I’m testing the new ‘post-from-Word’ feature in Microsoft Word 2007. My main concern is to see if Word inserts its usual HTML spam and to see whether pictures upload okay. As I type this, it looks a lot like Office Live Writer but with all the extra tools of Word (such as a spell checker that knows about British English).

Brian Eno’s website describes Oblique Strategies: “In 1975, in collaboration with the artist Peter Schmidt, Eno also developed the ‘Oblique Strategies’ set of problem-solving cards for artists. Each card states an act or attitude which can make an immediate intervention into the creative process.”

I borrowed the basic idea to come up with a deck of Oblique marketing strategies. You can print them on cards or use a random number generator to pick one. I’d welcome additional suggestions.

1. Be more specific
2. Be more emotional
3. Subvert clichés
4. Go across the street
5. Who is in a similar business?
6. Cement? Consolidate?
7. Turn it upside down
8. Which medium?
9. Be quick and dirty
10. Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do & do the last thing on the list
11. Take a risk
12. Work against your better judgement
13. Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance
14. BANJO – Bang Another Nasty Job Out
15. Phone a Friend
16. Use an egg timer to get started
17. Faced with a choice, do both
18. Do something really tiny but exquisite
19. Don’t be frightened to display your talents
20. They can only say no
21. Ask for more money
22. Use ‘unqualified’ people
23. Do as much as you can for a short period of time
24. Bridges -build -burn
25. Tidy up
26. Do the words need changing?
27. Shut up for a moment
28. Call ten people who don’t want your product
29. Remove the error from something human
30. Discard an axiom
31. Listen to the quiet voice
32. Buy a strange magazine
33. Give the game away
34. Use fewer words
35. Repeat your greatest success
36. What would Microsoft do?
37. What would Linus Torvalds do?
38. Just carry on
39. Reinforce success
40. Spectrum analysis
41. What mistakes did you make last time?
42. Courageous spending
43. Do it for nothing
44. State the problem in words as clearly as possible
45. Change the order
46. Cluster analysis
47. Do something boring
48. Overtly resist change
49. Accept advice
50. Work at a different speed
51. Down the pub
52. Free associate
53. Go for a run
54. Build a bridge
55. Do the things you love and the money will take care of itself

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Brian Eno, Oblique Strategies

Disclaimer: these opinions are my own. I wrote these notes a while back for a friend who wanted my advice about how to get started as a freelancer. They could be wrong and they could be out of date. I wrote this before I started Bad Language and many of the points are developed in detail on this blog.

I more or less stopped being a full-time journalist a couple of years ago but I still do a bit to keep my eye in. You can see a list of most of my journalism on my personal site.

These days I’m writer-in-chief at Articulate Marketing and I spend my time writing about technology for clients including HP, Microsoft and eBay.

Your mileage may vary. Don’t blame me if it all goes horribly wrong. If it goes right, send me a postcard or put me on your blogroll.

Assumptions

• You’re not already a professional writer but a regular person looking to become a writer.
• Writing won’t (initially) be your only source of income.
• You want to be a freelance journalist not a poet, novelist or playwright
• The basics like being able to read, write, punctuate, spell, use a computer, use the Internet for research etc. are not difficult for you.

Honing your skills

• Read lots. I mean LOTS. I subscribe to about thirty magazines in my field and every time I fly I buy five magazines that I would never normally read. I also get a dozen emails from mailing lists every day and look at a lot of websites each morning.
• Write lots. If you want to be a writer, write. Aim for 1000-2000 words a day. (As an aside this document took me 35m to write from start to finish. It’s about 2200 words.) [PS Plus another 30m a year later to reformat for the blog and put in some links. Typing quick isn't a problem if you know what you want to say. Researching original stuff takes longer.]
• Learn to tell a story. I can’t tell you how to be a good writer but this seems to be central.
• Read the books in the bibliography, especially Writing to Deadline, for more info.
• Study different magazines’ styles and content. Collect nice phrases and see how they handle the technical stuff like attributing quotes.
• Write 50 ledes. To see what I mean watch the (otherwise ghastly) Shipping News.
• Watch films about journalism. All the President’s Men is one good one.
• Read books on writing (see bibliography)
• Go to classes, but don’t spend a bunch of money unless you can spare it.

Finding a subject

It’s impossible to be a good writer on every subject. Find one or two areas that really appeal to you and in which you feel confident that you can become an expert and concentrate on them. It doesn’t matter whether it is chicken farming or tribal politics in Mongolia, there’ll probably be a market for your work. To write about absolutely anything you need to be the greatest writer in the world. Me? I write about business, technology and planes – the stuff I know and love.

