One interesting thing about NaNoWriMo is that it is the embodiment of a common technique — separating creation from editing. There is very little room for editing if you are going to generate a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. The emphasis here is on quantity with the explicit removal of any expectations for quality. (If you are thinking quality while writing you are doomed. If you are thinking while writing you’re pretty much doomed. This is one place where the myth of writers block comes from.)

This 50k task translates into 2000 words per day assuming you work six days and rest on the seventh (there are exactly 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays in November 2008 so whether you choose the Sabbath as originally observed or the Pope’s sabbath you’re covered).  The funny thing is that if you approach it as writing 2000 words per day it is much less daunting. As an added bonus it will also develop a habit that you can maintain for the rest of your life. [Why choose that habit? In MJ's Bestseller Blueprint he interviews an author who has produced nearly a hundred books with, you guessed it, 2000 words per day!]

Let’s go really extremist! (Will power and self control are highly over rated.) How can we enforce that separation of creation and editing? I have done this by typing on a manual typewriter. While fun, this did not feel very environmentally friendly, especially when it would take a ream of paper per draft! So being a geek I considered writing a program that did not let me edit while writing. Then the first of the programmer’s virtues (laziness, impatience, and hubris) kicked in.

What about not typing it in the first place!

So I asked myself “Self, how do we communicate that does not allow any editing?”
Hmm.

How about talking? There is no way to edit the words coming out of our mouths (as often as we would like there to be!). And as a bonus most people can talk faster than they type. Then we just need to get what we talk into a form we can edit later.  That sounds a lot like dictation or transcription. Getting your voice transcribed lets you paste together all the text to get your word count for NaNoWriMo and it lets you edit it (after November 30).

So now we need someone to follow us around and type up our every word. Sounds convenient, right?

Fortunately we live in a wonderful age and there are tons of ways to record your voice and at least as many places to get audio transcribed. If you have access to a phone I suggest using a service such as Drop.io where you call a specific number and leave your message straight into an MP3 in your “drop”. Then you can use a service like PodClerk to have the audio transcribed. The upside is that you can automate the whole thing so when you call you automagically get your transcripts the next day. The downside to this method is that PodClerk costs $0.75 per minute to transcribe. While this is one of the cheapest transcription rates I’ve seen it can add up quickly if you are using this method extensively. 50,000 words spoken at about 100 words per minute means 500 minutes which would overflow a free drop (if you kept all the audio files) and would cost you $375 just for November/NaNoWriMo!

The alternative that I recommend is a service called CopyTalk. CopyTalk gives you a phone number and pin like Drop.io, but rather than just storing an unlimited length recording CopyTalk lets you leave up to 4 minutes of message at a time (limit 5 per call) and emails you the transcripts of each of those 4 minute messages. Back to our 2000 words per day spoken at 100 words per minute means you need to talk for about 20 minutes a day to hit your NaNoWriMo goal. Coincidentally that means it could be done in a single call to CopyTalk (4 min/mesg * 5 mesg/call = 20 min/call). Did I mention that CopyTalk costs about $50-80 per month for unlimited messages?! The folks there do expect that their users are business people leaving memos or notes. If you are approaching your book as a business (which you should) and you are taking notes about each point in your outline (you do have an outline, right?) then this poses no problems. I have found that certain technical terms are best skipped or given a euphemism. (In one message I mentioned “die-in-package” and got “Diane ???” back.) One solution is as simple as using an abbreviation, ie QP instead of quilt packaging or DIP instead of die-in-package.

With a solid outline, a little ingenuity, and a few added constraints NaNoWriMo can be as simple as 20-30 minutes a day of “writing”.

What extreme measures do you need to take to hit your goals — NaNoWriMo or otherwise?

‘Tis a very literate season.

My first co-authored book is being released for sale tomorrow morning at 8:00am.

Go check it out at Lulu.com and support Variety The Children’s Charity by making your purchase.

