Open up your mind and say, ahh...

I was just logging off to go to bed, and I ended up reading this great post by DJ Coffman, about how to create a pitch with a hook. He asked, at the end, if we’d read the comic based on the pitch. I wrote that I might, but that what I found interesting was that the “until” was missing. Now, the weird thing is, I didn’t even realize that I thought like that, until I read DJ’s post, and then I didn’t realize that I even knew about the “until” ..um…until that moment.

What is the Until?

Movies and most fictional stories have a reasonably similar plot projection that goes like this:

Everything was normal UNTIL it wasn’t.

That’s it. That’s the plot nugget. Let me show it to you with the examples I gave to DJ in his comments section (and do go check out his cool project).

Marlin and Nemo lived happily in their reef UNTIL Nemo got lost during a school trip.

Wall-E lived happily in his junkyard, finding old junk to treasure UNTIL Eva showed up.

Bob and Helen Parr lived secretly with their children, UNTIL Bob had to go and have a midlife crisis.

See? It’s the UNTIL that makes the story.

Real Life is Rarely Like Fiction

You see, most of us try very hard to cling to that first half of the plot. Most of us try really hard to keep things the way they’ve always been. But you can’t do that in fiction. The Incredibles would be pretty boring if Bob just worked at his insurance job all day. Wall-E would be interesting for about 8 minutes if all he did was collect garbage. Finding Nemo happens every day inside of fishbowls.

But You Could Embrace the Until

What if getting laid off was your Until? Erik Proulx made an entire movement out of that idea with The Lemonade Movie.

What if a break-up brings you to your until?

What if a change of faith, a sickness, the discovery of a new technology brings you to your until?

You’ll Never Know, Unless…

Most of us ward off our “untils,” but what if you didn’t? What would life be like? How would you see the world, if you were at least open to the possibilities of your until?

What do you think?

I’ve been writing furiously for a few weeks, and I have another few weeks ahead of me before I turn in the completed manuscript, but now is evidently the right time to announce that my next book will be Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything. I’ve written quite a lot here on chrisbrogan.com about Google+ and I’ve created paid informational education about the service, as well as posted several thoughts, ideas, and more about the product. Frankly, I’m smitten with Google+ and the potential it brings as a business communications tool. So, Katherine Bull at QUE (part of Pearson) was kind enough to let me pen a book about it (and by “kind,” evidently turning a book around in six weeks now qualifies as the hardest thing I’ve ever done professionally), and so I’m happy to share that it’s available on Amazon already for pre-order, both as a physical book (affiliate link), and also for Kindle. It’s also available at Barnes & Noble (where I’ve actually sat in their cafe and written at least one chapter so far on it), and on Nook.

It’s tricky writing a book about a technology, but not unlike what Julien Smith and I did with Trust Agents, I’ve written the book to be more about the thoughts, the strategy, and the human business perspective that goes into using Google+ to drive potential business (whether you’re a small business or part of a large one). We’ll see how current I can keep it with my amazingly good team of editors and the help I’m getting from Katherine’s team. In my mind, it’ll be a pretty useful book for anyone who wants to get started with Google+, but also useful for people looking for some tips and tactics to get even more out of their efforts on Google+ for their business.

So, that’s my news. If you’re in the market for a Google+ book, it comes out very early in November (which is a lot closer than you think), and is available for pre-order now.

The following is something I’ve come to realize about myself, and by sharing it, I hope that if some of you have felt this way, maybe you’ll see how I got through it and take a similar path. If not, hey, it’s a blog post. Another on Monday.

The Builder

Imagine you’re a builder – not an architect, but someone who’s handy enough to put up a wall, make a room, maybe cobble together a shack. The thing is, you built your home on sand. You figured this out after the fact, and it wasn’t your intention to do so, but by doing so, you’ve made it much harder for anyone living in that house. Sometimes, a room tilts and becomes unusable, so you nail shut that door and you make a new room somewhere else. Other times, the stairs don’t go where they should any more, so you have to throw together a ladder or some such.

