The Zen Habits Story: How I Got 100,000 Subscribers in Two Years

By Leo Babauta

I often get asked by newer bloggers about how I started Zen Habits, how I built it from the early days, and how I turned it into a successful blog so quickly.

And while I’ve never exactly been secretive about what I’ve done, I’ve also never told the full story … until now.

Today I’m happy to announce that I’m releasing a free report called How I Got 100,000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits. Again, it doesn’t cost anything to download the report.

In this report you’ll:

  • Find out which three things make a blog go viral.
  • Understand how to skyrocket your subscriber count.
  • Learn my most effective strategies for building a fantastic blog.
  • Hear the story of what I did right — and wrong — in the early days of Zen Habits.

Get the report here.

It’s been a fantastic journey, and I hope that in sharing my story, you’ll learn something that will help you in your journey. And as always, thanks for reading!

Categories: Blogwriting

7 Simple Ways to Dramatically Improve Everything You Write

writer-sitting-on-bench
A guest post by Dean Rieck

Writing is hard work. It’s your job to string together words in such a way that readers will effortlessly understand your meaning.

If you’re writing a novel or poem, of course, you can break the rules and indulge in strange twists of phrase. But if you want to write a crisp blog post, persuade someone to buy your product, or explain how to do something step-by-step, your writing must be crystal clear. In fact, clarity is your #1 job, no matter what you’re writing.

There’s no formula for writing clearly, but there are techniques you can use to improve your prose.  Below, I list seven tips for making your writing simple and direct.

1. Put the reader first.

Your purpose is to communicate, not to show off your writing prowess. Words are the medium you use to transport the meaning in your head to the head of another person. You must ask yourself, “Who will read this?” Picture a real person and write directly to him or her.

2. Organize your thoughts.

You don’t need a detailed outline for most writing. If you’re comfortable with the sort of outline you learned in school, use it. Generally, all you need is to jot down the important points you want to make, and arrange them in the order you want to make them.

3. Use short paragraphs.

Look at any newspaper and notice how short the paragraphs are. That’s done to make reading easier and faster, since our brains take in information better when it’s broken into little chunks. Short paragraphs also look easier and less intimidating.

4. Use short sentences.

You should keep sentences short for the same reason you keep paragraphs short: it’s easier to read and understand. Each sentence should have one idea. More than that, and your reader may get confused.

5. Use simple words.

Since your purpose is to communicate, simple words work better than big ones.  Write “get” instead of “procure.” Write “use” rather than “utilize.” Use longer words only if your meaning is so specific that there is no simpler alternative.

6. Be specific.

Don’t write “adverse weather conditions will not result in structural degradation.” Just write “the roof won’t leak if it rains.” Get to the point. Say what you mean.

7. Write in a conversational style.

Don’t try too hard to sound educated or witty. Although you need to use good grammar and observe usage conventions, you should write in a way that comes naturally. Think of writing as a casual conversation between friends.

Do these tips sound familiar?

They should. William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White summarized essential tips such as these in The Elements of Style (Original Edition)

It is the quintessential writing guide for simple, clear writing. Read it. Then read it again. Its message is as clear as its prose: Cut the fat. Keep it simple. Say what you mean.

Dean Rieck is a leading copywriter who has worked with more than 200 clients in the U.S. and abroad. For more copywriting tips, sign up for Dean’s FREE direct response newsletter or visit the Direct Creative Blog.

Categories: Craft, Fiction, Habits

What Helps YOU Be a Better Writer?

feather
Photo by MontanaRaven

By Mary Jaksch

As writers, we’re always trying to improve. Well, at least I am. Maybe you’re already perfect…

I’d like us all to collect a list of everything that helps us to become a better writer.

Please write in the comments what helps you, or what has helped you in the past!

Mary Jaksch is Chief Editor of Write to Done. You can read more articles by Mary on Goodlife ZEN. Get her free Ebook “Overcome Anything” here or grab a feed.

Categories: Craft, Fiction, Habits - Tags: ,

The Art vs. Craft Gap – a Writer’s Paradox

bridging-the-gap2

A guest post by Larry Brooks

If you want to see a room full of writers go ballistic, right up there with a lynch mob on the hysteria scale, tell them there really is a formula for writing a novel.  A list of elements and criteria that define the nature of the work.

They probably already know that stuff exists for screenwriters, but novels? No, novels are art.  Everybody knows that, and if you don’t, well you’re probably a screenwriter at heart.  Or maybe an engineer with a taste for Clancy novels.

So are novels works of art?  Absolutely, yes they are.  So is cooking and making candles, but nobody argues that recipes don’t work in those fields, and the same is true for writing novels.

