no conversation is safe




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Dearest Reader. Reading this constitutes your consent to the following point:

I, Kelly Diels, plan to poach and scramble our every conversation and interaction

into yummy blog posts and other delicious content.

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Just kidding.

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(Sorta. That disclaimer basically describes life with a writer. Just ask my loverloverman.)
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…and now back to our irregularly unscheduled newsletter/loveletter/blog post…

So. I don’t put everything in my every blog post or story or article or Facebook update.

But my life and my art are intertwined. Explicitly. In all senses of that word.

I think it was Anais Nin who said “My life is my art” (if not, let’s pretend it was as that would be wildly appropriate since our girl Anais never let the truth get in the way of a good story, just ask her two husbands…whom she was married to AT THE SAME TIME) and that’s a much truer thing for me to say than my art is my life.

(I’ve been reading a lot of Victorian fiction. Can you tell? The tell is the overstuffed, overpunctuated sentence. It’s a delicious reprieve from online brevity.)

(Although with that particular sentence, I’m ape-ing Stephen Elliott’s comma splices too, despite the fact that when I first started reading him, they made me prissy. I’d see a series of his phrases hinged together with commas – all technically incorrect because they ran-on beyond a complete sentence – and sniff into my imaginary lace handkerchief thinking this: well that’s not correct.

And it’s not grammatically correct. But in his contexts and his voice it’s right.)

Because my life is my masterpiece. I just write about it.
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And teach you how to write about it.

And then write about teaching it.

And then slip into an alternate dimension.

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Let’s wander back to my point. I left the lead-up to it two sections and seven paragraphs back. But I’m going to pick it up in the next one.

(“It” being the aforementioned foreplay. We’ll climax a lil’ later.)
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Writing realistic telling and compelling dialogue can be enormously difficult. No matter how many multitudes you contain, it can be hard to speak in the voices of several characters.

I can, however, teach you two ways to generate authentic, excellent dialogue.

1. Do like Chuck Pahalaniuk -

Chuck Pahalaniuk is known for his memorable dialogue. Think,

“First rule of fight club, there is no fight club”

and

“You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake”

and

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis.”

- and define a limited vocabulary for each character. A narrow range of words. A verbal tic. Short sentences. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Think about it: everyone you know has a favourite word or phrase or schtick that we use over and over again like a chorus. Or shampoo. Or a recipe. And most of us cook the same three or four recipes using the same three or four ingredients. I didn’t make that up. That’s research, baby.

And that’s why most blog posts generally feel conversational: because they’re composed of short sentences and short paragraphs. It’s both intentional – bloggers are usually explicitly attempting to build a community and so speak naturally, conversationally, communally – and an organic feature of digital offerings flowing from the limitations of the medium: it’s hard to read blocks of texts – ie long sentences and paragraphs – online.

(But don’t let that stop you.)

(There’s always a place for The Great Wall of Text – especially when you’re trying to build to an emotional climax, because a long sentence or paragraph can feel like a stream of consciousness rant, similar to the kind of thing that flows from your mouth during an impassioned argument or tearful, uninterrupted confession.)

So that’s a way to guide good dialogue: define a limited, different vocabulary for each character and use short sentences. The conversations of your characters will instantly feel more real.

Or – and here’s what I do a lot of the time -

2. Just use real dialogue. Eavesdrop on conversations with strangers so you can drop that dialogues into your stories. Write down your own wrenching interactions for your novel or memoir (caution: this can be risky for the retention-rate of your relationships). Copy and paste your IM or Twitter conversations into blog posts. (But yo, tell the other person you’re doing it!)

And so when students of Artful, Heart-full Blogging ask me how to write authentic, easy-feeling dialogue, that’s what I often suggest/advise/insist/command.

To write great dialogue, steal from your life. And the lips of everyone around you.

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And those two practical, tangible how-to’s bring us a touch closer to my more existential point.

Good artists copy. Great artists steal. – Pablo Picasso

That wasn’t it. We’re still caressing and corresponding. Onward.

But Picasso presumably knows of what he speaks, yes? He’s kind of a big deal, art-wise.

Because, as Picasso so crassly, concisely explained, this is what artists do. They sculpt, paint, dance, and write their lives, their experiences, their thoughts, their worlds, so that we can see the world through their eyes, see it differently, see…

…because when what we see changes, everything changes.

And so, to show us their inner lives, artists steal from their outer lives: a gesture, a line, the line of your back.

Which, Dear Reader (dear writer!), can prickly and problematic for the people in your life. When you’re telling your story, you’re often telling theirs, too. And maybe they didn’t sign up for that.

And maybe sometimes that doesn’t matter.

Maybe when you’re telling the truth you don’t protect the liars. Even when you love them.

And maybe sometimes it does.

This dilemma makes it essential for you to make up your own writing religion and define the artistic commandments by which you will abide and at the core your doctrine will be this question:

Which relationships in my life will I protect?

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(Hello, point! We finally come together!)

(I may need a cigarette. Or a cuddle.)

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And that’s exactly what memoirist Jillian Lauren – whose parents disowned her after the publication of her autobiography – realized, and lives by:

There are certain relationships that I’m unwilling to lose in the world, that would trump me publishing something, and have. I have written a few things that he’s been very uncomfortable with, and so they haven’t made it out of the house. But generally, he [Lauren's husband] is very comfortable being written about. He knows that aspects of our life are going to be all over things I release, and he’s perfectly fine with that. He’s believes in me, and he accepts it. He knew this about me when he married me. I didn’t marry somebody who wasn’t okay with it. So yeah, there are a couple of relationships I’m not willing to lose.

And that’s it.

That’s the point of my cracked-up introduction/disclaimer + two-point dialogue tutorial + my life, really.

Thus far, writing has been the most enduring and compelling relationships I’ve ever had but I refuse to be entirely faithful to it. My first loyalty is to my loverloverman, whom I do write about…and, when I do, he sees it before anyone else does. If anyone else does.

Because I want to be like Ayelet Waldman and Matt Damon.

Ayelet Waldman has publicly braved slings and arrows of outraged parents by declaring that she loves her husband more than her children. Of course it’s a false dilemma; “more” or one over the other isn’t the point; the point is that we raise our children to leave us – that’s our job – but your lover is your lover for life, so love your lover first. And always. Forsaking all others (for the sake of your children who’ll then blossom in the light of the love of their parents).

Similarly, in this month’s Vanity Fair, when Matt Damon was asked, What’s your greatest accomplishment?, he answered,

My marriage, so far.

And that’s what I aspire to. My life is my art. My love will be my greatest accomplishment.

(That and my thus-far imaginary, unwritten, best-selling book.)

(It’s coming. I hired childcare and everything. ‘Cuz I need more time than “nap time” for writing my magnum opus.)

(PS I love you, baby.)

January 31, 2012 | filed under: Love, Meaning, Work

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deference is icky. And temporary. Get rid of it.




I was the worst waitress ever. Fortunately, I was equipped with two traits that universally guarantee good tips: great tits and even greater gift for gab. I once dropped an entire bottle of Corona down the shirt of a customer…the same customer who’d had to ask for that beer four times before I fetched it. He ought to have spoke to me sternly. Instead he tipped me $20.

I forgot side orders, substitutions, wine, how to properly pour wine. I forgot my place.

And I was always rewarded – and remembered – for it.

*******

My friend Heather and I remember a bag boy from our grocery store. I remember him because he’s a cousin of my daughters…and because he pissed Heather off. Heather is an enviable creature who can birth a baby on Monday and on Tuesday look like a taut nineteen year old goddess. (She’ll deny this and blame it on the Spanx, but whatever. I’ve seen her in a bikini. It’s a treat.) A week or so after a c-section, she was shopping. Cousin E was bagging groceries and Heather asked for a lil’ over-and-above customer service.

Heather: “Can you help me out to the car with my groceries? I’ve just had surgery.”

Cousin E, surveying her lithe, lean, luscious frame and manner, skeptically inquired: “On your arms?”

We both remember this story. And E. He didn’t bag groceries for long.

The barista at my local Starbucks won’t make coffee for long, either, which is unfortunate for me because he is a delight. I once asked him how he was doing. In response, he made an extravagant show of smoothing his hair and his smock and said, “Oh you know, just living the dream.”

Another time, when I hemmed and hawed about how I’d like my cappuccino – and changed my order twice, oh god, I’m that woman – he said, “You’ve made an excellent decision today, ma’am.”

