purpose of improving my book's entertainment value (that's how ghastly gruesome being a writer can be) while still getting across the same theme with the same principal characters and with the same resolution.

I made only one decision as I went into this process: I would keep an open mind. And that is what I did. Bridget seemed to understand what I was trying to accomplish with my novel. She never once told me what to do. She simply suggested options. I was alive to the possibilities. I began a massive revision. Amazingly, I found I could repurpose about 75% of the actual writing in a new novel that tells a compressed but livelier version of the story. The revision took me about nine months to complete. Then I did a second revision that took another six months. At that point I knew I had finished my novel. It came in at 540 pages. The entire project took me 8-1/2 years.

Here's what I know without a doubt: The 620-page novel would never have been published. I had to totally rip apart what I had been working on for 6-1/2 years in order to unlock the novel within the novel. By cutting, rewriting, adding in a few new sections and repurposing old material, I brought the work through a destructive-creation process that unleashed a great deal of emotion and passion not present in the book previously. I now have a novel that I believe is a tremendous accomplishment. And here's my point: The sense of accomplishment I get from writing is mostly found in the rewriting. That's where the triumph is. It's the reason people say, ''Novels are not written, they're rewritten.'' And here's my final point: I got a sense of accomplishment by rewriting this EWA that is similar to that which I got from rewriting my novel. You see, the process is the same. The scale of the two projects is slightly different.

2011-01-27T12:37:00.000-08:00

Welcome back. I'm proud to say I recently completed writing a novel that I've been working on since 2002: Redemption, a story of love lost and found in the dark days after September 11th. I entered it in The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. (First prize is a publishing deal. They announce the winners on June 13.) And this about my employment situation: I loved being a writer for Clark Consulting, but my last day there is February 1st. They're closing the company down. I would be most appreciative if you would send me work opportunities: possible freelance, contracts, or full-time employment. My specialties: B2B writing, corporate communications, web writing, thought leadership and media relations.
--Chuck Lustig, creative director, ExcitingWriting Communications

English, the orienteering language

I devote this month's EWA to a familiar refrain: Do the frustrations of writing English turn you into a fussbudget? (A beloved word) You are blameless. Our language is the culprit. English is an artful monument to complexity and ambiguity, particularly the American version of English, which is in constant ferment, and influenced by everything from hip-hop to other languages. The next time you're on the number seven train from Flushing going into the city during rush hour, as I was last week, listen to the languages being spoken. It's a Tower of Kibbuzing.

My view: English is the ''orienteering'' language. If you haven't heard of orienteering, it's a competitive sport from Sweden that has contestants race cross-country over unknown terrain, finding ''checkpoints,'' using only a compass and topographical map.

My point: English, more than other languages that I know, requires that you use all your contextual decoding capabilities to make sense of it. A little like getting from point A to point B by just reading the topography, comparing it to a topographical map and using a compass.

A few surprising examples follow, homonyms (identically spelled words with completely different meanings) provided by Rene Teig with a little editing from me. He did not originate this material, and doesn't know who did. I find it instructive:

The bandage was wound around the wound.

The purpose of a farm: To produce produce.

The dump was full. Officials had to refuse additional refuse.

We must polish the Polish furniture.

He could lead if he would just get the lead out.

The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

He thought it was the perfect time for him to present his present.

A sea bass was the school symbol painted on the bass drum.

When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

I did not object to the object of the inquiry.

The insurance policy was ruled invalid for the poor, unfortunate invalid.

A row broke out among the oarsmen about how to row.

He stood too close to the door to close it.

A buck does strange things when does are present.

A seamstress and a sewer fell through an open manhole cover into the sewer.

To make planting easier, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

I chose to subject the subject to a series of tests.

How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Our language contains more homonyms than I was aware. We orienteer our way through it, making sense of it based on the equivalent of a compass and a topographical map.

Next month: More about the word ''up.''

What's up with the word "up?"

2010-12-27T20:17:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed the two-letter word with the seemingly unlimited number of meanings? It keeps coming up in our writing and speech.

At a meeting, why does a topic come up? Why is it always up to a committee to take up an issue? And why, after due consideration, do fair-minded people make up their minds? Why are a slate of officers up for election? Why does the secretary write up the minutes? And does going to a meeting leave you with an up feeling?

Why do we call up someone we know? Why does a fresh coat of paint brighten up the place, or freshen it up?

Why is it that when it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding up, and when the sun comes out we say it is clearing up. After the skies open up, why do we say the dry earth soaks up the rain? But when it stops raining, why do we say the earth dries up?

When we are ready for bed why do we say we are all washed up? And when someone is unsuccessful in business, why do we say he or she is all washed up?

When we cannot hear what others say, why do we ask them to speak up? Why do we warm up food and clean up afterwards? And why do we lock up when we’re ready to go home?

Why does one team manage to get up on its opposition? Why do we climb up the ladder of success? And why do we stand up for our rights? Why do we wake up just about the same time the sun comes up? And when we are angry with someone, why do we get up on our hind legs? In the fall, why do we put up preserves? And given these tough economic times we all face, why are we all up against terrible odds?

To be properly informed about the proper uses of up, look up the word in an unabridged dictionary. In mine, it takes up nearly a page and the number of definitions adds up to 69. If you just get up and going, if you are up to it, you can make up your own list. Doing so will take up a lot of your time but if you do not give up, you might wind up with a hundred or more uses for the little word.

Myself, I have had it up to here with this little word, so I am going to quit, but you can up the number of definitions as much as you like without me. You can even make up some of your own. Go ahead. There is no way you can show me up because I give up. Now do not get uppity about it! Down, Boy! Down!

See you next month.

More Sound-alike Words.

2010-11-28T20:39:00.000-08:00

The verb to lie is a homonym, two words with the same spelling but with two completely different meanings.

One of those meanings is to tell an untruth.
The conjugation of that verb is straight forward.
Today I lie.
Yesterday I lied.
Often I have lied. (Well, let's amend that to say: I have never lied. That's a lie.)

The second word of the same spelling is to lie as in ''to lie down.''
Making matters worse, that second word to lie is often confused with the verb to lay.
Here's the correct usage: You always lie your own body down and you always lay something else down. But this second lie gets a little tricky on the past tense:
Today I lie down for a nap.
Yesterday I lay down for a nap at 2:00 p.m.
Often I have lain down at that time; it suits me.
Notice lie/lay/lain is always intransitive; it is never something you do to something else.
Lay is always a transitive verb when used as a present tense verb; it is always something you do to something else.
Today I lay the book on the table. (It's something you're doing to the book, so it's transitive. That's the meaning of the term, ''a transitive verb.'' The verb carries the action.)
Yesterday I laid the book on the table.
Often I have laid the book on the table. (This ''Today... Yesterday... Often...'' thing is a verb-conjugation format I grew up with in elementary school. The third one is a way of indicating repetitive action in the past. Did you grow up with the same format? I wonder. It's actually quite strange. Stranger still if we all grew up with it. Even stranger if I made it up without knowing I made it up. That would be really strange.)

You can memorize these verb conjugations if you like, but I don't recommend it. It seems more important to me that you remember which verbs can lead you astray so you can look those up and make sure they're right whenever you use them. (Or you can choose to avoid using them like a lot of us do. I put the book down. I took a nap. Look, Ma! Perfect!)

Some people mix up Sit and set, particularly when writing in past tense.
Sit is something you do, usually on or in a chair.
Set is something you or someone else does to something else. Just as with lie and lay, sit is always intransitive; set is always transitive.
Using sit is easy enough:
Today I sit down.
Yesterday I sat down.
Often I have sat down.
But set can trip you up on the past tense:
Today I set down the book.
Yesterday I set down the book. (Not sat down the book.)
Often I have set down the book.

Here are some others to round out this month's selection:
A dollop is a lump or blob of some viscous liquid like jelly or grease.
A trollop refers to a slovenly or wanton woman.
A polyp is a tumorous growth.
A solipsism is a theory that holds that the self is the only thing that can exist.

Forward means advanced or ahead.
Foreword is a preliminary in a book

Wait means to serve or, as a noun, a length of time one stays in one place.
Weight is a measurement of how much something weighs.

Heard is the past tense of hear.
Herd is a group of animals.

Later is something that comes after.
Latter is something that comes last in a series.

Still More Sound-alike Words.

2010-10-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

Homonym refers to one of two or more words that are pronounced and spelled the same that have different meanings. Example: as a noun quail refers to a kind of bird, but as a verb it means to falter or to go into decline.
Homophone refers to one of two or more words that sound alike but have different meanings. In recent issues of my EWA, I've been covering homophones.

Teem is a verb that means to abound or swarm. The forest is teeming with wildlife.
Team is a self-identifying group with a unifying mission or objective.

The word there has many different meanings and uses. Most often it refers to a place, as in He stood there, or Take it from there.
Their is an adjective that relates to a plural possessive. It is their property. It belongs to them.

Jeans are pants.
Genes are basic units of genetic material that make up hereditary traits.

Retro means backwards. Retro-rockets are fired off to slow down the forward motion of a rocket. Today we talk about the retro look of a building to indicate it contains references to formerly current architectural styles.
Retrofit means to furnish an airplane, a computer or some larger system with parts that weren't available when it was manufactured.
Retrograde means moving backwards, or to go into decline, or to quail.
Retrogress means to move back to a simpler state or to revert.
Retrospect means to consider the past. In retrospect...

Conscious refers to an awake state. He made a conscious decision.
Conscience refers to one's sense of morality. When it came to ethical behavior, he let his conscience be his guide.

A weak end refers to a football player whose performance is not up to par.
A weekend includes Saturday and Sunday.

A tale is a story.
A tail is the appendage at the end of an animal.

Preternatural means exceeding what is natural, e.g., exceptional or abnormal. Outside the realm of nature, for example, supernatural.
Natural means the opposite, existing in nature. It also means having the usual powers of reason and understanding.

More Sound-alike Words, Otherwise Known as "Homophones"

2010-09-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

Mown is an adjective referring to something that has been cut down with a scythe, a sickle or a machine. For example: New mown hay.
Moan is a sound made by people who are in grief or pain.

Tenant is a person who lives in an apartment.
Tenet is a principle or belief.

Fowl is a bird of any kind. For example, waterfowl is a category of bird.
Foul means offensive to the senses, loathsome, as in ''a foul smell.'' In baseball it means being outside the foul lines, ''a foul ball.'' It also means ''entangled.'' The verb we often come across is ''afoul,'' as in: ''He ran afoul of insider trading laws.''

Cite means to quote an authority. He cited many sources in his research paper.
Sight is the ability to see. The word also is used to refer to something worth seeing while you are on a tour. We saw the sights.
Site is a place. Typical usages include an architectural site or a building site. We never hear a detective use the phrase ''the site of the murder.'' The word ''scene'' is preferred. Why is that? Scene implies that drama took place. A ''site'' refers to just a location.

Secular is a word with radically different meanings.
A secular change refers to a change that lasts for centuries or is permanent, as opposed to a temporary change.
The same word also refers to worldly or temporal concerns. It means ''non-religious,'' as in ''secular music.'' In some religious institutions ''seculars'' are non-priests, meaning laymen. (Thanks to my brother, Marty Lustig, for bringing this word to my attention.)
Sect is a religious body or break-away group often thought to hold extreme views. The term sectarian refers to an adherent of a sect or a narrow or bigoted person. Some years ago, we began hearing about ''sectarian violence'' far too often.

Isn't it strange that the words secular and sect sound so much alike yet have nearly opposite meanings? As best as I can determine, the two words have completely different etymologies. Sect comes from the Latin secta, an organized ecclesiastical body. Secular comes from the Latin serere which means ''to sow.'' Strange but true.

Bare means naked.
A bear is an animal. Used as a verb, it means to carry or support, for example: The column bears the weight of the building.

Next month: more sound-alike words.

Sound-alike Words: Affect/Effect

2010-08-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

This month we cover two little words that drive people nutso. (That's an erudite word related in etymology to batso.) Affect and effect confuse so many, people often avoid using them for fear of making a mistake. Fear not! Let ExcitingWriting be your guide.

Let's begin with the most common confusion between these two words.

Affect is a verb meaning to cause or influence an outcome. Thus, ''The poor employment market affected the housing numbers.''

Effect is a noun describing the result of a cause. Thus, ''The after-effects of the drug lingered.'' Or, ''The long-term effects of running a large deficit cannot be ignored.''

