In my post about what I learned during 2011 as a technical communicator, I wrote:

Community collaboration is extremely tough to pull off. I can’t just assign a volunteer writer a topic and let them run with it. I usually have to either gather the information from a subject matter expert or connect the volunteer with a subject matter expert — and then see them through the process with more hand-holding than I want to provide. Still, community volunteers can generate momentum by the sheer number of assignments I have to follow through with. Overall, I have no idea how to engage community volunteers in an effective way, but I think I can eventually figure a strategy out. (See What I Learned About Tech Comm During 2011.)

In response to this post, Saul Carliner added the following insightful comment:

But the challenges of working with “volunteers,” is one that is rarely mentioned when discussing SME-authored and user-generated documentation. Having had worked with volunteers in a number of sectors over the years–from work-related ones to community ones–the issue of volunteer management is one that still challenges all of them. Incentives and clarity help, but not always in the way intended. Even in areas that have years of experience with volunteers, it’s more of an art than a science. Just because we’ve moved to community-based approaches to documentation and the wikipedia has been successful doesn’t mean that other ventures don’t involve nurturing.

The last sentence particularly stands out. Yes, many social ventures (such as Wikipedia and Digg) have been hugely successful. But that doesn’t mean applying the volunteer model to tech comm is a process or technique we understand. It’s an art, and one that most community managers still struggle to figure out.

The topic isn’t just limited to volunteer engagement. SME-authored documentation, as Saul mentions, also fits into this genre.

In a series of questions I responded to on Ugur Akinci’s blog, I reflected at length on what is the most significant change in the field of technical communication. It fits right in with collaborative efforts and social intelligence. Here’s an excerpt of my response:

QUESTION (3): What is the single most important change that you see in the technical communication sector since you first became a technical communicator?

… The greatest transformation yet to come is to drop the single-author paradigm of technical writing and to embrace the way information flows on the web. … For years help authoring has consisted of one person (or just a few people) writing help material. When content comes from one person, the content is usually limited in perspective, accuracy, and applicability. Writing needs to become much more collaborative, and not just from inside the corporation, but outside as well. Documentation is never finished. When I log off for the day, someone out there may be contributing to the documentation, making it evolve, adding sections, correcting errors, expanding on special cases, and so on.

It’s engaging to come into the office in the morning and review the latest changes to the wiki, to find that someone added a new section, or a new page. We no longer have documentation as static, standalone files that are written in haste by one technical writer and then “finished” as he or she moves to the next project. Documentation is a living, breathing body of information – like the web. The web is in constant flux. It’s full of a whole landscape of people – trolls, spammers, forum champions, lurkers, relentless volunteers, bloggers, programming whizzes. All of these people, like characters in a circus, come together on the same stage, interacting with each other in rich, multifaceted ways. Sometimes these interactions are exciting, other times they’re frustrating. But either way, documentation evolves to become more web-like in the ebb and flow of information.

This ebb and flow of information is what I find most rewarding about technical communication. Information no longer emanates from one source but rather connects into a greater body of people. This is the genius of the web. The web thrives because of this content interaction — one person building on the ideas of another in collaborative, interactive ways. (Read the full interview on Ugur Akinci’s blog.)

Let’s come back to the original question. How can you harness the enthusiasm and talent of volunteers in productive ways? The answer to this question wouldn’t just be a neat technique to enhance productivity; it would change everything about my job.

The problem is not content strategy; it’s content tactics. The strategy is clear: draw upon the talent and enthusiasm of willing volunteers to write high-quality content. The details of how remain a mystery. Let me continue my brainstorm.

Challenges

Several main challenges make this a difficult problem:

• Volunteer writers often don’t have the information necessary to write articles.
• SMEs with the knowledge often don’t have the interest to write articles.
• Content that volunteers write, even if informed, often needs significant editorial processing before it’s ready for publication.
• Writing assignments often need more detail before you can assign them to volunteers. If you can only gather this information internally, it makes it difficult to assign to volunteers.
• The remote distance between headquarters and volunteers makes collaboration and communication more difficult.