My point? Station and occupation are bullshit. I despise deference. You don’t have to be obnoxious (E, Imma talkin’ to you) but don’t kowtow to me just because you made my coffee. I’ve slung more than a few cups, myself.  And when I made the leap from a job to self-employment, I held onto something another aspiring – and now established – writer told me. When she was leaping into the fray, she told herself, “I can always sling beer.”

That’s what I thought then and thought now: I can always sling beer. (Even down their shirts.)

And so deference icks me out. So does self-deprecation. Don’t disparage yourself and your abilities, especially when you’re just starting out. You know your talents and offer better than anyone else so don’t obscure them. (Exception: admit when you’re a crap server; compensate with your gifts, such as charm and cleavage; and then get another gig.) The only person who can rock humility is Richard Branson.

And I’d think less of him for it.

October 15, 2011 | filed under: People, Red Shoe Blogger, Work

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darling, get thee an authentically canned speech (or a whole set of ‘em)




Practiced isn’t false. Rehearsed isn’t inauthentic. Preparation is a peace-building gift to yourself and to others.

(And so is style. A friend of mine, remarking upon a mutual acquaintance who is sartorially splendid – her undeniably modern yet dandy-inspired ensembles are detailed and dapper - said: “Her style makes you feel special. Like, all of that is for me?!”)

That’s why canned speeches are like canned peaches: delicious.

Except no one needs canned peaches.

But we all need canned speeches. For business, elevators, interviews, first impressions, cocktail parties, first dates…

…and even predictably and potentially awkward conversations with intimates.

And having a practiced patter doesn’t mean you’re inauthentic. Instead, it means you’re ready to give good convo. It means you’re able to turn potentially fraught interactions into amusing and often surprising connections. It means you invite connection.

To wit, an example. A deeply personal one.

After a failed attempt to see The Help (sold out, alas) my generous mama mediated my disappointment by treating me, my house-guest and my sister for drinks. They ordered margaritas while I pondered my pregnancy-induced deprivation. I wanted alcohol. I wanted something festive adorned with a tiny paper umbrella and a sense of occasion. I may have said so (I don’t ponder deprivation with a lot of discretion) whilst resentfully muttering  “I’ll probably have to have a Shirley Temple.”

And so, when the waitress took our order, I asked for her advice. I said, “I can’t have any alcohol, but I want a fancy-schmancy fun and frivolous drink. What do you recommend?”

She paused, then offered, hesitantly, “Maybe a Shirley Temple?”

I had a Shirley Temple.

There was no little stick with a cherry, no umbrella, no bedazzled orange peels. It was loudly disappointing. Or maybe that was me being loudly disappointed.

I digress.

Confession 1: I have a raw spot about being pregnant and unmarried. Not because it conflicts with my moral values or I’m disappointed that my loverloverman hasn’t offered up an entirely unromantic shotgun wedding, but because I’m continually anticipating judgement.

Confession 2: I have an even rawer spot about the imminent prospect of having three children with two different men. The unmarried thing compounds it. I feel quite exposed.

So, my darlings, do you sense a potential flashpoint?

Back to drinks. We’re talking about my girls, the baby, baby names. My sister noted that the children will have to go to different schools because, based on their paternity, my girls have a Charter right to an education in French and therefore attend a Francophone school. The new baby’s papa is not Francophone so he’ll not be allowed to attend the same school.

I hadn’t thought about that. My sister was right. She was observing reality. She was utterly inoffensive in intent and delivery, and I wasn’t put out at all. But my raw spots tingled – not from injury. From contact. As the kids these days say, that’s my shit.

And then my mom, in an equally utterly inoffensive way, noted that all of my children will have different last names. Again true, and by choice – my first two daughters have the  same daddy and we deliberately chose to give them similar but different surnames. But when you add baby #3 with a third surname fathered by a different man to whom I am not married…

…and…

Raw spot. Contact. Ouch.

Confession #3: In my younger, more tempestuous days, like last month, I would have taken this observation as not a slight but a grievous injury complete with malicious intent. And I would have reared up like a wounded bear and used my fearsome claws, which is to say my words, to carve something  irreversibly damaging into the psyche of my mother who intended and offered no harm.

But.

I recently read a Salon piece about a married couple, Cecilia Jethe and Christopher Ryan, who co-authored Sex at Dawn, a book examining monogamy via anthropology – and reframing some evolutionary theories of sexuality along the way, hallelujah [1] - and was struck by their sensibility. Clearly, once the book was published, they’d be doing media interviews. Obviously, since they are married and writing about monogamy, they would be asked about their own marriage. It only made sense to be prepared. So they prepared an answer that was both informative and unsalacious: “Our relationship is informed by our research.”

Brilliant. Boundary-setting. Marriage is sacred and the details of their intimate lives are theirs to share, if they care to. Or care not to.

Imagine though, if they hadn’t prepared an answer and just hoped no one would articulate the question we’re all thinking and wondering. They would have been unsurprisingly surprised and perhaps even rawly offended when the question inevitably came up, over and over again. The interviews would have been a trial. The answers would have been worse. They could have come off as prickly and reactive.

Possibly I know a lil’ sumthin’ sumthin’ about prickly and reactive and raw.

But, because I had read that piece – and because I regularly preach to my Red Shoe Blogger peeps the importance of an elevator speech – I didn’t go grizzly when people brushed by my invisible scrapes.

Instead, I quipped, “I like to err on the side of trashy.” And I laughed, for real.

And so did everyone else.

And no fragile egos were flayed in the making of a delightful evening.

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1. Yo, God Bless Darwin. Yay, evolution. However evolutionary psychology, in my extravagant opinion, is more often used to justify contemporary and hind-sightedly hierarchical gender relations than explain anything and can kiss my fat ‘n fabulous ass.

2. You don’t have to be promoting a book or a business to prepare artful, amusing and invitational responses to predictable inquiries. Having ready answers doesn’t mean you’re a great, big phony. It means you’re prepared not to be a skinless aggressor/defender who attacks and alienates the people you love.

3. Elevator Speech tip #1: Get one. You’re not self-aggrandizing, you’re giving people an opportunity to understand you. And, done heartfully and artfully, you’re also creating an invitation to meaningful conversation. You’re givomg someone an opportunity to ask questions and really connect.

4. Elevator Speech tip#2: Thanks to a tip from my magnificent friend Astarte Sands I regularly recommend the Wow, How, Now approach to my Red Shoe Bloggers. Watch it and work it – because it does work. Beautifully.

5. Elevator Speech tip #3: It’s critical. It’s how you present yourself in the world. It’s more important than a business card (I don’t even have a business card). And so it’s worth investing in. And so if you’re struggling to define and practice your magnetic, compelling, follow-up and meaning-inducing pitch, you must work with Dyana Valentine. Her Pitch Perfect (she has a wildly useful self-guided program as well as a catalytic one-on-one pitch-perfecting phone session and an intensive workshop that produces not one but several multi-purpose speeches) is, well, purrrrfect. I regularly, wholeheartedly and enthusiastically recommend her to my peeps.

And to you.

August 21, 2011 | filed under: Meaning, Money, People, Red Shoe Blogger, Work

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Sunday School for Sentences #1: Explain the Expected in Unexpected Ways




Luminous, live writing is microscopic.

Ninety percent of good writing is getting the tiny, exacting, laborious details right. Or wrong. Jarring, syncopated writing can be delicious, too.

When I work with other writers and bloggers, they tell me that writing is hard, they don’t have enough time, they don’t feel inspired, and they’re not sure that their writing matters.

When I hear this, I hear:

+ “I’m waiting for Inspiration to overcome me and the writing to pour forth.”
+ “I’m waiting for writing to be easy.”
+ “The conditions of my life are not ideal.”
+ “I don’t have time to write for hours and hours a day.”
+ “If I’m not actively writing for hours and hours a day on the Next Great Novel or A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, then my writing doesn’t count.”

And all of this adds up to these two conclusions:

So why bother?

and

 I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

Neither of these conclusions yield any writing much less good writing. When attempting to create dazzling copy it is useful to avoid formulas that add up to writers block.

And so, my darling, if you’re been thinking any of these awful things, then I have great news for you.

You’re wrong.