I know you are already confused so I'm going to give you a model you can easily memorize or refer to. It cuts through all the confusion:

It is thought that an overabundance of carbon dioxide affects global warming. The effects of global warming are everywhere around us, from polar icecaps to equatorial jungles. Note: ''effects'' usually takes ''of'' after it. It's a noun.

Is that clear? Affect is the ''influence'' verb. ''A'' affects ''B.'' Effect is the ''result'' noun caused by the influence. If you can memorize that, you've got the problem more than half solved.

The trouble is these words have some specialized usages:

Affect

As a noun, affect means a feeling or the projection of a feeling. Psychologists and psychiatrists routinely use the word to describe the feeling a person puts out. ''He had a depressed affect.''

As a verb, affect means to put on airs. He affected an air of being above it all.
He affected an upper-crust accent.

When you think about it, both these uses are sort of related. They both have to do with appearances.

Effect

As a noun, effect means to make an impression or give an appearance, to have a basic intent. That painting gives the effect of floating.

Effect can be used to describe when someone does something for show: Her histrionics were designed for effects. After all, that's where we get the term sound effects.

Now we come to a very specialized usage: Effects can mean belongings when used in the plural. Before leaving jail, he picked up his personal effects.

If you cannot memorize all this, carry this issue of the EWA with you at all times! You never know when you will need it.

Next month: more sound-alike words.

Sound-alike Words: Do You Hear What I Hear?

2010-08-10T06:56:00.000-07:00

Elicit, to draw out, evoke. Her impassive manner elicited rage from her husband.
Illicit, illegal, as in illicit drugs.

Factious, given to forming parties or factions in opposition to governments. Factious politics in Washington, D.C.
Fractious, tending to cause or make trouble. Fractious behavior.
Facetious, jocular or witty in an inappropriate or silly manner. He was by turns silly and facetious.

Complacent means pleased or satisfied with the way things are, with how they affect one's self. It also means self-satisfied or smug.
Complaisant means attempting or eager to please or satisfy, obliging or affable. For example, sycophants are so complaisant.
Compliant means to be submissive. The regulatory world uses the word to indicate that a person or a company is in compliance or is compliant with certain governmental requirements. If we file our income tax on time, we're in compliance with IRS regulations, but does that make us submissive? Ask a Tea Party follower.

Thus, complacent refers to a satisfied state of mind. Both compliant and complaisant refer to a disposition to behave or conduct oneself in a way that pleases or satisfies others, not yourself. The second two words almost have an opposite meaning from the first, yet they all sound alike.

Discrete means separate or distinct. The scientists isolated five discrete viruses that they believe are responsible for causing the medical condition.
Discreet means showing good judgment, especially in terms of holding one's tongue. The best butlers are discreet. It can also mean modest and understated. For example, the discreet elegance of an interior decor, or a discreet neighborhood where no one puts on airs (affects an upper crust accent). The word discretion means displaying the quality of being discreet. Everyone confided in him because he was the height of discretion.

Allude means to hint at or refer to in passing. He alluded to the effects of a strong Euro and a relatively weak dollar. She alluded to the wide-spread aspirations created by a burgeoning middle class.
Elude means to escape, get away with. He went through security with more than an ounce of water and somehow managed to elude detection. The trio managed to elude police despite a high-speed chase.
Illude is not a word.

Gorilla is an ape.
Guerrilla (1 U, 2Rs and 2Ls) is a kind of soldier or warfare.

An eminent person is someone who is well known. A cardinal in the Catholic Church is sometimes called his eminence, meaning someone who is revered or well known.
Immanent means staying within, inherent. It also means taking place only in the mind, not outside it. This word also has a theological meaning, dwelling in the universe or dwelling in time.
Making matters more complicated, imminent means something that is about to happen. The attack was imminent.

Abstract means difficult to understand, theoretical or detached. It also means a short synopsis or summary of an article's main points. Oddly enough, abstract also means ''to steal,'' as in, ''He abstracted the attention of the professor.''
Abstruse means difficult to understand or dense.

Next month: Affect/Effect. Are there others that you would like me to cover? Send me a note and allude to your favorites.

If for any reason you would like me to drop your name from my list, just tell me. No hard feelings.

Close but no Cigarillo, II

2010-08-10T06:45:00.000-07:00

Last month, I wrote: ''Words can be spelled similarly and sound alike when read aloud, yet they can have very different meanings. These are called homonyms.'' To be perfectly accurate, sound-alike words with different meanings, such as we discussed last month and will continue discussing this month, are called homophones. By contrast, homonyms are two or more words spelled and pronounced the same that have different meanings. Example: the noun, quail, which is a kind of bird, and the verb, quail, which means to falter, wither or decline. Another example: the verb, withers. Example: Talent withers on the vine at that company. And the noun, withers, which is the ridge between the shoulder bones of a horse. Example: Having no reins, he held on to the withers for dear life.

Now for some more homophones. I ask you: Have you ever been caught on the horns of these homophones?

To rein means to control or direct with straps fastened to a bit. To reign means to exercise authority like a monarch.

Accept means to receive willingly. Example: Accept no substitutes. Except means to exclude. Example: Open daily except Sunday.

Assent means to give one's approval, or agree. The court gave its assent. Ascent refers to something going up or rising, for example a balloon ascent, or a slope of some kind, for example, a steep ascent.

A principle is a high-minded value you might believe in while a principal is either a part-owner of a business, s star, or the administrative head of a school.

You write on stationery but when cars in a traffic jam don't move, they are stationary.

You might make an allusion to a work of art or literature as an indirect reference, but when you are flat-out wrong about something you hold an illusion.

Entomology is a branch of zoology that deals with the study of insects. Etymology is the study of word origins, tracing roots and meanings of words from one language to another through history.

To means towards. Too means in addition to. Example: I want to go, too. And two is the number that comes after one.

Loose means not tight. When you lose something, you misplace it.

The word then marks time. Sometimes it means next. Example: Then he walked away. Than is a comparison word meaning compared with. Example: This is larger than that.

Close, but no Cigarillo. (Homonyms 1)

2010-05-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

Do workers office in a cubical or a cubicle? Does a company give service to ensure or insure customer satisfaction?
Words can be spelled similarly and sound alike when read aloud, yet they can have very different meanings. These are called homonyms.

Ensure means to make more certain or to help in an outcome. For example, ''The structure ensures many years of use.'' Insure refers to a contract in place and pay-offs in case of non-performance; it implies a warranty. (Be careful not to confuse these two words or you may be unwittingly implying a legal obligation when you do not wish to.) Assure has a similar meaning as the other two words, meaning to give confidence. It implies actions that could later be given a legal context. Today we often see assure used as a noun. ''Before she began the job, she was given certain assurances which failed to materialize.''

We office in a cubicle. When we want to describe a blocky sculpture, we might call it cubical.

Ambiguous and its cousin ambiguity refer to ''having more than one meaning, open to different interpretations.'' It often refers to an unexplained or unexplainable mystery. Ambivalent means ''having mixed feelings'' about something, for example, a love/hate relationship or, to dress up the language, having attraction-repulsion emotions. One way to think about it: An artist with ambivalent feelings may create art that expresses ambiguity.

Augur and its cousin, augury both refer to a sign that foretells something, for example, an omen. An auger is a tool you use for making a hole, i.e., a bit. The words have separate etymologies.

Egotism ''means 'excessive conceit or self-absorption,' while egoism is a less common and more technical word for an ethical theory that treats self-interest as the foundation of morality.''

Don't confuse loath (''reluctant, unwilling'') with loathe, ''dislike greatly.'' So, you can be loath to partake in something because you loathe it, but not the other way around. Of course, the words have identical etymologies.

I think many of us forget that luxuriant and luxurious are two different words. Luxuriant means ''rich and profuse in growth.'' Luxurious means ''extravagant,'' of course. So a mink coat may be luxuriant and luxurious but for two different reasons. Both words share the same etymologies: from the Latin ''lux,'' meaning ''light,'' or ''to shine.''

Elevating the Common Comma.

2010-04-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

Commas are to writing what blooming flowers are to a spring walk. They give reason to pause, take a breath and see things in a new way, as opposed to rushing through a sentence.

I use plenty of commas sparingly. I've found that usage varies widely.

If you glance at a theme written by a high school student who follows all the rules, the number of commas sprinkled among the words might resemble teenage breakouts. Result? Many unneeded, but technically needed, commas. By ''unneeded,'' I mean unneeded for clarity's sake.

On the other hand, if you pick up some best-selling non-fiction and some fiction, you would think editors were under strict orders to use as few commas as possible. (They may be.)

Let's review some of the rules:

1. Use commas when listing a series of things. This is called ''a serial comma,'' which is different from a serial killer, for example, the unforgettable Hannibal Lecter played by Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs.

We place serial commas between a series of things, for example, ''I like A, B, and C.'' Or: ''We covered X, Y, and Z.'' Notice how I used a comma between the next-to-the-last item and the conjunction ''and.'' The rule calls for that comma. The AP Style Guide and other style guides recommend dropping the final comma in order to save space, as long as the meaning is clear. I think some people are uncertain whether to put in or leave out that final comma. My opinion: unless you're writing a document that has to pass muster with the AP Style Guide or a similar style guide, leave it in.

A few years ago, when I last covered this subject, someone wrote in to say that a single comma was the deciding factor in an inheritance worth a great deal of money. The will dropped the final comma when listing those who would receive inheritances from the estate. It said proceeds of the estate would go to ''person A, B and C.'' Because there was no comma between person B and the word ''and,'' the judge gave 50 percent of the estate to person A and split the other 50 percent evenly between person B and person C. In that case, person B and person C could appeal to a higher court, pleading, ''a kingdom for a comma.''

If the items in a series are complicated, never omit the last comma. For example:

The issues in the campaign are the value of the dollar, the rule of law, the failure of foreign policy, and the separation of church and state.

2. Use a comma after introductory clauses and phrases. Some people say you only need a comma if the introductory phrase is more than five words. I've heard various numbers. However, as I understand it, the rule is clear. Use a comma no matter how short or long the introductory clause. However, in the case of short introductory clauses or phrases, I think using a comma is unnecessary. For example:

Founded in 1898, the company now has assets of...

In my view use of that comma is not necessary, although most people will use it, particularly in business writing, and the rule says you should use it. Likewise, the following example:

With a full heart, I sit down to write this letter.

I say the commas in the two above examples are unnecessary because most people know those words to be introductory clauses.

With the ''full heart'' sentence above, I would rearrange it to read in ''normal order:''

I sit down to write this letter with a full heart.

When written that way, no comma is necessary, and it sounds better.

Following is the use of a comma after a short introductory clause that I think is necessary:

In the middle of the movie, he got up and passed right in front of me.

The comma makes it easier to read. Without the comma, I would have to do some thinking to understand the sentence. Not much, mind you, but some.

Note: In a high percentage of cases, a sentence with an introductory clause can be better written by placing the introductory clause after the main clause, thereby rendering the comma unnecessary. However, sometimes we purposely want an introductory clause for emphasis. That is what I did in the sentence just above that begins, ''In a high percentage of cases...''

3. Use commas between two sentences. When we join two sentences together with a comma and a conjunction, we call them clauses. So, technically, the rule reads: Use commas between two clauses. Example:

I wanted to walk the dog, but thunderstorms were predicted.

4. Never separate the subject of a sentence from a verb:

Examples:
The soldiers and the sailors, went for R&R. Never do that.

My friend, brother and sister, stayed away. Never do that.

5. Use a comma after an introductory phrase and before a quote:

According to the chief financial officer, ''We took a charge against first-quarter earnings due to supply disruptions.''

6. Set off explanatory phrases, called ''appositives,'' in commas:

The magician, also called a conjurer, works with sleight of hand.
The mountain climber, inspired by climbs of people who went before him, plans his next ascent next year.
Mark Twain, the once millionaire, was born with the name Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

Here is something interesting I learned about commas:

Have you ever seen slashes used to separate lines of song lyrics? For example:

You are my sunshine/
My only sunshine

Back in the Middle Ages, slashes began to be used in English to make it easier for people to read sentences, to tell readers where to pause, and where to breathe when singing.

Commas are the modern-day vestiges of those slashes.

So, this month, every once in a while, look down and smell the common commas. Elevate them to higher place in your estimation. Pick some and sprinkle them on someone you love.

How to Write a Headline.

2010-03-25T05:34:00.000-07:00

Since I began issuing my monthly EWAs in May of 2002, my purpose has remained constant: to tell my readers everything I know about writing in bite-size chunks. I have considerable skill when it comes to writing headlines. Let me know if you find this EWA helpful.

