www.ExactingEditor.com/BeyondMe.html

Grab An Audience
by Reaching Past Yourself
 

Rebecca West (1892-1983) burst onto the London literary scene as a radical feminist. She endured by rarely letting ideology get the better of insight. She was both a master stylist and rigorous logician. Digesting her book about traitors to England during the 1940s, a New York Times reviewer said "she writes with such force as to make most male writers appear effeminate." Her essays and novels spanned seven decades. In every sense of the word (West even produced a biography of Saint Augustine), she was a writer. And, regarding her own craft, she wrote:

My skepticism long ago led me to the belief that writers write for themselves and not for their readers, and that art has nothing to do with communication between person and person, but only between different parts of a person’s mind.

If she lived by the above -- about the talker and listener both being inside’s one head -- West was extremely fortunate. Why? Because she somehow spoke for millions without having to listen to them -- without having to do much more than report the conversation "going on upstairs."

But I don’t believe she functioned that way, at least not most of the time. Even if she did, for you and me to let "different parts of our mind" communicate with one another -- on paper and in public -- is risky. Unless we have extraordinary powers of both perception and description, such self-talk is likely to be neither profitable nor prophet-able.

No question that originality -- of insight, of reporting, of proposing -- begins with you. But, unless you are outstandingly original and perceptive, the writing has to morph into a product or at least a service. A self-published book can be defined as a "product," which invites the question: Who is being served?

Distinguishing Finders from Seekers

I’ve known many bright people who assumed their own "search" would inspire an audience to wander, alongside them, from place to place in a search for truth. Or the next truth. Or the Holy Grail. Or the Theory of all Theories. Early in life, they are asking How can I make sense of what has been confusing to so many others? -- or some variant of that.

In the Myers-Briggs line-up, this type tends to be an Intuitive Thinker (NT). I suspect that accomplished scientists and ideological fanatics both emanate from this paradigm-driven sector. They want to see the big picture -- and the strongest among them set out to try to "paint" a brand new picture. The weak ones latch on to someone else’s framework and turn it into a substitute religion; they start off looking for a new landscape and end up "framed."

The ones I’ve known -- nominally writers, but primarily people captivated by concepts and visions -- had a problem. They used the written word to reflect back on their search -- in a sense, much of their writing functioned as a mirror. And the reason I interacted with so many is because I had the same problem, right through 2000. Sidestepping the gory details, here are the three things I have since gotten quite clear on:

First, hardly anyone wants to go on the search with you. Those few who do, they are fellow hobbyists. They are not a paying market, nor will they serve you well as a proto-audience. Why not? Because they have the same assumptions you do, including the notion that researching and writing for free are fine. Only if you’re content to entertain this small group while informing and entertaining yourself should you stick with them.

Second, the point is not to search. Searching is at best a means, one that should bring you to at least one "find." If you intend to make your written words into a product or service, you need to have already found something: Either big and inspirational, or not so big but definitely useful. "Finding" the next piece of some puzzle isn’t enough. Shoot for an image or landscape that helps your audience leap out of its own "puzzlement."

Third, once you have found that something -- the sharpened landscape, the unifying theory, the better mousetrap -- the next question is: Have you discovered something new, or did you latch on to something owned by someone else (intellectually owned, that is)? Where’s the originality? If not in the substance, then is the "new" in the application? In the targeting? In a modernization or popularization?

Confessions of a "Found" Searcher

As a lifelong NT, I’m a sucker for new ideas, or at least new perspectives that don’t do too much violence to my classical values. But this is a website about writing and editing, not about religion or being a private detective. If you intend to be a professional in your publications, you’ve got to focus on the finding and the applying. The search is part of this process, but it’s completed early and is almost always an "off-stage" endeavor. When the floodlights go on, you need to have found something valuable or useful, and be ready to demonstrate or at least display it.

About the only way to make a "search" profitable is to turn it into a participatory game. Where in the world is Carmen San Diego? That was a PBS show for the younger set, but it created a repeating process that drew them in by the tens of thousands. The downside? To achieve that kind of excitement and interaction usually calls for a product other than a book.

If you press ‘em hard enough, some folks will admit that being expected to "find" something actually ruins the search. They agree with Wayne Dyer’s profound quip that "the journey is the destination." These people make fascinating conversationalists, but terrible marketers (apart from Dyer himself). If you are into searching, then keep a diary, and only think of publishing any part of it after you have found something -- I said think of publishing the excerpt, not go ahead and do.

Before going public, ask: Who cares? What might this thing actually be good for? Am I echoing someone else, or breaking off part of that person’s idea in a way that an audience will applaud and pay money for? Exactly who do I see in the front row applauding as I explain or facilitate this thing? And what’s a cheap way to test whether I am onto something more than a hallucination?

Success is Something Given to You by Others

For years I sought solace in paradigmatic substance. Found a lot of it, too. During the 1990s, I logged serious time with Michael Rothschild (founder of the bionomics movement); Lewis J. Perlman (whose introversion was so pronounced he wanted to use digital networks to abolish schools); George Gilder (who soared with his "telecosm" before sliding into a financial and credibility telechasm); and finally generational authors Howe & Strauss (whose method of sociological time travel is so powerful it stuns most hearers into turning down the volume or changing the channel).