You don’t need inspiration; most writing will NEVAH be easy; your life will never yield easily to writing (you will ALWAYS have distractions more appealing or dictatorial than hours alone at the keyboard); you DO have time to write every day; and you don’t have to be working at A Very Important Work to be working at getting better – and becoming a faster and more polished writer will be very materially useful when you DO take on your great work.

And I know this from experience. The actual process of writing – of flowing, creating – is short, easy and pleasurable. But the rest of it is punishing. But it can be done, and done every day, and you don’t need inspiration, muses, a room of your own, loads of “free” time, or divine conviction.

You just need to do it. And the “it” I’m talking about is less about writing and more about editing.

Editing is exhausting, oft-dreaded, and fairly unsexy – but editing does have a redeeming quality: it can be done any time, any where. It simply must be done. Over and over and over.

I’m convinced that the secret to being a good writer is editing – and most of us don’t do enough of it.

Here’s how I usually write:

I sit down and pour it out. I don’t edit myself or criticize. I just let it come. This is a very pleasurable experience. This accounts for approximately ten percent of my writing time.

And then I edit. I polish. I look for ways to make my prose active and engaging. I substitute verbs. I delete adjectives and adverbs. (Who am I kidding? I add more.) I invert comparisons, I introduce and expand metaphors, I read aloud so as to stalk and kill extraneous words. I research the etymology of words. I riff and add poetic flourishes. I fix my punctuation. I curse my addiction to hyphens and parenthetical asides. I leave it. I come back to it. I make it worse. I make it better. I find its rhythm. I spell-check rhythm. I understate things, I overstate things, I use the word “and” instead of commas, I overuse commas. I introduce emotional tension. I lie. I say the exact opposite of what I mean, but I place that lie in a paragraph of truth so that it hisses and won’t lie still. I keep working at it. I edit. Endlessly.

This is work. This is labour. It is pleasurable in an abstract way – when I get past the dread and the difficulty and the unremitting and acute knowledge that my vision as a writer outstrips my abilities.

A complete lack of faith in our skills and an insatiable desire to improve is the hell to which writers must acclimatize.

This accounts for ninety percent of my writing time. Because I believe that great writers write great sentences, almost all of my writing time is dedicated to wrestling my insecurities and futzing with the details.

And so my advice to other writers is unremarkable:

  • Write every day – it can be an e-mail, a letter, some phrases, pretty words, a list…just write something.
  • Edit more than you write.
  • Futz with the details.
  • Try not make your life an exercise in self-hatred because writing is already designed to work that muscle to exhaustion.

But my most cherished bit ‘o wisdom is this:

To improve your writing, you must strive to get your sentences either very right or very wrong.

And that’s what the next sixteen Sundays are all about. Sentences. Futzing. Details. Putting your precious prose under a microscope.

Each Sunday until the end of the year I’ll examine a stunning sentence and tell you what I love about it, what I learned from it, how I use what I learned in my own writing, and how you can too. And then together we’ll hold clinics in the comments.

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Sunday School for Sentences #1: Explain the Expected in Unexpected Ways

We all know what Siddhartha could have written. He could have written that her thong sat higher than her jeans and added snark about the dangers of low-rise jeans and vampy panties. That would have been predictable – and utterly forgettable.

What he did, however, was not forgettable.

I read this sentence months ago, and I regularly cite it to students and clients as an example of  dazzling sentence. This sentence is a story in microcosm.  This sentence is excellent.

What Siddhartha did right:

  • He used understatement.
  • He described something in an almost mechanical, factual way and let the reader fill in the emotive blanks.
  • He used unexpected detail – “minimalist approach to undergarments” – to make a sentence sing.

What I took loved and learned from this sentence:

Try to say the usual in unusual ways. Use unexpected detail. Use understatement. Sometimes straight description, without emotional interpretation, can be completely compelling.

How I Used these Techniques In My Own Writing

Saying the Expected in Unexpected Ways (Unexpected Detail)

In this very piece, I laboured over a couple of sentences. In each of them I tried to follow Siddhartha’s example and say ordinary things in extraordinary ways.

And so I wrote:

  1. When attempting to create dazzling copy it is useful to avoid formulas that add up to writers block.
  2. A complete lack of faith in our skills and an insatiable desire to improve is the hell to which writers must acclimatize.
  3. Try not make your life an exercise in self-hatred because writing is already designed to work that muscle to exhaustion.

Understatement

In all three sentences, although perhaps not obvious to a more minimalist writer, I dialed down the emotional content.

(Overstatement is my natural go-to, so whenever I dial it down, even a little, I think I’m crafting my prose.)

In sentence #1, I tried to use understatement by saying “it is useful to avoid” rather than something overstated like “You MUST, at all costs, avoid…”.

In sentence #2 although I use overstatement (“hell”) I pair that charged subject with “acclimatize” – a neutral, bland verb. And so, with that verb choice, I’m at least waving at factual, objective reporting.

Factual Reporting

These sentences don’t really use factual reporting (except possibly in #2, see above) but the dispassionate tone of them tips their respective hats to factual reporting and is at odds with the passion inherent to all three subjects:

  • writer’s block (ouch! avoid avoid avoid!);
  • the pain of creation (no wonder many writers call their books their babies and compare the act of writing and editing to pregnancy and childbirth); and
  • the loneliness and insecurity that accompanies creating something from nothing.

Mismatching tone and subject is one of my favourite techniques, because it is…unexpected.

Which, of course, is what I loved about Siddhartha’s sentence in the first place.

——————-

And you?

What did you like about this sentence?

How will you use understatement, unexpected detail and factual reporting to light up your own sentences? (Examples, please!)

————–

Sunday School for Sentences will be a sixteen-part series. Missed one? Here they are:

  • Prologue: God, Sex and Dazzling Sentences
    1. Sunday School for Sentences #1: Explain the Expected in Unexpected Ways
    2. Sunday School for Sentences #2: The (Textual) Reverse Cowgirl
    3. Sunday School for Sentences #3: Object Lessons (from Kanye West and JD Salinger)
    4. Sunday School for Sentences #4: How to Give Good Quote
    5. Sunday School For Sentences #5: Why You Should Write Bad Poetry
    6. Sunday School for Sentences #6: Two Damn Fine Writing Tips
    7. Sunday School for Sentences #7: There Are No Magic Words
    8. Sunday School for Sentences #8: How To Execute a Climax or Series of Climaxes. I’m talking About Writing. Mostly.
    9. Sunday School for Sentences #9: Thread the Grommets, Lace the Corset, Feed the Rabbits
    10. Sunday School For Sentences #10 – Work It
    11. Sunday School for Sentences #11: The Pigs In Space Edition
    12. Sunday School for Sentences #12: Screw SEO. I Write (Wackadoo Titles) for PEOPLE, Not Search Engines. And So Should You.
    13. Sunday School for Sentences #13: How to Write an Intimate Cosmology of Cheesecake, Cheesecake Shots (or not) and Shoplifting
    14. Sunday School for Sentences #14: What Picasso And Dave Chappelle Know about Writing. For Realz. 
    • September 5, 2010 | filed under: sunday school for sentences, Work

    50 people have we need you too.

    Red Shoe Blogger: A Manifesta




    http://longawaypix.com/blog/

    Let’s mash up reality and assume that Dorothy wrote The Wizard of Oz and it is a memoir told through the lens of pharmaceuticals and it is to be published next year.

    Dorothy has written a great book: part trippy fantasy, part freudian/jungian/wonky archetypical therapy, part love letter to friendship, and a prefeminist, feminist, post-feminist meditation on the nature and power of femininity wrapped in a trendy, little-dog-carrying, hot-shoe-wearing package.

    It is Sex and the City meets Eat Love Pray meets Little Red Riding Hood, on acid. It is a journey. It is a great book. It must be read.

    Dorothy knows this. She feels it right from her soul to the soles of her ruby red shoes. She can see the future: a movie. Musicals. The talk show circuit. Oprah. Much money, much love, much conversation, and a place in popular imagination.

    It can be all of these things, not because she promotes the flying monkeys out of it – which she will, and absolutely should do – but because it offers a watery answer to our thirsty, questioning souls: you are the author of your own affair.

    (Plus there are weird scary creatures who learn to love each other and grow as twisted, maturing moral entities and we all know that stuff sells. I hear a little book called Twilight is doing quite well these days.)

    So this book should sell. It needs to sell. Dorothy wants it to sell.