And as things shift, you’re thinking, “God, this house wasn’t built on the right foundation. I built on sand! I’ll never be able to fix this, but if I don’t keep on trying, I’ll die.”

I’ll Die

In this story, you are possessed of a great fear. You see all that you’ve built as temporary and not good enough, and you realize that for all you’ve done, it’s still going to crumble, but that you’ll die if it does, because it means that you couldn’t do it all, that you weren’t the great builder you hoped to be, or worse, that you knew all along that you weren’t the best builder, but that you could do enough to keep things going, as long as you could work fast and hard enough.

But That’s Not Really What Happens

When you stop building, the house will fall apart. That part is true. But the thing is, everyone will get out. You’ll get out. You’ll have no house for a little bit. But that’s also temporary. You’ll have to find a better foundation obviously. Only the crazy would try and rebuild on sand again, right? But everyone will make it out alive. Some new kind of house will be built. You will learn how to build again. And no one dies.

Because Death Is a Stand-In

That fear of death is actually misplaced. The Builder thinks its death he or she fears. But what he or she fears is truth. “Death” isn’t death in this story; it’s the truth. The Builder did it wrong. The Builder couldn’t sustain what he or she built. The Builder was going to let some people down, was going to face disappointment from all over the place. That truth often gets confused with death in one’s fears. And if not death, than something equally painful and worth avoiding.

But We Always Live

What the Builder does next is what matters most, I would think. Because we all live. We can feel anger, sadness, grief, disappointment, inadequacy, and a whole raft of other emotions. They pile up beside us like every cracked shingle and every warped frame we ever built with before. But when we inspect those feelings, when we look at where those feelings take us, when we make amends with some of how those feelings came to be(those bad building materials), then the obvious next step is to build with better material, and to build with good, solid, strong, love-worthy materials. And in this, we should almost always seek out better teachers, because we probably have learned a bit from the house that fell down, but we have a lot more to learn, and we can use help.

I’m a Builder. I suspect some of you are, too. And I’ve let a few of my houses fall down lately, as maybe you have. It’s what I do next that I hope gives me a legacy worth passing on, and it’s how I help us all live that will bring me my best joy. I’m still possessed of many fears, but for each one I find, I toss that board in the fire, and I seek out stronger building materials. I suspect you do the same, don’t you?

I’m writing a book and the deadline is looming. I was given six weeks to write it, which is the tightest deadline I’ve ever had. The work of doing this requires a great deal more discipline than I typically afford myself.

At the same time, I’m working with a renewed vigor on my fitness and health. With eating, that means being diligent at every turn, because a busy lifestyle plus travel makes it so easy to justify stuffing any old thing in your mouth to quiet your belly while you do “what’s important.” It means doing the work of exercise all the time, instead of just every now and again (I’m still not there on this point).

All of this makes me think about discipline, especially what’s untrue about it.

Discipline Isn’t Willpower

Rob Hatch and I were talking about a guy who wanted to practice his guitar more (I think this story is from a book, but I forget the book). He put little notes on his calendar to remind him to play guitar. Yet, after a busy day at work, he would come home and watch TV. One day, he realized that the reason he wasn’t reaching for the guitar he intended to practice more was that it was in the closet. He took it out and placed it between the couch and the TV. Pow, instant improvement in how often he practiced guitar.

Discipline isn’t willpower. Discipline is setting up the perfect environment to achieve the goals you have. If you want the perfect book for this, read Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath. If you read it already but still haven’t changed your environment to accomplish what you want to do, then read it again.

Success Breeds Success

Once you feel great about adhering to a better diet, you feel more inspired to work out more often. Once you get your writing into a steady flow of 2000 words a day, you expand your goals to accomplish something else, like resolving to record one video a week, or something. Success breeds success. So, find something simple to start with, build the appropriate environment to succeed, and then feel super excited that you hit something.

Beware Justification

The biggest enemy of your work on discipline is using your early successes to justify slip-ups and slacking. “I went to the gym two days in a row. I can take a break.” That will derail you faster than anything else. Doing what you’ve set out to do is not a badge you can wear. Imagine flossing your teeth once and deciding that you’re done. Discipline is a routine, not a single goal. Discipline is the power that fuels the systems that LEAD you to larger goals.

