Category: Online Writing

I Deconstructed 100 Of Tim Denning’s Articles And This Is What I learned

Neera

I have figured out how Tim Denning is writing ten articles a week and why readers love reading them.

Ever since I started writing on Medium in 2020, Tim Denning has been consistently generating ten articles a week. When many top writers gave up on the platform and started looking elsewhere, he kept showing up, hardly discouraged by what was happening around him.

You got to give him credit for that.

No wonder he has 305,000 followers on Medium and close to half a million on LinkedIn.

When I was new to Medium, I was in awe of his ability to consistently churn so many articles. At that time, he was working full-time and was also running courses and writing ebooks. I thought he had an inborn talent for writing to be so productive. Mind you, in those days it used to take me 7 to 8 hours to write one article.

As I get to know him a bit better, I learned he was a normal young man with steely determination.

As I am using his strategy to write five articles in a day, this week I sat down and read over a hundred of his articles in a single sitting and deconstructed them.

With little ado, here is what I found.

Writing articles in batches is a better strategy than writing an article a day.

As Tim has told us multiple times that he writes articles only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He writes and schedules 5 articles on each of these days. I used to think it is beyond anyone’s ability (except Tim) to do that. But as I started doing it myself, I found it is in fact easier to write five articles in a day than to write one a day.

The reasons are:

  • You are laser-focused (Tim calls it being in the flow state).
  • You know you have roughly 60 to 90 minutes per article, so you don’t waste time.
  • You can do images and footers for all articles in 5 -10 minutes.
  • You can use parts of the material in multiple articles.
  • You can choose one topic (say productivity) and write five articles in one go. The next day, you can choose another topic and write another five articles.

Stream-of-consciousness writing is the way to write better.

Most of Tim’s article flows so well as if he is just sitting opposite you and talking to you. You can call it mastery or you can call it stream-of-consciousness writing (or free writing).

Stream-of-consciousness writing happens when you don’t have to think and you just keep on writing as it comes. And usually, it is quick, fluent, and much more engaging.

When you have written as many articles as Tim has, most of your ideas are already clear in your head. You remember your stories so well that they pour out of your fingers at the right place, at the right time.

I am writing this article as stream-of-consciousness writing. I have not outlined this article. I am not sure what I am going to write in the following paragraphs. But I trust the right thoughts will keep coming until there are no more and then the article will be done.

Most of his articles are Leggo blocks put together.

There are so many structures and templates to write good and balanced articles. But I am mesmerized by Tim’s structure. He writes in blocks and then seamlessly puts them together as coherent articles.

There is an advantage in writing in blocks. You can pre-write them. I know Tim uses Roam Research to take notes. Roam Research allows you to take notes in the dot-point format only. Tim skillfully uses the notes he collects in his articles. Some of them he reuses multiple times, but you won’t even notice because it fits within the context.

Block format is also good for embedding stories. For example, he tells the following story in the middle of an article:

Author Ryan Holiday told the story of buying the book “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius at age 19.

There was an option at the time to get the book for free online. Ryan chose to pay for a copy and get a decent translation of it in modern English.

The decision seemed tiny.

But years later, he became obsessed with stoicism thanks to this $20 investment.

Now he’s built a multi-million-dollar career out of stoicism.

He has already told two stories before this one and then there is one more in the last third of the article.

Isn’t that cool?

Stories make the articles interesting. And they also make the articles less dense, giving the readers breathing space.

He spends more time on the headings than on the body of the articles.

His headings are brilliant. They are not the clickbaity. They are not even the ones with the highest score on the heading analyzers (I don’t know whether he runs them past an analyzer or not).

Instead, his headings are long and reader-centric. He has many bases on personal stories and lessons learned from them.

Here, have a look at a few of them:

The #1 Way to Succeed as an Online Writer Is to Stop Playing It Safe

Never Underestimate Someone Who Practices Self-Education in Their Free Time

The (Realistic) Way to Go from $0 to 7-Figures Online in 365 Days

Today I Lost $6000 on a Rogue Accountant. Here’s How *Not* to Get Screwed by Strangers.

Workplace Principles I Know at 36, I Wish I Had Known at 21

He has an ambition and a drive to become world-class in at least one thing.

None of the above things would have worked had he not had the ambition and the discipline to become a world-class player.

At age 12, he decided that he wanted to be world-class at one thing.

He chose drumming. He went all in for that and found a teacher drummer who trained him as if he’d become a navy seal.