Which do you prefer: 200+ co-authors each writing 400 words or one author writing 50,000 words?

This weekend a couple friends suggested I join them in NaNoWriMo-ing. Once I translated the verbalization into the wonky caps I realized they were talking about National Novel Writing Month . I said I’d be happy to play along and write non-fiction rather than a novel per se. On NaNoWriMo.com they claim "if you believe you’re writing a novel, we believe you’re writing a novel too." I started justifying a belief that non-fiction can be a novel ("a lengthy work of fiction") and then realized that several business books, including the one I am currently reading , have used a fictional track in parallel with the factual lessons.

After more pondering there turns out to be a number of reasons for writing a novel even if the topic of interest is non-fiction.

A powerful technique for focusing your service, whether teaching or marketing, is to create a persona of that ideal client . The more realistic you make that persona in your own mind the more you appeal to your ideal client. Oh, by the way, you’ll also serve them better because you know how they would like to be served.

Dimensionalization is a quick way to make your ideal client persona more realistic. Imagine how well you will understand your ideal client after writing a novel with them as the main character! You can also have them solve problems in their life by using products and services — like yours and ones you can recommend.

While you are busy solving your ideal client’s most painful problems you will also be dimensionalizing your product (or service). You’ll notice all the benefits that occur in the persona’s life because of your product. You’ll see dozens of ways the persona uses your product that you hadn’t thought of yet. You’ll get to hear the persona telling their friends what is important to them about your product. You’ll get to feel the joy, the relief, the satisfaction of that persona around your product. You’ll even get to hear that persona’s inner dialog as they decide to invest in your product to solve their problems.

Which of the dozens of benefits of writing a novel around your product are you most excited about?

[This post has been a draft for about 6-months. Talk about trying to get it "perfect"!
Thanks for your patience Stephen. Without further delay...]

Have you met copywriter Stephen Dean ? I was introduced to him through his collection of questions for one of his mentors and copywriting legends Michel Fortin . As I read the two volumes of "Tapping Michel Fortin’s Brain " I was more and more convinced by his questions that Stephen knows his stuff and is an accessible, go-to guy for copywriting questions.

Now the tables are turned and I get to ask Stephen a few questions!

WB: Please introduce yourself to those of my readers who haven’t met you yet.
SD: I’m a freelance copywriter working out of Washington state in my 4th year. Some of my clients are Jim Edwards, Ryan Deiss and some other big names I can’t mention. And now I share my experiences at StephensBlog.com .

What differences in mindset are you aware of between copywriting and writing for other reasons (to inform, to entertain, etc)?
Frankly I don’t see much difference, but that’s because of my writing style. I’ve always written like a copywriter, meaning short words, short sentences and short paragraphs. The reason copywriters write that way is because it makes their copy more accessible and more readable to a larger number of people…

…well isn’t that always how you should write? I think so, but with selling it’s crucial because you’re asking for action at the end.

Because the end results is so important in copywriting, you learn to modify how you inform and how you entertain when writing. You can’t be too boring while ‘teaching.’ And you can’t be so entertaining that it’s distracting away from the final action. So there’s a balance. And you always focus on the final action.

What rituals do you have to put yourself into the right state to write?
I get a good night’s sleep. I try to write at least something immediately after I wake up because my brain is fresh. I can be stuck on a section at 4pm and work an hour on it… or finish it in 10 minutes if I do it immediately after waking up.

I usually only write for about 10 minutes, then I get ready for the day and sit down to start writing again a couple hours later. And I try to only write for 3-4 hours at a time because after that my brain starts to overheat.

What role do story telling and emotion play in your writing?
Well a good story usually makes for the best copy. Your goal when writing copy is to get them from the top of the copy to the order link so they can purchase… and often a story that needs to be finished is the best way to keep them moving closer to that link. It keeps them engaged.

And all good stories will have emotion.

