 Sleepy last session of the or last afternoon of the conference crowd So hoping to pump up the volume perhaps to 11 and we will get going here today on storytelling Which I'm very passionate about I typically start my presentations with a discussion of my underwear So today will be no different When I spoke in Las Vegas, I was having huge bra strap issues So that's kind of where I went with that today I was a little worried about getting here on time because I was trapped in my spanks in the upstairs bathroom So I think that I have solved that now. I'm not gonna breathe I'm not gonna drink any more water and I think we'll be ready to go. So again, my name is Cindy Reid I am a writer. I walk a lot. So I guess I can't do that today I'm a writer. Let's see writer blogger speaker teacher I've been teaching writing since the Cold War and I hope that I can impart some of that value to you guys Today what I am most passionate about is teaching bloggers how to write stories to engage their readers There's actually some really cool science behind this Thomas still be science. I always want to shut up science and then at some cross nobody knows what I'm talking about So anyway, Princeton did a study a few years back where they did They used, you know Electros or whatever and they synced up the brains of people telling stories and people listening to stories And a really remarkable thing happened as the teller was relating the story the same parts of the listener's brain We're lighting up memory language sensory perception you know visuals and Experiences it's a really powerful thing when the brains actually synchronized like if you have little Doppler raiders of the brains The same colors should be going on in the two parts So that's the kind of power that you want to bring to your blog You want your readers to have that same engagement when you can synchronize the brains of you and your readers? That is pretty amazing So why what's gonna happen if you tell stories and engage people people are gonna stay You're gonna have more time on page people are gonna dig through your archives They want to look and find out more about you They are going to share your stuff with your their friends and Then they will tell their friends and so on and so on and they're gonna return because now you're a human you're an actual literal person and not just some Company or some individual giving instructions behind the ether of the series of tubes that make up our internet The story is also persuasive I mean you can't swing a dead cat on copy blogger or content marketing Institute without someone writing about Branding using storytelling so for your business again, so you're not anonymous like everybody else you stand out by creating Your personal brand story and that sells So what do I mean a by story? I'm not talking about fairy tales once upon a time this happened war and peace We are talking about creative nonfiction storytelling and the story equation when we do creative nonfiction We're borrowing the best elements of fiction and bringing it into our nonfiction writing so that it reads like fiction The elements are and this could be like a whole entire I'm pointing at my screen because this whole Ted talk thing is really new to me I've never spoken with the screens that I can't point it So this whole equation conflict plus narrative structure is like a year-long course in writing and we're gonna do it in 29 minutes So we're gonna talk about conflict first the story has that stuff happening. That's interesting conflict is not you know Boxing it's not people fighting. It's something happening an experience happening people changing It could be an internal struggle It could just be tension in an entertaining thing that happened to you But it has to matter to you and it has to matter to the reader The best way for me to teach about what conflict is is to tell you what it isn't Because without conflict you have no story So story is much more than just an emotion or an idea That's a diary That's your artist way pages that you write in the morning and those things have value They have value to you personally. I mean psychology studies have shown that that helps to calm people almost like meditation But it's not a story if you post it on your blog It may have value, but it's not the sort of thing that's going to engage other people So I was sad or angry or elated. It's not a story. Here's an example Gardening is peaceful. I Like gardening. I hate gardening. That's just an emotion That's how you feel about gardening, but you need to turn it into a story in order for it to engage So here's in the opposite as my life spiraled into chaos I tended my garden the one constant keeping my soul intact That leads you to a lot more experiences that allows for transformation of character of emotions and for action to happen The story is more than a sales picked how many people here have business blogs or blogs that they hope to sell things off of Yes, so and I'm gonna pick on web designers here I know there's probably a lot of web designers here But what I find when I go to web designer sites is that they all look the same, you know Use our services because these are the gold standard. These are the things we do There's bullet points. There's an about us page, but they all look the same Again, if your website looks the same as other people, you're not memorable You are anonymous and you they're