Learning from him put me in a constant state of overwhelm.

As he grew up, Tim grew out of drumming. But he didn’t forget his trainer’s weird way of training him. When he chose to write as his vocation, he applied everything he learned as a drummer to writing.

Today he is in the top 1% of writers in the world.

Without that ambition and discipline, he wouldn’t have been able to be a world-class writer in less than 8 years.

Closing Remark

It took me 57 minutes to write this article, along with pulling out quotes and links, 10 minutes to edit it and 3 minutes to select an image and add a footer.

I have not reached the state of writing and scheduling 5 articles in one day yet, but I am sure if I continue at it, I will be able to, with a few weeks of practice.

I may not have Tim’s trainer to coach me, but I have six decades of life experience to draw from. If I am able to write and schedule 5 article in a day, it will be a great achievement for me.

Thank you, Tim, for giving me something to strive for.

Are Our Reading Habits Scr*wed Forever

Neera

Before smartphones and before the internet, I used to read newspapers, magazines, and novels. Now it has been more than a decade since I have read a newspaper. I stopped buying magazines ages ago and I have to force myself to finish the novel even if it is well-recommended and I am enjoying it.

Instead, I spend hours on LinkedIn, Medium, blogs, and countless newsletters I subscribe to. I have tried to get away from it all and get back to some serious reading but failed. Serious reading bores me now. I want a fast-paced bite-size reading I can do in between chores and my own writing commitments.

Hamish Mckenzie, cofounder and Chief Writing Officer of Substack wrote an article, Time To Read, in which he admitted, “If I picked up a book instead of reflexively opening Twitter every couple of hours, I’m sure I would have read through my way through a library in the last 10 years.”

Social media is conspiring against our better instincts. It wants to feed us continuous dopamine hits and we keep accepting its offer.

The economic model for supporting content on the internet sucks. It doesn’t put readers first. The readers are addicted to Twitter and TikTok because these companies are zeroing in on the most titillating content to keep readers in a perpetual state of not-quite-satisfied-but-close. Social media companies are serving advertisers, not the readers.

For hundreds of years, publishing giants, newspapers, and magazines were making money through advertisements. But the internet vaporized that model. The new publishing giants, the social media companies, have a new model — ad-overload.

In all this mayhem, the writers were forgotten. They didn’t have the security of an agency behind them. They are not only expected to write for free but to continuously produce an unbelievable amount of content.

Medium came up with the concept of a Paywall

Medium.com was one of the first publishing companies to come up with a plan to pay writers for their work. They introduced a Paywall. They charged readers a monthly subscription fee and paid writers a portion of that based on the number of views and clicks.

The model became so successful that millions of readers and thousands of writers flocked to the platform. They ranged from amateurs to experts, all writing being able to find readers. But after enjoying an unbelievable amount of success for 3 to 4 years, Medium.com started on a downward spiral. There were several reasons for that and one of them being Medium started concentrating on readers (from where the revenue was coming) and ignored the writers (who were doing the hard yards to make Medium a success).

Thankfully things are beginning to change in mid-2022. The new CEO, Tony Stubblebine, is trying to turn the ship. While Medium was on a downward spiral, a new model emerged, introduced by Substack.

Substack model is different

Substack didn’t pay the writers as Medium did, but it allowed them to charge their readers directly. Writers could send their work directly to readers’ inboxes and charge whatever they thought it was worth. Substack made it possible and took a 10 percent cut of subscription revenue generated by the writers on the platform.

Substack can succeed only when writers succeed.

It’s a better model because one of the better ways an internet publishing company can provide value is by helping writers find more readers and make more money. And the best way to do that is to make sure readers are happy. Doing the right thing for the writer means doing the best thing for readers.

The way Substack is providing a great reading experience is:

  • by providing clean, simple, fast-to-load posts
  • no Ads
  • no pop-ups
  • directly in the inbox
  • option to read in the App
  • growth within the platform.

On Substack, readers have a closer relationship with the writer they care about. And writers have the ability and space to go deep into the issues that really matter to them.

A writer’s primary loyalty is to readers, and they get rewarded for using their attention wisely. They don’t have to play a game with an algorithm or trick readers into clicking like they had to with Medium. They are independent and not at the mercy of a company.

If they disappoint readers, the readers have the power to unsubscribe with just a click.

Readers don’t subscribers to newsletters

They subscribe to writers.

They want to know what their favorite writer’s thoughts are on a range of topics, what their experiences and learnings are, and what their life is like.