    Even more than that, Dorothy wants it to be read, to land, to take root, to grow, to inhabit, fertilize and animate our popular imagination.

    If I was Dorothy – and I am – I would start a blog before I even started writing the book. I’d go all Seth Godin and build a tribe on Twitter. I’d find my people. I’d give them somewhere to find me. I’d get on the cluetrain. I’d Oprah. I’d firestart. I’d listen to Leo Babauta when he says he doesn’t believe in SEO. I’d make friends. I’d work the aich-ee-double-hockey-sticks out of ProBlogger and spend serious time with Outspoken Media. I’d figure out the lessons learned by our pantehon of blog gods and best-selling writers. I’d figure out the mechanics of demand and distribution and audience and I’d build it and they would come. And if they didn’t come, I’d go get them and then hug and pet and feed them because that is the purpose of promotional tricks and lassos and rodeo ponies and hoopla.

    But I would only do that if, like Dorothy, I had something wizardly to offer: the journey. The passion. The learning. The love. The living. The lessons. The magic. The really, really great content. Please.

    And this is what exasperates me about the ‘blogging and social media for money’ superhighway. So many times I follow the yellow brick road laid by an enterprising blogger who’s working the system – rocking the comments, manufacturing controversy, guest posting, paper-training SEO, tweeting – and when I get there and pull back the curtain…nothing. No wizard. No magic. No message. Just a lot of mechanics and whirling buttons and a robotic, soulless special effects machine.

    Honestly, that’s what a lot of problogging and blogs and social media enterprises are looking like these days. It is turn-key blogging. It is execution unsparked by ideas. It is a waste of time and tweets and it won’t make you money.

    Straight up: I LOVE money. I want money. I make money and you should, too. I want you and Dorothy and every other problogger out there to have as many tiny dogs – more! – as you and your minions can carry.

    I just want you to make that money from selling wisdom, truth, experience, art or sparkly scarlet maryjanes (and if you are, I’m ALWAYS in the market for red shoes, so please put me on your mailing list).

    I want you to make an offering. I want you to have something to offer. I want you to be a Red Shoe Blogger. I just made that up.

    A Red Shoe Blogger is not blogging exclusively for money.

    A Red Shoe Blogger has a mission and is animated by passion and all the tips and tricks and hacks and tools and tweets are harnessed in service of that divine, cosmic, helpful, genuine, meaningful objective.

    That mission is Home.

    So this is what I want from all the Red Shoe Bloggers out there: I want you to buck the system, or work the system, but know that the system is not a slot machine that will pay off if only you keep pulling that arm and never ever run out of nickels or take a pee-break.

    Success is not only about the systems.

    The home address of success is passion, talent (let’s be honest), creation, contribution, collaboration, conversation, and community.That is where hot sweaty abundance and cold hard cash reside (FYI, they’re totally a couple) and I wish more bloggers lived there too.

    Because, after all, there’s no place like home.

    ___________________

    Red Shoe Blogger was my first guest post for ProBlogger in October 2009 – and, as I tried to say yesterday, it is my manifesta and my mission.

    Is this your mission, too?

    image credit: Jennifer Longaway


    May 21, 2010 | filed under: Meaning, Money, People, Purpose, Work

    47 people have we need you too.

    How to Get Unstuck, Part 3: You Have Everything You Need and All You Need is Love. And to Launch Something. hint hint.




    The third part of getting unstuck is people.

    Sometimes I have to pinch myself because my life is a reverie. My life is like a dream I dreamed when I dreamed of beautiful people.

    I’m not sure that I’ve ever before had the kind of love and loyalty that I have in my life right now – and all I can say is thank God and thank Twitter and Thank God For Twitter.

    There is a perception that Twitter is frivolous and we’re all talking about our last ham sandwich – and we are, and that’s ambient intimacy – but I have met incredible, inspired, talented, heartfelt and heart-full people on twitter.

    People who’ve become my soul’s people, my sisterfriends, my brothers-in-arms, my mothers, my lovers, my compadres.

    So I could wax lyrical about Twitter, but that’s not the point.

    The point is that right now, and during the past year, every time I was stuck I have been overwhelmed by the visceral, tangible support of people who want to love me up (and do).

    Just over a year ago, I had a new place, a newish job, and was newly single. Life was fine. I was going to work and taking care of my kids and running on that hamster wheel every day and it all meant…nothing.

    So I started a blog and discovered another blog that rocked my world, and, dare I say it, changed my life.

    Yeah, I’m talking about White Hot Truth with Danielle LaPorte. I read it obsessively. It lit me up. I learned things. I stayed motivated. This thing I was doing – writing, blogging, making meaning – seemed…

    possible.

    And so one fine day last June, I took a day off work and drove to Whistler for a firestarter. And on the winding highway on the way to Whistler I wrestled with my identity, my purpose, my practicality, my comfortable suburban life, and my bills. (As in: how is this cute thing I do – writing – gonna pay ‘em?)

    Finally, forty-five minutes into the drive and thirty-six years into my life, I gave up the fight. I gave up the stuck.

    I said, fuck it. I’m an artist.

    And everything Danielle said in that firestarter was for me and everything in that firestarter affirmed that I must scrape back the bullshit and be faithful to my purpose. That I must be true to who I am.

    An artist. A writer.

    I got misty-eyed and emotional only moments into the session.

    And when I got home, I found an e-mail from Danielle:

    you are one talented writer. You’re hot shit and the Real Deal and you should be getting your ass published as widely as possible.

    I cried my eyes out.

    I needed that.

    I needed that to keep going.

    I kept going.

    ____________________

    Now, almost a year later, writing is paying the bills. I still get stuck, though. I get stuck because I take too much on. I get stuck because I’m wed to what I should do rather than what I want to do. I get stuck because there’s something I want to offer and I’m scared to offer it. I get stuck because it is easier to start a piece or an essay or a book than it is to finish it.

    And people – my mentors, peers, friends – are what un-stick me every time.

    I wrote a piece about Dave Doolin last week – about how much his consulting, his website, and his book have helped me improve my blogging.

    And then, a couple of days later, I wrote a piece about how I was stuck.

    Within moments of posting that piece, I had a text message and then an e-mail from him. Minutes after that, we were on Skype talking to each other and he was totally in it to win it with me.

    Dave and I had been making noises about writing a piece together but hadn’t actually done it…and that night Dave told me we were going to write that piece together, now.

    So we did. We texted on Skype and wrote a post together using a shared Google doc. We wrote the piece from start to finish in forty-five minutes.

    This was huge to me.

    It was huge for three reasons.

    First.
    Something wasn’t quite right in my life – I was stuck – and here was my friend instantly, 100% in it with me, helping me muddle my way through it.

    That kind of loyalty means everything. And this is why I love Twitter (and Dave) with an unholy passion: because I first talked to Dave on Twitter. Now he’s my friend and he’s got me when I’m stuck. Wow.

    Second.
    I’m not a team player (don’t tell anyone). I am a writer. I like to do things by myself. Also, I’m pretty book-smart, which means I’m still scarred from years of group-work in high school where well-meaning teachers matched me up with kids who saw me and saw an easy A. So my experience with group work (slow, and all on me) is why I don’t much care for collaborating.

    Recently I’ve had people – really lovely, talented, compelling people, people I really do want to work with – approach me to collaborate on projects and I’ve turned them down simply because I thought I don’t like collaborating.

    But writing this piece with Dave etched a new collaborative groove in my head. Usually it takes me two to three hours to write a piece; when we wrote together, it took forty-five minutes. It was fast and it was satisfying.

    It was fast because as I was writing something, he was finishing another sentence, or editing a paragraph I had just written; or as he was writing something, I was inserting digressions into the middle of his paragraph or pulling the threads through the piece. The back-and-forth and the pace and the creation was rewarding.

    So that was a clicky lightbulb moment: collaborating can feed the creative process instead of stalling it.

    Third.
    I was stuck last week because I had a number of pieces started and zero pieces finished. I was frustrated. I wasn’t crossing anything off my list. And the less I finished, the less I finished. Over and over. Not finishing was feeding and breeding more not finishing.

    And Dave instinctively knew that what I needed to get moving, to get unstuck, was to finish something. Anything. Now.

    And so we started – and finished – that piece, together.

    And I was lightened. The whole week hadn’t been a waste, after all.

