I often think of Miss Mitchell, my 10^th grade English teacher. She showed up the first day, wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, faded jeans, and needing a haircut. We instantly trusted her. She taught us that the first rule of writing was to know your audience. She constantly prodded us to think about who we were writing for. This was long before Usability and Information Architecture were trendy buzzwords, but what they mean is to think about who will actually be consuming the words we put out. (I can’t believe I learned something this useful in high school.)

Miss Mitchell certainly knew her audience. She always dressed casually, used fun tricks to get us to write, and encouraged us with plenty of praise. How did she get to know us? She spent time talking to us, asking us to tell her about what we wanted to write.

Blogging is inherently a casual medium. By telling you silly stories to illustrate my points, I’m (hopefully) catching you off your guard. You might remember this later if it’s funny. But let’s face it, I’m trying to connect with a customer here, so I try to remember that when I write articles for this blog. I take seriously the comments and emails sent to me from this page, and these help me make sure that I’m writing what you want to read. It also works as a filter device for possible new customers, because if what I write here speaks to you, we have a good chance of working together successfully. It’s a high-tech and zero cost way of taking a customer for a cup of coffee. All the interactivity, and none of the caffeine.

In business writing, especially for the web, clever companies are increasingly using a low-tech tool to tell them what they want to know: focus groups. Using the feedback from test consumers previously unfamiliar with their product, they are able to create websites, training materials, technical manuals, and other materials that are tailored to the user / customer. There’s really no way around it: you have got to actually talk to your audience to find out what they want.

One my favorite examples of this comes from the original Muppet Movie. Fozzie Bear enters onstage in a rowdy bar, to perform his standup routine for a bunch of drunks and gamblers. He begins with, “I once knew a sailor who was so fat…” whereupon a very fat sailor stands up out of the crowd, smashes a bottle on the table, and says, “How fat was he?” Fozzie pales beneath his fur, and returns with, “He was so fat that he had lots of friends and everybody loved him.”

Unless you want to have your writing go over like a ton of bricks, it pays to check your output on a friend, especially if he happens to be green and have a snappy sense of humour.

I’m sure it has happened to you at least once that you send an email or instant message to someone, only to find that the information you sent has been completely misunderstood. With no facial expressions, no body language, and no patois or emphasis, it happens very easily and often. Therefore, the message must be framed with something to set the scene for the reader. In technical writing, this is accomplished by assuming that the reader has no prior knowledge of the subject. Information is presented using a “:top-down” approach, or what is also known as the inverted pyramid.

Let’s illustrate this: we’re going to use an example of writing ad copy, but you’ll see quickly how this can work in any type of verbal or written communication.

Top of the pyramid: (the main message I’m trying to convey to the reader)

First: Buying this car will make your life fantastic. (Framing what’s coming next.)

Second: This car makes you look very sexy. (High impact statement – generates interest and desire to hear more.)

Third: This car makes you look sexy because it is fast and sleek. (Justifies statement #2.)

Fourth: Guys, women love men who drive fast, sleek cars, that are also good on gas. (Rationalization.)

Fifth: Your life will be fantastic because when women see you driving a car that is not only fast and sleek, but also good on gas, and has all the latest safety features plus a bonus built-in child booster seat, they will try to pick you up at the gas pump. You will not be able to fend them off with a hockey stick. (Summary to re-state your framing statement and your high-impact statement.)

It’s easy to see how this can be applied to sales and marketing communication, but think of how using this method in an email to your co-workers might improve team function and clarify vision.

What if you sent out this message to your team: “Let’s build a website where customers can track their orders in real-time. We will all look like geniuses for participating in this visionary project. When sales improve because of this, our yearly profit-sharing will go up. This will make it easier for customers across all time zones to self-serve, taking stress off our customer service department. Customers love easy-to-use self-serve websites where they can get information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Everyone in this company is going to worship us and buy us donuts for the rest of our careers!”

As you begin to use this formula, you’ll see it starts to become an automatic function of your personal communication. How do I know this works? Let’s just say that when I met my husband, he was a gawky computer nerd who drove a red 5-litre Mustang Cobra.

This article was sent to me by a sales rep at a self-pub house in the USA. How nice of him! This is not dissimilar to ideas I’ve had about non-traditional marketing events for some projects I’m working on lately.