So make justification the enemy. The minute you hear yourself saying that inside your head, say, “I’m going to do something right now to counter that justification.” Do it. Without a quick snip, that justification will have you in the “I used to do that…” category faster than you think.

Discipline is the Ladder

Discipline is the ladder that gets you from where you are to where you want to go. Once you can write 2000 words a day without flinching, you can take on bigger projects. Once you can work out four times a week, you can take that trip to the mountains without worrying, or you can apply all that extra energy to doing more work (working out has given me more energy to make more money-making projects). Discipline is the ladder you can set against the wall that is between you and what you want. It’s not something to be longing for; it’s something you can accomplish by starting small, setting up the best environment, being consistent, pushing away justification, and then building on your previous successes.

So, where would you want to place that ladder? And what are you working on, discipline-wise? What are your challenges?

Earlier posts in this series:
Writing a Book – Finding Time
Writing a Book – Discipline

The trick with book writing, fiction or otherwise, is structure. Even with the best fiction, the most flowy-seeming fiction, there’s a structure. With nonfiction, there’s always a structure. The best book I ever read about this was Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting (amazon affiliate link). Don’t worry about whether you’re going to write a movie. You’re probably not (unless you are). Instead, buy this and read it. Get the hardcover, unless you are a good note taker on a Kindle. Because the notes will help more than anything else.

But, pretending that you didn’t heed my advice and didn’t buy “Story,” here’s some thoughts on structure.

Structure Defines Itself

When I write an article for Entrepreneur magazine, it’s around 500 words. That’s what they’ve given me. When I write books, I shoot for around 200-250 pages, because that’s a decent enough size to get the story told. With nonfiction, often times, the subject matter helps you define how much you need. So, if I’m writing about how a company will use human business to build their future wealth, I have to define what I mean by “human business.” I have to give “recipes” for what I mean. I have to provide case studies. I have all kinds of stuff that defines what I need to include in the story. See?

If I were writing fiction, I’d start with the frame of the story I want to tell. For instance, most fiction stories have three main acts. So maybe Act 1, the shortest act, would be defining the way the world is, and then ending it with what drastic change sets the story on its major course. Act 2 is the meat of the story and what happens to change the characters along the way. Act 3 is the resolution and the sense of what might come next. Within those three acts, I might define a series of actions or experiences that move my characters from the beginning of Act 1′s normalcy to the end of Act 1′s craziness.

Then What?

Authors tend to think that structure is something that just happens, but it’s not. Julien and I wrote trust agents with the perspective that we’d write six main chapters with one point in each chapter, and that we’d bookend that all with an intro chapter and a wrapup chapter. That didn’t “just happen.” It took months to decide on that structure, but once we had it, we couldn’t undo it. Once you have a structure, own it. Work within it. Make it yours. If you’ve decided to make the “odd” chapters in prose and the “even” chapters in verse, then do it. But stick with it.

Start Strong

No matter what, your first chapter has to be delicious. Your first page or two have to be delicious. Remember, when people pick your book up in a bookstore (those things that used to exist), they look at the cover, they look at the quotes (sometimes), and then they check out the first page or two. If you haven’t hooked them in the first few pages, they’re not bringing that baby home.

In Trust Agents, we started out with a gangster story. That was Julien’s idea. But it worked. More people mention that story than any other part of the book. You’ve got to wow people with chapter one, not warm them up. Even if you’re writing a mystery, that first chapter had better get me thinking about how I’m going to solve the mystery, or the book is going down.

Too many aspiring (and that’s why they still “aspire”) authors use the first chapter for throat clearing. It can’t work that way. Chapter one has to be the big open.

Oh, and there’s this old rule with nonfiction: tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them that, then tell them what you just told them. God I hate that rule. To me, the idea is that you’ll explain the promise of where you’re going, but don’t get all mechanical. No one wants to read a book, nonfiction or otherwise, where there are no surprises.

