Month: August 2020

Beautifully unique conversations

Neera

Hi Friends,

It is taking me time to get used to writing this email on Mail Chimp. Those of you who don’t know, Mail Chimp is an email marketing service that small businesses and bloggers like myself use to write to their subscribers. I had been postponing using MailChimp dreading to learn yet another software but finally gathered enough courage and launched into it. Longer I leave it, the more I feel intimidated by technology. So bear with me if things feel a bit out of place.

Speaking of technology, did you know that podcasts are the next big thing?

First Google launched a podcast app for Android phones. It’s called Google Podcasts and you should download it if you haven’t. Next, according to The Hotsheet, and Amazon is also getting into podcasts. I also read somewhere that the next generation of cars will have podcast apps built in the dashboards. That is entertainment and learning blended in one. If you haven’t started listening to podcasts yet, it is time you start. Leaving it too long will mean living in the eighties without watching TV.

If that is not enough to shock you, here is another technology shocker. A college student used GPT-3 to write fake blog posts and ended up at the top of Hacker News. GPT-3 is a language-generating Artificial Intelligence tool that looks for patterns in data. Liam Porr was trying to demonstrate that the content produced by GPT-3 could fool people into believing it was written by a human. He told MIT Technology Review, “it was super easy, actually, which was the scary part.”

Here’s a sample from Porr’s blog post (with a pseudonymous author), titled “Feeling unproductive? Maybe you should stop overthinking.” A reader to the AI post wrote, “Reads exactly like 99% of the bullshit you find on Hacker News and Medium – well done!”

Where does it leave bloggers like us? We will have to think of ways to beat the machines.

This leads me to an interesting conversation I had with a Medium writer Cody Mcgraw whose article 15 Radical Minutes caught my eye. Cody has been spending 15 virtual minutes with people he had never met before and having “beautifully unique conversations” with them (his words). I wrote a note in his article saying I like this idea and he invited me to have a conversation with him. We hooked on Goggle Meet yesterday and in fifteen minutes I get to know a guy who was young, amazing, interesting, and a great listener. And as they say, it might be the beginning of a long friendship.

This week I submitted the synopsis of my novel to the workshop I am doing with the Australian Writers Centre. It got great reviews. I am feeling energized to get back into it. I was about to dump the damn thing but apparently, the story wants to be born. You will find me talking about it from time to time. 

I started several reports this week, which I want to develop into free resources to be made available on my website. They will keep me busy for months to come.

That is it from me this week.

I will write to you again next Friday.

Until then take care.

Regards
Neera

It’s time for a bit of a change

Neera

Dear Readers,

First of all, I want to thank you for subscribing to my blog and staying with me while I found my feet in the wide world of the internet.

For the past two years, you have been receiving two articles from me each week. Although I draw a lot of pleasure from researching and writing them, I am finding that it is restricting me from working on other projects. I have a novel, a non-fiction book, and a number of courses underway. Their time has come.

Which means I need to make time for them in my daily schedule. 

Remember my article Three Types Of Newsletter To Stay Connected With Your Readers? In that article, I described three types of newsletters writers can use to stay connected with their readers. 

  1. “Editorial” or “Feature Article” style
  2. “Link” style
  3. Blog style

So far you have been receiving an “Editorial” or a “Feature Article” style newsletter from me.

It is best suited to educate readers and impart knowledge and experience in a regular way. As I am getting more and more into the nitty-gritty of writing, publishing, and marketing, I am observing that not all my articles interest all my readers.

Also being in the teaching mode doesn’t allow me to connect to you in the real sense. There are many things each week, other than the articles, which I want to share with you.

That is why I am moving from the “Feature Article” style newsletter to the blog style newsletter. Just like the one you are reading. 

But don’t worry I will still be writing articles.

I will be writing them and publishing them regularly on my website and letting you know about them in my weekly newsletter. You will receive one email from me, each Friday, to let you know what I have written to help you with your journey and to let you know about my journey.

Because, more than anything else, we writers learn from each other.

By sharing our progress and processes we inspire and motivate each other. And also keep ourselves accountable. Writing is a solitary activity. Without my readers, and their encouragement, I will get lost in my struggles and perhaps will have nothing to show for all the effort I put into my projects.

I need you, just like you need to know what I am learning from my experiences. 

This style of communication will suit us both. 