What do you do, personally, to grok* your audience when writing copy?
It’s important to become the reader’s ally in the copy. That’s why you’ll often see subheads that say, "It’s Not Your Fault!" It’s because you’re reaching out to them just like you would a friend who has a problem. You’ll explain why the cards are stacked against them, that it’s not their fault, and then offer a solution.

How much educating of your audience happens in your sales copy? (As opposed to when you are educating your customers about sales copy in your online courses.)
Only enough to make the case for buying. Some readers might respond to giving away free lessons in the copy, but often it can just cause procrastination. Giving away free info is great, but I don’t like it on the sales page because we want to get to that order link.

Sometimes you have to teach the reader why your product is important. For example I had to stress why scarcity was so important when selling "Digital Scarcity." If I hadn’t, they may have seen no reason to buy.

But you’re more likely to have a hit product if you don’t have to do any teaching in the sales copy.

How do you find the balance between the information products and services you offer? Does one lead into the other or is there not so much overlap between the "teach me how" and "do it for me" copywriting crowds?
Well that’s interesting because it’s something I’ve been trying to discover by trial and error. I get more work from copywriting critiques than I do from selling copywriting products. The copywriting products do help to show my expertise, so that’s good. But critiques are more personal so they work much better.

There’s some crossover, but not much. Most of the top entrepreneurs that hire me know how to write copy, but they see the value in hiring a professional. So it’s not like my products do much competing with my services.

…And to end on a fun note, what is the story behind calling your sister (copywriter Rebecca Dean ) Chong?
Well it’d probably be easier for Rebecca to explain. She’s lived in Japan quite a bit and I’d heard her call people by their names, with "Chon" at the end. I’m not sure if it’s spelled c-h-o-n or not. [All the fan subbed anime I've seen has spelled it "c-h-a-n". --WLB ] But it’s Japanese and is similar to Mr. Miyagi calling Daniel Laruso, Daniel-San.

I grew up always calling her Becky. I’ve never called her Rebecca except when I started calling her Rebecca-Chon. Which evolved into just Chon, and then finally, Chong.

Thank you Stephen!
If you’d like to find out more visit Stephen’s Blog or pick up a copy of TMFB .

* Grok - v. to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with
(Special thanks to Clay Cotton for explicitly connecting Heinlein’s concept with teaching and marketing!)

After my last post I was feeling a bit paranoid for whatever reason and decided it was time to implement one of the security mods on Wordpress to deter automated attacks based on the version.

WP includes a statement about what version of the software generated each page. I decided the easy way to nix them all was to go straight to the WP code that does that on every page. Once I dug through the code I found the offending code: “get_bloginfo( ‘version’ )”.

The only place that gave me any trouble was in wp-includes/general-template.php and most of that was related to my ISP’s web cache and my web host’s web based editor. I ftp’ed the file over, edited out the offending get_bloginfo() calls, ftp’ed it back, and I was all set. I thought.

Sometime since then I noticed that I was having trouble accessing my admin pages. I could go to the login page and everything was fine, but my dashboard pages were coming up blank. I thought it was a fluke and that my hosting company would sort it out in a day or two. Well, it has been a week and I finally started digging through the error logs to find the problem.

With the flow of this post you probably figured out more quickly than I that my issue was with the general-template.php file I modified. Yep, it was front and center in the error logs. So I ftp a copy over and open it up in an editor only to find that the line with the error is the last line in the file. “Odd” I thought as my ‘leet programming skills kicked in and I caught on that I had a blank line at the end. Checked against the original file (always keep a backup!) and sure enough, the one blank line was the culprit.

I’m now back into my admin pages and have no foreseeable reason not to post something relevant tomorrow!

The take-away for you is this: how secure is too secure? I certainly removed that potential guided attack. Was it worth it to also lock myself out? 

How have you “over shot” your desired level of security? What did you do about it in the end?

