Writing Tips

5 Actionable and Simple Tips to Help Parents Write (Right) Now

/ chicoinematt

“But I don’t have anything interesting to say.” “I am tired exhausted from work and household duties.” “I just cannot take time away from my family.” “This is going to add an additional burden on my spouse.” “Honey, there is literally no time. We both have full time and three kids to take of when we get home.”

These were some of the excuses I used in the past whenever I pondered a pursuit in a career in freelance writing. We have a finite amount of time each day. 24 hours. Doctors tell us at least a 1/3 of that should be used for sleeping. That leaves only16 hours a day at our disposal. Add in a full-time job, children and all the various school activities they are in, and meal time. Our time starts disappearing faster than a dozen eggs on sale at the store.

How to write and raise a family?

This article is specifically geared toward parents who want to develop a career in writing. As a father to four children ages 11,9,6, and 4, I completely understand the scheduling struggle. It might be more accurate to call it appointment acrobatics! I am also the husband of an elementary school teacher. Anyone who is married to or has a family member or friend who is an educator knows that profession involves A LOT of time—investing in lesson planning, parent meetings, professional development sessions, and staying up to do on current curriculum. Additionally, two of children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Autism is a social communication disorder. We have weekly adaptive aquatics lessons for our six year old. We have also had to invest an incalculable amount of hours into research, therapy, and home reinforcement over the past several years.

Bottom line is I understand that life presents you many challenges that take up the vast majority of the day. It is not impossible, nor even merely improbable to start writing and creating content.

Martin Luther King Jr. once declared, “If you can’t fly, then run, if you can’t walk run, then walk, if you can’t walk, then , but by all means keep moving.” While you may not be able to soar now you can take action. Move towards your goal of being a writer! The tips in this article come from my experience and have proven to have worked for my impossibly busy schedule. Let’s now jump into these five actionable and simple strategies to help you write now!

Be prepared to sacrifice

“Wait! I thought you said these were actionable and simple steps. Right away you are asking me to give up something,” you might be thinking now. As much as this fact hurts to hear, it is necessary to learn. To love something [and someone] it involves a sacrifice. Foregoing the latest Netflix original series, shopping spree, or having to say “no” to one of your kids activities will be painful. I struggled mightily with watching just one episode of the latest series so I could have time to write daily.

Since my decision to leave my full-time job to pursue writing as a career, I have made several sacrifices: our family gave up eating fast food, limited television time, and I will be working a night job to help the bills until I can write full-time from home. This decision was not made lightly. Writing proved to be healing and therapeutic as reached a low point in my life in 2015. If after some deliberation you realize your gift to the world is to write, realize this tremendous joy does come with a price—sacrifice. But it is well worth it.

Narrow and Nest into a Niche

A second tactic to help you write now is to find a niche topic to write about. Ask yourself the following questions: What topic can I talk about for 30 minutes without needing any preparation? What subjects am I already an expert on? Select your writing niche based on either or both of the answers to those questions. My expertise is Catholic theology. I have also developed an interest in writing about anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. Finding a niche does not always happen overnight. Yet, you can still start the process of discovering your writing niche now!

Find Five Minutes

Finding time in the day to write can be challenging. I get it! Parenting is incredibly tough. Kids require physical, emotional, intellectual supports to grow and thrive. We all want our kids to grow up into mature and productive citizens. Some days all hell breaks loose. The children turn into frenzied creatures—especially during a full moon! Other times, the children coordinate an executed staggered schedule attack to ensure that you and your spouse never get more than 2 hours consecutive that night.

Don’t let that deter you from your dream to write. Find just 5 minutes per day to write. Schedule it at the exact same time and place in your house to journal or type out your thoughts. If your life is a bit more hectic, allow for flexibility of that 5 minutes to occur at various times. Always make sure you write for an absolute minimum of 5 minutes. When your routine is set, up your time to 10, 15, 30 minutes, or to 1 hour. Consistency is absolutely necessary for traction towards your goal. Move towards your goal of writing a bit each every.

Consume Content Daily

Another simple strategy to develop your writing skills is to consume content from your writing niche daily. Doctors prescribe patients to eat a and balanced nutrition. That same is true for content creators. Creativity does not occur in isolation. Read books, listen to podcasts, watch videos, connect with experts in your desired field of study on LinkedIn.

Use those short drives dropping the kids off at school, running errands, or returning home to listen to podcast episodes or an audio book about your niche subject. During those rare occasions when the kids actually nap or go to bed on time read a book for a few minutes. I have been starting to take a book to the park—even reading just a page or two daily will help build your knowledge in the long run!