Over time I will improve the layout of this email so that it becomes more useful and familiar.

But for the time being, let the above cartoon mark the new beginning.

Keep writing.

Regards
Neera

PS: You can let me know what you think of this format by simply replying to this email.

“False Memory” an interesting tool to use in writing

Neera

“I remember so clearly taking a medal that belonged to my father and burying it in the garden. I then looked for it for ages, digging up little pieces of the earth but never found it. When I think of it now it must be a false memory. Why would my father have medals? Why would I bury them? But my memory feels like truth – shiny color and crisp edges.”

This memory was donated in the False Memory Archive; an art project started by a London based artist, AR Hopewood, who got interested in people’s distortion of the truth.

Other examples of “False Memory” are people who believe they have experienced an aircraft emergency landing or a car crash. A typical one is war veterans in group therapy, they gradually adopt each other’s stories.

Something that is so troublesome in the real world could be very useful in fiction writing.

“False memory” can prove a useful tool to develop interesting plots.

In 1844, master storyteller Edgar Allan Poe managed to trick American into believing that the first transatlantic crossing in a hot-air balloon had taken place. It is one thing to trick people into believing something that hadn’t happened but totally another thing to make them understand that something they believe that had happened but actually hadn’t.

The “false memory” research provides writers and particularly crime writers a unique tool. Crime writers the concept in three ways.
1. To question the memory of witness of a crime
2. As an interrogation technique
3. To assign a motive for the crime

1. To question the memory of the witnesses

The judicial systems all around the world are based on the assumption that eye witness is telling the absolute truth. And nothing but the truth. But memory research is proving there is no such thing as ‘absolute truth.”

“The truth of the witness statement is seldom questioned,” says Jorn Lier Horst, once a Norwegian police investigator and now a best-selling crime writer. Eyewitness psychology plays an important role in the plot of his crime novel Ordeal, in which a false memory is gradually uncovered. To write the book he took an interrogation course by real Norvigian detective Asbjørn Rachlew.

Rachlew states that many crime witnesses are surprised by how little they know when they compare it to what they’ve seen in crime stories. “Witnesses are unreliable and often remember things incorrectly.” Once he worked on a murder case where four witnesses described seeing the suspect riding a moped. The trouble was that everyone’s description was all totally different.

The interrogation methods used in crime films and books are totally wrong. Behaving boorishly in front of witnesses, interruption them in the middle of a sentence or threatening them is not the way the real interrogation is done.

2. As an interrogation technique

In the gangster films and crime TV shows, the good-cop/bad-cop routine has been used to the nth degree. The tough cop goes, “we know you did it; it’s just a matter of time until you break. The good cop wins the trust of the accused little by little and gets the confession. In real life, that is not the case.

In real life interrogation, the investigators work with the fundamental laws of memory. The methods used by memory researchers trying to create false memories in test subjects can be used in your fiction interrogation. Letting the suspect create the story rather than tell him your construction of how it might have happened, provides a great way to bring the twist in interrogation technique and also to exploit the false memory.

3. To assign a motive for the crime

There are three different types of false confessions. 1) Forced confession, where people are tortured to make a confession. 2) Voluntary confession, when people confess to something that they haven’t done because they think they deserve the punishment. And 3) a confession based on false memory when they believe they’ve done it but there is no evidence of them having done it. Which makes a very interesting concept.

Although the first and second types have been explored endlessly the third one provides an opportunity for great twists in the story. What if the accused has not committed the murder but believes he has. What if the protagonist is running from law thinking he as done something terrible getting into more and more trouble while in fact, he hasn’t done anything wrong at all.

The techniques of writing crime fiction are based more on what we see in movies and crime serials rather than real research. Even small real-life research, “False Memory” can provide means to add an interesting twist in your fiction writing.

Rather than following the beaten track of writing crime scenes based on TV serials, use the latest research to plot your story. You are sure to find something completely new.

How Should Writers Overcome The “Overwhelm Virus”

Neera

Remember the reaction when the World Health Organisation declared the pandemic earlier this year? People started stockpiling things. Toilet paper disappeared from supermarket shelves. City after the city went into lockdown mode. Unable to function as normal, people glued to the news. The daily toll, the economic downturn, the difficulties in finding a vaccine, no end at sight. No wonder we were overwhelmed.

