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Words @ Work,Lynda McDaniels: Author Guest Post

Lynda McDaniel shares tools and techniques she developed over her long career as a writer and business writing coach. As you work through Words @ Work, you’ll learn how to:

• Overcome fear of writing.
• Break through writer’s block so you can jumpstart your writing—and your results. Fear confuses us. It makes us procrastinate—the biggest time-bandit of all. It makes us give up—if we’re so bad at writing, why bother trying to be better? But when fear is banished, when we understand how powerful good writing can be—incredible things happen.
• Communicate and connect with a wider audience to build your business or career.
• Achieve goals faster through well-written letters and e-mail, reports and proposals, newsletters and blogs.
• Build confidence. Right away, you’ll realize you’re already doing a lot of things right. Pretty soon, the tips and tools give you a new attitude about your writing.
• Create new ideas. The writing process helps you tap into great ideas just waiting to be harvested.
• Add extras for excitement. Learn techniques that set your writing apart.
• Earn a promotion. Take time to write better, and someone at the top will notice. Text messaging? That’s just top-of-the-head stuff. Ditto most e-mails. Good writing goes deeper. And who knows? Maybe someone will post it on the Web, and you’ll get your 15 minutes (or more) of fame.

Effective writing expands your ability to persuade, sell,
innovate, teach, improve, change, contribute, and succeed.

Writing is more than just stringing words together. It’s the portal to your thoughts. It helps you tap into ideas deep within your brain. Then it helps you express those ideas in convincing ways. Or not.

In our e-world, our writing has gotten pretty sloppy. We increasingly write to people who’ve never met us and maybe never will. Our typos and clunky phrases give them a picture of us that’s far from flattering. They have no idea how interesting and talented we are.

But when you write well, you’ll introduce yourself in a way that shows them you’re smart, professional, and the right person for the contract, job, or business deal.

Each of the 12 chapters starts with a short story from my life that illustrates a key issue about the writing process. The rest of the chapter features detailed explanations and examples about that issue.

Topics include:

• Listen to your gut
• Write for your reader
• Overcome your fears of writing
• Tap into your creativity
• Edit your way to success, to name a few

AUTHOR GUEST POST...The Answers Lie Within

Do you ever envy someone else’s writing?  Good!  I know envy is one of the seven deadly sins, but it’s packed with useful information that can lead to great things when  you understand why you’re envious.

Years ago, I used to envy two types of writers:  journalists and copywriters.  Eventually I was able to use that envy positively to better understand myself.  As a result, I achieved success in both disciplines!  I came to appreciate that my envy stemmed from a deep yearning, and it was sending me a message to get busy and do something about it.

In psychological terms, envy is a form of projection.  Projection, according to the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, is an automatic process in which the contents of our own unconscious are perceived to be in others. Another way of putting that: It’s as though we have a slide show inside our brains that we don’t know exists. Every now and then, a worthy screen shows up (like my envy of great journalists) that turns the projector on. The screen lets us watch our inner slide show, and if we’re paying attention, we can learn a lot about ourselves from what we’re projecting. In my case, that was my love of writing.

Today, the term projection is more common, especially on talk shows and in coffee-shop conversations, though it’s usually used negatively. “She projected her shortcomings on me, and I couldn’t take it any longer.” “The President projected his need for approval onto the generals.” But projection also can be a positive mirror of our inner desires.

To get to know yours, watch for your slide shows and become conscious of what holds special vitality for you. Pay attention to people you admire—or envy—and figure out why. Study books and magazine articles you think are excellent—and deconstruct them to find out why.

Once projection rears its head, it tends to rev up its message until we finally take notice. And here’s where we can get in trouble.  We know what we want, but we don’t necessarily have the tools to implement it—yet.  That’s when we can be hard on ourselves.  This happened to me when I was in charge of approving an important brochure for an exhibition I was promoting.  I can still recall the feelings I had reviewing that brochure. It was sophisticated, clever, and engaging. I felt both excited and depressed—telling myself I never could have written it. Never mind that I had not yet devoted the hours to my writing skills that this copywriter had. Never mind that I hadn’t fully explored what I could do as a writer.

More often than not, the slides are about our “becoming,” i.e., something nascent inside of us that wants—and needs—to be developed. Because of the gap in desire and reality, the initial experience can be troubling. But these negative feelings can offer sage advice when we know what to do with them. When I projected my self-doubt onto the creative brochure copy, if I’d known then about projection, I could have understood how deeply important it was to me to write beautiful words. I eventually got the message, but at the time, I held myself back by telling myself I was a loser.

If only I’d said, “Hey! It’s time to study, practice, learn.” What arrogance to think I should be able to sit down and craft thoughtful copy. What nonsense to believe it just flows out and doesn’t require diligence and patience and copious editing.

That’s one reason I wrote Words at Work.  You don’t have to make this mistake. Next time you have a strong reaction to a novel or essay (or whatever you enjoy reading and writing), be happy even when it makes you feel uncomfortable. What change ever happens when we’re completely at ease? Go inside and discover where that feeling is coming from. What do you really like or hate about the writing? What inside of you would like to be just like that or not at all like that? Either way you win.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR...Lynda McDaniel is the director of the Association for Creative Business Writing (AFCBW), an organization dedicated to offering instruction and inspiration to everyone in the business community who wants to write with more pizzazz. Before launching her own writing business, Lynda worked for several businesses and found the atmosphere too often restrictive and unsupportive. A couple of decades and a successful writing career later, she still sees that atmosphere taking its toll on employees and managers—and their results. AFCBW is designed to offer the support employees need.