Helpful Hints for Writing

An inter­est­ing ques­tion was recently asked of me in a dis­cus­sion forum: “I agree with the idea of sub­mit­ting arti­cles [in order to get] a lot of tar­geted vis­i­tors to a site, how­ever, I was won­der­ing, ‘What keeps Michel Fortin writ­ing?’ I mean, Michel, what is your 3-​​, 5– or 7-​​point for­mula to get an arti­cle on paper? What are [some of the spe­cific] steps you follow?”

Here’s my answer.

1. I’m sub­scribed to a ton of ezines and blogs.

As an “expert” (if I dare call myself that) in my field, I must keep abreast of my indus­try — so should you. But the won­der­ful byprod­uct is that some­thing I’ve read will stir a few ideas in my mind about some­thing worth writing.

The gazil­lion of ezines and blogs to which I’m sub­scribed are fil­tered in my soft­ware (both email and RSS read­ers) into fold­ers for later read­ing. What I do, how­ever, is fil­ter such arti­cles for key­words that I decide, in advance, about which I feel there’s a need to write.

As for my RSS reader, I use Feed​De​mon​.com. The beauty with Feed­De­mon is that is not only syn­chro­nizes your feeds with the online ser­vice News­Ga­tor, but it also has fil­ter­ing capa­bil­i­ties such as a “bin” (i.e., folder) for copy­ing posts that men­tion a par­tic­u­lar key­word, such as my name, “copy­writ­ing,” “Inter­net mar­ket­ing,” “saleslet­ter,” and so forth.

But it also has an exter­nal keyword-​​based blog search (on Tech­no­rati, Google Blog, del​.icio​.us, MSN, and more). What it does is search blog net­works for a spe­cific key­word or phrase (that’s how I know peo­ple talk about me in the blo­gos­phere, for exam­ple) that I can file for later retrieval.

It gives you the abil­ity to copy spe­cific posts in a “News­bin” and even flag/​label spe­cific posts. When­ever I want to post about a topic, I can do a sim­ple search through my 300+ feeds for posts that con­tain a spe­cific tag or key­word, and copy the results to the news bin, for later perusal.

As for email, copies of all the email ezine issues I receive are fil­tered into a mas­ter folder (i.e., the fil­tered email is moved into its appro­pri­ate folder for later read­ing and a copy is also placed into this mas­ter folder, both simul­ta­ne­ously — most email fil­ters or rules do this ). In my mas­ter folder, I do a text-​​based search for cer­tain key­words (e.g., top­ics, ideas, events, etc) about which I can write.

2. I cre­ate a skele­ton arti­cle or post.

Then, I cre­ate an out­line. To do this, I write down key­words or keyphrases, in point/​bullet form, rep­re­sent­ing future para­graphs or phrases, and the sub­jects I’d like to cover in those para­graphs or idea blocks.

This allows me to see, at a glance, the flow of the arti­cle and then reor­ga­nize them so there’s a bet­ter struc­ture and orga­ni­za­tion of ideas. As you know, some points within an arti­cle are best men­tioned in strate­gic loca­tions within the arti­cle, and the out­line allows me to do exactly that, even before I start writing.

Writ­ing key­words in bul­let form and then expand­ing those key­words into full para­graphs is the eas­i­est way for me to write — it may not be for most peo­ple. For me, though, since the key­words or keyphrases are based on spe­cific top­ics, the flow seems nat­ural and I can see, quickly, if there is cohe­sive­ness within the article.

What I do is fol­low the three major steps:

• Intro­duc­tion
• Body (Con­tent)
• Con­clu­sion

It comes back to that famous rule: “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em,” “tell ‘em,” and then “tell ‘em what you told ‘em.” But let’s take a look at each ele­ment in detail.

a) Intro­duc­tion:

I’ll start with some­thing that announces the topic, pre­pares the reader and gen­tly takes them into the body of the arti­cle — some­thing that “tick­les” them in order to pull them into the arti­cle. (Cre­at­ing head­lines is last for me.)

This is also used as an excerpt when I post to my blog, par­tic­u­larly when you hit the front page. (By the way, you may not know this, but the excerpt, which is the first 80 words or so, are also auto­mat­i­cally incor­po­rated into the meta-​​description tag of the page’s HTML code.) Ulti­mately, using intro­duc­tions as a way to get peo­ple to start read­ing is crucial.

b) Body (Content):

Then I pre­pare the core com­po­nents of the arti­cle (usu­ally, it will be three main points, expanded, and I often use head­ings for these three core com­po­nents). Gen­er­ally, I resort to the use of adverbs as bases for expand­ing on the top­ics — my “five hon­est serv­ing men,” as the say­ing goes, “which are who, what, why, where and when.”

Now, a para­graph is not entirely ded­i­cated to one ques­tion, as it may be cov­ered in other places within the arti­cle, and in a strate­gic loca­tion that flows bet­ter with the thought process I want the reader to have while they are read­ing it. But I do make sure the arti­cle cov­ers most if not all of them.

c) Con­clu­sion:

It’s a recap or sum­mary of the arti­cle, with a final word — like the “moral of a story,” “final analy­sis,” or “bottom-​​line,” offer­ing an action­able step, a ques­tion upon which to pon­der or a cliffhanger (maybe lead­ing to another article).

In terms of soft­ware, I use TextPad, which is a text edi­tor. (I never write arti­cles directly into the blog or HTML soft­ware, lest my con­nec­tion goes down and I lose every­thing I wrote. I also don’t use Microsoft Word or any other word proces­sor, as copy­ing them into my blog or web­site may also copy junk cre­ated by the software’s pro­pri­etary code.)