Known Principles that Work

Now that I’ve outlined the challenges, let me also outline what I’ve learned about volunteer engagement:

• People are much more likely to accept invitations when invited on a personal level.
• People are much more likely to accept invitations when they have a relationship of trust with you.
• People need a clear understanding of what you want them to do.
• People need deadlines to understand when you expect them to finish their assignments.
• People need regular communication so that you can address issues and other concerns that might be obstacles.
• Communicating on a personal level, building trust, establishing deadlines, providing detail, etc., takes significant management time.
• People need opportunities to pursue their strengths. Not everyone is a creative writer. Many people function better as editors.
• People need access to information, people, and meetings to write the content that is expected of them.
• Content often goes through successive levels of edits before it’s ready for publication.
• People have a limited amount of time to work on articles they are not getting paid for.
• People like to feel that their contributions are valued, not wasted.
• Coordinating, tracking, commenting, and following up on assignments for scores of volunteers requires an advanced system to manage all of this information.
• People often want to get something in return for their volunteering, such as more experience, understanding, improvement, portfolio samples, and more.
• People often overestimate their writing abilities.

Formulating a plan

I recognize that my brainstorming and analysis is specific to my own volunteer situation, and one situation may vary dramatically to the next. Hopefully the tactical plan I form may be of interest to others who work in other volunteer situations, even if the details vary. Given the challenges and known principles, what would work well for success?

Here’s are a few potential first steps:

Step 1. Create a body of work that volunteers can do. This means crafting assignments that are important and worthwhile. Creating a body of work may be the most difficult of all steps, as this requires me to add detail and potentially outlines to topics. Sometimes I may only have an idea for a story, or a name to contact, not an actual story in hand. But having a tenuous idea doesn’t work well for volunteers, who may be playing guessing games at what I want. The details of the assignments need to be clearly spelled out. Each writing assignment needs to have a basic level of clarity to be something that users can actually accomplish. Contact points, key messages for the article, length, tone, and other details should be clearly defined.

Step 2. Personally invite volunteers to act. The second step would be to personally invite volunteers to work on the tasks they’re assigned. The invitations should ensure that the writing assignment is a good fit for the volunteer (that is, matching the volunteer’s strengths and interests), that the volunteers have a good idea of what you expect, and the due date.

Step 3. Regularly review, track, and follow-up with assignments.  It would be a good idea to review all the items stored in the system (in my case, JIRA) on a daily basis so that I don’t let some assignments languish and become forgotten. Volunteers may run into insurmountable issues and challenges; they may realize the assignment isn’t a good fit for their interests. By following up and checking in regularly with volunteers, I also demonstrate the value and importance of the assignment.

Step 4. Have volunteers edit volunteer writing. This is one of the steps that I’ve never implemented, but it might be good to have volunteers edit other volunteers’ writing. Writing often needs successive levels of editorial review. I could provide some quick comments and feedback, and then either have the volunteer make revisions or pass it to another volunteer to make edits, and then potentially to another volunteer. This way by the time the writing falls on my desk, it’s already to a level that is near publication quality. In some situations, I could ask SMEs to write content and then pass it along to volunteer writers to edit.

Step 5. Communicate regularly. Without regular communication, people lose interest. They quickly drop off. The communication also helps build trust, and people may feel as if they’re learning more from discussions. It’s not possible to build a lively community without regular engagement through e-mail and other online interactions. Perhaps contributing an e-mail a day may go a long way toward building trust and helping volunteers feel that they’re getting a lot out of the experience.

 Conclusion

No system works if one doesn’t use it. These five steps aren’t rocket science. I could probably have a decent amount of success implementing them. The problem is maintaining regular activity, sticking with the system week after week, especially when other, higher internal projects get in the way.  This is perhaps why breaking the tactics down to even a more concrete, daily to-do list might be a good idea.

I’m interested to hear what strategies you use for managing volunteer writers.

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Although it wasn’t called such, the meeting was similar to a “testimony meeting,” which is something that Mormons do once a month for their church meetings. During these meetings, rather than listening to several members give talks, anyone who feels the desire can spontaneously walk up to the front podium and say pretty much whatever they want for as long as they want. This can be both exciting and dangerous, or dreadful and dull, depending on who gets up and what they choose to say.