But the pandemic was not the first time when we felt overwhelmed. We all experience it from time to time. When we are under emotional stress, when we have too much to do, or when confronted with many challenges, overwhelm is what happens.

The tell-tale symptom of overwhelm is that we can’t think and act rationally.

We tend to freeze and unable to function normally. It’s a scary experience. We may not know which way is up or what way to swim. We feel stunned and unable to react. 

For writers, it happens when we undertake a new project—a project like writing a book. You know where I am coming from if you have read my previous post where I announced I would be publishing a book in 30 days. I panicked because I had so much to learn. Publishing, editing, cover design, formatting, marketing, launching, a whole load of things I knew nothing about.

On top of that, I had writing to do.

After a few days of panic attacks, I came to the realization that there is an antidote to the “overwhelm virus.”

It is called – “planning.”

It came as first-hand insight from observing the response to the coronavirus pandemic. The countries that “planned” well manage to control the infection and avoided the fatalities.

People who seem to get things done despite a lot of work on their plate have just one ace up their sleeve, and it is called “planning.”

When faced with writing a book or a blog post, you can’t just sit down and churn it out. Without a plan, you would soon be floundering. Time and time again, the people who are overwhelmed almost always have no plan.

Once you get to the root of overwhelm, you will always find a lack of planning.

It is a bit like being on the road. You may have a plan to get to your destination, but things may have changed since you got into your car. There might be too much traffic or an accident up ahead, or every lousy driver decided to show up on the road at the exact time you started on your journey.

When we get started on any project, we got to have a plan to make it happen. That plan may not stay the same all the way through, as I am discovering with my book project. The plan may change as things change. But there are still three basic ingredients that would stay the same.

  1. Time
  2. Focus
  3. Route

Allocate time to work on the project.

If you have not put aside daily time to work on the project and hope that you will be able to fit it in with your daily routine, you’re setting yourself for failure. “Hope” is never as good as a strategy.

One of the best ways to set a time is for a project is to tag it along with the tasks you do on a repetitive basis. For example, I listen to online courses while cooking dinner. Dinner gets cooked, learning happens.

For my book project, I have given it two hours in the morning when the interruptions are minimal because distractions and interruptions are two other demons leading to failure.

Minimize distractions.

Nir Eyal writes in his book Indistractable,” In future, there will be two kinds of people, those who let their attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others and those who proudly call themselves ‘indistractable.'”

We all get distracted by the volume of information at hand. There is so much demanding our attention all the time. The more we consume the more we crave. It is not possible to eliminate distractions completely from our lives but it is possible to delay them.

I forbid myself from checking emails or any social media platform, read articles, or a book for the whole hour in the morning while I am working on my book. It doesn’t work all the time, but it works many times. I am hoping, with time, I will be able to solidify this habit.

That takes us to the third ingredient of a plan.

Plan the route.

It is like going to the airport. If you are in a new city and hire a car, the first thing you will do is set up the GPS. Without that, you will be circling the unknown streets. But in your own city, you know the route to the airport by heart, having driven there several times.

I am applying this analogy to learn the route to writing and publishing a book. This book is going to be an experiment. An experiment to learn all there is about publishing in 30 days.

I am going to find shortcuts too. Only when you know the landscape well you can find the shortcuts. The people who are overwhelmed think there is only one route to the destination, the longer route.

There you go. My antidote to “overwhelm virus.”

Nothing beats a plan.

First, put a plan in place, then turn it into a routine. Routine is what gets things done on autopilot.

Planning also stops you from going over the top. When your energy is drained, you are reaching the state of “overwhelm.”

Anyone can do whatever they want to do without feeling overwhelmed with a bit of planning.

Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash

The Power of Hustling

Neera 1 Comment

Before Jamie Foxx was Jamie Foxx, he was Eric Marlon Bishop. He would go to comedy shows and sign up to go on stage and perform. Each night, the manager would call out the names of the amateur comedians who would perform that night. Eric (Jamie) was talented. After his first performance, he got a standing ovation. But then he ran into problems. The manager stopped calling his name. Eric wasn’t sure why this was happening but he was determined to get back on stage – by any means necessary.

After a while, he noticed that the manger would always call at least one female name. There weren’t many female performers at that time, and it seemed the manager wanted to give them a fighting chance.

