Broadcasting Brain

Many of us would like to solve the mystery of writer’s block. I’ve been blocked on an eBook project for weeks but I solved this case today. In this post I’m going to share my thoughts on a way to get past writing struggles by using a detective’s tools.

Writing is like solving a mystery

There are two common ways to start a writing project:

1. Gather lots of data and use it build an intelligible document. This document will be influenced by what you learn - it may start with no thesis.

If you have a lot of leeway in your writing assignment you can try the first method. This can be fun if you enjoy doing research. You get to start with nothing and then let the information guide your writing.

2. Start with a hypothesis and then go digging for information to prove it.

A lot of writing assignments start with a pre-determined subject and slant. Feature articles for blogs and magazines are used by editors to fill in their editorial calendars. They know they want certain types of articles at certain times, so that’s what you get to write.

In both methods, you’ve got to do research and synthesize data in order to write. A key difference lies in how quickly you draw conclusions about the subject matter. You as the author must decode the information, find the clues, and solve the case by writing an article that puts the pieces together.

Let’s look at a couple of examples of great detectives and see if we can learn from their methods.

Sherlock Holmes – master of deduction

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s celebrated sleuth has been a popular character for more than 120 years. Sherlock Holmes was virtually unmatched in his ability to solve crimes through investigation and deduction.

Holmes had an unworldly talent to make deductions about perfect strangers through observation. He knew how to find clues that could describe people’s lives and interests through mundane things like body language; scars and discolorations; brands and types of clothing; ashes; and so on. Holmes was a master observer and synthesizer of data.

Chief Inspector Morse – master of hypothesis

Holmes’s methods of solving crimes couldn’t be more different than the more contemporary exploits of Inspector Morse, Colin Dexter’s cult favorite detective. Morse was a brilliant, and eccentric, detective in his own right, but his methods were far different than Sherlock Holmes’s. I would classify Morse as a hypothesizer.

Morse tended to make snap judgements after observing a crime scene. Somehow, by using a combination of years of investigation experience and intuition, Morse would develop a solution. Morse almost inevitably solved his crimes, but not without incident. Unfortunately, Morse’s initial hypotheses rarely worked. He would also become attached to his ideas until overwhelming evidence would disuade him. Thus, it may have taken him much longer to solve a case than if he let the facts speak for themselves. On the other hand, his methods were effective in most cases where other detectives would have failed.

Deduction vs. hypothesizing – which is better?

In my case, let’s pretend that I wanted to prove that right-handed bloggers were more successful than left-handed bloggers. I started to write my eBook based on the assumption that right-handed bloggers were superior bloggers. After all, I knew of several successful right-handed bloggers, and didn’t know of any lefties, so I assumed that righties were better.

As I wrote I found it harder and harder to continue. What seemed like an easy exercise (I’d already written some related posts, so I figured it would be simple to write) became very difficult. Soon I was stalled and the document languished on my hard drive for weeks.

Credit: Emdot

How did I get stuck? Simple: the facts that I found began to disprove my hypothesis. I found some examples of successful left-handed bloggers. I couldn’t find any evidence that suggested that one’s dominant hand had any impact on blogging.

I started to doubt that right-handed bloggers were superior to left-handed bloggers. (remember, this is only hypothetical - handedness doesn’t really make any difference)

My downfall was that I was married to my hypothesis, not unlike Inspector Morse following a pet theory to a dead end. My inability to move from my hypothesis, despite the evidence to the contrary, made it impossible to continue writing.

I could have avoided my problem by following the Holmes example. Instead of trying to write the story that I wanted to write, I should have focused on the story that I found. I should have done more research ahead of time so that I could come up with a better direction for my eBook.

And so, I’ve decided that I need to switch to Holmesian mode for this eBook. Instead of running with a particular theory, I’m going back to a clean sheet of paper. I’m going to conduct research by interviewing a bunch of bloggers and learning from their experiences. I’m going to use that research to draw some logical conclusions. I’m going to go to where the research leads me.