Some testimony meetings are inspiring. Others are filled with long spaces of tense silence. At work, whenever we allow people to share their thoughts or feelings at the end of meetings, it highlights the interesting mixture of church and work — a mixture that feels new and sometimes awkward.

As I read up on the subject, it turns out that spirituality in the workplace is nothing new. In fact, it’s a huge trend in business management. Marques et al even say that “spirituality is the new competitive edge” (Spirituality in the Workplace).

Spirituality a “competitive edge”? Yes, but they’re not talking about spirituality in the sense of religion. Their definition of spirituality is broader. In their usage, spirituality is the desire to connect with a higher purpose and meaning. It’s the yearning to be part of something larger than yourself, or to find a calling that guides you. Marques et al say some define spirituality as “the way we orient ourselves toward the divine.” Others describe it as “an individual search for meaning, purpose and values which may or may not include the concept of a God or transcendent being.” In other words, spirituality can encompass many characteristics, but overall it’s the desire to align yourself with a higher purpose and meaning.

If you have this sense of spirituality about your work, you’ll be more dedicated and hard-working. You won’t do below-average work or spend all afternoon playing ping-pong and surfing the net, because you believe in what you’re doing. It’s not just a 9-5 job to you anymore. It’s a mission. You have purpose from the inside.

Alignment with the Cause

Instilling a sense of spirituality in the workplace is similar to aligning workers with a cause. If you can get buy-in for the cause, you boost performance. This makes logical sense, and researchers Giacalone and Jerkiewicz even say “data unequivocally suggests that spiritually based organizational cultures are the most productive” (Handbook of Workplace Spirituality and Organizational Performance).

Some organizations and companies can tap into a cause more easily than others. Disneyland employees, for example, often work at a lower salary than at other companies just so they can be part of the magic and imagination of Disney. When they walk into the Magic Kingdom each morning for work, they’re connecting with something greater than themselves. They’re working in the kingdom, making unforgettable experiences for people.

You don’t have to work at Disney to find a cause. Bill Pollard, CEO of Servicemaster, relates the story of a community hospital housekeeper named Shirley who gets excited about mopping and cleaning because she’s not “just cleaning floors.” She “sees her job as extending to the welfare of the patient in the bed as an integral part of a team supporting the work of doctors and nurses — she has a Cause — a Cause that involves the health and welfare of others.” (qtd. in Inspire!).

In other words, in her mind, she’s not just doing janitorial work. She’s cleaning bed pans and mopping floors so doctors can help patients return to health, so that patients can get well and rejoin their families with a full life.

Almost any company has a worthy cause you can believe in. My last three jobs involved working for a biochemical weapons testing facility, a large financial firm, and a nutrition company specializing in protein for triathletes. Although I didn’t always keep it in mind at the time, in the larger sense I helped protect the nation from terrorists (perhaps) by increasing the IT system administrator’s understanding of data storage techniques for housing video test data. I helped financial analysts increase the retirement funds, 401(k) portfolios, and other savings plans of thousands of citizens so they could lead more financially comfortable lives. I helped triathletes replenish their depleted muscles with protein so they could achieve their gut-wrenching physical goals of swimming, 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and running 26 miles.

But while I was involved in each of those companies, very rarely did I consider my alignment and participation in the cause. Mostly I was caught up in the details of documentation and missed the larger picture.

Aligning with Your Calling

If you work for an organization whose cause inspires you, such as Disney, or your church, you can hop on board the organization’s cause and find meaning and purpose no matter what your role. But sometimes your company or organization is more mundane – for example, a circuit manufacturer.

You could tell yourself that you’re not just writing instructions. You’re helping computer manufacturers build more power-efficient motherboards so that people don’t have to wait so long for pages to load. But despite this cause, sometimes it’s not quite strong enough to lift you through the dull moments.

