A guest post by Diggy from UpgradeReality.com.

Let me paint a little picture. Allow your imagination to go to work.

It’s a beautiful sunny afternoon, you’ve just stuffed yourself with a great lunch and you’re all stretched out on your couch. Flipping the channels on your TV to find something that you will allow to steal your afternoon away. You have plenty of ideas you want to start and projects you want to complete, but you can’t get yourself off that couch and get motivated to get to work and start writing.

How Do You Find Motivation?

The answer to this question is often what stands between you (right now, far from your goals ) and reaching your goals and being successful. That reason or thing that sparks us to take action, (the carrot in front of the donkey’s nose) is what we need to find or create. Everyone has a creative genius inside of them. There just needs to be a reason to let that genius come out to play.

I think there is little more motivating than a near-death experience or a loss of something you’ve always taken for granted. Getting told that you only have one year left to live or surviving a head-on collision are examples of events that change everything. After one of these events you will focus on the things you truly care about and spend as much time with the people and things you love.

The secret to being continuously motivated is realizing why your whole focus shifts after you nearly lose something very important (like your health or freedom).

If you can understand that principle and apply it BEFORE something bad happens to you (i.e. pretend or imagine how you would feel if you indeed lost something very important), then you would truly live your life to the fullest. You will love with all your heart, work with all your energy and enjoy everything that this world has to offer you. You will see every day as a gift that allows you to be creative and share your thoughts and writing with the world.

Imagine that you only have one year left to live, would you waste it by sitting on the couch and watching tv? I highly doubt it…

Find Motivation By Setting Imaginary Rewards:

Fear is usually a bigger motivator than dreams and that is why the process of nearly losing something really important to you makes you so much more motivated to live your life to the fullest.

However, you are the only one that knows what you really desire in your heart. This means that you can use that desire as a source of motivation.

Let’s say for example that you really want to be financially independent so that you are able to travel the world and wake up to a tropical beach and aqua-blue sea every morning. If you really really want that tropical beach, it will always be on your mind. When you wake up in the morning you can remind yourself how much you want it and that you are going to do anything you have to do to reach that goal. You can find a postcard or photograph of that beach you want to be on and pin it on the wall behind the desk you work at. That way you will want to write as soon as you see that postcard.

You need to determine if you are someone who is more motivated by fear or by dreams. I am not able to tell you that. What is the thing that is going to make you get out of bed on a Sunday morning or motivate you to work late into the night so that you can achieve your goals?

The Lance Armstrong Story

I’m pretty sure that you know the Lance Armstrong story or have at least heard about it.

Lance Armstrong was a top-athlete at the peak of his career in 1996. Back then, he had just won the World Cycling Championships. He had become the first cyclist to clock the widest winning margin in the U.S. National Road Race Championshipís history. Even more, he had also signed a 2 year contract to ride with a famous French racing team for an amount of $2.5 million.

Later that year, Lance was diagnosed with an advanced stage of testicular cancer. The cancer had spread to his lungs and brain and doctors gave him a 50/50 chance to live. An urgent operation had to be arranged to remove his swollen testicle that was the size of an orange. Lance had cancer cells the size of golfballs in his lungs. Doctors and others were really not optimistic about his recovery.

Lance however, was determined not to give up and to beat his illness. He underwent the surgery and the chemotherapy and lost a lot of weight in the process. Amazingly he was declared cancer-free after he completed his chemotherapy and he went back to his cycling.

For the next 7 consecutive years, Lance proceeded to win the Tour de France. He went from facing death and having people tell him he was going to die to winning the largest cycle event in the world 7 cosecutive times in a row. At a later stage, Lance wrote that he chose overcoming cancer to winning the race. It was the former that allowed him to ignore the negative predictions that his doctors gave him and focus on his own strength and faith.

Lance Armstrong published a book titled “It’s not about the bike” which is a really inspiring and beautiful story to read. If you haven’t read it yet I really suggest you get hold of a copy.

The reason that I told you this story is that you should never give up. You are much stronger than you think and you are capable of withstanding much more than you think. Don’t allow the negativity of others to drain your life or motivation out of you, it’s not over until it’s over.

Let Me Give You A Boost:

Everyone has days where they can’t find motivation and they are a little low on confidence or self-esteem. You may not have the urge to write on these kind of days which can turn into weeks or months if you let them. Even if you have been writing for months without results and your efforts seem fruitless, then remember the Lance Armstrong story. You can be facing what seem insurmountable odds, but you can still conquer them with hard work,persistance and determination.

