Topic: Newsletters
I've always read about article writing and trying to sell your articles to as many markets as possible and gearing the article to a specific market. So what a pleasure to get another newsletter in my inbox yesterday only to see the same article written by Michael Masterson that I'd posted yesterday and geared towards copywriters (which the newsletter caters to).
For any writers that are interested in comparing how the two articles, I post that here too...
IN THIS ISSUE:
* What can you do each day this year?
By Michael Masterson
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
ACCOMPLISH THE UNTHINKABLE:
WRITE WELL EVERY DAY THIS YEAR
By Michael Masterson
Yesterday marked the beginning of 2007. Like me, you may
have been thinking about what you can accomplish this
year.
You are a writer. A writer with goals. Unless I have you
mixed up with someone less ambitious, you want to
improve your writing skills and make more money. Both
are respectable, doable objectives for 2007.
In fact, let's make this a breakthrough year for you.
Let's talk about how you can do that.
I was inspired this morning by a piece I'd clipped from
The New York Times a few weeks ago. The article is about
Suzan-Lori Parks, a pretty, dreadlocked, 43-three-year-
old Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who, in 2002,
decided she would write a play a day for a year.
Think about that. A play a day for a year.
When it comes to goals (setting and accomplishing them),
I consider myself to be a strong player. Before my 40th
birthday, I met and surpassed all my business and
financial goals. Since then, I've been knocking off
other lifelong goals at a pretty steady pace - and many
of them involve writing.
To me, writing a short story a month is a very ambitious
goal. And although that's been one of my goals for at
least the last five years, I've never quite accomplished
it.
How is it possible to even imagine that you could write
a play a day for 365 days in a row? And even if it were
possible to imagine, how could it be done?
The New York Times article doesn't tell me that. It
talks about how, after Parks finished the project, the
manuscripts sat in her drawer for three years until she
and a theater friend hatched a plan to produce all 365
plays. (The plan is very complicated, opening them a day
at a time in 14 cities, using a network of hubs and
satellite theaters.) And the article tells me her
subject matter ranges from "deities to soldiers to what
Ms. Parks saw out of her plane window."
But how did she do it?
Did she wake up early every morning and get to it and
not stop until she was done? Did she work on other
projects first (she is also a screenwriter and novelist)
and then get to her plays at night?
And how much did she write? According to the article,
some of the plays were "only a few pages long" - but
that's still an amazing accomplishment. She gave herself
an almost unthinkable goal ... and went ahead and
accomplished it.
But she did it smart. She didn't put a minimum length on
each play. She let each one take its own length. That's
a clever way to approach doing something great.
Perhaps you can do something similar in 2007. Set some
unthinkably big task for yourself that, when completed
at the end of the year, will have made you a much
stronger and more highly compensated writer.
Let's think about some specific writing objective that
would be similar to writing a play a day for a year.
What could that be?
The obvious answer is to write a promotion a day - to
complete, by the end of the year, 365 new direct-
response packages. That would be an amazing
accomplishment, don't you think? When you consider that
even the most prolific copywriters write fewer than 59
packages a year, 365 seems impossible.
But it can be done by doing what Parks did: by narrowing
the scope of the goal and focusing on quality rather
than size.
In Parks' case, she defined writing a play as writing an
effective dramatic presentation - even if that
presentation was a single act that lasted no more than
five or 10 minutes. In your case, you could define your
copywriting objective as writing one effective mini-
advertisement per day.
Here's how you can do it in a way that might also
dramatically increase your income:
1. Get on the mailing lists (snail mail and Internet) of
six or eight direct-marketing businesses you'd like to
work for. (Long-term AWAI members should have already
done this.)
2. Build a "swipe file" (that is, a borrower's library)
of ads that these companies are currently using.
3. Every day, before you do any other work, take out one
of the ads from your swipe file and study it. Spend 15
to 30 minutes figuring out what the copywriter is
attempting to do, evaluating how well he's doing it, and
identifying other approaches that might work equally
well or even better.
4. Pick one of those alternate approaches and make that
your daily assignment.
5. Spend the next 30 to 45 minutes writing and editing a
little ad based on the theme you've chosen.
6. When you are done, file the completed mini-ad in a
large envelope addressed to the CEO or marketing
director of the company it applies to.
7. Once a month, send out all those envelopes (each of
which will contain one or several samples of your work).
Include a letter that briefly explains who you are and
why you are sending them this free copy. The letter
should be some version of: "I admire your business and
hoped that, if you saw what I could do, you might have a
spot for me on your freelance rotation."
Don't spend any more than 60 minutes a day completing
this task.
In the beginning, you will find that you will be able to
write only a limited number of words. But as the weeks
pass, you will see your speed improve dramatically.
You'll almost certainly double the speed at which you
write. You may quadruple or quintuple it. And you'll
also see that the quality of your writing will improve --
which may surprise you, considering how much faster you
are getting. You will have sharper, more tangible ideas.
Your language will be crisper and cleaner.
The trick is to focus on quality, not quantity. So your
daily objective will be to come up with just one good
marketing idea - and then, when you have it, to write it
as simply and powerfully as possible.
If you don't want to do this every single day of the
year, make it a workday goal ... which would mean you'd
be writing about 250 little ads this year and sending
them out to potential clients. That goal is plenty big.
And it allows you two days a week to do something else
first thing in the morning.
I am thinking about setting a goal like this to improve
my skills this year. I'd like to challenge myself to
write one good story every day. The story won't have to
be long. In fact, the first 100 or so of them will
probably be very short - but that's okay.
In addition to my "write one ad a day in 2007" idea,
here are some other "unthinkably" big goals to consider:
* Learn a marketing secret a day.
* Scan an educational book a day.
* Contact a potential client a day.
* Recite a poem a day.
* Call/write a friend a day.
* Practice a self-promotional speech a day.
* Sing a song a day.
If you would like more goal setting ideas, as well as a
step-by-step action plan to make 2007 your wealthiest,
healthiest, and most successful year yet, click here:
http://www.isecureonline.com/Reports/700SACP1/E700GCX5/
[Ed. Note: When you set your "unthinkable" goal for
2007, we'd like to hear about it. Please send it to
thegoldenthread@awaionline.com and we may publish it in
The Golden Thread as inspiration for your fellow AWAI
members.]
