Prewriting techniques can make all the difference between a blog that causes you nothing but struggle and one that flows easily from beginning to end. The brain naturally makes associations…generates ideas…creates connections…so be sure to give yourself plenty of time to allow it to work with you instead of against you before you start to write.

What are these prewriting techniques?

You can generate ideas in many different ways. One of my favorite techniques is to simply go for a walk. I put a small notepad and pen in my pocket and head out. As I think about my overall topic, ideas soon begin to flow. As they do, I stop and quickly jot them down, then I continue walking. By the time I return to the computer, my blog is fully-formed, and all I have to do is sit down and write it out!

I know other people who get their best ideas in the shower. Others get them in their dreams. What about you? What are you doing when ideas come to you most easily and clearly?

Traditional Prewriting Techniques

Writers have several traditional techniques they use to get ideas flowing. These include:

In free writing (or freewriting), you take a piece of paper and a pen and go to a quiet, comfortable place where you can be alone and undisturbed for a few minutes. Set a time limit—such as 10 minutes—and then begin to write.

Put down whatever comes to your mind, without criticizing or judging it. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar or the quality of your ideas. Just write—without stopping—for 10 mintues. If you can’t think of anything to say for a few seconds, write down “I can’t think of anything to say” until a new idea pops into your head. (If you don’t stop writing, ideas will soon begin to flow again.)

The depth of insight that comes out of this process can often be amazing, so be sure not to stop before your time has ended!

In listing, you focus on a topic and allow your brain to quickly associate ideas with it; as the ideas begin to come, quickly jot them down in the form of a list.

I just replied to a question on another blog about when I realized I was a writer. I thought I would continue this discussion on my own blog. I’d also like to ask you a similar question: When did you know you were a ____ (writer…artist…coach…entrepreneur…scientist…whatever)?

Writing has always been as close to me as breathing. I grew up on a ranch in Montana in the days when there was just one television station, so I read constantly and wrote a lot of REALLY bad poetry as a teenager.

I also loved learning foreign languages, which in turn taught me a great deal about English. And I had a wonderful, inspiring English teacher when I was a junior in high school. Her name was Mrs. Quanbeck, and (30 years later) she is still my favorite teacher–even though I’ve since earned a BA and two MAs! (I tracked her down through the Internet last year, called her out of the blue, and told her how much she’d meant to me. It was wonderful talking with her.)

As an adult, I’ve taught writing and English as a second language to hundreds of college students, and I’ve written my share of corporate communications, too. I’ve also edited lots of stuff–business communications and academic papers, mostly.

My major passions revolve around human performance development and lifelong learning, so I tend to write nonfiction articles, ebooks, and ecourses that teach something.

What most astonishes me about writing, however, is the power it has to help us learn, create and heal. It is such a wonderful tool for self-discovery–whether we understand how to make our verbs agree with their subjects or not!

I believe that every kind of writing tells a story—whether it is a blog, a personal statement for a graduate school application, a business letter, a scientific article, or the Great American Novel. Stories from our families, our communities, and the media form our worldview and shape our lives.

Our storytelling faculty appears to be innate; this means that we unconsciously seek a well-told story in everything that we read. When a piece of writing meets our expectations, it can have a powerful effect on us; when it doesn’t, it can leave us confused, irritated, even angry.

Stories Help Us Learn

Scientists have discovered that our natural ability to create stories is intricately connected to our ability to learn. This is because our brains seek to create meaning through relationship, and stories do this superbly.

Because stories form such an important part of who we are, it is important to understand their underlying architecture.

Stories Have an Underlying Structure

At the most basic level, every story has a beginning, a middle and an ending. The beginning draws the audience into the story and makes them want to hear it. The middle tells the basic events in some kind of logical order so that listeners can follow the story easily. Finally, the ending ties up loose ends and brings the story to a satisfying conclusion.

Stories Are Targeted at a Particular Audience

Successful stories are always targeted at a particular audience and use language and terminology the audience understands. This means storytellers never tell just one version; instead, they constantly revise their stories in a creative process that keeps them new and fresh. For example, they may add an extra dollop of humor in order to relax their audience and create a feeling of community; they may change their vocabulary and details when they tell the story to children; or they may change the order of events to add emphasis.