If you are having one of those days where you don’t feel creative, let me help you by telling you the following:

1. You are alive
2. You are enough
3. You are unique
4. You are cool
5. Never give up

Always remember this! Now get off your butt and go and write some mind-blowing articles (Just do it)!

Diggy writes all about self improvement at his blog UpgradeReality.com. If you are looking for motivation, inspiration or useful tips to live a better life, subscribe to his articles via RSS FEED or EMAIL

A heads-up for WTD readers
Leo and Mary will run the next A-list Blogging Bootcamp, How to Create a Blog that Rocks from 13-17 February. Everyone had a blast last time! We’ll be emailing some great articles on blogging. Get yourself on the mailing list by clicking on Leo’s report below.

A guest post by Glen Allsopp who writes about Viral marketing.

I wrote my first blog post back in 2006. At the time, blogging was just starting to be used as a way to connect with your audience and attract more eyeballs to your products and services. Back then, I didn’t care about building a readership or writing posts that hit the Digg homepage, I simply kept writing content so that Google would send me more traffic.

Of course, a lot has changed since then. I now couldn’t care less about search engine traffic to my blog and instead focus all of my energy on building a vibrant, helpful community around my brand. It’s not only my blogging focus that has changed in the last few years, but also the way I actually write my articles.

The Old Way

In 2006 I was blogging once or twice per week to an audience of less than 30 subscribers. I think it took about 6 months for the blog to receive a comment that wasn’t left by me. Around this time, and up until very recently, I still held the same ’style’ of blogging, even though my entire aim for what I wanted out of blogging had changed.

The process was very structured, and went something like this:

• Decide on something you can write about
• Choose a killer headline (1)
• Map out sub-headings for different sections of the post (2)
• Fill out these sub-headings carefully (3)
• Watch out for spelling / grammar mistakes as you go (4)
• Re-read the post (5)
• Hit publish when you want it to go live (6)

This is a very basic outline, but it contains most of the steps that I used to follow and most of the steps that I’m sure thousands (if not millions) of bloggers still follow today.

If we were to put this process on a chart that showed the level of passion, energy and excitement that takes place when writing the post, I think we would see something very basic like this:

There are clear peaks here of energy and excitement when you find a killer headline that you love, have the post organised and eventually hit the publish button. Apart from that though, blogging can look like a pretty simple and boring process. Some people might love this, and I totally get that, but don’t ignore other options before you try them.

One such option, is the new blogging way…

The New Way

The reason we need a ‘new way’ is because it is no longer enough to succeed at blogging by showing up and posting frequently. A few years ago that would have been great for your readers and excellent for search engine traffic, but things have changed. There is now so much noise in every industry online, that if you don’t stand out with amazing content, you may as well not write at all.

This change still means that you need to write content, and if you wanted you could write in the style of the ‘old way’, or you could start getting the most out of the process. A few months ago I noticed this change in my blogging but really didn’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t until a tweet from Adam allowed me to ‘picture’ the process in my mind that I could finally put things into words.

The process of the New Way, goes something like this:

• Decide on something you can write about
• Choose a killer headline (1)
• Start writing the most important things you want to say (2)
• Don’t worry about headings, spellings or grammar (3)
• Keep going until you’ve wrote everything you want to on the topic (4)
• Take a break and cool down (5)
• Tidy up the post and hit publish (6)

If we were to put this in a graph like we did for the old way of blogging, you would see something like this:

This New Way of blogging does include a concept I have written about here at WritetoDone in the past: keep writing until you’ve said everything you want to say, then edit after. Not as you’re going along.

However, this whole process is going to be an entirely new concept to most people. Again, it’s not simply enough to be writing content for your niche anymore. Due to the sheer mass of competition online these days, whatever you put out to the world on your blog has to provide massive value to your readers.

Because of this, if you can get really into your articles and get excited about the process, that’s going to show in the final result. The bottom line is that if you’re feeling really passionate about what you’re saying, you’re going to produce the type of posts necessary to gain mindshare in your industry.

Maybe I’m off the mark, but for myself and many others, I’m seeing a totally new way to look at writing blog posts…

This is a guest post by Glen Allsopp who writes about Viral marketing. He has also written an in-depth guide about guest blogging you may also enjoy.

A heads-up for WTD readers
Leo and Mary will run the next A-list Blogging Bootcamp, How to Create a Blog that Rocks from 13-17 February. Everyone had a blast last time! We’ll be emailing some great articles on blogging. Get yourself on the mailing list by clicking on Leo’s report below.

