I had the weirdest dream last night.

Freelance writers James and Harry from Men with Pens had managed to escape from their psych ward cells, stumbling their way through the dark basement until they came to what appeared to be some kind of writer’s museum.

“Write For The Web: The Guide For Beginning Writers,” the sign read, “by JCM Enterprises.”

“JCM Enterprises?” James asked, as if it were strangely familiar. “I sense something, a presence I’ve not felt since…” He never finished that thought.

Harry didn’t like the stiff look of things. Even in the gift shop, he was afraid to touch anything because it looked too nice. “Who are these pretentious pricks?” he wondered. “I’ll bet they put caviar on their Corn Flakes, and make people call them ‘Esquire.’”

Still, Harry knew they had stumbled onto a gold mine. “You know James, we wasted a lot of time early in our writing careers. All this information really could have helped us shortcut our learning curve. There’s so much hype out there about how great freelance writing is, but it’s hard to know who’s really shooting straight with you.”

As if he had been waiting for a cheesy cue, James drew his gun and began a series of dramatic poses, flitting around the room and desperately looking for an excuse to squeeze the trigger.

“Put that thing away before you hurt someone!”

“Are you new here, Harry? This is what we do.”

“Yeah, but you don’t even know what you’re aiming at.”

True, James had to admit that he couldn’t really find anything worth shooting. He was really impressed with how diverse the museum’s collection was, covering many different kinds of web writing as well as many aspects of the business that new writers might not have even though of.

James began rattling off weak excuses to shoot. “I’m just not sure how useful this would be to experienced writers.”

“Yeah, but it says right here: ‘The Guide For Beginning Writers.’”

“Hmph. Well, it could really use an overhaul so it looks like it’s wearing a leather jacket and smoking, y’know?”

“True, that would definitely help. While the information is sound, it doesn’t exactly come across with much style. You’d never see us doing something like this. Not in a million years. But I think they can be forgiven. Besides, it looks like they’re under new ownership.”

“OK, well then what about all these resource links? They look good, but I haven’t actually gone and checked them out, have you?”

“Well, no, but you can’t blame the museum for us being short on time. These guys really know what they’re doing, and I’m sure they’ll only point us in the right direction.”

James was getting anxious. “But I’ve never come back from a job with a full clip yet, and I’m not going to start now!”

“Tell you what, James. Take my gun. You can do the shooting for both of us next time.”

###

In case a translation is needed, this is a review of Write For The Web: The Guide For Beginning Writers, a $19.99 ebook by Men with Pens. The review is done in the style of their brutal “drive-by shooting” blog reviews.

Their ebook has a lot of useful information for people looking into freelance writing, but it’s written in the corporate style they had back when they went by the name of JCM Enterprises. I hope they grace us with an updated version one of these days. In the meantime, this is solid information from people who learned everything the hard way, so you don’t have to.

Does good content matter in the blogosphere? Recently there has been quite a bit of discussion suggesting that perhaps it doesn’t.

James at Men with Pens wrote about Getting Creative With Your Content, or rather, how people are not getting creative with their content:

“I scroll through my feed reader, my attention dulled by the similar headlines. They’re carbon-copy titles that make a desperate attempt to grasp my attention. Some – very few – do. But I’m often quickly disappointed. The headline may be mildly intriguing, but the content of the first paragraph is just the same old stuff. Nothing new, nothing entertaining, nothing interesting.”

Skellie wrote about Why Great Writing Doesn’t Matter Online. Considering how many people admire her writing, it surprised me a bit to see her say this:

“Good writing, clever writing, beautiful writing — all of these things are unnecessary in the creation of great web content…clever turns of phrase, immaculate grammar, flawless spelling and crisp sentences are relatively insignificant.”

(Her point was that “all great web writing must do is communicate great ideas without getting in their way,” but I’d contend that even great ideas don’t necessarily matter, as evidenced by the success of certain blogs).

These posts received a flood of comments from people on both sides of the issue. I felt that a lot of people were doing their best to resist admitting what deep down they know is true: maybe great content really doesn’t matter that much.