While penning a novel is indeed an artistic enterprise, it is also one that depends on solid craft to be successful. And you wouldn’t set out to whip together a four-course meal or pour yourself a chapel full of candles without getting your head around the craft of it before putting on the old apron.

And yet, many novelists – even experienced ones – rip into the writing of a story without the slightest idea what the components or criteria for a good of a story are – that’s the craft of storytelling – armed only with a killer idea and a den full of bestsellers they’ve read, each of which have led them to the dual delusion that,

a) it doesn’t look all that hard

b) I’ll just head on down the storytelling road and see what happens.

As if that’s how it’s done.

How it’s done is all over the map, and that’s one of the reasons teaching writing is such a challenge.

Should you outline or write organically?

Should you depend on your drafts to add new elements and depth to the story, or are your drafts used for honing the elements to a crisp edge and elegant sheen? 

What is the art of storytelling versus the craft of storytelling?

Let’s look at two  metaphoric houses to tell the difference.  Both are built from specific designs.  Both are executed from blueprints.  But one is a tract home in a crowded neighborhood, the other – no bigger in terms of square feet – end up on the cover of Architectural Digest.  Both were built with excellent craftsmanship.  But only one is considered a work of art.

The art resides in the design, and the craft resides in the execution.

Say what?  You’re a writer, not a general contractor.  So let’s break it down.

At the design stage, both houses are nothing more than the sum of a bunch of concepts and ideas, just like a novel.  To simply stand upright against a stiff wind – the metaphoric equivalent of getting published in the case of a novel – there must be solid ideas and concepts in play which are executed with a sufficient level of craftsmanship.

But the essence of the truly artistic house is the originality, energy and beauty of the form and shape of the structure.  Without something exciting, fresh and thought-provoking, you risk your story being perceive as yet another tract house in a neighborhood full of mediocrity.

Unpublished novels earn and keep that label because they lack art or craft, or both.  It’s not rocket science to accept that premise.  But too many of those unpublished writers put all their chips on one or the other, without understand that it is the melding of both that becomes a sum in excess of the parts, which is precisely what publishers are looking for.

It boils down to this: a great idea or concept does not a good story make.  What evolves a killer idea into a marvelously compelling story requires craft, executed with artful creativity.

Art is the essence of that originality and the power of the end result.

Craft is execution using the tools of the trade: a great hook, a compelling set-up, a plot point that grabs the reader by the throat, irresistible stakes, magnificent tension and elegant exposition, blinding twists and heart-wrenching character arc, and a denouement that goes down like a smooth southern beverage on a steamy summer night under a full moon.  Or, one that scares the pants off you, depending on your genre.

In athletics they say you can’t coach speed, and the same can be said of the art of storytelling.  But it can be learned, and the formula for that is this: read, write, repeat… read, write, repeat.

The art of storytelling is an aesthetic sensibility that evolves with fickle timing, and you have to chase it down and then hold on until the whistle blows.  As for craft, the formula is much more precise: set-up, plot point, response, proactive pursuit, final twist, selfless heroism and irony.  Some call it orphan, wanderer,   and martyr.  Whatever.

It is a discipline that you’ll embrace before you write a successful, publishable story, whether it be through discovery as you write drafts or through story architecture that you create as a roadmap for your narrative.

And in the end, if you do it right, the reader will never know the difference between your art and your craft… just like that first bite of something succulent prepared by the hand of a master chef.  It just takes you there, without a hint of recipe, and equally dependent upon both the art and the craft of the creator.

Larry Brooks, aka The Storyfixer, is the author of four thrillers, one of which was a USA Today bestseller, another a Publishers Weekly “Best Books of 2004 selection. His blog StoryFix.com, is a resource for writers who are tired of workshop jargon.

Categories: Craft, Fiction - Tags: , ,

Campfire Writing: Why Stories are the Writer’s Elemental Tool

campfire

A guest post by David Masters

“I don’t think you can write – at least not well – if you don’t love stories.”
~ Nora Roberts

“To hell with facts! We need stories!”
~ Ken Kesey

An Ancient Greek Parable on How to Captivate Your Audience

Demades, the Ancient Greek orator, is about to address an assembly in Athens on a matter of vital importance. Though widely recognised as one of the greatest speakers of his time, he can’t get his audience to listen. They’re joking and laughing among themselves, ignoring Demades as he stands alone on the podium, babbling, struggling in vain to attract attention.

He pauses briefly before starting to speak again. At the words he now speaks, the audience falls into an enchanted silence, focusing on every syllable coming from Demades lips.

Demades’ words were these: “Ceres set off on her journey with a swallow and an eel as her companions.”

Demades’ opening words – after his pause – contained a simple magic: the magic of storytelling.