What to charge

The NUJ has a freelance ‘Rate for the Job’ website which gives a guideline for how much you should expect to ask. In my experience, UK magazine rates vary between 10p a word and 35p a word. Corporate work is typically around 50p-£1 a word. US magazine rates are $0.35-$1.50 depending on circulation but generally Americans expect more rewrites, fact checking and general fussing than British magazines. Typically, these rates are expressed in terms of ‘rate per thousand words’. This usually includes all your expenses and time for interviews etc.

Another way to tackle the problem is to work out how many days a year you want to work (240 working days a year, minus 30 for holidays, minus 30 for administration and business development is a good start), work out how much you want to earn from writing and divide one into the other to get a daily rate. Then work out how much you can write in a day, factoring in interviews and research, and charge that (if you can!).

Marketing and business development

• Daily pitch – this is key. If you send out 240 (or even 365) pitches a year, and you get a 10% response rate you’ll get a reasonable amount of work. But send something EVERY day, even if you’re busy. The wrong time to be looking for work is when you have nothing to do.
• Build relationships. Better to have good relationships with three editors than shotgun fifty who don’t remember you.
• Study the publication before making the pitch
• Don’t be put off but remember that editors are busy.
• Keep records: pitch history, contact database (live / dead / pending), pitch targets, story ideas database.
• Sources of possible clients: Mediabank CD-ROM at library, Writers and Artists’ Handbook. Visit WH Smiths.

Generating ideas

Again, read lots. I get most of my ideas by reading obscure trade magazines and insider websites and then selling the stories to more mainstream media. Keep a notebook for ideas and write down anything that seems interesting and saleable. When you come to make your daily pitch, just pick the best idea from the current crop and pitch it. That way pitching doesn’t become a creative process subject to the usual blocks and anxiety of writing. Also get in the habit of tearing out pages from magazines as you read them. Go to trade shows and conferences. Chum up to companies in your field and PR firms and get on their lists.

Organising your work and coping with deadlines

Most business professionals shouldn’t have a problem with this, but don’t be fooled into thinking that a freelance writer lives in a mound of creative chaos and thrives on late nights, whiskey and hand rolled cigarettes. Prussian efficiency is required to make the work of a freelancer pay. You’ll need:

• In, out and pending trays
• A way of storing ongoing stories with all their bumf – I use foolscap plastic folders. Once the story is done, the whole folder can be archived away easily.
• Good financial systems for invoicing, tracking expenses etc. www.bcentral.co.uk and Business Link are useful resources for the business side of writing.
• A to-do list, preferably electronic, preferably synchronised into a PDA.
• A diary. Ditto.
• Get a hands-free headset for your landline phone to keep your hands free for interviews. I use Plantronics.
• A notebook. Some people like Moleskine. Some people like very cheap reporters spiral bound notebooks. I use a slimline filofax so I can constantly file out notes into the ongoing story folders.

To avoid going crazy, you need to plan your time. Books like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People can be useful in starting to think about this stuff if it is new to you. Otherwise a bit of planning and thought are required to adapt what you already know to the job of writing. I use:

• An annual business plan
• A monthly personal development plan and at least one or two days a month allocated to self-development, e.g. training or thinking about new stuff
• Every week I sit down and plan my work – this afternoon for interviews and research, that day for writing, this other day to finish that column. Big chunks of time dedicated to a single task is the way I get stuff done because I procrastinate and I need time in which to do it (for instance, I’m on deadline for a feature as I write this!)
• A day a month at least to long-term marketing, e.g. relationship building with new prospective clients.
• In my to-do list I have a list of current assignments, with their deadlines and urgency. I keep them in a separate category so I can always see exactly what’s on the slate. This helps me allocate time to the urgent stuff. NEVER miss a deadline. NEVER. The way to avoid this is planning ahead and allocating enough time to the article early enough.

Writer’s Block and Editing

One good way of coping with writer’s block is to do lots of research and lots of interviews. Then just arrange the good bits of research and the good bits of an interview into an order that seems to make sense and then précis it, leaving the very best quotes and stats in place. It’s easy to generate quantity, let the quality come out in the editing. Better to chuck out 4,000 words quickly and edit down to 1,500 than struggle to write 1,500 but hope that each word is perfect. The book “The Artist’s Way” is very good on writer’s block.

One tip: I like to finish the article a day or two early and then do something else. Coming back to a piece after a break is very healthy. It gets rid of word blindness and makes it easier to do drastic reconstructive surgery if it is needed.