It occurred to me that perhaps we’re looking at this the wrong way. Instead of lamenting the sad state of the blogosphere, maybe we should just give the people what they want: rehashed content. And I have a tool that will save you a lot of time in creating it: the Automatic Blog Post Rehasher.

Now you can easily rehash content from these blogs:

• 4-Hour Workweek
• IttyBiz
• Hunter Nuttall . com
• Men with Pens
• ProBlogger
• Seth Godin’s Blog
• Skelliewag.org
• Steve Pavlina . com
• Zen Habits

(I chose these blogs because they’re some of the well-known blogs I read. I’m not saying that they consist of rehashed content.)

Just fire up the Automatic Blog Post Rehasher and pick a blog. Adjust some parameters to fit your writing style, click “Rehash it,” and it spits out a brand new post for you, using word choice similar to the selected blog. It even gives you an image to use.

Some of you English majors may quibble with the grammar of what it spits out, but it really doesn’t matter. As you may know, people don’t read every word, they just scan. As long as your post contains a few buzzwords, it’s golden.

If you write (or read) content online or anywhere else good writing doesn’t matter, I’ve just saved you thousands of hours and given you a practically infinite number of free posts. I may have even improved the quality of your content.

Me Hunter. You read.

Photo by lanuiop

Earlier I wrote about the importance of finding your calling, and pointed you to some ways of finding your calling through introspection. I also said I’d write about an alternative way to find your calling without introspection. Here it is.

There’s lots of advice out there saying to “do what you love,” or “follow your heart,” or “do what you’re meant for.” The idea is that by paying close attention to who you are, you’ll be able to figure out what place your unique gifts have in the universe. And there’s certainly some truth to that. It’s essential to spend lots of time thinking about what you’re supposed to do to be fulfilled. The decision usually isn’t as easy as just picking from society’s menu of recommended career choices. If it were, then why do so many people hate their jobs?

Henry Ford once said, “The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what it is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.” Notice that he said “secret,” not “easy color-by-numbers blueprint.” Your destiny is often far from obvious! And sometimes by being too close to the problem and too entrenched in routine, we can miss things that others might see.

Yes, sometimes others know things about us that we don’t know about ourselves. Or maybe we’ve just forgotten things we used to know because we’ve gotten used to wearing a different mask. Our success is ultimately judged by others anyway, in that you can’t make a living from something unless people find enough value in your work to pay for it.

For these reasons, it makes a lot of sense to pay close attention to what other people tell you you’re good at. Not necessarily what they tell you when you ask them, because they’ll probably just make up some vague or generic answer on the spot to get you to go away. But you should pay close attention to what they tell you on their own, without being prompted.

Let’s look at an example. I was led to creating this personal development blog in large part because of three things that other people voluntarily told me I was good at: writing, creativity, and honesty.

Writing. A few years ago, my mom ran into my high school journalism teacher at the doctor’s office. They didn’t know each other, but my teacher figured it out when they called my mom’s name. It was about ten years after I had graduated, and my teacher had no idea what I was up to. She said “Just tell me that Hunter’s writing!” When my mom said I was a software developer, my teacher let out a disappointed “Oh.” That should have told me something, but unfortunately I didn’t listen right away because I was too focused on doing what paid the bills. It took me a while before I got into writing, but I got there.

Creativity. I was actually told that I was creative by a personality test more so than by any actual person, but it still counts. I once took a test (I think it was called the OAD Survey) that measures how your personality matches up with the ideal personality for your job (sounds useful, doesn’t it?). The most obvious discrepancy for me was in the area of creativity. I got a 10, and my job was ideally suited for a 2. No wonder I couldn’t stand it! Now I can use creativity both in finding solutions to tough problems, and in writing about them.