In this case, deduction will work better.

Don’t rule out the power of hypothesizing

Hypothesizing is a powerful tool and it has its place. Editors will ask for certain types of stories because their experience tells them that they’re out there. They won’t always be right, but they often are. Despite the many twists and turns of his cases, Morse almost always solves the crime. He simply uses steps and paths that Holmes might not use.

A hypothesis can be used to perform directed and valuable research. I could read about blogging for days and never come to any conclusions about the performance of left-handed vs. right-handed bloggers if I never check out that angle.

The other thing about the use of hypothesis is to be prepared when your hypothesis is proven to be incorrect. In some cases this is simple. If your hypothesis is completely wrong, you can use your existing research to rewrite or reshape your work in the direction of the correct conclusions. If the real story is some different combination of ideas, you need to be more flexible in your thinking. Sometimes you have to let go and follow the facts wherever they go.

Fill your toolkit with multiple approaches

I’ve tried to show that hypothesizing and deduction can both have their place in writing. I think that some forms of writers block is the result of placing too much emphasis on one method.

If you’re stuck because a flawed theory, you need to let go of the theory and get back to researching your topic to get on the right track. Conversely, if you research, research, and research, but you don’t know what to do with your newly acquired knowledge, then maybe you just need to pick some possible directions and analyze them until you find something that works.

This change of mindset has helped me – I hope it will help you.

(Approx 6 hrs. and two major edits)

EDIT:  This post has been submitted as a part of a Problogger.net group writing project on headlines.

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Image credit: Christina Snyder.

I think it’s the sloganeers that win most of my respect and admiration. In the advertising world, that is. Perhaps it’s the act of writing sales or ad copy that can really show what you’re made of. Finding that magic blend of brevity, wit, and power is yet another of those tempting grapes that I keep leaping for, yet it seems to keep eluding me.

Every now and then I see something and a little phrase pops to mind. Normally it’s a pun or wordplay that lands softly on my tongue and leaps out at the first opportunity. I want to be first to introduce the latest and greatest neologism to grace the minds and hearts of my peers and neighbors in social media. (I’m incredibly jealous of James Chartrand for inventing “niebu”. Well, he didn’t really invent it; his fat fingers did. But I digress as the envy express loads up for the next ride.) Or anywhere, really. As long as it’s clever and (here it comes) I get some credit for originating the pithy phrase, I’ll take what I can get.

This is turning into a more serious condition for me, though. I think I have coinage envy (see, I can’t stop trying!) Or punitus. Here are some (overlooked) examples of mine that I saved in Twitter:

• Q: What song do pirates sing when they’re outnumbered/outgunned by other pirates? A: “You’ve got to fight, for your right, to parlay!”
• If Saturday night’s all right for fighting, is Monday morning all right for moaning?
• There is only one thing worse than not being talked about and that is not being Twittered about - apologies to O. Wilde
• I saw the phrase “shrinkage enhancement” in a doc. at work today and thought, hm… oxymoron?
• Air conditioning - the miracle that ultimately made Web 2.0 possible.

And then there’s the attempts at pseudo-technical terminology!

• Idea injection method
• Rookiememe
• Chattercrack
• Humpday Linkage (an actual weblog that I used to post on Wednesdays)

But of course, other smart minds are out there grabbing the terms like “Twebinar”, “Plurkcast”, “Plurker”, “Clowd”, and Facebook and Twitter and… Google… and…

[deep breath]

OK, what to do? Should I abandon this pointless quest for sentence success? Or should I keep trying for something shining that “sticks”? (more on this later)

EDIT:  and, most importantly, should I get a life?  

