Ongoing Spirit of Gratitude--A Thanksgiving Writing Exercise

A book-writing client talked with me this week about having an ongoing spirit of gratitude for her characters. She regularly notes on paper what she appreciates about them. She also works as a newspaper reporter. Her interviews are always full of understanding of the people she profiles and their situations.

She believes this spirit of appreciation sparks unspoken cooperation between writer and subject—whether that subject is memory, imaginative, or factual.

Make use of the annual holiday of Thanksgiving for your writing exercise this week, by writing each day for 2-3 minutes about what you appreciate. This is sometimes called a gratitude journal.

Writers use gratitude journals to unblock their creativity. Gratitude is simple, easily forgotten, more powerful than expected when you practice it. With our creativity, it fosters a kind of deeper understanding and appreciation about our lives, what we specifically offer the world, what’s unique about that offering and why it matters.

Each evening before bed, list three things you felt grateful for that day. You can focus, as the book writer above does, on what you’re grateful for about your book, your characters, the topic you’re exploring. Or just your life.
Keep going with this exercise for seven days. Regular practice is key to it working.

A week from now, see what changes have come. Sometimes you’ll noticing a lightening of spirit. Maybe there will be new opportunities. More awareness of what’s actually working, what you’re doing well.

This sounds like a lightweight activity. It’s not. It’s potent. I’ve keep a gratitude journal for many years. When I forget to write in it each evening, and the days slip by without appreciation, my Inner Critic begins to strongly affect my writing. I’ve learned to appreciate this simple exercise as a way to keep myself on track as a writer and as a human being.

Happy Thanksgiving!

How to Start a Law Firm | Law Firm Blogging Part II

In my last post I showed you how to start a law firm blog. If you followed my advice, you should now have the bare bones of your new law firm blog. This lesson will probably be much shorter, but will contain some very important information.

Today we are going to discuss optimizing your law blog - in regular people speak, we are going to make it easy for Google, Yahoo, and the other search engines to tell what your blog is about so that when people search for your services the search engines will put you at the top (or at least near the top). For example, they know this site is about starting a law firm because I do things to tell it that.

If you weren't aware, most of the sites you see in the top ten positions on Google when you do a search for legal services aren't there by chance or luck. Because a lot of money is made on Google through advertising, sales, and other methods, ranking high on Google has become a bit of a science for some. Luckily, I have studied this "science" a bit and am willing to help you out. It isn't hard. It just takes a little time and some planning. So let's get started.

To begin with, you have already started optimizing your blog for Google just by picking a good title and blog address. When analyzing a site, Google tends to start at the top left hand of the page and work its way down toward the bottom right. Whatever Google sees first (the web address and title of the blog) it assumes is a good indication of what the site itself if about. That is why I suggested you use your practice area or whatever you think potential clients may search on Google as your blogger address and blog title. Don't worry, if your title isn't right, you can change it now. Just go to the Settings tab and change it - same with the description - the more keywords the better (but make sure it makes sense).

Before we go any further, you may be asking yourself, why would I be putting this information on the internet? Wouldn't I want to keep this information to myself and continue to rank high on Google (although I don't yet for my main keyword)?

The answer is twofold. First, How to Start a Law Firm is meant to be here to help you out. The purpose is to help others start and build a law practice, just like I am doing. And second, it is highly unlikely that you are in my area of the country and my area of practice and would be competing directly against me. And third, honestly, I think I can rank higher than you anyway.

Before the first post there is one other thing you can do to optimize the layout of your law firm blog quickly and easily - the "about me" section. Go to the "Layout" tab of your blog and click the edit button on the about me box. Then fill it out including as many of your law firm keywords as you can get in there, including the geographic location of your practice. For example, if I were a criminal defense attorney in Seattle, I'd write,

CMS, a Seattle DUI lawyer who will do whatever it takes to fight your criminal charges and get your life back on track.

This gets all of your keywords on all of your pages automatically - Google will see this and know what your law firm blog is about.

Now comes the fun part - your first post. Unless you really want to dive right in, I'd suggest making this an introductory post to help get your blog on the map. Here is a good example of a law firm introductory blog post. As you can see it introduces what the law firm blog is about, what it will say, and welcomes everyone in. There are also two other key aspects to this post.

First, when you are creating this post you will see a title box, to fill in the title, and "link" box, where you can put in a link. Every time you make a blog post, the link needs to have the home page of your law firm blog. For this "How to Start a Law Firm" blog, I insert http://startingalawfirm.blogspot.com each and every time. What this does is create unique pages for each of your posts. This allows each page to have its own Google "juice" and build up Google "juice" to your home page.

