Writers: Want More Reader Engagement? Change Your Writing State
How your writing mood affects your reader’s mood
I’ve experimented with the phenomena of writing states for years. Proper writing state is a well-known strategy is sales and copywriting, but it hasn’t leaked-over into other types of writing as much.
Your level of excitement and enthusiasm for your work bleeds onto the page. If we want to write work worth reading, we’ve got to be in a state worthy of writing.
Huh?
We’ll start with a basic example, then I’ll get esoteric on you: If you really believe in a product you’re selling, the sales pitch becomes easier, right?
If I love model trains more than sunlight and hot dogs, it’ll be easy for me to write endless articles, record positive videos, and speak publicly about trains.
My mood and state will be so good my enthusiasm for trains translates easily to my audience. They’ll say, “hey, this guy’s coo-coo for trains. He must know something I don’t. Maybe I should learn about trains too.”
Our level of care for our work comes out in our word choices
If we don’t enjoy our subject, or feel less-than-passionate about it, we’ll make tiny decisions that change the mood of our work. And we won’t notice until our readers stop engaging.
Maybe you’re halfway through a manuscript and you grow to resent the project. Or you slog through a blog post because you feel you’ve got to hit your self-imposed deadline of daily publishing.
You’re frustrated or blue. The work suffers in the process.
Maybe you and your significant other got in a bad argument and you grabbed your laptop, leaving the house in a huff — anything you write while you’re encased in that hyper-stressed mindset will not translate well for readers.
I’m a natural pessimist. I work hard to be more optimistic and keep the pessimism demons at bay, but if I’m angry or negatively-passionate about a project I see a direct correlation in reader engagement.
Wrong writing state = little reader engagement.
I may pick a title that’s overly-negative or aggressive. I’ll make small word choices and use pull quotes that give a very pessimistic feel to the piece. None of these are deliberate choices, but, as writers, we’re highly influenced by our mood.
Are you in a state of flow or rage?
When we write in flow the words come fast and natural. Our state matches the best of our work. We’re not blocked by rage, depression, or sadness.
When we write in a positive flow-state these feeling translate directly to the reader. The changes are tiny — one word here, a sentence there.
The body of work as a whole, changes. When we write in the right state, the work becomes much better for our audience.
We’ve got to do the work no matter what. I prefer to take a blue-collar approach to writing. There’s no plumber’s block. There shouldn’t be any writer’s block. We don’t have the luxury.
We’ve got something to share. The work must go on.
How to ensure we’re writing in a positive way
Even if you write the darkest of fiction, you’re still in the entertainment business. Most of us don’t seek to read work that makes us feel terrible.
We want to be engaged. We want to escape. We want to be uplifted, to learn, to move-on, or to change state as the reader.
As writers, if we want to serve the reader and uplift her, or change her state — we’ve got to be in the right state too. Especially if we want to sell books or gain followers.
Although I’m a pessimist, most pessimistic writers are a turn-off to me. I prefer charismatic speakers, uplifting reads, and engaging characters — even in the darkest stories I can feel the state of the writer.
The writer’s state bleeds through to the page.
The first step is to recognize our current state.
This isn’t about waiting until we’re jacked-up on Mountain Dew to start writing, it’s about recognizing how we feel and changing how we feel if the work warrants it. We have to write, regardless.
Bottom line: if we start typing angry, sad, or upset the work will FEEL angry, sad, or upset.
It’s fine to write upset if we’re journaling, but if we want to sell books we’ve got to change our state.
When we write in the wrong state, not only does our mood slow us down and prevent us from doing our best work, but negative writing chases readers away. It’s a turn-off. Think of the last time your read the 1,000th social media post from the one friend who complains all the time — or the condescending person…
Not good, right? We roll our eyes and hover over the unfriend button. Books and articles are the same way. Our readers have a choice. When they feel your work is heavy, condescending, and negative, there’s a good chance you’ll lose them.
Real life is hard enough. We don’t want you to make us feel worse while we’re relaxing and reading.
How to change your writing state
We all have our own vehicles for state change. What works when we’re having a ho-hum morning will do nothing to touch deep distress. Yes, there will be some days that are so bad it’s best you back away from the keyboard.
But, for the regular days — the basic bumps of life, I like to use these three methods to ensure I’m in the best state for writing something worth reading.
There are three techniques that work best for me:
- Meditation
- Exercise
- Disposable journaling
Meditation
There’s daily, maintenance meditation and there’s I need to hit the reset button meditation. Here’s a story I wrote about a quick way to change your state through breathing. This is the reset button:
When you meditate, you calm your monkey-mind. You grab hold of the anxiety and dampen it to a manageable level. You won’t remove the feelings, but you may keep them at bay long enough to get your writing done.
If you want a longer-term solution, here’s a daily meditation practice I developed especially for creatives with short attention spans:
Exercise
It doesn’t take much movement to change your mental state through physical exercise. There’s a direct correlation between physical activity and positive state change.
Exercise is nature’s anti-depressant.
Many of us write in the morning or late at night. We’re not really in the mood for a one-hour trip to the gym or a sweat-dripping run before we can write a word. To change your state through exercise (or movement) you don’t have to exert yourself too much.
There’s a simpler answer.
I do this easy exercise every morning, once I get out of bed, before anything else. It gets the blood flowing and I can do it half-asleep. If I need a state change or a boost of energy, these qigong shaking exercise work almost every time.
Disposable journaling
When all else fails I grab the legal pad. This quick technique helps you play both sides of therapy.
Write out the problem, how you feel, how the other person feels, what you could have done differently, what you’ll do to learn from the feelings, and what you’ll do to change your state.
No one will read this page.
Write whatever you like. When you write-out the feelings keeping you in a negative state, it’s as if you wring-out a rag. You dump all the shit that’s bothering you on one page, where you can analyze it like a detective with a magnifying glass.
The words fall out of your head and onto the page. You can take a step back and take a third-person’s view on the negativity bothering you.
Once you feel better, crumple the paper and throw it in the trash. Disposable journaling is not meant to be archived and it’s not meant to be shared.
Benefits of positive-state writing sessions
- More reader engagement — you’ll write your best stuff, in your best voice.
- You’ll feel better about your writing — instead of writing mad, you’ll write inspired. If you write as if you’re getting revenge on the keyboard, the revenge will show in your work. Positive state begats positive word choices and better decisions.
- You’ll write less garbage — nothing is worse than spending a full day writing and have to delete it all. When you write in your best state you’re more-likely to write in flow. When you wrote in flow the work will tumble from your fingers.
Whether you write fiction or sales copy, how-to manuals, or horror — your writing state matters.
If we want to be a commercial success with our work, we need reader engagement. We can’t sell one story. We want our readers to keep coming back for more. It’s hard enough to get noticed in today’s environment of constant-on and endless scrolling.
When a reader has a choice between something that makes her feel good when she reads it and something that feels off — you know which one she’ll pick every time.
We need your work. We need you in the right state when you’re writing it.
We’re waiting for you.