Repeat—Key is Consistency

If you made it to this point of the article without interruption I want to congratulate you! Thank you for taking take out of your busy schedule to further your desire to write. My final strategy to help you write right now is simple—repeat strategies 1-4 daily! If you are running low on energy or motivation please message me on LinkedIn or email me at chicoine.matt@live.com. I would love to help you through any scheduling obstacles and mental roadblocks.

Related Links

The Origin Story of The Simple Catholic

3 Ways to Stay Relevant as a Catholic Blogger

Thank you for sharing!

Why You Need to Tell Your ‘Why’ Story

/ chicoinematt / 1 Comment

why questions

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” —Simon Sinek

That phrase is continued throughout his book Start with Why.

💡Your why or purpose for your personal brand or company will be something that sets you apart.

Is this something you thought about?

Start with Your ‘Why’

Don’t begin with what you do or even how your product or service works

❤️ The starting place has to be deeper— go to the heart of the matter.

It’s natural to start with asking someone: “What do work do you do?”

Have you considered asking people:

“Why are you a ___________?”

A bit uncomfortable question (maybe at first) right?

Here’s why I became a writer 👇

My first why was surviving depression from losing kids to miscarriage (I write to help show others how to survive a similar horror).

A second why is related to my first— my younger kids are my rainbow babies & they both need speech therapy.

Daily I have to listen 👂 carefully to what my kids needs because it’s not always clear.

💡This skill translates well into the workplace

Understanding the importance of communication has deepened my ability to help people communicate effectively.

🎯 What’s (there I am again with defaulting to ‘what’ 😅) your ‘why’?

Share yours in the comments ⤵️

Related Links

Start With Why- Simon Sinek

Why is it Important to Ask “Why?”

Thank you for sharing!

How Baseball Helps Your Copywriting

/ chicoinematt

Writing Tips

🔆Copywriting tip— Use short paragraphs, sentences, and words to pack punch to your copy.

Writing is analogous to the flow of a baseball game.

⚾️ Think of the headline as the opening inning. It gets your the attention of your audience and sets the tone for the rest of your copy.

The first sentence leads to the second— the lead off hitter gets on baseball to set the other batters for success.

✅ Keep your sentences short to keep your readers’ attention

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you need to have a longer sentence—especially when you want to provide facts or evidence for a claim.

Use those short punchy sentences to your advantage.

⚾️ Short punchy sentences are like hitting a home-run or grand slam. Immediate impact.

⚾️ Longer sentences are similar to hitting to playing small ball (stringing singles together, stealing bases, or sacrifice bunts to advance runners)😊

⚾️ Packing your copy’s lineup will get your audience’s attention, but without sentence variety you can’t defeat distractions.

✅ Hit for average (long sentences) and power (short, punchy sentences)when you write.

How do you arrange the rhythm of the paragraphs in your copy?

Thank you for sharing!

Write Something Imperfect Today

/ chicoinematt

Write Now

 

 

💡It is better to write something imperfect than nothing at all. You may aim for perfection. Quality should a priority.

💡But if you constantly strive for perfection an unintended side effect is inaction. Seeking perfection can lead to a creativity clog.

💡A blocked mind makes it difficult to create content. The antidote?

💡Write something imperfect. You don’t have to publish it on your blog or social media channels. Save it in your notes or journal. The benefits of writing something unpublishable?

1️⃣ Helps remove the creativity clog—like a drain is blocked with crud, so too your mind needs crud removed to allow creativity to flow.

2️⃣ Builds consistency—write regularly. It’s like physical exercise. Writing something allows you to maintain a habit.

3️⃣ You have an opportunity to re-write your work later—the first draft is likely not going to be polished.

4️⃣ Develops humility—seeing my bad writing reminds me that I need to be humble and grateful that I am still a work in progress.

💭 How do you remove a “creativity clog”?

💭Do you ever write something that goes unpublished?

💭Why or why not?

Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Thank you for sharing!

How to Pack Power into Your Writing with this Tip

/ chicoinematt / 2 Comments

Writing tip

💡Writing tip #8—Use short paragraphs, sentences, and words to pack punch to your copy.

Writing is analogous to the flow of a football game.

Think of the headline as the kickoff. It gets your the attention of your audience.

The first sentence leads to the second.

Keep your sentences short to keep your readers’ attention.