The second thing you will notice is that in the post there is a link to the homepage using some or all of the keywords. This is very important, and you should have at least one link back to your site (to the home page or an older post) each time you post. For my first post I linked to the home page. For this post I linked to the last post I did about starting a law firm blog.

So, your next homework assignment is to make this first post. I probably won't post for about a week, so if you want to post to your blog in the mean time make sure it is keyword rich and has the internal links. And if you are wondering wear I learned all of this, it's off a how to make money blogging site I just love (that's why I just gave the good link juice - read his site and you'll know what I'm talking about). The author offers great information on optimizing blogs (he doesn't care how you use it for the same reasons that I don't care how you use the information I am giving you - he is way out of my league). Go check it out and read it from the beginning. You can really learn a lot.

Next week - Starting a Law Firm | Getting People to Your Blog.

Related Posts:

Starting a Law Firm | Getting Ranked in Google

Starting a Law Firm | Internet Marketing 101

Writing Exercise--Pace Yourself via Expansion or Contraction

Pacing—a delicate affair in writing a book—depends on a balance of expanded and contracted moments. Good pacing creates a rhythm between the two. This week’s exercise lets you notice your natural (often unconscious) tendency of either expanding or contracting too much. If you adjust, correct, and balance, your writing will soar.

1. Set a kitchen timer for fifteen minutes. Begin to write about a childhood event that influenced you greatly. Don’t overthink this exercise, just let it rip. No editing along the way!

2. Read the piece out loud. Whenever you get interested, as you read, highlight the paragraph that pulled you in. (It’s essential to read out loud—you’re switching from a writer’s viewpoint to a reader’s.)

3. Contract (condense) the paragraph into one sentence, as short as possible, without losing the essence of the larger paragraph.

4. Now expand this one sentence into five new sentences (a new paragraph).

Which was easier for you, expansion or contraction? Think about whether this short exercise helped you see anything about your natural tendency as a writer.

5. Return to your original freewrite about the childhood experience. Select your favorite section, a paragraph or two.

6. Apply the aspect (expand or contract) that was the most difficult for you in steps 3 and 4. If you had trouble with expansion, expand the section to three or more paragraphs. If you had trouble with contraction, condense the section to half its length.

Read the new writing out loud. Can you notice the difference in flow, in music, in pacing?

Starting a Law Firm | Blogging Part 1

In today's day and age, if you don't have an internet presence you are dead. Not only are more and more people turning to the internet to find their lawyers, but creating an internet presence is so cheap and easy it is idiotic not to get yourself out on the world wide web.

If you are new to the technology game, starting your legal internet empire can be quite intimidating. So, as part of my starting a law firm information, I'm going to help walk you through starting a law firm blog and tell you how to get people to your blog. It is actually a lot easier and more straightforward than you might think. All it takes is about 30 minutes of your time and $10.95 and you can be off and running with your own blog - just like this one!

Now, if you are thinking about building your new law firm internet presence, I would make a couple of suggestions.

First, have a law firm web site set up with all of your contact information and whatever else you think might be appropriate (this is not where your blog(s) will be).

Second, be ready to set up a blog for each of your legal practice areas - pick something you like to do and get really good at it - don't generalize! And third, be ready to write some good material.

Go to www.godaddy.com and Secure Domain Names for Your Law Firm Website and Blogs

This step is easy. Go to the site, use their name search feature until you find some domain names that have your practice area in them (don't use your law firm name), and pay for them. Try not to put dashes in if possible. They aren't necessary for Google to decipher the words in your site (which is all that matters - in the end your goal is to be #1 on Google for your particular practice area in your particular state). Put keywords in the domain name that describe your practice.

For example, my two sites are seattleduidefense.blogspot.com and seattlecriminallawyer.wordpress.com. They both have keywords that people might use to find me (Seattle criminal attorney and Seattle DUI lawyer, among others).

The domain names I think cost $10.95 each. Splurge on these. If you are going into business as a solo or small firm lawyer, you are going to have these blogs for a long time. The least you can do is fork over the money to have a legit looking name. If you decide you need to save every penny, however, you can skip this step and go straight to step two - creating your FREE blogger blog.

Creating a Blogger Blog for Your New Law Firm is Easy and Fun

The first thing to do when you go to blogger is create an account. If you already have a Gmail account, you are halfway there. Just enter your Gmail address and password and you are ready to rock and roll. If not, just follow the simple directions to get started.

Once you're signed in, it is now time to start a law firm blog. Now, a word to the wise here. There are several reasons for you having this blog when starting a law firm.

First, it will help establish you as an attorney in the marketplace. Second, it will begin to establish you as an expert in your chosen field. But third, and the most important factor, it will help potential customers find you on the internet. Always keep this in the back of your head.