Stories Use Concrete Details

At all times, however, storytellers use concrete details and strong, active verbs to create forward movement and energy. Their language creates pictures in the minds of their listeners, and each word is important in moving the story along. Storytellers are also masters at creating rhythm. This means that their pace is sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes it stops altogether. This gives the audience the opportunity to absorb what has just been said.

Stories Help Us Feel

Above all, storytellers use emotion to connect deeply to their audience. Skillful storytellers can make us laugh or cry. Their use of emotion helps us identify strongly with the topic, engages us in the message, and unlocks our ability to create and problem solve. Emotions help us remember, they inspire us, and they move us to take action.

What does this mean to you if you just want to write a business article?

It means that you carefully write an introduction that captures your readers’ interest and tantalizes them with the essence of the message to come. It means that your ideas flow logically from one major point to another and that you avoid inserting ideas that are random or out of place. It means that you use concrete details, active verbs and strong nouns and avoid useless fillers and fluff.

And it means that you become adept at listening for rhythm, that you play with your writing until it “sings.” How do you do this? By always being willing to revise what you have written. By changing your vocabulary and the length of your sentences and paragraphs. By playing with different kinds of punctuation, using parallelism, and adding headings and subheadings when appropriate. Finally, you do this by being conscious of white space and giving your readers plenty of chances to stop, breathe, and absorb what you have written.

Most importantly, it means that you find ways to engage your readers’ emotions so that they care about your message.

For More Information

If you’d like to learn more about how to improve your writing skills by understanding the characteristics of a well-told story, check out my free white paper: All Writing Tells a Story

This blog revolves around a question for which I do not have an answer! (Maybe you can help me?) One of my Facebook contacts (Nikhil Kripalani) just published a quote by Patanjali that states:

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

I think this is an absolutely wonderful quote. (It sounds a lot like the one attributed to Goethe, doesn’t it?) This is why I have always admired (and to be honest envied) people who have found–or just seem to be born knowing–what their great purpose is.

One man I know–Ettore de Conciliis–is a superb artist in Italy. Ettore was born knowing he was an artist and has spent a lifetime just getting better and better at it.

My two biggest heroes are Greg Mortenson and Muhammad Yunus. Greg is the American author of two amazing books (Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools) that detail his successful efforts to build schools for girls throughout the remotest areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. About 16 years ago, he just happened to stumble into the Pakistani village of Korphe after a failed attempt at climbing a mountain and ended up promising to return and build the people a school.

Muhammad is the Bangladeshi (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) who started the microcredit movement that has now moved thousands of people (mainly women and children) out of poverty around the world. Thirty some years ago, Muhammad just happened to loan a few dollars out of his pocket to a poverty-stricken group of women who wanted to start their own business. They paid the loan back with interest, and a worldwide movement began!

In other words, both of these men “accidentally” discovered their life’s mission and look where it has led them!

What about those of us who aren’t sure what we born to do? Who struggle throughout our lives to find the big “What”? How do we find a purpose that so inspires us that we transcend our limitations and literally move mountains, too?

I have been thinking a lot recently about a client for whom I have written some press releases. He is a physician who owns his own practice and is looking for ways to build his business.

My client does have a website, but he created it himself using a free template. Unfortunately, he isn’t much of a writer, and the information on his site is confusing, sparse, and fails to build any kind of relationship with his potential patients. In addition, he has no understanding of search engine optimization (SEO), so the site completely lacks any features (key words, headings, links, unique title tags) that would attract the attention of search engines.

I have urged my client to improve his site, but he doesn’t think it matters to his business because he is a specialist and gets most of his business through referrals from general practitioners. Statistics that disprove his assumptions, however, are everywhere. Just a few include:

• Daily newspaper circulation is 48.4 million, and the number of people who watch TV every month is 285 million. But the number of core searches conducted online every month is 14 billion! (Source: Lee Odden, TopRank)

• According to Chris Smith of NetConcepts, 80% of internet user sessions begin at search engines, and 55% of online purchases are made on sites found through search engine listings. In fact, Smith says that Google listings are your “personal sales force” and if you’re not doing SEO, you’re “leaving money on the table.”