not going to remember to come back to you, but if you use Your sales page to tell stories then you become a real human being somebody they want to work with so here Etsy Etsy scarves by my scarves and Etsy because they're awesome And I am one of one zillion people knitting scarves and hawking them on Etsy Are you gonna remember that person? You know, I have awesome scarves or are you gonna come to the site that talks about why she knits or heat? I perched on a rickety stool Memorizing the way my grandmother's leathered hands scraped the wool between the carding boards Now you're into her motivation her experiences. There's room for you to learn more about her and her knitting. I Really should say here she unknitting a knitting is like a huge thing. I'm from Asheville like everyone is knitting everywhere in Asheville Story is also not simply reporting facts and again, there's a place for all these things. There's the police blotter You just want facts. You don't need a story about, you know, the burglar's back history necessarily So chronologies straight reporting and instructions all not stories because there's no conflict. I tend to see this most Travel bloggers and DIY bloggers travel bloggers will give you an itinerary here. We went and here's some cool pictures Here we went next dinner was good. I felt good about the dinner, you know, whatever or you get DIY blogs Where it's a step-by-step tutorial There are so many stories on a travel blog and then you could break that down into 30 posts And we all know that our blogs are content hungry So why have just one straight itinerary when you could have a series? You could even put a menu tab, you know Tripped to I was speaking to someone yesterday who went to Portland and had an awesome Trip out there and wrote about it. You could have that as a special tab So when people come to your site, you're the expert on Portland and you have all these engaging stories to tell about it So what is not a conflict? Evan's sixth birthday party Yay, it's a happy birthday party. Everybody came. They were excited for Evan's sixth birthday party We games we had awesome cake everybody get a goodie bag and they left and everybody was happy Nothing happened It's not a story Don't be Evan's birthday party and again I see this in parenting blogs often people who want to put in a lot of affiliate links to the goodie bag materials The caterer, you know all the things that happened people, you know, they're gonna be bored by just reading about a straight Chronology of what happened. So if you make an interesting story if there was some tension did Evan throw up Did you suddenly feel? Nostalgic about when Evan was a baby and this was a transformation for you as a parent kind of write a passage Lots of things could have been in there to create that tension and conflict, but it's just not going to be interesting unless you do that So That is what is conflict and what is not conflict. So how do we tell these stories on our blog? well You see studies of what people actually read or those heat maps of where their eyes go on a blog You don't have a lot of time You want to tell your story in a flash? About 500 words is a good blog size post It's called flash nonfiction and it's what I specialize in it is not telling your story quickly it is not taking that trip to Portland jamming it into 500 words and You know getting everything out like that It is telling instead a story with one core concept at a time Breaking down that trip into components so you can tell stories that will fill your blog for perhaps a few weeks So you edit until your story is blog sized. It's like fun sized It's like the Snickers bag you buy and then eat before Halloween and then you have to buy it again and hide it from your children So it's about 400 to 600 words How do you find the one core concept? Let's break it down again Cindy with the Etsy scarves here. They are we're gonna break down these Etsy scarves into a bunch of stories That the seller could talk about I've done three categories here wool dies and knitting and remember this person lives in Asheville How many people have been to Asheville or nobody? Yeah? Okay, so you know you know my people all right So the wall she probably sheared the sheep that lived in her backyard and ate the organic grain that she grew And she can talk about the sheep and their personalities and what it was like the shearing process She can also tell that story. I mentioned before about the grandma teaching her all about wool and all about knitting The dies because she lives in Asheville. She harvests them, you know ecologically or environmentally sustainably She has learned witch barriers to use perhaps from her personal shaman And she harvests the berries on hikes in the beautiful blue ridge mountains Finally knitting as a process How does she choose her patterns? Is she inspired by art by the colors in a garden? All of those things are stories of places she went and what happened on those trips and how it inspired her as An artist and finally the process of knitting as mindful meditation So many possible posts from that particular store So conflict we're telling it in a flash the second part of that story equation remember conflict plus narrative structure Here we are in narrative structure story requires structure What you want to avoid Is what I call I hope my dad never watches this if it's videoed what I called the So I