So, Eric started listing himself under fake androgynous names. Pat, Kelly, Erin…Jamie. One night it finally worked. The manager called Jamie. He got back on stage and got a second standing ovation.

Not only that but when people called out his name “Jamie” to congratulate him, he didn’t respond, making him seem cocky. But his cockiness worked in his favor. People thought he had “a certain” factor that made him talented. His budding career came on track because he bent the rules. Because he hustled.

Hustling is powerful.

I used to think “hustle” as being busy. Doing things that didn’t matter such as “hustling about putting the house in order.” But the word has now taken a new meaning for me. It is about “doing whatever it takes to succeed.

The above story came to me from a book by the same name – “Hustle – The Life-Changing Magic of Constant Motion” written by Jesse Warren Tevelow. Jesse wrote and published this book in one week. In fact, wrote it in three days, edited it for the next three days, and published it on the seventh day. He did it as a challenge to himself.

The book is an easy read and perhaps nothing original but the most interesting part of the book is the story of writing the book itself, which Jesse has captured as diary entry within the book.

It inspires you to take on the challenge yourself.

And I did.

I have been stuck on finishing at least three books that I have started but haven’t been able to finish. I decided to write and finish my first book in one week too.

As I worked on it furiously for the past two days I realized there is so much I didn’t know about publishing a book. Jesse had the previous experience of publishing a book that took him a year to write. How the hell am I going to do the same with no experience of formatting, editing, designing a book cover, launching, and marketing? The only thing I am now comfortable about is the writing part. Everything else I need to learn.

But the case Jesse made about hustling didn’t go away. Hustling is about grinding. It’s about doing whatever it takes. It is about making things happen. It is about creating momentum.

And what creates momentum?

Movement.

When you take action and put things out into the world, stuff happens. Eventually, there are results. The more you move, the quicker you move, the more results you get. When you get results, it leads to inspiration and motivation, which then leads back to momentum. In other words, the cycle feeds on itself. That is why constant motion is the core characteristic of every hustler.

The act of hustle is more important than anything else. Whatever you are doing, whatever you’re planning to do start it. Constant motion delivers life-changing results. So focus on the constant motion part, not the destination part.

Jamie Foxx didn’t give up. By continually moving he eventually broke through the barriers and started his career.

Building momentum can lead to unthinkable results.

I have started to learn everything there is about formatting, editing, and publishing. I have decided to publish my book in a month. It is a challenge I am setting for myself. Dear readers, I need you to hold me accountable as I have started hustling.

Hustling requires a different mindset. It requires confidence, an aversion to staying in the status quo, and a desire to work hard. Hustlers do all kinds of crazy things. That is because they are not afraid of experimentation, failing, being laughed at, or making mistakes. They know experimentation leads to growth.

And when succeed in you experiments you become even more confident hustler.

So dear readers, I want you to raise your glasses to hustle and wish me success for my hustle – to write and publish my first book in one month.

Photo by Caique Silva on Unsplash

Three types of newsletters (to stay connected with your readers)

Neera 1 Comment

It is Tuesday morning again and I am fretting. An article is due in a few hours and it is not ready. I have barely recovered from Friday’s article and the next one is due again. It is not that I don’t do anything about them the whole week and just spin-off 1000 to 1500 words articles on Tuesday and Friday mornings. The whole week goes into the preparation.

Finding topics that will be useful to my readers, researching, outlining, finding relating and interesting stories, and then writing and editing them take hours. This one commitment to my readers take 40% of my working time (used to be 70%, I am getting quicker). Why do I do it?

Because it is important.

Writing articles is a great way to educate your readers, establish authority in your field, and most importantly staying in contact with your readers.

And you know dear writers, how important it is for us to stay in contact with our readers.

Without readers, there is no point in writing. Yes, we write for ourselves but we only do so when we want to take the weight off our chest or want to use writing as a therapy. Most of the stuff we write for ourselves is a rant.

Writing for a readership is the way to grow as a writer and to find meaning in our labour.

Now that we have established that we do need readers, we need to find them and stay in regular contact with them. How to find readers is a whole different topic which I will address in another article. In today’s article, I am going to address how to stay in contact with readers once you have a few of them subscribe to your newsletter.

Is article writing the only way to stay in contact with your readers?

No, it isn’t. There are other means.

There is a difference between articles and newsletters and their purpose.

