The Journal Jumpstart: Getting Your Thoughts Down On Paper
It's the new year and everyone is full of resolutions as to what they aspire to do in the upcoming year. If you want to improve your writing, I can't think of any better exercise than keeping a journal. Journals are great places to just let your ideas spout and take root.
You can use a journal to:
- Reflect on events
- Organize your thoughts today
- Record your thoughts and dreams for the future
Yes, you could use a blog for this but sometimes your words are ready to be public or really shouldn't see the light of day. (I'm all for sharing the process but you usually have to go through plenty of not so wonderful thoughts to get to the good stuff.)
The trick they say is consistency. But wouldn't it be better to be consistent once a week than consistent for 30 days and then quit. So start small, take five minutes a day or even a week and commit to writing.
Get a jumpstart on writing your journal.
There are some wonderful journals out there that come with prompts which is a smart way to get you started and to make consistency a habit.
Some of my favorites include:
For more on storytelling in business, subscribe to my newsletter.
Facebook confessions.
There was an app that went around Facebook a couple of months ago that calculates how much time you’ve spent on Facebook. So with some hesitation, I clicked it.
Yikes!!!!!! Since 2009, I have spent 24 entire days on Facebook.
That’s almost a month! I could write a real book in that time.
That’s 4 days a year! That’s an average of 15 minutes a day!
And I know it’s been way more than 15 minutes a day the last few years because now I am part of more groups and the conversation is more engaging.
I love reading about Michael’s adventures in Hong Kong, catching glimpses of Alexis’s life in Buenos Aires and learning from industry groups like the Dirties and the Freelance Bitches. (I seriously have the best feed.)
Don’t get me wrong, I received one of this year’s most interesting, educational project referrals from a group on Facebook, so yes it pays to be there.
But I am going reduce my time on Facebook.
I took Facebook off my phone and my iPad to prevent me from mindlessly cruising at home when I should be interacting with my kids.
I go on once in the morning on my laptop and then turn on my favorite app, Self-Control, which blocks any site for up to 24 hours at a time. (Yes I cheat plenty.) It's been about a week. It's not easy. I think it takes 60 days to make a habit. I'll let you know how I'm doing.
That’s the best gift we can give this holiday season:
To be present.
If you liked this, subscribe to my infrequent newsletter!
Naked sketches: from rough idea to produced concept.
(Or Why I heart designers.)
As a copywriter, I am hired as the “word girl,” the girl that comes up with the snappy taglines and hilarious headlines.
Bill Bernbach, one of the original Mad Men in the 1050s, had the right idea when he started pairing art directors and copywriters to work together. Two brains can give you better ideas and rub off on each other. We would work for hours "concepting" and would sketch out a headline and rough visual and just pin it up on the walls. If we were lucky, we had a day or two to let ideas brew. The next day, we'd come back, look at the ideas on the walls and figure out the best ones to develop.
And after working with visual folk, I’ve developed skills by osmosis; I’ve learned to visualize videos, ads and digital. I’ve learned to sketch out rough ideas to convey a concept. (Of course, we leave it to the professionals to make it look really good.)
An Ocean Beach-based designer wants to send a holiday greeting to her clients in snowbound climates.
A Pantone book becomes a Spanish fan for an invite for a salsa social for designers.
A net bag for an organic fruit company has many uses beyond holding fruit.
An HR person has to be a fortune teller, magician and therapist in a video about a software.
So what's the lesson? Don't be intimidated by your inability to sketch or draw. What's really important is your ability to communicate an idea.
For more insights on creative storytelling for business, subscribe to my newsletter.
Summer reading: what to read after you're done with Cosmo.
Summer reading on creativity and branding. (Confession: It took me all year to read these books.)
Read moreWhy I hate the word content.
I really don’t like the word content.
con·tent – 1. Something contained, as in a receptacle. Often used in the plural: the contents of my desk drawer; the contents of an aerosol can.
Content is something that fills a box.
The word content is thrown all around—referring to the words and pictures and videos that fill a website. Even HBO calls their programming content.
What’s the problem with one little word?
Content commoditizes creativity.
A “content producer” sounds like a factory worker.
A beautiful design, great video, compelling writing or a stunning photo all take emotion and heart. When I write for a client, I put myself into the project.
Heart takes commitment.
Heart takes time.
Heart costs money.
And in the whole business vs. art in the design and creative fields we can’t forget that we are indeed selling things—products, services, entertainment. We have our research and our demographics and our sales funnels. But what really grabs people?
How a product or service makes them feel.
How can we use words and pictures and music to evoke feelings in the hearts of people?
Heart. <3
Like what you read? Suscribe to my newsletter for more nuggets on creativity and storytelling for business.
When online and offline collide: Sharing your Instagram shots IRL.