Another tip: I get my partner to read my articles to see if they make sense and I’ve explained everything. Since she knows nothing about business, technology or planes she can quickly spot anything I’ve missed or assume the reader knows.

Final tip: edit from the back to the front. Read the final version slowly OUT LOUD before you send it in. I find at least one howler every time I do this, even though I think I’ve finished the piece.

Business issues

Don’t forget you’re running a business. You need to get the finances right, market yourself, actually sell your work and collect the money. VAT and PAYE taxes need to be sorted out and there is some paperwork to do to become self-employed. There are good books on starting a business, lots of practical support online and from quangos like Business Link. In my (limited) experiences one-man businesses typically fail because:

• They over-rely on one client or one stream of work
• They totally fail to market or sell themselves, expecting clients to find them (although existing clients are your best marketing resource – most of my corporate work comes from recommendations).
• They fail to manage their cash properly and spend too much and earn too little. It takes time to build up a freelance practice – two or three years at least – so you need other means of support.

Ethics, diligence and fact-checking

Here are the guidelines from Business 2.0, an American magazine I write for occasionally. They are good guidelines even if you are writing for a less scrupulous magazine. One day you’ll be able to blow an editor away by the authoritativeness of your research. It’s happened to me a few times and I’ve confounded PR companies and editors to my great credit! (However, you don’t need to send in annotated versions of your articles to most magazines – only do it if they ask). I tend to take contemporaneous written notes, typed transcript or voice recordings of all my interviews. I use templates for interview transcripts that remind me to take a note of the name, title and contact details for everyone I interview.

FACT -CHECKING GUIDELINES FOR FREELANCE WRITERS

Our goal is for Business 2.0, and for your writing, to be the most authoritative business journalism around. As a compliment [sic] to your careful work, all articles accepted for publication are checked for accuracy, timeliness, clarity, and context. Because facts and assertions must be verifiable, we will need to see your published sources and speak with your live sources. Please tell people you interview to expect a call from a fact-checker.

Here are the three types of fact-checking materials we require:

1) Copies of key research documents

Every fact must be verifiable from a primary source. The primary source for a given fact is the source that originally generated that piece of information, or one that is able and authorized to report on that information firsthand. Common primary sources can include live experts, company literature, analyst reports, reference books, government agencies, and official organization Websites. Please give us printouts (and the URL) of any Web page you’re relying on as a primary source (Sites change and disappear).

We don’t accept popular publications such as magazines or newspapers as primary sources; even back issues of Business 2.0 and Fortune are not gospel. Popular books may be used to confirm the book-author’s one-time stated opinion. Please have at least one verifiable primary source person or publication-before including any fact in a story. Details that can’t be verified by at least one primary source will be deleted.

Please include any newspaper or magazine articles, Website URLs, or any other material you feel would be useful as background for the editor or fact-checker, or as resources for our online readers. If a great interview was cut back in the magazine, our Web team may still be able to use information from your notes or transcripts online. We place these background materials in our files, so please make copies of anything you want to keep.

2) A list of live sources

Please include an independent list with the full name, title, mailing address, and e-mail, phone, and fax of every person cited in your story .We also need the phone, e-mail, and URL for each company or organization that garners more than passing mention. Also please provide us with your own street address, e-mail, phone, and fax. If your editor has agreed to change the name of a person in your story, we still need to check back with that person; please send the real name and phone number of every live person cited in your story .In special cases we may ask for interview notes, tapes, or transcripts.

3) An annotated copy of your story

Every fact and assertion in your story must have an identifiable source. Effective methods of annotation include using traditional footnotes or writing the names of live sources-as well as the titles and page numbers of written sources-in the margins beside each fact or factual section in the story. Your editor may want you to annotate your first draft or may have you wait and mark up a subsequent version of the story. Check with your editor before you annotate, or you may have to repeat the task on a later version.

Develop a sense of humour

Being a journalist is an honourable and important profession but in the eyes of the general public, we’re down there with estate agents and politicians. I always get an ironic laugh when I tell people ‘I’m a journalist so I’m interested in truth, beauty and justice.’

Mostly, I tell them I’m an accountant.

Useful websites and bibliography

Links are to reviews on this site.

• The Writers and Artists Handbook
• Writing to Deadline, Murray (See also my recent summary of this book)
• The Economist Style Guide
• On Writing, Stephen King
• The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
• The Pyramid Principle, Barbara Minto
• Writing for the web
• The NUJ freelancer page:

Technorati Tags: Writing, journalism, business, freelance, freelancer, how to

I am a huge fan of Donald Murray’s Writing to Deadline. (Read my review.) It is a practical guide to the art of writing.  He is a reporter and it is about journalism but it applies to the kind of professional copywriting I do at Articulate Marketing. 

