How to Be a Writing God, Beth Dunn Keynote

Yeah. So about that bit, how to be a writing God. I just want to make one thing perfectly clear from the start. I am not a writing God. But like a lot of people who want to become better writers, I have my deities. I have a kind of personal pantheon, sort of interior altar of writers whom I respect, admire, and aspire to be more alike. You probably have some of your own. And what I've noticed over the years is that each of these writers has advice for people like you and me, and it shares a common thread. And it's that common thread that I want to share with you today. So who am I? My name is Beth Dunn, as you have heard, and I'm on the User experience team, or UX, if you're in a big hurry. Here at HubSpot. Here, metaphorically speaking, at HubSpot and on that team, I'm a writer and editor, which means something a little bit different than it might in other departments. I'm responsible for the actual words that are on the screen when you use the software at HubSpot and various other types of useful and fun copy, app, release notes, anything that's going to be kind of quirky, short, fun. And HubSpot Y is kind of my thing. And I'm not going to lie, I love my job. I am one of those really rare birds, a happy, productive writer. This is not a secret. Where I work, people kind of know this about me, that I'm kind of annoyingly happy. And so it's not that rare for people to ask me, sometimes via email, sometimes secretly, sometimes not in so many words. Beth, how can I become a better writer? And because I've lived a few years, I know that the subtext to this question is often something a little bit more along the lines of, how can I learn to hate writing just a little bit less? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but there are probably a few people in this room who feel like they've gotten the old bait and switch a little bit, right? This whole new world of inbound marketing came crashing in upon us, and a lot of us became people who had to learn how to write without our permission. This is not what we signed up for. This is not the job we applied for. But all of a sudden, everybody's supposed to be a content creation machine, right? And the thing about writing and inbound marketing is I know that blog posts get all the love, right? People thought I was doing, so they were like, oh, you're going to talk about blog posts, that's great because you love to blog makes sense. No, no, no, it's not just the blog. Post writing is a sneaky little bastard in inbound marketing. It is everywhere. It is in the offers, those ebooks, those white papers that you have to constantly crank out to get people to convert into leads. Oh, it's the words that you put on those adorable little buttons, those little calls to action. What words are you going to put there? What's going to get people to click? What are you going to say on Twitter? What are you going to say on Facebook? Is it grammatically correct? Is it the right tone? Is it the right time, the right thing to say to the right person? It's all writing. So for people who don't really like writing, this is a conundrum. But the fact of the matter is that we all have to face up to that. Words are the currency of the web. And like money, it's not just a nice to have, it's a need to have. The reason for that is that words are a proxy. Words are a stand in for the things that we as people and we as companies want to convey to the world. They do that for us. What do words do? They make us look like we're smart, sometimes smarter than we actually are. Make us look like we're really good at our jobs. Like we think things through to their logical conclusion. Like we're more helpful than that guy. Fact of the matter is, customers love good writing. The people who give you money trust good writing. They actually go completely berserk for good writing. But they don't know that that's what they're responding to. They don't know that that's what they're going crazy for. What they think they're resp. Responding to are those qualities that you've managed to convey with your good writing. So how can you become a better writer? Well, the advice that people often get and give along these lines often boils down to something very vague and non helpful, like practice, practice, practice. Well, I don't know about you, but I need a fair bit more specificity in my advice. So what I do is I go back to my pantheon of writer gods and I pull out that thread and see what it is they have to say to me. So let's check in with my first writerly God. His name is Jim. It's not his actual picture, my friend. Jim is a real person. He's a 21st century person. Spent a very successful career for 25 years working I don't know what direction in one of those skyscrapers. Right downtown in Boston as a corporate communications professional. So somebody who worked with words. But he decided when he retired that he wanted to fulfill his lifelong ambition of becoming a poet. So he enrolled in school, this fabulous leafy campus up in Vermont, to get an MFA in poetry. So he's very excited. It's the first week of classes. It's a story that Jim told me not that long ago. And he sits down with his new MFA poetry advisor, not her actual picture, and she says, jim, I am so glad you're here. I really love the poems that you submitted on your application. So why don't you tell me a little bit something about your writing process? And Jim says, I am so glad you asked. It's really kind of cool, actually. I love nature. I'm kind of a transcendentalist at heart. And so what I do is I go for walks in the woods, I go for walks by water. And when inspiration strikes, out comes a poem. And there is no channeling the muse, of course. So sometimes there's a poem a week, sometimes there's a poem a month, sometimes every six months. His advisor says, well, that's really interesting. Thanks for sharing that with me. And that works really well if you're some guy who works in a skyscraper downtown. But you are now in a prestigious MFA poetry program, and things are going to be a little bit different. Here's what you're going to do for the duration of the time that you are my student. Your first assignment, and it's an ongoing one, is to write one poem every day. Every day you will give me one poem. My friend Jim, after a short, stunned silence, says, that's impossible. One poem a day. Come on. I told you about the muse and creativity and inspiration striking. Nobody can write a poem a day. You're crazy. His advisor says, jim, it's easy. And I swear to you, this is what it's a true story. Head of the department in a prestigious MFA poetry program said to my friend Jim, all you have to do is lower your standards, change your idea of what is an acceptable output for what you're calling poem for every day, and you will be able to put out a poem every day. Write like crap if you have to, but write every day. So here's what I think you should do. Don't focus on the poem. Focus on the envelope you're going to stick it into when you put it underneath my door. Every day. Think, if you will, of yourself as a poet, athlete, and