Is Your Next Writing Project Worth the Trouble? Use the K.I.S.S. System and Find Out!

There are a lot of ways to communicate your point, but sometimes the simplest vocabulary and the shortest sentences offer the the biggest benefit. While every writer knows and understands that, what’s not so simple is our process for making decisions.

Enter the K.I.S.S. system, which stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. (The acronym can also be used to describe Keep It Short and Simple, too.)

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the challenge for a lot of writers is this little thing called “the brain.” This spongy mass tends to get in the way of great writing because it’s easy to “over-think” your projects and what you’re working on. Having a strategy to write is one thing, but thinking about your writing so much that you end up either a) not writing or b) writing something you’re not happy about. Our writing ends up suffering because we feel obligated to write something rather than focus on something we want to write.

If you feel you’re over-rationalizing your projects, then read on because I’ve got good news for you. You can use the K.I.S.S. system to simplify your woes and get back to writing what you want to write. All you have to do is ask yourself these simple questions and limit your responses to one, two or three word answers.

I’d like to help you by using an example. Let’s say you are tasked with writing an e-book about how to use WordPress. Here’s how the K.I.S.S. system can help you:

    1. What am I writing? – e-book
    2. Who am I writing it for? – first-time users
    3. What is the format of my project? – how-to, non-fiction
    4. What is the primary focus? – explain main features
    5. Do I need to do any research for this project? – no
    6. Do I need to use any additional skills? – yes, screen shots
    7. Is the project paid or unpaid? – paid
    8. What do I achieve by working on this project? – money, publication credit
    9. Do I own the rights to the content? – no
    10. Is there a contract? – yes, work-for-hire
    11. Are edits including in the contract? – no
    12. Is this a project I want to write or have to write? – have to, money
    13. Am I getting paid fairly? – no
    14. Is the publisher reputable? – yes
    15. How much time will this take? – 10 to 15 hours

Here you can see that fifteen questions, broken down into simple answers, offer a wealth of information. In this example, the writer can see at-a-glance what the project will entail from the legal side of things to the production side. Based on these fifteen questions and responses, is this a project you would take on in your schedule?

If you’re interested in a related topic, I offered a little bit of information on this when I designed some writing exercises to learn word conservation. The K.I.S.S. system can also be applied to the way in which you write as well. A writer’s style is often something that develops naturally over time. Using simple, clear phrases can help improve your writing in some cases, but may not work for every project that you’re writing for.

What kinds of questions would you ask yourself when working on a project? Can you limit your answers like I did?

April 10, 2009
Permalink ∞

How to Make Your Voice Heard in a Sea of Content

fishing-boatEarlier I talked about the concept of content saturation, which spelled out the sheer volume of content added every month and how it’s affecting your writing. Do you have any ideas as to how you can navigate through this sea of content?

First, the cold hard truth is that no amount of yelling, screaming or crying is going to get your content read. Think about the amount of content added every day as an actual “ocean” of words and your potential visitors are akin to “fish” that you want to catch. If you’re on a boat, screaming your head off, are you going to catch a fish? If you tell your potential visitors that “This is the best article I’ve read in a long time. By the way, I wrote it!” will they come to your site? Probably not.

Instead, ask yourself why you are writing your content to figure out what kinds of fish you want to catch. Is it “just” because you need to write something down? Are you writing for SEO value? Customers? What?

Before you can catch the right kinds of visitors, you need to figure out what you’re going to write and why you’re going to write it. In other words, you’re determining which “net” of specific topics you’re going to publish to attract the visitors you want. Think about it this way: just because you have a great article about widgets, doesn’t mean you need to get as many eyeballs as possible on the page. What you need is to ensure that the people who care about widgets read your article.

Once you determine why you are writing your content, the next step is to figure out what action you want your readers to take. Do you want your readers to comment? Subscribe to your RSS feed? Or do you want your reader to contact you to find out more about these widgets you’re writing about?

Depending upon what action you want your visitors to take, you can develop a content strategy that will attract “qualified” visitors to your website or blog.

Build a Strategy Based on a Stream of Qualified Visitors

So now that you know why you want someone to read your content, you can build a strategy to help attract or “bait” those readers. Before you start second-guessing what your visitors might want to read, think about building a customer profile aimed at their behavior.

Customer profiles can be pretty challenging to create for new websites, but they are a bit easier to develop if you have an existing base of content. This is where your web analytics package comes into play. Start taking a peek at your visitor behavior through the lens of “visitor acquisition.” In other words, how do visitors find your site? What types of content are they reading?

After you’ve developed some basic impressions, you can figure out what types of visitors you’re looking for and begin catering content to them. This is a win-win for both you and your readers, because your reader is getting something of value and you are getting what you desire. On the flip side, if you discover that the readers coming to your site are not interested in your desired actions, you may want to re-think your content strategy and test new ideas. As part of your content strategy, I also highly recommend that you test your new strategies on a 30-60-90 day basis, especially if you are unsure of what kinds of content you want to create.

If you don’t have an existing website or blog yet, my best advice to you is to determine why you want to develop an online presence in the first place. If it’s to help manage your online reputation, then perhaps you don’t need to create a ton of content to achieve your goal. Perhaps all you need to achieve your goals is to set up your “boat” and cast a line.

Whether you start catering to visitors by creating more of a particular type of content or look for ways through social media to “spread the word,” you can make intelligent, strategy-based decisions to attract qualified visitors.