I just conducted my own search and located the site of the Maine Health Care Coalition (MHCC), which provides a webpage that lists tips for choosing a primary care doctor. A critical piece of their advice is:

“Visit the website for the physician practice. Based on the information you find on the website, choose a few doctors that seem to be a good fit for you. What is important to you in a doctor? Gender, education and training, and areas of specialty are examples of things that are important to some people.”

The MHCC site also provides guidelines for how to select a specialist physician. The guidelines suggest a variety of questions that potential patients should ask when choosing a specialist–and all of them should be answered on the specialist’s website. For example:

• Does the suggested specialist work in the same business arrangement as my PCP?
• Have my PCP and the specialist successfully shared care before?
• What are the specialist’s credentials?
• Will the specialist provide all of my care for this problem?
• How capable is the facility where the specialist works?

Clearly, a doctor’s website is THE medium with which to develop a relationship with potential patients! If the website lacks critical information and fails to develop a warm, positive relationship, the potential patient will move on to the next doctor’s website.

Most importantly, if the site lacks SEO, the online searcher may not discover the doctor’s website at all!

Revision plays a critical role in the writing process.

If you care about quality, however—especially if you are a small business owner and every word you write directly represents you—stop! Don’t press that send button just yet.

I’m sure you’ve heard that writing is a process. This means that putting our thoughts down on paper is only the first step in producing a clear, coherent communication that achieves our goals. The most important step is the next one: Revision.

To be able to revise our work requires that we get some distance from it. This is because we are so close to the piece right after finishing it that we will “see” what we expect to see even if it isn’t actually there!

What’s the solution?

Put the piece down and walk away. Do something else for an hour or two (or—if at all possible—for a day or two). Then come back and carefully re-read what you have written. When you do, you may feel as though someone else had written it altogether.

This distance you have gained plays a critical role in the writing process because faulty reasoning, out-of-place ideas, confusing passages, wordiness, repetitions, and all manner of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors will suddenly leap out at you.

Another plus is that as you begin to work on the issues you have identified, completely new ideas…new support for your points…and better ways to express something will often occur to you as well.

The end result of this revision/taking a break process will be a powerful piece of writing that truly communicates with its intended audience and achieves its goals. At the same time, it will also demonstrate your expertise and your high regard for quality.

Clearly the benefits of taking a break outweigh the urge to just get the thing off your desk, don’t you think?

For the last 8 years, I have been teaching myself how to design, write and market a small business website that grows my writing, editing and writing coaching business. 

My passion has always revolved around languages, writing and storytelling, so the copywriting / grammar / proofreading part has come fairly easily to me. But I developed my geek genes late in life, so the technical aspects have involved a much larger learning curve. For software, I started out with FrontPage, went through a couple of other software programs, and ended up with Dreamweaver. 

In the last two years, I have begun to create websites for others (first as a volunteer and now for money), but I hesitate to officially call myself a “web designer.” There’s so much I don’t know (including Photoshop), and there are designs I just don’t know how to create (like curved edges, or logos that swoosh down into the body somehow). 

On the other hand, I am amazed again and again at how many professionally-designed websites are completely devoid of any SEO features at all! Shouldn’t that be a prerequisite for a professional web designer? 

Clients come to web designers because they want a site that will grow their business. If search engines can’t find the site because it uses no headings, alt tags, or links—and the title and description are identical for each page—isn’t that actually somewhat akin to fraud?

I woke up this morning thinking about how more and more communication is taking place online instead of face-to-face. In many cases, this is a positive development because it allows like-minded people and learners to join together (or find a teacher) from anywhere in the world. On the other hand, of course, it also means we lose out on the pleasures of connecting with another human being in person.