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you need to have a longer sentence—especially when you want to provide facts or evidence for a claim.

Use those short punchy sentences to your advantage.

🏈 Short punchy sentences are like tossing the touchdown. Immediate impact.

🏈 Longer sentences are similar to that sustained drive when a team goes the length of a field to score.

🏈 Both are required to keep the attention of your reader. Change the sentence length. Keep the pace moving for your readers.

Short. Short. Long.

Thoughts?

Let me know in the comments. 🙂

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Thank you for sharing!

10 Tips to Help You Create Better Content

/ chicoinematt

Life is going to throw you curve balls. Be prepared to adapt. But what if life sends that elusive knuckle ball? Preparation can only go so far in these types of situations. Today, I felt like a hundred knuckle balls were aimed at me. I had a bunch of tasks I wanted to accomplish. So far, I have missed. There was a thunderstorm last night. This woke up and scared my three-year-old and nine-month-old kids.

Working the night shift, I did not expect to get much sleep anyway. To make matters a bit more complicated was finding out my five-year-old was running a fever. 1 sick kid + tired 2 kids + 1 tired sad = a knuckle ball kind of day. So far, I have found a way to make through the morning (and hopefully the rest of the day) with in the most graceful way possible for me.

Content Creation

 

 

 

 

This post is the compilation of 10 tips for content creation in 10 days. Originally, I posted these content strategies on LinkedIn, but I figured why limit myself to one platform when other content creators would benefit from some of the tips that worked for me.

💡Tip #1—Complete tasks using chunking, micro-chunking, or nano-chunking depending on your schedule and ability for the day

Breaking up a task (writing, reading, email follow-up, lead research, etc) into manageable bits of time helped get me to achieve something. Something is better than nothing.

I  pause many times or step into another room to center myself whenever parenting gets too stressful. It actually took me at least 3 Nano chunks (1-2 minute time segments) to complete this first tip! Placing a time barrier between you and the overwhelming into definitely helps.

💡 Tip #2 Focus on one goal or group of goals at a time

Some weeks or seasons of your life are more challenging than others. Maybe you left ended such a season in your own life. Perhaps you are in the calm of the storm. All I know for certain is that you will encounter resistance again in the future. I am in the middle of the stress tsunami.

Sharpening my focus to specific areas of my work has helped prepare me to better weather this storm. Below are just a couple examples of my focused goals for today and the rest of the week:

  • Post at least once a day on social media
  • Do creative/free form writing for at least 30 minutes sometime this week
  • Read at least 5-10 minutes a day
  • Begin to carve time in my schedule to listen to podcasts about marketing

I know I cannot achieve all 4 goals every single day, but my goal is to focus on and name the specific goal and at least be consistent in my approach to working towards it. Consistency is an investment that you rarely see a return on in the present. What tools/resources/advice have you implemented to help you focus your goals?

💡Tip 3—It is okay to adjust your goals

Earlier this week, I mentioned this has been a ‘knuckle ball’ type of week. Challenges kept coming at me, yet there was no pattern to them. Monday and Tuesday, I kept swinging and missing. I almost gave up and shut down for the week.

Instead, I adjusted my productivity goals. Dealing with sick children and an erratic work schedule I realized this was going to be a less productive period. I maintained consistency but limited the frequency of content produced. See it is easy to give up when life sends you knuckle balls. I used to have an all or nothing (home run or strikeout) mindset.

If you can’t give it 110% everyday what is the point in trying? Realistically it is not always possible to be at or over 100%. You may get sick. Family obligations supersede work goals. That balance may not happen all the time.

Consistency is what will help weather you through these trials. Hit for average not power:  Are you more of a power hitter with your work goals or a person who shoots for average/consistency?  How have you endured a ‘knuckle ball’ week?

Rest

💡Tip 4—Rest is Necessary in order to improve productivity

I have started taking off most of the weekend (starting last weekend) from social media. I am realizing more and more that it is not realistic for me to post daily and comment often on others’ posts. I am a parent to special needs kids first.

This week drained me of all my mental stamina. It was a week of regression for my three-year-old. I know a lot of people only post the positive stuff and shy away from the real challenges of life. But I am not your normal connection. I am being honest here.

Don’t give into the pressure to create content like a machine. Rest. I am going to cut back on my overall social media a bit as I rest and strategize how I can be more efficient with creating content and still focus on my family.

Have you ever been so worn down from life’s challenges that you had to limit or eliminate your social media activity?