When your organization lacks a compelling cause, you can at least take comfort in the idea that you’re pursuing your calling or vocation. For example, no matter what you’re creating as a chemist, if chemistry is your calling, just working in the lab doing chemistry might ignite you.

For many technical writers, as long as they’re working with the written word, crafting and shaping sentences, clarifying ambiguity, describing complex setups with a grace that taps into their core talent, it’s okay if their company’s cause bores them. It’s all right because they’re pursuing a career they love. They’re aligned with their calling.

And when you’re aligned with your calling, Pollard says “a creative power is unleashed that results in quality service to the customer and the growth and development of the people serving.”

The Problem

Aligning with your calling is ideal, but this can be an issue for technical writers, because almost no one feels that technical writing is a calling. In Technical Writing: Career or Calling?, Scott Nesbitt writes, “I believe that technical writing is a career — a career that can be interesting and rewarding. But it’s definitely not a calling.”

In Is Technical Writing Your Calling?, Michael Harvey also agrees that technical writing isn’t a calling. He writes, “I don’t think that writing installation manuals, product guides, or help panels is a calling. It’s a job — an enjoyable career if you’re good at it. The underlying activity — clearly communicating complex concepts or procedures to help someone get work done — feels close to a calling.” But it’s not a calling in the sense that you would leave everything to do it.

In a guest post I wrote for DMN Communications, I explored more or less the same topic. I concluded that technical writing isn’t something you can be unstoppable about, like you can with a calling. But if you hook into a related sphere that ties in closely with tech comm., such as film or story or code or illustration, and that’s your calling, you can use that passion to convert your job into something more meaningful.

A Creative Solution

Rather than looking at ways to find a calling in your current work, which can be an endless chase, Lance Secretan, former CEO of Manpower Inc., suggests a reverse strategy: apply your existing calling to your work.

For example, an ex-helicopter pilot once contacted Secretan for work. Secretan asked the pilot what his calling was. He said he loved to fly and used to transport people to the North Sea oil rigs off the main coast of Scotland during the economic boom in that area. Secretan ended up forming a new company to help service oil rigs with fleets of helicopters.

Secretan’s strategy is to find people passionate about a calling, and then “to align their Calling with our Cause, so they could create magical careers for themselves, while, at the same investing in our cause.” In other words, rather than try to inspire employees with a new passion or calling, he uses the existing passions or callings of his employees to grow his company (Inspire!).

So if you don’t find your calling in technical writing, try Secretan’s strategy: figure out what your calling is, and then bring that passion to your technical writing role.

For example, Michael Pick has a background in film. I assume this is what he’s passionate about, rather than creating help tutorials. But he brings his passion for film to his role as a technical communicator for WordPress by creating mesmerizing screencasts.

Another example: You might have a passion for creative writing. Rather than minimizing your calling as a creative writer, integrate your passion with your technical writing role. You could create scenario-driven help, where your characters (played by imagined users) encounter problems and you explain the solutions. You could write story-driven blog posts about your product for your corporate website. You could take special care to ensure that each button and interface label resonates with the clarity and precision of poetry.

One activity I enjoy is building websites. Rather than leaving my passion behind and relegating myself to the standard tech comm. tools, I can breathe passion into my tech writing role by creating and branding web platforms to publish my help (such as what I’ve done with Mediawiki).

But let’s say your real passion seems to have nothing to do with technical writing. You’re a helicopter pilot with a history of transporting soldiers to and from the field of combat. How would you integrate that passion into your role as a tech writer? The solution is simple: Look for work in the helicopter industry, writing manuals for helicopter pilots. And then immerse yourself in usability, interviewing and observing helicopter pilots in their own environment to assess their tasks and needs.

However you do it, find your calling and integrate it into your work.

Conclusion

The most fulfilling jobs occur when you are aligned with both the organization’s cause and your calling. This is why the engineers and other IT professionals at my work can stand up and share special feelings they have for their jobs. Many get up and say that it’s “night and day” compared to previous jobs they’ve had, and so on.

But any job can have the same spiritual underpinnings, as long as you believe in your organization’s cause (or as long as you remember how your work fits into the larger picture), and as long as you find a way to integrate your calling into your role.