I’m still not sure exactly how this differs from what a publicist organizes, or exactly what the marketing / sales relationship is between the publicist and the company profiled here, Mobile Libris. But they certainly sound organized, professional, and it looks like they just sell more books.

I was recently in a meeting with a lovely woman – let’s call her Ms. S – who has written what I believe to be a ground-breaking book about spirituality. If you liked The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, you will love this book, which we’ll refer to as Book E for now. Ms. S is a gifted teacher, and considers herself a vessel for the information that she has written down. She disdains being classified as “new age”, and is sincere in her desire for the information in the book to be taken at face value – it’s real, it’s simple, and it’s an achievable understanding of enlightenment. I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t take away something fantastic from this book, and I’m eager to help her get it into the hands of as many people as possible.

To help clarify the primary audience for the book, we were discussing distribution and promotion possibilities. I suggested that perhaps non-traditional distributing was a better way for her to go, as her readers were probably not the type who shopped at Chapters.

As I spoke these words, Ms. S immediately cut in, “But how do we know, Peggy? What if that person who picks up the book in Chapters is meant to find it that way, perhaps even by accident? What if that is now enlightenment happens? Who are we to say how it should or should not happen?”

What an excellent point.

I had previously postulated that there are two types of people who shopped at Chapters. The first is someone who knows exactly what they are looking for, and by going to a store with a large inventory, they know that they will be more likely to find it, whether it be obscure or not. The second is a person who is a Shopper, and who is just browsing for something in their general category that is fresh and new and that will inspire them.

But now I wonder if there is a third person who shops at Chapters: the Unsuspecting Reader, who is reaching for the book next to the one we are offering. Perhaps they lose their balance, bump Book E instead, whereby it falls gracefully off the shelf, and smashes their toe. While they are limping around looking for a tacky overstuffed chair in which to recover, they still have Book E in their hand, because they don’t know what else to do with it. As they sit down, they flip it open, and voila: enlightenment happens.

Perhaps just because a book has been non-traditionally published, with non-traditional content, we should not assume that traditional distribution will not work. I realized when she pointed this out that I had let my personal bias interefere with a creative opportunity. What a mortal sin for an Editor to make!

Marketing opportunities with Book E will definitely be handled differently: Ms. S considers herself a conduit for divine inspiration, and after reading the book, I would agree with her. So, there will be no ego-boosting author exercises here. If there is a reading, it’s about the material, and not a signature on the overleaf. If there is an interview on the radio, it’s about the message, and not the voice of the author. If there is a lecture, it’s about the experience of the audience, and not the spotlight on Ms. S.

Despite the use of traditional avenues of marketing and distribution, we will still be taking full advantage of whatever non-traditional and creative opportunities that appear during this process. Even if Ms. S is not interested in getting rich from this venture, she wants as many people as possible to benefit from the use of this information. I asked her, “But what will you do if it sells 50,000 copies?” She promptly returned with “Oh, I’ll build another study centre, or open an orphanage.” Let’s not be confused then: it’s a great thing if this project makes money, but Ms. S doesn’t want to make money by being some sort of new-age guru.

(I wonder if Ms. S knows that by trying to avoid the spotlight, she will probably find herself even more in it. She’s an excellent speaker and teacher. People will want to hear her.)

OK, so it looks like I need to spend some study time with this material myself. :o) Enlightenment can’t be easy for someone whose assumptions almost prevented others from attaining it!

A number of years ago, a book titled “The Mayan Propecies” hit the shelves. It’s been some time since I even looked at the copy in my library, but one message of the book stuck with me, about how there are no coincidences – everything happens for a pre-planned reason. I truly believe this is the case, although who’s doing all the logistics work on that is still up for debate.

A lovely series of coincidences have happened to me recently. I’ve just moved into my new home that I’ve spent the last few months building. I’ve been approached with some very exciting new work, my daughter is growing into a beautiful toddler, my husband is having fun with his own projects, and overall, I get the wonderful feeling that many things are coming together quite nicely. Including meeting some new incredible people here on Gabriola Island.

One of them, a friend I’ll call Lesley, is a bright Englishwoman who came to Canada many years ago. She still retains a charming accent. It turns out that Lesley and I have quite a bit in common. We both work with textiles, we both love gardening, and while I used to live on Denman Island, she used to live on Hornby Island, right next to Denman. Lesley has had many simliar life experiences to myself, and it seems, has many similar philosophies.