The event that stimulated these thoughts was an email I received this week from a local Portland organization whose monthly meetings I have been attending for a couple of  years. The email announced that the organization’s meetings will now take place solely online–and that the membership costs have quadrupled.

On the one hand, the organization is offering more benefits to members, who can now live anywhere in the world. Because monthly meetings will take place via teleconference and also be recorded, members can listen to them at a time that is convenient for them. Such a move also means the president of the organization no longer has to pay money to rent a facility and hope enough people attend each month to cover the costs.

On the other hand, it means that the organization that made it possible for people to laugh and talk with each other before, during and after meetings, plan networking picnics in the park in the summer, or meet each other at a cafe to share marketing and writing tips about their ebooks will no longer exist.

Another organization I am passionate about–one that is over 30 years old, already has an international membership, and whose board I served on for four years–is struggling to attract enough attendees to keep its annual conference going (especially this year). 

I believe that holding an online conference next year would be an excellent decision because it would enable our members to save several thousand dollars in travel expenses (especially those who come from outside of the United States) and still acquire the wonderful information, tools and techniques that our amazing presenters share year after year. Such a choice could, in fact, make the difference between surviving as an organization or not.

On the other hand, it also means that talking long into the night with someone I just met who shares my passion for learning; playing hooky with a woman who, like me, is a new board member and feeling the need for some downtime (which led us to bond with each other and become great friends and allies); and being inspired by a presenter who has participants dress in costumes from The Wizard of Oz and physically walk on a “yellow brick road” laid out on the classroom floor while reciting lines from a script in time to music will be impossible in an online teleconference.

In the end, I do understand why moving to an online venue makes sense, but it makes me sad, too.

A potential client contacted me recently. He had written a 70,000-word memoir and was looking for an editor. I asked him to send me the first chapter so I could evaluate the degree of editing that would be required. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly ready to be edited. In fact, it needed to be completely rewritten.

What was its problem?

It told his story rather than showed it. It presented one fact after another (sometimes in random order and almost always in passive voice) about the place in which he grew up, his father and mother, his siblings, the influence of fundamental religious teachings on the community. It had some interesting details, but it had no emotional impact on me as a reader.

We made a mutual decision not to pursue working with each other. He was not open to writing coaching–only to finding a copyeditor–and I was not willing to go forward as an editor on a project that still needed so much work. But I have been thinking about what I would have told him if he had been open to suggestion.

And that is…think of your memoir as though it were a movie script.

Choose a certain number of scenes for the opening act (i.e., Chapter One) and plot them out ahead of time. What is going to happen in scene one? Who are the characters? Where are they located? What are they doing? What are they saying?  What is the main character (the memoir writer) feeling as a result? After writing this out–including snippets of dialogue you want to incorporate–do the same thing for the remaining scenes in the chapter.

Then begin to write.

Such an approach would  go a long way toward helping the writer understand how to show rather than tell. It would help him realize that he needs to tell a story that draws his readers in, evokes emotion in them, and connects them deeply to particular characters and events. 

I would also suggest to this writer that he check his bookshelves or go to a bookstore and take a look at the first page of several really well written memoirs or biographies. Look how they begin. What does the writer do that draws you in immediately and makes you want to keep reading?

In Three Cups of Tea, for example, David Oliver Relin opens with a scene in the cockpit of a helicopter that is flying over the Hunza Valley in Northwestern Pakistan, which is surrounded by some of the highest mountain peaks in the world.  Relin nervously watches a flashing red light indicating that they are almost out of fuel, while the Pakistani Pilot,  Brigadier General Bhangoo, nonchalantly taps the fuel guage and explains that it is unreliable. Greg Mortenson is sitting next to the general with a map on his knees that hopefully indicates exactly where they are and how long it will be until they can land.

Relin continues to provide wonderful details that put the reader inside the cockpit. He also presents dialog that reveals the personality of the men in just a few words. And he does this page after page, making it extremely hard for the reader to put the book down!

Clearly, we can learn a great deal from analyzing the way that masters tell their tales, and it would have been a great place for my potential client to start.