In summary, to make your voice heard in a sea of content I recommend asking yourself these simple questions:

  • Why are you creating content?
  • What action do you want your readers to take?
  • How are you determining what to write?
  • Who are you writing your content for?
  • When is the best time to publish/promote your content?
  • Where are you publishing/promoting your content?

Happy fishing!

April 4, 2009
Permalink ∞

Book Trailer for Argentum, My Online Serial Novel

This is the first time I’ve delved into producing video. I’d appreciate you providing me with feedback if you have the time to check out this short book trailer for Argentum, Book One of the Violet War series I’m writing.

March 28, 2009
Permalink ∞

Content Saturation and its Effects on Your Writing

According to this article about amazing web stats from January 2009, there are an average of 900,000 blog posts published within a twenty-four hour period. Even if the average reader would skim through each post at a rate of one per minute, it would take approximately 1.75 years to read every one.

With this amount of content added on a daily basis, the web is rapidly approaching a point where content is becoming heavily saturated. Content aggregators that point to other people’s content are increasing in popularity, even though the demand for original content is not slowing down.

Content saturation is a challenge that every content creator (i.e. writer) must face sooner or later. There are a few effects of content saturation that are becoming more and more apparent each day, and I’d like to point these out to you:

  • It is becoming increasingly difficult to find the original source of an idea. All great journalists are taught that citation goes a long way toward establishing your credibility as a writer. Because there are so many blog posts created every day, the “original” post may get lost in a noisy sea of words and links.
  • Content saturation fosters plagiarism. When you have 900,000 blog posts created every day, it is very easy for any writer to fall into temptation. After all, if they take one person’s blog post or idea and re-formulate it as their own, who would find out?
  • A writer’s credentials are less important than the post’s or website’s content. In more conservative times, a writer’s background was as important as the content they were writing about. If you were writing about finance, for example, you either had a background in finance or you interviewed people in the field to ensure you got the details correct. In today’s environment, there is little-to-no differentiation between one writer or another, even if that writer has no background or experience in what they’re writing about.
  • It is harder to tell the difference between opinion, observation and fact. Many writers vie for stronger prose to express their point more authoritatively. “Top 10 Marketing Tips for Your Novel” for example, is one topic I’ve been reading up on. Not one of these articles provided proof of concept (e.g. case studies, real life examples) to show how or why these tips were important. While one of these articles might be more factual than another, without citations or credentials, it’s really easy for any author to get confused.
  • A reader’s attention span is nonexistent. Over a decade ago, this article talked about how readers don’t read the web, they scan it. This lack of attention span is forcing writers to write less words for any particular topic, not more. In fact, I did the math after reading this article about the change to WordPress.com’s homepage and found that, on average, each blog post was only 250 words.
  • It is more challenging to write on “original” topics. With that amount of content created each and every day, it’s quite possible that multiple people could be writing about the same topic of conversation at the same exact time.

In an upcoming post, I’m going to show you some techniques that you can use to combat content saturation to spruce up your writing and reading skills. For a different take on content saturation, read: Warning: The Internet is Almost Full.

March 23, 2009
Permalink ∞

Genre Fiction and Why I Can’t Look at a Piece of Pie

As a writer, I’ve found that I really enjoy experimenting with different themes in fiction. My personal preference is to write in the horror, dark fantasy and science fiction genres because of the freedom and flexibility they provide. The settings I create (or write for) offer me the chance to explore heroic and villainous characters in new and interesting ways. You won’t find me writing a lot of gore or stories about “abuse.” I’m more interested in that little bit of light that resides in all of us — even the characters you least expect to see it in.

As an online marketer, I feel that sociology is part and parcel to what I do every day. From how people are (or aren’t) using specific tools to integrating online networks into your personal life, there’s no doubt that the internet has a profound and significant impact on our lives. I find that my own writing is influenced by popular trends and culture, which is why I tend to explore three-dimensional characters in my fiction rather than plots. Yes, plot is extremely important to my stories, but I prefer to write about the villain that will move mountains for the cute kittens or the hero who doesn’t like eating his peas.

My latest story will be published in just a few months for an anthology called Buried Tales of Pinebox. Dubbed “Pie,” this is a horror short story about a Skinwalker (i.e. an evil creature who skins people to assume their identity for a limited time) who is trying to help the FBI find a murderer in town to save her own skin. Literally. In this horror story, I had specific themes that I wanted to play around with. First and foremost, the main character is a villain, she’s just not “the” villain in this particular plot. Secondly, since Pinebox is a small town in Texas, I wanted to write a story where I ignored the “small town” tropes and focused on using the mundane to add in a horrific element. Even though I only reference it once or twice in the story as part of the subplot, I grossed myself out to the point where I can’t even look at a piece of pie.

What’s next for my writing? I just wrote an article for the Flames Rising horror fanzine about the origin of horror tropes, which is a prelude to writing a monthly column featuring a different strong female character in horror. I’m researching a fight scene for my free urban fantasy novel, but I’ve also got a lot of other things in the pipe including five big events between now and Labor Day. As soon as I get an idea of what panels I’m speaking on, I’ll update you with a schedule.

March 14, 2009
Permalink ∞
Previous Posts Next Posts




Looking for Monica’s books and games that are still in print? Visit Monica Valentinelli on Amazon’s Author Central or a bookstore near you.

Archives

Back to Top