Another wonderful thing that has just happened is that a very interesting manuscript recently found it’s way onto my (messy) desk, concerning finding one’s true inner self. That is, the self that is unchanged by the influences around us, and the self that is not material, or even of the physical body. It may be that I’m missing my old meditation routine and feeling loney for this type of reassurance, but it seems that this has come into my sphere for a reason.

Lesley pointed out to me today that whether I realized it or not, this manuscript came to me at the time that I needed it to. If I had been asked whether I was ready to examine some of my own deep feelings about this type of subject matter, I would probably have said something really lame, like, “Oh, I’m just too busy right now. Maybe in 6 months.” I know without a doubt that in six months, I would have given another lousy excuse.

But instead, after reading this manuscript, I find myself full of energy. I have the urge to pick up some old writing work that was never completed, and examine it more closely. New ideas have been coming at me so fast all day that I’ve had to keep my digital voice recorder in my back pocket, so that I can whip it out and quickly capture a thought before it’s gone. I feel no fear of rejection when thinking about trying some new outlets to publish small pieces. And, the words flow easily from my fingers into the keyboard.

Ove the years, I’ve gone through some serious boughts of writer’s block, one of which lasted almost a year. I’ve tried all sorts of tricks, gimmicks, exercises, classes, and even vitamins to jump start my pen. Some have been enough to get me to pump out some minor stuff, but nothing ever gave me a sense that I was really in a groove. That I was doing exactly what I was meant to be doing at that moment. This is the most liberating cure for writer’s block I’ve ever found! Block be banished!

What else could be on the horizon? The perfect pair of shoes on sale? A flattering haircut? Or, dare I suggest it, sister who’s willing to babysit during our long-weekend getaway? If all of that happens, I’ll blog it, and call myself Guru.

I was recently browsing the forum questions at writersdigest.com, and came across a post from a writer who was looking to hire an editor. Surprisingly, many responders told him he didn’t really need to hire an editor, and that if he couldn’t do the editing work himself, he shouldn’t be writing in the first place. To tell this poor fellow that he was somehow deficient because he felt he needed an editor was, I felt, highly unfair and narrow-minded.

There are many different types of editing. (Check out the Editor’s Association of Canada for their definitions of editorial work.) Copy editing is what most people think of as editing, which is mostly about checking spelling, grammar and sentence structure. Copy Editors are the mechanics on the race track of publishing, waiting in the pits to do a dirty job quickly, and with as much style as possible.

But, besides Copy Editors, there are also editors who re-structure, editors who research, editors who create indexes, content lists, and organization for the book, editors who choose photos, editors who create illustrations, editors who plan layout and design, editors who re-write for style or content, or editors who revise the work for length and language. I’ve never met anyone who can do all of these well.

No matter what any writer tells you, they always invest at least a tiny bit of themselves in the work. This means a lack of obectivity, and it is nearly impossible to edit one’s own work because of this. The editor’s job is not to fix “bad” writing, but to help the writer’s message to be delivered, through objective comment. Also, read my previous post about keeping the voice of the writer when editing, and how important this is.

I’m reminded of the time I brought my grandmother’s chair into the shop to repair the foot that had finally become so wobbly that it was dangerous. When I saw it there in the shop, next to all the other furniture that had just been restored and re-upholstered, I realized that the seat cushion was sagging by almost a full 2 inches on the left side, and that the fabric on the arms was not only faded, but downright shredded.

I had never noticed this while in my own house, because I still remembered times as a little child, sitting in that chair with Grandma, while we watched Sesame Street together. I saw the love in that chair, and not the trashy appearance. Before I left, I chose an attractive, moderately-priced fabric, and agreed to have the chair re-upholstered as well. Grandma at least deserved that much!

When I picked up Grandma’s chair from the upholstery shop, it looked incredible! The soft fabric was warm to the touch, the seat foam had been replaced, the feet were re-finished and shiny. All I wanted to do was to get it home and sink into it.

But when I did sit in it at home, something was missing. I couldn’t quite place it for a day or so, but then I realized what was gone – the familiar squeak of the frame as your weight transferred to the seat. I had heard that sound for so many years that it had become part of the soul of the chair. What had given it the character that made it so attractive in the first place had been removed and replaced with new stuffing, new nails, and new springs. The chair had been edited into something entirely different – and I was upset about it enough to bring it back to the shop, where they kindly removed one screw, and replaced the squeak. Thanks Grandma, for another great lesson learned.