Writing a headline is a easy as 1,2.
Step #1: Figure out what you want to communicate in a phrase or sentence.
Step #2: Type those words at the top of your page. That's your headline.
But wait! There is method to my facetiousness. All headlines begin with an understanding of what you wish to communicate. Whether you're writing a direct mail piece, a brochure, a landing page or an e-mail blast, the best headlines (or subject lines) contain appealing benefits. The best headlines dramatize. And the best headlines often work on a turn of phrase, for example:

High blood pressure:
Ignore it and you'll go away

There is a knack to writing headlines, a knack that you can acquire and improve upon with practice. Here are two best practices:

1. Write the headline early and often. Whether you are writing a news feature or a direct response piece, start out by writing just a phrase or sentence that sums up what you think the piece is about. Do not try to make the language pretty or clever. As you proceed, let your headline be your creative platform. Take chances. As I'm fond of saying: ''Give the reader something to get, so the reader can say, ''Oh, I get that.'' Your readers will think more of themselves and of you when they do. Sometimes playfulness will do the trick, for example:

The most convenient bank branch is one you never have to visit.

Sometimes you may want to bring out the drama in a story:

She did not know how much her husband loved her until he sent her a Tupperware container on her birthday.

This walks down the time-honored path of effective story-telling ads from days of yore such as, ''They laughed when I sat down at the piano.'' The Tupperware ad tells the story of a husband who placed a ring inside a Tupperware container.

2. Write a list of possible headlines. There is no substitute for sitting down and banging out a bunch of possible headlines for any given piece. This is not easy, but force yourself. Go into stream-of-consciousness mode. Turn off the inner voice that says, ''This is no good.'' You will be amazed by what you can accomplish in a short time if you choose not to censor yourself.

Those are two principal techniques I recommend. To reprise: Let the headline come out of what you want to say, and force yourself to brainstorm.

Here are some other tips:

1. Make sure you write a headline, not a title The title of a Gothic romance is Candlelight Ecstasy. The headline that advertises that book is: Once you have knownCandlelight Ecstasy you will never settle for mere romance.

Titles can be short theme markers, e.g., The Year of Living Dangerously, or Tender Mercies. Headlines contain benefits, or when taken in with the visual, create the impression of a benefit.

2. Do not think that a headline must be short and snappy. More great ads were never written for this reason than any other. The writer refused to consider a longer headline because the writer thought it was just too long to be good. One headline I wrote: A bill in Congress right now will let your pension go up in smoke unless you stop it in time.'' It was a very effective ad. Sometimes you need more than a three-word headline. Longer can be better if it taps into emotion.

3. Always use active verbs. Use hyperactive verbs, if possible. Do not go blah with passive voice. Use active voice for cut-through power. If you would like to learn more about active vs. passive voice, e-mail me; I will send you an EWA on that subject.

4. Beware of puns. Using puns in headlines is like opening a speech with a joke. You had better know what you're doing, and it had better be good. Consider an ad for a flat monitor: We flattened our prices on LCD monitors. No one flattens their prices. Stores cut their prices. The pun doesn't work. Avoid overreaching. Compare that to the Wells Fargo line. The next stage. That dog can hunt.

5. Practice truth in headlines Think of your headlines as promises to your readers. Does the body copy or the content of the e-mail or web page deliver on the promise in the headline? Once a magazine ran a celebrity cover story under the headline: What is Her Secret? As it turned out, the article never covered that point. The headline was a sham. Make sure you deliver the goods. If you don't, your audience will feel cheated. I really wanted to know that celebrity's secret.

There you have it: a few thoughts on how to write a headline. And what was the headline I used for this piece? How to write a headline. How-to books are often best sellers for a very good reason. They earn their keep by teaching, as I hope my EWA has earned its keep with you.

Writting for Twitter #3

2010-02-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

How do you build a Twitter following? In this post, I describe a six-step method. By following these steps last summer, I built my Twitter following from 1 to 450 in three months. More importantly, I'll describe why I built a Twitter presence and what I hope to accomplish with it. First some background:

In the beginning there was e-mail. And it was good. If I wanted to send you a message, I would simply fill in your address and press Send. Done. I didn't need your permission to send you a message.

Then spammers came on the scene and spoiled a good thing. They sent out e-mails by the millions, clogged in-boxes and made themselves very annoying.

Then, in reaction to spammers, the opt-in concept was born. By law, senders of e-mail broadcasts needed to get permission from recipients before they could broadcast. My ExcitingWriting Advisories are opt-in e-mails that I broadcast to more than 2,000 people every month.

Along came Twitter, and turned everything on its ear. With Twitter, you, as a sender of short e-mail messages, have absolutely no power to send anything to any specific person. Twitter is opt-in on steroids. Twitter lets recipients, and only recipients, decide from whom they wish to receive short e-mails. In Twitter language: Users follow whomever they want. After they click on a "follow" button, they begin receiving the tweets that the person they're following sends out.

A businessperson who wants to use Twitter to drive his or her business is powerless to send tweets to anyone. Is that a recipe for effective marketing? Wait. I'll explain.

Last summer, I decided to see if I could build a Twitter following. I attracted 430+ followers in about three months. My purpose: To learn how Twitter works so that when the novel I am writing is published, I can use Twitter to turn what might otherwise be a moderately selling novel written by an unknown author into a runaway international best seller. The novel is not completed, mind you. I have neither an agent nor a publisher. Technically speaking, I have no idea if it will ever be published. I didn't let that stop me. Last summer, my objective was put Twitter through its paces, thinking of it as something between a workhorse and racehorse, to see what it could do.

Now for some background on literary pursuits: If you insist on thinking of a novel as only an artistic endeavor, please check that opinion at the door. Of course, writing it is the work of an artist, but, once completed, marketing it is very much a business enterprise. And those of you who believe that marketing a novel should be left to the company publishing it, Oh my, how times have changed. Today authors of non-fiction books are expected to develop and execute their own marketing plans. It would only be considered a plus by a publisher if a novelist did that much or more. First novels are rarely afforded marketing budgets. The typical first novel spends only seven weeks on the shelves of a bookstore before it is remaindered. Hey, everybody: A novel is a product. It's a product of the entertainment industry. If it's promoted, and if it provides satisfying entertainment to its readers, it could catch on nationwide and, subsequently, worldwide, translated into 17 languages. If it is not supported with marketing, it could die an early death. A lot is at stake because it takes years of sustained effort to write a novel. (And as I said, it only gets to be in the bookstores for seven weeks.) If it flops, you can't just come back next year with another. Many novelists have difficulty getting their second novel published if their first one doesn't sell. So here's the deal: I'm not waiting for a publishing company to kick in millions of marketing dollars. I intend to actively engineer a bestseller using social networking platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Face Book in a coordinated, strategically focused campaign. I'll only have one chance and a seven-week window.

Not having a published novel to market last summer, my fallback position on Twitter was to see if I could attract a community of artists, including writers of all stripes, singer-songwriters, literary agents, editors, book lovers, readers, fine artists, etc. Who would be more open to talking about an interesting novel (once it came out) than writers, artists and readers? Or so my thinking went. Luckily, I had the content of my ExcitingWriting Advisories to attract them and turn them into followers. Typically, writers appreciate someone who sends them witty140-character writing tips. All I had to do was slice and dice the content of my EWAs into 140-character pellets, not that difficult a chore. So, last May I began tweeting helpful writing tips to my one-and-only follower at the time, John Wise, who encouraged me to get started with Twitter.

Within a few weeks, I began to build a following and a method that worked for me. Just as importantly, I began to follow many Twitter users who had thousands of followers and were highly experienced. They gave me excellent advice.

(By the way, I found the Twitter community highly collegial. If you're helpful to the people I affectionately call "twits," they will bend over backwards to be helpful to you. Two ways they can be helpful: RT and FF. RT means they "retweet" your tweets to their followers, which spreads your thoughts across Twitter Nation. FF stands for "Follow Friday," a ritual where each Friday Twitter users list the people they follow that they like and admire as a recommendation to all the others that follow them. You can pick up a lot of new followers if you're "FF'd." It's no small thing in the Twitter world.)

Here's the six-step formula I created that I believe can work for anyone wishing to attract any focused following on Twitter:

#1. After you set up your profile, issue 15 tweets. Don't worry that you don't have any followers at this point. Make sure your tweets are hitting all the brand attributes you want to cover. (Remember what I said in Writting for Twitter #1: Your tweets are your brand, and Twitter is all about branding.) In my case, given my ExcitingWriting brand, I made sure my tweets were helpful to writers—covering grammar issues and higher-level writing issues:
• How to get started
• How to manage large writing projects
• How to take criticism
• Principles of writing
I developed about 50 tweets. I tried to make them sound like aphorisms. Example: "Sentences that begin with the word 'There' are usually weak. Revise." Within the tweets, I put in plenty of links back to my blog so folks could read more.

#2. Ask someone you know, a friend who is on Twitter, to go to your profile and follow you. When they do, you'll get an e-mail message that that person is now following you. That's your first follower. Congratulations!

#3. Use the "Find People" button to search for people you know who might be interested in following you or in receiving your tweets. These may be people you know personally and who know you, or people you just know of.

#4. When you find those people, click on their profile and read their stream of tweets. If you like what they're writing or find it useful in some way, follow them. Click on their "Follow" button. You'll start to see their tweets in your stream.

#5. Once those people are notified that you are following them, typically they will click on your profile and look over your stream. They are looking at your brand. Even if you issued those tweets when no one was following you, that doesn't matter. If what they read in your stream is interesting, quirky or attractive to them in some way, they may follow you back. When they do, your follower count on your profile will increase by one. You're on your way to building your following. But here's the trick: It's not about the numbers. It's more about building a community of like-minded people. In my case, I built a community of writers, artists and readers.

#6. Use the # mark to dip into tweets of people that have something to do with your interest. In my case, I searched "#writing" and "#books" to find people talking about these topics. I went on their profiles to examine their tweets. If I liked what I read, I followed them. And once I did that, most followed me back because when they looked on my profile, they saw a brand that was out to help them.

Does this sound like work? It is in a way, and believe me, while I'm using this six-step method, I run into plenty of Twitter users who do nothing more than talk about last night's Grammy awards show with other folks who are searching on #Grammy to find what's being said, and then following those people. And there are plenty of users who tweet their #Grammy opinions to their followers. That works fine for them. It's a lot less work and a lot more fun, I suppose, for them to build a community of like-minded people. But then, think about my larger purpose in building my Twitter community. What's a bestseller worth?

To use Twitter for business, you will need to attract a defined audience by supplying them with information that is useful to them. Thus, my approach of giving writing tips to attract writers.

Here are some other examples:
• A home improvement specialist can give tips on insulation
• A personal trainer can give tips on how to avoid getting injured while exercising.
• A physician's assistant can give tips on how to avoid getting the flu.
It's pretty obvious. The deeper wisdom is this: People who are out to sincerely help others do well on Twitter and get what they want in exchange.

Now here's the kicker for me and Twitter: I am not currently using Twitter. As I built my following to 400+, I lost interest. I learned everything about Twitter I was able to at this point. Until my novel is about to come out, I've decided I have better things to do with my time. Note: With more than 80 million Twitter users, 85 percent post less than one update every day. (That's me!) Also, 73 percent of all Twitter users joined during the first five months of 2009. (That when I joined.)

Why am I not currently using Twitter to promote my freelance writing practice? I'll answer that question next month. I'll also describe practical ways you can use Twitter to drive your business. And I'll reveal methods anyone can use to help turn a published novel into an international bestseller that Hollywood then turns into an Academy Award winning film staring George Clooney. (Thinking big is not my problem, folks.)

And when I accept that Academy Award for screenplay adapted from a novel, I'll thank John Wise for getting me started with Twitter. I may mention my mother and Gina, as well. Oh, and also...

Writing for Twitter #2

2010-01-14T07:50:00.000-08:00

As I wrote last month, I am not a Twitter enthusiast, but I have made my peace with it. Twitter is about influencing others to your way of thinking, or, at least, getting on other people's radar, making connections, etc. That's why it's a social networking platform, and why I believe that it's all about branding. The assumption is that Twitter users influence their ''followers.'' What are followers? Think of Twitter as a specialized e-mail application that lets you send out very short messages to a select opt-in list. What is an ''opt-in'' list? Each month, I send this content in an e-mail newsletter to an opt-in list, to people who have chosen to receive it. My opt-in list is now 2,000+. In the Twitter world, your opt-in list comprises all those who have chosen to receive your tweets. Those are your followers.