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Wikis, on the other hand, are a platform for groups to collaborate on an information project, such as documentation, technical specs, or other reference material (e.g., Wikipedia). One author isn’t just cranking out all the information. Multiple authors are contributing chunks and pieces, linking from one page to another, making edits on each other’s content, diving deeper where necessary, and moving toward the idea of a more complete information product. Wikis are rarely ever done. They are successful only as much as they tap into the collective intelligence of a group.

How exactly do these two formats fit together? In  [amazon-product type="text" text="Conversation and Community"]0982219113[/amazon-product], Anne Gentle says that the blog can often be a conversation starter, the medium that opens up communication among people. Your blog can attract outsiders and draw them in to participate on a wiki or other involvement.

Seeing how these two formats and activities fit together provided an Aha! type of moment for me last week. We have a community projects wiki where a lot of developers, QA engineers, and others interact on a technical level, either compiling requirements, designs, or other details about the projects they’re building. The site also has a blog component, but the blog doesn’t always address the existing projects. In fact, the blog mainly consists of random IT topics written by people in our department.

I realized (not that it’s really much of an insight) that in this situation, the blog should act as a companion to the wiki. While the wiki has project details and other specs, it’s not the motivational piece. It doesn’t build trust, inspire people to join the community, or even communicate that much to those outside of the layers of its structure. Just as a charter or project requirements documents rarely inspires anyone to volunteer for the project, the same might be said of wikis. But that’s not the wiki’s job. It’s the blog’s job. The blog serves as the human-focused news stream for sharing announcements, insights, developments, stories, and other details about the projects going on in the wiki. They’re a perfect fit, and one fuels the other.

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By the way, I rarely write guest posts. In my 3+ years of blogging, this is only the second guest post I have ever written. I hope you enjoy it.

Read my guest post on Unstoppability

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Fortunately, now is one of the best times for writers to be alive, because you can write and publish without hassle. According to Phillup Greenspun, the web provides a flexible format that removes traditional restrictions of length. You’re no limited to magazine length (5 pages) or book length (200 pages) of content. You can publish 20 pages essays, or 2 paragraph thoughts. You can write fiction or nonfiction, on any topic you want. You could publish your novel serially, or write your book chapter by chapter in a wiki-like way, or do any creative thing you want.

So why is it that, given the opportunity and tools to write, so few embrace it? I have several thoughts as to why.

1. You enjoy the idea more than the work

Most people enjoy the idea of being a writer more than the act of writing. The same could be said of a lot of activities. I once fantasized about doing triathlons, but it was really the idea of being a triathlete that appealed to me more than running, biking, and swimming. I also once fantasized about medicine, but it was the idea of “being a doctor” that appealed to me more than putting my hands inside bloody skin and tissue to fix people.

The truth about writing—the reason why people may daydream about “being a writer” but never seem to find the time to write—is that it’s a lot of work. Coming up with original ideas, organizing and structuring those ideas, editing and polishing your sentences, refining your thoughts, and finding time to do it all rather than sit back and watch TV or work in the yard—is something akin to completing that triathlon. It’s a lot of running/thinking, swimming/writing, and biking/editing. And it’s taxing. Winston Churchill compared writing to fighting a monster:

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.

Instead of slaying the monster, it’s easier to sit back and think about “being a writer.”

2. Your elevated awareness sets higher standards

Another reason you may not find time to write is that your literary awareness is on a higher level, which makes writing more challenging. You’re aware of what good prose looks like, and so the standards you set for yourself are more rigorous. You’ve got William Faulkner and Jane Austen or some other famous writer on your mind, and you know that to write something worth reading, it will take a lot of time, more time than you’re willing to commit. For the limited time you do have, all you can produce is mediocrity, which you won’t sink to.

This high-brow position isn’t very excusable, because knowledge of higher standards often gives you more talent and capability. And if you have limited time, you can just stretch your efforts out over a period of time. Still, being able to recognize that your first drafts are junk can be a motivational deterrent.

