How to Heal Chronic Internet Fatigue Syndrome

Sovereign Standard, Issue 21 What’s the number one reason bloggers quit writing?

Forget that… what’s the number one reason you want to quit the writing practice that's mean to build your business or your professional platform?

Because nobody seems to read what you write, right?

It’s one thing to know that most online readers are just skimming, it’s another to feel like you’re not even reaching those eyeballs.

You slip into despair if your site stats don’t match up to the investment you made in the post. Who can blame you? Writing a from-the-heart, meaningful, useful post every week or two takes a lot out of you, but it’s a labor of love.

It’s the next step, the “doing social media” to get the link in front of prospective clients and readers that pushes the whole venture into mission: impossible territory.

Unless you have a fully charged phone while you’re in line at the DMV or killing time someplace similar. In that case, you have time to share the blog post on every social media platform you’ve ever heard of.

Those deep dives into social media can be really useful, but soon they teach you something vital...

Social Media Isn’t About Posting Strategy or Likes, It’s About Real Relationships

Getting people to read what you write really isn’t about crafting Tweets and status updates and making everything sweet-as-pie Pinnable.

If you don’t have the online relationships, even the best piece of content is likely to languish in obscurity on your under appreciated blog.

As social media matures and the networks figure out how to monetize their “free” platforms, it becomes increasingly hard to hear and be heard above the noise.

Instead of tuning in to every Mari Smith email and Social Media Examiner podcast like I used to, I’m focusing on nurturing real connections with people I care about. It's the only way to heal a modern disease I bet you know all too well...

Are you suffering from Chronic Internet Fatigue Syndrome?

My case of Chronic Internet Fatigue Syndrome flares up regularly. Sick of the sales pitches, the false promises, the self aggrandizement, and the sheer meaninglessness of it all, I burn out and hide myself in a few good novels. (Or a Candy Crush Soda binge… don’t judge me.)

During these hibernation periods I tend to lose hard won footing in the social universe. The disappearing acts make me seen inconsistent and, hence, I'm easily forgotten or dismissed.

It’s easy to claim “because my kids”  but really, I just can’t sustain these online “connections” that aren’t forged in real, sustaining reciprocal relationships.

At the early stages of building a platform and becoming a trusted voice in your area of expertise, it feels like it’s all about giving, producing, and introducing yourself.  It's so easy to burn out. Eventually, you’ll reap what you sow and see a return on all that effort, but only if you are offering yourself and your writing to the right people.

The Writer’s Cure for Chronic Internet Fatigue Syndrome?

Reach.Connect.Uplift Women

As with any chronic ailment, the goal is to break the cycle and enjoy sustained health and vitality. You want to find a sustainable online community that loves to read what you write and offers up content that betters your personal and professional life as well.

You do, right?

Ok, so come join me over at the Reach.Connect.Uplift Women Forum because I think it’s the cure for digital burnout.

Just when I realized I needed to break my feast or famine social media efforts and focus on an online community that gave as good as it got from me, founder Lany Sullivan told me about how the RCUWomen Google+ group was migrating to its own membership forum.

As Lany describes it, "We decided to go old school and build a forum on our website that we could really let loose and have a broader reach. "

What, it's 2015 and we're back to a message board? If you're getting lost in the social media crowds, it may be just the medicine your content creator's soul craves.

Here's Lany's explanation of "why a Reach.Connect.Uplift Women Forum, why now?":

We want a platform that allows us to really highlight our members, provide valuable resources, and be able to monitor and manage it with maximum efficiency. Social Media doesn’t do that for us or our members.

Building an audience off social allows us to have a greater impact, better connections and deeper relationships with our members. Instead of sifting through the millions of posts on social everyday, our members can drop by the forum for some of the top content in the market. Plus, we have some additional SEO and link building benefits that has a positive impact for everyone.

So, will you join me over on the new forum? My social streams and my inbox are too full and I'm missing your great content, but I know I'll see it if you become a RCUWoman too (and guys, if you've got the stones to join the ladies, we'd love to have you too!)

Want to connect with your reader? Cut "should" from your writing

Sovereign Standard, Issue 19  Nobody likes a “should-er.” (No, not shoulder… we all need a shoulder to cry on sometimes and the entire game of baseball would be wrecked if there weren’t shoulders to rest the bats on.)

I’m talking about that evil “s” word - “should.”

“You should…” reeks of unsolicited advice, shaming, and regret.

I check every piece of writing I publish to be sure that I avoid that “s word.” Readers come to me for insights into how to write brilliant stories and copy to support their creative work. You’re not coming to me for a wagging finger and the implication “you likely know better, but you’re still doing it wrong.”

“Should” damages personal relationships & teaching relationships

This is from Hannah Braime in Why the Word “Should” Can be Harmful and 3 Empowering Alternatives. Substitute “authority in your field” for “friend or partner”:

I realized that when I told other people they should or shouldn’t do something, I wasn’t respecting their ability to make the best decisions for themselves. That didn’t fit with my personal philosophy (that people are free to do what they want as long as they’re not harming others), and I knew I wasn’t being the best friend or partner while I was using “should”-based vocabulary.

I love what teacher John Spencer has to say about the problem with should. Replace “teaching” with “educating, engaging, and inspiring through content marketing”:

See, the problem with "should" is that it places all of teaching into rigid, binary, either/or, right/wrong boxes. It takes away the individuality, the autonomy, the creativity and the contextual knowledge required to teach well. Any strategy, any tool, any medium, any resources has benefits and drawbacks. The hard part, the part that requires patience and humility, is learning how to refine our craft as teachers based upon the needs of students.

But “should” is such a handy word for authorities, isn’t it?

Mentor and consultant Blair Glaser has made the brave and beautiful decision to leave leadership for authority. She’s making “authority” sexy - so stop thinking about buttoned up authority figures and start imagining a connected, compassionate someone who walks her talk and knows her stuff.

Her first paragraph in the blog post that announces her shift away from leadership and toward authority is laden with “shoulds” (underlines are mine!):

Read enough [books on leadership], and you’ll start to see a formula on how leaders should BE: authentic (hard for many to really know what that means); humble; curious; calm, empathetic, open, and funny.

You’ll also collect a list of behaviors of what leaders should DO: Serve (this can border on religious); listen more than talk, and empower by coaching.

They shouldn’t act bossy, they don’t “manage,” and, heaven forbid, they certainly don’t micromanage.

Blair goes on to describe her vision of authority (by the way, there isn’t a single “should” in the post once she starts riffing on her beloved new concept):

Personal authority comes from the ability and willingness to be the author of our own lives.

Authority in this context is the antidote to feelings of helpless and hopelessness, to the victim role. With a little work you can find your authority in almost any situation.

As I like to say, authority = confidence plus creativity. This is what makes authority irresistible as a force that will draw people to you.

Based simply on how Blair phrased these passages, what you rather strive to be -- a wannabe leader who is always looking over her shoulder trying to follow the shoulds and avoid the should nots OR an authority who employs creativity and confidence to be an irresistible draw?

You don’t need “should” to own your authority and offer advice that matters

The word “should” inherently separates.

If you berate yourself with “I should’ve…” language you’re creating a barrier between an ideal you and a real you that never measure up (I should eat better, I should sleep more, I should return emails faster…).

If you fill your writing with shoulds you stand apart from the reader, creating an ideal world that may make them feel inadequate.

Connect, don't divide. Teach, don’t lecture. Advise, don’t preach. Suggest, don’t decree.

There’s almost always an alternative to “should” in any sentence you write. Substitute a more evocative, specific word and watch your blog posts and other professional writing take on a new tone that invites people to learn more from you - the compassionate, down-to-earth authority who is always there to help.

I’m always here to help you with your writing whether it’s in fine tuning your word choice or developing your editorial strategy. Learn more about what I have to offer on my services page.

Before you waste a summer day inside writing a blog post, read this

Sovereign Standard, Issue 18  This year, you're going to put “lazy” in hazy days of this summer - in a very good way.

You deserve this kind of warm weather downtime. You need long days of lazy moments in order to replenish your creative resources. A good break is what you need refill your well of patience and compassion - for your clients, your family, and yourself.

In order to make time for those guilty pleasure novels and to be truly present for the firefly chasing, you have to make the hours you do work a heck of a lot more efficient.

What part of your business needs to become quickest and easiest as the temperatures rise? The thing you’re most likely to ignore and procrastinate about -- your blog and your newsletter writing.

Your business needs you to keep writing this summer, but you need summer to be like summer

It may be tempting to hang a “see you in September” sign on your blog, but you’d be missing a valuable opportunity. Many people use their “lazy” summer time to Google fresh solutions to their problems and do that professional research they never have time to do during the average work week.

Imagine this: while you are on the beach with your kids, someone is replying to your email newsletter and asking to set up an appointment that will guarantee you have enough money to pay for that last week of summer camp.

That is so much more likely to happen if you stay present online during July and August by publishing quick, meaningful blog posts and keeping in touch with your list.

The one thing you have to do to produce those quick, meaningful summer blog posts (Hint: it’s not about brainstorming ideas or composing a killer title)

You need to simplify.

For many creative entrepreneurs, “simple” is a bad word - it implies facile and “simplistic” and your work is deep and meaningful (dammit!).

Or, “simple” is an impossible dream. When a business sits at the core of your livelihood, your creative output, and much of your sense of self, it’s bound to be a nuanced, multilayered affair.

If you feel like the business is entangled in just about everything, writing for your personal stories for your beloved clients is anything but quick and easy.

Yes, friend, you are as rare as a glitter dusted zebra-striped unicorn and as complex as Superstorm Sandy,  but your next blog post doesn’t need to be - really!

Two ways simplify the story and produce blog posts before they even miss you at the beach

1) Give 25%. You had a flash of insight during your morning jog? Jot down as much as you can then walk away for a while.

Come back to your notes and ask yourself how many ideas were really included in that flash of insight. It wasn’t just one perfect ah-ha - you were pounding the pavement for a good 45 minutes! You don’t want to get stuck inside writing a 3000 word epic. You want to offer up 750 words of succinct quality content. Either strip away all the extra stuff and toss it as the unnecessary padding it is or save it for next week’s post.

2) Recycle. Didn’t have a stroke of brilliance during your run? (Because, honestly, it’s vacation and there was that last bottle of chardonnay that just had to be finished before bedtime.) That’s great.

Go back and read one of those wicked long posts you dragged out of yourself over the winter. You know, one of the missives that you yourself have trouble reading all the way through? Pluck out one idea and expand on it. Or, if you’re proud of all the content because it’s central to your brand vision, break it into an easy-to-digest list and pare down the language for your lazy summer readers.

Simple writing takes practice

There’s this delicious Italian word, "sprezzatura.” It means “studied nonchalance.”

Someone who exhibits “perfect conduct or performance of something (as an artistic endeavor) without apparent effort” is simply glowing with the qualities that marked a successful 16th continental century courtier.

I learned about sprezzatura when studying Yeats as an undergrad. If anyone slaved himself to produce a line that was achingly simply and painfully profound, it was that Irish poet. But, he kept it up for a lifetime and became one of the greatest writers who ever lived.

You, my sweet summer friend, may also be destined to earn a Nobel Prize one day. I won’t stop you from delighting in every difficult task related to reaching that great height, but I will remind you that the blog posts your writing during the summer of 2015 are not going to make or break your chances with the Scandinavians.

It’s hard to simplify your ideas and to offer the quick and easy version of your brilliance because something as foolish as enjoying the sunset demands your attention, but if you’re going to be worthy of that next client - or that Nobel Prize - you have to give it your best shot.