says to the guy I says kind of story If you were ever captive at the dinner table in my house You heard many of these and he was a salesman So there was a lot of stories about selling welding supplies where he started out So I says to the guy I says that is not a story. That's how we talk We do a lot of you know vocal ticks. We go on tangents. We are boring on occasion What story is is narrative and what narrative means is that we have a beginning a middle and an end But Cindy I can't do that in 500 words, you know that like takes a lot more time But remember we're doing it in one core concept at a time so you can do it Here's the beginning one way that you edit out words is by starting when your story starts And what I mean by that is don't go all the way back in time to set it up with exposition and backstory You can do that if you're writing a play or writing a novel even then it's kind of boring to do it It's better to weave it in you want to start exactly when your story starts So you don't have that paragraph of introduction either. This isn't toast masters We're not going to tell them what we're going to tell them tell them and then tell them what we told them We're just going to tell them And actually we're just going to show them when I get you know showed them tell So then what I like personally is a short first paragraph a short first sentence. That's my style your style may be different What you want is any kind of narrative hook The first sentence grabs them and the only purpose of the first sentence Is to make them read the second sentence and so on onto your blog There's lots of ways to create a great narrative hook that will engage your reader a line of dialogue is a great way Some interesting or unusual bit about the setting where it takes place where it makes people curious What's going to happen there? An unusual fact that's sort of mysterious that makes you want to know why that happened a very good example of that Is from the glass castle, which is janette wall's memoir. Has anybody read it? Yeah, amazing amazing book. So this is the very first sentence of her memoir I was sitting in a taxi Wondering if I had overdressed for the evening when I looked out the window and saw mom rooting through the dumpster Lots of things that you want to know about that sentence. They're they're living these parallel lives in different classes How did that happen? It's almost like she didn't expect her mom to be in the same city Like what has happened in their relationship and in their lives to send them in these different directions where mom is dumpster diving And she's apparently in a cab off to some kind of elegant evening It's a great first sentence You want it to be punchy. That's the narrative hook This isn't an example of something I wrote. I didn't write the wordy one. I wrote the punchy one. Okay, just so you know I went back and I wrote bad for you guys So I spoke at a conference that was literally called bacon in las vegas. It's like the best conference name ever Boarding area conference. It was for travel bloggers So I could have started at the beginning of time I was flying from ashile to las vegas I connected through atlanta on my way to speak at a conference that was literally called bacon Or the story I wrote was called the exit row It's a story where I was so anxious about sitting in the exit row that you know Because you have to like lift that thing and turn it and like toss it out the whole plans depending on you That I nearly soiled myself out of fear So the whole story is about the exit row. So you start there I dropped into the window seat on the wing the exit row That's a punchy start Look we were at the beginning we're on to the middle the middle I like to call it the muddle in the middle. This is where everything happens. It's the hardest to organize It's the hardest to edit because you think everything's so important But you want to do a couple things if you've ever taken a theater class or a fiction class You know the typical plot chart, you know rising action climax falling action and resolution The middle is the rising action These are the obstacles that you need to overcome How did you clean up evans vomit while still trying to entertain the other children with juggling? You know, that's one way that you have it. I wrote a post this fall called apple hell A fun fall family tradition And so the conflict there was me against the orchard against the 102 degree weather and it was going to be a fun thing I was going to take my elementary Age daughters and we were we were going to pick apples like every other person in the Appalachian mountains But it was a horrible day and um We uh ended up having a lot of obstacles in our path to successfully bring those apples home Which everybody hated at the end of the day because nobody really likes apples. Anyway, so that's one way You can show all the obstacles. You can show characters changing and growing Characters transforming. That's the thing what I mentioned about evans parents. Maybe, you know, let's see It was an 18th birthday That's kind of you're going into that empty nest thing That is a transformation and character that is also rising action and tension So you want to create that tension to keep the reader going until you reach the climates The other key to making the middle interesting Is to show don't tell Writing teachers favorite added show don't tell. Well, what does