    Good-bye, stuck. Thank you, Dave.
    ————————–

    So that’s how Danielle LaPorte helped me get going, and keep going when I first started out, and how Dave Doolin helped me get going, and keep going, last week.

    Your people will get you unstuck if you let them.
    ————————–
    Which brings me to my Big Stuck.

    For a while, I’ve had the feeling that what people want from me (and what I want to give them) is not Yet Another Boring E-book.

    I’ve felt that what we need to do, together, is connect.

    I’ve felt like what I have to offer is writing, and love. (And writing is just a channel through which love flows.)

    I’ve wanted to offer classes and consultations about how to develop your unique writing voice, and how not to be a boring writer.

    (Please, let’s not be boring bloggers. There’s so much competition for that. There’s none for being you.)

    But…I Am A Copywriter. I should be doing that – not hanging out on Twitter all day and talking on Skype and answering questions by e-mail.

    But that stuff – the answering questions, the helping, the loving – is what I love to do.

    Recently I was telling my friend (insert mental air quotes around that, please) F that my best qualities are also my worst qualities. My best quality is that I’m a Lover which means I take care of the people around me. My worst quality is that I’m a Lover, which means I make other people’s missions my own, and sometimes more important than my own.

    F said, maybe helping other people with their missions IS your mission.

    Maybe he’s right. I thought the same thing just a week ago when I read Danielle LaPorte’s The FireStarter Sessions vook (video-book).

    In The FireStarter Sessions, Danielle insists that you MUST do what you love. You must lead with your strengths. You must choose the things that light you up so that you can light the way for yourself, and for others.

    I write and I love and even my writing is loving. The things that get me really excited are helping other people. When someone e-mails me and they have a question, or they need help, a close review, or advice, I’m all in. I’ll drop the things I should be doing to do that.

    I can look at someone else’s writing and instantly, instinctively know if it needs sugar or salt or more heat. I know how to season it and cook it. I know which ingredients are missing, how to amp up the emotional contrast and tension, and what technical tricks – rhetoric, typography, poetic devices – will work.

    I understand how to train your writing voice to sing. I love editing your pieces. I love talking to you about your writing and encouraging you to take risks – and I’ve done that quietly, informally, and freely for several writers and bloggers.

    So that’s what I want to do, and what I’m going to do – and what the people around me have encouraged me to get unstuck enough to do.

    So let’s do that.

    Do you want to write more persuasive, emotional, meaningful pieces?
    I’ll download to you everything I know about writing and teach you to do that.

    Do you want to unlock your writing voice?
    I’ve got the keys.

    Do you want to know how to build (and make money from) a blog, all while juggling a job, family, and life?
    I can show you how I re-framed every single obstacle in my life – full-time job, single mom, two kids under five, very little child-care or support, no money, no time – into an opportunity and out of those opportunities created a rapidly growing blog, new business and new life for myself.

    Do you want to guest post for A-list blogs?
    I can tell you how I did it so you can do it, too.

    Do you want to blog better? Do you want to know what you’re doing right (and maybe what you’re doing wrong)?
    Dave Doolin and I will review your blog – the art and the science of it – consult with you, construct a report for you, and tell you how to do it better.

    And do you want it in a face-to-face class or do you want it on the phone?

    Because baby, I can do it both ways.

    —————–
    How Not To Be a Boring Writer: The Workshop

    Vancouver, Saturday July 17th, 25 spaces available, $50 per person
    E-mail to reserve your space (or to organize additional dates! Hell yes, I’ll travel!)

    Red Shoe Blogger

    I review three of your pieces and then we work together on the phone to amp up your unique writing voice.
    E-mail to book a session ($100)

    League of Extraordinary Bloggers

    The Art and the Science of Blogging. Blog Review, Report, and Personal Consultations with Dave Doolin and Kelly Diels.
    E-mail to book your blog review ($150)

    May 20, 2010 | filed under: Love, Meaning, People, Purpose, Work

    41 people have we need you too.

    A Love Letter to Dave Doolin. I mean, Blog Post Engineering.




    I started blogging one year and two weeks ago (April 18, 2009).

    When I started, I wanted to Just Get Started. Now.

    (‘Just do it’ really is a recipe for success. I have LOTS of great ideas, but the only ones that count are the I ones I execute – and NOW is always the right time.)

    And when I started, I didn’t want to figure out WordPress, I just wanted to write.

    So that’s what I did. For the first six months, I used GoDaddy’s built-in blog whatchamacallit and a template. I wrote and I pressed publish. I wrote and I pressed publish. I wrote and I pressed publish.

    And then I got to promoting my pieces with links on Facebook and Twitter.

    So it was publish and promote. Publish and promote.

    That works, but it takes a lot of muscle (and a lot of friends!) – and it does not really endear you to Google.

    Google loved my name + cleavage but not much else. My search traffic was mostly imaginary.

    And search engine results are pretty important for building passive traffic. It is how you maximize the impact of your magnetic words.

    Some of my old pieces, for example, are pretty good, and they’ve been read by six people: me, my mother, my sisters, Heather and Monica.

    (There is a profound irony here: my most fervent supporters and early day commenters get the least of me IRL because My Blog Ate My Life. I’m sorry, my loves. It will get better once I figure out how to scale my business beyond my time.

    I will have to cut and paste this into an e-mail from my mom, who had to stop reading my blog when I started writing about my sex life. I’m probably more relieved than she is. I’m also relieved that my six year old does not have independent internet access. Yet.)

    But, as they are, Google will probably never send good traffic my way. These post lack tags, they’re not categorized, they don’t have descriptions…and so on. After all, I wrote and pressed publish. I didn’t do any of the backend stuff to make my blog posts search engine friendly.

    Mostly because I didn’t know how to.

    Learning To Blog – AFTER I Started Blogging. Whatever. It worked for Me.

    In October/November, when I decided to get serious about blogging, I knew WordPress was the way I’d go. But I didn’t want to figure it out. I just wanted it done for me, so I could write and press publish, write and press publish.

    So kickass web developer, Amanda Farough of Violet Minded, takes care of all of that. I tell her what I want to happen. She makes it happen and sends me invoices. We’re both happier for it, and so is my blog, which now looks and feels so much more ME.

    But I still wasn’t getting a lot of search engine traffic. ‘Write and press publish’ wasn’t serving me very well. I knew that all those boxes in the WordPress interface that I left empty probably had a purpose.

    They do. They really do. They want to make your blog posts kiss up to Google and friends.

    I sighed and said some bad words and knew I had a little lot of work ahead of me. Fortunately I have a friend who knows ’bout this stuff.

    (And, not coincidentally, he’s having an “un-launch” this week.)

    Wherein I Extol The Virtues of Dave Doolin’s Website in A Weekend and Blog Post Engineering

    Any of you who follow my Twitter stream already know that I’m obsessed with Dave Doolin Website in a Weekend.

    We’re sort of in the same business (blogging) but Dave Doolin is terrific at all the things I’m not – which is basically everything that is NOT writing and being social.

    I’m good at the outward facing stuff. I like the promotion part of blogging. I could mainline Twitter. Facebook and I are going through a bit of a rough patch, but I think we’ll pull through. Guest posts? We started off slow but now I’m all in. Commenting? We’re friends with benefits.

    Most of that stuff I picked up, intuitively, and then figured out the ‘rules’ thereof from ProBlogger and Copyblogger and a little prodding from Josh Hanagarne.

    And sites like ProBlogger and Copyblogger are TERRIFIC for explaining the promotion and the how-to-write a blog post part of blogging – which is all the stuff I like to do and am naturally pretty good at.

    Website in a Weekend covers the ins-and-outs of writing and community-building too, but I read it because Dave Doolin teaches me the stuff that is not intuitive – like how to link to a specific paragraph or section of a blog post instead of the entire piece. Or how to structure the url (slug) of your piece for maximum keyword/SEO bang. Or how to make sure your tags, categories, description, title and slug all echo each other’s keywords and get you lots of good SEO juju.

    In other words, how to do all that stuff I wasn’t doing.

    (As Dave says, I was basically treating WordPress like it was an online version of Microsoft Word. Write, save/publish. And that’s it.)

    And this stuff – the stuff I wasn’t doing – is pretty essential.

    Look Ma, RESULTS!