I subscribe to several newsletters, but in fact, I subscribe to the writers.

I want to read what they are saying. When I am reading a writer’s post, it’s just me and the words. I bury myself in the writer’s thoughts and eloquence and ideas.

The future of online writing will be different

The first thirty years of the internet were built on the mistaken business assumption that online reading isn’t worth as much physical reading. So they focused on clickbait or social flotsam and jetsam.

But the internet is still just getting started, and so is Substack. The way we’ve thought about online writing and reading for these first 30 years won’t be true for the next 30.

Big things are still to come. Writers will have the power their work directly with their readers.

And the readers will have the power to choose which writers they want to read.

How To Create Your First Digital Product In Three Hours

Neera

“If you want to grow your subscriber numbers, write a freebie,” said my mentor.

“But I don’t know how,” I cried. “And what?”
“What can I give as a freebie?”

“Anything of value.”

Something was stopping me, but I couldn’t figure out what.

I had written several articles on Medium but writing an eBook was a big step.

Then one day, almost a year later, I woke up with a tiny voice in my head.

“Write the damn book and write it fast.”

If there is one thing I learned in my creative life, it is to listen to that tiny voice.

I wrote my first ebook in one week and published it.

Then wrote three more and published them too.

I have written a guide to help you with the process.

It’s FREE. Download it here.

How To Create Digital Products Using Your Current Knowledge

Neera

Creating a digital product that they could sell is every new creator’s dream. Digital products are an amazing way to add a revenue stream.

The beauty of digital products is that they allow you to package knowledge you already have or skills and services you already performed into a product that you can build once and sell countless times. That allows you to save a lot of time, a lot of overhead and reach a lot more customers.

What is so special about digital products?

  • They’re a low investment.
  • They’re more profitable than physical goods because you don’t have to worry about shipping or replenishing inventory.
  • You don’t have to deal with the hassle of constantly producing stock, storing shipping, or any other logistics.
  • You can automate the delivery, and you can serve your niche at scale by providing valuable information.
  • Not only that, but the shifted digital business models and online education is a powerful market factor working in your favor. eLearning for example is projected to be worth $331 billion by 2025.

What should you create?

You don’t need to be an expert in what you do in order to create a digital product. You need to be two years ahead of the people you are teaching.

Think of something you have learned in the past two years. Chances are other people also want to learn the same skill. You can teach them through your product.

People prefer to learn from someone who is a little ahead of them rather than from experts. Experts are too far ahead in the game. Beginners can’t relate to them.

Make a list of the things you are good at. Things people ask your help for. It could be — how to create a website or how to choose a good board game to play when you have friends over.

Make a list.

Then choose one thing that you can work on straight away.

Once you have done that, let’s get started.

How to create a digital product

The first thing that you need to do when creating a digital product is to answer a very simple question.

What problem can you solve and what opportunity can you provide?

At the core, there are two main reasons people purchase a product.

  • To move further away from pain
  • To unlock a benefit.

In either case, these people are seeking to improve their lives meaningfully. So what you need to do is create a problem statement.

A problem statement is a concise description that highlights the gap between the barriers your target market is facing and their desired end state.

The reason you want to do this is so that you clearly articulate what the idea is and why it is useful in the context of the marketplace.

Writing a problem statement is actually quite simple.

It should be more like a paragraph that a sentence. Start by stating the desire. Then point out what is stopping them from fulfilling that desire. Then propose how they can fulfil their desire and how your product is going to help them reach that.

Last week, I created a digital product. The problem statement for that was:

Creating a digital product is every new creator’s dream. But most of them don’t do it because they don’t know what problem they should pick, how to create it and how to write the sales letter. They either keep postponing it. Or they start creating it, and when they get stuck, they give up.

My guide can help you create your first product in three hours. It will help you write the sales letter and select a platform where to publish it for repeat business.

Do you see how the problem statement helps frame and articulate my digital product idea and why it is valuable in the market?

Then I stated how my product was going to help them solve their problem.

This guide can help.

Written in a short and succinct manner, this short guide gives you all the information you need on:

• What to create as your first product.

• How to create it.

• Where to publish it.

• How to improve it.

• How to write a sales page.

Examples of products.

No matter whether you’re making software, a course or a digital download, don’t skip this step.

I have created a guide that can help with the entire process. You can download it here for free.

Image by the author

Hope it will inspire and help you with writing your first product.