I'm here to help you discover your own simple writing style. Let's talk about how hiring me as your writing coach can ease your summer writing load.

How to Write for the Skimming Reader (and actually be ok with it)

Sovereign Standard, Issue 17 If you’re skimming this post, you’re “doing the internet” right. You’re granting this piece just enough attention to glean useful information. And, if it would be of interest to the people you wish to engage, you’ll share it with a brief comment that shows you’re paying attention to important things.

If, as a writer, I’ve done the internet right, you find it easy to breeze through these 1600 words. You get what you need, How to Write for the Skimming Reader (and actually be ok with it), and move on.

Headers help you navigate. Lists help to break the main ideas into bite sized portions. Bold passages show you when to pay attention.

Yes, there are technical points to master - they matter (find more steps on doing that below). But you know there's more to writing a post that people care about than "just make it skimmable.”

In order for something to read quickly and easily, you as the writer have to put in a heck of a lot of time and effort.

Does that sort of make you want to cry?

The internet really has changed how we read & think

You want to be available to your potential clients, customers, and readers, so you write content and post it online.

Even if their attention is scattered, it’s something, right?

The goal is to give people just enough in a blog post to engage their curiosity. Once you've intrigued them, they’ll invest their attention in a longer piece of your writing (a book either on their tablets or in print). When blogging is part of your content marketing strategy, you’re hoping that readers who got free content will soon spend money on your product or service.

You’re hoping that your readers have what Tufts University's Maryanne Wolf calls a “bi-literate brain.” They'll switch from a quick skim to an in-depth relationship with your work.

Professor Wolf researches the effects of this online skimming on our ability to read like we're "supposed to." Listen to this Note to Self podcast for assurance that you’re not alone if you feel like your brain works differently these days. Many are finding it hard to jump from speedy info consumption to contemplative, focused reading. (I'm just grateful I had to read Ulysses before the Web rewired my mind!)

In a Washington Post article, Wolf says:

We can’t turn back. We should be simultaneously reading to children from books, giving them print, helping them learn this slower mode, and at the same time steadily increasing their immersion into the technological, digital age. It’s both. We have to ask the question: What do we want to preserve?

Personally, I want to preserve that alchemical process of turning thought into written words that inspire a reader and change the world - even if many readers are just skipping through, looking for the quick news they can use.

How do you write when your reader's brain has been altered?

These sources don’t explore what it means to write with and for these new brains. As Note to Self says about what they found in the course of this episode:

It's another example of a phenomenon we see over and over again: If you feel like a device or any technology has messed with you, you might be onto something... way before any researcher can prove it.

The internet has messed with the way your readers engage with your content - now what?

[tweetthis]The internet has messed with the way your readers engage with your content - now what?[/tweetthis]

As a writer who lavishes her writing talents on screen-only material, this is how I cope with the reader who’s just skimming through:

• Accept that blogging is a bit like Zen sand art
• Write “good enough to be proud of” blog posts that meet my audience's expectations of an online reading experience

Blogging: an object lesson in impermanence

Blogging is an ephemeral art - and I believe it can and even should be an art, not just a perfunctory advertising technique.

Writing for the internet is a lesson in accepting the impermanent nature of life. Even posts that go viral get shunted off the front page eventually.

I think we can go further to say that blogging is also a spiritual practice. After all, blogging teaches you how to resist attachment. You simply cannot expect specific outcomes and end up feeling successful.

A blog is part of the business long game. There’s no guarantee that any post will bring in a dime. If there is an ROI, it’ll be cumulative and hard to trace to this one bit of writing. Instead, each post builds a relationship and takes a potential client that much closer to trusting you with their investment.

Most of the gifts of blogging come through the practice…

• The practice of writing each post gives you a chance to explore ideas as they occur to you. You can spend a few hours thinking deeply about how to communicate your thoughts into comprehensible messages. That sort of deep thought helps you maintain your bi-literate brain.
• The practice of maintaining a blog and writing over time gives you the chance to examine how your visions has grown and changed. You are able understand the relationships between your ideas and develop them into something more lasting like a book or a program.

A blog post is impermanent and they're just skimming it anyway - does it have to be perfect?

One of the first lessons in living without attachment I ever learned: let go of perfection. (As a writer who gets paid for typo-free prose, this was a hard one for me.)

Perfectionism really does equal paralysis. It also is responsible for business writing that never gets done and countless client relationships that never had a chance to get started.

So, “chuck perfect” as Karen Brody says.

Instead, focus on consistently creating material that is just good enough to stake your professional reputation on. Not every post needs to be a magnum opus. (Though keep in mind: you just never know when a particular passage is going to be your all important first impression.)

5 Features of a Good Enough to Be Proud of Blog Post

• Focused. The post is designed to convey one single, elegant idea. Take the pressure off yourself and the post itself by allowing it to perform a single simple task. Chances are, you can always get three posts out a single “ah ha!” moment. Dare to be brief or to go deep with one concept.
• Well-written: The post is as close to typo free as you can get after three read throughs. People can look past a few errors, but consistent oopses will erode your credibility. If you’re killing yourself to catch the missed words and you stress over every potential there/their/they’re humiliation, retain me as your writing coach and editor.
• Clear & organized: If your reader wants to skim, help them! Cut adjectives. Use small words and short sentences.Use headers that a clear rather than clever so your reader skip around as they please. Break ideas down into lists even if that offends your sensibilities as a “real” writer.
• Story-driven: The post is framed by a story or uses storytelling to convey main ideas. You use stories to give readers a taste of who you are, but also to engage yourself in the process. Stories breathe life into information. Don't lose yourself (and the reader) in your autobiography, but do allow your personality to shine through.
• Relevant: If the post is going to appear on your business blog, it has to relate to a product or service you offer or speak directly to the questions and concerns of your ideal client. Wrote a beautiful essay about seeing an eagle in flight or want to share your opinions on your favorite Netflix drama? That’s nice. Don’t blog it here. What you publish serves the mission of your business - to solve the problems of your customers and clients. If it doesn't, put it on your personal social media profile or submit it as a guest post someplace else.

But does it still hurt that you’re getting skimmed over?

No one has ever accused me of being particularly “zen” - at least not with a straight face. I strive to practice this non-attachment thing and ignore my stats and trust good content to make its own way (with some strategic social sharing, of course). Sometimes, however, it seems like we’re in a permanent state of imbalance - pouring all this exacting energy into writing something that people skim and consume rather than read.

People are turning to podcasting and YouTube for this very reason. I understand the attraction, but I still believe that it’s worth writing for your business - especially when you’re armed with the right mindset and understand that the rewards of writing may emerge far in the future.

Why it’s important to keep writing - and writing well - for the online readers

• You’re smart and literate. There’s a great chance that your ideal clients and customers are too, If you like to write, the person who thinks you’re perfect probably likes to read. That’s a good enough place to start - even if they’re "just" skimming your blog.
• Writing helps you think. It helps you discover new ideas and develop them from zygotic in the shower thoughts into big, beautiful visions that change lives.
• Though the human brain was not designed to read and write, we’ve been doing it for over 5000 years. I’m going to side with tradition on this one and conclude that we won’t stop reading in just one or two technology drenched generations

I’d love to help you contribute to the perpetuation of the English language. Oh, and help you communicate your ideas to your audience too. Here’s how I can help you as your writing coach.

Does your business need a blog? Depends on what you need from your business

Sovereign Standard, Issue 16 I’m a frugal lass. I squeeze the toothpaste tube for a week longer than any sane person would and I still manage to have fresh breath.

If there’s still some meaning to be eked out of a revelation like “I gotta quit entrepreneurship,” I’m going to find it. I’m obligated to find it. (Yeah, I get that this can be obsessive, exhausting, and self-defeating.)

Then I’m going to spend a few hours crafting it into words. And then I am going to share it with my readers - even if the article doesn’t take me one inch closer to attracting copywriting clients or further my creative projects.

Blindness? Egomania? Fear of missing out?

Can we call it dedication? I’ve found a tribe who, like me, is feeling the crush of creative entrepreneurship and the idea just won’t leave me alone.

You’re downshifting from entrepreneurship into freelancing. It’s time to do the work that immediate rather than pioneering a visionary program or building a firm (at least for now).

Living and working like the creative-in-business you want to be may mean adjusting how you do business by offering the basic, 'useful' services.

This is why I am shifting my attention to offering the right people my copywriting and editing services while the 'real' creative work gestates in the dark for a while.

Read the rest of Burned Out? Maybe It’s Time to Split the Creative from the Professional

When it comes down to it, “don’t waste anything!” probably isn’t a good enough reason to keep writing about a concept that may or may not be aligned with personal and professional goals.

So I ask myself (in the way I know best - a piece of writing I intend to publish)  do I even need to keep blogging and sending out the Sovereign Standard if I’m redefining my relationship to my business?

As you ask your business to ask less of you, how will you show up online?

So, what if you are called to make a shift in how you relate to your business?

Tons of your behind the scenes habits and attitudes will change, but the hardest changes you make will relate to how you decide to show up online.

You know you still have to think about your visibility, consistency, and reputation. Even if you're happily shutting down a larger company, with creative dreams like yours, there's going to be a time when you want an audience who knows and loves you.

Over-hyped as it may seem, content marketing is key to building a business in 2015. It's key to building a creative platform as well. We hear about “the importance of creating compelling content, of all lengths, and across all platforms” from countless sources. Everybody’s doing it and if you’re serious about building a business or a platform as an author or thought leader, you have to do it too.

(Wait, is that really true?)

Not surprisingly, I do think writing is important - even essential. But, you don't blog because "they" say you must or because you think it's fun compete against mega stars and companies with mega budgets as everyone vie for the web surfers' finite attention.

You create written content because it supports your personal, professional, and creative growth. Ultimately, you need to establish a writing practice that gives back to you.

Must you write for your business (even if you’re scaling it back)?

You've got so much going on. You just want a break. The point is to devote creative energy to the work that matters, not to the marketing and the ephemeral blog posts...

Can you just quit?

As with most answers to important questions, there is no one single “should” when it comes to deciding how you’ll figure out how to show up after you change the rules to your own professional game.

Instead, there are just more questions. This is what I'm asking myself as I restructure my relationship with my work.

How do you write for a changed business? The practical marketing questions

• Do I have enough contacts and other resources to pull in the clients I need without doing my own content marketing?
• What do I blog about now that I am running a more “low key” business that’s built on my scale, not to be scalable?
• Do the clients who hire a smart, competent freelancer want something different than clients who are investing with a creative entrepreneur?

Pause. Here's an answer to those last two questions:  Remember that clients don’t really care about what you call yourself as long as you get the work done. And readers don’t care either as long as you’re interesting and helpful.

A new opportunity to prioritize writing for business (or not) and to honor your creativity no matter what

Yes, no, maybe? Business writing is time consuming enough without adding the pressure of an existential blogging crisis on top of it all. Let's cut through the deliberation and establish what's most important:

If you still have to earn a livelihood as a self-employed person, you fundamentally need to focus on the income-generating activities that will sustain you today, tomorrow, and in the near future.

And, if you want to be the person you know you're mean to be you also need to honor and creative acts will nourish you today, tomorrow, and in the near future.

To that end, I'm going to ask myself these three questions before I sit down to write another word on any project.

• Am I writing this for myself and/or to further my creative vision?
• Am I writing this to win real business?
• Am I writing this because part of me has been trained to equate “likes” and spikes in my site stats with approval?