    The way I was blogging meant that I wrote a piece, tweeted it, and it got lots of love for a day or two and then disappeared into my dusty archives – without a way to find it again. That kind of blogging is like putting a book in a library without cataloguing it. Not smart. Not find-able.

    So I got Dave to teach me how to do it. I bought his book, Blog Post Engineering, and did a couple of consulting sessions with him.

    And look what happened:

    When I do the things that Dave taught me, personally and in Blog Post Engineering, I get search engine traffic. That means that pieces I wrote a month ago or a week ago are continually getting hits, because the search engines can find them.

    That makes me really happy – because the point of all of this writing is that people read my words.

    So getting the backend right – optimizing each blog post so that the search engines can find it – means that I’m extending the life and audience of each piece I write.

    And I don’t have to write for search engines (which is good, because I’m an ARTIST, doncha know, and We Don’t Do That). Instead, I write what I want and then wrap it up in tags and title attributes and anchors that help search engines find it and love it up.

    To me, ‘blog post engineering’ is like interior design. In interior design, you’ve got to get the envelope right: the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the light. The basics. Once you’ve got those right, everything else builds on top of that. If you’ve got peeling plaster walls, your sofa will never really look good and the room will never feel comfortable.

    Blog post engineering helps me get the envelope right so that my words can find their audience, and invite them in, continually.

    I’m so glad I took the time to figure it out, and that Dave (and Blog Post Engineering) helped me do that.

    Which is why I tell my friends who are starting blogs (hi Cara!) and daughters of friends who are considering starting a website (hi Acacia!) to read Website in a Weekend, take Dave Doolin’s free course, and buy Blog Post Engineering.

    It is not just because I’m kissing up to Dave (though there’s that, too). It is because Dave Doolin + Website in a Weekend + Blog Post Engineering, taught me stuff that made me a little smarter and my blog a lot better.

    Just ask Amanda Farough, who I am pretty sure fell out of her chair when I – the queen of don’t tell me a damn thing about tech because I Don’t Wanna Know, just make it work and we’ll never speak of it except in hushed tones – e-mailed her a line of buggy code and said “someone has hacked my site; I found this”.

    I might have told Dave this story in a giddy, “look at me! I’m so smart!” moment. He was very proud of me.

    But I digress. Go check out Blog Post Engineering. I guarantee you’ll learn lots that will make you (and your blog) better.

    And in three months, Google might love you 117% more, too.

    May 5, 2010 | filed under: People, Work

    24 people have we need you too.

    How To Get A Book Deal – The Accidentally Epic Series




    Here’s a list of all the pieces in the accidentally epic how-to-get-a-book deal series based on advice from published authors to a wannabe (that’s me!):

    The how-to-get-a-book-deal piece, in full:

    How to Get a Book Deal. An Evolutionary, Biblical Approach. (This Is Why I am a Writer And Not a Scientist.)

    The How To Get A Book Deal Interviews, with:

    * I also did phone-interviews with Josh Hanagarne and Gretchen Rubin but get very, very sad when I think about doing more transcription

    **My phone interview with Gretchen Rubin – in which she gave me some personal advice that really landed with me – inspired me to be a little nicer, online. Gretchen Rubin is my Jiminy Cricket.

    Guest Posts at Write To Done (that triggered this whole series):

    Guest Post at Write to Done: How to Get a Book Deal: Part 1 – Printasauraus Rex Vs. The Blog: Publishing 2.0

    Get Thee A Blog, and A Big One: Guest Post At Write to Done

    March 28, 2010 | filed under: How To Get a Book Deal, People, Work

    no people have we need you too.

    How to Get a Book Deal. An Evolutionary, Biblical Approach. (This Is Why I am a Writer And Not a Scientist.)




    You know the old saw, “if you want to learn something, teach it”?

    I’ve got deep, dark nefarious plans to write a book.

    But I don’t know a thing about the publishing industry. Agents, proposals, negotiating, and advances are a sexy mystery to me.

    So I asked around. I asked

    Gretchen Rubin – The Happiness Project, Power Money Fame Sex, Forty Ways to Look At Winston Churchill, Forty Ways to Look at JFK, Profane Waste (with Dana Hoey)

    Leo Babauta – The Power of Less

    Danielle LaPorte – Style Statement

    Erin Doland – Unclutter Your Life in One Week

    Josh Hanagarne - I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you…but watch him. A book is coming…ok I can’t keep a secret. Read the piece.

    Chris Guillebeau – The Art of Non-Conformity (in stores Fall 2010)

    I asked them: how’d you get a book deal, baby? (With variations on that theme.)

    And they told me. And it was goooooood.

    (You can read my interviews with Erin Doland and Chris Guillebeau, here. I’ll run the interview with Leo Babauta, tomorrow.)

    The first two (of four) parts of this mammoth essay (3500+ words!) appeared at Write To Done, as

    Here’s the piece, in its entirety.

    ____________________

    How to Get a Book Deal. An Evolutionary, Biblical Approach. (This Is Why I am a Writer And Not a Scientist.)

    Want a book deal? Think your magnetic, compelling, ninja talent for the written word is all it takes?

    Think again.

    Now, says author/blogger/truth-telling goddess Danielle LaPorte, “two-thirds of a publisher’s decision is based on your platform”.

    In other words, your blog. How famous are you? How big does your audience and ‘platform’ need to be?

    “Pretty fucking huge, apparently…” continues LaPorte, who was in New York last September pimping her latest book proposal to agents and publishers, “because I just got told I’m not famous enough.”

    Publishing. It is Ancient History so Study the Scrolls.

    Danielle LaPorte knows a lil’ something about the publishing racket.

    In a former life, LaPorte was freelance book publicist for publishing houses like Simon and Schuster and Harper Collins. Now she has a juju personal development site called White Hot Truth, a rockin’ inspirational speaking career, and a new TV gig.  And that’s not all: four years ago, she and a co-author wrote Style Statement and sold it to the prestigious Little Brown and Company for a $150,000 advance.

    Back then, she didn’t even have a blog.  True story.

    Bestselling author Gretchen Rubin didn’t have a blog, either, when she pitched her Happiness Project book proposal to publishers. An established, best-selling author of four books, her read on the blog/book deal relationship is a little less go-blog-go.

    In publishing circles, says Rubin, “there is some skepticism about bloggers. Books and blogs are very different mediums. Can a blogger write a book that hangs together as a narrative?”

    Still, Rubin’s agent encouraged her to start a blog.

    “She planted seeds,” says Rubin, “and I was resistant…” Eventually, though, she started her blog, The Happiness Project, to test her thesis that novelty (new medium, the blog) and consistency (maintaining the blog and writing new content daily) are essential components of happiness.

    Now, Rubin has been told that “your blog is more important than your book. Never forget that.”

    Those stories – legends of non-fiction book deals signed only three to four years ago and captured without carefully cultivated venus-blog-traps – might be ancient history.

    Printasauras Rex? Meet Twitter. It Will Eat You Alive. Play Nice.

    It was about a two-and-a-half year process from securing an agent to it [the book] coming off the presses. Painfully long. It is totally jurassic. The publishing industry is antiquated.

    Publishers have not seen the future. There are a few who are admitting that things have to change and that they are Jurassic and that the future is social media. The future is multimedia expressions of all forms of literature. – Danielle LaPorte

    The publishing industry might be prehistoric, Jurassic and slow-moving, but it will follow the scent of food. Or cash.

    You’ve got a blog and an email list and an RSS feed of devoted readers to whom you can announce – and pre-sell – your book? Yes, please.

    Gary Vaynerchuk knows this. He also knows his worth. Vaynerchuk worked 5 days a week for seventeen months to create his cult/platform and estimates the audience for Wine Library TV at 90,000 people per episode. He has 850,480 followers on Twitter. When he mentions a wine, it sells.

    Craig Haseroty, the owner Sojourn Cellars, a small winery in California, told the New York Times that “nothing has put more people on our database and sold more wine than Wine Library TV.” Vaynerchuk mentioned their wine and their switchboard lit up. In 24 hours, Sojourn Cellars answered 500 phone calls and e-mails. They sold a lot of wine.

    That’s the power of suggestion. Vaynerchuk’s followers are vayniacs.

    Somewhere out there, Seth Godin and Chris Brogan are smiling, knowingly.

    With this kind of clout, the wine-spitting social media maestro Vaynerchuk was not likely to say “book deal? Really, ME? Really REALLY? Oh THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.”