The Idea Injection Method version of this post:

• I think many people are too busy/too lazy to read any document of 1000 words or more in length that uses words of more than two syllables.
• Instead, we look for extremely simple, direct writing, embellished with striking formatting, to quickly grasp short, simple ideas.
• This is just like being injected with a fast-acting drug to achieve instant results.
• We dismiss complex, detailed writing as unnecessary/too difficult/worthless.
• Critical thinking skills are becoming weaker.
• We risk missing out on important learnings by depending on quick-acting injections of knowledge.
• Take time to read and reflect on what you are reading. You may learn something valuable.

The “old school” version of this post: Read the rest of this entry »

Thirty years ago a multimedia sensation was unleashed on the world. I’m firmly convinced that I was one of the first people in North America to ever hear about The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the first novel in the series of novels, and multimedia sensation, that launched the career of British writer Douglas Adams into the stratosphere. The thing is, I didn’t discover it in book form – I heard it on the radio. That’s also when I discovered my favorite Eagles song. There was a kind of magic in that discovery that you don’t seem to find those days.

Many people have experienced H2G2 (a popular abbreviation for the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series) through the novels (a “trilogy in five parts”), album recordings, a BBC TV adaptation, computer games, comic books, and even the 2005 movie adaptation. What a lot of people might not realize, however, is that H2G2 was originally released as a BBC Radio comedy program 30 years ago (yes, 30 years!) Read the rest of this entry »

Empress Eve and Dave III were kind enough to let me guest post at their fantabulous blog Geeks of Doom, devoted to many things fantastic and geeky.

My guest post is humbly entitled 10 Ways To Make a Kick Ass Version of Space:1999. It’s based on the 1970’s TV show, which I talked about in a previous Broadcasting Brain blog post about keeping old flames burning bright.

Please have a look at my Geeks of Doom guest post and don’t forget to give it a Digg or a Stumble if you like it.

P.S. The post really doesn’t have much to do with social media, but they did a great job of adding additional images and stuff to beef up my words.

What do you do when you feel like you need to say something but you just can’t find the right words to communicate it?

Telepathy would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? Gone would be the guessing games, the frustration, the hurt feelings and time lost due to misunderstanding. The perfect words wouldn’t have to be so perfect anymore when direct mind-to-mind communication, free of filters and barriers, could transmit any thought, feeling, or concepts between two or more people.

Credit: Writers block 3 by Jonno Witts

Alas, telepathy is currently impossible. We must rely on our five senses (smell, taste, and touch don’t tend to be used very often: at least not intentionally) to tell the story.

Given these constraints, it’s easy to understand that we can struggle with the right way to communicate something. We use different languages with hundreds of thousands of characters, symbols, and groupings to move information between minds. Sometimes we get the message across, sometimes we don’t.

But what do you really want to say?

What’s worse, sometimes we can’t even figure out what we want to say, even if the thoughts feel maddeningly close to the surface, just like we could snatch them up and start using them. Sometimes these words and thoughts will dive deep, scamper away, or otherwise evade our grasp. Instead of transmitting a meaningful message, we broadcast gobbledygook that even we, the author, don’t understand.

How do we get the right words out?

Read the rest of this entry »

Read broadly, even if the experts say you shouldn’t. You learn as much from reading outside of your chosen niche as you do reading inside that niche. But don’t just take my word for it – I’ve got an expert backstage, waiting for the right moment to make his dramatic entrance.

Read the rest of this entry »

 Image by David Fraiz.

February 2008 brought me to a new personal milestone:  I had an article published in an honest-to-goodness magazine.  With pages.  And paper!

My article, “Toastmasters in Rural Areas”, was published in Toastmaster magazine in their February 2008 issue (the downside is that the magazine is only available to Toastmasters members, but at least there are over 200,000 of us…) 

It was a long road to get to this milestone, probably much longer than it needed to be.  At the same time, there are a few valuable lessons from this experience for me to share with you.

Almost… but not quite

The last time that I came close to getting published in a magazine was in 1995.  The periodical in question was a short-lived Canadian publication called Onset.  I worked hard on that article (about career prospects in the telecommunications industry), only to have it pulled and dumped before the magazine went to press.  I didn’t do much non-business writing for ten years following that.  I have to admit I was rather crushed when I was told that the story wouldn’t run, especially at a time when I was looking at changing careers.

When you experience a disappointment like this, you tend to wonder whether one of two things happened:

1. Did random circumstance screw up this opportunity?
2. Was this event the result of destiny or planning by unseen forces?

It’s tempting to think that 2. was the reason why I didn’t get published in 1995.  I could think “Gee, the stars and planets weren’t in proper alignment,” or “God didn’t want me to get published”, or “Maybe I broke the Law of Attraction somehow,” or…

But I highly doubt those were the reasons.  It probably was a random collection of events that led me to where I was.  Nonetheless, I didn’t push ahead any further with writing.  It’s quite possible that I wasn’t ready at that moment, regardless of whether or not fate was involved.

Quitting… to do other important stuff

The main reason why I gave up on the writing dream was to focus on things like career and family.  Quite honestly, it was the best thing that I could have done at the time, because that decision put me on the path to marriage, family, and career advancement.  You tend to learn a heck of a lot about life by following this path.

So why am I messing around with writing again?

Put simply, things change.

Years of neglecting my creative side caused frustration and desire to build up to the point where I had to try again.  I started with fiction writing, but found that it wasn’t quite gelling for me.  I blundered into user generated content sites like Helium and Triond and from there to social media to blogging and…  well, we’ll see where this winds up.

Get a life (I mean hobby!)

This time around, my hobby led to my article.  I joined Toastmasters in early 2005 as a way to get back in touch with my creative side.  Since Toastmasters was very goal and acheivement oriented, it gave me some objectives to sink my teeth into.  I earned the first two Toastmasters communication certification, became part of my club executive, and generally learned a lot about Toastmasters while meeting a number of great people.  This experience gave me the raw material to create the article and, after a fair amount of work, it was published.

It did take nine months from start to finish, including one major rewrite, but the article did get published.

I’ll tell you, there’s nothing like seeing your first article in print.  Some of you probably know what that’s like, but if you don’t… it’s like winning the best award ever.  My heart lifted and I grinned like a fool for at least fifteen minutes (which is a LONG time for me).

Lessons learned

1.  Subject matter experience is a huge advantage:   I probably couldn’t have written that article without my Toastmasters experience.  At the very least, it would have been much harder to research and write the article without being a member of Toastmasters.  Writing about what you know is clearly a smart thing to do.

2.  Membership has its rewards:  Toastmasters membership gave me an automatic advantage over anyone who wasn’t a member.  Membership automatically conveyed a certain amount of authority and credibility.

3.  Find the right outlet:  Toastmasters is very receptive to articles about Toastmasters!  The article wouldn’t have worked for Rolling Stone, Wired, or Newsweek because Toastmasters doesn’t tend to have the mass appeal of politics, current events, technology, or pop culture.

4.  It’s never too late to try:  there’s no doubt that I did quit writing for many years.  However, the dream never died.  If anything, I’m a better writer today because of the knowledge and experience that I’ve gained in the past 13 years.

5.  Don’t be afraid to try again:  I never completely abandoned the idea of getting published, despite my previous failure and my “break”.

In conclusion

Generally speaking, I don’t recommend waiting 13 years to try something a second time.  At the same time, don’t let the passage of time discourage you, no matter how long it seems.  Just look at the people who successfully graduate from educational programs later in life!  What about anyone who has the guts to try something new and different long past the time when common wisdom says it makes sense?

If there’s something that you want to do badly, but you’ve never had the courage to try, don’t let time scare you away.  If you have the capability and the drive to pursue a milestone that you are theoretically capable of doing, then try it!  Don’t worry about the consequences of failure; worry about the consequences of never trying.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m most interested in writing, particularly writing that can be published on the Internet. One of the focuses of this blog is to examine the creative process, both from the point of view of the creator as well as the consumer/reader/scanner.

Despite my aspirations to make a living from my writing, I’ve spent most of my time during the past six months making user-generated content. My creative journey has following the following path to date:

1) Attempts at writing and publishing fiction - one story published at Aphelion

2) A lot of articles for Helium.com (over 100)

3) Eight articles at Triond.com family of websites

4) My two blogs

5) Guest posts at The Thinking Blog, The WWW Observer, Dumb Little Man, and SEO 2.0.

6) A bunch of social news/media/bookmarking stuff with StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, ShoutWire, and Sphinn which has led to me making a number of on-line contacts - great people, all of them.

7) Some participation in Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog communities, although I’ve been neglecting them of late.

I’m part of Maki’s Team Marketing Network, which may lead to some interesting projects and cool blog ideas.

9) I’m writing a weekly column about the Web for one of my local newspapers

10) One other article for a print media trade publication which will hopefully be published in early 2008 (fingers crossed).

11) Ongoing Squidoo experiments

There’s no doubt that I’ve been learning a great deal and that my writing has improved during the past year but I’m feeling… dissatisfied. I feel like I’ve been taking a shotgun approach to the Web and writing in general, but I haven’t really been aiming consistently at any one thing. I’d like to make some income off of all of this (and I am making a tiny bit, probably close to $300 this year from a variety of sources), but I’m still looking for a least one significant income stream. Maybe in 2008.

If I’d been able to read the recent posts by Maki and Muhammed Saleem (Read Before You Play)on social media about three months before they came out, I would probably have done things quite differently this year. Would have I been any further ahead? I really don’t know. Maybe it’s just as well to learn things gradually through trial and error then to have the knowledge handed to you by some maven and then, just like opening up a faucet, money would gush out.

Oddly enough, this rather sparse article put me on the track to Digg and many other social media wonderment. This other article about promoting your own work at Digg caught my attention for awhile, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone knowing what I know now.

In fact, I was disgusted enough with these articles that I wrote my own, mainly because I didn’t want people to get too disillusioned or waste too much time submitting huge volumes of their work at the social news sites and then having their @sses handed back to them. I hope it goes #1 in that Helium category so people read it first and get some realistic idea of what to expect from self-submitting rather than reading the current #1 article. But whatever.

I’d summarize 2007 as being a time of experimentation and getting grounded in various social media and user-generated content platforms.

I hope to find some better focus in 2008 and increasing my earnings, primarly through freelance or column writing gigs. I’d like to earn $ 2,000.00 (US or Canadian) by writing and on-line ventures in 2008. I don’t know if that’s acheivable, but it’s certainly possible.

I’d like to establish The Uncanny Broadcasting Brain Blog as a solid, dependable read and a good source of information. I’d like to get the subscriber count to at least 150, we’ll see how that goes.

I’d like to take The Mighty Introvert further by developing a community for introverted social media practioners (or, to be honest, anyone interested in social media) to share ideas and do great things.

Oh, and I’d like to win at least $10.0 million (but I have that same wish quite frequently…. )

Finally, I will make more use of graphics, images, and pictures in my posts in 2008.

So, here’s to the fast-approaching end of 2007 and looking foward to 2008. Cheers!

Christmas Day is one day away for those of us in North America. This will be a light posting week here at The Uncanny Broadcasting Brain Blog, but the brainwaves are still out there!

Here are a few recent posts that I’ve written at other blogs or article sites:

I live in the Blogosphere (SEO 2.0)

Leave me alone but not lonely (The Mighty Introvert)

Blog it in 140 characters or less (WebUpon)

My article where I compared Superman’s strengths and weaknesses to those of an introvert (which I’ve linked to before, but I’m doing so again because I really like the article) (Socyberty)

How to market your Helium article (which I wrote because I thought people should get an honest?perspective from someone who had spent a fair amount of time and effort on Helium.com at one point) (Helium)

Have a safe and happy holiday if you enjoy that sort of thing!