show don't tell really mean? Mark twain one of my favorites. Don't say the old lady screamed Bring her on and let her scream So how do we bring her on and show her screaming? What is she screaming about? Is she surprised? Is she angry? Um, is she why else would people scream? Is she upset? Is she, you know, horrified about something scared? Lots of reasons and you show that by showing her behavior Maybe her hair is disheveled You show the setting that's happening around her you could describe her clothing And you also show the reactions and dialogue of other characters who are in the room All of that is so much more interesting than just saying that she screamed That's telling Here's a couple of examples. This is one of my examples Um called crowded taekwondo. Um, so this is about my time I had a hot flash and my daughter's taekwondo class women of a certain age. Am I right? It just happens sometimes and you're like so schvissy that you have to do something about it What happened at this was really unfortunate because I have this favorite target. It's a snap-up Plano shirt And usually I wear a t-shirt under it. It's like it's so hot. I just ripped open the snaps, but unfortunately that day I had not worn the t-shirt. It's thereby flashing the entire dojang or whatever they call it So how I started this story was with a little bit of showing about the setting I could have told people it was crowded at my daughter's taekwondo class You know what it feels like to be crowded, you know, whatever, but I showed instead The backside of a backpack dad poked into me uncomfortably adjacent to my face Like you're feeling like you're going to have a hot flush right now, right? You know, you know, you've had a lot more feeling of claustrophobia Here's another one from my friend louise ducca. She's a beautiful writer She could have just said my grandma gave me her old car, but look what she does She shows using character development She was wide-hipped and thirsty and I called her bertha after the grateful debt song A two-town 72 cutlass handed down from my grandma She's turned that car into a character into her in her story Now we're at the end. Now we're at the end. Okay. So in life what we want is peace and serenity That's why there's so many yoga studios. We want to be centered. We want to, you know, get away from all the stress But in stories once you reach that point of equilibrium Your story's over. You're done So when equilibrium is achieved stop telling your story Do not be tempted to do these three things To show both the screens. I feel like I need to do that. No one to stop The first one to do is the one on the um No summing up because that goes back to our toast masters thing You don't need to have a summary paragraph telling everybody what you just told them. They read it if you wrote it well They know what you told them what you've shown them How you've made them feel the mood and the tone of the story how it will linger in their minds It's not story. It's something that can be edited out to get you to your 500 words No neat bows on the ebbside This is something I see in parenting blogs a lot. So say you're writing a story about a really horrible day with your kids I mean imagine that a horrible day with your kids like apple picking for example Suppose that, you know, you were out and you were in the minivan. The kids got sick. They were arguing It was a terrible day. You were exhausted. It was relentless and you're telling a story about this But then the writer gets to the end And thinks Everyone's gonna think i'm a horrible parent and I hate my children And so they don't trust the reader to understand the story that they've told It's a hard day, you know parenting is hard, but I still love my kids So they write something like this and that's why motherhood is the hardest job I'll ever love It's so inauthentic I mean you basically negated the entire awesome story that you've told the real story that you've told the urma bomb back version of parenting Which is amazing and you've made it something that's less authentic Um, so don't do that. Don't tie everything up in a neat bow Like I was saying before the stories that linger the most in our minds Maybe have a little bit of an open ending. Maybe we wonder what happened next or what how they felt next Trust your reader to kind of figure that out or to apply it to their own life That's what good writing is about it's a dialogue between the reader and the writer And finally no navel gazing what that is is telling the readers what the story meant to you the writer And I have an example of that. This is a bad example of my writing so It's in an accident And it was traumatic and I had my daughter in the back seat and someone was actually thrown against our car So this isn't a funny story And um, so my daughter was in the back seat So I pulled over and I stopped but I was afraid to help Because I was more worried about her So I wrote the post about it and at the end I'm sorry. It's not a funny story, but this is such a horrible paragraph at the end I stopped and I thought should I have done more Aren't we defined by the choices we make in the blink of an eye? It's just like it's so overwrought. It's not story. It's me telling you how I feel about the incident that happened So I actually cheated and like a year later. I went in and added this other ending to it I left this one in because you know, I'm not