A 10-minute SILENT EDITING DISCO

I went to a SILENT DISCO at a music festival last year. Was I the last person to hear about these? Hundreds of people dancing in total silence, with a silent DJ who looks really into it.

You can hear everything if you put on the wireless headphones they give out. It’s also fun to take them off.

After about 15 minutes of dancing, you’re ready to go.

It’s a nice metaphor for editing.

Editing feels stupid at first. No one knows what you’re doing over there—they can’t hear the music. But they can tell if you’re into the music, and that’s what counts.

Writing is like the secret music in your headphones. Editing is like dancing.

Editing is best in short bursts, and in the right mood. You need to keep it loose, but dance with intention, my friend.

Want to grab a pair of wireless headphones and try it?

INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUR 10-MINUTE SILENT EDITING DISCO:

Pair up with a friend so you don’t have to dance alone.

Start your dance mix, set a timer for 10 minutes, and start EDITING. But only for 10 minutes.

Then take a nap. (You can only DISCO twice if you take the nap first.)

Use these questions to guide you. Make tweaks, but don’t get pushy. Keep moving. Do the easy parts first.

  1. When you wrote this, did you allow yourself to write 4 pages for every 1 page of copy you intend to use? Or were you trying to force the outcome to happen too soon?
  2. Read it from the perspective of three of your favorite clients, and report back.
  3. Send this to someone who gets you. Say you only want to know the parts that moved them or that sparked their curiosity or excitement.
  4. Did you write this in a bad mood, or from a fearful place? Time to delete. Remove all but one of the explanations you find. And see if you can cut that explanation in half.
  5. Anything else just feel off? Embellishments that ring false, or phrases that sound defensive or aggressive? What’s behind that? (Write about how you want it to feel, but don’t try to wordsmith it just yet. How can this feel true?)
  6. Are there unnecessary words? Sections? Can something be cut & used as a blog post instead? (Are you trying to do too much convincing within the sales page itself, without using other types of content?)
  7. What’s the simpler way to say it? Is that simpler way the truest way for you to say it?
  8. Does your call to action provoke their curiosity?
  9. What’s the one thing you want them to do? Is every element on this page serving that intention, or are you packing it with more stuff in hopes there will be something for everyone? Do you need to break this up into sub-pages or a series of emails or posts?
  10. Did you use bullet points, or did you intentionally not use bullet points? Either way is fine, as long as you thought about it.
  11. Did you do the scanners a kindness by incorporating headlines and bolding places to catch their attention?
  12. Do the headlines make you want to read what’s beneath them?
  13. Does anything in here provoke a “duh…” response from your people, and how can you tweak it so it doesn’t?
  14. Does anything in here provoke a “huh?” response from your people, and how can you tweak it so it doesn’t—without over-explaining?
  15. Are you playing hard to get, or are you falling all over yourself to persuade them?
  16. Does this incorporate insights from customer interviews and testimonials?
  17. Does this take a new approach or say it in a way no one else is saying it?
  18. Is there a clear problem this solution is solving?
  19. Is the problem presented in a way that gives the reader a mini-epiphany about the nature of the problem?
  20. Is the problem something one might actually feel proud to have (or at least RELIEVED to read about, like someone finally gets it?) Or, are you making the problem sound shameful, condescending, embarrassing? Is this a smart-reasonable-intelligent-creative-person problem? Or an unsophisticated-person problem?
  21. Are you pandering to the audience by telling them they’re smart and creative? (As if they don’t already know.)
  22. Where is the surprise, and can we move it to closer to the top? Maybe so it’s the headline? What’s the most surprising thing you can say about this? How could you reverse what’s expected?
  23. Does the first sentence leave them feeling incomplete and needing to know what you mean by that? This is good.
  24. How are your transitions? Does it transition smoothly from one point to the next?
  25. Do the headlines incorporate problems & benefits?
  26. Did you address the most important objection?
  27. Did you cover the benefits they already want—sneaking in a couple they never would have thought of?
  28. Did you give proof points, if possible, for the benefits? Can you track them down–or ask for support?
  29. How do you feel about it overall? Are there parts that just don’t feel like they’re grabbing you, for some inexplicable reason? Like they make sense and they’re correct, but they’re just not pulling you in?
  30. Type-os?

Commenting policy: If I like your comment, it will be approved. I don’t always comment back, but I will nod my head and tent my fingers and say, Ahhh, yes yes yes. Your comment need not bother with fancy footwear or rational undergarments. But it does need to feel comfortable—both for you to write and for others to read. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, and if I decide I don’t want it taking up people’s brain spaces, I will let it softly float away. Perhaps one day it will return to you, and you can tuck it into bed.

The bunny who liked to hide in trees

Once upon a time there was a bunny who liked to hide in trees.