It’s Okay to Revise

You can revise a structure if you realize that it’s not going to work for you, but be very very clear that that’s why you’re going to do it. If you say you want to build a boat, then don’t put wings on it. Make sense? But, if you start by saying you’re going to build a boat, and you go from building a fiberglass boat to a traditional wooden boat, then you’re still within the parameters of structure.

Structure is Oddly Freeing

When writing, once you have a structure in mind, it’s so very freeing. In the current book I’m writing, I know that a chapter will be around 10 written pages. Thus, as I’m writing along, I can glance at the page count, and know how far into the story I should be at any given time. If I’m near the end, but haven’t made my points, then I have to go back and edit. If I’m near the beginning and I’ve said all I have to say, I then must determine if I’m doing the story justice, or whether maybe I defined my chapter too narrowly, and thus, have written myself into a corner.

But that structure keeps me strong. The Entrepreneur magazine articles having to be around 500 words keeps me true to telling the story in the tightest way possible. Even a tweet helps you learn this kind of thing.

Make Structure Your Friend

One last point: without structure, we throw the kitchen sink into our writing. I was once writing a science fiction story that mixed angels, demons, sci fi elements, and all kinds of other ideas in a blender. It wasn’t half bad, but it wasn’t half good, either. The problem, from MY side of the writing, was that I was just throwing everything into it and making “sausage” out of the ideas. Make structure your friend, and keep “simplicity” right close by, too.

Hopefully, you’ll find that this helps your writing immensely.

In our Writing a Book series, yesterday, we talked about finding time. Today, let’s talk about discipline.

Writing a Book – Discipline

One of the most difficult parts of writing a book has nothing to do with the work, exactly. It has everything to do with sitting still, and putting the words down on paper (and “paper” is so quaint to say in this digital age, but when I interviewed Ryan Blair, he said that he wrote his book longhand on paper). Discipline is probably 80% of what keeps someone from writing a book. But it’s not like you can’t do it. It’s not like you can’t exercise these muscles.

Allies To Discipline

My first advice about discipline: get an accountability buddy. Find someone (or a group of someones), and make it know that you’ve got a goal of writing ___ words a day (or week, or whatever), and that you want them to hound you about it. Be really specific about what helps and what doesn’t. If shame helps, ask them to shame you (frankly, that would cripple me, but hey). If they catch you on Facebook when you should be writing, have them push you back off. Give them your cell and ask them to text you daily. Make them nag the heck out of you. (I learned this from Julien Smith.)

Discipline Comes From Early Victories

If you decide to write 2000 words a day and you’re currently writing 25 words a day, then you’re going to fail quickly. Maybe set the bar a bit lower. Agree to 500 words (less than that and you’re still phoning it in), and set your sights on getting that done a bunch of times in a row. The more you can repeat the success, the more the success treats you well, and makes you strive for even more. Rack up those “wins” with your accountability buddies. Heck, give yourself promises of rewards. Whatever it takes to get the work done, that’s what matters.

Justification Is the Enemy

There are a hundred viable excuses why you can’t get your words in today. You can write them all out in a list, if you’d like. Refer to it often. You woke up late. You slept poorly. You had to pick up the kids, even though it wasn’t your day.

Here’s a hint: the real writers have all those excuses, too. They just do what needs doing.

One of the biggest justifications I’ve heard is that inspiration wasn’t with you. That’s possibly true. But guess what happens? The moment you write, even if you’re writing crap, inspiration will catch up with your process. And besides, if you’ve kept a decent amount of notes, and if you’ve got a reasonably detailed outline, you can work without inspiration. Inspiration is something you get early in the process. Once you’re into the grind, most of the work is just that: work.

Discipline Doesn’t Mind Helpers

If you’re trying to eat healthy, fill your fridge with healthy foods and throw out “bad” foods. It’s not wrong to put up ‘bumpers’ to protect yourself from a lack of discipline. Here’s a hint: if you’re working on the ultimate playlist to write to, that’s not helpful. Yes, maybe some great tune will inspire you, but anything that’s not writing is just that: not writing.