Tell me, what other questions do you ask yourself as you decide how to spend your precious writing time. And if you have any answers? Glory, glory, they're more than welcome too!

Writing for the Web Is Crushing Your Creative Spirit

Last week, we explored how to take a story from your own life and shape it into a narrative that bolsters your visibility or furthers your business. The goal is a simple one: connect to the reader through a description of a personal experience and then offer some useful or inspiring content that makes the reader the hero.

Essentially, invert that high school essay writing funnel: go from the narrow personal tale to the more universal message that speaks to the interests and concerns of your tribe.

I devoted two posts to this Art of Using Personal Stories In Professional Writing.  One was a basic “how to” and the other was devoted to modeling the process.

Part of me hates that advice and part of me stands by it… because I am about to do it again.

Note: I’m defying the form I just offered you and inverting  the “personal to universal” funnel.  I may switch to another metaphor completely. 

Since this post is about identifying and defying rules - as well as owning up to the pain of the online writing process and honoring the needs of your own creativity - funnel nixing and metaphor mixing seems acceptable.

But first, let’s establish some more rules - just so we can have the pleasure of breaking them. And so we can admit how we all feel a little broken by all these bloody rules.

Five “rules” for writing for the web

 When you’re trying to follow typical internet writing conventions, you make sure that every web page or blog post is:

• Focused - Devote yourself to one central question or theme. Go deep rather than broad and realize that most of your big ideas are actually the foundation of dozens of different articles.
• Brief - This isn’t just about word count since important, “substantial” posts of 1500 - 3000 words can be highly successful. Be sure to break ideas into bite sized pieces so that the distracted reader can digest what you’re trying to say.
• Clear -  Even if the goal is to raise questions for the reader rather than simply dole out a bunch of overly simplistic “shoulds,” don’t muddy the waters with your own ambivalence.
• Actionable - Every post should be the beginning of something - an ongoing relationship because the reader signed up for your list or the first step in the buying journey. You’re missing a huge opportunity if you don’t invite your reader to take a next step when they reach the end of the piece. 
• Fascinating - Well, at least be interesting... The previous four rules are pretty irrelevant if you're boring the reader.

You and I will ignore those writing for the web rules (is that ok?)

Rules are made to be broken, of course, and you can point to a zillion successful articles that annihilate these conventions. Such posts compel you and even go viral because  they’re aimed right at the collective sense of concern, outrage, or “awwww, so cute!”

One thing about those rule-breaking posts though? Readers may comment and share them, but they probably aren’t spending any money based on the content they've just consumed.  It’s hard to invest in a writer or a company who rambles about their own confused state of affairs....

It’s important to remember - the “be focused, brief, clear, and actionable” aren’t just guidelines that exist “because the internet.” They’re just good business sense.

If “the confused mind does not buy,” then the confused entrepreneur does not attract buyers.

But what if you don’t feel focused and clear in your writing (or in your thinking)?

As I said, I kinda hate the advice I gave about using your personal stories to frame a bit of useful business information - but I believe in it enough to do it again (and again).

Telling you about my ambivalent, nuanced relationship with the blending of personal storytelling and forwarding a brand doesn’t make for focused, brief, clear, actionable prose. So, most of the time, I keep the existential angst to myself.

I tell part of my story about storytelling, hit publish and feel just good enough that I offered my readers something authentic and worthy of their time.

But then I stew. For days.

I fill a couple dozen journal pages, questioning the role of entrepreneurship and storytelling in my life. I analyze my place in the entire capitalist venture. I long to abandon business and blogging and all the well-meant advice so I can hole up with a word processor and a dream of being a novelist.

Ok, so I don’t do this every week (I’d end up in alone, likely  in a van down by the river), but when I do get myself into this state, I write headlines like:

For I Will Go Mad If I Write Only for the Marketplace

I long to spool out meandering paragraphs that go on for pages, expecting the reader to stick with my muddled quest for clarity simply because she loves being along for the artist’s journey…

Invariably, I swing the other direction, glad that I’ve given up dead poets and all that opaque academic writing for the vibrant, immediate world of the creative entrepreneur.

I trust that there’s room in my life for the personal writing, the fiction writing, and the business writing.

I hate tangling my creativity in business goals and online writing rules. (Except when I don’t hate it.) 

This, my friend, is not the stuff you blithely toss on the blog and share to LinkedIn with the expectation that new clients will start tying up the phone lines.

Why am I revealing all this anguish? Anguish I cooked up by publishing my own useful, business-focused blog posts? Because I think you’re going through something similar.

This writing-for-your-business stuff doesn’t always feel good. What’s the source of the pain?

Your writing process is often a burden or an unanswered "should." Let’s be honest about why all this blogging and guest posting and website content creation is hard - or even painful.

Here are 5 reasons that the creative entrepreneur resists the writing-for-your-business process (at least some of the time). 

1. Creativity doesn’t like serving a single-minded master - particularly when that master is concerned with doing what’s necessary to sustain a viable business
2. Storytelling is an art in and of itself, and sometimes it feels like you’re selling out when you use your own stories to sell a product or service
3. There’s only so much creative juice in your glass, and when you drain it for something as ephemeral as a blog post, you resent how the “real” creative projects suffer
4. Certainty isn’t part of the creative journey - and you don’t want it to be… asserting your in-process vision as fact because the skimming online reader doesn’t see shades of gray feels reckless
5. You want to believe that stories matter because they matter, not because they’re a means to an end

Some of these are pulled right from my own fevered journaling sessions. Others come from conversations I’ve had with creatives who struggle with their online writing chores. All of them resonate with me, but I think, collectively, we could go even deeper.

Please share your reasons for resisting or resenting the writing-for-your-business process in the comments or on your favorite social media post (please do tag me and share this post!)

Why wallow in "writing is hard!"?

We're not throwing a "woe is me, the connected creative with a business and a following and a commitment to my art" pity party here. Instead, we're owning up to our resistance and our periodic crises of faith in the whole endeavor of building an online platform.

In a world where ambivalence or being "in process" is seen as a weakness, we must take a stand for the very real state of "becoming" and embrace the clarity as well as the mess.

Dare to follow the rules of writing for the web - sometimes. Put out posts that are focused, brief, clear, actionable and tell enough of the story to meet your own Sovereign Standard.

Other days, allow yourself to defy those conventions and just write into "fascinating." Write what you must write, not what the marketplace seems to demand.

But, do me a favor - breathe deep and pause before hitting publish. Some ideas must be allowed to marinate in the mind and in the journal for a while... even if you are dedicated to making this whole online writing thing work.

Let's make this writing-for-your-business work easier... I'd love to support you as your writing coach. Have a look at what I offer and we'll set up a free 15 minutes chat about how I can help you.

The Art of Using Personal Stories In Professional Writing

Sharing bits of your own life can be an ideal way to connect with your reader and show that you’re delightfully (or horribly!) human. Then again, it can be a risk. Sharing too much or nattering on about something that bores your audience can kill engagement and lead to unsubscribes.

As with anything, it’s about striking the right balance. For the creative entrepreneur, that means blending a story that piques interest with useful information your readers can apply to their own lives.

Your mission: weave together story & news they can use

Two general guidelines as you balance story and practical information in your business writing:

1. Provide just-juicy-enough details and personal revelations, while honoring that this is a professional space, not a confessional one.
2. Remember that the reader is the hero, not you (even if you’re using your own crumby day or ecstatic moment to get an idea across). The article you’re writing or the talk you’re giving may open with lots of “I did this…” and then “I thought that…” language, but you want to bring it back to the “you” by the end of the piece.

Does every personal story need to offer the reader an obvious “what’s in it for me?”

Just as balance isn’t always about 50/50, “make your own story about the reader” isn’t true 100% of the time - at least not in an overt way.

Business writing and blogging isn’t memoir writing, but we can take a cue from the Elizabeth Gilberts and Cheryl Strayeds of the world… Even when the story is purely personal, strangers can see their own story in a first person narrative.

If you trust your readership to interpret the story and understand that they can follow your example or heed a cautionary tale, you may be able to carry the autobiographical approach all the way to end.

When you’re starting out, however, stick with this basic rule: employ a compelling story from your own life to illuminate something you’d like your readers to examine or try in their own lives.

• Be obvious about the connection between story and "lesson."
• Transition from prose to a list. (This makes it clear for the reader that they're in the "teaching bit" of the article.)
• Shift from using“I” at beginning  to using “you” at the end.

Interested in seeing that in action? I walked my talk in last week’s Sovereign Standard post: As Entrepreneurs, As Writers, As Mothers: What’s “Enough”?

Did you know it was possible to take the story of a fourteen month old’s split lip and use it to describe how to best prioritize your business writing? I didn’t either…

But, as I worked through the worry and the guilt that sprang from failing to protect my girl (from gravity and a wee bit of questionable maternal judgment), I eventually arrived at secure state of “enoughness.”

And "enoughness" isn't just essential to the harried mama - it's essential for the overcommitted entrepreneur trying to honor client work and business building and the writing practice that feeds her soul as well as her marketing duties.

Learn how the Story Triangle can help you balance TMI and just enough details to draw your readers in. Sign up for the free webinar.

As Entrepreneurs, As Writers, As Mothers: What's "Enough"?

One of my girls had an accident this weekend. Though it was terrifying at the time, it ended up being relatively minor. Now I can claim a parenting merit badge my mom never earned: held my daughter as she got stitched up. It was an accident, yes, but it could have been prevented. I could have had my hands on the kids instead of sitting inch beyond an arm’s length away. I could have said “no, honey a five year old isn’t big enough to carry her one year old sister yet.”

But I didn’t.

And we ended up at the emergent care center, covered in blood - and sidewalk chalk and dirt from what was supposed to be a typical Saturday spent in a yard just awakening to spring.

We’re so proud of our girl for healing so quickly and handling it all so well. And I’m pleased to report that I’ve emerged from shame’s shadows. Truthfully, the horrible guilt dissipated within twenty-four hours. (Likely that’s because much of the swelling did too).

No longer blinded by self-recrimination, I can simply hold my little one tight, overcome with gratitude and rendered speechless by how precious she is to me.

Yes, gravity won in that split second, but I forgive myself.

I’ve decide that I am mother enough for my daughter - even if I’m woefully and beautifully imperfect.

 So that’s the question: how do you know what “enough” is? And how do you peacefully maintain that state of “enoughness” when you find it?

This isn’t just a question for moms with accident-prone kids - it’s a question for everyone trying to balance priorities and keep the whole enterprise from teetering into disaster.

As I understand it, the secret to contentment and enoughness - especially when it comes to motherhood and entrepreneurship and maintaining a writing practice - is in finding balance.

Balance Isn’t About 50/50. It’s About Enoughness.

I know balance triggers people (“balance is a myth!” and “balance is BS!”), but I wish we could reclaim it. Balance is essential - but we don’t often realize that until it fails and someone ends up in the ER.

The iconic Scales of Justice have brainwashed us into perceiving balance as a 50/50 or nothing proposition, but why do we trust a blindfolded statue with something so fundamental to our happiness and success?

Balance is not about giving half our effort to work and half to play. It certainly isn’t about giving half our time to business and half family (unless that’s really the right mix for you).

 As I understand it, balance is a much more rewarding, complex equation. It requires heart math I could never do in my head.

Balance is about reaching the end of each day saying "I am enough."

You may have told your partner you had too much work to do to come to bed on time. You may have blown off a writing deadline because you needed to play outside until sunset. OK. Try again tomorrow.

The essence of balance isn’t in recreating the same pie chart every day. Each portion of your life may not always get its precise allotment of resources.