I’ve been using TextPad for years, now. It’s like Notepad but on steroids. It has a spellcheck­ing fea­ture with a lot of macros, file man­ag­ing func­tions, inte­grated char­ac­ter maps, etc. Even HTML tags and split win­dows when writ­ing var­i­ous parts of the same arti­cle, at the same time. It also has a hard-​​break fea­ture so that I can split-​​wrap my arti­cles at 65 char­ac­ters — which is the norm.

3. Then, I just write.

I tem­porar­ily put my “crit­i­cal edi­tor” hat aside and I just keep writ­ing, non-​​stop. I don’t even stop to read what I’ve writ­ten. I just write! Once done, I stop, read again and edit for style and gram­mar — of course, with the kind help of my TextPad’s spellchecker.

Some­times I’ll take whole sen­tences out and add new ones in. I’ll rewrite pas­sages I feel aren’t clear. I’ll cut and paste some para­graphs where I feel they belong best. (In fact, after writ­ing a bit I can see where my out­line, cre­ated ear­lier, may need a bit of revamping.)

And then bingo: The final product.

As for the fre­quency, I write all the time. What I often do is pre­pare a ton of skele­ton arti­cles in advance and save them for future use. (I do this with Microsoft OneNote, which is a fab­u­lous piece of soft­ware that allows you to save clip­pings, audios, videos, URLs, notes, com­ments, you name it.)

I use Thun­der­bird (from the folks at Fire­fox) for my email. The neat thing is that I can cre­ate new “tem­po­rary” fil­ters. Ezines are fil­tered into tem­po­rary fold­ers in order to research more infor­ma­tion on the top­ics I’d like to cover. From there, I move copies of spe­cific arti­cles that match a key­word search into new tem­po­rary fold­ers for research in cre­at­ing future articles.

I can jot down URLs and spe­cific data per­tain­ing to arti­cles — when I don’t use OneNote, I some­times send an email to myself with the notes I’ve made and have them filed in those spe­cific “tem­po­rary” folders.

While I seem to be using Microsoft OneNote more these days, there are sev­eral free­ware desk­top note-​​making appli­ca­tions on the web, such as notes soft­ware from 3M, the mak­ers of Post-​​It Notes. (There’s also Google Note­book, as well as some of the social book­mark­ing sites like del​.icio​.us, that do the same.)

I also have with me, most of the time, a small tape recorder or notepad (a cel­lu­lar phone and Palm Pilot are also good for tak­ing notes). I record some thoughts that pop into my head from time to time.

I’ll give you an exam­ple: I’m dri­ving to a client. While in my car, I lis­ten to the news. Then all of sud­den, bang! An idea hits me. I’ll record it imme­di­ately and use that as a basis for an arti­cle — or for that week’s blog post, for example.

I also fre­quently use a ser­vice like iDic​tate​.com. After open­ing an account, I get a 1–800 num­ber and, after call­ing in and dic­tat­ing my “thoughts,” a few hours later I get a tran­scrip­tion by email. This is absolutely per­fect when I’m on the road. (I also use it to write copy for saleslet­ters, too.)

4. I edit, edit and edit some more.

In terms of proof­read­ing, what I do, when I have a chance, is have my arti­cles read by my wife Sylvie, friends or asso­ciates. Often, they see things I don’t see. I miss things that are bla­tantly obvi­ous but over­look them since I tend to read my arti­cle the same way I wrote it.

In fact, the best method, I’ve found, is to read the arti­cle slowly, to myself, out loud. Really! If I notice that my speech slurs or fum­bles at some point in the arti­cle, or that a pas­sage just doesn’t sound right, then I know that some­thing was poorly writ­ten and I’ll rewrite it for clarity.

I’ve used dic­ta­tion soft­ware before, but I don’t use it nor­mally. (I pre­fer iDic​tate​.com. You don’t have to train it like soft­ware, as it’s tran­scribed by real human beings. I talk more than I write, and as a pro­fes­sional speaker and sto­ry­teller, I talk a lot . So iDic­tate is a god­send for me.)

Finally, I reg­u­larly spend 18 to 20 hours a day on my com­puter and on the web. Like I said, I read and write a lot. I’m a vir­tual sponge. And surf­ing the web, believe it or not, is one of the most cre­ative processes in which I engage myself.

Some peo­ple call me “expert” or “guru.” I hate that. In real­ity, I’m more of a per­pet­ual stu­dent. I read intensely and love new ideas and trends. But I scan a lot, too. I usu­ally receive about 2,000 emails and blog post noti­fi­ca­tions a day (I’m not kid­ding), two-​​thirds of which are ezines and blogs in the areas of copy­writ­ing, mar­ket­ing, Inter­net mar­ket­ing and sales.

Cre­ativ­ity is known to be one of my biggest tal­ents — as a copy­writer and mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant, cre­ativ­ity is a must. But in terms of writ­ing arti­cles, it’s as nec­es­sary as oxy­gen. I always like to write about either what hasn’t been writ­ten or some­thing that’s been scarcely writ­ten. (You know as I do that the web is filled of recy­cled, rehashed content.)

How­ever, it doesn’t have to be new per se. What stirs that cre­ativ­ity is often not some­thing com­pletely new but some­thing on which I want to opine. Thus, a new arti­cle or blog post may be as sim­ple as my own take, or a dif­fer­ent twist, on an exist­ing topic.

About the Author

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