In October 2000, fed up with producing text people could neither decipher not deploy, I stumbled upon Focus by Al Ries. This ended the search for paradigms. What was needed, according to master marketeer Ries, was something far simpler, perhaps as basic as a single word: "If you want to be famous in life as well as death, you should [own] a word in the mind. That’s true of an individual; it’s also true of a company."

He means your market or constituency should be helped to look at you and think [fill in the blank] -- a word or phrase that condenses your talent and value. Forget buzzwords like "quality" or "excellence." Go for the rare mix of originality and focus. "It’s not your leadership that matters. What matters is owning the word in the prospect’s mind that defines the category. This is the residual effect of leadership, and it’s the most powerful way to dominate a category."

Ries’s longtime partner was Jack Trout, whose 1999 book The Power of Simplicity also came in very handy as reorientation:

Trying harder, believing in yourself, walking on fire, and saying yes I can are not steps up the ladder of success. The surprising truth is that success does not spring from anything inside yourself at all. Success is something given to you by others. When you focus on yourself, you have only one ticket on the race. By expanding your horizon to include others, you greatly increase the odds in your favor.

If you expect to make a living writing about ideas, download the works of Al Ries and/or Jack Trout -- and get re-reoriented. If you need a conceptual way of making the world sensible or logical to you, speed up that search and conduct 95% of it in private. Then let your written output (a) become understandable as well as authentic; (b) take on some aspect of service; and (c) pass the marketing hurdle. A plus B will likely get you to C.

Drucker the Anomaly

The only author I’m familiar with who routinely delivered substance and service in one career is Peter Drucker. He carried out the Al Ries doctrine on "create a category" and "own a word" 20 years before Ries and Trout staked their own claim to the word "positioning." Drucker’s word? Management. I devoured his books long before getting clear on the principles behind this essay. Lately I have gone back to Drucker, less for his ideas, and more for his self-management. Specifically, on how to do consulting, a typically misunderstood form of service.

Starting 66 years ago, he wrote two sets of books. Either set by itself would amount to a profound career of thinking and publishing. One set is characterized by The Age of Discontinuity, The Frontiers of Management and Post-Capitalist America. The other set -- built around his work as a consultant -- is typified by The Effective Executive along with the magnificent 1973 tome Management.

The first set focused on the big picture and "substance." The second set aimed to serve a much smaller slice of humanity -- the part Drucker got to know by being a consultant.

In 2001, Jack Beatty published a solid book (apart from its typos) called The World According to Drucker. In 1976, John H. Tarrant offered a less rigorous, but in the end more practical, book called Drucker: The Man Who Invented the Corporate Society. Tarrant’s book is out of print, and the only place I ever saw it was in Powell’s Bookstore in downtown Portland.

If you are out to build a career advising and facilitating others, either book is valuable. Each one shows how Drucker went about the business of serving clients -- CEOs, decision-makers, planners -- as well as future-minded audiences who’d never work with him directly. But Tarrant uses several chapters to portray Drucker going about the work of consulting. Among all the snapshot-style quotes in that 1976 book, I took this one to heart:

The contribution I make to a client is basically to be very stupid and very dense; ask simple, fundamental questions; demand that you be thoughtful with the answers; and demand that you make decisions on what’s important... The greatest contribution I make isn’t what happens in this room. It’s when I sit down and write [the client] a letter, a week or two later. Sometimes the letter is one page, sometimes it’s 50 pages...

In talking with Tarrant, Drucker also deals with his other side -- his big-picture, explain-it-to-the-world side, which has animated roughly half his books:

"I have been able to see how things work, and this surprised me, because I never considered myself to have any gift in that area. And another thing that surprises me is the satisfaction that I’m getting out of making things work. I can connect unlikely facts and trends -- probably because of the need to make a little information go a long way... I have a journalist’s kind of feel for what makes sense and what doesn’t. I’m better about things that about people. I’m more interested in people than in ideas, but I’m better at ideas."

I suspect he learned to serve a wider readership with "ideas" because he figured out how to serve clients and companies with letters (or memos) that were pertinent, original and effective. By demanding they take action on their own stated aspirations, in response to his consulting, he also placed big demands on himself.

The Finding, the Value, and the Test

Don’t you get it? You are listening to a lapsed NT! The Exacting Editor is no longer in the market for new truth. He hopes you have got your eye on some, and might be ready to help you bring it to market. But don’t proceed primarily for your own enjoyment. Don’t go around reassembling the ideas of others and imagine this "adds value." Don’t write because you think others deserve to hear "different parts of your mind" conversing with each other.

Drucker was big on figuring out what the right question is. Given that the goal of this essay is to redirect young writers away from self-expression and toward various forms of service, the right question is not "what are you searching for?" Instead, it’s "what have you found, to whom should it be valuable, and how can we test that premise?"

What? You can’t handle that kind of self-probe this week? Well then, try some inspirational escapism until you have built up more strength. This essay will do okay to end where it started: I’m content to introduce any aspiring author or social critic to the astonishing life and works of...Rebecca West.

http://partners.nytimes.com/books/00/09/10/specials/west.html

© 2005, Gregorsky Editorial Services