3. You’ve fallen out of the habit

Although the previous two reasons are possible, most likely you stopped writing because you’ve fallen out of the habit. Desiderius Eramus, a fifteenth-century Dutch humanist, said, “The desire to write grows with writing.” The reverse is also true. The desire to write shrinks the less you write.

Habits aren’t particularly tricky to establish. It’s mostly a matter of doing it. Once you start doing something, it becomes easier to do it. When asked for advice from a young would-be writer, E.B. White, author of dozens of essays, said:

You asked me about writing—how I did it. There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed. I must have written half a million words (mostly in my journal) before I had anything published, save for a couple of short items in St. Nicholas. If you want to write about feelings, about the end of summer, about growing, write about it. A great deal of writing is not “plotted”—most of my essays have no plot structure, they are a ramble in the woods, or a ramble in the basement of my mind. You ask, “Who cares?” Everybody cares. You say, “It’s been written before.” Everything has been written before.

In other words, if you want to write, just open up a blank Word document and start typing. It’s that simple. The rest—the form, the purpose, the ideas, the publications—will follow. The more you write, the more desire you’ll have to write. And the easier writing will become.

Final Thoughts

I decided to write this post because I’m frequently asked—by fellow writers—why I blog [write] so much. For me, I consider myself foremost a writer. I majored in English, studied creative nonfiction writing, and find value in the act of writing, especially when I have nothing particular on my mind. I enjoy creating something from nothing.

I prefer personal essays and nonfiction over fiction, so the blog is a natural form for me. But whatever preferences for form you have, don’t give up on your more creative or literary writing. You don’t have to submit your writing to journals and magazines for publication. A blog can be a worthy publishing format. I get more reward from the comments, trackbacks, emails, and other feedback on my blog than from any other writing endeavor. Whatever style and format you choose, if you’re a writer, write. The opportunity is there.

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Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As)
Length: 35 min.

Richard Hamilton is the author of Managing Writers: A Real World Guide to Managing Technical Documentation. His book, published in 2009, is one of the few books written specifically for managers that addresses the diversity of issues that managers face today – everything from hiring and firing to motivating, metrics, outsourcing, localization, content management, and more.

Managing Writers

Richard describes the book as follows:

Managing Writers is a practical guide to managing technical documentation projects in the real world. It is informal, but concise, using examples from the author’s experience working with and managing technical writers. It looks beyond big project, big team methodologies to the issues faced by smaller, less well-funded projects.

I actually met Richard Hamilton at Doc Train West 2008. At the time, he was still writing his book, but he handed me a brochure describing the book title and its contents. I’m glad to see that some months after our conversation, he published it.

A few weeks ago, Richard sent me a review copy, so I decided to interview him for a podcast. In our conversation, we cover the following:

• Hiring and firing employees
• What to look for in resumes
• Danger points in interviews
• Motivating your team
• Rating and ranking
• Overcoming differences about tools
• Measuring success with metrics
• The importance of documentation plans
• Getting involved early in the software development process
• Ensuring proper allocation and balance across your team
• Evaluating whether writers need managers

For more information, see Richard Hamilton’s book, Managing Writers. You can also read Richard Hamilton’s blog. He has made a sample chapter available here: What Doc Managers Look for in a Resume.

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Today I was thinking of this heroin phrase in relation to a couple of emails people sent me about technical writing. A bank teller tells me he finds his job boring and wants to break into technical writing. Another person with years of experience in technical writing has nearly the opposite feeling. She is “tired of technical writing.” She finds it “boring and redundant.” Instead she wants to become a freelance writer, even though she hasn’t found much work in it.

My advice? If you find your day job boring — whether you’re a bank teller or technical writer — a blog can be an escape mechanism. For me, it is like my own personal brand of heroin. It fulfills me creatively and provides an avenue for writing, expression, thinking, interacting, and exploring new technology. If you haven’t discovered blogging yet, there’s an entire dimension of your life it can fill. It can also be time-consuming, addictive, and physically demanding.