With 300 million users uploading 21.9 billion photos on Instagram last year, we’re taking and sharing more photos than ever before. But the funny thing is, we’re printing fewer and fewer of them. Instagram may have the highest engagement of any social network, but you can also engage people by printing out your Instagram shots. The intersection of online and offline is my favorite place to hang. Here are a couple creative ways to share your favorite photos.
An Instagram business card.
Sue B. Zimmerman is The Instagram Expert, a high-energy entrepreneur who helps growing businesses find and connect with their audiences on Instagram. Is it any surprise that her business card is an Instagram shot of her in an Instagram frame? Sue's contact information is printed on the back. These are Mini Squares printed by Social Print Studio, a fun online studio that prints your Instagram shots. (I am not an employee, I simply love their products.) And yes, several months after meeting Sue again at #smmw15, I still have her business card pinned up on my bulletin board. How's that for brand engagement?
Cards Against Banality.
Branding expert Liz Goodgold is a speaker and author of How to Speak Gooder: Brand-New Rules for Public Speaking in a Digitally Distracted World.
Liz’s talks are the epitome of “edutainment” – blending information, education, humor, and real-world examples. She is known for her Words of Lizdom, a collection of wise and punny aphorisms. As a holiday gift I designed a card set of her Words of Lizdom. (Large format Squares from Social Print Studio.) I know Liz got a big kick out of them and appreciated the personalized gift.
.
The Word Book
In the writing world, November NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month where writers commit to writing the first draft of a novel. While I couldn’t commit to writing 1,600 words a day, I could commit to writing 1 word a day. So every day for a month, I created a word image on mobile devices, using a combo of photo, Over and Brushes and posted the word image on Instagram. At the end of the month I printed a tiny book, My Favorite Words.
I sent My Favorite Words out as a holiday promo to my clients. It was a big hit, many even shared the book on Instagram. Now, over a year later, when I visit their offices, many clients have the tiny book stuck on a filing cabinet. (The back cover contains a magnet! Yep, printed by Social Print Studio.) This is the beauty of print, if you create something precious, people will keep it, providing a lasting branding message.
Do you have any crafty Instagram ideas? Share them on Instagram and tag me: @annemccoll.
If you want more insights on storytelling and creativity in business, sign up for my newsletter!
Designer Justin Skeesuck forges a new path—500 miles in a wheelchair
This year the AIGA San Diego Y Design Conference celebrated its twentieth anniversary. The regional conference is a favorite event for speakers because it’s big on heart, and this year was no exception. Among the many varied speakers and presentations, one individual story—an amazing tale of bravery, friendship, and hope—left a lasting impression that few attendees will soon forget.
AIGA San Diego president David Conover explains: “Of all the compelling speakers at our 20th Annual Y Design Conference, one in particular captured everyone’s attention,” he says. “Justin Skeesuck—designer, motivational speaker, and seasoned traveler—and best friend Patrick Gray completed the five hundred-mile ‘Way of St James’ journey in northern Spain. By definition an amazing accomplishment, but considering Justin requires a wheelchair for mobility makes the feat even more astounding.”
“There wasn’t an attendee I spoke to who wasn’t emboldened by Justin’s courageous determination and unremitting perseverance as he chronicled his astonishing passage of physical, emotional, and spiritual toil.”– Dave Conover
A designer for twenty years, Justin attended San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University before launching a successful career working with Fortune 500 companies. Gradually, his career declined as an autoimmune disease triggered by a car accident progressed over the years, causing Justin to lose the use of his legs and, more recently, his arms. When he was no longer able to work as a graphic designer, he left San Diego and moved back to his hometown in Idaho with his wife and three kids.
“After I lost about sixty percent strength in my arms, I arrived at a very scary place—a dark hole. I’m usually a pretty upbeat person. But I came to a crossroads: do I go down this dark hole or do I move forward? I said to myself, ‘This is going to suck, but I’m going to make the best of this.'”
Fast forward a couple of years. When Justin asked his best friend Patrick Gray to join him on the five hundred-mile El Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James)through the Pyrenees Mountains and the arid deserts of northern Spain, Patrick answered the only way he knew how.
“I’ll push you,” Patrick said.
Thus began a journey that would require far more than either of them could have imagined.
Lessons From the Road
Once they were on the Camino, Justin and Patrick quickly learned that they had to ask for help. Justin recalls, “I think it was an especially important lesson for Patrick. He thought he was going to push me the whole way, and it became apparent on the first day he wouldn’t be able to.”
Justin also had to learn to let go. “We’re raised to be independent in this culture. It’s just a fact now, I need other people to do just about anything.”
“We realized this was going to take more than the two of us,” he continues. “I had to be okay with being vulnerable and allowing people to help me. We all need help with something—whether it’s climbing a mountain, or in your career, your personal life, or marriage. When you allow somebody to help you they find great joy in that.”