A guest post by Nathalie Lussier of Raw Foods Witch

Why do you write your blog?

Maybe you are writing to share your point of view, help others, or just get things off your chest. No matter what the reason you write for your blog, you need to learn how to craft each post to have the greatest impact on your reader.

Your readers are granting you their valuable attention, after all.

How storytelling applies to blogging

In an effort to expand my skills as a blogger, I started reading about the power of storytelling.

Storytelling is an age old tradition that is as natural to human beings as breathing. That’s how we communicate, sell, and relate to each other. The go-to book for understanding the power of story is Robert McKee’s book “Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting“. While the book is about screenplays, it hit me that there was a parallel between scenes in a movie and blog posts.

Here’s the breakdown: your blog is like a movie, while each blog post is a scene in that movie.

Your blog’s theme and genre

Whether you think of it in these terms or not, your blog has a theme. The same goes for movies: documentaries, dramas, horror flicks, love stories, and comedies.

You might think your blog is special and that it cannot be classified within a genre. That would mean you’ve got an “art blog,” kind of like how art films are hard to classify, but make up a genre of their own. If you haven’t articulated your blog’s theme for yourself or your readers, maybe it’s time to write a blog post about it.

Or just a short blurb that you can add to your about page. This will come in handy for the next part: writing to affect change in your reader.

Each blog post should affect change

One of the most fundamental abilities you can develop as a blogger is knowing when to hit publish, and when to recognize a subpar piece of writing. At the beginning of your blogging career you might publish everything you write, but eventually you will start to get a feel for what resonates with your readers.

Here’s a shortcut that I gleaned from Robert Mckee’s book, referring to a scene in a movie: you should only include a scene if it changes the character(s) from one state to another.

Scenes that are pivotal are the only ones that make it to the final cut.

Pivoting a character’s emotions, opinions, or outlook is what furthers the story. The same is true of pivotal blog posts, furthering the overall story of your blog.

What a single blog post can achieve

Just like each scene in a movie is relatively short and to the point, so should your blog posts be. You shouldn’t attempt to change someone’s entire life in one blog post. That’s why you’ve got a subscribe button, and ongoing content, isn’t it?

However, you can achieve a lot in a single blog post. Here are some possibilities…

• Take your reader from confused to educated.
• Take your reader from bored to entertained.
• Take your reader from apathetic to emotionally engaged.
• Take your reader from reluctant to convinced, by showing results.
• Take your reader from sadness to happiness.
• Take your reader from curious to interested.

The possibilities are endless. What you can do with a single blog post will largely depend on the tone and genre of your blog and what you are trying to accomplish.

Pivotal blog posts

Here are a few examples of transformative blog posts that take a reader from one place to another:

• Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz takes you from surface level marketing to a deeper understanding of a marketer’s life.
• Mary Jaksch of Goodlife Zen takes you on a journey from creatively blocked to a place of opening possibilities and creative flow.
• James Chartrand of Men With Pens takes you out of your usual element and dives into controversy.
• Glen Allsopp of ViperChill takes you from speculation to proven fact on twitter statistics.
• Ali Hale takes you from hating work to optimistic about the concept of work.
• Jonathan Mead takes you from hating the concept of productivity to finding a means of making the most of your life.

Take Away Points

Now that you’ve read some examples of truly pivotal blog posts, it’s time for you to craft your own.

First identify your blog’s overall goal, diection, and genre if you haven’t already done so.

Then take the next blog post you were going to write and design it with a pivot in mind.

After you’ve written your first draft, read it over and identify the starting state and ending state of your reader.

Is he bored? Lethargic? Unenthused?

How does your blog post turn this around? Have him leave your writing laughing, energized, and inspired.

That’s when you’ll know you’re truly creating content that makes an impact on your reader’s life.

Nathalie Lussier’s blog Raw Foods Witch is about eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, while eliminating unhealthy food cravings. Follow her at @NathLussier on Twitter.

A Heads-up for WTD readers
Leo and Mary will run the next A-list Blogging Bootcamp, How to Create a Blog that Rocks from 13-17 February. Everyone had a blast last time! We’ll be emailing some great articles on blogging. Get yourself on the mailing list by clicking on Leo’s report below.

A Guest Post by Tomas Stonkus of Uncertain Change

I have one question for you: “When did you grow up?”

OKAY, that is actually just the first question. Here’s the rest.

Do you remember that exact moment when you decided to stop having fun and start being serious? Do you know when your careless smile was replaced by a frown? Do you know when you stopped believing in your dreams and decided to become reasonable?