stalling. I'm not erasing the past So that line is still in there But I went back and I wrote this other line that said when the local news called today I declined to be interviewed on camera that story that ended the story And then I trust you to figure out how I felt or you can think about whether my choices were right or wrong Or how you might have behaved in that situation Follow the coca Chanel rule. This is my last rule about endings of your story If you know coca Chanel, she was a designer. She was usually draped in ropes and ropes of necklaces and her famous line is when accessory Accessorizing always take off the last thing you put on So when you go back look at the end of your story and think Is that story or am I adding something on my navel gazing? Am I putting in a neat bow or am I summing up and lop that off Now for coca Chanel, I mean she had so much jewelry on and all of her pictures I like can't imagine what the pre exit Coco Chanel must have looked like I mean like maybe she had like a little pinky ring that she removed You know, but anyway, that's her favorite her famous adage And I want you to follow that and and ignore the reality of who coca Chanel was and what she wore Number one question I get as a writing instructor How do I find my voice? What is my authentic voice? First of all, let's define what voice is Voice is making your story sound like you And making your story sound like what's in your head, which is a much harder thing to do We all have great stuff like when I'm driving in the car I I could write like the best blog post ever and then I get home and like You know, like what words was I having it sounds so much better in your head So really the art of finding your voice is getting that on paper the way that you want it Everybody says write like you talk Um again, you want to avoid the so I says to the guy I says Don't write like you talk because we don't talk in tight little narratives All right, write like you are discover who you are as a person and then you'll find your voice So how do you discover your voice? It's like it's hiding somewhere It's like where is it? Is it under the table? Is it behind the ottoman where my three-year-old hides every time and it's always surprised that I find them there? It's my voice over there. Um, you can look at a couple things to help you figure out what your voice is First of all your personality Are you a formal person? Are you sarcastic Are you a very centered person? All of those things contribute to the way that you experience the world and the language that you use How do you speak? I speak really quickly I um Maybe you speak um In proper English. Maybe you have a regional dialect Maybe you use a lot of slang So you want to bring those things in and grammar is important But it's not always important if you speak in slang or a regional dialect you want to use that that's who you are That's your voice. I'm originally from minnesota where we say things like okay So you bring home cookies and you say are those store button cookies? Because they were cookies that were purchased at the store as opposed to homemade So store button is not grammatically correct, but it's what we say So if I was telling a story of my childhood, I would say store button cookies Or whatever your regional dialect might be Think about how your mind works My mind races So I tend to in my stories make a lot of connections different places and then hopefully tie it all together at the end If you are a more logical thinker Your stories may will typically have a more linear fashion. You may tell them more slowly Your core concepts may be narrower than my core concepts where I want to make all these different connections You also want to think about your focus The things that are the building blocks of story are really plot dialogue character and setting So what do you remember when you go to an event suppose you went to word camp and you get home Do you remember the things that happened the events the action Do you remember your conversations with people and what they were like? What was their essence or do you remember what people wore? I always remember what people wore Or you know the setting that you were in Describing the room how it was like at the bar last night All of those things are going to affect the balance of information that you including your story If you are plot driven you're steven king You're axing out everything that is not plot driving your plot forward If you are someone who Likes character and dialogue. That's what I tend to think in is dialogue You're going to have more of a balance towards that. I mean you always need plot You always need all of these things, but it's a different balance depending on where your focus is Here's a couple of examples of voice I have an informal voice. This is from my blog the reester speaks. This is apple hell. Okay, so here's this We stood in line behind all of america This was in what I call the um the check out barn of sorrow A woman dripping with perspiration and toddlers learned the hard way that the archer had only took cash A man towed a radio flyer wagon overflowing with apples The duggers couldn't have eaten that many apples in a lifetime Here's my friend bill dameron a lyrical voice. It's lovely writing. I could never write this way It's not my personality, but he actually thinks in imagery This is when he first said I love you to his partner now husband When we drive along the rocky coast of main and watch the green ocean swell Like it is a living being larger than eternity. I do not say it He doesn't say he loves him. It's a beautiful post And finally michelle longo another excellent blogger. She's got a very minimalist voice She's not having way, you know, she's not only using words that have three and four letters But it's much more minimalist than a lot of other writers Here's one about the summer. They didn't have air conditioning because funds were tight My mother would twist her hair at the nape Secure it with one barrette and walk around with a wet washcloth on her neck If I aggravated her she'd simply say michelle it's hot So we've learned about conflict having interesting things happen We're not going to write Evan's birthday party. We've learned how to structure our story and we are on the way to discovering our voice So what's my takeaway? What's my one core concept for you guys? Every person has a story to tell it's how we connect as humans It is important to share them and you would be selfish jerks not to put them on your blog So what's your story questions? Yes About Yes, exactly exactly that's starting a story way early like the salmon we're spawning Over here and then your your story's about fishing. So you really don't want to start back there. Are the questions? Yes Sure, the question is what if you are doing product reviews? And how can you incorporate some of these qualities of stories such as conflict into reviewing? What's something that you review a dog bed? Okay, so how would you do it now? Okay Okay Okay, so those are all the questions you're answering. Do they flatten easily? Are they washable? Do they support large dogs? I have a st. Bernard. So I totally understand this There's stories to tell in there. I mean you're going to test it on your dogs, right? So that's the story you're going to try to shove it into your washing machine That is a conflict. Does it work that way? Do you have to beat it with one of those old-fashioned beaters to try to get the stuff out? Are you constantly for breezing it because you can't you know make it clean? So there are a lot of ways to enter into that just the process of you reviewing something Is interesting because you are taking actions and learning and relaying what you've done Yes Sure, the question is about taking the storytelling format and applying it to customer testimonials And in this case the question asker, what's your name? Leslie is saying that they use an interview like a questionnaire for them And the stories or information tends to come out sounding the same First of all, you might want to tweak your questionnaire a little bit tailored Individually to the people that you're talking to about their experience But that's what it should be about is their experience of working with your Company and that's different for every person that comes through and they will remember different things And they will have had a different service performed for them and you can create a story around what those unique things are More questions. Yes. I don't think so. What was your traffic on the original post? It was Okay, you might want to do something like again put the tab up there Now I have this portland tab and you can break it down into categories that way You could also use it as a list builder Use that giant post or you know Chapterize it or something make a little ebook sign up for your list get this free thing all this information about portland in story form Where you have an index of all the things you spoke about it might be more Accessible to people than trying to scroll through your your 2000 word post. Yes. She was my portland example She I had lunch with her for like two minutes yesterday. And now you're in my speech Other questions. Yes The question is about you have let's say a client who wants you to Detail everything that happened at a conference. The speaker spoke they spoke about this You know, we had the sponsor after party this happened, whatever So you're a little bit client driven What you need to do is kind of sell them on what's going to be more interesting I think the biggest thing there is to tell them. Let's do it a post at a time It's better for them Promotion wise if they want to promote it later, they have all this information that's going out at separate times to their list You know, they've engaged in a dialogue for longer But also just to tell them that you know this really great thing happened I think we should talk about this speaker's background and how she came to be speaking here And that's more interesting. You've got a character development there Why she's speaking on this why she's so passionate about it But it is when you're working for a client it is a sales job to get them to do this. Yes in the back Thank you Sure, let me address the second part first, which is how to bring to life those tutorials Think about julia child cooking Like it was hysterical, you know She talked about all the things that were going on and she dropped the bird and all the things that happened or look at There's a lot of cookbooks out there. I'm just using cooking for one thing Where they tell a story about the recipe. Where did you discover the recipe? You know, was it handed down to you? Where did you get the ingredients? Was there some kind of interaction there? Did you eat this first in a different