An article is 1000-2000 words “editorial” or “feature article” like writing usually on one small aspect of a topic that involves some research and includes writer’s observation, inference and recommendation. Its purpose is education. It features on authors’ websites and may and may not go to the subscribers via email.

A newsletter on the other hand is an email kind of correspondence drafted to stay connected with your readers and goes out to all those who have subscribed to them. Its purpose is communication. It can be of any form – from a full-fledged article like I send to you twice a week to an informal email to talk about your day.

There are three ways the writers can draft their newsletters.

  1. “Editorial” or “Feature Article” style
  2. “Link” style
  3. Blog style

1. “Editorial” or “Featured Article” Style

This form is best suited when you want to educate your readers and impart your knowledge and experience in a regular way.

It is also the most labor-intensive and requires a lot of commitment. But it has its benefits. Articles build your platform, populates your website with useful content, and establishes you as an authority in your field.

Article writing has a copious value not only for your readers but for yourself too. When you are writing about a topic you tend to do a lot of research that helps you clear your own concepts. You end up learning from the exercise than even your readers. That is why many writers write about writing. They are learning their craft while educating their readers.

You need to pick any area in any genre and start writing about it. You can venture a bit as long as you don’t go too much out of the boundaries of your topic. I write about art, craft, language, creativity, productivity, and marketing side of writing.

For this type of newsletter, you’ll need to be a decent writer. While other types of email newsletters don’t require you to be a good writer (as you’ll see below), this one definitely does. 

With that said, just because you can write doesn’t mean you should write forever. This type of email newsletter can be 300–2000+ words It just depends on the topic and how dedicated your audience is to reading lengthy content.

This is less than 200 words, yet still as effective as a longer from-the-editor style newsletter. As long as the below bases are covered, your subscribers are going to love reading your newsletter alongside their morning cup of coffee.

  • Why does this matter to my subscribers?
  • Is this valuable to my subscribers?
  • Is this topic relevant to my industry?
  • Is this engaging enough to make my subscribers keep reading?

2 “Link” style newsletter

If you are strapped for time and writing expertise you still can provide quick value for your readers through the ‘Link” style newsletter. These links can be internal links (i.e. your own content) or external links (i.e. other people’s content).

These kind of emails are short but packed with useful information which your readers can save to read at their leisure. But this style only works if you are providing superior or unusual information that your readers won’t normally get by a simple search on the internet.

Just because you’re not writing lengthy, researched-based, storytelling newsletters doesn’t mean that you can get away with shonky links and poor quality information.

It still involves a lot of research but rather than writing about it you are just sending the links so that your subscribers can go there and read for themselves.

Here is an example of “link” style newsletter:

There’s just one thing you can not mess up when it comes to this newsletter style. If you choose to go with this style, it is very important that you make sure you are committed to providing context for each link. You need to explain why your subscribers should care about the content you’re linking out to.

3. “Blog” Style

A blog-style newsletter is when you do not want to spend that much time on research and writing full-fledged articles but still want to provide useful information to your readers. You can do that in the informal style of writing.

Blog style newsletter has more room for going off the topic and write anything from what breakfast you had to what book you have been reading keeping in mind it has to have something for your readers. So there has to be some value for your readers to know why you had special “oatmeal” breakfast which you created using your grandmother’s recipe which was not only delicious but easy to prepare, nutritious, and fill you up in fewer calories.

But the real purpose of the blog style newsletter is to share useful information. Never forget that your readers agreed to receive emails from you because they are learning something from them. The moment they will stop learning, they will unsubscribe.

This type of newsletter is best suited for having conversations with your audience. It is also more personal. Readers get to know you better and want to stay connected.

Try to keep it short and punchy, because no one wants you to keep on babbling about your breakfast.

You can think of the “blog” style newsletter as a hybrid of the “editorial” style and “link” style newsletter. While you’re certainly not writing 2,000 words to explain why people should consume the content linked, you’re still showing the value behind them clicking.

Here is an example:

Recap

There is a difference between writing articles and writing newsletters. The purpose of articles is to educate while the purpose of the newsletter to stay connected with your subscribers.

Your can send ‘editorial” or “feature articles” in your newsletter or you can send a list of useful links. Then there is third choice the hybrid of two – a “blog” style newsletter.

Whatever you might choose you need to make sure your newsletter provides value to your readers by giving information that your readers find relevant and useful.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash