Get a pen ready. You’ll want to write this one down.

You’re writing a masterpiece. It’s going to be the best thing written, ever, by anyone. It’ll be epic and entirely original. Every sentence will flow with wit, while being as tight and crisp as the prose of Hemingway.

If world-shattering wasn’t a cliché, that’s what this writing would be.

“Eat this, Willy Shakespeare,” you’ll say when you’ve finished.

Every publisher will want a piece of you. You won’t have to do any marketing besides sending your finished piece to the first agent listed in Writer’s Digest, who will instantly recognize your genius.

You accept that a few publishers might reject you. This is the cross any good writer must bear, and it’s only fair. The first Harry Potter book was rejected 9 times before being published  Watership Down notched up 26 rejections. Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, took 30 rejections before hitting shelves.

But your writing? That book will be an instant, worldwide hit. Bookstores will be looted because of the words you’ve written.  You’ll need to open a bank account in Switzerland to cope with your newfound wealth. And you’ll need to flee to your European mansion to escape the media frenzy and find some peace.

The only trouble is that you haven’t written a single word. You’re a blocked genius.

The masterpiece is still in your head. You’re keeping it there in pristine condition. You haven’t yet wanted to dirty it with pen and ink, or word processors and typos.

One day you will.

You wish you could do it today. But you can’t.

Want the solution? Brace yourself; it’s only two words. And grab your pen to write it down.

Here it comes…

Stop it!

I hate to break it to you, but you’re probably not a genius. And if you are, you won’t become one by writing a masterpiece.

Write an article for a magazine. Write fiction. Write publicity materials for your two jaded clown-friends and their bankrupt Russian circus.

But please, put the masterpiece to bed.

Don’t try to write a tour de force.  Write an excellent, publishable article. Write horror fiction that gives you nightmares.  Write publicity materials so good that the two clowns become a sell-out act and can afford to employ a knife thrower, a fire eater, an acrobat, a juggler and a trapeze artist.

Forget the masterpiece. There’s no need to be amazing, unique or original. Just use what works.

Remember, Dickens didn’t write masterpieces. He wrote serialized fiction to entertain the masses. Dostoevsky didn’t write to get rich.  He wrote to pay off his gambling debts. And the Bronte sisters? They wrote because they just liked telling stories.

So stop it. And just go write something you enjoy, and write it well.

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Post by David Masters

David is a digital writer, storyteller, vagabond and dreamer based in Swansea, Wales. He traveled the world hunting for a damn good story and discovered brilliant stories are everywhere. To brighten your day with more storytelling goodness you can (and should) follow David on Twitter.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
The 2-Word Solution for Every Blocked-up Genius first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Did you know that roughly 20% of people might pay for a course and NEVER sign in?

That’s what happened to Jon Morrow with his Guest Blogging course. Roughly 2 out of 10 students paid $500 for his course and then flushed the money down the toilet by never showing up to it.

If you’re going to spend that kind of money, you should do everything you can to get the most value possible.

So to help you dramatically increase the value you get from an online course, here are several best practice suggestions:

1. Go Through ALL the Course Content

It never ceases to amaze me at how many people gloss over training materials they’ve bought. If a neurosurgeon only skimmed through his textbook on brain surgery, would you want him operating inside your skull?

I rest my case.

2. Do the Course Exercises

Good online courses include exercises and worksheets so you get hands-on practice. The exercises might seem simple, and you might be tempted to put them off until later – or even skip them.

But the combined results of reading all the material is compounded by doing the exercises. In fact, it’s powerfully compounded.

3. Take Course Notes

Writing out notes is a great way to reinforce learning. And writing notes often results in new ideas you hadn’t thought of.

Taking notes also enables you to build a custom implementation plan to integrate course concepts into your business.

4. Interview the Course Creator

Interviewing course creators helps you learn both how they succeeded.  You’ll get personalized advice on completing the course, and you’ll also have the opportunity to promote the course as an affiliate as well.

5. Interview the Most Successful Students

The next logical step is to interview the most successful students of the course.  Leverage the opportunity to find out what made them successful. Ask what they did in the course that worked, what didn’t work well and what they would do differently next time.

6. Participate in Forums

Forum participation is one of the most underused experiences. Ask any successful student, and they’ll mention the role forums played in their ability to get the most from the course. Forums are also a great place to connect with other students and share ideas.

7. Repeat the Course at Least Once

The first time you go through a course, you won’t absorb all the knowledge from the material.  Taking the course a second time with a clearer picture of how the pieces fit together lets you approach it with a more powerful perspective.

8. Create a Best-Practices Guide

If you’ve done all of the above, then you should have tons of notes. In fact, you’ll have all the material you need to put together a best-practices guide for the course. Imagine offering the creator of this course a guide that he or she can share with their students!

If the guide is good, you’ll get credit, traffic and people looking your way.

9. Start a Mastermind Group

While some courses include a mastermind group, starting your own could make a big difference.  It gives give you the opportunity to exchange ideas and discuss challenges with peers in the course. An extra benefit is that a mastermind group helps you remain accountable.

Signing up for a course is just the first step. It’s what you do once you’ve paid good money for it that really determines your success.

Have I missed any ideas? If you’ve taken a course, what would you do differently next time? What would you suggest as a best practice? Let me know in the comment section.

P.S.: If you’re looking for one of the best online writing courses and a top investment that brings your business great returns, stay tuned. The Damn Fine Words online writing course for business is coming your way May 7 – don’t miss the early-bird registration for big savings!

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Post by Srinivas Rao

Srinivas Rao writes about the things you should have learned in school, but never did. He’s also the host and co-founder of BlogcastFM, where you can download his free webinar on the 7 Pillars of Blog Traffic. You can follow him on Twitter @skoolofllife.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
How to Get the Most Out of an Online Course or Info-Product first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.

You’ve got a great idea. You’re going to write an ebook – perhaps your first! It’ll grow your business, bring in money, and help establish your expertise.

And to keep yourself accountable, you tell all your readers to expect the ebook by the end of the month. Sure, that might mean a few caffeine-fuelled, late-night sessions … but your ebook will be done, dusted, and out the door.

Heck, if you really knuckle down, perhaps you can knock out a short ebook in a single week.

Maybe you can.

But that doesn’t mean you should.

Writing an Ebook isn’t a Race

It’s easy to feel pressured to knock this out fast. Maybe you wish you’d written your ebook a year ago. Perhaps everyone else in your field seems to have an ebook – or several. You might feel like you’re already behind.

But writing your ebook isn’t a race.

Yes, at some point, you need to ship it out. Taking an extra few weeks (or even just an extra few days) isn’t going to kill your business, though. In fact, it might well be the best decision you make.

Your Ebook Should be Your Best Work

Whether your ebook is a paid product or a freebie, it needs to show you at your best.

If customers need to pay for it, they’ll expect an ebook that’s complete, carefully structured, and well-written. If buyers get an ebook that’s error-ridden, badly structured, and obviously rushed, they’re never going to buy from you again.

And if your ebook is a freebie, you still need to make it as good as you can. Those readers are potential customers, but if they download your free ebook only to find that it’s full of typos, badly formatted, and confusing, they’re not even likely to buy once.

So what should you do? Here are 4 simple ways to create a well-written ebook:

1: Follow the Writing Process

Every writing project goes through the same stages:

• Idea Generation
• Research
• Planning
• Writing
• Editing
• Publishing

Sometimes the stages overlap; you might do some research while sorting through ideas or revise your plan during the writing stage. Sometimes the stages take next to no time at all, and you might come up with an idea within a couple of minutes.

But when you rush through the stages with an ebook, though, you waste time.

If you don’t have a strong idea of what readers would love, then you’ll wonder what to write.. If you don’t take enough time to plan, you’re going to get stuck partway through. If you rush the writing, you’ll spend extra time going back to fix it up later.

2: Set Aside Time on a Regular Basis

You might have great intentions for your ebook, but if you don’t get into the habit of spending time working on it regularly, you’ll end up rushing things to meet your launch deadline.

Big chunks of free time aren’t just going to magically appear. You need to carve them out of your schedule.

Put ebook-writing appointments into your calendar at regular intervals. That might mean spending the first hour of every day on your ebook (yep, before you check emails) or it could mean blocking out a couple of afternoons each week.

3: Involve Readers during the Process

The good news is that you don’t have to tackle every stage of writing your ebook alone. If you have a blog, email list, Twitter account or Facebook page, you’ve already got at least a few readers or potential customers.

Get them involved from the start.

When you’re coming up with ideas, look at the questions your existing readers typically ask. Do any topics come up again and again? Or if you’re not sure, you could run a survey to find out what readers want or need.

When you’ve finished the first or second draft of your ebook, ask if any readers would be willing to take a look and give you some feedback. (In return, you’ll give them a copy of the finished ebook in due course.)

They might not be expert writers, but they can tell you when you haven’t explained something clearly enough or when you’ve gone off on an unnecessary tangent.

4: Get Help from Professionals

If you’re short on time but have a bit of money to spare, then consider paying for help. You could hire an editor to improve your rough draft, for instance, or you could even hire a ghostwriter to do the bulk of the work for you. And when you get to the publishing stage, you might want to involve a paid ebook designer.

Not only will you save time but you’ll also end up with a higher-quality finished product – which helps make the time you invest more worthwhile.

An ebook can be a huge asset to your business. If it’s a freebie, it can bring in lots of new customers; if it’s a paid-for product, it can become a very nice income stream. But you can’t just sit down and rattle off ten thousand words in a spare afternoon or two.

You need to put time and effort into your ebook if you want it to be a success.

Don’t let that put you off, though. Right now, take out your schedule and look ahead a week or two. Find some time that you can block out to work on your new ebook.

And let us know in the comment section what you have planned – so we can help support you!

Leave a Comment!

Post by Ali Luke

Ali Luke is currently on a virtual book tour for her novel Lycopolis, a fast-paced supernatural thriller centered on a group of online roleplayers who summon a demon into their game ... and into the world. Described by readers as "a fast and furious, addictive piece of escapism" and "absolutely gripping", Lycopolis is available in print and e-book form. Find out more at www.lycopolis.co.uk.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
4 Simple Ways to Create a Well-Written Ebook first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Let me tell you a story about what’s happening right now in Greece, my corner of the world, entrepreneurship-wise.

The situation in Greece is quite bad at the moment. We keep hearing how it’s in ‘critical condition’ and ‘hanging from a thread’. If you’re an entrepreneur running your own business, the blows come one after the other: surging taxes, closing businesses, long periods of unemployment, spending on the decrease…
It’s all a vicious cycle – out of which we still don’t know how to exit.

Unfortunately “we” more or less includes the entire world. It’s a test for the globe’s financial and social structure, which one way or another affects all countries with no exception, even if indirectly.

It’s a test we’ll all have to take.

There’s an upside in all of this. We Greeks – and I expect the rest of the world to follow soon – are finally starting to realize that if we want to make it, it’ll be through our own honest and healthy work, carried out both individually and in teams.

We’re distancing ourselves from traditional institutions, whether the state and its bureaucracy, banks and their often impossible terms or unsustainable sources of support and funding.

Instead we turn to healthier assistance: our local community, online aid in every shape and size, and new, more agile and modern types of investment.

Realizing the need and also the existence of alternative options, more and more of us have decided to take the plunge and become entrepreneurs – if you think about it, it’s the oldest type of job man can do.

In fact, a large fraction turn to online entrepreneurship for good reason. An online business is faster to set up, requires comparatively less starting capital, has an abundance of tools that help you get the work done efficiently, and there’s direct access to the world market.

A recent survey found that online connectivity is one of the last expenses to be cut in Greek households – and I believe it’s because people realize the strength of the online world.

It’s heartening to see architects setting up clothing e-shops for their designs, science grads trying their hand at olive oil e-commerce, IT teachers selling handmade jewelry online, engineers starting an internet business – all to enhance their income or to leave a saturated industry and start anew.

It’s happening in Greece and elsewhere. There’s an imminent financial meltdown, but if that’s not the best way to ‘not let a good crisis go unexploited’, then I don’t know what is.

In short, financial crisis is eventually a good thing. It’s not about the problems we have; it’s about what we’ve been doing wrong. It’s not about money handling gone bad; it’s about how to learn to handle money better. It’s not about how close we’re to economic meltdown; it’s about how far the economic reform we initiate can take us.

It’s a chance for all of us to reassess how we’ve been doing things so far (or how we’ve been letting things happen) and take control of the situation in our hands.

And that can only be a good thing.

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Post by Dimitris Athanasiadis

Dimitris Athanasiadis is a freelance social media consultant who has come to terms with the term.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
Why Financial Crisis is Good for Entrepreneurship first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Do you ever wonder why so many ads, web pages and emails sound the same? And why is it that some copywriters get their content to sound so much better?

Is there a secret copywriting conspiracy going on? Do they know something we don’t know?

Yes.

Yes, they do.

And I’ll tell you what it is… right after I tell you a little story.

Once upon a time, I wasn’t on the inside.

I began my copywriting career in PR. I wrote press releases for the music industry, which was pretty cool. But, I was never initiated into the uber-secret-mad-men-esque clique known as “agency copywriters”.

I didn’t get the secret memos. Or the decoder ring.

Sure, I could tell the difference between average copy and stellar copy, but I didn’t really see what that difference was.

And as I began writing more and more website copy, I became frustrated and fascinated by this one missing piece of the puzzle. What was the secret I wasn’t seeing?

I needed a clue – fast.

It wasn’t that my copywriting was poor or anything. I had clients, I received recommendations, and my business grew.

I was doing something right.

Then I met a copywriter who had worked in agencies for his entire career. One sunny afternoon over coffee, we talked about the biz and I said something about how when my clients wrote their own copy, it was all self-focused and myopic.

He replied that, in his experience, clients write self-focused copy because it’s very difficult for most people to write from another person’s point of view.

And that’s when the secret was revealed to me.

Perspective.

Most website copy seems like same-old advertising because do-it-yourself businesses are trying to write website copy that sounds like advertising.

And of course, most businesses are also comfortable simply writing about what they know best: themselves.

What separates the average from the great is copywriting perspective, because great copy focuses only on the prospect’s problems, and then it shows those prospects how the product or service solves that problem.

Delving deeper into perspective

My instincts were right, I just didn’t know why.

I could see that most businesses write about themselves: “We do this; we make these; our products solve these issues,” but now I knew the secret ingredient.

Brands that stand out and knock their competition to the ground are the ones who write about their customers: their challenges, their needs.

Have you seen website copy like this before?

Business123 offers our customers the top solution to distribution problems. By combining our knowledge and expertise in supply chain management, we have created a platform solution that gets results.

Yep. You’ve read something like it before because that’s the default website copy for most businesses.

Now here’s the same company speaking to their customers’ perspective:

When your margins keep continuously eroding while you search for new suppliers and spend time managing a growing global distribution network, you need a solution. Fast.

Can you see the difference perspective makes? Rather than telling the prospect all about themselves (which is boring at dinner parties, so why do it in advertising?), the business shows the prospect that they understand what’s happening.

This then infers that they have the solution.

Try copywriting perspective for yourself.

The next time you find yourself writing copy that isn’t quite clicking, take a look at its perspective.

Is it self-referential? Could it speak to a prospect or customer about their problems instead?

Ask questions. Get their attention. Show them you know what’s going on inside their company, that you know where the pain is.

Then show them how you can take the pain away.

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Post by Derryck Strachan

Derryck is Managing Director of UK copywriting agency Big Star Copywriting. He provides web copywriting, articles writing, blogging, press releases and content consultancy services to several leading UK search agencies, brands and SMEs across a range of sectors.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
The Biggest Secret of Stellar Copywriting first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Freelancers tend to struggle with selling, to some extent.  Some of us are better at it than others, and we know you folk by the fact that you’re making a healthy living and thumbing your nose at us as you drive by in your shiny new BMW… but I digress.

If you’re anything like me, you’d love to just open your email and find a steady stream of “Can you do this for me? I’ll pay you cash,” requests that you just need to click to approve and move on to doing the work.

In the real world, it doesn’t quite work that way.

So, we need to deal with the necessary evil of sales.  If only there was a way to earn money without having to deal with finding, wooing and convincing all these new clients…

Wait a minute – there IS a way!

We have a terrible habit of forgetting one of the most common-sense business rules: It’s far easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to find a new one.

And to help you get started, here are a few time-tested, guaranteed-effective methods that work:

The Up-sell

The up-sell is one of the oldest money-making tactics. If you’ve ever gone to McDonald’s, you’ve had the up-sell tried on you, because every cashier worth his name tag has asked, “Do you want fries with that?”

And probably 70% of the time or more, you’ll get the fries. You’ll think it’s because they’re devilishly yummy and you’d nearly forgotten, but the truth is that the power of suggestion is incredibly powerful!

The up-sell is as simple as suggesting another purchase based on the success of the last one your customer made. For example:

• Offer a complimentary ebook or e-course on your ‘Thank You’ page that appears immediately following the purchase of a different product.
• Enhance a basic service by offering options available at a “pro” level.
• Encourage the purchase of a related book after hosting a webinar or a course.

The up-sell, if done well, should feel completely natural to both you and your customer.  It should be as simple as, “I know you’ll benefit from what you just purchased, and you can take it even further with this, so I’m pretty sure you’ll appreciate that I’m offering it to you.”

The obvious danger is trying to blindly up-sell everyone on everything.

It might be tempting to fire off emails to every customer you’ve ever serviced to see if they’d like to buy your new ebook. But if a given customer worked with you once and you get in touch to offer something random, the chances of them seeing a natural connection and taking you up on the offer are probably pretty slim.

Offer them something directly related at the right moment, though, and you’ve got a good chance of getting somewhere.

The Cross-sell

Cross-selling is a little different from up-selling, and it takes a little more forethought to pull off properly.

Cross-selling means introducing a customer who has shown interest in one of your products or services to other products or services that aren’t directly related. It’s easy to screw this up, so take your time and think it through.

Let’s say you’ve worked with a sales consultant to create content for his blog, and he’s really thrilled with the results.  And in the course of conversation, the consultant shares he’s having a tough time gaining traction with his local sales conferences presentations.

That person may not even realize you’re capable of – or interested in – writing speeches, press releases, handouts, or a hundred other possible items that could really help him get where he wants to go.

Now’s your chance to carefully yet confidently let him know!

If you’re not capable or interested in providing those services, you can still be the hero by recommending a great fellow freelancer who specializes in whatever your client needs.  It may not mean more money in your pocket (unless a referral fee is in order) but at the very least, your karma’s in great shape.

Reciprocity’s a beautiful thing! Which brings us to the next sales opportunity…

The Referral

Referrals work in various ways, all of which end up mutually beneficial if well handled.  Here are some examples:

• You’ve just finished an incredibly successful web design project for a small retailer at a local mall.  This one is easy: Simply ask, “Do you know of anyone else whose website could use an updated design?” Success ensues.
• You’ve just put the finishing touches on a series of articles for the company VP, and she’s thrilled with the results.  You’ve heard through the grapevine that her boss, the CEO, has been considering writing a book about his unique management philosophy.  Ask the VP, “Any chance you can introduce me to the CEO?  I think I can bring some real value as a ghostwriter for that book he’s thinking of writing.”  Slam, bam, thank you ma’am.
• Your latest client just mentioned her need for a virtual assistant, and you just happen to have coached a bright young woman on her brand new VA business just two months ago.  What do you do?  You guessed it: introduce them. (And they live happily ever after.)

Referrals are awesome for at least two reasons:

Any referral comes with an implied endorsement of your work, which is money in the bank for you.  It’s a head start on the road to a contract, especially if arranged soon after your current customer’s smile of approval on the job you did.

If the referral doesn’t pan out into a paying job immediately, you’re now connected with someone new, someone who may never have been on your radar before.  And in their mind, you’ve already got a star next to your name, thanks to the implied endorsement.

When they need someone like you… well, there you are!

The Uber-sell

All three methods discussed above can and should be used in any combination based on given circumstances.

If your relationship with a client makes it seem natural to offer something more and their needs are such that you can do more to help them out, by all means up-sell, cross-sell and work out some referrals!

Don’t feel you’re overdoing it or bothering your client.  You’re not. Ask!  After all, what’s the very worst your client can say? “No.” That’s not such a big deal! And the alternative is that your client’s eyes go wide, her mouth gets all smiley, and she says, “Wow!  I never even thought of that.  Let’s do it!”

As much as you’d probably just love to have fun in your creative work and leave the nitty-gritty of sales to some invisible person somewhere, you probably don’t have that luxury.  So embrace the sale and make the most of it!

I’d love to hear your suggestions on how you could expand a relationship with an existing client or how you used any of these methods in your own business. Let me know in the comments!

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Post by Justin P. Lambert

Justin P. Lambert is a freelance copywriter and content marketing specialist who constantly thinks about uber-selling his clients and blogs about what he should have done at Words That Begin With You.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
How to Master the Freelancer’s Uber-Sell first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.

A free ebook is a great way to showcase your expertise and provide value to potential customers. But for most small business owners, finding the time to put together an ebook is hard.

Sure, you know all the benefits an ebook could bring you … you just can’t find the time to write it and get it done. After all, writing ebooks are typically known as huge, long projects, right?

What if I told you that you could write that free ebook in just one week, spending no more than two hours per day on it?

Well, you can. (Even if that means you need to let go of your rigid blogging schedule.) Here’s your 7-day plan to writing an ebook for your business:

Day 1: Think Up a Great Ebook Topic

You may already have awesome ideas for an ebook, ones that you’re itching to write.

Put those aside for now.

Your ebook needs to be short, specific, and incredibly useful to your audience. That means you’re looking for a topic that:

• You can cover in 3,000 – 4,500 words (around six blog posts in length).
• You can make clear, concise and compelling. “Ten Great Gardening Tips” isn’t as focused as “Ten Ways to Grow Better Broccoli”.
• Your readers are clamouring for. Think about questions that come up constantly in the comment section of your blog or problems that all your clients seem to have.

If you’re stuck for an idea, head to Facebook or Twitter and ask your audience, “What’s your biggest struggle with [topic]?” Look for any common factors in the answers.

Day 2: Build an Outline for Your Ebook

You’ve got your topic; now it’s time to plan. Getting a clear plan down on paper means the actual writing will be much easier – you’ll just be filling in the blanks  – and the ebook will be a coherent, structured, whole that readers will find easy to take in.

Hopefully, you already know a lot about your topic, and you just need to get your ideas down onto paper. A great way to do that is with a mindmap:

1. Get a blank sheet of paper and write your ebook’s topic in the center (“Ten Ways to Grow Better Broccolli”, for instance.)
2. Jot down all your related ideas around the edge.
3. Draw lines to connect related points.

Often, writing your ideas helps you come up with new ones. Once you feel you’ve jotted down as many ideas as you need, you can start sorting them in a sensible order.

If your ebook has a numbered structure (e.g. “Ten Ways…”) then you’ll want to aim for eleven or twelve points so you can cut or combine any weak ones. If you’re writing a how-to, then make sure you’ve covered each logical step along the path.

Write a list of chapter headings and two to four bullet points for each chapter.

At this stage, you may realize that you need to research some particular areas. Look up any key facts that you need, but don’t get bogged down in research. Tomorrow, you need to start writing.

(Tip: If you find that a particular point needs lots of research, it might be best as a blog post or even a separate ebook.)

Day 3, 4 and 5: Write Your Ebook

You have three days to write your ebook. That might not seem like enough time, but with a great topic and a clear plan in place, the writing phase shouldn’t be too difficult to manage.

A good length for a free ebook is around 3,000 to 4,500 words. That means you should aim to write 1,000 to 1,500 words per day.

You can probably manage that within a couple of hours. Don’t worry about perfect spelling and grammar; you’ll have the chance to edit your ebook on Day 6.

Here are a few writing tips:

• If you get stuck while writing, imagine yourself writing an email to a client or customer who had this particular question or problem. Write in a simple, direct, and straightforward manner.
• If you struggle to stay focused when you’re writing, turn off your internet connection!
• If you’re missing a vital statistic or fact, just jot down [note to self] in the text and highlight it in yellow so that you can come back to it later while editing. .

Split your ebook into short chapters and use a similar structure for each chapter. This makes the writing phase easy and helps give readers a consistent experience, as they’ll know what’s coming next.

One simple structure you can use is this:

• Explain the concept or idea
• Give an example or mini case-study
• Have an exercise for the reader to try

Day 6: Edit Your Ebook

You’ve finished the draft of your ebook – but you’ve still got two days left. The next step is to edit your material.

Editing doesn’t just mean correcting spelling mistakes. It also means making sure that your advice and instructions are clear, and you can watch for any missing pieces or unnecessary tangents.

If you had a good outline for your ebook, you probably won’t need to make any big changes.

Here’s your action-plan for quick editing:

• Print your ebook and read it through in one sitting. Look for areas where you repeat yourself, information you might need to add in, or sections that don’t really fit. Make these changes before going further.
• Rewrite the introduction to make it stronger. That might mean cutting it down – you don’t need two pages of waffling around at the start of a short ebook.
• Read through slowly and change any awkward or unclear sentences. Look up any missing facts and double-check information you’re not sure about. Fix any typos or spelling mistakes.

Day 7: Design and Publish Your Ebook

You’re writing a free ebook, so readers won’t expect the world’s flashiest design. They will expect your ebook to be easy to read.

Try these 5 easy ways to enhance your ebook quickly:

• Use a larger font size. When I write regular documents, I use 11 or 12 pt fonts; for ebooks, 13 or 14 pt works better.
• Avoid a sea of plain text. Use bullet points and bold text, just like you would in a blog post. You might also put a box around your exercises, for instance, to help them stand out.
• Add page numbers. This takes seconds, but it’s very helpful for readers who might print your ebook.
• Start each chapter on a new page. Use a page break (rather than hitting Enter multiple times) to do this efficiently.
• Add a cover. This doesn’t need to be anything fancy: you could take an image from Flickr (make sure you attribute credit to the artist) and add a text box with the title of the ebook and your name.

To publish your ebook, simply convert your document to a .pdf. If you’re using Open Office or Word 2010, the ability to save as .pdf is built in. If you’re using Word 2007, you can download an add-in from Microsoft to save your file as a .pdf.

And that’s it! You’re now the proud author of a great ebook, and you’ve got a very nice piece of marketing material for your blog, website, or email list.

By the way, there’s never going to be a “perfect” time to write your ebook. So why not get started today? If it helps, add some accountability by leaving a comment below about your start date plans.

Leave a Comment!

Post by Ali Luke

Ali Luke has written a bunch of her own ebooks (several are available free) and has worked to help other writers with many more. If you find it tough to get inspired to write, check out her post Twenty-Five Ways to Come Up With Great Ideas for Your Writing.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
How to Write a Free Ebook in Just 7 Days first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.

There comes a point in every freelance writer’s career where he simply can’t take it any more.

Unless he’s leaving the house to conduct first-hand research, he’s seeing the same things all day, every day. The place where he works during the day is 20 feet from the place where he lounges at night.

It’s the same kitchen, the same bathroom, the same everything, every day.

It’s enough to make anyone go a little nuts.

All freelancers, at some point or another, deal with cabin fever. We just need to get out of the house, no matter where the destination. The seasoned vets among us might plan for these bouts in advance, scheduling days where they can get away and not fall behind on work.

Those with less experience — which, make no mistake, is a large portion of us — probably need to keep working in order to pay the bills.

The solution, then, is to pack up our work and haul it elsewhere. And so we stuff our trusty laptops into bags and take our work to another environment. That’s productive. It means we’re taking a proactive approach to an unavoidable problem.

Yet not all writing environments are created equal. In my years of freelancing I’ve tried many of them and have found the ups and downs with each.

Here are the official recommendations.

Where Not to Write

If you plan to have a full, productive day out of your home office, you’d do best to avoid these places.

Coffee Shops

What, exactly, about a coffee shop screams productive environment? People are moving in and out constantly. There are usually many others occupying seats and tables. During busy times, you might not even be able to find a seat.

People yap on their phones. People talk amongst themselves. Music you don’t control plays on the PA.

There is nothing productive about working from a coffee shop.

If you want to simply get out of the house and take a break, coffee shops can provide an excellent outlet. You can actually interact with baristas and perhaps even other patrons. You can get a hot, stimulating beverage, or maybe even a pastry if you’re into indulging yourself. You can even focus on something unrelated to your work — I used to bring a journal and empty my brain at a local Starbucks.

But working? I think not.

In an environment that promotes distraction, you’ll likely get nothing done. If you do get anything done, it’s not done as well as it could be. That means you’re at the same place as when you started, only with fewer hours to get everything completed.

(If you can’t tell, I’m pretty passionate about not working in coffee shops.)

Friends’ Houses

Your friends might say they understand that you work from home. No, they say, they know that you have to get work done.

Then in the next breath, they’re asking for a ride somewhere or for you to do them a favor. You know, because you don’t go to work.

It takes considerable willpower and strong consideration of the consequences to avoid strangling them for this offense.

Unless your friends also work from home, they do not understand. Your girlfriend or boyfriend do not understand. So unless they’re absent while you work in their apartment just to change the scenery, avoid this situation.

Working solo might get lonely; in fact, it will certainly get lonely, perhaps painfully so. But sidling up to friends and significant others during working hours helps zero.

Just to be clear, your parents’ house is an equally bad choice.

The Park

I wouldn’t even mention this had it not come to my attention that people actually try to work in the park.

The thought process is understandable. It’s nice outside! I have wireless internet! Let’s go to the park and write! Truthfully, the thought has occurred to me also at times.

It’s typically followed by a facepalm.

If you thought coffee shops were distracting, parks are doubly, maybe triply so. You know how people in offices lament their daytime imprisonment when it’s nice outside? That’s probably healthy. They’re at work for a reason, after all.

If you’re escaping your office for the glory of outdoor writing, you’re probably going to find yourself so distracted by the pretty surroundings that no work gets done.

Also, have you ever tried to use a computer in any kind of sunlight? Unless you have superhuman typing accuracy, it just doesn’t work. Case in point.

Where to Write

“Geez, Joe, you’re such a downer.” Yeah, I get that a lot. But I’m not done yet. Now that I’ve shared my opinion on the worst places to write, I’d like to share some of the more serene environments I’ve enjoyed for top results.

The Library

Who doesn’t love the library? No friend of mine, I can assure you. Libraries are wonderful repositories of books and other information. Anyone with a curious streak can spend hours searching for, well, anything that fancies her.

Libraries also make wonderful work environments. Why the library? Glad you asked. Here’s a quick lists of a library’s virtues for a writer.

• It’s quiet. Not only that, but you can actually tell people to shut up if they’re being too loud. It’s your right. The library is supposed to be quiet.
• You can face the wall. I’ve never been to a library that didn’t have work stations. Set yourself in one of them, and you’re looking right at the wall. There is no better way to eliminate distractions than by turning your back to them.
• They’re free. There’s no need to buy anything, as there is in a coffee shop. You just walk in and set up, even if you don’t have a library card. (But you should get one. Just saying.)
• They’re full of information. Need some secondary research? It just so happens that you’re surrounded by material. Use as much of it as you need or want.

If you need to get out of the house to work, by all means, choose the library.

Hotels

Truman Capote used to do his best writing in motels rooms, or at least that’s what Stephen King tells us in On Writing.

There is certainly some merit to escaping traditional writing environments completely. A hotel room brings something old, yet something new. There’s a writing desk, but it’s not yours. The same goes for the bed, the bathroom, the TV, and everything else. It might appear familiar in superficial ways, but it’s really not.

The downside, of course, is the cost. Sure, you can find cheap hotels on travel sites, but that still costs a chunk of change. The only way it makes sense is if two conditions are true:

1. You have a time-sensitive project.
2. You are on the verge of breakdown.

Unless you’re independently wealthy — and how many copywriters do you know who can say that? — a hotel is a considerable cost. Most times it’s not justifiable. But that doesn’t make it any worse a writing environment. The familiar but different environment might be just what you need to beat cabin fever.

And if you’re not getting any work done at home, then you’re not making any money there either. Getting out might just unblock your productivity and bring in cash.

Like this idea? Try making nice with the owner of a nearby hotel or motel. Maybe if you write him some marketing copy, he’ll let you use a vacant room from time to time.

Unfortunately, this pretty much covers the list of places I’ve productively written. There just aren’t many places you can go where 1) there won’t be any distractions, and 2) you won’t have to pay a considerable fee.

That makes public libraries the hands-down best place to get work done outside your home. If you need the break, by all means take it at the library.

As for coffee shops, friends’ houses, and public parks, there’s just too great a risk involved. Yes, working there means you’re not working at home, and for many people that’s the most important part.

But it’s also important to get our work done. In a public, distracting setting, that’s just not possible. It sounds ideal, but in reality, it’s anything but.

Of course, these are just my experiences. Surely other writers have other places where they’ve realized success. What are your favorite places to write? Which places do you recommend people avoid?

Leave a Comment!

Post by Joe Pawlikowski

Joe Pawlikowski is a writer and editor working on many blogs across the internet. His latest project, A New Level, covers the art of working from home.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
The Best – and Worst – Places to Write first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Why do those ancient cave paintings, with their crude renderings of animals and people and symbols, intrigue, draw us in, and provoke a sense of wonder?

Because they tell a story. They tell of deaths, births, times of feast or famine—the gritty and sometimes grace-filled stuff of life.

People are storytellers (and story listeners). They have been for ages, whether the words were inscribed on resistant stone, delivered in a lilting voice or scanned on a Kindle’s screen at 30,000 feet.

As Joseph Campbell said, “Everything begins with a story.”

Many cultures have creation myths: often grandiose, extravagant tales that embody idealized concepts critical to a people’s sense of self—the noble warrior, the self-sacrificing parents, the wise witch. Even the most impossible, implausible accounts are grounded by human elements: the basics of love, hate, greed and generosity.

Ghost tales grab us because they were us.

The lack of a story is where many businesses falter, and fail to reach their customers. They may have a great product, i.e., “The ergonomic design of this shoe results in the absorption of 93.7 percent of all heel-strike shock,” but their products—or more tellingly—their business itself, doesn’t put a picture, a story, in the customer’s mind.

There’s no cave painting, no ghost story, nothing at stake where the customer’s imagination is engaged, where they nod in agreement or ask for more.

Stories sell before products.

Does Your Business Fail to Tell a Story?

Businesses often have a perception problem: the public looks at them as soulless boxes. When people think of a General Motors or an IBM or even smaller businesses, they rarely consider them to be dynamic, thriving hives of activity, where dramas (or comedies) unfold.

Rather than inviting customers in, the typical business face erects a wall between its message—its story— and the listener, the customer.

Creative storytelling can dissolve the wall between your message and your audience and overcome their initial defenses of skepticism or doubt.

Of course, you probably don’t want to make up a story out of whole cloth—“Our natural spring water comes from the exact center of the earth, delivered in clay vessels by naked nymphs”—but you need to place your reader, your customer, in the dramatic arc of your tale.

Use the classic elements of storytelling: drama, humor, mystery, surprise, peril, renewal. Your goal shouldn’t be the selling of widgets, but the initiating of a relationship, where your business and your products are customer-centric, and the customer can step into your story.

For instance, has your business overcome great challenges? Let your prospects know that you stumbled, reversed course, burnt the midnight oil and then, eureka! Tell that story in your “About,” or elsewhere on your site.

It’s often friction, obstacles or unforeseen, secondary paths that make a reader hunger for more, that they can relate to in their own struggles, and gain an emotional toehold on your products. (That toehold might turn into a whole foot later.)

Obviously, don’t be falsely manipulative, attempting to force an act on a call to action, but rather pose an opening, a door into an idea about your company that brings light, strikes sparks, paints pictures.

Stories Are Living Things

Because stories are living things, it’s great to present your business bio in video form, or perhaps as a podcast. Sincerity is more important than looking like Angelina Jolie, though it can’t hurt if you do.

Make your Contact page big, fat with invitations to shake electronic hands. Or if it could work for your business, perhaps have a forum or some other means of interaction for people to talk about your stuff, how they use your stuff, how your stuff makes them feel.

They’ll talk about it elsewhere—if it’s worth talking about—but if you can get them to drop the curtain on their ideas right in your backyard, you can invite them in closer to the campfire.

The important thing is to connect, as people do, by telling stories.

Maybe your parents’ parents started the business in their cellar those many years ago, maybe you tried a thousand formulas for getting ink to stick to your paper and were days from quitting, when formula one-thousand-and-one worked, maybe you graduated from veterinarian school and realized that you really wanted to design and sell bespoke picture frames.

There’s a story behind every business, and there are people behind every story.

Share your stories with your customers. Ask them into the conversation. Put your products into that story, and populate it with your customers as the characters, showing how they can plant your heirloom seeds in their own gardens, use your software to research their ancestors, handle your hammers to reframe their houses.

Just start your “once upon a time…” and watch them lean in. Everyone loves a good story—and especially one in which they play a part.

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Post by Tom Bentley

When words fail us all, Tom comes to the rescue with a good story and smart business advice. To learn more about Tom's sharp wit and sharper wordsmithing skills, visit his site at The Write Word.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
Why You Should Invite Your Customers to a Campfire Storytelling Session first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Want to learn a cool trick? It lets you cast a spell that makes folk soak up each word on your blog. And I’ll show you how to do it right now.

But first, let me tell you why you need to learn how to cast this spell:

• Your blog will be a snap to read.
• Each point you make sinks straight into your fan’s brain.
• Your words will hit so hard that folk ask how on earth you do it.

Best of all, when you cast this spell on your blog, there’s next to no chance that you’ll get caught. Most folk are blind to this trick.

Here’s the spell:

Write with one-syllable words as much as you can.

Words that have just one sound don’t need to be read. Your eyes see them and soak them up. And one-syllable words make blog posts a breeze to read.

When I show this spell to my friends, they tell me that I’m mad. They say that short words and sounds rob a post of its clout and make it weak, dumb or slow.

They’re wrong. The truth is that most folk don’t care how you write. They don’t judge your work like your peers do.

All they know is: “Does this piece feel hard to read? Is it work? Or does it light up my brain when I look at it?”

Short words do that. Most of the time, long words don’t.

Need more proof? Go back and read this post again. You’ll find that – save for the word ‘syllable’ – no word has more than one sound.

Now go grab your wand and make some magic of your own.

Leave a Comment!

Post by Ian Harris

Ian Harris runs Rockstar Comms, a blog about internal communication that helps companies talk to their staff. He also sometimes uses more than one syllable, with no apologies.

Another rockin' post from Men with Pens!
How to Cast a Spell On Your Next Blog Post first appeared on Men with Pens
Copyright 2006 - 2011, All Rights Reserved.