While you have followers (people receiving your tweets), you also have the people you're following. Those are the people whose short messages, or tweets, you're receiving. Just because you choose to follow someone doesn't mean that person will then follow you.

Generally speaking, Twitter experts say you don't want to follow more people than follow you. There are plenty of exceptions, for example, someone who follows Hollywood celebrities who never follow them back. That's a perfectly valid way to use Twitter; however, if you want to use Twitter for branding purposes, you should balance the number of your followers and the number of people you are following, or, better yet, have far more followers.

If everyone who you followed was following you back, you would have a closed loop. You would develop a community of followers, which would promote branding. If you make a point of thinking about the brand attributes you wish to project as you write your tweets, you are more likely to be successful with your Twitter campaign. Followers will re-tweet your tweets to their followers. Your reputation could spread. That is how Twitter works.

There are nifty applications that look at your followers and the people they follow and let you ''un-follow'' those who are not following you. The reason they're popular: People use them to help balance those two numbers I mentioned above. The application I've used effectively to do this is Huitter.

I covered reciprocity in a past EWA. If someone does something nice to you, it's only human nature to want to return the favor. Many Twitter marketers depend on that: ''If I follow you, you'll follow me back.'' I recommend that you be very picky about the people you follow back. The numbers of Twitter ''marketers'' are legion. They will follow you expressly hoping you will follow them back so they can then clog your ''stream'' (your ''stream'' is the list of tweets on your home page) with commercials for ''business opportunities,'' nutrition drinks, weight-loss regimens, or the like.

Two dirty little secrets about Twitter:

#1 While the fantasy about Twitter may be that of celebrities using it to communicate with thousands of fans instantaneously, the reality is that even if you have 20,000 followers, only a fraction are online at any given time. This accounts for Twitter scheduling applications, which let you load up plenty of tweets at one time and then tweet throughout the day at regular intervals, thereby increasing the likelihood of actually influencing your followers. If you're interested, google ''Twitter scheduling applications.''

#2 Tweets have a life span of about five minutes. That is, within five minutes after you send it out, everybody online at that time has seen it. After that, it's toast. Ancient history. There's one important exception to that: If your followers are passionately interested in what you have to say, they can do a search on your Twitter handle. You can fill any Twitter user name into the search box and click on the magnifying glass. Every one of that Twitter user's recent tweets will come up. The follower can browse through them at his or her convenience. (In fact you don't have to be a follower of that person to do that. Anyone can do that search on any Twitter user, if they know the handle. If they don't, they can look it up by clicking on ''Find People'' at the top of the page.

Next month: the six-step method I used to build my Twitter following from 1 to 450 in three months, and why I chose to do so.

Note: Last month's EWA drew plenty of positive reviews and thank-yous. I appreciate them all.

Writing for Twitter #1

2009-12-18T10:09:00.000-08:00

The world is all atwitter about social networking as Twitter has grown its member community a whopping 1382% between February '08 and February '09, according to NielsenWire.

I am not a Twitter enthusiast, but I have made my peace with it, believing it is here to stay and, when used properly, effective. You could say I hold a jaded opinion, after spending last summer, nearly an hour each day, seven days a week, tweeting and building up a community of followers. I was doing that for a very specific reason. I'll tell all in my January 2010 EWA. In the final analysis, if you're in business, and if you're smart about it, and if have something to say, Twitter can bring business to you. It is just another marketing tool. As more people become inured with Twitter, choosing not to use it becomes idiosyncratic, if not downright counterproductive. As I said, it's here to stay.

What is Twitter all about? The fantasy may be that Twitter is all about telling your thousands of followers in one 140-charcater tweet that you're getting on a plane and you just had the most horrid time weaving through traffic in a taxi to the airport. The reality is far different. Twitter is about branding. Twitter is a tactical-level tool you can use to communicate your brand to a specific community of "followers."

What is a brand? It is a public identity, something that resonates with clients, customers, partners and/or consumers. It's what people think of when they think of you. Businesses have brands, but so do rock musicians, fine artists, building contractors, rocket engineers, novelists, scientists, owners of janitorial services, journalists, symphony conductors and analysts of every stripe. Everyone who is in business and wants to be known for what they do should have a clearly articulated brand that helps them attract business on the web. Twitter can help define that brand and make it available to large numbers of people who can become potential consumers of the brand.

After using Twitter for about a year, and listening to smart, well informed people talk about Twitter, I've come to the conclusion that even those who use Twitter to have water-cooler type conversations about last night's Madmen or Lost episode, or those who comment on "trending topics" like Tiger Woods' debacle, are using Twitter to broadcast their brand. Your tweets are your brand, and that's perfectly okay. Twitter is about trending topics. It's about public unrest in Iran that was beamed outside Iran thanks to Twitter. It's about the guy who runs the corner service station giving car repair advice and sending customers links where they can download discount coupons. It's about an analyst tweeting quick impressions from the floor of a trade show. Twitter is about all that stuff and more. It's about whatever the users of Twitter want it to be about.
Once you become a Twitter user and establish your profile, you'll find a question that appears above the window where you type your 140-character messages: "What's happening?" To be effective writing tweets, you have to imagine the question reading, "What can you tell your followers that will add meaning or substance to your brand?"

People ask me, "How can you shoehorn everything you want to say into 140 characters?" The answer: Don't. Set up a blog for the content. Then write a short, provocative question or statement and place the link to your blog directly after.

In my case, most of the time, I don't tell my followers what's happening with me. Instead, I give them writing advice. Or to put it another way, given my brand identity, writing advice is what's always happening for me. My brand ExcitingWriting stands for writing excellence. My tweets help people improve their writing. More often, they are teasers designed to cause people to jump on the link to my ExcitingWriting blog (which has content identical to these e-mail newsletters). So the question isn't how to shoehorn everything you want to say into 140 characters. It's how to get people to click on a link.

Here are three examples of promotion-tweets I've used in recent months:

• 13 things you can start doing today to become a better writer. Sept issue of my blog at…

• Six principles that underlie everything going on with social networking. August issue of my blog at…

• Ever notice that non-profits usually ask you to make a pledge? Why is that? Read "commitment" in my Aug. blog entry at…

Another approach to writing tweets is to write a wise-sounding aphorism, for example:

•    Confused about when to stop researching and start writing, it's probably time to start writing. Read my blog at…

Most people tweet links to articles that are interesting to them and, they hope, to their followers. That's all they do most of the time. They're serving a helpful role by spreading news. Thanks to these tweets, last summer, when I spent about an hour a day on Twitter, I was being exposed to very interesting content I would have never run across anywhere else.

Generally, the helping, "advice giving" model works well in Twitter and is effective at building your brand. If you're out to help someone else, explain the ropes, make life easier, you can't go wrong. It makes you the expert.

A landscaper can give landscaping advice. A mechanic can give car care advice. A technologist can talk about technology trends. A marketer can give marketing advice.

Many enjoy tweeting positive, inspirational quotes, which, I guess, makes them an expert on the meaning of life.

Of course, there are times you will want to join the on-going conversation and then, as I said earlier, it's similar to water-cooler conversations in a workplace. People comment on the show they watched last night—whatever. Often, people give other people encouragement. You get to know some very interesting people that way. Do some of that, if you like. Sometimes you really do want to tell people what's happening in your life at this very moment. (For example, in my case, I could send out a tweet that says I'm nearing completion of a novel I've been working on since May of 2002. It's the truth!) You might throw in some crazy tweets designed to get a laugh, too. For example, "Just took the Aston Martin in for an oil change. $75, they wanted. I raced over to the competition."

Twitter is a fantastic platform for spreading breaking news. And that's where it can be effective in business—if you think of your advice as a form of news, or if you can tie in your expertise with an on-going news story.

Next month: The six steps I followed in building my Twitter following from 1 to 450 in three months, and, more importantly, my purpose in doing so.

25 Things You Can Start Doing Today to Become a Better Writer

2009-11-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

This piece was inspired by Mary Jaksch's ''73 Ways to Become a Better Writer.'' (You can find her piece on the ''copyblogger'' blog. She got it right!)

1. Write more. Increase the number of words you write. Start writing every day.
2. Write faster. Don't worry about sentence structure and all the junk they drummed into your head in school. Give yourself permission to stream words faster than you can think. Just get them down. Revise later.
3. Start writing a blog today. Express yourself! Go on record. Say what you need to say! (That's a song and a way of life.) It doesn't matter what you write about. This is public writing, so tell your friends you are writing a blog. (Go to www.blogspot.com now and start your blog.)
4. Write on deadline with specific word limits.
5. Go to wordsmith.org and subscribe to ''Word A Day.'' You will receive a word and its definition in your inbox every day. Learn that word. Use it. Words are a writer's tools. The more tools you have, the better.
6. As Julia Cameron suggests in her Artist's Way book, write Morning Pages every day. Write privately about your deepest fears in your morning pages. As Mark Twain said, ''Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.'' We all have our demons. One way to face them is to write about them.
7. When you're stuck, get out. Do some Yoga. Stretch. Roll a dowel under your feet. See a movie. Bridget Foley says, ''Writing is physical.'' It takes body and mind working together. Getting out can free up the mind to get in touch with your body.
8. Write about your grandest aspirations in your Morning Pages. Inspire yourself. Fill your mind with your dreams. Indulge yourself. Think of your dreams as awe-inspiring powerful clouds that can take you anywhere you want to go.
9. Go on ''Artist Dates.'' Let yourself be inspired by all kinds of artistic expression: dance, art, music, magazines, television dramas and talk shows. Take it all in.
10. Challenge your assumptions. Write a short story in ten minutes. Write a novel over a weekend. Write a story in future tense. Write a story in second person. Stretch. If you're bored, move on.
11. Revise more carefully. Raise the bar. If it doesn't sound right, it is not right. Correct yourself before anyone else does.
12. Improve your interviewing skills. Ask questions that entice people to reveal themselves and tell their deeper stories.
13. Become a collector of stories. Understand how and why stories work. (Read Story by Robert McKee.)
14. Become more observant. Watch how people dress, how they walk, how they express themselves, how they shop. Watch how they relate to and talk about everything from their religion to their children to the make of their car.
15. Ask for a writing critique from a professional writer. Submit a piece and see what that person says. Ask the person to use track changes so you can see specific suggestions. See what you can learn.
16. Read books, blogs and essays more carefully. Learn new ways to expand your methods of writing. Become a vacuum cleaner, taking in all the ways people express themselves and all the subjects they express themselves about.
17. Notice your writing ''crutches,'' the methods you routinely use to express yourself. Notice the ways you can break out and leave those crutches on the sidewalk. Learn to use new sentence structures. Learn new ways to attack sentences.
18. Read more widely. Be adventurous. Read outside your comfort zone. Pick up kinds of books you'd never be caught dead reading until now. And give yourself permission to love, hate or be disgusted by what you read.
19. Find ways to say things in fewer words. Condense. Work at this. It's an invaluable talent.
20. Write with passion. First, settle on something you feel really passionate about. Then write about it. (Writing with passion is the best way to quickly improve your writing skills.)
21. Buy a book of grammar and use it. Don't try to read it from cover to cover. Use it as a reference when you're stuck or not sure about something. I like The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers by Anson & Schwegler. And don't forget to read the ever popular Elements of Style by White and Strunk.
22. Copy the writing of a favorite writer into a word file. I know it sounds crazy and it's obviously illegal if you try to pass it off as your writing. That's not what I'm suggesting. Take a passage of a favorite writer of yours. Type the words yourself. See if you can learn anything from immersing yourself in the syntax and subtext of the writing by doing that.
23. Join a writer's group. If you live in Dallas, visit The Writer's Garrett and see what's going on. Show up for readings of writers your admire.
24. If you happen to lve in Dallas, be sure to attend meetings of the First Friday Book Synopsis. Visit www.firstfridaybooksynopsis.com. Randy Mayeux and Karl Krayer present two business books every session. Read their handouts very carefully.
24. Become an active watcher of movies. Dissect stories. (Read Story by Robert Mckee.) Discover how the story is told.
25. Tape record yourself reading your writing aloud. Listen to it. This technique helps some writers improve. It's helped me.

One Client's Recommendation of ExcitingWriting Communications
''Chuck is a top-flight business writer, up there with the very best. He has insight into the businesses and business processes he is writing about that sometimes amazes me. He expresses concepts in a way that is extremely clear, compelling, easy to read and persuasive. He can write effectively in a wide variety of styles, everything from white papers to direct response. And Chuck is so much more than a writer. He is a strategist, an effective communicator and the source of thought leadership. He is an excellent project manager, and multi-tasking writer, and has never missed a deadline.''
--PJ Hoke, VP Marketing, Thomas Group

In These Difficult Times, I Hope this Example of ExcitingWriting Inspires You.