Maybe it was around the time when you stopped playing.
Until that point, the whole world seemed to be your playground!

There were no rules, no limitations. Everybody told you that you could be anybody you wanted to be. Nobody ever said no to your dreams; instead, they just encouraged you never to stop believing in yourself and just to keep striving for your craziest goals! It was still OKAY to believe in fairy tales, dragons, elves, Santa Claus, heroes, princes, and princesses. It was still okay to believe in magic! There was so much to explore, so much to see, so much to experience.

What is more important is that you thought you could do it all!

Nevertheless, one day you stopped playing.

It’s because everybody around you stopped playing with you. Just because you grew a little bit older, the “grown ups” decided that you should understand the world for what it “truly” is: a very risky place. Not only that, but taking risks should be avoided at all costs because of the possibility of failure.

Life showed it’s “true” colors all of the sudden: it was a mix of black and white. The other colors seemed to have disappeared somewhere. Being serious and being cautious became the norm. Suddenly there were rules! And they were everywhere. People started telling you to grow up, to do this and not to do that. It seems like there was a correct answer for everything: from how you should dress to how you should act and what you should think! More importantly, nobody wanted to play anymore.

But you do want to play and have fun, don’t you?

I do too!

Before we move on, remember this: life is a risky place. And, guess what? Risky life leads to a fun, rewarding and magical life if you are ready accept that you are going to fail. All you have to do is to remember how to have fun even while you fail!

That is possible only when you are playing.

It’s OKAY.

You probably forgot how to play and need a place to practice. Alright, let us practice together. Let’s go play at the ultimate playground: blogosphere!

The Ultimate Playground

It is a cool place, isn’t it? So many weird and interesting people play here.

Look!

There are so many of them and everybody is having fun! However, if you want to play here, you must know a couple of rules first:

• There are no rules (ironic, I know)
• You cannot possibly fail
• The rewards are limitless
• Nothing is serious

Indeed, it is a strange place. Blogosphere can be as real as you want it to be. You can make it your real life extension or you can start a new life on the blogosphere and make your real life your blogging extension. The only thing that matters is knowing where you want to be and what you want to become.

Playing in a blogosphere can be confusing at first. That is why I have put together the following guidelines for you to follow.

1. Pick what you want to be.
   If you do not know, it’s OKAY! You will learn what appeals to you as you keep playing in the blogosphere. If you do have an idea, it’s fine! It will make the process so much faster. Either way, every single person on the blogosphere is a creator. Some people write, some people draw, some people create music, and some solve problems. Ultimately, it does not matter what the specific definition is. What matters is that you will end up creating as well. Do you want to be a writer, a life coach, a consultant, a musician, a marketing guru, a dating guru, a comedian, a journalist, a social activist? The list goes on! Take your pick.
2. Start creating. |
   It might be scary at first, but remember the first rule of the blogosphere: there are no rules. Did you ever have crazy ideas come to you that you were too scared to share with anybody? Did you ever think of things that you thought made no sense? Did you ever think of an idea and wanted to see how others would accept it? If you did any of the above-mentioned things, then you are in the right place. That’s why we are all here. Don’t think about it twice, just start creating. Whatever comes to mind, put it out there in the form of music, writing, drawing, a video recording!
3. Get help.
   Blogosphere is a very friendly place because nobody ever fails. People are eager to help. Many of them will help you out for free! There are more resources here for creation than you could have ever thought. If you are stuck and having a tough time creating something – speak out and ask for help. You will always be answered.
4. Make friends.
   Did I mention that people in the blogosphere are very friendly? Don’t be afraid because you cannot fail. People here are eager to meet new people and make new friends. It is much easier than you think! You can make friends by helping others, by commenting on their creations or simply by connecting with your already existing friends. Nobody will ever say no to a new player in the blogosphere.
5. Ask for feedback or NOT.
   By now, you will have created something and you will want to know how you are doing or NOT. It’s up to you! If you want to create just for the sake of creating and expressing yourself, it’s great! Many people do just that. However, if you do want feedback, just ask! Sometimes the feedback will come to you anyway in the form of views, comments, tweets, time spend on the website and so on. Then you can use feedback to assess how you are doing and if you are creating something others enjoy.
6. Improve at your own pace.
   There is no rush or need to improve. It is all up to you! If you want to improve to finally become what you set out to be, then repeat steps 2 through 6 as many times as you want. In no time, you will reach your goal all the while having tons of fun! The best thing is that you don’t have to stop there because the rewards are limitless. You choose how much fun you want to have.

