Successful Blog

  • Home
  • About GeniusShared
  • Author Guidelines
  • Meet the GeniusShared Team
  • Liz’s Book
  • Newsletter

The 5 Traits of an Infallible Writing Program

August 4, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

Why There Is No Decent Writing Program

I received an email asking:

Is there such a programme (not software) for writing? A simple one?
If not, can it be done?

My answer:

There is not one that I know of. The problem is that language is so complicated that the finest copyeditor I know can sit for hours over a sentence unraveling its meaning and its correctness.

A writing program requires a human. Otherwise you end up with a stilted bad translation, like a piano player who knows all technique and no art — or a designer with the same problem. You only get so much without discussing an original whole developed by the learner to test the message the learner is trying to send to make sure its the same one the reader is getting. It’s the ambiguity of words and the twists and turns of spelling that make learning to write too complicated to teach from a book or a computer program.

The 5 Traits of an Infallible Writing Program

Each writer’s process is individual. We find our own way to it. If your quest is to become an effective writer, you’re really taking on an apprenticeship. These are the 5 traits you need to build an infallible writing program.

    1. To make the words sing with power and move people to action, you need a writing-rich environment, where folks write and talk about writing, a place where you have mental space and time to practice.

    2. To offer direction based on your writing, you need a human, a coach, a teacher, a fluent writer, who understands the dynamic tension between structure and expression, who can listen like a reader and translate you message, and who loves the music of the language. Writers need constant feedback no question.

    3. You need writer friends to coach you with tips and techniques that they use, the way an old jazz guitarist shares what he’s learned with a new one. Writers need input to keep growing.

    4. Plenty of technical resources and reference books to check for how to do things according to conventions, such as capitalization and punctuation, grammar, usage, and mechanics. And you need someone to show you how to use them as manuals not roadmaps.

    5. You need time for reflection. Time to think the deep thoughts. Without them, serious writing just doesn’t happen. The world gets in the way. It only takes a few minutes to let a writer find the quiet to write in.

Learning to write starts the day we learn our first word and continues until we write our last one. It works in this way:

First we listen. Then we speak. Then we read. Then we write. The more we listen, speak, read, and write with folks who can already do it, the more fluent we become in the language, and the more we understand how to use it. With fluent speakers and writers guiding us, we learn to do it faster, broader and more deeply.

In the end, we learn to write as we learn to talk, by doing it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

If you think Liz can help you with your writing check out the Work with Liz!! page in the side bar.

Filed Under: Business Life, Successful Blog Tagged With: 6+1-Traits-of-Effective-Blog-Writing, blog-writing, focusing-ideas, organizing-ideas, Writing-Power-for-Everyone

While You Were Out Having a Life

July 5, 2006 by Liz 2 Comments

Highlights for Readers

I know that most of you have a real life, and that during this holiday you actually lived it. With that in mind, I’ve collected the recent posts on the most popular topics and brought them together here for you.

Click on the titles of the ones that you want to explore.

6+1 Traits: Sentence Fluence I Got Rhythm

SOB Business Cafe 6 30 2006

 Search Engines and People Care About Anchor Text in Links

6+1 1,2, 3,: Save Me from Beginners and Experts NOW!

6+1 How-to Blogging -- Stomp Out Swiss Chees Knowledge

Hope this helps make your life a little easier. I know it’s always hard this first day back to work.

Brand you and me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to help with your writing, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related articles
Checked the complete Writing Power for Everyone series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES PAGE.

Filed Under: Design, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Personal Branding, Productivity, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: 6+1-Traits-of-Effective-Blog-Writing, audience, blog-promotion, blog-writing, Personal Branding, readers, Writing-Power-for-Everyone

6+1: How-to Blogging — Stomp Out Swiss Cheese Knowledge

July 3, 2006 by Liz 12 Comments

What Have You Taught Me Lately?

Power Writing Series Logo

Bloggers are always teaching or learning something. Blogs are filled with ways to promote a blog, to build a brand, to install a new plugin. When we get a new program, instructions come with it. Sometimes we follow them. Sometimes they work. Sometimes big parts of them seem to be missing.

How-to blogging teaches something.

A how-to post could be as simple as how to a make a sandwich or as complicated as how to turn your computer into a host server for WordPress.

People read how-to articles because they want to be learning.

Therefore: Nothing is worse than a how-to post that skipped a step.

I hate information that has holes in it. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Blog Basics, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: 6+1-Traits-of-Effective-Blog-Writing, audience, blog-promotion, blog-writing, Personal Branding, readers, Writing-Power-for-Everyone

6+1, 2, 3: Save Me from Beginners and Experts NOW!