    Legend has it that Harper Studio is publishing 2.0. They’ve heard of this little thing the kids call a ‘platform’ and are willing to share the profits – and also the pain and price of promotion – with authors.

    And President Bob Miller apparently doesn’t pay a penny over $100K for an advance.

    What is a Vaynerchuk with a legion of devoted, possibly tipsy vayniacs to do with a price ceiling?

    Blow it up.

    Vaynerchuk set up shop in the Harper office.  Tweeted about The 26th Story, the Harper Studio blog. Watched, in real time, as that blog suddenly drowned in traffic.

    His point: my people like me. They like my suggestions. They WILL buy my book and make all of us rich and pfooey! I throw down my handkerchief in a faux snit and laugh at your measly $100K!

    (This is not a direct quote.)

    The result? Gary Vaynerchuk – who casually admits that he doesn’t read books – signed a seven figure (translation for the math challenged: at least a million dollars), ten book deal with Harper Studio. His first book, Crush It, debuted in September 2009, and yeah, it did make the New York Times’ bestseller list.

    And he’s not even a writer.

    I know. I just died a little, inside, too.

    The moral of the story? (And, I argue, the moral is not just a story because it is based on a very comprehensive, validated sample of at least three published authors, which makes it a scientific fact.)

    Get a blog, rock it out, and then go get yourself a book deal.

    Need a Book Deal? Get Thee A Blog, and a Big One

    Newbie authors and big deal bloggers Chris Guillebeau, Leo Babauta and Erin Doland accidentally and accidentally-on-purpose hacked their way through the publishing jungle with their brain children/addictions – Art of Non-Conformity, Zen Habits and The Unclutterer – firmly in tow.

    If Chris Guillebeau was forced to identify his favourite child, he’d waffle: ”I really love them both.”

    But I’m going to kill them both if you don’t choose.

    “I guess if I had to choose, I’d choose the blog since it allows me to reach more people…”.

    Even so, Guillebeau started his blog with a book deal in mind. “It was one of the primary goals of starting my blog,” he says, “I felt like I had a message to share and wanted to write a book.” He knew that it would be “hard to break into the publishing world without a strong online presence” and so along came ”the blog and everything else I did online for nearly a full year prior to getting the book deal.”

    Guillebeau has now signed a deal worth more than a handful of m&ms but less than $100K, and “in terms of the time commitment, probably reflective of minimum wage.” What the hell, Chris? “That’s OK with me, though – I feel very grateful that I can do what I love to do”. Well, okay then. You’ve got a book deal and we don’t. Thanks for rubbing it in.

    Guillebeau is probably writing that book right now – likely while sitting in a plane or an airport terminal, poor baby – and expects his book The Art of Non-Conformity to be in stores September 2010.

    Like Chris Guillebeau, Leo Babauta also loves his first-born best. His blog “is my baby, and will always hold a special place deep within my heart” but publishing a book was “a fantasy come true,” thanks to his blog:

    As my blog took off, publishers and agents approached me. My blog had 26,000 subscribers within the first year, so it was obvious my writing was connecting with a lot of people — people who responded enthusiastically…

    It was essential that I built up my audience with my blog before I tried to sell the book. Publishers get a million requests per second (about the same as the number of Google searches done per second), and you need to stand out. If you have a successful blog that has shown your potential as a writer and marketer, you have a good shot at least. If you don’t, you’d better have an AMAZING proposal.

    Leo Babauta knows what he’s talking about. He has to. He has six kids to feed which is why I’m so glad his publisher advanced him $80,000 for his 2008 book, The Power of Less.

    I digress.

    Unlike Guillebeau and Babauta, Erin Doland doesn’t talk about her blog and her book in parental terms, but that is because she has a problem. She is “obsessed with reading and writing books the way druggies pursue their next high.”

    In fact, before Doland signed her book deal, she would lie in bed at night and “stare at the ceiling and feel like I had failed to achieve one of my purposes in life.” And then, during the day, she’d bitch about it. “I wasn’t quiet about this failure…Everyone I know was well aware of my feelings of inadequacy over not yet having written a book.”

    Thank goodness for her wildly popular blog, The Unclutterer, because “if it weren’t for my posts on Unclutterer.com there wouldn’t be Unclutter Your Life in One Week. My agent and editor both were fans of my writing on the website, and they wouldn’t have had a clue whom I was if it weren’t for the site.”

    But they did and they do and Unclutter Your Life in One Week came out November 3, 2009.  Bulging garages and strung-out attics everywhere are detoxing as we speak.

    Get Thee an Agent

    Josh Hanagarne has some serious blog juju.

    World’s Strongest Librarian is less than a year old, but traffic doubles each month; writing furiously helps Hanagarne muscle through Tourette’s Syndrome; ‘his people’ are icky-sticky passionate; and oh yes Seth Godin e-mailed him to say thanks but no thanks to Hanagarne’s offer to guest post.

    Why was Godin’s rejection magic?

    Because in Godin’s humble, genius-marketing opinion, Hanagarne’s story should be a book, not a guest post, and so he should talk to Godin’s literary agent RIGHT NOW. Seth Godin hooked Josh Hanagarne up.

    This is a blogger’s wet field-of-dream. If you write it (blog it!), they will come.

    The magical baseball/blogging/cornfield of publishing dreams worked for Leo Babauta, Erin Doland and Josh Hanagarne. But what if your imaginary agent doesn’t hear your frantic law-of-attraction affirmations “I will get an agent and a book deal and a sick, sick advance, I will get an agent and a book deal and a sick, sick advance” and magically appear?

    Simple: Go get yourself an agent.

    “This is the hardest part”, says Gretchen Rubin, who kicked it old school and knocked on doors.

    So did Chris Guillebeau. Yes, even social media savvy and internet famous Chris Guillebeau had to get out there and actively seek representation.

    Before his blog waged war on Alexa, Guillebeau “approached everyone I could think of and more. I knocked on doors, posted on my blog that I was looking for an agent, and asked a couple of hundred people for referrals. Some people wrote back, some didn’t, but that’s just how it works.”

    Now that Guillebeau’s campaign for world domination is firmly underway, “the tables have turned and I get approached all the time. I’ve been fortunate to receive a lot of good media coverage – New York Times, CNN, Business Week, etc. – and out of that experience, a number of other people have made contact to pitch me on things.”

    Recruiting representation worked for Rubin, who oozes kind words about her agent, and it worked for Chris Guillebeau. Guillebeau is utterly, completely, passionately sold on his agent, David Fugate with LaunchBooks. “He’s fantastic,” says Guillebeau, “and the book would not have sold so quickly without his great work. He also spent a great deal of time refining the proposal to make it both more marketable (which I expected) and also much better in terms of content (which I didn’t expect but greatly appreciated)”.

    Danielle LaPorte would approve. When choosing an agent, she advises writers to “hold out for the love,” because, after all, “it is a potentially life-changing relationship. Your agent will be your greatest advocate. They will want to get you the most money, because, you know, they’re getting 10-15% of it, so they will want to get you the exposure.”  Not only that, but “the right agent will actually work with you to craft that book. They could be hugely influential in the finished product. They will go to the mat to you in the end on everything from price point to pub date to cover design. It is really important.”

    And the writer/agent chemistry doesn’t have to be interpersonal-clicky-butterflies love.

    “It may sound contradictory,” admits LaPorte, “but you and your agent don’t need to see eye to eye on the material. You need to have free reign with your voice. An agent can be philosophical opposition and still go get you a good deal and help bolster your career.”

    How did she find her agent for Style Statement?

    The answer makes for a great story. Malcolm Gladwell (yes! Malcolm Gladwell! Poet-wooing, point-tipping, intellectual whodunit-spinning, best-selling, Malcolm Gladwell!) makes an appearance.

    Like doorknockers Chris Guillebeau and Gretchen Rubin, Danielle LaPorte found an agent it an old-fashioned way. She read books.

    In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell “profusely, adoringly thanked his agent” whom, he argued, should be the “next president of the United States or at the very least the CEO of Microsoft.” LaPorte thought, “she’ll do” and e-mailed Malcolm Gladwell.

    (Duh! Who wouldn’t?)

    LaPorte put on her charming pants and danced. She wrote, “I’m Canadian. You’re Canadian. You’re from Etobicoke. I know how to pronounce Eh-toe-bih-ko. You’re half-black. I have dreadlocks. Here’s my concept. Help me get to your agent.”