2009-10-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

I began issuing my monthly EWAs more than seven years ago. The opt-in list now includes more than 1,900 people. Never once have I made the content of an EWA the actual copy that I wrote for a client until today. Whenever I read the copy below, which I wrote in the late 1980s for Exhibition Dynamics, it inspires me to believe that, although times can be tough, we have the capacity to be tougher than we think we can. Tell me if these words affect you in the same way. (Bill Reed, now of MarketGarden, was the designer on the brochure and referred me to the client.) My brochure copy for Exhibition Dynamics began:

''In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, a young man opened a sign painting shop in a Texas town. A few brushes and some cans of paint were all he had. The odds of his business lasting out the year were against him. But this man, Bob Powell, had a talented hand, a will to succeed and a vision that overcame all odds.

''You would see his work at county fairs, trade expositions and in showrooms. His business lasted out that year, and the next, even the Depression itself. The exhibit industry grew up around him. And gradually Bob Powell acquired a reputation and an organization and a list of clients second to none in the Southwest.

''Today that thriving business--now called Exhibit Dynamics--is national in scope, run by seasoned executives, and widely acknowledged to be on the cutting edge of design, construction technology and logistic services.

''What accounts for over a half-century of uninterrupted success at Exhibit Dynamics? Ask us. You'll experience the Exhibit Dynamics attitude.''

It's a shame that Exhibit Dynamics no longer exists, but I believe the spirit of its founder and organization live on.

In next month's EWA, I will finish up my list to 25 things you can do to become a better writer (the last 13). Promise!

13 Things You Can Start Doing Today to Become a Better Writer

2009-09-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Let's get obsessed about writing. Let's get passionate about writing. Let's raise the bar and make writing our life's work like nothing else mattered (even though, let's face it, lots of things matter way more, for example, integrity, loyalty, friends and loved ones).

This piece is my take on Mary Jaksch's "73 Ways to Become a Better Writer." (on the "copyblogger" blog. She got it right!) This month, I'll list my first 13.

1. Write more. Increase the number of words you write. Start writing every day.
2. Write faster. Don't worry about sentence structure and all the junk they drummed into your head in school. Give yourself permission to stream words faster than you can think. Just get them down. Revise later.
3. Start writing a blog today. Express yourself! Go on record. Say what you need to say! (That's a song and a way of life!) It doesn't matter what you write about. This is public writing, so tell your friends you're writing a blog. (Go to www.blogspot.com now and start your blog.)
4. Write on deadline with specific word limits (Notice my EWA comes out on the 23rd of each month. Right now, as I'm writing these words, I'm writing on deadline.)
5. Go to wordsmith.org and subscribe to "Word A Day." You'll receive a word and its definition in your inbox every day. Learn that word. Use it. Words are a writer's tools. The more tools a writer has, the better.
6. Write privately. As Julia Cameron suggests in her Artist's Way book, write Morning Pages every day.
7. Write privately about your deepest fears in your morning pages. As Mark Twain said, "Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain." We all have our demons. One way to face them is to write about them.
8. Write about your grandest aspirations in your morning pages. Inspire yourself. Fill your mind with your dreams. Indulge yourself. Think of your dreams as awe inspiring beautiful clouds that can take you anywhere you want to go.
9. Go on "Artist Dates." Let yourself be inspired by all kinds of artistic expression: dance, art, music, magazines, television dramas and talk shows. Take it all in.
10. Challenge your assumptions. Write a short story in ten minutes. Write a novel over a weekend. Write a story in future tense. Write a story in second person. Stretch. If you're bored, move on.
11. Revise more carefully. Raise the bar. If it doesn't sound right, it's not right. Correct yourself.

12. Improve your interviewing skills. Ask questions that entice people to reveal themselves and tell their deeper stories.
13. Become a collector of stories. Understand how and why stories work. (Read Story by Robert McKee.)

Writing for the Web - 4

2009-08-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

This month I cover the seminal work of Dr. Robert B. Cialdini, the social scientist at Arizona State University and author of Influence: Science and Practice, which Fortune Magazine lists as one of "75 Smartest Business Books." From his thirty years of researching human behavior, Dr. Cialdini has distilled six principles of persuasion; he says one or more of those principles are at work in the background whenever an individual influences another to declare a preference, identify with a cause, make a purchase, or even just to "connect" with someone on LinkedIn or to "follow" someone on Twitter. (A big thank you goes to Michael Egan for introducing me to Dr. Cialdini's work years ago.)

Dr. Cialdini's six principles of ethical influence apply to the basic principles at work when business gets done over the web; they also apply to person-to-person selling, selling via direct mail, traditional advertising, personal communications or business communications via any other media. They say more about us as social animals than they do about the technology we use to socialize.

When Dr. Cialdini speaks of "ethical influence," he means the exercise of persuasion that derives from a legitimate company or person working for legitimate ends. In his words, "The ethical use of influence means: being honest; maintaining integrity; being a detective, not a smuggler or bungler." He speaks of himself as being a "detective of influence."

Here in brief are Dr. Cialdini's six "weapons of influence," which he says "are the subtle, yet powerful 'gears' capable of transforming virtually any interaction…[to obtain] measurable results."

1. Reciprocation. When people realize someone is doing something nice for them, they will be motivated to return the favor. I ask you: Why do pharmaceutical companies give out free samples? Tequila companies give out free shots? Restaurants give "2 for 1s" on certain nights? And why does Chuck Lustig give free writing advice. The answer is reciprocation. If a business-to-business company wants to assemble a list of prospects, it might "give away" a white paper, but not until interested parties fill in and submit a registration page. Why do they do this? Reciprocity. The moral? When on the web, always be the first to give service, information and concessions. You will be rewarded.

2. Commitment & Consistency. Have you ever noticed that non-profits usually ask you to make "a pledge," which they later bill you for? Why is that? Why don't they just send you a bill, let you fill in the amount you want to give and ask you to pay it straight away? The reason is simple: Researchers have found people are willing to commit to more money in an environment where they don't actually have to part with money. Dr. Cialdini found that once you get people to make a commitment, even if it is just a matter of filling in and sending in a pledge card, people are far more likely to honor their commitment, even if, as they are writing out the check, they are saying to themselves, "Too much! What could I have been thinking when I pledged that much?" Have you ever purchased a car or a home and found that, as you were working out the financing, the loan or mortgage turned out to have higher monthly payments than you first thought? Why did you not just walk away? Because you were committed; and being consistent with your commitment is a powerfully persuasive principle of ethical influence. After you've shopped online at a new website, the retail chain will typically begin e-mailing specials to you. Have you noticed that the "specials" are in the same price range and product category as the product you just purchased? Is that a coincidence? As you become a regular customer, the e-mail "specials" will be more expensive. Why is that? Think of it as a corollary to Dr. Cialdini's commitment and consistency principle: When you are building a relationship, start with small commitments and build. Why do you think automobile salesman begin by asking, "What color do you like best?"

3. Social Proof. People will do things they see others doing. Why were sophisticated investors hoodwinked by Bernie Madoff? Because Madoff was already doing business with their friends who were also sophisticated investors. In a famous experiment of Dr. Cialdini's, one or more people who were in on the experiment would stand around looking up at the sky. That's all they would do: Stand around looking up. Passersby would invariably look up to see what the others were seeing. Once, when this experiment was performed, so many people were looking up, it blocked traffic in an intersection. "Social proof" is the reason why websites use client or customer testimonials and case studies—to give the impression "everyone is doing it." It's the reason why certain people Twitter certain opinions or their approval of certain products. Let's face it: Were social animals. And isn't this the basis of political correctness as a trend?

4. Authority. People obey authority figures. This is the reason why credentials are so important; also why professionalism and industry knowledge are so crucial. On the web, it is apparent the way each company puts across its authority in areas that are key to its business. Companies will pay analysts to perform research and write white papers so they can position themselves at the forefront of thought leadership. Companies position themselves as authorities by fielding research. The news networks partner with newspapers and news magazines to field opinion polls. The American Automobile Association tracks the price of gasoline nationwide in order to position itself as the authority on auto travel in the U.S.

5. Liking. People like to buy from people who they sense are just like them. The success of Tupperware home parties and other home-party businesses are a result of people buying from people they like—where the walls between "salesman" and "customer" melt away. It is because of "liking" that social networking sites are so persuasive today. I think this principle is behind the success of the entire social networking craze. People want to "connect" with people they like.

6. Scarcity. Offers are available "for a limited time only," or available to "one family only." Movies open in LA and NYC to spread the buzz before opening elsewhere. This principle explains the shortage of "Beanie Babies" in the 1980s as well as iPhones and tickets for various rock and country acts. It's the law of supply and demand, after all.

If you look closely at every aspect of what is happening on the web today, you will see one or more of Dr. Cialdini's principles at work. If you are planning a website, campaign or any kind of social networking initiative, it pays to factor in all six weapons of influence.

An EWA-reader testimonial:

"I gave Chuck the challenge of writing a two-paragraph value proposition for a new company I was founding with a number of partners. The other partners and I sat with Chuck for a little over an hour and answered his well thought-out questions. About a week later, Chuck sent us two paragraphs that I was very impressed with. They not only summed up who we are and what we offer; they gave prospects extremely persuasive reasons whey they should contact us. That's ExcitingWriting."

John Ball
Managing Partner
SeatonHill

Writing for the Web - 3

2009-07-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

In this ExcitingWriting Advisory, I present a vision for how on-and-off-web marketing programs can work in synergy to give companies a competitive advantage. Assisting me once again is Andrew Szabo, principle "conductor" of Marketing Symphony, a results-oriented, full-service integrated marketing agency. He is also "The Marketing Chef," author, speaker, strategist and commentator.

The key thought this month: Most companies' on and off-line marketing efforts are not integrated; if they were, those companies could significantly improve their return on marketing. Other thoughts we'll be covering: There is a "bifurcation" going on that is limiting productivity. (More about that later. Listen up, Twitter fans!) And this: Many companies are in a rut when it comes to their marketing activities. (More about that later, too.)

Let's begin: Relatively few companies are tapping into the business-building synergies of integrated on- and off-line marketing instruments.

Andrew has found that the way people respond to traditional media is in a state of flux. This is supported by a Direct Marketing Association study, which found that when people receive direct mail (letters, brochures, mailers, etc.), 42 percent now prefer to respond online. Organizations must be prepared to communicate effectively through this channel and not pass these leads off to generic websites.

Here is an integrated approach Andrew has had success with (and it's based on the results of that DMA study): Prospects receive a postcard, letter or email that asks them to go to a "personalized URL," a web address that contains their name along with the campaign name.

When recipients enter in their PURLs, they are presented with an eight- to 20- second video that brings the static direct marketing piece to life. The "look," theme and creative approach is unified, from the teaser direct mail piece through to the landing page and beyond. The landing page contains specific and relevant offers, discounts or coupons which entice prospects to participate in a short opinion poll that takes no more than twenty seconds to fill out. They next read a message that is dynamically altered according to their survey responses. The final step is an immediate trigger email back to the respondent that again is dynamically driven based on the survey responses.

This approach gives a high-technology twist to an old-fashioned, off-line approach (direct mail), and integrates it with on-line techniques for added success. Using personalized URLs often double response rates, as users are intrigued to interact with what appears to be a personalized website. And thanks to the PURL, the company can immediately identify who the respondent is.

A 2008 MIT Sloan School of Management study found that when a salesperson or call center agent telephones a respondent within five minutes of that person visiting your web page, it improves the chance of that agent helping the customer or selling something by 100 percent over waiting thirty minutes to make that phone call.

Of course it's not only about booking sales. Selling it is also about giving service. When an agent calls within five minutes, that person is in a position to engage and be far more helpful—because the prospect is engaged and the WOW factor cannot be underestimated.

So, imagine going on line to your PURL, receiving a coupon, submitting answers to a simple three-question survey, and then, within a matter of minutes, receiving a phone call from the company. Again you have old technology (a call center) enhanced with new technology, automatically generated e-mails that trigger agents to call customers when they are more likely to purchase. It works.

This is what we mean by integrating on- and off-line techniques. Corporations with B2B models can use the same approach. Within five minutes of someone downloading a white paper or a software sample, the person could receive a phone call from customer service. The agent has an opportunity to be helpful. Perhaps a new customer relationship is born!