Watching my six month old son learning to sit and spending most of his time falling over really reinforced that perfection is a myth — especially the idea of doing things “right” the first time. The whole point of learning is in growing and expanding your capabilities. (Really makes me think about homework in school and the expectation of getting everything “right” the first time you work the problems…)

The irony is that I’ve been agonizing over how best to share about perfection. (I want to get it “right” don’t you know!)

Yesterday I pondered in-depth posts and wrote nothing…
(FYI: Long posts and perfectionism lead to major delays.)
Today I chose to be efficient and (re)gain momentum.
Tomorrow I’ll dimensionalize myself into gear and share that trick.

I’d like to hear your own personal “secret method” for getting moving.
[The challenge is getting you to slow down just long enough to post them below!]

The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated (even though it has been a long, long summer).

I made it through two cross-country moves, a near-death experience, computer crashes, Internet access oddities, changing hosting, and a plethora of other not-so-fun stuff. However, there have been plenty of things to celebrate (like births and birthdays) over the last six-months.

Basically this is just to let you know I’m back.

Upcoming posts: perfection, copy, tribes, and boats ships.
Get ready for the ride!

Update: I must have jinxed myself — the hosting transfer was not quite done and I’m still fighting through those issues… The joys and the perils of being a tech weenie.

Alive, still moving
The blog-o-sphere keeps turning
Just not on my phone

(Keep an eye out, I’ve got an interview that should have been posted before we moved for the summer and my world exploded. Be back soon.)

It never ceases to amaze me how many often we assume that others know what we know — quite often incorrectly!

The best method I’ve discovered for revealing that unconscious competency is to teach something about a topic. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to expose your knowledge by getting it out of your head. Because people learn in different ways here are several options:

• Record yourself as you talk your way through a topic. This is stream of consciousness or a brain dump not anything prepared. Remember, this is getting the info out of your head — we can clean it up and package it later! If you want your content into text form you can transcribe the audio — or better yet have someone else do the tedious part of transcribing while you record more of your expertise! If you don’t have a microphone for your computer there are free teleconference services that will record digitally and all you need is a telephone.
• Mark Joyner reminded me recently about a stream of consciousness style done in writing, I call it blind writing, where you explicitly separate typing and editing. This involves brain dumping by typing into a word processor with the monitor off (after testing to make sure it is capturing your keystrokes!). There is no way to edit so it is much easier to let the ideas flow past the inner critic or censor.
• Similarly Richard Lee posted a good action plan for writing a report. Again, notice the emphasis on writing as an action completely separate from editing.
• To riff off of Richard’s plan I suggest using Google Docs rather than downloading another application. You can just as easily save it to PDF and as a bonus you can share or “publish” the file so that people can access the latest version. You could even type into Google Docs with your monitor off and record your voice at the same time!
• Big picture people can create a stack of index cards with topics or points of interest by recording any and every idea that comes to mind. Then you can just pick one at random to start talking/writing about. The nice thing about this method is that you can organize the index cards as a distinct activity from recording the details of what you know — just be sure that you take a break from sorting index cards and spend some time recording those details!

That should get you started — which is the hardest part!
What other methods do you use for getting info out of your head? Please share in the comments.

Complex equivalence is great!

I believe the best coverage I’ve run across of complex equivalence is from Jonathan Altfeld in his Knowledge Engineering program. Altfeld is a master which means he spends a lot of time working with complex equivalence patterns in the form of “A is B” or “A means B”. (Did you notice I’ve already sprinkled each in this post?!)

A few poor examples: Learning means passing the test. Math is hard.
More useful examples: Flexibility means winning. Teaching is really learning.

Once you’ve become aware of a complex equivalence in someone’s world view you can work with (and around) that meaning. You have options such as directly challenging the complex equivalence, reframing the meaning, or any of the other Sleight of Mouth or Mind-lines patterns.

And what prompted this simple lesson about complex equivalence? Besides our own migration to NM for the summer I’ve found out that Patrick Curl and his wife are planning to visit and/or interview 50+ writers from each of the 50 US states. I love the idea and that means showing my support!