Forging a New Path
Although Justin has spoken around the country and appeared on both the Meredith Vieira Show and the stage of TEDx, coming home to San Diego was extra special for him.
“It was really cool,” he says. “I wasn’t nervous being in front of my peers, it was exciting. In the past my disability hasn’t been at the forefront, and now it is as I am talking about my life and my experiences.”
Ron Miriello, a pillar in the San Diego design community who hired Justin as a young designer, knows Justin well, and has followed his story closely. “I find it fascinating—how do we define what it means to be a designer? Design is much more than a professional set of skills it takes to get a job,” says Ron. “It’s a point of view and perspective.”
“In Justin’s case I keep going back to the analogy of the game of Pick Up Sticks. You start removing pieces until you are left with the essential elements,” muses Ron. “That’s what happened to Justin. He’s lost use of his feet, then legs, then his arms. But he hasn’t lost his essence of being a designer.”
“I was made to be a designer, I was made to be a creative individual,” says Justin. “With the progression of my disease, especially in my arms, I’ve had to adapt. In the past, I used my creativity to solve problems for clients through design,” he adds. “Now I use my creativity in a new way. It’s the same set of skills, just used in a new way. I had to adapt and learn to use new tools. I now use voice dictation and even an eyeball tracker to do things.”
Justin has also had to make shifts in how he communicates. By putting his disability at the forefront, he admits, “I have to be more vulnerable and honest about my challenges.”
The Journey Has Just Begun
Justin and Patrick want to share their story with as many people as possible, and Justin has already appeared onstage at various universities and events around the country.
They also collaborated with emota, a San Diego-based video agency, to tell their story. emota sent a crew to Spain to film the friends’ journey for a documentary, aptly titledI’ll Push You. After raising funds for the project on Kickstarter, they expect to release the documentary by the end of the year.
Justin continues his consulting work on accessibility issues with his firm, The Disabled Traveler. He and Patrick also speak at events across the country, sharing their message of hope, community, and vulnerability.
Justin sums up the lessons he and Patrick learned along the way: “We proved that even if you have limits in your life, they don’t have to define who you are. Nothing is impossible.”
Find out more about Justin’s story at IllPushYou.com.
Photos courtesy of The Disabled Traveler.
Featured in How to live Tweet an event on Social Media Examiner.
My sketchnotes for Social Media Marketing World were featured in an article for Social Media Examiner about how to live Tweet and event to drive traffic to your website.
It pretty much sums up the benefits:
Drive targeted traffic to your site Showcase your services Generate product buzz Capture the attention of journalists Connect with influences
Sketchnotes from Social Media Marketing World #smmw15
I attended Social Media Marketing World once again and sketchnoted every session I attended. With over 100 speakers, there was usually a choice of 10 talks to choose from so I actually covered about 10% of the conference including keynotes. What were the big takeaways?
- Podcasting is big.
- Everything is video. (Hasn't every year since 2005 been year of the video?)
- Niche deep to stand out.
Sketchnotes featured by Social Media Examiner
The sketchnotes I created last year for Social Media Marketing World #smmw14 were featured this week in an article on Social Media Examiner: 26 Tips for Improving Social Media Examiner.
My sketchnotes illustrated a creative use of Slideshare. Of course, I always want to bring people back to my site but by putting the sketchnotes out on Slideshare, the collection has racked up almost 30,000 views, something that would never have happened had I only posted them on my site.
3 easy ways to combat digital distraction and get down to writing.
Some people are able to sit at their desk all day with a bowl of M&Ms, welcoming their co-workers with a blast of sweetness.
I am not that person. Put a bowl of M&Ms in front of me and I will eat them all. If I want will power, I have to put the bowl of M&Ms in another room.
The same is true for the shiny lure of social media. I am on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram for work. I am on social media for my business, but if I’m not careful, social media can be a great time suck. I have found a few apps that make it easier to limit my time on social media and get down to the business of writing.
This is a beautiful app that lets you turn off the Internet connection to your machine so you can be more productive. (Extremely useful if you are at work or a co-working space and can’t physically turn off the Internet.) You turn Freedom on and specify how long you’d like to focus and you get down to work. If for some reason you do need to get back online before your specified time is up, you can reboot your computer.
Now often, people say, “Wait, I need such and such a site open so I can do my work, or research.” If that’s the case, then you just need a little Self-Control. This handy dandy app lets you specify what web sites to block or to specify the only websites you’re able to access. Again, you can specify up to 24 hours which sites to block. SelfControl ups the ante, you can’t access your blacklisted sites until your time is up—even if you restart your computer.