    He replied within two days, writing, “You’re so charming. How could I refuse?”

    To recap: kissing best-selling Godin/Gladwell ass can land you an agent. If that fails, your blog is your baseball/cornfield and if you build it they will come. If that fails, try calling around, knocking on doors, writing letters (and maybe even reading books!) and asking for one directly.

    But by all means, by whatever means necessary, get an agent, and a good one, and one you like (even love), because a good agent will help you write and sell a great proposal.

    And that’s what you sell, when you hawk a non-fiction book: a proposal. So the agent/author/proposal triangle is important.  Get all the angles right.

    Write a Divine Book Proposal

    Ah yes, the book proposal. If you’re writing non-fiction, you sell a proposal, not a finished manuscript.

    What is a book proposal? It is a hook, a map of the book (the table of contents), your bio, market research (ie where does this fit? Who will read it?), marketing (how will you and the publisher sell the pants off it?) and oh yes, some sample chapters to show that you really can write more than a proposal.

    And now, apparently, a book proposal needs to include the weight of your platform. Who are you? How big are you? Who is talking about you? How do you talk back? How much does Alexa and Google love you?

    Need help licking the proposal beast? It is easily available online and in the bookstores. Leo Babauta “found a few examples of proposals on the web and picked out the parts I liked best, merging them into one kick-ass document.” Danielle LaPorte used a template created by Linda Severson and then “when it felt right to go out of the box, I did. I am not Times New Roman. I am not double-spaced”.

    Even with all the resources easily available, every single author I spoke to (LaPorte, Rubin, Babauta, Doland, Guillebeau) said that when it came time to cook up a proposal, their agent was in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, apron strings tied, stirring the pot.  Agents are helpful critters. That’s why you should get a good one.

    Josh Hanagarne found oodles of helpful proposal writing books. He would read how-to-write-a-proposal book, revise his proposal, read another book, revise the proposal, and did that, several times, until his agent said “I want you to stop reading those books.”

    So, if you’re stuck, what about a proposal coach?

    I put the question to our intrepid authors.

    Q. Proposal Coach. Did you use or consider using one?

    The answers could be characterized as follows:

    A1. What is this mythical creature of which you speak?

    Erin Doland: No. I didn’t even know there were such things as proposal coaches.

    A2. That sounds like a scam.

    Leo Babauta: I didn’t know they existed. If they do, they are probably scammers. The info you need to write a proposal is available free online. A proposal coach would make money on the insecurities of writers, which are notoriously large and numerous.

    A3. Your agent is your proposal coach.

    Chris Guillebeau: I thought that was the role of a good agent. The problem I see with a proposal coach is that they aren’t the ones who will pitch your project to publishers. I suppose if you’re having a hard time getting a concept together, then such a person could help, but realize that you’d likely end up doing it all over again with a good agent.

    A4. Might not be a bad idea.

    Gretchen Rubin: That might not be a bad idea.

    So there you have it. It might not be a bad idea to get a proposal coach, if that’s your thing, but it is probably a better idea to just get a great agent who will help you write a killer proposal.

    The Deal. Negotiating. You Need a Meat-Eater for This.

    Back in the day, Oprah had a shark of an agent. Sort of. He’s actually an entertainment lawyer, has been called “the little-known power behind the media queen’s throne”, and Oprah herself says he’s “a piranha.”

    Oprah’s piranha/entertainment lawyer is Jeff Jacobs and they met when she was looking for contract advice in 1984. Jacobs advised her to build a brand and create an empire rather selling herself as talent-for-hire. Then he helped her create Harpo.

    That worked out fairly well for her.

    If Oprah has a piranha, you need a shark. We’re talking about media now, not publishing, but the lesson holds.

    The lesson is this: get the right agent. Then, when you’re approaching publishers, “Don’t go with your begging bowl”, cautions Danielle LaPorte, because “for an author, a book is a huge upfront investment”. (Penelope Trunk blogs that writing a book is a ‘time sink’.)

    In other words: don’t be afraid to walk away.

    And don’t lose sight of your art. That’s why you have an agent. Your job is the content. Do you want to write a book, or any book, or do you want to write your book?

    Josh Hanagarne, for example, doesn’t want to write about Tourette’s. He wants to write a memoir of his abusive, dysfunctional relationship with Tourette’s. He wants to “write on a nerve”.

    Danielle LaPorte wants to “go back hold my baby a little while longer”, and while she does that, she wonders, “if there were no agents, no publishers,” (heresy! blasphemer!) ”no twitter followers, is this the book you would want to write?”

    Are Angels Singing and Monks Chanting? A little?

    Is this the book you want to write? Is your agent the shiz? Did you rock out the proposal? Did the proposal-writing process make your manuscript into the book you didn’t even know you could write?  Did your publisher present your agent – who is of course the shiz and a negotiating shark (or piranha) of paleolithic proportions and origins – with a huge oversized cheque with your name written all over it? Or just an adequate cheque?  Adequate is fine. Cash may be king but books are divine.

    The writers in this story may be online gurus and entrepreneurs and daily micro-publishers (what is a blog, after all?), but at heart they are bookies. As in book-lovers, not loan sharks.

    Chris Guillebeau – straight up – admits that his goal, from the drop, was a book deal. Erin Doland suspects that her “friends are happier than I am now that I have a book under my belt simply because they no longer have to listen to me talk about it”.  Gretchen Rubin was already a best-selling author when she reluctantly started a blog that happily took over the world. Leo Babatua was so happy to get a book deal that he stopped and dropped it like it was hot. “I’m big on booty moves”, says the Zen Habits, simple-living guru, simply.

    So there you have it. Want a book deal? Get a blog. A big one. And rock it out.

    I know. The (snobbish, print-loving) writer in me just died a little, too. Again.

    ———-

    Here’s a list of all the pieces in the accidentally epic how-to-get-a-book deal series (with from advice from published authors to a wannabe (that’s me):

    The How To Get A Book Deal Interviews, with:

    * I also did phone-interviews with Josh Hanagarne and Gretchen Rubin but get very, very sad when I think about doing more transcription

    **My phone interview with Gretchen Rubin – in which she gave me some personal advice that really landed with me – inspired me to be a little nicer, online. Gretchen Rubin is my Jiminy Cricket.

    Guest Posts at Write To Done (that triggered this whole series):

    Guest Post at Write to Done: How to Get a Book Deal: Part 1 – Printasauraus Rex Vs. The Blog: Publishing 2.0

    Get Thee A Blog, and A Big One: Guest Post At Write to Done

    March 27, 2010 | filed under: How To Get a Book Deal, Money, People, Work

    19 people have we need you too.

    the blogging for money game seems a ballsy one, to me




    I have this idea – more of an observation than a fully-fleshed out structural theory – that the how-to-make-money-online blogging conventions are pretty male.

    The model:

    person has a question/problem, types it into Google, follows links to pages that rank high for those query keywords, lands on a page of an ‘online authority’, who ultimately provides – for sale – a ‘solution’ to that problem

    and so, to capture that traffic and convert it to a sale, probloggers aim to rank highly on Google (authority), structure themselves as likeable, trustable experts (authority), and offer infoproducts that solve problems

    the bloggers, then, who will be successful, are the ones who follow this model, exploit it, and provide solutions

    that’s how you monetize. You capture the questions and provide the solutions.

    and, as a result of this process, and as a function of how people read online, effective blog posts are structured in a particular way:

    • pithy headlines
    • short sentences and paragraphs and just short, in general
    • body text carved into sections using Headers to facilitate scanning
    • lists
    • brief, lean and to-the-point (the solution, the tip, the hack)

    my observation: the information-finding model and the genre conventions are linear, analytical and about problem-solving and solutions

    my beef: the websites that provide solutions are the least bewitching and entrancing to me (with an exception or two, and usually that’s due to a relationship I’ve got with the blogger, or by how deeply they’ve embedded their personality in their prose)

    and…A-list solution bloggers = men

    probloggers tend to be men

    hell, bloggers, it seems, tend to be men

    this linear, solution-hunting model and attendant blog-writing genre just feels very male to me

    and so lots of the advice – even the basic genre conventions – about how to be a successful problogger just plain put me off

    and that’s it. That’s my observation.

    January 28, 2010 | filed under: Work

    71 people have we need you too.

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