Balance is about knowing what slices of pie you need to serve, and what slices you need to save. You're in balance when you can honor your commitments and ensure everyone (including you!) is getting enough.

When Everything Gets the Perfect Amount of Attention

If I over-mother I start to drive myself - and my children - crazy. Most likely trying to overcompensate for something that has nothing to do with parenting, I hover and hug until we all get stressed and fatigued by a mama who is trying too hard.

And if I push mothering off to the side, whatever I focus on instead - like client tasks and writing deadlines - it never gets my best work.

When everything gets the perfect amount of attention, everyone feels like they’ve been seen and supported. I go to bed full of gratitude, sure that I’ve been of service and certain that I have access to the help I need.

I won’t presume to give you advice on how to do the heart math about how much time to spend with your babies or your novel or your lover, but I know something about how to decide how much attention to offer to the different kinds of writing you do for your business.

How to Prioritize Your Business Writing Commitments

Foundational Website Content, Email Marketing, the Book Project, Blogging, and Social Media: How Much Attention Does Each Deserve?

Everyone's business writing pie is going to be divided differently. You'll determine how to spend your writing time and resources depending on how well you've established your business's story, your individual goals, and the size and responsiveness of your audience.

I've ranked the six writing tasks below by their general importance to your visibility and sales.

Remember, the goal is a sense of balance and “enoughness”! You. Don’t. Need. To. Do. It. All.

To prioritize your writing commitments, just make educated choices based on where you are now and where you want to be six months or a year from now.

1. The website copy that clearly expresses who you are, what you offer, and who you serve
2. The opt-in offer (eg. a special report or a “mini course” you deliver over email) that proves your expertise and acts as the first step in the clients' buying journey
3. The weekly or at least bi-monthly messages to your email list
4. The book project that gives you an opportunity to explore and expand your theories and stories
5. The regular blog posts that boost your visibility and prove your credibility to the first-time website visitor who wants to know your work is current and your business is vibrant (stick guest posting and article writing into this category too)
6. The social media posts that remind your community about the great things you do

Reorder the list based on your own personal pie. Here are a few additional ideas to help you set your writing priorities:

#1: your website copy is a non-negotiable top priority. If people spend a minute reading your site and say “Looks great…. but what do you do?” then you're wasting your time on items 2 through 6.

#2: your opt in offer is often put on the back burner, but if you want to build an email list (something you need if you expect your online efforts to make money), you need this sooner rather than later.

#3: your ongoing email marketing is the essential follow up to your opt-in offer. The people who open your emails are most likely to buy from you, so treat these individuals like the valued community members they are. (Keep in mind you can often combine this with your commitment to blogging!)

#4: a book project may not even make the list (which is totally fine!). But if it does , you can never expect to get it done if it’s less important than blogging and Facebook.

#5: blogging is great - but it’s also completely overrated if you’re focusing on weekly posts or guest posts rather than a homepage that invites people to dive deeper and crystal clear services page that gets them to pull out the credit card.

And #6... We’ve come of age as social media users and finally realize that “likes” aren’t anything more than a number. Use your social media reach as a tool to bring people back to the writing that matters - the web content that reveals your Sovereign Story.

Again: the goal is balance and enoughness. You don't need to do every item on this list and you don't need to apportion your writing resources in the same way every day.  

But, as I promise to neither over-mother nor shortchange my kids on the love and attention they need, please promise me you won't lavish your attention on the writing tasks that don't matter at the expense of the projects that tell the core story of your business.

Not sure what to put first when it comes to writing for your business? Let’s set up a free 15 minute conversation to assess where you are and decide how to best invest your writing energy.

Why Writing Means So Much to the Creative Entrepreneur

What becomes possible when you own “creative”? Use it as a noun or an adjective. Use it as a title. Use it as a source of inspiration. Let it express your very reason for being.

What happens to your work, your process, and your own view of yourself when you dare to declare yourself a source of new stories and solutions?

Not that you asked, but I can tell you that claiming “creative” changed everything for me.

If You Want to Be a Writer, Write. If You Want to Be Creative, Create.

The secret to owning “creative” is in the act of creating, of course. (If only it were that simple!)

My husband nearly threw himself into the Atlantic the morning of our wedding because he found writing his vows so frustrating. (We blame fear of writing, not cold feet!) He’s the last guy to give writing advice. But it’s the non-writer who can put it most plainly: If you want to write, write!

He suggested that when I was a bored hourly employee and when I was stifled at my salaried management job.

Later, he might have said something about “just write” when I was forcing myself through various marketing and website design biz ventures, but I couldn’t hear him over the pounding of my scared, success-starved heart.

How “Just Do It” Really Works for Creatives

“Just do it” fits nicely on a tee shirt, but it’s not advice that will change your life until you’re ready to hear it. And do it.

When my second child arrived, I saw how ragged my dreams and my reality had become thanks to a four-year-long entrepreneurial experiment. I’d learned too much to force myself into momtrepreneurship times two kids without making fundamental changes to my approach.

That’s when I realized I had to source my entrepreneurship in something other than “I have to make money for my family and be available to them at the same time” (the fundamental drive of the mom entrepreneur).

I had to devote myself to work that satisfied more than my need to be the super mom who makes the dinner and pays for it too (even though both those things still had to happen).

And so, even as my mothering responsibilities increased, I traded the identity of mom entrepreneur for “creative entrepreneur.”

Suddenly the professional title I gave myself didn’t indicate that I was an over-scheduled, under-rested woman who negotiated contracts during diaper changes. What I called myself was inspiring and invigorating rather than draining.

How Will You Connect the “Entrepreneur” and “Creative” Dots?

Yes, my daughter's birth made me realize that I wanted to leave the mom entreprepreneurs’ playground and find a place in the creatives’ studio, but realizing and doing are two different things.

Finally, I was able to listen to that wise husband of mine.

I wanted to write, I always had. I was going to write my way into the creatives’ circle. Enough with thinking they'd never admit a fraud like me who had the hopes but not the word count to prove she wanted to be Diana Gabaldon someday.

But what about you?

Writing isn’t the only way to step into the “I create things” arena, but it’s the way that is most immediately useful to the entrepreneur.

We know that creating content is essential for marketing your business and that words and stories are still the most important way to do that.

By learning how to write your book - even if it’s not the sort of trade non-fiction aimed directly at your current clients - you’re gaining skills related to story architecture, idea sculpting, and platform building that are indispensable for the entrepreneur.

Enter Sovereign Reality, Enter Tracking Wonder

Last summer when I was juggling client work and trips to the beach with the kids (it was supposed to be a vacation), I somehow stole an hour for a webinar for anyone writing & publishing a book led by Jeffrey Davis of Tracking Wonder. I'd known Jeffrey as an esteemed colleague and as a dad from the preschool and knew I loved his work, but this experience was somehow different.

I still felt like a fraud as I tuned in, there amongst the "real" creatives doing the work to become "real" authors. But over the next hour, I was filling my journal not only with Jeffrey's practical advice, but with scraps of plot and character names and ideas about the bigger themes that my novel needed to explore.

Sovereign Reality, the trilogy of novels, became real to me. And the entire concept of “sovereignty” began to take shape as the backbone of my professional work.

On that summer afternoon, I stepped on to the path. I had a work in progress. I was going to be an author. I had a new perspective on my dreams and what I had to offer to my business.

 I really was a creative entrepreneur.

Making the Commitment to Creativity, Story, and the Book that Matters

By October of 2014,  I found myself surrounded by a select tribe of Jeffrey’s dedicated writers at the Your Brave New Story Authors’ Intensive at Mohonk Mountain House. Immersed in my story and the importance of my compatriots’ books, I felt every bit as alive and fearless as I did in those blissful moments after childbirth - even though I was only at the very beginning of my fiction writing journey. 

That's the thing - writing a book is a journey and you need a tribe and you need a guide to support you. Jeffrey offers that all year long through various programs and consultancy options, but especially with the Your Captivating Book mentoring program.

If this really intrigues you, email me - act by April 30 and I can get you a special discount and maybe even a free initial consult with The Book Papa himself.

One final reason to think about writing that book that has been holed up inside you and to do it with Jeffrey's help: he's about more than just books and authors... He is distinguishing himself as a major voice for doing business as UNusual and speaks directly to the needs of the business artist, AKA, the creative entrepreneur.

5 Steps to Reclaiming Your Writing Practice

The Sovereign Standard, Issue 8 

A creative entrepreneur’s editorial calendar can be her salvation. Making a commitment to generate ideas, get the writing done, and put something in front of an audience signals to your community (and your brain and your spirit) that you’re fully invested in this work.

But, then again, a writing plan can just be a spreadsheet full of punishment and guilt. If you can’t seem to work the plan and meet your deadlines, does it mean you don’t truly care about your business or the people you serve?

Of course not. But when you’re blinded by the glare of the blank page or find every idea fizzles after two paragraphs, you start to panic. Especially when you’ve been on a consistent publishing streak.

You're thinking nothing short of a natural disaster should stop you from posting on schedule, but here you are, about to fail because you can’t find and stick to one halfway decent topic on an average Tuesday.

Step 1 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Set Your Information Filters

The problem isn’t a lack of ideas. Most likely, it's an overabundance of information and possibility that has you stuck.

So, the first thing to do to vanquish writer’s block is to practice discernment about what sort of information you consume.

In Relax, Their Blogging and Marketing Advice Doesn’t Apply to You I offer a case for why you can tune out what the majority of experts have to say about content marketing - even if you’re dedicated to writing a blog in support of your business.

But then, once you’ve shut off the information fire hose, you’re left with the paradox: now that I finally have some quiet around here, I’m just going to add to the noise.

Step 2 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Believe In the Writing Process

Is the ultimate cure for writer’s block simply killing the urge to write?

What if you convince yourself that producing more articles just adds to the chaos of the oversaturated digital stream? Then you can just walk away from the whole writing enterprise and congratulate yourself for reducing the information glut, right?

 No. That’s not right.

 There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.

- Maya Angelou

Writing is medicine. Words want to make alchemists of us all.

To shape your flashes of insight and prayers of gratitude and revelations of joy into a message that someone else can understand… that is the great prize of the human intellect, the greatest expression of aliveness in this Age of Information.

Writing has saved your sanity more times than you can count, but you forget this. I forget this. And so we research a little more in order to avoid taking the cure that is just as bitter as the disease.

Why is it that when it's time to write we open Google Search instead of opening a Google Doc? 

Step 3 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Avoid Writing By Reading About Writing

Proving that we need writing to sustain us, when I didn't want to write this week, I began to read.

 Seth Godin says:

Writer's block isn't hard to cure. Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.

He’s right, of course, but the path to success he describes is outlined in traffic cones. Like me, I am betting you were hoping for velvet ropes or a seashell strewn path.

So turn to Kelly Galea who offers the same idea but prepares you a soft writer’s nest with the perfect writing implement and a beloved journal.

 Just express yourself. Just BE. So simple, really. Again, are you wondering where these thoughts and words are coming from? This pen. How is that for an answer? The pen is an instrument … YOU are an instrument. Be used to express this collective consciousness in YOUR voice – your unique voice, the voice someone (MANY someones) are waiting to hear, to call them forth, to bring them home. Lead them, guide them, help them, inspire them, teach them. Give them hope. Give them love. Give them that spark. Give them compassion for themselves.

Kelly got me cozy, but I might just burrow into that nest she crafted with her words and never write a thing, so I look to Jeffrey Davis to get me moving.