Naming Your Law Firm Blog

As I've suggested before, the name needs to reflect the area of the law you will be talking about. No one will be searching for CMS Law Firm, for example, but they will search for Yakima eminent domain attorney. So, in your title, you need to put the practice area of your blog, even if it is just your location and what you do - Chicago Divorce and Child Support Information for example.

Once you've done that the next box will fill in a proposed URL for you. If you have picked up your domain names you don't have to worry about this box - skip it. If you have not, check to see if the name you want is available, again inserting key words and phrases you want people to find you for, and see if it has been used yet.

If you have purchased a domain name for your new law firm blog, in the last box click the advanced blog setup link. Once there insert your title and log in to the site where you bought your domain name. That is where the rest of the information is going to be. Once you find that info., put it into the box, hit continue, pick a template, and you have just created a blog!

Setting Your New Law Firm Blog to Operate Best for You

Once you are set, you will then see three tabs on your law blog - publishing, settings, and layout. Go to Settings first. In the basic tab you will see a bunch of boxes to set up your blog. The title should already be filled in. In box two you can put a description of what your law practice blog will be about. In this box, again, you want to insert as many descriptive keywords as possible to help Google know what your blog is about. If you go to my legal blogs, linked above, you will see what I'm talking about.

After that, going down the boxes, you want to make sure the blog is listed in the directory, that search engines can find your blog, that quick editing is on, and that email post links aren't allowed and this is not adult content (these are all the default settings for Blogger - you shouldn't have to change anything).

Skip the publishing tab and head into the formatting tab. Once there, switch the number of posts to one (this will show only one post on the home page of your blog, allowing each post to eventually become its own web page - important for later search engine domination). Next, pick whichever date format you'd like. I like to have something with the day, month, and year in it because as time goes by people will be able to see how long you've been at it - time equals experience in a lot of people's eyes (although you know that's not necessarily true right?!).

You can continue to pick your preferences (if you don't know what it is leave it alone) until you get to the box labeled "show link fields." On that box, switch the no to yes. This will allow you to create a separate link for each of your blog posts, making each post a separate page and increasing your internet presence. The next box you can leave the same, and if you prefer you can enter some text into the post template. This would be a good place for a signature or something of that sort. Whatever you put in here will be inserted into every post you do.

On the comments tab I'd do the following: show comments; anyone can comment; full page comment form placement; new posts have comments; hide backlinks; new posts have backlinks; leave the time stamp the same; no comment message; always have comment moderation; yes to word verification; and leave the other two the same. Comments aren't that important - you want new customers stumbling upon your blog and seeing how much you know about the subject, not avid readers - but if someone does leave you a comment, make sure to acknowledge it, it may lead to a backlink in the future (more on that later).

For archiving, leave everything exactly the way it is. This will make everyone of your new law blog posts its own web page, key to building a strong legal web presence. And as for the rest on settings, leave everything else the way it is too.

This is it for now. Next I'll discuss the layout section, as it is its own beast. Remember, if you are starting a law firm or solo law practice, a strong web presence is a must. It will get you new legal clients, build you up as a legal expert in your field, and give you something to do while you are waiting for the phone to ring! (just joking about that last one, a little). So, get started on these steps and tomorrow I'll fill you in on setting up the layout of your law practice blog to maximize the likelihood of Google liking it.

Related Posts:

Starting a Law Firm | Blogging Part 2

How to Start a Law Firm | SEO

John Truby: Why Writing with Images Is More Powerful Than Writing with Words

Hollywood script doctor John Truby says that successful movies are written with images first, words second.

We are such a visually oriented culture. But we are trained in school to communicate with words first. Images are considered random, illogical, somewhat dangerous. In my experience, writer’s block occurs when we become too word-based. Freeing ourselves requires tuning into our natural, childlike ability to perceive images.

This week, explore the two languages we use as writers: the language of words and the language of images. Both are necessary to a good book.

For ten minutes, pay attention to images around you. What can you perceive when you remind yourself of details perceived via the five senses?

Building a Bridge between Your Writing and Your Life

How closely do your writing and life intersect? How can they support, even feed, each other?

This week's exercise can be transformational. You begin by listing your personal minimum requirements for staying healthy and balanced in your life. Look at these arenas:

physical (health, sleep, exercise, food)
emotional (relationships with family and friends, self-care, private time) intellectual (learning and growing, staying current)
spiritual (faith in self, belief systems)

Ask yourself, What is required in my life to feel in control, balanced, and healthy?

Make a second list or chart of what you need to have in your life, to get your book written. Be very specific:
privacy?
time?
feedback?
supplies?
resources?
working equipment?
good scheduling?

Rate the two lists as far as reality. What do you have in place? What is missing?