This article contains my summary notes from the last time I read it.  It’s a long post but easy to scan.  I still recommend reading the whole book and this post is a sprat to catch a mackerel.

You can buy Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work from Amazon.

 The Craft of a Reporter

• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• How
• Why

The Craft of a Writer

• Write with information: specific revealing details, concrete images, quotations, statistics, records, facts. Individualise by specific detail.
• Accuracy. Get the names right.
• First the lede. If you get the information the reader needs in the sequence they need it, the rest will follow. Write seventy five ledes.
• Less is more. Clarity, grace, simplicity, varying sentence, writing as simply as the subject allows. Worry about length after five typewritten lines.
• Get out of the way of the story and let it tell itself.
• Encourage able editors by thanking them for their feedback, encouraging them to call you at home and treat them and the editing process with respect.

Writing to deadlines

• Know the limits. Understand the budget, schedule, context, purpose and audience.
• Rehearse.
• Focus. Bring all the elements of the story together somehow. A line or fragment that creates a tension.
• Select and develop. Pick the key one, two or three points (if they are related) and develop them within the limits of length.
• Order. Find the racing line.
• Write fast. A flood tide towards meaning. Quickness evades the censor.
• Write out loud.
• Edit: explore, focus, rehearse, draft, develop, clarify. Process discipline helps the writer. Prewriting, discovery drafts, ledes. Be disciplined about time - it’s a matter of economics.

Story

• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• How
• Why

 

• Write with information: revealing details, concrete images, quotations, stats, facts
• Accuracy – objectivity comes from not making facts up not by distancing yourself
• First the lede – draft 50 ledes
• Less is more: use strong verbs, tell by revealing

Process

• Explore
• Focus
• Rehearse
• Develop
• Clarify

Use your senses

• Hearing
• Touch
• Smell
• Taste
• Sense of change
• Effect and consequences
• Conflict
• Context
• Self

Ask the reader’s questions

A good reporter is forever astonished at the obvious.

• Brainstorm
• Change point of voice
• Compost
• Role play
• Read new magazines outside your interest area
• Try another genre
• Try free writing
• Avoid stereotypes (e.g. CEOs are workaholics)

Find the tension

• Line: tension, conflict, irony, energy, discover, play, music, form
• Qualities of a good story: information, focus, context, faces, form, voice
• “Write what makes you happy.”

Rehearse: writing before writing

• Give assignments to the subconscious
• Talk to yourself
• Make notes and outlines
• Lead with the lede.
• Not: cluttered, flabby, dull, mechanical, closed or predictable
• Think about: focus, context, form, evidence, voice, authority, audience, length, pace, order
• Possible forms
• News, anecdote, quotation, umbrella, descriptive, announcement, tension, problem, historical, narrative, question, POV, reader identification, face, scene, dialogue, process

30 Questions

1. what one thing?
2. what would make a reader say ‘listen to this…’
3. What surprised you?
4. Is there an essential anecdote
5. An image that reveals the story
6. Where’s the conflict
7. How will this affect readers
8. What’s going on
9. Why should anyone read the story
10. Is there a telling metaphor
11. Where?
12. What voice?
13. Who? Face?
14. Where’s the tension?
15. A quote?
16. Which elements of the story connect and how?
17. What is the shape of the story?
18. What generalizations can be made about it?
19. What questions must be answered?
20. What’s the best form?
21. How can I summarise the story?
22. A telling specific?
23. What is the story’s history
24. POV?
25. What problems must be solved
26. What’s the central event?
27. What is my opinion?
28. Should I tell the story?
29. Why did this story happen?
30. What is the process?

Vision

• Wonder at the commonplace
• Circle the subject
• Use a zoom lens
• Where’s the fight
• Reveal the characters through the story
• Hear them talk

Information

• Accuracy of fact and context
• Revealing details
• As short as possible but not shorter

Voice

• What’s the voice of the story
• Talk with (not at or to) the reader
• Listen to what you write (read it out loud)

Invite surprise

Attitudes

• Know yourself
• Welcome the difference problem or opposition
• Connect
• Play
• Confront your fears

Techniques

• Write faster than your censor
• Try a way of writing you have used before

Tricks of the trade

• Ask the readers questions
• Collect abundant details
• Use POVs
• Listen for the key / opening line
• Say one thing
• Write without notes
• Write many ledes
• Write easily
• Write with your ear
• Show don’t tell
• Write with information
• Answer the reader’s questions
• Cut anything that doesn’t move the story forward
• Stop mid-sentence if interrupted so you can easily pick up your thread
• Be your own editor: read for meaning, read for structure, read for language