In Jeffrey’s Post Ecstasy Laundry List he addresses the inevitable come down after a peak creative experience, but much of this advice applies to you if you can’t imagine feeling creative ever again.

He’s telling you to keep writing too:

Make mistakes. The only catastrophic choice a writer makes is not to choose. Whether it’s genre or working story arc or angle. Show up. Get messy. Hit dead ends. Flounder. That’s part of the quest.

Step 4 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Assimilate Rather than Create

I allowed myself one more click before I told myself I would just walk away from the desk and pray for inspiration over the next diaper change (after all, it’s in moments of rest and boredom that the real answers flow).

Then I discovered Karen Brody’s work. Great goodness! She’s an expert in the struggle exhausted, depleted women who inspires you to change your way of being: “Because your life needs you fully charged.”

Life needs you fully charged, and so does your writing practice. Addressing writer’s block by staring at the page is like passing someone a Kleenex to cure grief.

Karen offers 9 insights into the art of being well-rested, and it's barely a stretch to apply each of these to the  “I have no idea what to write” lament. My favorite:

Welcome Everything. Think of all the hours you live in an either/or mentality. Real transformation comes when you can drop the false idea that you’re separate.

Apply this approach to your daily life, welcoming every experience as a potential inspiration for your next blog post or article.

Step 5 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Practice Compassion

Bless you and your commitment. All hail your editorial calendar that can. You keep rocking that publishing streak.

But remember that your writing practice is meant to give back to you.

The hours you put in aren’t just in service to another post, another snack for the voracious internet marketing beast.

Your next post is a distillation of your presence in your life and in your business. It is a message from the heart of your work to the heart of someone who needs your wisdom, encouragement, or strategic advice.

The people who matter - the people who want to be beguiled and convinced and changed by your words - they don’t want you to look at a blank page gone blurry with tears of frustration. If they must, they can wait til next week.

And so can your spreadsheet.

But before you give up and beat yourself up:

• tune out the extraneous noise
• remember why writing matters to you
• seek wise counsel
• be present in the moment, and
• be kind to yourself

 I can’t wait to read what you'll write next!

This post was sent to Sovereign Standard subscribers first. To join our community of readers and contributors, please subscribe here.

Relax, Their Blogging and Marketing Advice Doesn’t Apply to You

It’s your business to make life more beautiful, bearable, or bold for a select group of people. You want to be more visible, telling your brand’s story and your own stories. Launching a blog or devoting yourself to a regular business writing process on your current website is the right decision.

Here’s the first thing to do: stop listening to advice for bloggers.

Tune out the smart, reputable marketing experts with their experience and convincing facts and figures.

They’re not talking to you.

(And, of course, you also want to stop listening to the “get rich quick” business gurus, but you already knew that.)

But back to those intelligent, compelling marketing marketing minds and what elements of their advice you can ignore...

You’re Not the Every(wo)man Blogger

About 15 - 20% of Americans are involved in entrepreneurial ventures.

A large proportion of those individuals make utilitarian products and sell everyday services like septic tank maintenance. Most of those companies rely on old fashioned advertising to find new buyers.

There’s a smaller slice of the self-employed population that will experiment with content marketing and launch a blog or develop other types of media to educate and entertain and entice new business.

Though they’re surely speaking to marketing officers at larger corporations too, the majority of the blogging and marketing experts are pitching their message at this group of "traditional" business folks.

Since you’re an entrepreneur interested in creating content, you’ll want to listen to the same podcasts and consume the same articles as the car salesmen and the electricians, right? After all, there are business fundamentals that apply to everyone, don't they? You can just filter out the bits that don’t fit your ideal clients.

No.

Stop filtering as you listen! There's too much noise in your life already.

Move on immediately when you realize the speaker isn't talking to you. Find someone who is. They're out there and they want to address exactly what you're concerned about.

Good Marketing Advice That’s Not For You

Demian Farnworth is Copyblogger’s Chief Content Writer. As part of the company’s brand new podcast network, Demian hosts a show called Rough Draft. Here’s the pitch: “ If you’re a pure writer, and you wonder how you’ll be able to build your own online platform that actually gets seen, this show is your shortcut.”

I’m not exactly sure what a “pure writer” is, but I guess I’m not one of them and I don’t believe the creative entrepreneurs in my circle are either based on the recent episode, “An Idiot-Proof Guide to Writing Blog Posts That Google Loves.”

Demian is doing his listeners a great service as he describes the current state of SEO and debunks some of the myths around what’s often seen as a secretive world - if not a downright dark art.

He uses some well-known examples like eHow.com (hint: when the examples someone uses have absolutely nothing in common with your goals, approach, or audience it’s often a sign the advice is not for you).

And then he describes a Google’s engineer’s description of a high quality site comprised of more than twenty questions including:

• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?

I know your answer to every one of these questions.

I also know that you wouldn’t consider any answer other than your own to be acceptable - not of you’re going to put your good name on it and expect it to draw in the high caliber prospects that you’ve created a business to serve.

Now, there is nothing wrong with this advice. Until recently, the Web was a Wild West where tricks and gimmicks were just part of doing business. There are many people who need to hear Demian's info  - including some conscientious, hard-working business people led astray by nefarious SEO “experts” who profited off of link farms and other low quality sites.

But since you’ve never considered buying content from a low value, low cost supplier and since you always strive to write pieces that are worthy of publication in a magazine your audience loves and trusts, why would you listen to this kind of advice (other than to feel superior to the swindlers and the nice guys who were duped)?

What Sort of Marketing & Business Advice Does Apply to the Creative Entrepreneur?

Who is your ideal marketing and business resource? The cop out answer is also the truest answer: “you’ll know 'em when you hear 'em.”

Develop your own powers of discernment and perfect your own filters so you can identify when an expert deserves your time and attention.

In order to have that kind of discernment you need to be clear on your own identity in the marketplace as well your own goals and needs. Know your own creative entrepreneur’s autobiography and what brought you to where you are now as a business owner and as an individual.

If you’ve never done business as usual, don’t judge your past or plot your future with one size fits all business advice.

If you were a vegetarian you wouldn't buy the #1 best selling guide to cooking spare ribs. As a creative entrepreneur with a storyteller's soul, don't get bogged down by advice for people who've tried to scam their way onto their audience's computer screens.

When you know and own your own entrepreneurial story you’ll become more comfortable with clicking away and searching out a more relevant resource when someone is blazing a path through “doesn’t apply to me" territory.

Don't Judge an Expert By One Piece of Content

Even if there's a seemingly limitless supply of marketing resources out there, you don't want to abandon relevant thought leaders because every statement isn't customized to your exact interests.

Without singling out Demian Farnworth too much, I want to be clear that I have listened to each episode of his new show and have found some great information mixed in with the stuff that doesn't need to be on my radar. In a previous Rough Draft episode on keyword research, Demian asks:

Will anyone read the online content you produce?

It’s a terrifying question, but an important one. If you’re committed to building a popular and profitable site, you’ll have to write, read, and talk about your topic almost every day for the next several years. You’ll invest thousands of hours, quite literally gambling with your time.

The question is, how will you approach it? Will you start writing and hope someone notices you? Or will you carefully research your niche, looking for the precise angle and language that will make your content irresistible?

I recommend the latter.

This statement - though yes, terrifying - speaks to the creative entrepreneur because it’s true of everyone on a quest to build a business through content marketing.

And yet, he also reminds us of the importance “niche.”  Just as you want to be sure to identify your own niche so you know how to speak to your audience, you want to be just as clear about whether you fit in a content producer's tribe.

Be a magpie, pulling inspiration from across the web, but also be choosy. Be willing to abandon any bit of information that doesn’t contribute to the knowledge base you’re seeking to build.

The Sovereign Standard is a publication that collects multiple perspectives on topics that are relevant to the creative entrepreneur. Subscribe for free here.

And if you're looking for writing help that is honed specifically for the needs of the creative entrepreneur with a storyteller's soul, I invite you to think about how I can help you get your ideas into a post that speaks to your ideal reader and client.

Why Myth Matters to Your Writing and Marketing

We need myth. We always have, and we always will - if we want to retain our humanity.

Why myth matters to your writing and marketing

Called “a roadmap to the human psyche,” myths exist to explain the big questions like “for what reason was I born?” and “what will happen to me when I die?”

Myths lay out pretty clearly what is on the human smorgasbord: what we want, what we fear, what we would like to have, what we would very much not like to have. Those human fears and human desires really have not changed, and they're reflected in the myths that have been with us for a long time.

 --Margaret Atwood

Myths are also indispensable when it comes to less existential matters like creating a Hollywood blockbuster, writing a novel, and assembling a marketing plan.

The Myth that Everyone Knows: The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey as originally framed by Joseph Campbell is something of a cultural standard these days, particularly for storytellers.

Turns out, “everyone” wasn’t always aware of this great twelve part cycle until Christopher Vogler brought it to Hollywood’s attention in the mid-1980s (at least that’s how he tells it). Of course, it was hiding in plain sight as George Lucas’s Star Wars had already transported us to a galaxy far, far away and transformed movie hero-dom forever. (Later, John Wayne, we've got a farm boy with a character arc!)

Vogler offers great advice on following the Hero framework when crafting a story (this also applies to any attempt to lay your ideas over someone else’s framework):

As with any formula, there are pitfalls to be avoided... The hero myth is a skeleton that should be masked with the details of the individual story, and the structure should not call attention to itself.  The order of the hero’s stages as given here is only one of many variations – the stages can be deleted, added to, and drastically re-shuffled without losing any of their power.

The myth is infinitely flexible, capable of endless variation without sacrificing any of its magic, and it will outlive us all.

(While you’re brushing up on the basics of the Hero’s Journey, do check out the summary of the Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock too… I know I’m intrigued.)

The Hero’s Journey through the Marketplace

The hero's story is is a human story that speaks to us on multiple levels. At its best, the Hero’s Journey can connect people with resources that will better their lives. At its most banal, it can be used to make people buy stuff.

First, the “what NOT to do” example.

In Brand Storytelling: 10 Steps to Start Your Content Marketing Hero’s Journey, you’re guided through “The CM Brand Hero’s Journey."

Stop. Right. There.

Develop a marketing and content strategy with you or your brand in the hero’s role and you’ll alienate those who really matter to the story: the people who invest in your work and use it to change their own lives.

The brand is not the hero, just as the writer is not the hero. In case you forgot, Pamela Slim will remind you: It is not about you.

Lest we get sidetracked, deriding those evil marketers who cheapen and co-opt everything, there are clever, useful, sensitive ways to apply this wisdom to business.

Copyblogger’s Brian Clark masterfully re-envisions the role of the brand in the hero's tale: the magical mentor.

The mistake most often made in “marketing” is thinking of your business as the hero, which results in egocentric messages that no one else cares about.

The prospect is always the primary hero, because they are the one going on the journey — whether big or small — to solve a problem or satisfy a desire.

Another reason to tune in to this New Rainmaker podcast: Echoing the cyclical nature of the hero’s journey, you get a new perspective on the funnel: the concentric circles of belief. (If you're excited by the Heroine's Journey this "feminine" diagram of the sales process may really appeal to you.)

A New Mythic Model for the Magical Mentor

Brian Clark employs two of our most beloved mentors to illustrate his point: Obi Wan and Morpheus from The Matrix. You know these guys. You'd trust them if you were chosen to save the world.

Here’s another option that hasn't hit the multiplex: the Sovereignty Goddess.