Use whatever helpers you need. Unplug your Internet for a while. Turn off the phone for a while. Shut off the TV. Send the kids to Grandma’s. Whatever you have to do, do it. And use whatever means necessary (mostly legal, but I’m not above other means) to keep your discipline protected. Work hard, and then work hard at preserving the efforts of your work.

At the End Of It All, It’s Still Work

Writing a book isn’t as demanding as roofing. Both, however, are work. Just because writing can happen at a Starbucks, with a delicious iced coffee sitting beside you collecting droplets of moisture, it doesn’t mean that the effort of getting all those words put together in useful ways isn’t work.

Dorothy Parker famously said, “I hate writing. I love having written.”

She’s not wrong.

Tomorrow, let’s talk about structure.

You want to write a book, and have been wondering about the process. Maybe you’ve started a bunch of times, but something got in the way. Motivation failed you, or you lost track of the time, or you wrote the entire thing but never got it out there in any form or fashion. There are lots of roadblocks and dead ends in the world of writing books.

Finding Time to Write a Book

Most people, when I queried them, said that finding time was the #1 complain/worry/issue they had with being able to write a book. As I’m about to complete my fourth, and my fifth will be finished a few months after that, I can tell you that it most certainly does take time, but that time can be found. Here are a few ways to “find” time.

• Write notes about your book into something like Evernote, which can be accessed from your phone, your desktop, and any web browser (meaning you have no excuses to take down ideas).
• Keep 3×5 index cards in your pocket or bag, and jot notes there, too. A lot of writing is done before you sit down to actually write.
• Build loose-but-useful outlines and seek out 20 minutes here and there to “shade them in.” People facing a blank page waste too much time thinking about the page. Instead, work on bits that need work.
• If you work better speaking, look into a product like Dragon Naturally Speaking to do dictation for you.
• Prone to distractions? Try Ommwriter for Mac (or PC).
• Also, shutting off the Internet helps.

But I Have Kids

So do I. I have two kids. And I run a few companies, and help several others. You can create excuses to fit your issues with finding time, or you can find time. Here’s some ways to do it.

• While they watch TV, you write at the table. If you have time for TV, you have time to write a book. Can’t concentrate? Headphones.
• Wake up 40 minutes earlier. Use 20 to get less groggy. Use 20 to start some writing.
• Stay up 40 minutes later. Use 30 to write and 10 to calm your brain back down.
• Use “idle time” like waiting room time to write. Don’t want to whip out the laptop? Then use something else to capture more work (remember that note cards aren’t a book).
• Quit one “used to be useful” activity. We all have them. Are you still at book club? Unless it’s your life saver, stop. Ditto volunteering. Volunteer to write a book. Then volunteer.

Time DOES Grow On Trees

Gandhi famously said that we all have the same 24 hours in the day. We just choose how we fill them. I find time all the time. One way I do it is to ignore email for a while. We are a world trained to answer little red 1′s. Shut off the auto-popups that tell you when mail comes. Kill the audible for it. Do everything you can to limit the INTERRUPTIONS of time to just a single channel, like SMS, so that if someone really needs you, they know they can text you. And if they bug you too much then, consider switching to Google Voice and set up rules for each phone number that bugs you. Problem solved.

How you respect your own time and how you show others the value of your own time is the key here. You can’t shut out the world, but very very few authors get that luxury anyway. Every book I’ve written, I’ve written while running more than one company, while managing a busy speaking schedule, while blogging daily (sometimes more than once a day), while being a dad, and while facing all the other complicated interruptions that life throws your way.

Own this. You can do it.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about discipline. Yes, it’s a series. There are four more posts coming. : )

Photo sharing via Flickr

I had a problem. I’d been using Google Docs for a survey, which was great if you want to collect the info, but was crappy when it came time to analyze it. I just couldn’t find my way out of the problem. So, I did what I do: I tweeted.

Jason Miller to the Rescue

Out of nowhere, Jason Miller from Zoomerang reached out and asked whether he could help. In no time, Jason was taking on quite a task, by converting my data into something usable at Zoomerang.

Now, this isn’t Jason’s job. He’s a social media marketing manager. That means his goal is to help people find and fall in love with Zoomerang. Oh wait, so maybe this is Jason’s job.