She didn’t actually like to hide in trees, but it seemed better than the alternative of dressing up like an astronaut and wearing one of those gigantic glass globes and a jet pack and zooming through the air at high speeds, like so many of the other bunnies had learned to do.

She would sit there in her tree, on top of a 6-foot mound of kibble she’d collected from various parts of the world.

And she would shake and tremble, her whiskers quivering uncontrollably.

And she would look up at the sky at all of the bunny astronauts who were flying to and fro with their jet packs, and wonder why she couldn’t bear to come out of her tree and strap her jet pack back on.

This bunny couldn’t bear to go back up. Maybe she’d seen too many bunny crashes in the past. Maybe she just couldn’t leave the safety of this tree. It felt so cool and dark and quiet.

She realized she was terrified of heights. Had it always been this way? She couldn’t tell.

Perhaps this fear of heights had made her seem like one of the bravest bunny astronauts, because she was very good at pushing herself to do things she didn’t actually want to do.

Except that one day she realized she wasn’t able to push herself anymore.

And she wasn’t sure whether she was allowed to just hang out on the ground in a tree and eat kibble and perhaps one of these days poke around and have a tiny adventure in the field.

What bunny astronaut does that?

How would anyone take her seriously?

Some of the bunnies would drop letters down from the sky. Letters seemed to constantly be falling here and there. All around the base of her tree was a pile of letters, most of them addressed to her, but some of them weekly or monthly updates with news from the other bunnies’ travels.

She loved getting letters! But the sheer number of letters eventually surpassed even her ability to reflect and chew and respond.

Her regular protocol no longer seemed to be sufficient. Open the letter, scribble your reply below, and find the nearest tree letter suction distribution system. They used those old bank tubes to shoot letters back up into the sky.

Meanwhile, letters kept dropping from the sky, all around her tree.

She didn’t even know which letter to read first, so she stayed in her tree, shaking and eating kibble.
Time passed too quickly.
The pile of letters grew so that she couldn’t even see the ground anymore.
The seasons changed.

This probably isn’t very sanitary, but she was so terrified of being hit by one of these letters, or being spotted by one of the other bunny astronauts, that she remained firmly ensconced in her tree, eating her way through all of the kibble.

She wasn’t sure whether she could teach spaceship piloting when she herself didn’t particularly want to pilot spaceships. Not full-time, anyway.

And so many bunnies seemed so perfectly happy up there, jetting to and fro. They didn’t seem to miss the field at all.

But maybe they did. She couldn’t really tell from the ground.

She really just wanted to find a patch of field that was clear of bunny astronauts flying overhead, maybe have a picnic in the grass, and enjoy a nice butter lettuce salad. With some cheese.

And sometimes she actually forgot she was a bunny.

One week she went to a bunny astronaut conference.

There she took off her spacesuit and hopped around and ate lettuce with other bunnies.

There were so many bunny astronauts she admired there, and it seemed they, too, missed their old trees. And made frequent visits back.

And she felt like she wasn’t alone.

And she resolved to do something about this tree situation. And all of the letters that had piled up so high around her tree.

She didn’t want to hide in trees anymore. Neither did she want to fly through the air full-time.

And neither could she read and respond to every letter, shooting them back up the trees in the little bank cannisters.

So she decided to reflect on this.

And to give herself permission not to respond to the letters, rather than guilt-resistance-guilt-resistance, which also didn’t seem to be working.

(Unless they were active bunny clients who were already enrolled in astronaut school. These she invited into her tree. And they ate kibble. And they did bunny-nata.)

And eventually they became the kinds of bunnies who had field adventures together. And they didn’t mind spending lots of time on the ground.

Once in a while, they flew through the air like they used to in the old days. But this time it felt different, because they were free to choose.

And this bunny became a semi-reclusive bunny who only hid in trees once in a while, evenings and weekends. But most of the time you could find her hopping around, gathering ingredients for blueberry pancakes. It’s her favorite.

You can still find her on a Sunday, making blueberry pancakes.
Or hopping through the field, softly singing through her whiskers, making up fairy tales about bunnies, hanging out with squirrels.

Commenting policy: If I like your comment, it will be approved. I don’t always comment back, but I will nod my head and tent my fingers and say, Ahhh, yes yes yes. Your comment need not bother with fancy footwear or rational undergarments. But it does need to feel comfortable—both for you to write and for others to read. If it doesn’t feel comfortable, and if I decide I don’t want it taking up people’s brain spaces, I will let it softly float away. Perhaps one day it will return to you, and you can tuck it into bed.

How to know when something is finished

You know something is finished when it feels true.

(To the intention and the spirit and the potential of the experience.)

And when it feels complete.

(It answered enough burning questions for a certain someone to feel ready to do the next, tiniest, baby-sized thing.)

And when there’s an a-ha moment in there somewhere.

(Epiphanies, lightbulbs, and Huh-I-never-thought-of-it-that-way moments. For best results, the insight will concern all of this DRAMA they’ve been having.)