As I describe in my St. Patrick’s Day post, 5 Lessons on Writing and Entrepreneurship from an Irish Goddess, the Celtic Sovereignty Goddess plays a vital - though fleeting - role in the creation of the hero. She owns her magic and never stresses about playing second fiddle.

“Just” having a supporting role in the hero’s journey is actually what being a storyteller or running a business is all about.

This introduces the paradox of the hero:

We don’t need another hero. Everyone is a hero.

You’re most effective when you realize you’re not the hero of the piece you’re writing or the business you’re running. And yet, you must remember you're the hero of your own story.

The Hero’s Quest: Be of Service

“The hero’s journey is to be of service”: that’s Lisa Engel’s “ah ha” statement at the end of this episode of The Jess, Scott, and You show, “In the Service of Others.” (I had the good fortune to be a guest on this particular show too.)

Though it’s true that it’s not all about you (here, Susie Moore explains why that is such a good thing), you are also on your own quest. You must practice self-care and act from self-love and self-interest in order to grow and meet your potential (we discussed that at length on the show).

You'll never prove your heroism through an egotistical romp aimed showing off your skills and authority. Instead, you become the hero through a willingness to imagine, learn, endure, transform, and then bring the magical elixir home.

Who are your heroes? How have you been called to take on the role of the hero? And what has that taught you about who is really in charge? Leave a comment or tag me with the answer on your favorite social media platform.

5 Choices You Make Every Time You Write a Post

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility. Eleanor Roosevelt

What? There’s something words can’t do? Yes, thank goodness.

Every writer knows that the most profound aspects of life stretch the limits of language. That’s why we seek out those liminal, wordless spaces. And, because we’re a bit mad, we then return to the desk and try to prove that it’s possible to express the inexpressible.

Regular Voyages To the Space Beyond Words

Four weekends a year I escape my responsibilities as mother, wife, and entrepreneur and I attend class at the Sacred Center Mystery School - my home for personal and spiritual development work. This is where my teacher and mentor first introduced “the goal is to become sovereign in your own reality” - the phrase that has launched my personal and professional quest for sovereignty.

What I absorb at the Sacred Center is folded into what I think Eleanor Roosevelt would call my “philosophy.” I receive teachings that both precede and supercede words. The alchemical process of turning experience into language begins when I get home and the irresistible urge to write takes over.

We explored “choice” during this latest class. I saw my life as a series of spirals and arcs rather than right or left turns. In countless instances from meeting my husband to quitting my job and becoming an entrepreneur, it seemed like life had mostly happened to me.

There was a healing around this for me - now I'm ready to recognize all of the ways "I have a choice" echoes through each day.

After all, I choose every word I write (when autocorrect doesn’t think it’s smarter than me, at least!).

How much will you reveal? You always get to make that choice

As part of the Message Discovery and Development Process, a client who wrote her creative entrepreneur’s autobiography went deep into what inspired her to become a healer. She spent a lot of time considering and organizing the story, and was very honest in the telling, but there was a resistance when we discussed what she’d written.

Beyond a doubt, getting to the core of her “why” to understand the origins of the work was worthwhile. And yet, details of her personal trauma and descriptions of the bumps on her road to success clearly weren’t to be included in the story she’d tell on her About page.

It felt too personal. Her professional identity was not enhanced with that level of vulnerability - at least not on this particular page of her website. Plus, the story was long and people were coming to the website for her healing skills, not because they were interested in reading a spiritual memoir.

And so, a three thousand word journey was distilled to three paragraphs and together we decided that she’d focus on what she had learned from her journey: her philosophy of connection and healing.

5 Choices You Can Make Every Time You Write a Post

No one is making you blog for your business or forcing you to write guest posts to boost your visibility. You’re dedicating yourself to a writing practice because you know writing matters to your business.

Once you’ve made the choice to write, there are so many more empowering choices you get to make:

1. The voice: The basic rule, especially when writing for the web, is “write like you talk.” That’s good advice, but you certainly use a different tone and vocabulary when you’re dishing with girlfriends than when you’re presenting to the school board.Will you be nurturing, professional, something of a smart ass, or somewhere in between?
2. The form: They say people love list posts, and it’s true that the average internet reader likes to scan through logically organized information. But don’t just shape your writing to fit the bloggers’ advice - write to support your story and the needs of your specific audience.
   Will you break out the old reliable “5 ways to…” or tell a story or present case studies? You always have the option of combining forms (just like this post does).
3. The reason for writing: You’re writing because you see each blog post as an opportunity to educate, entertain, or inspire. You’re also writing a post to get the reader to do something that betters her life and connects her more deeply to what your brand has to offer. The post needs a clear call to action or CTA. Direct your post to a final “ask.”
   Will you choose to promote a product or program in the last line? Maybe you just want to ask the reader to subscribe to your email list (after all, that is where most sales are eventually made).
4. The details: As described the healer involved in the Message Discovery Process realized, not every detail of the story has to make it into the post. Some details may be for your eyes only while others may be the seeds of future articles.Once you’ve written the first draft, try to leave it alone for a few days or at least  few hours. When you come back, what extraneous details can you cut and what key ideas can you bring to the fore?
5. The visuals: As you write, you have the opportunity to choose metaphors that help your reader picture what you’re talking about. Because images are so important to blog posts, you also get to choose the photos and illustrations that will really prove your point (and make the whole blog very “pinnable” and easy to share on social media). How will you make the blog post cohesive - a selection of photos from the same location, a series of related quotes, a handful of drawings that have the same vibe?

I chose to make this a post about expanded consciousness and a healer’s journey into self-awareness and a relevant about page, so I can’t really switch tones and conclude with “you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can pick your friend’s nose.”

But then, I am still feeling invigorated by the power of choice and I can choose to ignore my own well meant advice!

For a weekly collection of inspiration and ideas for the creative entrepreneur, subscribe to the Sovereign Standard where it’s all about setting your own standards (and breaking your own rules as you see fit).

What You'll Gain From a Business Writing Practice (Besides Blog Posts)

If you’re only creating content for content’s sake, you’re missing something important. Yes, every internet savvy creative entrepreneur is supposed to produce regular content for the blog and other online outposts, but there’s more to the writing process than sales pitches and knowledge transmission.

The internet beast is insatiable, and if your only reason for writing a blog post or producing a newsletter is to check another chore off your list, you’ll always be stressed about keeping up.

When your heart isn’t in the words you produce, you’ll never connect to your readers the way you hope. You’ll start to believe that this whole content marketing thing is a racket and that writing on behalf of your business is just a waste of time.

To remain true to your creative business vision and to keep your personal equilibrium, you must get more out of the writing-for-your-business process than “I got it done.”

Expect Your Writing to Give Back to You

Good, consistent content supported by a smart, sustained online sharing strategy will build your business because that’s plain good marketing. But, if you expect more from your writing practice, you’ll receive even more in return.

5 Unexpected Benefits of a Writing-For-Your-Business Practice

1. The writing process reconnects you with your “why” and helps you go deeper into the mission of your company and the meaning of your work. There’s no better way to stay true to the entrepreneurial adventure than through the personal exploration and public declarations that are inherent to this new art of online writing.
2. If your mission is at the core of your business, writing also helps you explore the outer edges of the work. Drafting into “what if…?” style questions will reveal new possibilities and directions.
3. You are able to speak more fluently about your work and what you have to offer in any setting - at an in-person networking event or in an online exchange where it’s appropriate to talk about how your company can help solve a problem
4. For all that you may identify as a “creative” it can be easy to lose track of your creator’s mojo due to the demands of entrepreneurship. Writing is your chance to stoke the fires of your creativity while still remaining engaged in your business.
5. When you start telling your business’s stories you’ll find yourself uncovering new aspects of your own story. Even if you don’t reveal everything in the public narrative, this sort of personal insight is invaluable and the essence of true success.

But Sometimes, the Writing is Still a Struggle

This post ended up being a killer to write.

I have a long term business project on my mind, my schedule is thrown off due to the snow, and life just wants my attention to be elsewhere.

Writing about how wonderful it is to write for your business seemed disingenuous as I had just peeled a crying baby from around my neck, thrust her into my husband’s arms, and growled “please, I just have to get these damn ideas on paper and then I will make dinner!”

This post ended up being the greatest test of my authenticity and my alignment to my own mission.

After a few false starts, I scrapped my original idea and wrote into the pain and frustration of having to write in the first place. I railed a bit against the content creation imperative and my own self-imposed editorial calendar. I ranted about how hard all this was and how thankless it all felt.

Most of what I wrote was garbage and only a few phrases will appear here in the final draft, but in that for-my-eyes-only scribbling, I caught a glimpse of why I’m doing all this.

As much as I kept saying I felt guilty for abandoning my teething babe and for admitting that I didn’t want to hear my kindergartener practice whistling any more, I needed the break. Only the “mama just has to get some writing done” announcement would secure me passage to the quiet oasis on the other side of my office door.

The writing practice is a demanding one, but it's all the sweeter for the sweat it occasionally demands. I see the greater worth in the process and only by walking through its fires can I emerge on the other side, honestly able to tell you that you can stand the heat and you will create something important.

Is Your Business Sustainable? Your Writing Practice May Reveal the Truth

I wrote myself out of my fevered angst and ended up feeling better when I took my own medicine, but what if writing for your business never seems to get easier or offers up the fringe benefits I describe above?

You deserve (and need!) a business that you can maintain. It may not all be effortless, but, ideally, your work only requires the smallest degree of push and strain. Content marketing (ie. blog writing, podcast production, YouTubing) is key for anyone who wants to drum up business online and it will take up a portion of your workweek when you’re taking it seriously.

If you feel like writing for your business is a constant “<sigh>, if I must,” something is wrong. This sort of resigned martyrdom will come through what you write and you’ll never get the results you hope for.

I’d love to help you through this struggle. Contact me and we’ll set up a brief chat to clear away some of your writer’s blocks and come up with a few solutions so you get more than just a blog post out of your next writing session.

Online Visibility, Transparency, and Authenticity When You’ve Got Other Things On Your Mind

Entrepreneurship springs from optimism. You believe in the vitality of the marketplace and your own potential. You understand that your livelihood relies on your energy and vision. You have a faith in yourself and your tribe and the world as a whole. But what if you’re just not feeling it right now?

We get stuck in the doldrums sometimes. Maybe it's due to illness or the needs of the family or this endless winter (this week’s Sovereign Standard offers balm for the snowed-in February soul).

Regardless of the source, these low periods are real and sometimes you can't just put on a happy face and push through, business as usual.

You Can Keep Sailing Your Professional Ship - Despite Private Tidal Waves

Maybe you’re one of those unflappable people whose personal relationships or interior monologues never gets in the way of her work. Maybe. But I doubt you’d click on a blog post with this title if you were. For the purpose of full transparency, you and I probably won’t be soul mates if you’re the Unsinkable Molly Brown type.

Time for more disclosure: I have big feelings and big ideas and sometimes they cause huge waves that threaten overturn my little professional skiff.

You too? Wonderful. Keep reading - there’s some ideas for how to survive these internal tempests and an extended boating metaphor in it for you!

Decide What You’ll Throw Overboard BEFORE the Storm Hits

You set out on the entrepreneurial journey with dual goals: adventure and prosperity. You were prepared to do the creative work as well as the grunt work. Your vision would become a service or product that filled a need and was worthy of your clients’ investment.

Though you may not have thought about it in any detailed way, you planned on showing up fully as you. After all, the reason you’re taking the risk of self-employment is for the ultimate fringe benefit: independence and the freedom to plot your own course.

The thing about being you - about being human: stuff happens. Storms hit. And the best laid professional plans are practically worthless when you’re in survival mode.