The Magic and Power of Story

As a writer, it is not words, but stories, that are your elemental tool.  Stories are an enchanting magic that grip the reader to the page.

Here is the power of storytelling: People make sense of the world through stories.

Stories are fundamental to being human.  Without stories, life would appear as a meaningless jumble of facts and ideas.  Stories make facts, and great ideas, meaningful.  They connect with the everyday life and experience of their listeners or readers.

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
~ Muriel Rukeyser

A Short History Lesson for Writers

Take history, for example.  As a collection of dates – seemingly random numbers to a neutral observer – history has no meaning.  428, 1,564, 1,757, 1,812, 1,899, 1,947. These become meaningful, firstly, when you realise they’re smaller than 2,009 – so they could tie in with the story of Christianity and western history.  They become more meaningful when letters are attached to them: 428BC, 1947AD. They’re more meaningful still when words are added: 428AD, Plato born; 1564AD, Shakespeare christened; 1947AD, Stephen King born.  These letters and words add meaning to the numbers only because you know – or know of – the stories contained within them, hidden behind them: the lives and works of philosophers, playwrights and poets.

“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.”
~ Rudyard Kipling

Invoking Your Readers’ Imagination

Stories hold truth more deeply than facts or statements.  As a mixture of images and ideas, stories cross the boundary between two types of truth. Storyteller Robert Bela Wilhelm calls these two truth types ‘day-time talk’ and ‘night-time talk’.  Day-time talk uses sentences to clearly explain ideas.  Night-time talk – the talk of dreams – gives your imagination free reign to use images and fantasy in whichever way it likes.  Story provides a way of writing that bridges these two types of truth – allowing the rational conscious mind to be co-present with the creative unconscious mind.  Stories satisfy the order required by left-brain thinking while provoking the imagination of right brain thinking.

All well written stories are fairy stories.  A well written story enchants the reader – casting on him or her a spell that will leave them transformed in a way that simple, blunt facts never could.

“People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.”
Chinua Achebe

Stories inspire lasting change for two reasons.  First, they are memorable.  A well told story is never forgotten; it lodges itself deep in the reader’s subconscious mind. Second, the reader has to find out the purpose of the story for themselves.  The reader is responsible for working out the truth of the story.  Instead of being told what to do, how to act, where to look, how to think, they must discover this by thinking the story through.  And in finding the meaning of the story for themselves, the change will stay with them.  New ways of life learnt through stories are never merely an idea that seemed nice to read, but a new truth that has become a deep and lasting part of the reader’s inner world.

To conclude, a story.

Leave Your Readers Craving for More

King Shahryar of Persia loves his newlywed wife more than all the world.  It is his greatest happiness to meet her every wish, and to treat her with the finest jewels – diamonds, rubies, and sapphires – and beautiful silk dresses.

Shahryar’s Queen, however, is in love with another man.  For many years, the Queen and her lover have a secret affair.

When King Shahryar finally discovers his Queen’s infidelity, he is furious.  Breaking down and losing his mind, he has the Queen executed.  As revenge on his former wife, he decrees that all women are unfaithful.

He soon marries a new bride, but has her executed the next morning, before she has a chance to cheat on him.  He marries again, and again executes his new wife the next day.  He repeats this pattern until his chief advisor can find no more women for him to marry. The only single woman left in the whole kingdom is the advisor’s daughter, Scheherazade.  Reluctantly, the chief advisor agrees to let her marry the king.

On their wedding night, Scheherazade tells the king a story.  At the climax of the story, she stops her storytelling, and refuses to continue.  The king is determined to discover the ending to the story.  He begs her to finish, but she will not tell the ending.

The next day, the executioner knocks on the king’s door, as has become custom the day after each wedding. The king sends the executioner away.  Scheherazade’s execution can wait until tomorrow; he must first hear the end of her story.

That night, Scheherazade finishes her story.  The king is satisfied, and will have her executed the following morning.  However, while he is plotting  Scheherazade’s demise, she begins another story.  Again, she stops telling the story at its climax, and refuses to continue.  Again, the king holds off her execution so he can hear the ending to her story.  And again, that evening, when she finishes the previous story, she starts another.

For 1,001 nights Scheherazade captivates the king is this way, holding his curiosity each night with a new story.

During these years of sharing stories, the King has fallen in love with Scheherazade.  He can no longer imagine having her executed.   Scheherazade, too, has fallen in love with the King.  Together, they live happily ever after, with a reign of justice and truth, always listening carefully to the stories of their subjects.

Stories are like fairy gold, the more you give away, the more you have.
~ Anon.

David Masters is a writer, storyteller, blogger, and amateur photographer. Follow fragments of his life on Twitter.

Photo by smcgee>

Categories: Blogwriting, Craft, Fiction, Journalism