Watch the video to see/hear more:

Watch it on YouTube

Or on LinkedIn

The post Is the future of speaking virtual? Presenting my set up for my first ever full virtual experience speaking experience. (Professional Speaking. Episode 310) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

As mentioned earlier I am not doing weekly episodes of ProfessionalSpeaking any more. After 300 weekly episodes of sharing speaking tips – for free, and without selling anything – I decided to reduce the frequency a bit while I focus on some other projects. I hope you have found value from these free speaking tips, and appreciate the episodes when they do come.

In this episode of Professional Speaking I thought I would share some lessons about writing.

And for this episode I will not do a video, but instead communicate via text and I will not talk about speaking, I will instead write about writing.

While video has become much more important for speakers than it used to be, writing a book is still more or less essential. Not necessarily because people are buying a lot of books (they are not), or because it gives you credibility (it does, but not as much as it used to), but because writing a book is a great way to structure your thoughts and push you to do research.

So how do I look at book writing? As if it was baking. Let me explain.

1) Research (getting all the ingredients in order)
2) Work the text. (Kneed the dough)
3) Let the text rest (letting the dough rest)
4) Send it away (put it into the oven)

Let’s look at them one by one.

1) Research (getting all the ingredients in order)

Many people who have never written a book seem to think that writing a book starts with writing. It doesn’t. It starts with researching. The worst books (with some exceptions) are books where people just wrote down their thoughts on a subject.

Writing a book, if you ask me, is at lest 80% research and perhaps 20% writing.

Interview at least 100 people on the topic you are writing on. Have a folder on your computer (like Evernote) where you keep every article, text, video, information, quote, story etc about the topic you are writing on.

Only 10% or so of all the material you actually collect should be good enough to make it into the book. (And then just 10% of all that made it into the book makes it into the speech.)

A book takes 2-5 years for me to write. But the writing is usually less than 6 months. The rest is research, and me thinking about what I am going to write once I do.

Lesson: Do more research and collect more material than you think you need. Writing is not writing. Writing is research and thoughts on paper.

2) Work the text. (Kneed the dough)

There is no one way to write, but this is how I write: I re-write and re-write and re-write.

Some people make an amazing structure and stick to it.
Some writers write a rough draft, not caring about structure, and then go back and edit.

I start to write as soon as I have an idea of the kind of text I want to create and then, if I stumble on a sentence, I will sit and re-write that one sentence (or paragraph, or page) over and over again until I feel it has the flow I am looking for.

The “Delete” button is most likely the second most key on my keyboard after “Space”…

To me, writing is a joyful way of solving a puzzle, and you can feel it in your soul when the pieces (the words) have fallen into place in the correct order.

Lesson: Writing is not writing. Writing is re-writing. So re-write over and over again.

3) Let the text rest (letting the dough rest)

Writing a book for me takes time. Not because of the writing itself, but because I will let a text “rest” for months on end. When I do write, I write in chunks. I block off 1-2 weeks or more and do almost nothing but write all day. But after a while you get so sucked into the words that you cannot see what you have written. That’s when you need to distance yourself from the text. I can leave a text for months. When I come back to it, I read it as if it was written by someone else, not as if I know every word by heart (which is how it feels when I am in writing mode.)

When I re-visit a text after being away from it for a while it becomes much easier to separate the beautiful sentences from the ugly ones. The ugly ones are the ones that need editing.

Because no matter how much you have re-written a text while you were in writing mode, you can bet that large chunks of it needs to be re-written once you come back to it after giving it a rest. (Most books I re-write multiple times. For one book I did more than 20 edit rounds before sending it to the editor.

Lesson: Give yourself time to take a break from the text to be able to read it with fresh eyes.

4) Send it away (put it into the oven)

No matter how great of an writer you think you are, always send the script away to an external editor. I can not stress enough how important it is to get a professional editor to go through your text. Yes, it can hurt to get all that feedback, but better to get it before the book comes out than after…

Many first time writers will “save” on editor, but please do not do that.