Do you ever have moments where you go to a coffee shop or an empty conference room in your office and get an amazing amount of work done? Sometimes moving to a new physical location helps with your ability to focus. OmmWriter is like that. It’s a simple text editor with simple backgrounds and soothing sound effects that create a distraction-free environment that helps you focus on your writing at hand in a calm collected manner. OmmWriter isn’t a word processing program so it doesn’t have spell check and other tools. Its primary purpose is to help you get your thoughts down in a first draft. By far, one of the best things to happen in writing.
Happy writing!
If you want more insights on storytelling and creativity in business, sign up for my newsletter!
How to have a brilliant year.
How to have a brilliant year. (With a nod to James Altucher who I had the honor to sketchnote at TEDx San Diego.)
You can also download this infographic in a handy dandy 1-page book!
Happy writing!
If you want more insights on storytelling and creativity in business, sign up for my newsletter!
A chain reaction.
I had the great honor and pleasure of sketchnoting the TEDx San Diego conference. Previously I had attended the 2010 and 2011 TEDx events. (But when the event was moved to the Saturday during the holiday season I couldn't make it!) With 700 attendees, this event was much larger than the first event of 150 attendees but was able to reach a much wider audience.
If you want more insights on storytelling and creativity in business, sign up for my newsletter!
What's first: content or audience.
A fun sketch inspired by a great post by Jay Baer that talks about the relationship between content and social media.
Happy writing!
If you want more insights on storytelling and creativity in business, sign up for my newsletter!
Facing the blank page: How to get started.
Is there anything more intimidating than an 8/1/2 x 11 piece of paper or a blank screen?
Yes there is. Writing about yourself or your company.
It. Can. Take. Forever. To complete the first paragraph. You’ll edit. And edit. And edit—and never make any progress.
So what do I do when I have an assignment and don't know how to begin? Start with the middle first. Or even the end. I fill in the easy parts. Maybe it's the contact page information. Or the disclaimer part of a coupon (because everything has an expiration date.) But the important thing is to get the momentum started.
You might discover by the time you've flushed out most of your article or blog post, the beginning will become more obvious.
Happy writing!
If you want more insights on storytelling and creativity in business, sign up for my newsletter!
Sketchnotes: Filling the shopping bag.
The National Retail Federation hired me to sketch their Shop.org Merchandising Workshop at the lovely Terranea Resort. It was a fast two days. Big takeaways: share data with your whole team. And video, video, video!
I use the Brushes app on the iPad to create all of my sketchnotes. It took a while to master the app to be able to move fast. I work without a stylus for greater accuracy and control. (Probably because I am always losing them—great holiday gift idea for me.)
You can see more sketchnotes here.
Using Adobe Voice for an AIGA San Diego video.
So I am a design-challenged copywriter who wants to create a video quickly and easily. My audience: the San Diego designers of AIGA San Diego.So design matters.
Adobe Voice to the rescue. It's simple and easy to use. It's limitations is what makes it easy. (There are only a few layout options. This is to keep non-designers from making too many mistakes!)
But my wishes for Adobe Voice:
- Make it uploadable to YouTube (I would pay to be able to do this)
- If that's not possible at least let me be able to track number of views
- Let the video appear in total in Facebook feeds. Right now it just looks like a graphic. (They brand it as an Adobe Voice but is bad usability that it doesn't look like a video.)
Some recent video work.
How to Sell on eBay.I wrote scripts and suggested some animation. emota produced.
The Whys of Social Media Social media made easy. I wrote the script and storyboard.Voiceover recorded in a bathroom after a glass or two of wine. With Fandom Marketing.
A New City The center of San Diego is shifting.
What does next look like? from Anne McColl on Vimeo.
The Science of Scheduling Nurse staffing made easy. I wrote the script and sketched rough storyboard. The folks at Jacob Tyler produced this.
Who's the Most Photographed Woman in the World? Shameless self-promotion. Started as a blog post but more fun as a video.
Summertime reading.
It’s summer time. And that means more time at the beach and the pool. After surfing or swimming, if I don’t feel like reading my paperback, I pick up my iPhone and catch up on emails from some of my favorite writers. These emails are like postcards from friends, insights on what they're writing or what they find interesting.
Every week he shares his favorite things around the web which may include a few of his drawings or black art poems.
If there is one person to follow on the Internet, it's Maria Popova's Brain Pickings. (I would never get anything done if I read everything Maria wrote.) This is weekly recap of the best of Maria’s amazing Brain Pickings. A catalogue of interestingness.
(Austin suggested her.) Ann is a journalist who loves the Internet and writes for a bunch of places like The New Republic, NewYorker.com, ELLE, The Guardian and Los Angeles magazine.Ann shares her writings and her favorite articles from around the web. And pie charts. And animated gifs.
Nicole is a content strategist (And a surfer.) Her once-in-a-while missives talk about the writing life and her experiences in authoring her first book.