How To Convert Anecdotes Into Stories Using A Simple Framework

Neera

Last week I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feeds while sipping the steaming hot tea on a chilly winter morning when a story caught my eye.

It was captivating and well-written, but what really intrigued me was the footnote. The author mentioned that she developed the story with the help of a story coach, and if anyone wanted to develop their story, they should DM (direct message) him.

Now, if there is one thing that I have been struggling with for the past three years, is telling stories from everyday life. I am very good at telling other people’s stories. But when it comes to telling stories from my own life, I feel inhibited.

So, I sent him a contact request. He immediately accepted it, and sent me a welcome note.

I was impressed.

I wrote back, telling him that I wanted to improve my storytelling skills. What would he suggest I should do?

He sent me a link to a TED Talk.

I listened to it, and before it was over, my mind was made up.

I wrote to him saying, “I am setting myself a personal challenge — To write 30 stories in 30 days on LinkedIn. Announcing it to you makes it official.”

“Then consider it official,” he wrote back.

As soon as I got his response, I said to myself, “OMG! What have I done? Am I even equipped to pull it through? In two weeks, I will be traveling. There is no way I could meet the challenge.”

I can go back and tell him that it was a mistake.

Or don’t go back at all. I don’t owe him anything.

But hang on, what will be the price of pulling myself out?

I will not learn storytelling. What’s the big deal?

Hang on. It is a big deal. I want to get better at storytelling. This is my chance. Why not give it a go? Write as many days as I can. Learn as much as I could. I have nothing to lose. Only to gain.

So, this was it.

I published the above story as Story #1. The story got 2760 impressions and 42 likes. I received more than 20 comments.

Image by the author.

Since then, I have been writing a story a day. I even created a hashtag #30days30stories. Other people joined in, and we have a nice thread going where people are telling their stories while learning the craft of storytelling.

I have learned more about storytelling in the last week than I did in the past three years.

And it started by putting myself out there.

How to craft a story?

On the very first story, the story coach Dan Manning wrote to me,

“You can make any story better by getting really specific on the moment of change. Here it is in this story:

I listened to it, and before it was over, my mind was made up. I wrote to him saying, “I am setting myself a personal challenge — To write 30 stories in 30 days on LinkedIn. Announcing it to you makes it official.”

In all of your stories, make sure your audience knows this is THE moment they have been waiting for.

Later I had a Zoom call with him, and we talked about storytelling. He gave me a simple framework to craft my stories.

That framework was a goldmine. Using it, practically any anecdote from everyday life can be converted into a story.

It looks like this:

Image Source: Dan Manning

A story starts with a change. In your anecdote, look where the change is occurring and start building your story from there. Describe what was the situation (or the person) before the change and how it (the situation or person) changed after the change.

If there is no change, there is no story.

Phillip Berry Osborne said:

“Ultimately, the key to personal-experience stories is change. Where our personal lives are concerned, in fact, change is probably the biggest single challenge we all face and share.

That’s why the best personal stories explore our transition in life — if only to encourage us to accept ourselves in some new context or as we’re becoming.

Such transition or change is vital to storytelling since it’s bound up with the overall message that underscores any good story — and yet, too often, writers fail in this one key area of change and, especially, the message that comes out of it.

Another important element of a story is meaning.

Without a message, a story is like an egg without a shell.

Many of us, as writers, neglect this fundamental requirement.

We, humans, love stories because we are looking for meaning in them. Meaning could be as simple as:

  • making a decision to do something or not to do something.
  • an insight
  • a lesson
  • an epiphany
  • a realization.

Pick those moments in your day and weave your stories around them.

Follow me on LinkedIn, and you can read my stories there.

So want kind of stories can you write?

There are three kinds of stories:

  1. Stories that motivate you and make you feel focused, and enhance your memory (dopamine generating)
  2. Stories that make be more generous, trust and bond(Oxytocin generating)
  3. Stories that make us laugh (Endorphine generating)

Want to learn more about them, watch this TED Talk.

How To Write Your BackStory

Neera

In 2018, when I was creating my website, the most difficult thing to write was the About page.

I wrote and rewrote it three times.

When I couldn’t make it any better, I put it aside, thinking that as I got better at writing, I would write it again.

I didn’t touch it for three years.

The same thing happened when I wrote the About Me post on Medium. It’s my pinned post and I wrote it about 18 months ago. I meant to update it but can’t bring myself to do it.

Why?

Because it is too hard.

We writers can write hundreds of stories but can’t tell our own story well.