Did you have fun playing in the blogosphere? I did too!

Since you are already playing in the blogosphere, why not play all the time and making your “real” life the extension of you blogosphere life? You’ve had so much practice and learned so much. Why not take what you have learned in the playground and apply it to your everyday life? You already know how to do that!

Since your real life is the extension of your blogosphere life, then the same rules apply as well:

• There are no rules
• You cannot possibly fail
• The rewards are limitless
• Nothing is serious

Heck, you can even use the same guidelines for playing in the “real” life as for playing in the blogosphere!

So the next time somebody asks you: “When did you grow up?” you just tell them that you are still growing.

Tomas Stonkus is the creative genius behind Uncertain Change. If you are looking for honest, blunt and practical ideas on how to lead a multidimensional life, subscribe here.

Photo credit: Photo by benchilada

A heads-up for those who want to play in the Blogosphere
Leo and Mary will run the next A-list Blogging Bootcamp, How to Create a Blog that Rocks from 13-17 February. Everyone had a blast last time! We’ll be emailing some great articles on blogging. Get yourself on the mailing list by clicking on Leo’s report in the sidebar.

A Guest Post by Oleg Mokhov of Lifebeat

Want to become a high-impact writer? Make your articles stronger and your message hit harder by utilizing the U2 method of high-impact writing. You can use a 3 step method to easily catch the attention of readers from the very first sentence.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s indisputable that Bono and gang wrote some incredible, lasting pop songs. Tunes that become a part of people’s lives.

“One,” “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “Pride in the Name of Love,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “New Year’s Day,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “With or Without You,” “Beautiful Day,” the list goes on…

How does U2 have such high-impact songs? It all stems from Bono’s approach to songwriting: Write the best chorus you can, then make that the verse and write an even better chorus.

So simple, yet so effective.

3 Step Method to High-Impact Writing

What the heck does Bono’s songwriting have to do with us writers? This is Write to Done, not Songwriting to Done.

Answer: You can apply U2’s method of high-impact songwriting to your own writing. Make your articles as immediate and catchy as U2’s songs.

Here’s the 3 step method:

1. Write your high-impact point, the main message of your article
2. Make that the first sentence or paragraph
3. Write an even stronger point for the conclusion

So simple, yet so effective.

Plus, what’s awesome about the U2 method of high-impact writing is that it’s practical, rather than some abstract “push yourself to write better” tip
(what does that even mean?).

3 Reasons This Method Works

Here are 3 reasons why the U2 method will make your articles high-impact:

1. Capture a reader’s attention right away – our short attention spans need immediate hooking in, or else we quickly lose interest
2. Best foot forward – when you start off strong, people want to keep reading, just like a good intro riff makes you want to keep listening
3. More valuable article – you make it easy for the reader to get the value, and the less they have to work the more they’ll read and the more value they’ll get

Nothing Clever, Just Solid Writing

Some songwriters get caught up in trying to be clever, thinking they need to figure out some secret chord progression or song structure to make a better song.

But all it is is simply pushing yourself to make the most high-impact chorus you can, then making it what starts the song and creating an even better chorus.

The same goes for writers. If you want readers, you don’t need to be clever with some fancy structure or rhyming scheme. Just write the best darn point you’re trying to make, then make that start the article and push yourself to write an even better concluding point.

I Utilized the U2 Method for This Article

The first paragraph of this article was originally the conclusion. It stated the message and value of the article.

But I decided to utilize the U2 method and put the high-impact point in the very beginning. Now, this article starts off with (hopefully) an immediate and catchy paragraph that hooked you in to read this far.

Following the 3rd step of the U2 method, the conclusion you’ll read next is an even higher-impact point.

The U2 Method of High-Impact Writing

Transform your next article into a high-impact hit. Utilize the U2 method of high-impact writing to create an immediate article that captivates readers and hooks passer-bys.

You’ll capture a reader’s attention right away, have your best foot forward with your content, and create a more valuable article.

Oh U2, is there anything you wonderful Irishmen can’t teach us?

When not pulling writing tips from the controversial but awesome Bono, Oleg Mokhov writes unconventional life-maximizing ideas for remarkable people and makes energizing electronic dance music for melody-lovers on his site Lifebeat.

A Heads-up for WTD readers
Leo and Mary will run the next A-list Blogging Bootcamp, How to Create a Blog that Rocks from 13-17 February. Everyone had a blast last time! We’ll be emailing some great articles on blogging. Get yourself on the mailing list by clicking on Leo’s report in the sidebar.