💡Tip #5 Clear and consistent communication overcomes the toughest of situations

Whether you work remotely, in the office, or odd hours it is important to keep your boss and peers at work in the loop. Any transition point in a project or process requires extra diligence. Find how your co-workers prefer to receive information (email, text, in person, phone call etc) and flex to their preference.

Communicating in a variety of ways not only allows you to work well with others but shows your ability to adapt. Always provide a short recap of the main points of a meeting of phone call. Ask clarifying questions to check for understanding especially if you are working on a complex process.

💡Tip #6—Dedicate time every work to work on your craft

Carve our 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. Whatever time segment works with your schedule make that the goal you aim for. Call this your “base goal” a non-negotiable on the absolute minimum amount of time to work daily. With my topsy-turvy work schedule and raising young children my base goal is 5 minutes daily.

Make a stretch goal on days you have more free time. What I mean is add extra “x number of minutes” to your base goal these days. Ex: Wednesdays and Saturday’s I don’t work any of my part-time jobs. So, I up my stretch goals a lot—to an hour.

Not hitting your stretch goals should never cause you worry or anxiety. This is bonus time. Achieving stretch goals should invoke gratitude.

Do you set daily or weekly goals? If so, why do find it helpful? If not, what is stopping you from setting up goals?

💡Tip #7—Getting feedback from your audience will help improve your content

You could be a superior writer interweaving complex ideas together in a beautiful way, but it you are not generating content that resonates with your audience it is ultimately a selfish and futile work.

Feedback

J.K. Rowling began her Harry Potter series not for herself, but as a bedtime story for her children. She know the kind of content that would be easily picked up by kids. J.R.R. Tolkien was inspired to Roverandom to entertain his son after losing his favorite toy. Selfless acts of creation blossomed into classic tales that continue to give joy to readers today. One way to get feedback is to simply ask.

What kinds of questions do you have about content creation? Do you prefer standalone posts, or would you like to see a content series based on a theme? What prevents you from engaging with certain content on LinkedIn?

💡Tip #8—Getting feedback from your audience is only as important as your consistent execution of that feedback into content

It is important to listen. That often involves follow-up questions or noticing the engagement on the content you implement will go a long way towards fostering a solid relationship between you and your audience. I did get feedback on whether people wanted to see a series based on a theme or standalone posts. The verdict was it was a bit of both. I plan to continue the unique posts but will be creating more of a themed content series broken up in the course of a few days or a week.

What are some of the obstacles in your way of implementing the feedback once you got it from your audience? For me it is time and family obligations—my nine-month-old is teething still and having trouble sleeping through the night.  What are some strategies or tools that helped you implement feedback promptly and consistency?

💡Tip #9—Higher priorities will bump your content goals down the queue sometimes and that is normal

Full disclosure: My 10 tips in 10 days has been a misnomer as a couple days I had to miss because of dealing with regression in my autistic son’s progress. Yesterday, was challenging as we painted our living room (thankfully we had some family come up for help). But any deviation from our schedule big or small incites a meltdown unless we uber-prepare him. The latest meltdowns were like wrangling a squid with the tenacity of a wolverine and the sound of a jet engine. Some days it takes me entire mental stamina to maintain a sane semblance of composure. I was 100% drained.

Don’t get down if you miss a day so long. Consistency does not always mean creating daily, but generating, on average, a repetitive and predictable schedule. The weekend often mean family comes first and this was the case yesterday.

How have different and higher priorities impacted your content creation and productivity of your work recently?

💡Tip #10—Content is versatile across platforms

There are so many different types of social media and communication platforms today to publish your material. Audio, written, and video. As I previously mentioned, originally these tips were created for LinkedIn, but realized I was limiting myself to only a single audience if I kept this content solely on one platform.

Combining the ten tips did not take up too much time. I basically had to update the format to read as a blog article (I included headings and ensured I broke up the paragraphs in a readable fashion) and proofread for consistency.  Finally, I added images to help break up the text and improve reader experience.

Creating content can definitely be daunting at first. The key is dedicating time daily,a even if it is only 5-10 minutes, to work on your craft, develop a consistent schedule, implement chunking or breaking up tasks throughout the day, reassess your goals often. Learn to love the process of creating content as this will help you greatly in achieving your end goals!

Content is King

If you need engaging content for your website to improve traffic and boost your brand please send me a link to your website in the comments below along with any questions you have about content creation. I will randomly select three comments to set-up a free content creation consult call!  The deadline for comments to be included in the drawing is November 15th.

Thank you for sharing!