How often is on- and off-line integrated marketing being used by companies today? It's rare. But integration can improve bottom-line results. Don't ignore the opportunity!

A few related observations:

There seems to be a "bifurcation" going on today: Some companies are effective online but forget to experiment with old-fashioned marketing models. Others give a nod to the web (with a website) but are stuck in traditional marketing techniques, and show no great interest in using online marketing tools or social networking media for branding and marketing purposes.

Despite what some say, social networking is providing some companies with powerful business platforms:

Dell is raking in $2 million in additional business due to special twitter-only offers via @DellOutlet. It currently has 888,000 followers. Read more. (LINK: http://blogs.usatoday.com/technologylive/2009/06/twitter-isn't-making-money-but-delltwitter-is.html)
The return on investment is tremendous; the company is hardly spending an additional penny to mount the campaign. Interestingly, Dell has users going from Twitter to FaceBook to actually pick up coupons.

JetBlue has also had early success on Twitter with @JetBlueCheeps. More than 10,000 people are "followers" and get the Twitter-only airline specials.

Social networking is also giving companies opportunities to field surveys and polls in new ways via LinkedIn and Twitter. Of course, there is still a place for traditional quantitative studies and focus groups.

Despite these successes and opportunities, most companies stick to doing whatever's working.

Andrew has created a list of 166 possible "marketing instruments." The list includes everything from outdoor billboards to social media such as Twitter and FaceBook. Just drop an email to 160plus@TheMarketingChef.com and Andrew will give you the full list plus a method to select and prioritize those that are best for your business. The point is not to use all 166; rather that most companies stick to a few proven marketing instruments, which they have a modicum of success with. They don't experiment because, as Andrew is fond of saying, "the good is ever the enemy of the great." (The more success most people have, the less adventurous they typically are about trying new things.)

Out of the 166 possible marketing "instruments," how many has your company ever used? How many are you testing? Do you have a process in place to test new approaches? Try it!

Writing for the Web - 2

2009-06-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

I usually give writing advice; however, this month's EWA covers some marketing basics. In business, writing serves marketing, not the other way around. If the marketing plan is flawed, the writing will be, as well, no matter how "creative" it may seem. When the marketing strategy and plan are right and when the writing is both on strategy and empowered with emotion, there is no more powerful marketing tool any company can have. Assisting me this month is Andrew Szabo, principal "conductor" of Marketing Symphony, a results-oriented, full-service integrated marketing agency. (LINK TO MARKETING SYMPHONY WEB SITE) Andrew is a thought leader in this area; he is writing a book on the subject, as well he should!

Although I have entitled this EWA ''Writing for the Web -2,'' I do so with the belief that business success always begins with marketing, which for most companies today includes on- and off-line marketing techniques, tools and channels.

I have always liked Andrew's definition of marketing:
''Marketing is everything you do and everything you do not do; because everything you do and do not do sends a message.''

The way a company answers its telephone is marketing.
The way its customer-facing employees dress is marketing.
The way a company sends out a proposal to a prospect is marketing.
You get the idea.

I like the inclusiveness of the definition because it forces one to a pretty radical conclusion: A lot of a typical company's marketing is not directly under the control of its marketing department; it is part of a company's culture.

What is the purpose of marketing? Andrew says, ''The strategic objective of all marketing is to have your clients, prospects, referral sources and other stakeholders think of you first, often and well.''

''First'' means that the purpose of a marketing campaign must be to promote the company to top-of-mind awareness among prospects. Marketing experts say in any given niche there is room for three competitors, at most. Andrew's definition sets a simple goal: Be the first organization that comes to your prospect's mind for your specific niche.

''Often'' means marketing must be a regular, ongoing business process; you cannot have people thinking of you often if you market to them sporadically.

''Well'' means there must be an element of product or service superiority and customer preference, otherwise no one would ever recommend a company to anyone else.

Andrew goes on to posit that your positioning, the space you stake out in the marketplace, must be:

Unique, or at least differentiated from other choices

Defendable, so no one else can easily lay claim to the same positioning

Credible, which means you have the facts to support your position; it is not based on fluff

Sustainable, which means it lends itself to an ongoing, integrated, rationalized marketing effort that will work today, next week and six months from now. (Changing your positioning every year only creates confusion in the marketplace.)

When you have these four attributes working for your company, you discover that ''the thing being marketed'' is your unique niche in the marketplace.

What follows may seem preposterous, but I swear it is the absolute truth: Over the last fifty or more years, since the development of ''marketing'' as a discipline, nothing has changed about it. I know, I know: You probably expect me to say everything has changed since the arrival of the web, and particularly since the social networking craze with everybody going gaga over Twitter, Face Book, LinkedIn, et al. Regardless, I rest my case: Nothing has changed. The reason: It is always about inducing a defined audience to find value in, and, ultimately, consume something, and it always will be. Twitter and Face Book are merely new tools marketers may choose, or choose not, to use.

Experts have done research proving that turning a prospect into a consumer requires many ''touch points.'' I am not surprised. I am a relatively late adopter, so I need a lot of touch points before I will act. Ask yourself: Back in the 1980s (if you were alive then), how many times did you have to hear positive messages or commercials about or from Federal Express before you entrusted a valuable package to the company and paid their (at the time) exorbitant price? That just speaks to the need for a consistent marketing program over time.

My approach to growing a business is as old as the hills. (My parents were retailers and provided a good example.) If you mind the business, the business will take care of you. Andrew agrees with me. He takes a process view of marketing and the way to win new customers:

For Andrew, when it comes to attracting a new customer, a business must be interruptive in order to gain the customer's attention. Once it has distinguished itself, it can become informative in order to establish credibility. Then it can become interactive in order to build an ongoing relationship. Finally, it must inspire a customer to take that leap of faith as it closes the sale.

Andrew sees this process like a relay race: By that he means that if any link in the customer-creation process is broken, the sale falters. (For example, if a company is good at being interruptive, interactive and inspirational, but is not good at being informative, it cannot win customers.)

Andrew has identified seven essential and immutable principles of marketing every successful organization must follow if it intends to ensure success:

Your organization should consistently communicate your key message across all touch points. Everyone in your organizationtop to bottomshould know your key message. Why? Because marketing is everything you do, and everything you do not do, and because everything you do and do not do sends a message.

Your message must include a strong reason for selecting your company to do business with over your competitors; you must be consistentnot sporadicabout your marketing. Why? Because the strategic objective of your marketing is to have your clients, prospects, referral sources and other stakeholders think of you first, often and well.

Your brand must sum up who you are and differentiate your organization from your competition. Remember, your brand is the essence of who you are and how you are represented in the marketplace; it is the assimilation of all the messages your target audience receives about you.

Intelligent marketing is executing the right tactics right. Right tactics are derived from strategy. In the absence of a codified marketing strategy, your tactics will end up dictating your strategy, which will result in chaotic marketing. Remember, strategy is as important to marketing as marketing is to copywriting.

Continuous, incremental improvement is the name-of-the-game. The efficacy of your tactical execution is maximized through strategy, integration and measurement, and iterative incremental improvement.

Every organization has a story to tell. Find your core story, ensure it is relevant, memorable and persuasive. When it is right, it will move the heart, mind and soul.

Relationship building is central to marketing; as in any relationship, to be thought of first, often and well requires constant listening, patience and positive intention.

Next month: Andrew contributes thoughts on how to integrate on-line and off-line marketing strategies.

Writing for the Web - 1

2009-05-25T08:10:00.001-07:00

Because the influence of the web and social networking media are so pervasive, today I embark on a series of EWAs devoted to writing for the web. In this essay (Essay comes from the French word for try.) I cover a few fundamental writing principles. In future months, I will cover writing effective tweets and direct response web writing, among other topics.

My comments here apply to business-to-business and corporate websites that describe capabilities and product offerings for the purpose of driving business.

Include key words but don’t get carried away. On the home page, make sure your copy includes relevant key words, but also make sure your desire to inject key words doesn’t keep the copy from being helpful and sounding authentic. Mentioning key words and phrases prominently on your home page is important because search engine spiders go out on the web and capture key words. Search engines then deliver up your URL when someone searches for key words that happen to be on your website. Some would say, ''Well, then, let’s just make our home page a string of key words. Stack 'em deep! Sell 'em cheap!'' If that sounds like a used car salesman, it is no coincidence. Today’s search engine spiders are intelligent enough to reject those URLs. So be aware of key words, but put the key-word list away when you write.

Write with authority and clarity to project trustworthiness. Your copy should be simple in structure and authoritative in tone. It should always be in active voice. It should sound natural so it inspires confidence. Make sure it tells visitors exactly what your company does and what they will get out of doing business with you. As with all copy, features and benefits must figure prominently.

Think usability first. Try thinking of your website as both an information utility and as the essence of your brand. Is there a contradiction there? How can a website give visitors useful information and still be the brand? There is no contradiction. The essence of a brand is not what we are; it is what we do for others. For example, there is no need for my ExcitingWriting brand to claim superior writing skills; my brand gives useful advice that demonstrates mastery. On the web, you walk the talk by doing for others.

See your home page the way your visitors see it. The corollary of the think usability first principle is this: See your home page the way your visitor sees it. When you are planning your website, make sure you take into account each audience segment and the information that segment will be looking for when it visits your website. Then design your navigation so your audiences can find what they want with as few clicks as possible.

Make sure your website gives useful information. Remember, sometimes visitors are looking for answers to simple questions that might not occur to you: What is the name of your CEO? What is your postal address? What is your physical address? What business are you in? Why do customers/clients choose to do business with you? When it comes to content, make certain each page is short and to the point. The maximum words on each page: 250 to 300. People scan when they read on the web. They don’t want a tome. It’s fine to attach longer PDFs, but make sure navigation and content are thought out in terms of what users want to know.

Do not be afraid to use the same key words more than once. When you were in school your English teacher might have taught you that you should never to repeat words in close proximity. She taught you to use a thesaurus and synonyms to avoid repeating. That’s over. In web writing you are allowed, even encouraged, to repeat, but be careful. Make sure the web writing sounds natural. For example, it’s okay to repeat some of the same concepts and key words on the About page that you use on the Why Choose page. Make sure you create a balance between usability of content and your use of repeated key words.

Think short and simple. I have already mentioned a maximum of 300 words on each page. Make sure each sentence is short and to the point. Make sure each paragraph doesn’t have too many sentences. The copy should not look too dense on the page. Use bullets and bold subheads to make the copy easy to scan. And make sure you are respectful in your writing and take a business point of view.

Use standard buttons. Websites today routinely use About, or About us, Why choose? Partners, Contact, Press, Investors, Services, Products, Blog, Bios, etc. People are accustomed to seeing those buttons and similar ones in websites. They feel comfortable using them. So make sure they are a part of your website.

What one client wrote about Chuck Lustig
After I wrote copy for her website, Clivia Bettelli Baskin wrote:
''It has been a real pleasure working with you. You have a wonderful grasp of how to present the information, and I like the way you talk through and review changes. Looking forward to another session/project.
All my best,
Clivia

The Semicolon, Semi-explained

2009-05-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

This month we continue our journey down punctuation road for a discussion of that little understood and oft-feared mark, the semicolon. Yes, feared! I once feared it because I could not fathom why anyone would ever want to use it! Show offs, I thought! Once I found enlightenment, I became semi-confident about my semicolon use.

Once upon a time, a period married a colon and gave birth to a semicolon. The semicolon had some of the characteristics of a period because it usually came at the end of a clause that could stand on its own as a sentence. It had some of the characteristics of a colon because it caused the reader to slow down and nearly come to a full stop. It also resembled its uncle the comma because it gave a sense of flow to two clauses locked in a love embrace. When little Miss Semicolon grew to adulthood, she said, ''I'm all about relationships.''

The function of the semicolon is in bringing two clauses together in a relationship but not necessarily specifying what the relationship is. The relationship happens in readers' heads; that is the beauty of the semicolon.

Consider this sentence:
The credit markets are reeling over the sub-prime debacle; more economists are predicting a credit crunch, if not a recession.

The causal relationship is implied. I like semicolons because they enable a writer to use those relationships to weave subtext; they also make careful reading more rewarding.

For a moment, allow me to digress and comment on something called ''comma splices.'' When I taught writing at the college level, students seemed to be hooked on comma splices. What is a comma splice? Here's an example:

When my father was a boy, Studebakers were the cars everybody loved to hate, they would overheat in traffic and mechanics were hard to come by.