Well, those professional plans aren’t totally worthless. Before crises hit you can set priorities, develop systems, and hire back up so that clients won’t feel seasick when you're caught in a riptide.

And you can decide what’s on the bottom of your list.

This post is to help you decide what to cut loose before the ship starts going down. My suggestion? Your online presence.

Yes, the woman whose business is based on writing, content creation, and feeding the hungry internet beast in a graceful, sustainable way just told you to put your online presence last.

Note: that doesn’t mean that you put your writing last. Goodness knows the only way to survive a personal crisis is often a nice glass of red and a long session with your journal, but I digress…

Why Your All-Important Online Presence Isn’t All That Important Sometimes

You build an online presence in order to increase your visibility. If you’re not being seen you’re not building brand recognition or accruing those vital “know, like, and trust” points.

Does that make the online world sound way too much like appearing at a high school hangout on Friday nights? I meant for you to squirm a little with that one.

As important as visibility is, it’s also a bit trivial. Was one missed party social suicide when you were a sophomore? Is one week without Twitter going to damn you to obscurity?

Of course not. If you completely vanish from, the scene the conversation will eventually move on without you. But if you stick around your professional online haunts even when you feel like an emotionally crippled zombie, you risk your sanity - and potentially your reputation.

But What About Transparency and Authenticity?

Transparency and authenticity are two of the buzziest buzz words out there when people talk about how to “do” social media. They’re also some of the most flexibly defined words in the modern lexicon.

Let’s consult the bona fide word experts at Merriam Webster:

Transparency:  the quality or state of being transparent: able to be seen through; easy to notice or understand; honest and open; not secretive

Authenticity:  the quality or state of being authentic: to be real or genuine : not copied or false

Remember, friend, in this particular scenario, you’re a mess. You want to crawl into your bunk with a big thick book (this one features a shipwreck in keeping with our theme) or take up permanent residence on a desert island.

When you're wracked with doubt or swept up in a personal hurricane, transparency is not necessarily your ally. You don’t want or need to share all the details of this process just because you’re dedicated to being “real” online.

Lots of smart people have explored the intersections of transparency and authenticity (Gina Fiedel offers two of my favorites here  and here.

Transparency is Optional. Authenticity is Mandatory.

You’ve got a lot of discretion when it comes to what you reveal, but as a creative entrepreneur whose work is fueled by your passions, authenticity isn’t something that you want to start skimping on.

Your child is sick. You’re dealing with a mental health issue. Your mother-in-law just moved in. These situations are casting some long shadows over your optimism right now. It may feel good to step into the light of the always glowing digital world and talk about growth and hope, but you may also feel like an underpaid actress desperately pretending the script isn’t flat and the working conditions aren’t horrible.

Sometimes the most authentic, connected thing you can do is gracefully step away from the screen.

You may want to post a little note to the effect of "gone fishin'" or you may simply trust that you'll be back soon enough and your dedicated online community will greet you with open arms when the time is right.

Alternatives to a Complete Digital Hiatus: 3 Ways to Keep Up Online Appearances

Sometimes you need to just pull away. Being online when you feel vulnerable can make you feel too exposed - even if you’re not talking about anything personal. But if you can get your head around doing some simple online chores there are ways to keep up appearances:

• Post from your archives: You barely remember what you wrote last fall, so there’s a good chance that your older material will feel fresh to your readers. Plan ahead and make this easy on yourself: create a spreadsheet and record every post’s title, category, keywords, and meta description so you don’t just start picking old blog posts at random.

• Create media with the books that are getting you through: If a novel or a gripping work of non-fiction is your solace during this tough time, pull some quotes and use WordSwag to create a neat little graphic that’s easy to Instagram and share across social media.

• Build a list of ten or more trusted allies' sites and repost their content: Sharing others’ content may be a natural part of your day when you’re stopping by Facebook regularly, but think ahead for the times when you’re away from your usual digital hang outs. Create a list in Feedly or Twitter and repost content from your savvy friends and wise colleagues.

Despite the fact that I’ve barely been outside in months, I’m still keeping my ship afloat. Check out this week’s Sovereign Standard and subscribe to see you’re not the only one suffering during this long winter and to pick up some inspiration for finding warmth in the endless white veld.

How to Decide What to Publish When You're Writing the Bigger Story

You’ve been writing. The thoughts are flowing into the journal or popping forth in Evernote-ready snippets. There’s so much excitement around these emerging ideas, but there’s frustration too. Brilliant as the initial flashes of inspiration have been, these new concepts aren’t ready for prime time. You just want to keep up the momentum and ensure that the seeds continue to fall on fertile ground.

And yet there are days when it’s hard to sustain this private garden of possibility. You've got a broader vision and you’re impatient sometimes. Every time you expose yourself to social media's digital torrent of “content” you feel a little more stressed, a little more worried that you’ll be left behind.

“Everyone” is writing and pushing out content constantly - or so it seems. You’re already drowning in information and you’re sure that your ideal reader is overwhelmed too.

You’re caught between the trust in your process and your need to leave some footprints on the digital trail before it's too late.

Whenever that is.

Do You Need to Carry “Publish or Perish” Stress?

Once upon a time, I remember nodding my seventeen year-old head as a worldly college senior talked about the personal attention you’d receive from the faculty at their itty bitty liberal arts school.

With pride, he told our tour group that this place wasn’t “publish or perish.”

I still envision a flock of wizened academic buzzards picking at the bones of the young assistant professors who didn’t grace the pages of some obscure literary journal only read by fourteen other people in the field.

Back then, I dreamed of a life in academia, so I was a little spooked by this early lesson in survival of the fittest. Then I left that world and eventually made my way to entrepreneurship - the proverbial out of the frying pan into the fire, right?

Only You Know What You Must Write

Did you leave a career track full of obligations to start your own creative business adventure only to find that you were prey to countless experts with a new universe of what you “should” do?

At the top of the list is “do content marketing.” It’s a beautiful concept - educate, entertain, and inspire rather than advertise in order to win a community of prospective customers. But the reality is that you start to feel like you’re in a perpetual race to publish to the blog (and to Facebook and to LinkedIn, and…) or perish in obscurity.

This “gotta pen, produce, and publicize” drive is a distraction and downer for anyone, but it is even worse if you find yourself enjoying unprecedented - yet unpublishable - productivity.

Truth is, neither the content marketing imperative or the people who try to sell you easy ways to blog understand what's truly important to your story - especially if you’re filling notebooks with ideas in progress.

You're the only one who can put your bigger dreams above the short term gains of feeding the hungry online content beast.

You Have Choices. But First Acknowledge You Have No Choice

There’s one thing you have no choice about: You must keep writing.

This inspiration that propels you into each day and keeps you up late at night is a gift and your success and growth needs you to protect and cultivate these powers.

But then, you have 4 choices about how to approach publishing and your platform when you're working on the bigger story:

• Write even more: Keep doing what you’re doing in the journal in in the smartphone notes, but then dedicate more time to writing simpler, audience-ready posts based on what you already know.It may be hard to detangle your existing stock of knowledge from the emerging insights, but spend some time developing beginner’s mind and going back to basics. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to create content in response to your clients’ questions. Dare to make it easy and accessible. This is what people need when they’re first getting to know you. Think of it as preparing to blow their minds when your magnum opus is ready

• Find a different way to be visible: I know that a #365project can make you a better writer. It enables you to be visible and to see your life in a more focused way. Here are two posts that may inspire you to keep writing your own stuff while you find creative ways to connect with your online community each day: The 365 Project as a Creative Process and A 365 Project that Inspires You to Love the Life You Live.

• Work the discovery writing in a more deliberate way: Trust the process. Love the process. Live the process. Keep writing into those ideas! But also appreciate your desire to get these out of the thinking stage and onto the page in a structured way that opens your work to the people who need your work. Find a mastermind partner or learn more about the Message Discovery and Development Process.

• Chill out and explore: Buck the "productivity at all cost" trend and simply allow. Use your online platform in a way that nurtures but does not distract you. If that means taking a social media hiatus, I promise you that everyone will still be here when you return.

If you want to make more time for your own writing and still immerse yourself in what leading thinkers in business, creativity, and progressive leadership are saying, please subscribe to the weekly Sovereign Standard.

When You Wish Upon Someone Else’s Marketing Star

Nine ways some marketing stars* are like Disney princesses

1. They promise that every dream comes true.
2. They’re dead sexy (or at least their message is).
3. They may try to convince you that getting noticed by the right people is as easy as wishing on a star.
4. They make you long for a world that's more like theirs - even though you don't actually want that glitzy lifestyle.
5. They draw you in with promises (like simple success formulas and glass slippers) that seem empty or impossible.
6. It’s hard to get their slick, auto-tuned messages out of your head.
7. They suggest that everything outside their glittering walls of pomp and hype is a little scary and messy.
8. Finally, when you refuse their manufactured dreams, you have a hangover from the processed perfection.
9. When you see them for what they really are, you're deeply, deeply grateful to be free of their version of reality.

* Some, not all, of the big name marketing minds, mind you. You know the type... the ones who use the equivalent of internet megaphones to offer quick fixes and fairy tale results.

But, even when you tune in to the ethical, well-meaning purveyors of marketing advice, you have to be sure you stay true to your own goals and story.

That One Night I Banished Anna and Elsa

The kids and I been stuck inside for four days thanks to icy rain. Husband had the stomach flu and went to bed the second he got home for work. I was just getting over the same bug and wanted to hide under the covers too. This was not going to be a good night.

I was attempting something more virtuous than frozen pizza for dinner. “Let It Go” was on Pandora again. My kindergartener told me she was Princess Elsa and I was Princess Anna and the baby could not play. "Now, Mummy, first you say..."

And I snapped.

“Enough! Disney has colonized your imagination and stolen all your stories!” (Yes, I really do talk to my child that way. Yes, she does occasionally stop me by declaring “Mom, you said too many words again.”)

“I’m the Queen around here," I declared, "and I banish all Disney princesses from this house tonight. I will be anyone you want me to be, but no Anna and no Elsa and nobody else from the movies in the cabinet!”

Let me be clear: there’s nobody to blame for the Disney contagion but us. My husband and I either bought the DVDs or allowed them to pass through the gates. Some were soundly rejected after one viewing (don’t get me started on Peter Pan). We found enough value - or enough banality - in the others to turn a blind eye to what princess worship might be teaching our girl.

Though our daughter only sees about two movies a month, they’ve each made their impression. It seems that even limited exposure to the Disney code is enough to alter a child’s inner landscape. She has been programmed by their predictable plots and stock characters and endless rules of engagement, all inspired by that Magic Kingdom we swear we'll never take her to.

That night, I broke the pink sparkly spell. I made my decree. And something magical happened.

The kitchen danced with the grace of the Fairy Dainty Queen, baby god Moira, and a house pixie who cleaned up every game and art supply (without being asked!). I was Queen Audre and little sister was the princess Leatrix. There were costume changes and dance breaks and dragons on the loose. A healthy dinner was cooked, no tears were shed, and I had the most remarkable evening of motherhood - ever.

We were free to find each other in our own stories. No one bashed her head against against the way it “should” be. There were no clashes in this truly creative play.

Maybe I’m confusing correlation with causation, but you miss the magic when you try to analyze things like that. I had the time of my life when my daughter took the reins of her own authentic story. I was my own queen in her private tale, not a co-opted corporate drone. It felt damn good. It felt like Sovereign Reality.

