1/n Just attended a great webinar by @david_perell on writing on-line.

David is consistently pumping out fantastic material on twitter and his podcast, and I was not disappointed by listening for an hour.

Summarizing some quick takeaways below - thread:

2/n

First thing you need:

First thing you are going to need: a note-tasking system that he calls "The Capture Habit". If you read anything, you need to save it!

Ebooks - highlight your notes
Instapaper + IFTTT
Webpages: Liner app

3/n

Why do you need a note-taking system?

Because modern writing is not created - it's assembled.

You don't need to be original.

Prolific writers synthetize ideas of other people.

David Foster Wallace: “Books Are Made out of Books”

4/n The compounding benefits of Note-taking doesn't lie solely in the _amount_ of notes, but in the connections between them.

Note to self: finally do a deep dive on Zettelkasten

5/n Ideas worth collecting

Inspiring
Useful
Personal
Easily Lost

You should have two types of notebooks: Hot notebooks and cold notebooks.

See the explanation below for each.

6/n Hot notebooks are *action-based*

Ideas/thoughts/material that can be used in the short-term (or even right away).

These are about topics you are currently working on/interested/writing about right now.

7/n

Cold notebooks are *information based*

These are ideas you are passingly interested in, would like to (maybe) research/write about in the future.

They are a smorgasboard of 'nice to have' stuff you might or might not need later.

8/n

You can either write alone a.k.a. the Henry David Thoreau method: go to a cabin in the woods for two years, full-on hermit mode, and produce a book.

Modern writing is collaborative - rather than doing it alone, you discuss, get feedback, percolate, improve, distribute.

Collaborative writing: The Content Triangle

Start at the bottom - have a conservation, share it, get feedback, refine, create a blog post, get more feedback, refine further, etc.

Arriving at the top: collect all the info, write a book, distribute it.

Rinse/repeat.

10/n Voice Transcription

Use http://otter.ai  - better than Siri!

This is the method @david_perell and @mrsharma used to create some great written content.

They recorded then organized their discussion, turned it into an outline, and used that as a base for writing.

11/n Myths of Writing Education

Write from abundance, not scarcity. "I had the worst Writers block; but Nobody ever gets talker's block" (see previous tweet on voice transcription)

12/n Forget "writing for the teacher" - you are spending years and years writing for one person, who then puts red marks all over it. It's boring, counter-productive, demotivating, academic.

Writing should be simple and understandable, not academic.

13/n

Write CLEAR Sentences

_C_reate a rhytm
_L_ink yor sentences
_E_liminate anything that's confusing
_A_dd colorful details
_R_emove unnecessary words

14/n

Compress your ideas:

* Write the essay
* Explain it to somebody
* if something is in your writing but didn't come up in your explanation: drop it!

15/n

Don't just write words. Write music!

Combine short, medium and long sentences to create a rythm

[this doesn't work very well as a tweet - on the webinar, he read the passage below aloud (after readint text with 5-word sentences) and indeed, it makes a huge difference!]

16/n

The Story Roller-Coaster

The slide says it all!

This reminded me of the greek drama story arc, thoug that's just a big followed by a big down.

17/n

FAST writing (as taught by @david_perell) vs SLOW writing (as taught in school)

FAST Writing:

_F_ind
_A_ssemble
_S_peak
_T_each

18/n

SLOW writing (as taught in school) vs FAST writing (as taught by @david_perell)

SLOW writing:

_S_yllabus
_L_isten
_O_bserve
_W_rite

19/n “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” Same with your ideas - no way to know which ones resonate with others!

Talk to people, and you'll find out: if they get back to you, you found ideas worth refining and distributing.

20/n

Audience building is just as important as great writing.

There are plenty of writers on-line who aren't read - don't be one of those people!

Learn how to build your audience and get your message out.

Get feedback, refine, connect with more people, rinse, repeat.

21/n

Grow your audience on Open Platforms.

Build relationships on Owned Platforms.

You need a synergy between the two.

In the beginning, you need to piggyback off open platforms.

However, don't get stuck there - you might lose your work overnight (see examples below)!

22/n

As @naval put it:

"Building a following on Twitter is building a castle out of sand, as the implacable tide shifts in and out. Invest in the free and open web - blogs, podcasts, newsletters."

23/n Example of fails and successes (not) using the Open-Owned principle

- Meerkat was built off of twitter, killed by Periscope

+ Youtube was built off of MySpace

+ Instagram was built off of Twitter + Facebook

Grow on other people's open platforms.
Channel it into your own

24/n Building a Personal Monopoly

"You do not merely want to be considered the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones that do what you do." - Jerry Garcia

Make your own Kind of Music!

25/n Defining your Personal Monopoly

Do something on the intersection of various domains that is unusual, specific, experimental and complimentary - and above all, unique to YOU.

26/n

Example #1 of personal monopoly:

Of Dollars and Data - personal finance using data analysis by data scientist Nick Maggiulli ( @dollarsanddata)

27/n

Example #2 of personal monopoly:

Travel Write Draw - celebrating the unique, bold, and colorful worlds of travel, fashion, and art by Megan Morrison ( @TravelWriteDraw)

28/n

Recap: The Write of Passage Method - check it out on https://www.perell.com/write-of-passage

This was one of the best webinars I've ever been to - chock full of usable info getting my creative juices flowing!

Thanks @david_perell!