TA #70: 💌 What I Learned About Writing from Dumpling School; 20 Questions to Stronger Content

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This week's image, #70: Carmela Caldart on Tenor

Welcome to the 70th issue of Total Annarchy, a fortnightly newsletter by me, Ann Handley, with a focus on writing, content, marketing, life. A special welcome to new subscribers from Litmus Live and UBA Trends. THANK YOU for joining the fun. P.S. Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe right here.

Boston, Sunday, September 27, 2020

Hi, Sugarpop.

Before everything went haywire this year, I went to Dumpling School.

Dumpling School is exactly what it sounds like: a school where you learn to make (in this case) Taiwanese-American dumplings. A master chef named Patty Chen taught the class.

Patty and her husband, Marco, taught us how to mix the dough; roll it thin and flat; make two kinds of filling; stuff and shape and seal the dumplings into a classic half-moon shape.

It was harder than it looked: The springy dough seemed to have its own ideas about what it wanted to be. Instead of cooperating by folding itself into a tidy, tight shape and staying put, my dough seemed determined to reinvent itself.

Forget half-moon: My dumplings rebranded themselves as "Tire Blowout" and "Ruptured Amoeba."

Embarrassing. Obscene.

Anyway, in between Marco's dad jokes (How much does the heaviest dumpling weigh? Won ton.), Patty worked like a Basic Training cadet.

She hauled buckets of flour, scurrying up and down the cellar stairs. She slapped into shape a pile of dumping dough big enough to double as a Large Cheese pizza. She stoked a steamer that boiled so aggressively it steamed up the windows and everyone's eyeglasses every time she lifted the lid.

Pipe in some dance music, and Dumpling School would for Patty look a lot like a cardio class.

"You have to fall in love with the labor," Patty said at one point—seemingly out of nowhere, as if in answer to my thoughts. "A lot of people open restaurants because they love food. But that's not how it works. You really have to learn to love the labor."

* * *

There's a cliché in writing: Writers hate to write, but they love to have written.

I've promulgated that idea myself from time to time, grafting it onto my identity and tending to the fused part until it was impossible to know what was native and what was not.

But it turns out not to be true: It's a lie—the idea that you can be a writer if you hate to write. At least, you won't be a writer for very long.

You can't love just the product. You have to love the process.

You can't love just the dumplings. You have to love the scurrying up and down the cellar stairs.

* * *

So the challenge for you and for me: How can we learn to love the work, even when it feels hard? And of course I'm talking about writing here... but it could apply to any work we do.

Here's what's worked for me:

Find the moment you love most in your work.

Blow it up. Slow it down. Make it last.

* * *

I hate writing first drafts of anything. Blog posts. New speeches. This newsletter.

It's torturous and painful and what I have in my head comes out Extra Stupid. Like I'm typing with mittens on.

So my solution looks like this:

1. Write daily for 15 minutes in a notebook I use to record fragments of ideas and rando thoughts. Flip through it before you sit to write a first draft (just a minute ago I flipped through what I'd written about Dumpling School; I'd forgotten that Blown-Tire detail).

This is a writer's equivalent of Barry's Bootcamp: high-intensity interval training. Bursts of thoughts, in succession. Don't stop before the 15 minutes. Don't NOT show up.

2. Rush through The Ugly First Draft (TUFD) like you're Usain Bolt and the TUFD finish line is April in Boston on a normal year. Make it quick: Set a timer. Spend as little time there as possible.

👉 Pro tip: Write your TUFD as a list. Anyone can write a list of ideas.

3. Change into your party pants, and go back to it. Once TUFD is out of my head and onto the page, I move it back into my head—but this time, only a paragraph or a sentence at a time or a single metaphor at a time.

Every minute in the TUFD felt like an hour, sitting in that chair. Now every hour feels like a minute. This is flow state. Revel in it. Enjoy it. Make it last as long as you want!

The endless tweaking that drives my editor nuts is actually what I love the most. This is the Patty part: the labor you love. Read it out loud until it sounds right to your ear. Or until the Dumpling is perfect.

* * *

You aren't me, of course. Maybe you love TUFD stage and hate the polish process. Maybe you love the research. That's OK. The point is to slow what you love, and rush what you hate.