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We all sat mesmerized while Hymas related story after story. His speech wasn’t polished or his diction articulate, but his life-altering stories held me at full attention. As I walked back to my department, I wondered how he had become a motivational speaker. Was it the handful of life-altering stories, which he could deliver in sincere, moving ways, that made him inspirational?  I thought, perhaps if I had a handful of life-altering stories …

But later I realized Hymas probably didn’t have more stories than anyone else. There are hundreds of other quadriplegics, others who have broken their necks, who are no doubt dull, unmotivating, and ordinary.

What separates extraordinary presenters and writers from others? I believe it’s the ability to see stories where others miss them. The ability to create stories where others look at the obvious and see nothing.

Writers see stories where others see nothing

This week I’ve been reading a book of essays by James Hall, a contemporary Florida novelist. In one of his essays, Hall explains how that his love for reading stemmed from a murder mystery called Nude Woman in the Grass, a book he randomly found in the library and started reading when he was ten. The smutty-sounding title (which turned out to be very PG) grabbed his attention, but he found the mystery gripped him, and led him to see the appeal of reading. He writes,

“So this was why people read! Books were about adult things. Strong emotions, extreme behaviors, the inside stuff of a world I had never imagined existed. In this my first recreational book I suddenly realized that novels could fill one with heart pounding fear as well as lip-smacking lust. That they could, in fact, suddenly expand the boundaries of the tiny hillbilly town where I had always lived and where I imagined I would always stay.”

Hall’s experience was quiet, subtle, and mostly stationary — he was merely reading a book in a library. But within this one moment, he sees a larger, more meaningful narrative.

The writer’s ability to see story where others pass it by is similar to the photographer’s eye. When I take photos, I merely point and click, and don’t think much about what I’m doing. But real photographers, I’ve been told, look for the single moment that tells a story — the one split second where someone’s countenance tells the story of the whole. Novices don’t see this. The captured moment is something you must learn to see. The photographer sees the invisible story and captures it.

Yesterday Jane and I rode our bikes through some winding roads in Eagle Mountain, passing by rustic 9,000-square-foot ranch homes, many with horses in the sides of their yards and four car garages. The sun was setting over the mountain hills. I was pulling all three kids in a bike carrier behind me.

Nothing happened on the ride, but I felt, in a few distinct moments, that we had found a place we could call home. After years of living all over the world, and months of searching for the right place, we found the right place.

I started to see how I might create a story out of an experience that didn’t seem to include a story. We were, after all, just riding our bikes. No one was injured. No one broke world records. No one even talked much. But I caught a glimpse of the narrative that was going on, almost invisibly before us.

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photo from SAAO

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Honestly, I can’t tell. The Writer’s Mind CD is supposed to stimulate your brain waves to give you both creativity (by selecting Track 1) or motivation (by selecting Track 2), but it just sounds like rain to me. But even the falling rain seems to focus my attention. It tricks me into really thinking it’s raining outside, which makes me feel cozy inside my safe shelter.

To be fair, the falling rain is just a mask over the frequencies that would probably otherwise be intolerable to listen to. In a nutshell, here’s how the technology is supposed to work. Your brain emits different wave patterns (Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta) based on moods. The Delta frequencies you emit during sleep contrast with the Alpha frequencies you emit during more creative states. So if you can refocus those Delta waves into Alpha waves, maybe you’ll stop falling asleep at your desk and instead feel motivated to write.

Someone just sent me the CD for free. Check out their site — Writers Mind — if you’re interested. It seems a bit gimmicky to me, and if were really true that you could transport yourself into a creative state through these practically inaudible frequencies, then there would also be CDs out there to remove anger, help you sleep, motivate you to exercise, compel you spend money, etc. (actually, there probably already are these CDs).

I think that if this technology works, it has a 10 percent or less effect on my actual thoughts. The human mind is complex. We may emit certain frequencies based on our moods, but it doesn’t mean that hearing those frequencies will have the reverse effect of changing our moods.

However, despite my skepticism, I have to admit that I keep playing the CD whenever I don’t feel like writing, and it seems to help a little, if nothing more than to provide white noise to blanket out other talk going on. I prefer music when I write, and this soundtrack (a rain downpour) provides the audible without any distracting words.