Preparation

• Write five readers’ questions
• List as many sources
• Imagine you are the subject
• Read clips but don’t be swayed

Reporting

• Pay attention to what surprises you
• How much of yourself to reveal
• Listen to what and HOW people say stuff
• Observe the subjects world and work
• Take notes as well as tape
• Try to do three interviews – one to meet, one for info and one to follow up
• Ask subjects to describe themselves
• Be a professional ignoramus
• Research enough so you don’t ask foolish questions
• Sensible curiosity
• Intense attention
• Respond deftly and intelligently
• Most people dislike and mistrust reporters
• Always keep off the record assurances

Prepare to write

• One sentence summary
• List 3-5 specific pieces of information thread into the story
• Visualise and draw the story

Writing

• Use dialogue as well as quotations
• Find a revealing action
• Consider anecdotes
• Give the reader a trail

Description

• Use active verbs
• Use a different connotation
• Specific bits of information
• Revealing details
• Give the reader an image
• Describe a process
• Use senses
• Use analogy

Develop

• What works
• What needs work?  Context, documentation, faces, voices, voice, distance, first person, setting, action, chronology, answer readers’ questions
• Clarify
• Turn traitor on your own copy
• Read fast for meaning
• Half speed for evidence
• Slowly for language

Story proposals

• Headline
• Lead – focus, tone and shade
• Bullet – 3-5 main points
• Summary of sources, art etc.

Don’t lecture on why the story should be run, it should be obvious.

Technorati Tags: Writing, Donald Murray, interview, journalism, deadline

Since I moved house in December, I have been slowly upgrading my office and IT systems. The latest addition is the Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24″ display.

The name doesn’t do it justice. It should be called the Awesome Wall-of-Screen.

It takes up most of my desk and its 1600×1200 display means that I can have email, calendar, web browser and Word open at the same time without alt-tabbing through them.

There’s evidence (see references in this from Jakob Neilsen, for example) that large monitors improve productivity. None of the research mentions how much they improve video games!

I was going to buy from Dell direct but they put the price up over Christmas so I ended up buying from Chillblast, a Bournemouth company that specialises in custom and silent PCs. It saved me about £150. As soon as Vista launches, I’m planning to order a silent workstation from them as well.

Technorati Tags: Monitors, productivity, GTD, display, Dell, Chillblast

I’ve just taken delivery of my bright new Aeron chair from FastAeron.co.uk.  I ordered it this morning and it arrived about four hours later, complete with a free ergonomic consultation from a nice chap called Sam.

I used to have an Aeron in my old business but they’ve really improved them in the last six years.

• First, I got one with the optional aluminium chassis. How cool is that?
• Second, there’s an adjustable lumbar support.
• Third, the seat can tilt forward for typing.

Did I mention the shiny aluminium?

I have had a rubbish chair for so long that I forgot what a good chair is like.  I spend about eight hours a day sat in front of my PC so it’s an important investment in my productivity and health. 

Plus it’s made from aluminium. Pimp my chair!

My friend Claire has just done a massage course and she’s using me as a guinea pig for her technique so I’m getting these two-hour massages.  Between that and the chair, my back is going to have a holiday.

Does anyone have any experience of Anthro desks?  I’m thinking of ordering a new desk to go with my new chair. I’d love to get some feedback.

Technorati Tags: Aeron, sitting comfortably, ergonomics, writing, productivity

I just got back from Goa this week.  My sister-in-law had her wedding out there and I went with my wife and my mother to join in the fun.  We stayed at the Taj and had a villa with an amazing view (below).  You can read all about the trip on the blog I set up as a wedding present for the happy couple: www.mikeandshirley.com.

Technorati Tags: Goa, wedding, Mike, Shirley

I saw this on Steve Rubel’s site, Micro Persuasion, and really wanted to share it.  See other posts on this site about Web 2.0.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0, logos, satire

I did an interview with John Lindner of the Baltimore Sun and the podcast is just out. John’s interviewed some top people for his Blography series. Check it out here.

My recent post about the Economist Style Guide included a passing comment about whether companies were singular or plural.  It generated a surprising number of comments and a some grammarphile controversy.

The Economist says they’re singular. I agreed. 

But today (coming back from a week’s holiday in Goa), I’ve come across a situation which leaves me scratching my head - a two-person company.  Writing about them as a singular entity seems oddly formal and doesn’t look right at all.

It just goes to prove the old adage: ‘if in doubt, prefer geniality to good grammar’.

Technorati Tags: grammar, writing, The Economist