My podcast this week is an excerpt from a fantasy short story. I will finish it today, mostly because it’s due! Yes, I’m traveling. Yes, I agree, I look terrible. Too bad. I meet my deadlines. I promised you a (mostly) weekly peek into my writing. You get it. (I expect to miss next week’s […]
I am so pleased to announce I have a short launch video for Effective Public Speaking: How to Use Content Marketing With Stories to Show Your Value. Len Epp, from Leanpub, interviewed me. We both had a great time. While I love to speak about my books, I find doing a video like this challenging.
How do you start a piece of writing? I often start with a “story,” an anecdote about a person with a problem. Long ago, I read a project status report from Clive. It was so boring that I skimmed it—only to read this as the last sentence: “This project is at substantial risk of not
Some writers don’t believe the promise of my Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer book. They don’t believe writing can be fun. Or that writing can free your mind to think of more ideas as you write. They tell me writing is a slog, that they hate it. And they can’t wait to finish the piece.
My podcast this week is from a short story I expect to finish today. I am sure the title will change. Enjoy! The Podcast: The Transcript: This is 60 Seconds of Writing in Public with Johanna Rothman for March 14, 2025, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress.
In my most recent writing workshop, one writer, Suzy, had a little trouble staying focused for an entire 15-minute writing session. (For my recommended writing process, see Writing Secret 12: Subheadings Help Guide Readers Through Your Content for how I use 15-minute timeboxes.) Suzy realized she could not always write forward. Sometimes, she had to
While I’m an extrovert (words just come out of my mouth sometimes), I’m not always comfortable speaking with people I don’t yet know. However, I want to make a real connection with other people. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing, speaking, or networking. I still want that real connection. I use stories and examples to
Many writers struggle with perfection. They interrupt themselves with editing and trying to make the writing “perfect.” In their pursuit of perfection, they don’t finish and publish. But not publishing creates two problems: Not publishing means the writer receives no feedback. Sometimes, that means the writer stops writing. Worse, the writer continues to try to
You’ve written something. But before you hit “publish” you’re worried about how some readers will react. Will they like what you wrote? Will they dislike it? The answer is “yes” to both. That’s because each reader has a different context. If you write to one ideal reader, you have a good shot of finding readers
Several newish writers have asked me how to help their readers find their writing. What they’re doing does not seem to work. They write on LinkedIn and on other social media sites. But the people they want to attract to their writing do not seem to find it. That’s the writer discoverability problem. Every writer