Kabul, Afghanistan-1976

Although I have not visited Afghanistan since 1978, the country and her people have had a huge influence on my life. I went there for the first time in July 1976 as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In December that year, I met a Dutchman named Hans; in October 1977 we were married in Kabul at the church in the Italian embassy.

For the last 30 years, I have watched in sadness as the country and her people have been torn apart by a never-ending war. I have also watched in anger as the U.S. has twice come to the country’s aid and then deserted it.

Since many of my friends know about my Afghan connection, they have been asking me recently about my opinion of the surge. I have told them I honestly don’t know what the best solution is. On the one hand, my heart just wants to end both of our wars of choice and bring our soldiers home. On the other hand, I shudder to think what will happen to the country if we desert it for a third time.

Three Cups of Tea

This is why I was so eager to attend last week’s lecture by Greg Mortenson. I have few modern-day heroes, but Mortenson is one of them. As described so beautifully in Three Cups of Tea, he has spent the last 16 years almost singly-handedly building schools—mostly for girls—in the remotest areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It was interesting to see Greg in person. He was wearing a dowdy gray sweater that was stretched tightly over a somewhat pudgy body. His shoulders were a little hunched, and he kind of shuffled as he walked across the stage. He was also humble, self-effacing, and extremely inspiring. It just goes to show that you don’t have to be a rock star to change the world and that one human being with a passion to help others can make a huge difference.

Greg’s organization, the Central Asian Institute (CAI), has now built 131 schools that serve 58,000 students, including 44,000 girls. Although the Taliban has destroyed many schools in the area, not one of CAI’s schools has met that fate. This is because Greg only builds a school when the leaders of the community come to him and ask him to do so. They also have to agree to donate land, thousands of hours of manual labor, and whatever materials they can. This ensures that the community truly buys into the project and strongly supports it.

In fact, only one of CAI’s schools has ever been attacked by the Taliban. This happened about two years ago. In response, the villagers attacked the men who had overtaken their school, killed a few of them, jailed the rest, and reopened the school two days later.

One of the most disturbing things I learned from Greg was that the Taliban have been actively working to destroy the culture in Afghanistan by driving a wedge between the children and the elders. Traditionally, the whole society—young and old—has had a high regard for the elders, who regularly gather together to make decisions for the good of the community. By removing the male children and putting them in schools that teach them to disrespect the leaders of their own communities, the whole society is beginning to fall apart. (First the individual communities collapse, Greg explained, then the central government.)

Women Students at My Wedding Reception

Greg said that an educated woman plays a critical role in this regard, which is one of the reasons the Taliban are so opposed to the education of women. This is because a woman who can read, learn and think for herself will not let her sons attend such schools. She will also have fewer children, which improves the health of the whole family, and she will ensure that her children  obtain an education.

Greg quoted a proverb from Africa that says: “If you educate a boy, you educate an individual. But if you educate a girl, you educate a community.”

At the very end of his talk, Greg acknowledged that many people in the audience were probably wondering what he thought about the planned surge of U.S. soldiers. He didn’t exactly answer this question one way or the other, but this is the gist of his comments as nearly as I can remember.

First he said that the politicians in Washington made their decision to support the surge behind closed doors—without soliciting opinions from the American people or from the Afghans themselves. He believes this was a big mistake. He also said that the politicians—including Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden—have made few trips to the country and understand little about its people and culture.

On the other hand, he said the military leaders really “get it.” In fact, ALL of the American officers in Afghanistan are now required to read Greg’s book! Greg has had many conversations with General Petraeus and other high level military leaders, and they seem to understand that to succeed in Afghanistan, Americans must build relationships, understand and respect the culture, and work closely with the elders.

The alternative to the surge is to increase air bombing through drones (as Biden has apparently urged). This is absolutely the wrong step, of course, because drones kill women, children and innocent men as well as whatever military leader we might be targeting. The result is growing hatred of Americans.

So…for the moment…I think I’ll try and suppress my baby-boomer distrust of the military and support the surge. The alternatives are worse. And maybe–just maybe–we will get it right this time.