the stat that you are now tracking is envelopes, under doors, don't focus on the poem. Don't focus on whether it's a good poem or bad poem or a poem that will ever see the light of day. Focus on keeping the streak alive. Of envelopes under doors. There's a similar story told about my second writing God, Jerry Seinfeld. I probably didn't have to tell you that was who that was. We're in a nightclub and there's a young up and coming comic, and he sees Jerry Seinfeld in the back of the room and he says, I'm not going to pass up this chance. I'm going to go ask him for advice. So he goes up to him and he says, Mr. Seinfeld, what kind of advice would you give to a young upcoming comic like myself? Seinfeld says, I'm glad you asked. I have an opinion about that. Here's what you do. Go out to the store and get yourself a calendar. As big as you can get it. Big wall calendar. Put it on your wall and get a red Sharpie. Your job now is to write one joke every day. A joke a day. If you write two jokes in one day, you are not off the hook for the next day. You also have to write a joke that day. When you have written your joke for the day, you take your red Sharpie and you make an X on that day. Your job is to keep the streak alive. Your job is to track your new stat of X's on calendar days. Jerry Seinfeld. Lower your standards, basically, is what he's saying. Change your idea of what is an acceptable outcome for what you're calling a joke for every day. Write like crap every day if you have to, but write every day. It's a very similar philosophy to what's followed in National Novel Writing Month. And yes, the third deity that I'm going to talk about today is everybody who has ever participated in National Novel Writing Month. Any of my gods here today. Namaste. In National Novel Writing Month, for those who are uninitiated, we do something, and I've done it a couple of times myself, that seems impossible. You decide that during the month of November, you are going to create a first draft of a novel by the end of that month. So from November 1 to November 30, the last day of November, you are going to be writing 50,000 words. Now, this is a very steep hill to climb. And so what we focus on is the daily word count. And the daily word count breaks down to what, 1,667 words. It's not like that number is emblazoned on my brain. That's what you focus on, is you focus on hitting your daily word count and you don't focus on whether or not they are the right words or good words or words that are in the right order or will ever survive that first revision in December. You focus on hitting your daily goal for that day and then you're done. You can go to bed. It's X's on days, envelopes under doors. Write like crap every day, but write every day. Now you're probably saying, I can hear you. Beth, that's my name. If I write like crap every day for, say, six months or a year, won't I simply become somebody who writes every day but writes like crap? How do I get from here to there? I'm here to tell you that that's actually not how it works. If you do this thing, it can yield quantifiably remarkable results. I'm going to use a non writing example to illustrate that it's a big moment for me. This is me a year ago in June of 2012, fairly out of shape and overweight. And I decided for the 17 billionth time that I was going to get in shape and get healthy. And I decided I was going to do that by becoming a runner. Any runners in the room, Any failed runners, people who hate running? That was me. I had done the couch to 5k business, for lack of a more gentle term, a couple of times, gritted my way through it, did the 5k, threw out the sneaker, said, I'll never do that again, let's have a pizza. And then I would realize I needed to try it again. This time, apparently I meant business. It was a drastic situation. And so I did what people like me do in drastic situations. I downloaded an app. I use the Runkeeper app, which I know is a popular app, some of you probably use it. And what you do is it tracks your runs and it tells you how far you've run and how fast you've run and what your average pace is, which, if anybody here runs, you can see, is approximately the pace of your grandmother in a stroller. And you get to publish that on Facebook. So I did that. I did that for about two weeks and I focused on the numbers and I said, someday I won't run so slowly and I'll be able to run further than two miles. And yes, that includes warm up and cool down of walking. But then I realized this was completely demoralizing and that I could not do this anymore. I went back to my writer gods, I remembered the advice they had given me all these years ago that has never steered me wrong. And I thought, I wonder if that will work for running. What if I change my idea of what's an acceptable output for running for each day and find a proxy to track? So I started taking selfies. What? I'm a hubspotter. This is January of 2012. It's the first time I took what I started hashtagging as sweaty selfies. I just decided that I would take a picture of myself every time I successfully completed a run. It was instantly addictive. I love keeping streaks alive. I'm a completist. So I did these sweaty selfies on the bike path. I live on Cape Cod, so now I run on the Charles too. But I was too shy to. Then I did it through the fall and into the winter. It was a very cold winter this year. By the end of one year, I had amassed a fairly decent album of sweaty selfies. And what's even more important is I no longer hated running. I love running. Keeping that streak alive turned me into a runner. I've now completed a couple of 5Ks and I'm training for a 10K. And I love it. But the thing is. Thank you. The thing is, I love running. And so I know I'm never going to stop getting better at it. It's the same thing for writing. I lowered my standards. I ran like crap every day. But I ran every day. And I did lose £70. It's actually 75 now and I'm not done yet. But I mean, the point is, I love running. I'm going to keep on running. It does work for WR as well. Ten years ago, I was not an employable writer by any stretch. So I did what non employable writers do. I started a blog. And I was listening to my writer gods then as well. I decided that I wasn't going to focus on how long my blog post was, how good it was, or whether anybody would read about it or care. I focused on the publish button every single day. I said, you're going to hit that publish button. I don't care if it's one word, three words, five words, a paragraph, or a page, you're going to write every day, even if it's crap. And now I am a happy and productive writer. That's a pretty remarkable result in my book. So whether you want to be the next Walt Whitman or Jim or the next Emily Dickinson or the chair of a department in the prestigious MFA poetry program or Jerry Seinfeld, Shoot High or Jesse Owens or whatever runner you happen to admire most. That's my favorite. If you lower your standards and allow yourself to write like crap every day or run like crap every day, but keep that streak alive, you will be a writer. God, in my book.