Sunday, November 27, 2011

"Coach Yourself to Writing Success"

Today's book is “Coach Yourself to Writing Success” by Bekki Hill. This book is also more about writing for publication than it is about copywriting, as are most of the writing books out there. However, I decided to pick it up because it's almost exclusively about the mental aspects of a writer's life, such as dealing with rejection and positive thinking. These will apply to me as well and so I thought I could still learn something from it.

Preparation
The book begins with several chapters on identifying what you really want and planning how to get there. My choice of freelancing itself already reflects my core values, as the book would say. It's really difficult to come up with new ideas all the time, but copywriting means that your clients tell you what to write about. Freedom to set my own schedule and live wherever I want are even more important to me. I might come back to this book though if I'm going through a rough time and questioning the freelance life, but for now I have the questions in this section answered. So I learned from this book that given the experiences of other writers, these questions may become problems in the future.

Get More Done
The most important things I learned were ways to overcome mental blocks to productivity. For 76 pages, the book deals with how to motivate yourself and overcome procrastination and lack of motivation. I do like writing, and the challenge of selling something, but marketing myself is by far my least favorite part of the freelancing business. Other books tell me how to do that but ignore the thoughts that keep me from getting started. Since the author is a writing coach, she uses personal experience and surveys to identify and deal with these issues. Other authors either ignore the problem or don't haven't fought procrastination in themselves and others before. So far this book has helped me a lot in overcoming procrastination, which is the foundation for doing anything.

New Ideas
After you handle procrastination, turning on the creativity is also key. Clients supply me with the subject, but the new points of view need to come from me. This book explains creativity in a way I'd never seen: alpha brainwaves, which occur in a state of deep relaxation just short of meditation, are responsible for creative ideas. Hence Einstein's complaint that many of his best ideas came to him in the shower (according to the book). “We often drift into it when doing repetitive tasks,” says Hill. I've always done well on standardized tests, and now I think one reason that I was able to enter this state of mind and concentrate. I will be using these techniques on future projects.

After a while, almost every book on a given subject says the same thing. This book is the rare exception. Your shelves are already fully stocked with books on using correct punctuation and active language or how to write a query letter. Buy this book and you will get started on your projects faster, and move on to the next in a better state of mind even if you didn't get the response you want.

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