Jason’s other job, more a passion, is to be an editor at the San Francisco branch of The Vinyl District. So, he’s a music guy, on top of everything else. Have you ever noticed how music guys (people) are always a bit more passionate? I have.

Zoomerang Rocks

I love how easy it is to build a form in Google Docs, but with this one experience, I’m sold on Zoomerang. It’s amazing how the right tool makes the job so much easier to do. I’m not sure they have an affiliate program, but if they do, I’m going to sign up for it based on this experience. Finding a great tool to help analyze survey data and the like has really been helpful.

Jason Miller Sold Me On This

Reaching out and helping me in a moment of need made me a convert. I never knew I needed this technology until I needed it. And with this, I’m a big fan of Jason Miller and a fan of Zoomerang.

Check them out.

I had the opportunity to interview Marc Ostrofsky, author of Get Rich Click!: The Ultimate Guide to Making Money on the Internet (amazon affiliate link). Marc sees things differently than some of you might, but he’s also ridiculously successful, so his ideas bear consideration. I read his book cover to cover, then got the Kindle version, then read THAT and kept dozens and dozens of notes and started doing some of what he recommended.

This video has some interesting perspectives. If something raises your dander, then think about checking out the book. You’ll decide quickly whether it works for you or not. Give it a quick watch and see what you think.

Can’t see the video? click here.

The term “authentic” gets used a lot in social media. It gets used all over the place. We tend to use “authentic” to mean something like this: a person who says what he or she feels and who shows you all aspects of his or her life.

None of us are authentic, unless we suffer from some serious mental disorders. We all filter. It’s part of what makes the world work. If we were completely and utterly authentic, we’d have no friends, no loved ones, no business.

So What Do We Mean?

When we say authentic, I think what most people are really seeking is some kind of “closer to reality” experience. For instance, if I have a bad day, I talk about it. If I’m feeling a bit hurt by something, I might talk about that, too.

But there are limits to what people want with regards to authenticity. What if you presented your business idea to me and I said, “I really feel it’s not sustainable, and won’t really serve you well.” That wouldn’t really help you much. First off (and I learned this from my brief flirtation with seeking VC money), maybe I don’t see the value in your project, but that’s a fault of mine. So if I say something like that, I’m not doing you any favors. Second, if I’m going to dissuade you, then that’s not really helpful in your business pursuits.

When we say authentic, I think people want some sense that we’re not just all business all the time. I think sometimes what we’re asking for with authenticity is a sense of what happens behind the curtains, so that we better understand what influences one’s opinions and thoughts.

But that doesn’t really equal authentic, just like a restaurant called Three Gringos isn’t ever going to be authentic Mexican cuisine. Authenticity shouldn’t be the goal. So, then, what should we choose for a goal?

Be Helpful

There’s a lot that goes with true authenticity that isn’t helpful. Instead, the people we connect with would be much better served if we chose to be helpful instead. “Helpful” is a far more useful frame of reference than authentic. But there’s more.

Be Clear and Disclose

Often times with authenticity, people really simply want to know what biases have led to something. When I talk about how much I love the Genesis WordPress theme platform (affiliate link), I’m quick to disclose (as I did just there) that I stand to make money from any sale of that product. This tells you that I have a bias that you should consider, and that I stand to benefit from your purchase.

Does that mean that I don’t like the product and I’m just selling it? Of course not. Some people could do that, but what I have tried to do over years (and by the way, “repetition” is a lot closer to what people perceive as authenticity, too) is to show you that I’ll promote products and services that I’ve used and that I believe in, because I believe they’ll be helpful to you.

Don’t Strive For Authenticity

In fact, the phrase “authentic” should set off alarms, just like the phrase “to be honest” often makes us wonder if the person who says that is rarely honest otherwise. Instead, be honest with yourself and filter that into whatever it takes to be helpful to others. Present your most helpful side to the people who need it, and do so with as much genuine interest in other people’s success as you can possibly muster.

It will serve you far better than the goal of being authentic.

What do you think?