country and you had to hunt down where you found it? There's lots of stories behind the food that we eat food is one of those cultural connections that goes deep like story The first part of what you said is do I have more resources and yes, I do I do right here resources for writers. I'm going to pop these up into slideshare. I'll tweet out the link Um, I've got you an editing process thing here proofreading checklist My favorite resources on writing number one here is on writing by steven king I have never read a steven king book because I don't like to be terrified This is the best book on writing that I have ever read And resources on grammar. There's some elements of style every writer has to have it and then there's two Websites at the bottom that I particularly like grammar girl is awesome And then yeah, that's all of them So we have to go back to this picture of me because look at I missed my I had these long hair and I got it cut I really kind of miss it and also I was supposed to be wearing that necklace today It's kind of my lucky necklace, but I forgot it at home And I went to target and shockingly the quality and selection of necklaces that target is not that good So we can imagine that I've got this long hair and I'm wearing that necklace. All right other questions But I digress. Yes in the back Right, right. I think one thing you can do is back to the customer testimonials You can use their stories about working with you Another thing when you're doing something like that where it is a technical field and there is technical information to impart Is think more on the lines of your Business as a brand that has a story. It's probably going to go more into And about us page. You might have a ceo blog that's attached to it that tells stories You know features the employees features different projects that you're doing So there's going to be the basic stuff in there of the how-to's But arrest surrounding that in the business. There's lots of stories to tell to branch yourself Uh, what time am I at? Oh, we've got plenty of time more questions. Yes Voice. Yes Your voice is the snarky voice or you're reading snarky voice Okay, there's a place for that Snark so I can tell you about that you have to write who you are if you're trying to write For what you think is popular You won't be successful because it's your readers are going to know right away that that's not you Um, so write who you are and what you love and how you are as a person And that's going to be genuine and you're going to try you have to trust that you will attract the people who want that Not everybody likes snark. I know that's surprising But not everybody enjoys that kind of interaction and dialogue It's very popular among a certain demographic But there are so many other demographics out there who would love to hear your voice and your stories Another thing I do with my students is have them read Different, you know blog posts in different genres and then try to write in them And find which one is most comfortable for them. So that's another way to try to find your voice Yes, I can't I can't imagine The question is how do you blend writing or making yourself this trusted expert, but also you are a flawed individual um Yeah, that's kind of my shtick really is that you know Most of the things that I write about are things that have gone terribly awry In what I've attempted to do, but you learn from the end of it You know what worked and what didn't work. So it's an interesting way to get to that story The other thing is just being honest about it You know, this is what my expertise is in and a lot of inspirational stories from people are people who have struggled You know, I got to this point because I struggled to get here You know, and you can tell those stories about fallibility and they are very very empowering for you to write and inspiring for people to read More questions. Yes Okay, you're talking like affiliate links affiliate sponsors to Okay, well that part of that goes with the deal that you make with them Like I would always be careful to make a deal where that you still can write independently You know about how you feel that you don't feel hemmed in like, um, it's it's It's a difficult line To try you really in your contract with them need to kind of narrow down what their expectations are Do they want you to mention the product so many times whatever, but hopefully you can still weave around Say you're getting sponsored to go to a conference. Is that the kind of thing or sponsored on a trip? I'm sorry. I'm having everything writing for Costco, but keeping your soul Until I would do that that's more than like a one a sound bite that I can give I have time for a couple more questions Anybody Are we yeah, it's in the green Okay, I'm going to put the slideshow the slide my slideshow up on slideshare And then I'm going to tweet it out with the wc atl hashtag And um, y'all can follow it there and find it. Oh, I do. I'm not supposed to sell from the podium, but if you If you go to um, Cindy read me that is a landing page for mine. I teach online Um online classes on storytelling for bloggers. Yeah Oh, you're being filmed We'll edit that out in post It's Cindy read up me because it's like, you know, it's all about me In fact, I think I tried to put Cindy read on this like 20 times like the most e-centrical page Sure. All right. I think we're good. Thank you guys very much