Honesty. Lots of people have commented on how honest I am, but I still don’t fully understand this. Is being honest actually uncommon? I thought most people were honest, but I guess they must not be, or people wouldn’t bother telling me that I am. Personal development is definitely a field where honesty will differentiate you. Obviously, there are lots of people out there hyping up scams or overpriced programs, books, CDs, etc. that purport to make you millions overnight, easily accomplish any goal, etc. Even a lot of the legitimate stuff is hard to recognize because it’s drowned in hype. I have some things to sell here, but even when I do have a vested interest in something, I think you’ll find me refreshingly transparent.

It’s always good to get second opinions. I’ve had people tell me I was a bad writer, that I had no imagination, and that I was lying through my teeth. So who did I decide to believe? I just went with the people who seemed credible and caring instead of the people who were making ignorant snap judgments.

I didn’t immediately connect these three qualities to blogging, but I might have done so a lot sooner had I consciously thought about it. And at this point I can’t say for sure whether my blog will become successful or lead to anything, but I found that it was immediately a lot of fun, and I know it’s something I have to do.

Don’t feel that you have to do all the work in finding your calling. Other people will do a lot to point you in the right direction, if you just listen.

Yesterday there was a post on PickTheBrain titled Improve Your Writing with a Conversation Tone. What I found most interesting about it was the link to the Readability index calculator, which scans text you enter in order to calculate the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade level.

The Reading Ease score is typically 90 for comics and 10 for legalese. Time magazine is about a 52, and Reader’s Digest is about a 65. The Grade level is theoretically the grade you have to reach in order to understand the text, but it’s not perfect: Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham gives a grade level of -1.3. Both Reading Ease and Grade are based on the number of words per sentence and the number of syllables per word, but these measures are weighted differently by the two formulas.

When you write posts that a 10th grader can understand, that doesn’t mean you’re dumbing them down because you think your audience couldn’t make it through 10th grade. It means you’re avoiding pretentious words and convoluted sentences so you sound more like a person and less like a textbook. The less effort it takes people to figure out what you’re trying to say, the more they can ponder what you’re saying. Of course, some situations require complex language, but in general, we should try to avoid it.

I’m subscribed to 48 blogs, and I decided to put them to the test. Out of the 48, I find 13 of them especially enjoyable to read, and I find 8 of them especially painful to read (I read those 8 either because they have very good information, or they’re very popular and I’m still trying to figure out why). It occurred to me that the blogs I find enjoyable to read would probably have high readability scores, so I decided to conduct an interesting (though highly unscientific) experiment.

To save time, I only tested the 13 most enjoyable blogs and the 8 least enjoyable blogs (in a slightly narcissistic move, I included my own blog among the most enjoyable). I used the most recent post from each blog, unless it was a guest post, contained a lot of quoted material, was too short, or was otherwise unusual, in which case I moved on to the next most recent post.

The results were what I expected for the most part: the blogs I liked generally had the highest readability scores, while the blogs I didn’t like generally had the lowest scores. Here are the rankings for the top ten most readable blogs I subscribe to, after filtering out two that I don’t like reading, sorted by Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score (with a secondary sort by Grade level and a tertiary sort by blog name).

#1: brip blap (Reading Ease score: 64; Grade level: 8)

#2: zenhabits (Reading Ease score: 62; Grade level: 8)

#3: Seth’s Blog (Reading Ease score: 61; Grade level: 9)

#4: Hunter Nuttall . com (Reading Ease score: 60; Grade level: 9)

#5 (tie): Conrad Hees’ Blog (Reading Ease score: 57; Grade level: 9)

#5 (tie): Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog (Reading Ease score: 57; Grade level: 9)

#7: Early Retirement Extreme (Reading Ease score: 56; Grade level: 11)

#8: Skelliewag.org (Reading Ease score: 52; Grade level: 10)

#9: Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek and Lifestyle Design Blog (Reading Ease score: 50; Grade level: 10)

#10: On Moneymaking (Reading Ease score: 50; Grade level: 11)

(Had the list been sorted by Grade level before Reading Ease score, Early Retirement Extreme would be pushed down to #9.)

The blogs I’m subscribed to that I don’t take pleasure in reading had Reading Ease scores around 40, and Grade levels around 14. So the message is clear: be easy to understand, and people will like listening to you.