Yet we need to be able to tell our backstory in a compelling fashion.

Nearly all successful entrepreneurs have a compelling backstory. The backstory helps entrepreneurs build their brand and generate loyalty among their customers.

As authors, we are building our brands too.

We, too, need a compelling backstory.

By that, I do not mean you need to invent a backstory or make up a false story.

What I mean is that we need to identify our authentic backstory and tell it in such a way that it resonates with our audience.

Recently, I learned how to identify and create my (true) backstory. I am sharing the whole process here so that you, too, can create your backstory.

It is done in 7 steps.

Step 1: The Obstacle

To begin, it’s important that our audience can relate to our story. We could be from different backgrounds, different countries; we might have different upbringings and different education, and different professions, but there is one critical thing that’s very relatable: overcoming an obstacle.

And everyone has to overcome obstacles in their lives.

So, base your story on what obstacle you have overcome.

My example: I wanted to win promotions in my current role, but there was one problem. My English was not very good. It was my second language, and the truth was I sucked at it.

Step 2: The Internal Struggles

Internal struggles are how we feel inside because of the obstacle faced in Step 1.

Internal pain is captured with words like fearful, insecure or anxious.

My example: During a performance review, my boss told me that the only thing standing between me and a senior management position was my written English. Even though he was polite about it, his remark left me shattered. Does that mean I will never be promoted?

Step 3: The External Struggles

External struggles can generally be seen or heard. An over-drafted bank account, a lost job, a poor living situation, etc.

My example: I was overlooked in many promotion opportunities. My superiors saw me as a workhorse rather than as a leader.

Step 4: The Change Event

The change event is the one critical decision that you made that leads you from your struggle to your newfound transformation.

My example: I couldn’t swallow that. What can I do? I asked myself. I decided to take a writing course. I thought it will help me become a fluent writer. But instead of joining a business writing course, I took up a Life Story Writing course.

Step 5: The Spark

The spark is that magic moment when you realize everything is about to change. When you go from feeling completely disconnected to reinvigorating.

My example: I learned that writing was nothing but storytelling. Even business writing. When I was writing a business case, I was telling a story. When I was writing a discussion paper, I was weaving several stories to make a case. Even when I was writing a resume, I was telling a story — my story. I became a storyteller.

Step 6: The Guide

The guide in the story is the person who lifts you up and helps you see your potential for what it really is.

My example: A few months later, my then boss gave me an important project — to create a monthly performance report for the department. A perfect opportunity to showcase my storytelling skills. I never looked back from there. I got promoted multiple times and eventually reported to the CEO of our organisation.

Step 7: The Result

The result is the continuation of the story to even bigger and greater success, leading up to your present situation.

My example: Years later, my storytelling skills helped me to launch my writing career. I went on to author four books. Today I am a full-time writer.

Stitching the steps together to tell the story

Now stitch together all the pieces. My backstory sounds like this:

I wanted to win promotions in my current role, but there was one problem. My English was not very good. It was my second language, and the truth was I sucked at it. During a performance review, my boss told me that the only thing standing between me and a senior management position was my written English. Even though he was polite about it, his remark left me shattered. Does that mean I will never be promoted?

I was overlooked in many promotion opportunities. My superiors saw me as a workhorse rather than as a leader. I couldn’t swallow that. What can I do? I asked myself. I decided to take a writing course. I thought it will help me become a fluent writer. But instead of joining a business writing course, I took up a Life Story Writing course.

I learned that writing was nothing but storytelling. Even business writing. When I was writing a business case, I was telling a story. When I was writing a discussion paper, I was weaving several stories to make a case. Even when I was writing a resume, I was telling a story — my story. I became a storyteller.

A few months later, my then-boss gave me an important project — to create a monthly performance report for the department. A perfect opportunity to showcase my storytelling skills. I never looked back from there. I got promoted multiple times and eventually reported to the CEO of our organisation.

Years later, my storytelling skills helped me to launch my writing career. I went on to author four books. Today I am a full-time writer.

Now I can use the various iterations of this backstory for different purposes. I can tell the full version where needed, and I can tell shortened versions or use snippets of the story when it makes sense.

Takeaways

  1. Telling a compelling backstory isn’t just for entrepreneurs; authors need it too.
  2. Everyone who has a backstory you admire has crafted it and perfected it.
  3. Being vulnerable with your audience allows them to see you in a very transparent and human light.
  4. Practicing your backstory using the seven steps gives you a consistent and compelling story that you can use for various purposes.