Lesson: Get a professional editor.

Conclusion: As I am writing this I am actually working on 5 books at the same time. One is ready to be published, one is in the final editing stages, and three are in different stages of development. I do not recommend working on five books at the same time – it tends to drag out the time it takes to get them out – but that’s how my brain works…

But know this: never stress a book out. The process of writing a book is the most rewarding part, at least for me. Few things gives you so much satisfaction than to take a huge amount of mumbled up thoughts of yours and then structuring them into a book that clearly communicates those thoughts to other people in a way that gives them value.

Good luck with your book writing – and with your speaking!

Fredrik Haren – The Creativity Explorer and the man behind ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

The post How writing a book is like baking. ProfesionalSpeaking. Episode. 309 appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

At the moment I am writing 3 non-fiction books on creativity (yes, at the same time) and putting my final touches on my fiction book “The Unvisible” that is coming out on Penguin in early 2022.

So in this episode of Professional Speaking I speak about how DIFFERENT it is to write a fiction book vs a non-fiction book.

Enjoy.

Watch it on YouTube.

or on LinkedIn.

Fredrik Haren – The Creativity Explorer.

ps. Do not miss my 5-hour online course on Mastering The Keynote available – for free – on YouTube (no need to register etc)

https://tinyurl.com/MasterTheKeynote

All I ask in return, If you like the course, is that you tell others about it and/or tell someone about me who might be looking for a speaker on creativity. I call it “The caring economy”.

The post Non-fiction vs Fiction writing. (Professional Speaking. Episode 308) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

And I give my answer to that question. But the main message is for you to give your answer to yourself. What is the answer to the question to you?

Happy Chinese New Year!

Fredrik Haren

Watch it on YouTube.

or on LinkedIn.

The post Why do you speak? (Professional Speaking. Episode 307) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

Watch on YouTube and on LinkedIn.

Also: Do not miss the 5-hour long FREE online course on YouTube: Master the Keynote. (Totally free. All I ask is that you help spread the word for the course, if you find value in it, and that if you hear of anyone interested in booking a speaker on creativity you think of me

Become the best speaker you can be.

The post Creative Virtual Speaking Setups. (Professional Speaking. Episode 306) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

Watch the full video to learn the technique I use.

Also please notice how my assistant Maria is demonstrating the power of using hand gestures and body language to help me remember what to say. The “muscle memory” reminds you of the order of the story.

And notice that there is one place where I forget one part of the speech, but in a regular speech that does not really matter as no-one knows what you were supposed to say.

When you are confident that you will remember your speech, you relax. When you relax you become a much better speaker. Watch this video and become a better speaker.

The post How to remember what to say in a speech. (Professional Speaking. Episode 305) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

In this video I give both my preference, and what I think is the right answer (and that is two different things.)

Watch it on Youtube.

And on Linkedin.

The post Virtual Speeches, What is Best: Recorded or Live? (Professional Speaking. Episode 304) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

Let’s experiment, try new things and be creative to make sure that the virtual meetings become amazing experiences.

Watch it here.

The post Creative Virtual Meetings. (Professional Speaking. Episode 303) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

The post Bonus episode of Professional Speaking. appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.

It increases because there is a crisis.

This changing time, is way too important, to have a bunch of our employees sitting at home unmotivated and uninspired, and alone,

they need to get together,

they need to get the industry going,

and that is just what has started to happen.”

(Sorry for the mic going crazy a couple of times, I guess I got too excited

Would love your thoughts? What are you seeing? Please leave your comments on the Linkedin post.

Fredrik Haren.

ps; Here is the video again. I hope it will inspire you: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fredrikharen_eventprofs-publicspeaking-speaker-activity-6721940365076766720-urr1

The post Speaking is back! (Professional Speaking. Episode 302) appeared first on ProfessionalSpeaking.com.