Content Mastery Guide

Editor and Ghostwriter

Clearing the way for creativity

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Computer-cords

(Source for cartoon unknown)

Well, I could relate to this cartoon more than I liked to admit, but it actually came my way after I'd already asked someone to come over and help me with my messy computer cables. Yesterday we got down to it, and the situation is much improved!

See for yourself:

Before2
Before my computer-cable-clutter-clearing session

After1
After my computer-cable-clutter-clearing session

Hmmm, the photos really don't do it justice. You'll just have to trust me when I say I feel much more breathing space around my desk, where I do most of my creative work.

I've written quite a bit about clutter and creativity, and you can take this Clutter and Creativity Quiz for Artists if you suspect that your own article writing creativity might be hiding under a pile of clutter.

Article time: Where do you find it?

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I received these two related questions when I asked my readers what you want to know about article marketing:

  1. When you don't really have time to blog or write an article, what is the most time-efficient way to complete the task?
  2. How do I make the time to put article marketing at the forefront of my To Do list?

My short answer is that you don't find article-writing time, you create it! And once you create it, you protect it!

Decide

The first step to finding time for any new thing has to be a decision that the new thing is a priority. In this case, you've decided that it's important to grow your business, and you've read enough about article marketing fundamentals to believe in the power of article marketing to grow your business. Hooray!

Since growing your business is important, article marketing is important, too.

Create

So now you'll want to devote special time in your schedule to getting your articles done. I suggest you block separate times for brainstorming, drafting, writing, editing and publishing. Batch the tasks to get the most momentum (I wrote about batching in a previous post).

I'll be posting more suggestions about some of those specific tasks in separate blog posts, beginning with brainstorming. For now, just keep in mind that some tasks have more than one part, and you'll complete them in more than one sitting.

I'll take anywhere from two days to one week to bring an article from idea to publication, depending on the amount of research and/or collaboration I have to do.

Protect

Here's a self-care article I wrote back in 2006, with some relevant messages about saying no to anything that is threatening your article writing time.

And here is a timely message from my colleague Kim Nishida, about how what's important is also the most urgent.

Remember, article writing is in service of your article marketing, and your article marketing is in service of growing your business. Decide, create, protect!

Why I’m cheerfully withdrawing from the #HAHD challenge

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The #HAHD challenge is an event put on by EzineArticles, my favourite article bank website.  As a way of encouraging their members to put the incredible power of article marketing to use in a BIG way, they challenged us to post 100 articles in 100 days.

Though this is their second challenge, the first I heard of it was when I noticed my friend Kimberley Simon's tweet at the end of July.

I got a bit caught up in the excitement and pledged to post my own 100 articles in 100 days.

Fast forward to today, when I am officially (and cheerfully) withdrawing my commitment. And here are the reasons why:

  1. It wasn't a SMART goal for me right now. While it was a very specific and measurable goal, it wasn't achievable within the time I was willing to put towards it (see #4). It wasn't a relevant goal specific to my business and marketing plan for 2009, and it didn't fit into the time line of activities that WOULD help me carry out that plan. (Don't get me wrong, my plan is flexible, and I've already adjusted it several time since the beginning of the year.)
  2. I would much rather join my Pink Spoon Telecamp campers in our own challenge – create a new pink spoon for my own business during our 6-week class. 
  3. I don't respond particularly well to competition.  It is healthier and more self-caring for me to set my own SMART goals and work towards them within collaborative, supportive and loving relationships.
  4. My project list is full. Burning the midnight oil to add something to it would kind of defeat the purpose of having one. And I am simply not willing to sacrifice my self-care or personal time with friends and family to do this.

Good luck to all of the #HAHD participants! I know that whether you reach the goal of 100 articles in 100 days or not, you will likely publish more articles than you would have otherwise, and even just one of those articles could land in front of your next great client or customer and bring you miraculous results. Especially with the power of EzineArticles behind you!

Baby steps to mobile living

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Just when I decided that a Blackberry was the way to go, a little voice asked me to slow down and reconsider. Something about taking the plunge at this time just didn't seem right.

So I've decided to wait until I have less months left on my current contract. Maybe I'll even make the switch to Rogers and the iPhone at that point.

In the meantime, I did get myself a wireless router so I can surf the web, check email and keep my calendar updated via my iPod Touch in other areas of the apartment (like the couch 🙂

I can check for Twitter DMs and mentions via TweetDeck, but I haven't been able to successful sync my columns from my desktop version of TweetDeck, which is a real shame. If anyone has any suggestions about that, please let me know!

I'm also getting faster with the little touch-screen keyboard, but I still can't imagine writing anything lengthy that way.

The adventure continues…

Tired of wonky formatting when you copy and paste from email?

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Copying and pasting from web-based applications is a regular source of frustration for me.

My only solution so far has been to keep a Notepad document open all the time so that I can copy text from the web, paste it into Notepad to strip the formatting, and then copy and paste it from there into MS Word.

Of course the problem is that now I've lost all formatting, and sometimes the spacing is STILL wonky!

Well, the other day I clicked on the "Create a Document" link in my Gmail account – I enabled it awhile back but had completely forgotten what it was or what it did.

Wow, what a surprise! A Google Doc popped up with the contents of the email, perfectly formatted. You can check out an example of how it works in my previous blog post about patience. In the post, I reference an email I received from the folks at EzineArticles, and I was able to link to a Google Doc of the actual email.

It's a beautiful thing.

Keep 'em coming, Gmail!