Comma splices are grammatically incorrect and annoying to read. They give me the impression that the writer does not know where one clause ends and the next begins.

Look at the difference a semicolon makes:
When I was a boy, Studebakers were the cars everybody loved to hate; they would overheat in traffic and mechanics were hard to come by.

My point: Those of you who love shaking comma sprinkles on your ice cream should try sprinkling semicolons for a refreshing change of pace.

I often see semicolons used with transition words such as however, on the other hand, moreover, thus and therefore.

I saw him at the store; however, he didn't see me.

Transition words ruin what I love about semicolons by making the relationship between the clauses obvious. On the other hand, those transition words can be very useful in business and technical writing because they contribute to readability.

Some punctuation guides say you must always place the semicolon before the transition word; however, Leslie Bivens points out that such a rule is misleading. All three of the examples below are correct:

Example #1: I saw him at the store; however, he didn't see me.
Example #2: I saw him at the store; he, however, didn't see me.
Example #3: I saw him at the store; he didn't see me, however.

Notice how the linking words can be placed at various points in the second clause, yet the semicolon is always placed between the first and second clause.

The second major semicolon use is in a complex series where the semicolon is used to keep hierarchies correct.

Examples of American Gothic architecture can be found in Lenox, Massachusetts; Hampton Roads, Virginia; and Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

When not every item in a series has a modifier, don't let that throw you. Use the semicolon between all the items in the series.

The group included Bert, IT manager; Sandra; and Jennifer, corporate comptroller.

And now a little bit about the history of the semicolon. First used by a London printer in 1560, Shakespeare's sonnets employed them regularly. For example, two couplets from one humorous sonnet:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

And there you have it! My semi-humorous, semi-complete ode to semicolons.

Who Knows Where the Period Goes?

2009-05-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

''Who knows where the period goes in this case?'' ''I do, Mr. Lustig,'' said the eager student. This month we review use of periods; it's a cross check between use of quotes and parentheses which we've covered in recent months. Then, farther below, read a short homily on the divine nature of business writing. Yes. The divine nature of business writing.

I noticed a curious contrast between the use of parentheses and the use of quotes: The quote always encloses the period at the end of a sentence, but a parenthesis sometimes has a period hanging out there, exposed at the end of a sentence. Examples:

Use of quote:

Mr. Jake Lancer, Dallas entrepreneur, said, ''I know most will disagree, but I believe the economy is fundamentally sound.''

Notice that the quote sign always goes to the right of the period at the end of the sentence.

Use of parentheses:

You can place an aside at the end of the sentence (as I have done here).

Notice that you place the period to the right of the parenthesis when (and only when) the parenthetical expression comes at the end of the sentence. When a parenthetical expression encloses the entire sentence, you put the period to the left of the final parenthesis.

Example:
(When the aside is a complete sentence, you put the period to the left of the final parenthesis like this.)

So now (in the case of quotes and parentheses) you know where the period goes.

On the Devine Nature of Business Writing

If you ever give yourself the gift of reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, you will notice that the divine nature of creativity is one of the most fundamental principles of her book. ''Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy,'' she writes. And this: ''When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives.'' And this: ''Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.'' To Cameron (and to me) the process is highly spiritual.

I think it is generally accepted that higher forms of art are inspired by a higher power while lower forms, for example, advertising, marketing communications, architecture and product design, are not. I disagree. Why should other work, for example, the design of a circuit board, a semiconductor, or the writing of a software manual, be excluded from this cavalcade? When we produce anything positive in this world, even if it is work as lowly as taking out the garbage, we can do it while connected to our divine creator and be inspired as a result. A piece of business writing can be as informed by this inspiration as a novel or a play. It is only up to each of us to supply the connection.

For the Love of Writing

2009-04-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

This is my song to writers who straddle two worlds, people who are commercial writers by day and artistic writers by night. And this is my paean to people who work by day, whether as mother and homemaker, shoe salesman, CEO, or waitress, and who in their free time turn to their true passion whether that be writing a novel, poem, children's book, opera, short story or song lyric. You may feel privileged that you've given yourself this second job of making art. And I'll bet it sometimes feels as though you are cursed. Your second shift begins after dinner, after the children have quieted down. That is when you begin anew because the artist inside beckons and you must answer; because you know you can do this, and because it is something you must do to nourish your soul.

I know something about being a commercial writer by day and a novelist by night. I'm now in the final stages of a novel I started writing in May 2002. Below are a few strategies that might help you live the life of a part-time artist with grace and equanimity (when you're tempted to give leave of your senses).

Trust. It takes time. It's a journey. Trust yourself that you will never quit until you get it right. Trust that the forces of the universe will align to give you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it. Trust that you'll know when its done and you will give it up to the world when it is at its best. Trust that all this will happen in its own time.

Take out the trash. (Courtesy of Dan Millman's The Way of The Peaceful Warrior.) By this I mean take the trash out of your mind. Examples of trash: Boy, that's great writing! This is dreck! My readers will close the book on me! I'm brilliant! I'll never get this right! I've got this knocked! Damn, this is good! I can't write! I'll never finish! That's so flatfooted! No one could possibly understand this, no less love it! (In fact, when you're in this place, thinking these thoughts, you may be on the verge of the most universal stuff; it can go from ''nobody will understand this'' to ''everyone can and will understand this'' in an instant, if only you take out the trash, simplify and stick with it.)

Don't talk about it too much. Just write it. Writers have talked themselves out of stories by telling the story to too many people before they write it. Don't tacitly ask for permission to write your story. No one but you can give yourself permission to write it. Just write it.

Stay in the moment. (Courtesy of Dan Millman's The Way of The Peaceful Warrior.) There are no ordinary moments. Something important is always happening. Be part of it what is happening around you. Turn off the observer-artist that wants to stay aloof and only observe and write about what is happening. As much as possible, be part of what is happening around you.

Don't hold onto your artistic writing too tightly. Avoid getting all your identity from your artistic writing while, to yourself, you trash your commercial writing or your day job. Find the love in what you do. Every day I write, I swim in an ocean of creativity. I think we all do. We're creative in our day job; we're creative in our night job. I believe my artistic writing informs my commercial writing and the other way around. So it's not: I'm an artistic writer who happens to be writing marketing communications. It's: I'm both the artistic writer and the commercial writer. I get enjoyment and identity from both.

Don't forget to have a life. Enjoy the journey. That is all there is. (Courtesy of Dan Millman's The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.) Sometimes I won't write at night to give myself a break. That way, I'll be less likely to get burned out. Sometimes the best thing you can do to finish your story is to go see a movie.

Note: Last month's EWA brought e-mail from Kim Kaminski who wrote, ''This is absolutely your best newsletter thus far... I see a new dimension to your writing and I love your essay 'On Love of Little Words.'''

And from Gloria Rosenstock who wrote that her son ''mentioned he enjoys reading your EWAs. He finds them helpful tutorials for improving his daily business writing! A huge compliment from a young man resistant to slowing down for details.''

And from Katy Barrilleaux who wrote, ''I enjoy your emails and love this topic. Are you going to put it up on your blog?'' (Yes, you will find this an other EWAs on my blog at http://excitingwritingblog.blogspot.com)

And from Susan Mardele who wrote, ''Excellent advisory. One thing I've used to get unstuck is to envision that my higher self, guiding principle, God, whatever, already has the piece written. All I have to do is start it, and it will 'channel' through me.'' (I find this to be a deeply moving thought.)

Sound-alike Words: Do You Hear What I Hear?

2009-04-22T19:39:00.000-07:00

Let's begin with two definitions:

A homonym denotes two or more words spelled and pronounced alike that have different meanings, for example, ''a quail,'' a game bird, and the verb ''to quail,'' to wither.

A homophone denotes two or more words pronounced alike but different in meaning, derivation or spelling, for example, ''two'' and ''too.''

These technical distinctions do not interest me. What interests me is helping people who struggle to become better writers by confronting the intricacies of ''sound-alike words.'' That is how I will refer to these word pairs and triads:

Factious, given to forming parties or factions in opposition to governments
Fractious, tending to cause or make trouble
Facetious, jocular or witty in an inappropriate or silly manner

Complacent means pleased or satisfied with the way things are, with how they affect one's self. It also means self-satisfied or smug.
Complaisant means attempting or eager to please or satisfy, obliging or affable.

Thus, complacent refers to a satisfied state of mind. Complaisant refers to a disposition
to behave or conduct oneself in a way that pleases or satisfies others, not yourself. They almost have opposite meanings, yet they sound virtually the same.

Discrete means separate or distinct. The scientists isolated five discrete viruses that they believe are responsible for causing the medical condition.
Discreet means showing good judgment, especially in terms of holding one's tongue. The best butlers are discreet. It can also mean modesty and unpretentiousness. For example, the discreet elegance of an interior décor, or a discreet neighborhood where no one puts on airs (affects an upper crust accent) and goes about his (or her) business. The word discretion is first cousin to discreet. It means displaying the quality of being discreet. Everyone confided in him because he was the height of discretion.

Allude means to hint at or refer to in passing. He alluded to the effects of a strong Euro and a relatively weak dollar. She alluded to the wide-spread aspirations created by a burgeoning middle class.
Elude means to escape, get away with. He went through security with more than an ounce of water and somehow managed to elude detection. The trio managed to elude police despite a high-speed chase.

Gorilla is an ape.
Guerrilla (1 U, 2Rs and 2Ls) is a kind of soldier or warfare.

An eminent person is someone who is well known. A cardinal in the Catholic Church is sometimes called his eminence, meaning someone who is revered or well known.
Immanent means staying within, inherent. It also means taking place only in the mind, not outside it. This word also has a theological meaning, dwelling in the universe or dwelling in time. Making matters more complicated, imminent means something that is about to happen.

Abstract means difficult to understand, theoretical or detached. It also means a short synopsis or summary of an article's main points. Oddly enough, abstract also means ''to steal,'' as in, ''He abstracted the attention of the professor.''
Abstruse means difficult to understand or dense.

Would you like more sound-alike words next month? Send me a note and allude to your favorites.

Words We Can Do Without: All, Even, Just and That

2009-04-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

So many people say the key to happiness is finding your mission in life and living out its essence every day. I'm lucky enough to know my mission is writing and educating others on its finer points. That's why I'm so happy to be issuing my monthly ExcitingWriting Advisories. Let's get started with four little words I suggest you use sparingly: all, even, just and that.

The other day, I found myself thinking about all the ways we use words. Scratch ''all!'' Let me start over: The other day, I found myself thinking about the ways we use words.

Is the word ''all'' necessary?

Consider:
How do I love thee? Let me count all the ways.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Would we find Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem as memorable with ''all'' in the first line?

Consider these:
Arrest all people who break laws.
Arrest people who break laws.

Color in all the blank squares below.
Color in the blank squares below.

All people have their good and bad sides.
People have their good and bad sides.

The above sentences without ''all'' are stronger and more respectful of the reader. Their attitude is calmer, less preachy and more appealing because they're missing one little word. Notice I chose not to write ''all because.''

Look: There may be a place for ''all,'' for example, when you're giving instructions and you want to make certain the person understands: Color in all the blank squares below. However, if I wanted to be emphatic, I would write, Color in the blank squares below. Check your work and make sure you don't miss any. I think it's far more respectful when you use a separate sentence to express that thought.

Getting even with ''even.''

Even you have faults.
You have faults.

Everyone is trying harder. Even he is.
He is trying harder, just like everyone else.

He collects everything, even pennies.
He collects everything, including pennies.

Even when Jim applied himself, his output was average.
When Jim applied himself, his output was average.

Even if you're extremely lucky, your chances are not very good.
If you're extremely lucky, your chances are not very good.

My point? ''Even'' is another one of those words that act as the moral equivalent of a blinking neon sign. Yes, it can be used to express surprise about an unlikely event; however, invariably, I prefer alternative sentences that avoid using the word.

Delete ''just''

I want just the facts!
I want the facts!

Just because you're intelligent doesn't mean you shouldn't try hard.
You're intelligent. Does that mean you shouldn't try hard?

We got there just in time.
We got there in time.

You get the point.

Write without ''that''

I think that you're intelligent.
I think you're intelligent.

I say that a person is only human.
I say a person is only human.

I believe that all men are created equal.
I believe all men are created equal.

This is the gift that we give each other, the gift of love.
This is the gift we give each other, the gift of love.

Some sentences require the word ''that;'' however, it is often unnecessary. When it is, leave it out!

''All,'' ''even,'' ''just'' and ''that:'' I am not suggesting you never use those words. I am suggesting that each time you want to use them, you see if you like the sentence better after you rewrite it without that word. Give it a try!