The one size fits all advice that has drowned out your story

So, who has co-opted your entrepreneurial imagination? Who has defined success for you and offered you a guaranteed process for fame and fortune? Who has lured you to join their list with the promise they’d reveal the secret breakthrough solution for your business growth blues?

Maybe you can’t even name names since they all blur together into a massive “them” that seems to ooze a confidence and success that you find both intoxicating and disconcerting.

Out of all the business gurus out there, it’s the content marketing experts who offer “the easy way to deliver that amazing content to keep your customers coming back for more” who really get to me. They’re the most bothersome and beguiling to the potential writers I care about most.

The “create epic content!” contingent tends to get inside the heads of people with important, nuanced stories to tell. These stories from the soul can’t instantly be cut into blog sized pieces and served up in epically engaging portions. These stories can and should grace social media and the blogosphere, and they can be used to build a business, but there’s deeper discovery work to do before one can churn out a thousand words and hit “publish.”

It’s true that content creation is important. People are drawn to you when you showcase your expertise and tell powerful stories that inspire, educate, and entertain. But when you try to push content into the world before it’s ready according to someone else’s method, you’re destined for disappointment.

In fairness, these big marketing names do have some really great insights into how to gain attention and sell product. They can even tell you about what sort of stories are most likely to engage a prospect and how to follow through to create a long term relationship with a customer.

But there are important aspects of the creative, visionary entrepreneur’s story that get lost in the big, slick presentation.

• How can you “create epic content” before  you truly know your own story and why it’s of significance to the work you’re doing for the world?
• How can you follow someone else’s one size fits all blueprint when you’re dedicated to creating something that has never been seen before?
• How can you find your own true, singular voice when you’re trying to sing along to the tune of the guy with the most newsletter subscribers?

What’s possible for you when you refuse to heed the message that appeals to the masses?

Small business owners and solo entrepreneurs are like today’s busy parents: so well-meaning yet so overextended. Both are vulnerable to solutions that promise “don’t try so hard, it can be so fun and simple!”

Disney is as much a part of childhood as bedwetting and mac n’ cheese. It’s so ubiquitous, we rarely stop to evaluate its quality or its values. Even if you’re like my husband and me, it’s easier to ignore the reservations and go with the flow since it could be so much worse. And really, you’re too overwhelmed with everything else to fight the Mouse and his begowned henchwomen.

And those experts’ recommendations (that occasionally sound like commandments) about how to be a Pinterest rockstar and a Facebook badass and a content marketing machine… They seem like they’re an unquestionable part of running a successful online business too.

Make sure you stand out, they say, but conform to these basic rules.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

“We can use their ideas, but Disney isn’t in charge of how we play and the stories we tell.”

That’s what I told my daughter just this morning when she wondered whether it was okay that she used a brown crayon to color “Coronation Elsa.”

So, how can you look at all you’ve heard from the hectic world of “do this” “don’t do that” marketing and shape these ideas to serve your own narrative? How can you say “thanks but no thanks” to the glass slipper that may fit for the night but will end up causing you to trip and break your neck?

For more insights into how to plot your own business destiny subscribe to The Sovereign Standard, the weekly publication for entrepreneurs seeking to share their message, create a livelihood, and enjoy some everyday creative magic.

How a 365 photo project makes you a better writer

The more pictures you take, the better writer you’ll become. Yeah, right, you say. Writing makes you a better writer, not messing around with photo filters and getting lost in the endless Instagram dinner plate captures.

From more than a year’s experience of daily shooting and posting, I can promise you that the process really does take you closer to your writing goals - especially when it comes to writing for the digital universe.

Five Things Writers Gain From a 365 Photo Project

• Discipline: In order to become the sort of writer you want to be you need to practice. Once you establish that you can do something every day, like taking a picture and sharing it to social media, you prove to yourself that you can do anything - including writing every day.
• Visibility: Being a writer isn’t just about writing - at least not if you want people to read your stuff. Daily images boost your overall online profile, even if they aren’t each perfectly aligned with the work you ultimately wish to promote. In 2014, I participated in the #365feministselfie project. Did all those pictures of my kids and me tell you about what I can do as an author and a writing coach? No, but they told you a lot about me and that’s what will really help potential clients pick me and future readers get excited about my books.
• Brevity: Photo projects aren’t just about the visual. The picture is worth a thousand words, of course, but the words you use to introduce and contextualize the image still matter. One of the most important skills for online writing is the ability to be engaging and yet concise. When you're limited  by what your thumbs can comfortably tap into your phone and you know shouldn’t say more than your distracted viewers will take in, you learn the skill of the the short and sweet. (Full disclosure: I have trouble with this and often write wicked long captions because they're still quicker than a blog post!)
• Outliers: To paraphrase Alice in Wonderland, you’ve surely imagined six visionary creative projects before breakfast, but they’re all outlier ideas you have to dismiss. They're “distractions” from your “real” project. What if your daily photo snap could be a five minute journey into those excess ideas? Your satisfying the muse and you're cataloging those ideas for later.
• Play: Though defined as “pleasurable and apparently purposeless activity," we know that play is so much more than that. It is what keeps us vibrant, engaged, and flexible on every level. You’re not a photographer. Your pictures will only occasionally be brilliant. Allow that and find delight as you mess around with something you don’t have to be good at.

Is there a downside to devoting a few minutes a day to a 365 project?

I'm an unabashed #365project devotee and I can't imagine I'll ever quit, the practice has so many benefits. If I stretch, I can find one downside though...

I take pictures to illustrate the story going on in my head, whether its actually from a piece of fiction I’m working on or part of my professional or personal story.

My images likely suffer since I’m grabbing the phone to snap a pic to explain a work in progress rather than seeing the magic of the moment or object itself. Taken out of context, the picture may not be all that meaningful to your audience (and you’re practicing brevity in those captions and don’t want to write a novel about each pic).

But that is the joy of a 365 project - you always have a chance to make a distinctive piece of art tomorrow! And again, simply showing up every day and creating a 365 piece puzzle has a magic of its own for your visibility. Every puzzle piece isn't meant to stand alone.

But really, should you just do a #Write365 project?

Yes, you could always do a 365 writing project… It would help you build discipline and visibility and maybe brevity, but there’s a great chance you’ll lose out on the play and the chance to explore those outlier ideas.

My project for the year is called #365SovereignReality. Follow me on Instagram or Google+ for a window into my 2015 as I discover what it means to “become sovereign in my own reality.”

5 Epiphanies for a Writer Frustrated By Blogging

Tell me, do you reach a point in life when you’re no longer embarrassed by what you did five years ago? It would be nice to imagine that someday you won’t blush at the thought of what you wore, what you watched, or what you blogged about.

The fashion and entertainment industries exist because they’ve convinced us that new is always better. And the internet is in the thick of its own maturation process, which means time is constantly sped up.

We're practically compelled to reinvent ourselves every few years - and feel a little sheepish about what we offered up as our most stylish look or most polished work just half a decade before.

My writing from five years ago makes me squirm.

The Story of a Young Blogger

Between 2007 and early 2010 I blogged in fits and starts. The Girl Who Cried Epiphany was the perfect description for a woman who bounced from one “ah ha” moment to the next, giddy with each new idea and almost sure no one had ever looked at things quite the way she did.

I began as a writer on a spiritual quest and was eventually a new mother seeking to escape the 9-5. I loved my baby, Byzantine sentences, obscure Irish poets, and trying on different faiths, and I wanted everyone to know about because… well, because!

So many words, so many assertions, so much earnestness shared on a site that didn’t include my real name or my picture.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing, but  I was terribly serious about it. Eventually, I just knew I’d be recognized for being smart and nice and worthy of praise.

But I was so frustrated that the more I cared about the blog and the process, the less my tiny audience seemed to care.

They Call that a “Hobby Blog,” Friend

If anyone had dared dismissed my nightly writing sessions as a mere hobby I would have been mortified. A hobby involves macrame or painting model airplanes in the basement! This was my art and my soul. It was my own super important journey - and doing it publicly was part of my dream of changing the world.

Fast forward to 2015. I’m more likely to get blogging inspiration from the likes of Jon Morrow (the Boost Blog Traffic guy) rather than Thomas Merton (the contemplative monk.)

Morrow compares serious bloggers to hobby bloggers I know what he means because clearly I used to be one of the latter.

But, there’s also so much to learn from that hopeful twenty-something who was so dedicated to self-discovery (and to writing sentences that stretched on for four or more lines).

5 Epiphanies that Could Transform the Wannabe Thought Leader  

We’ve all asked this question: if I knew back then what I know now, where would I be? Pointless navel gazing, but these five recommendations could help rescue a could-be serious blogger from the hobby zone today.

Have a goal. Yes, we write to discover who we are and what we think. When you begin writing you likely won’t even know how to articulate your big goals.  That’s why you’re writing! Start by acknowledging that you want your blog to take you somewhere and write in that direction each day. “Draft to discover” - Jeffrey Davis’s gift of a term - is an essential part of the writing process and the thinking process. My old Wordpress blog was a draft to discover laboratory - or it could have been. But that sort of meandering public self-discovery project is not nearly enough to consistently impact readers’ lives.

Tell captivating, elevating stories. That’s what brings in readers and keeps them. Those stories aren’t accidents that spring from your stream of consciousness post of the day. After “Draft to discover” Jeffrey Davis invites the creative to “craft to design.” That means you’re revising and honing your message, but not because you seek perfection. You do it because you seek connection.

It’s not about you. “Make the buyer the hero” is a concept that Chris Brogan has written about a lot. Even if you’re not trying to sell anyone on anything other than you own credibility, this still applies. As a blogger it’s up to you to invite readers into the narrative. Even if the story is ostensibly about you, allow them to see themselves in the story you tell (come on, I know you’re thinking about what you might have posted online back in 2008).

Know the value of attention. The attention of an audience is a privilege that you earn. It almost always takes a long time to garner the sort of attention that will sustain you over the long haul. You don’t deserve acclaim just because you’re a wonderful person with lots of ideas. If that were the case, you and I would be famous and my spell checker wouldn’t know the word “Kardashian.”

Remember where you’re writing. This is this internet. It is not a book, it is not a term paper or your thesis, and it is not a professional document. Don’t sacrifice your voice to imitate how they write on People.com or even Copyblogger, but remember that people are reading your work on an iPhone, not from a leather bound volume. Work with their splintered modern attention spans - at least a little bit.

How to Do Self-Discovery… Differently

Maybe it sounds like I’m being a little hard on the quest for self-knowledge and dismissing it as so five years ago. That isn’t my intention. After all, I offer something called the Message Discovery & Development Process.

I believe in the discovery process with every fiber of my creative entrepreneurial being, but I only arrived there after I worked through a ton of resistance.

As soon as I started my own business I dismissed the discovery process as a luxury and only made time for it when I hit a total dead end (I’ve made several professional wrong turns that make me blush more than my old blog ever could). Completely swept up with doing, I was frantically following “expert” advice and trying to mimic others’ success.

Now, I’m dedicated to shaving years off your business message discovery process.

Yes, keep writing and keep searching and keep being vulnerable and allowing yourself to get it wrong. But don’t just free write on your blog, praying for the next epiphany to strike and catapult you to the fame you deserve.

There’s more to this process of discovery and to this sort of public writing. The world you want to change needs you to do it differently.

Let's talk about how I can help you discover your message and put out a message you'll be proud of in 2020 and beyond.

PS: It's the Feast of the Epiphany. Feast your eyes on Marisa-in-progress with a couple January 6th posts from 2008 and 2010. Sweet and spirited, but most likely under the heading of "what not to do."