The Write Alley

“The thing about trains,” says the conductor on the Polar Express, ” it doesn’t matter where they’re going. What matters is deciding to get on.”

I’ll be stepping off the blogging train here at The Write Alley and jumping on the holiday train until 2011! While I may slip in a post here or there (maybe one or two on New Year’s Resolutions?), I will resume my regularly blogging schedule of posts about improving your writing and using social media tools for yourself and your business in the New Year.

So light a candle, gather some friends, enjoy the stars, and have a wonderful time!

I took pages and pages of notes from Seth Godin’s talk in LA to a small intimate and devoted group of Linchpins.

And since Seth has suggested that Linchpins everywhere meet and connect today in person, I thought for today’s Tuesday Tips I’d share three ideas that stuck with me and are inspiring me the most to rev people up.

In some ways, in his talk, Seth rehashed some of the themes in his book, Linchpins. But he also built on those themes, and he applied them to specific questions that people in attendance posed for him. I promise I will share more.

But today, here are three big ideas I took away last month, the ideas that stuck with me and reverberate the most:

1. Instead of going to graduate school, spend your money on starting your own business. If you succeed, great. If you don’t, analyze what you did wrong.

2. Anything anyone might want to know is out there on the internet. Anything anyone would like to read, to view, to listen to. So why buy art or books? For a keepsake. To hold it in your hands. To share with someone else. To feel a sense of belonging.

3. Take risks. Failure is instructive.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be a linchpin and I was wondering whether it could be taught because it has come so naturally to me.

I realize it can. I’ve been coaching someone in how to become a linchpin in his office. It’s scary and it feels risky to him, but what has he got to lose? He’d like the business he works for to stay open, to keep his job. That’s only going to happen if he becomes a linchpin, because the market is changing, and the company he’s working for is not. If he’s not able to make some changes, at least he took risks and he tried, and he’ll be able to use those lessons in his next job.

So what about you? Are YOU a linchpin? Do you want to be?

In an article published on Copyblogger yesterday, fellow writing coach James Chartrand points out that for most writers, once we get going on a writing project, we know what we’re doing and we’re confident we have the tools and strategies to put together a polished product.

(Need help on developing strategies so you know your writing is right? Contact us–we’d love to coach you to confidence!)

But we all have to face that “blank” page that often chases the best ideas out of the most seasoned writer’s brain. We all write that “shitty first draft” as Anne Lamott puts it in her essay from Bird By Bird (you can read it here). Then we revise and revise it into something we’re willing to put our name on.

(And yes, we at The Write Alley can help you develop revision strategies, too!)

The biggest hurdle is getting started, getting going. Once I’m going, stay out of my way! Until I get on a roll, I struggle with the same challenges as Chartrand discusses–and I bet you do too.

So here are three strategies that will help you get your writing going: (more…)

Head Coach Gwendolyn Alley aka Art Predator aka Wine Predator was interviewed about wine writing for a documentary while attending the Wine Blogger’s Conference in Walla Walla Washington in June 2010. Here’s a blog post about it and link to see a teaser.

At the Wine Blogger's Conference last month in Walla Walla, Catavino (aka Ryan and Gabriella Opaz) invited me to sit for an interview with documentary film maker and photographer Zev Robinson. He's doing a film on the Wine Bloggers Conferences with a focus on European WBC organizers Gabriella and Ryan Opaz and Catavino. They wanted me to discuss my experiences at the three North American Wine B … Read More

via Wine Predator