It's just better writing.
Scratch that. It's better writing!

On love of little words.

2009-03-23T13:16:00.001-07:00

I love little words, don't you? You'll come upon a flock of these spirit-fairies in a forest of words, carpeting the forest floor. They are iridescent beauties, these sub-atomic particles of ideas, and they are breathtakingly beautiful. They dart here and there, fleet and colorful. Little words are so familiar; you think you know them. If one word takes notice of you, it will stop in its tracks, hyperventilating, trembling with fear. Standing beside them, you are a huge hulking creature from a alien planet. But if you stand very still, eventually the little word will regain its composure and alacrity, swirling around your head with gleeful cries like a child on an amusement ride. Yes, you think you know them, but you can't begin to know what they can become when you conjure them into necklaces and bracelets, adornments for your beloved.

Advice for those who are stuck in writing projects

2009-03-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

A former co-worker, Tiffany Francis, asked me to issue an EWA on what to do when you're writing something and you get stuck. Read below for suggestions. I thank John Wise, Andrew Szabo, Dan Hardy, Triche Guerin and Dan Sturdivant for recommending me on my LinkedIn profile. If you would like to connect with me on LinkedIn.com, send me an invitation. I would be delighted to return the favor. Below the ''How to Get Unstuck'' article, you will find my essay, ''On Love of Little Words.'' If there are back issues you would like to read again, e-mail me and I will add them to this blog.
--Chuck Lustig

HOW TO GET UNSTUCK

When it comes to writing projects, I used to spend a lot of time being stuck, so let me begin by claiming expert status. This is my Unified Field Theory of Writing Project Stuckness, meaning it applies equally to all writing projects: columns, short stories, theses, articles, poems, novels, brochures, operas, manuals, songs, musicals, business plans, sales presentations, speeches, product descriptions, screenplays, plays, video scripts and non-fiction books. Below I've listed the four reasons people get stuck and strategies for getting yourself unstuck.

1. Reason one: You don't know where to start.

Consider the doctoral candidate who cannot stop researching a thesis and begin outlining (there's so much more to know!), or the novelist who doesn't know where to start a story. Not knowing where to start often comes from being overwhelmed. The subject is so vast; you struggle to find the perfect entry point. Often you have so many facets you want to cover, you are unable to actually begin organizing how you will cover the subject or how the story goes, i.e., what happens first, second, etc. You're stuck.

When you don't know where to start, try this:

Remind yourself that there are two phases to practically any writing project. First, you ''dig up the clay,'' you research, even if it's emotional research. Second, you ''play with the clay.'' Whether it's an historic novel or doctoral thesis, there will come a time when you must stop digging and start playing. The truth is you will always want to dig more; you will feel regret; there will always be more to know! But you must shift from one phase to the other if you want to finish. (And doesn't ''playing'' sound like fun?)

List on paper all the places you could start. Then prioritize them. Decide what's most important to you about the subject, second most important, etc. The number-one item may be your starting place. Then go one step further: Consider that what may be important to you might be boring to your audience, or not as interesting. So, list on paper the topics that, as best as you can tell, are the most interesting to your audience. In each case make sure you are clear on why they are the most interesting. Then prioritize those topics. See if there are differences between the two lists. Perhaps the top ''interest'' item is your starting place.

If your piece is written from one character's point of view, try telling it from another character's point of view.

Or, accept that you won't find a perfect entry point, so stop looking for it. Just find the best entry point and begin. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, ''Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.''

To sum up, when you're having this kind of difficulty, try slicing and dicing it in a new way. Then you may be able to find your way forward.

2. Reason two: You don't have enough information or insight.

Sometimes I would struggle for hours before realizing I didn't have enough information. Lack of insight can also stop you in your tracks.

When you don't have enough information or insight, try this:

Decide the people you want to ask for help, and the questions you want to ask them.

Begin thinking about it at a higher level. For example, you may be writing about a merger between two companies when the higher-level issue might be the trend of consolidation in a specific industry or in business in general. Or, you might be writing about the breakup of a marriage without realizing that the higher-level issue is freedom and independence. As when you're gazing at a painting, try squinting your eyes and taking the longer view. Sometimes it helps.

Insight can be gained by seeing how others have handled the same subject or a similar subject. It may be time for a Google search or two, reading other books, watching other movies, or listening to other songs, etc.

3. Reason three: You don't have permission to finish.

By this I mean you have not psychologically given yourself permission to finish the project. Perhaps you don't feel you deserve to finish yet. Finishing is tantamount to achieving success. There are many reasons why people do not feel they are ready to achieve success.

When you don't feel you have permission to finish, try this:

Talk to yourself and listen carefully to what you say about the project and all the reasons you can't finish it, or why it doesn't come up to your standards. Then analyze what you're saying: This may help to give you permission to finish it or insight into how you can finish it.

And consider this: You don't want to bring something to market before it is ready. Doing so could be self-destructive. So, if you wait until you feel more confident, you may be giving yourself a tremendous gift. For the last few months I have made a point of actively manifesting, ''It will be done as soon as it is ready.'' If you live your life believing and manifesting this, it will relieve the pressure of finishing. Oddly, you may wind up finishing a project sooner than if you keep the pressure on. Obviously, self-imposed pressure can be detrimental; it can also cause illness.

4. Reason four: You don't have a clear conception of what the finished piece will sound or feel like.

This is self-evident: If you don't know what you're going for in a scene, a thesis, a chapter or an article, you will have no way of knowing if you've achieved it.

The key thought: Start with the end in mind.

When you don't have a clear conception of how the finished piece will work, try struggling. When nothing else works, give yourself permission to struggle. Give yourself permission to get it wrong, to write drafts that don't work. Struggle, if you must.

Sometimes I don't know how to write the next sentence, but I know how to write the sentence after that or the one after that. So I write what I know and then I go back and fill in what I don't know. You can do the same.

Again, reading or viewing similar works completed by others can be helpful. They may have left a trail of crumbs for you to follow.

Now that you know how to get yourself unstuck, give it a try!

How to make everything sound better than it is.

2009-03-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

I began my career in advertising where I was paid to put a marketing spin on everything I touched. I turned it into a minor art form. Very minor. In this EWA, we'll review the various marketing-spin claims and examine how they work. As you will see, you, too, can develop a knack for making everything sound better than it is.

Let's cover parity claims, self-referential claims and superiority claims.

Parity claims

The word ''parity'' means roughly equal, yet parity claims sound as though they are superiority claims. How is that possible? All I can tell you is that by a quirk of language, it is not only possible, it is an everyday accomplishment. Have you ever heard?

No other toothpaste fights plaque better.

It sounds like a superiority claim, doesn't it? But in fact, it's a parity claim. It simply says that no brand of toothpaste can do a better job. In truth, it is saying, ''Our brand of toothpaste fights plaque about as well as all the rest.'' But how much toothpaste do you think they would sell if they stated it that way in their advertising?

Other parity claims include:

You can't find a better (Fill in the blank).
There's no better (Fill in the blank).

And how often have you heard this encomium for public figures?

Many people have given back to this community, but no one has done more for the people than (Fill in the blank).

All that statement is saying: This person has done about as much as any other community leader, certainly not more! That's all it is claiming. But most people, upon hear those soothing words, have the impression they're hearing a superiority claim for dedication to public service. Not so!

Self-referential claims

Self-referential claims give the impression of claiming superiority by referring to themselves as the standard. How many times have you heard or read these claims?

Only (Fill in name of store) has (Fill in name of store) prices.

Or:

Only (Fill in name of store) can give you the (Fill in name of store) price guarantee.

Well, of course, only Circuit City can give you the Circuit City price guarantee. Then again, only Best Buy can give you their price guarantee.

Here are two classic self-referential claims. I'll bet you never even thought of them as such:

Are you strong enough (or good enough or smart enough) to (Fill in the name of an action, for example, to drive a brand of car).

That is what I call the self-referential challenge claim. Clever, huh?

What kind of (man, woman) drives a (Fill in name of car)?

Here the claim for a product is being made self-referentially, based on the people who already own it or use it. Logic: Customers who use these products are appealing, so the products or services they use must be also. This is the logic that led so many wealthy people to invest with Bernie Madoff. Makes sense to me. Doesn't it make sense to you?

Superiority claims

Even when one product is truly better than another or an entire field of products, it is rare that advertisers just come out and say it:

The Mavs are better than the Spurs!

Our language allows us to paint shades of meaning in a single stroke. Consider the gradations captured in the following statements:

Only we can make that statement.
No one else can make that claim.
Few can match that achievement or make that statement.

And consider this oft-used and rarely-apologized-for slam at the competition:

(Fill in the name) is the complete solution.

If (Fill in the name) is complete, everything else must be incomplete, right?

Stronger still:

Only (Fill in the name) is complete; everyone else's solution falls short.

So now you can claim to know a thing or two about claims. And the next time you hear one little girl say to another little girl, ''My dolly is better than yours because it's mine,'' you'll know she is uttering a self-referential superiority claim.

Now go forth and make everything sound better than it is. Please.

Word Love

2009-03-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

I warn you: Don't fall for words. Word love is unrequited. It's nearly as bad as falling in love with a statue or a spreadsheet! But, I must admit, I am a sucker for word love. I can't help myself. I love the sounds some words make when you put them together, like "A Hymn to Homonyms," a recent EWA. As you'll see below, despite my best efforts to take my own advice, a few words have warmed their way into my heart. I am uplifted by them. Then crushed by them when they make it clear they couldn't care less about my affections. Below: A few words I love:

Evanescent: Vanishing, fading away, fleeting
(''The evanescent glow of fireflies…'')

Diaphanous: Sheer, transparent or translucent

Aggress: To commit the first act of aggression

Caress: An embrace, a light stroking
(I particularly like ''aggress'' and ''caress'' used together. ''Shall I aggress or caress?'')

Lumpen: Dispossessed, displaced people who have lost social status.
(I see lumps of clay. ''These are the lumps of the lumpen.'')

Agon: A conflict, a struggle
(''Job had an agon with God.''

Parse: To examine critically, to break down in component parts
(''How could I begin to parse the sentiment behind that look?'')

Doleful: Sorrowful, mournful

Wayworn: Fatigued by travel

Coruscate: Give off or reflect flashes of light
(''They pulled up at the farthest end of a loop path that looked out over the great basin of the Gio Grade under brilliant, coruscating stars.''Bill Roorback, ''Big Bend'')

Swoon: To enter a state of ecstasy

Rapture: Joyful ecstasy

Confabulation: Easy, unrestrained conversation

Evocative: Tending to evoke
(''The fragrance was evocative of languid summer afternoons.'')

Sere: Dry, withered

Wizened: Shriveled, aged, white with age

Languid: Slow, listless

Rheumy: A mucous discharge from eyes or nose (sometimes snot)

Phantasmagoric: Deceptive appearances in a dream or created by the imagination

Languish: To become weak or feeble

Dear Reader: e-mail me your favorites.

You need a great copywriter, even if you're blind to it now.

2009-03-06T08:21:00.000-08:00

Have you seen the YouTube video that opens with a disheveled man begging on a busy street while holding up a sign that says, ''Blind?'' He's not receiving any donations from the people passing by. His tin cup is empty. Then, by chance, one person looks down and notices the beggar's dilemma. He asks the blind man if he could have his sign for a moment. He turns the sign over and writes on it in big letters, ''It's a beautiful day but I can't see it.'' He returns later that day to find the blind man's cup overflowing with money.

The principle of abundance is that each and every one of us can attract what we really want if we manifest our desire. I contend that having the assistance of a great copywriter helps.

''Freelance writing that creates an urgency to buy'' has always been the motto of ExcitingWriting Communications. I admit those words may give the impression that I am a specialist in direct response copywriting. More than most writers, I am able to vary the style of my writing so that it is also effective for TV and radio commercials as well as for web, video, brochure, training, sales presentation, white paper, technical, and many more kinds of business writing assignments. I happen to have a lot of experience writing about healthcare and high technology topics.

More than anything, I am an effective conceptual writer. It was an idea in a passerby's mind to suggest, ''It's a beautiful day but I can't see it.'' An idea, properly phrased, can spark a tremendous response and change a life or a business.

Please call me at 214-685-9555 with freelance writing opportunities. Or e-mail me at clustig@excitingwriting.com, I am dedicated to assisting you and your contacts with writing that gets results. You can expect fresh ExcitingWriting Advisory (EWA) blogs to appear in your inbox on the 23rd of each month.