Try it. Let me know how it goes?

* * *

Here are a few things worth sharing this week.

1. Speaking of Process...

Orbit Media released its 7th annual blogging survey, tracking trends in content marketing and blog writing.

Lots of great benchmarks in there that both document blogging's maturing and offer you some handy guidelines for more success with your own program. This chart, for example:

Look at that drive-off-a-cliff drop in short-form blogging and the steady rise in 1000+ word posts. We're publishing less frequently, too, because we have more to do than write 2K-word blog posts all day, don't we?

See the 7th annual report and a bunch of charts here.

Go deeper 👉 👉 👉 My favorite chart in this report is the last one: The Ultimate and Ridiculously Unrealistic Blogging Strategy Unless You're HubSpot*

*(I just live-edited the title LOL)

Orbit's Andy Crestodina shared the results of that chart with me prior to its going live. "Will people know I'm kidding?" he asked.

Totally. To run this process we'd need a FIFA Club World Cup team of marketers + a network of freelancers and contributors + 1 zillion dollars.

Bottom line: Any benchmark study is a snapshot. Not a mandate. Our job is to decide which elements from this report we can reasonably implement.

2. Good & Twenty

The legendary Roy Peter Clark gives journalists 20 questions to ask about their writing. But those same questions moonlight in Marketing, too. Among them:

1. How would I explain this to a smart person that I know—who is NOT an expert?

2. Where are the points of greatest complexity so that I can slow down the pace of information there?

3. Have I used shorter words, sentences, and paragraphs at the points of greatest complexity?

4. Is there heavy cargo—technical data, numbers—that can be lifted from the text and placed in an illustration, informational graphic, or list?

5. What jargon terms can be avoided? Which ones need to be translated so that readers learn the secret codes?

6. Can I explain something by focusing on the experience of one human being? (Like the Patty Chen Principle)

7. My writing is clear. But have I made it interesting enough so that readers will care?

8. Can I find a "mentor example," a microcosm or small world that represents a larger reality, an intensive care unit rather than the whole hospital complex.

The other 12 are equally golden.

QUICKIES

✍️ Writer Ursula Le Guin's house is for sale... and Look. At. This. Writer's. Room.

🖥️ Ideas to make work happy hours on Zoom 100% less awkward.

I loved this: The problem isn't that your co-workers are unusually boring, the problem is the social norms of meetings. People "gravitate toward small talk even when they crave connection because sharing important things about ourselves can be socially risky." —Dan Ariely

💰 10 Steps to Better ROI with Content Operations "Content operations" sounds about as much fun as filing your taxes. But these 10 steps on harmonizing content across your mature org make it waaaay less painful.

🗨️ A Writer's Hierarchy of Needs: How to Do Our Best Work A key in 2020? We have to clear the cobwebs.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Writing is networking for introverts." —Byrne Hobart

DEPARTMENT OF SHENANIGANS

Austin's El Arroyo restaurant is well known for its giant sign used to share jokes, puns, musings. In 2020, that sign has taken on new poignance. In 2020, the El Arroyo sign is all of us. [h/t Joe Waters]

LOVE LETTERS will return next time.

* * *

Thanks for scrolling. Thanks for your kindness and generosity to me and to each other.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Register to vote. I'll be back on October 11.

P.S. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, buy a book. Or forward this newsletter to a friend with an invitation to subscribe right here: www.annhandley.com/newsletter.

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Ann Handley is the author of Everybody Writes and other books.
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TA #70: 💌 What I Learned About Writing from Dumpling School; 20 Questions to Stronger Content

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TA #69: ☕ Pumpkin Spice Newsletter: A Case Study in the Power of Copywriting

TA #68: ✨ How This Storytelling Program Mopped Up; 10 Tips to Make Your Social Media More Conversational

TA #67: 🕸️ A Writer's Hierarchy of Needs; the Most Important Skills of 2020 Leaders

TA #66: 🐝 Why Imposter Syndrome Can Be Your BFF; Not All Buzzwords Are Lousy

TA #65: 📞 The Best CTA (+ Why It Works); 40 Writing Tips

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