July 1, 2006 by Liz 6 Comments

Folks Who Are Learning and Folks Who Know

Power Writing Series Logo

Most bloggers find their audience is a lot like you are — an audience of folks who learning and folks who know a whole lot. That can throw a new writer. It can seem a problem of huge proportions. It’s not hard to think that what you have is two different audiences in one. How do you know how much to say and how much to leave out? It’s easy to get twisted trying to write for an audience of people who are both beginning and experienced.

Get twisted, heck! Somebody save me NOW!. From where I sit, some days the beginners need to learn so much, and the experts already seem to know all of it. How do I possibly talk to both of them at once, without risking insulting or boring either one of them?

That writer’s problem can seem impossible to solve, but it’s not. In fact, it’s not even a problem at all. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Customer Think, Personal Branding, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: 6+1-Traits-of-Effective-Blog-Writing, audience, blog-promotion, blog-writing, Customer Think, Personal Branding, readers, Writing-Power-for-Everyone

6+1 Traits: Sentence Fluency — I Got Rhythm

June 29, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

I Got Rhythm I Got Music

Power Writing Series Logo

We talk about being fluent in a foreign language, but it’s almost foreign to talk about being fluent in our own.

Wow! That’s a fluent sentence. It’s got rhythm and cadence. It’s well-built and interesting. It stands well on its own and it almost dares you to read it out loud.

If I were to guess why so many people tell me I’m a great writer, I would guess that sentence fluency has a something to do with what they are thinking about.

Sentence fluency is the romance of how words come together to pass on meaning. To me it’s the seduction of writing. It’s what writers mean when they use the word compose.

As a reader, I want the words to carry me and do what great music does — take me along with them — slow down when I need to listen hard and go fast, fast, fast, when the writer is telling something that’s exciting and fun.

As with all of the traits of effective writing, writers have ways to make writing dance to the tune that you want. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Personal Branding, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: 6+1-Traits-of-Effective-Blog-Writing, blog-promotion, blog-writing, organizing-ideas, Personal Branding, sentence-fluency, Writing-Power-for-Everyone

6+1 Traits: Word Choice — A Writing & Business Power Tool

June 28, 2006 by Liz 17 Comments

Word Choice Reveals Things About Us

Power Writing Series Logo

Hugh Prather says, We cannot talk without talking about ourselves. Word choice is where our bias shows.

Difficult, arrogant, clever, brilliant, resistant, creative, out-of-the box, genius, spoiled brat, misunderstood, having a bad day, playing with you, smartass, ambitious, valuable, disruptive.

I heard all of these words said by different people to describe the same exact behavior by a single individual.

Each person chose a different word. The word for them described the behavior, but even more it described their mindset, the filter through which they see the world.

Words reveal the mindset of a company culture too.

Does your company choose nice words to talk about inanimate objects and violent ones to talk about people? Does it seed catalogues and grow the business, but target customers and kill competition?

Word choice is a powerful thing. It communicates our unconscious thinking. At first we think it’s just a habit, but imagine for a second. What if we said “seed and grow customers”? How would that change the way we think and what we do?

What if Google called us customers? Would Blogspot bloggers have more service? What if Technorati called us partners?

Word choice is a power tool — both in writing and in business. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Personal Branding, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: 6+1-Traits-of-Effective-Blog-Writing, blog-promotion, blog-writing, ideas, organizing-ideas, Writing-Power-for-Everyone

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »

New from Liz Strauss & GeniusShared Press



Having a hard time finding focus?

Having a hard time finding focus?

It can be hard to find focus sometimes. A few months ago, I was talking with a colleague who was having a hard time finding focus in their work. They spoke of feeling pulled in multiple directions and of many obligations — both at work and with their family. As I listened, I could hear […]

Sometimes We Outgrow Our Stories

Sometimes We Outgrow Our Stories

The other day I was having a conversation with a friend. We were sharing stories from days gone by about each of our lives. We hopped from one story to the next — based on what each of us were sharing. It was really an incredible discussion as we were each learning from the other […]

It’s Not Your Passion, But Your Purpose

It’s Not Your Passion, But Your Purpose

Everyone feels lost sometimes. I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t been lost in their head at one time or another — even those folks overachieving all over the Internet. We all find those moments that we wonder about who we are and what we want. But the question is not whether everyone gets […]

Getting Past Fear

Getting Past Fear

I felt the more embarrassing fear of people’s judgment. When I decided it was time to write again, I avoided the computer for the longest time. On the rare occasion that I managed to sit myself down to write, I’d get caught up answering email or reading articles around the web, not doing writing I […]

  • What IS an SOB?!
  • SOB A-Z Directory
  • Letting Liz Be

© 2019 ME Strauss & GeniusShared 2005 - 2016