WWN14: Love's Labours Write

It’s my anniversary today.

(Carraniversary?)

Naturally, I started to think about Shakespeare, and an interesting historical fact.

Well, interesting if you’re an English nerd anyway.

One of the great Bard’s plays appears to be…

…missing.

From the ol’ Wokey-Pedia, because it’s still reliable enough if you steer clear of politics and religion:

In other words, there are a couple of Shakespeare’s contemporaries who mention this play “Love’s Labour’s Won” and yet…

No record of it exists!

Curious.

Was it a ‘nickname’ for another play?

Was it a long lost sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost?

Or…

…was it just a dastardly prank by Billy Shakes’ buddies who thought it would be funny to write about a play that never existed to trick the historians in the future?

The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Because I don’t have a clue.

Like all these things, everyone’s got a theory and nobody’s got no evidence for it.

But it’s an interesting thing to mention because Love’s Labours (and Labours of love) are exactly what I want to talk about here.

Because writing, especially writing well, is an act of love.

It’s reaching out to another person and connecting with them and if you’re doing it even half decently, creating emotion and desire and action in them.

And so there are two things to talk about today, ever so briefly.

Love’s Labours and Labours of Love.

Yes, those are different.

Yes, the difference matters.

Yes, I’m using a slight difference in word order to hammer home a point.

Deal with it!

Because ‘Love’s Labours’ are what goes into all your writing, if you’re writing it right.

We are not Content Creatooooors here. We are craftsmen writers.

(And that includes craftswomen, if you’re dumb enough to be offended by the correct use of men for the collective, please unsubscribe.)

Craftsmen writers care.

They love.

The love not just the words themselves, for themselves. But the people those words are reaching out to.

And that might sound like fluffy woo to you who grew up in the Content Creatooooor Cesspit. But it’s time to make like Dorothy’s Tin Man Pal and grow a heart.

Because loving your reader is the core of being a craftsman writer.

What does it mean practically? Well, we’ll come back to that in another issue because this one could run long (especially if you’re signed up to Craftsman’s Corner and getting the 600 word bonus below).

But in short?

• It means caring enough to be clear, instead of obfuscating to make yourself look smart.

• It means caring enough to be clever, instead of simplifying to the point of dullness.

• It means caring enough to write well, edit effectively, publish prolifically.

In other words, it means being a craftsman about the whole thing.

The craftsman writer never just churns out a pile of content. He never just “bashes off” an email without though, whacking a “buy my crap” in the P.s. and failing to entertain nobody.

Instead, he crafts it.

Carefully. Consistently. Crusaderly.

Did I say crusaderly?

Why yes, because that is our sponsor this week. (Psyche, you thought there wasn’t one, didn’t ya?)

But jokes aside, I’ve teamed up with The Art of Purpose, Alin Dragu and the Art of Sales to give you one sweet ten day ride to your first (or next) 1,000 subscribers.

And this seems like a good point to share that for two reasons.

One, I’ll be teaching some of the craftsman approach to writing emails inside the cohort - specifically on lead magnets, and also editing people’s emails for great lovin’

But also because I love you, dear reader, and so I have prepared the mother of all bonuses which you can read all about…

…when I email you later in the week about it properly.

Meanwhile you can go straight to the sales page to check out the cold, hard cohort details here.

If you like what you see and buy through that link, I’ll honour the bonuses when those are announced (think multiple hundreds of dollars in value) or you can wait until the weekend - but you’ll leave yourself a lot less time to think about it because the bonus stack will vanish next Wednesday.

But before we drift into the end of the email I got one more thing for ya.

Labours of love!

Because much as I love ya, dear reader, there is a limit to how much love you can pour into an email or a tweet. Content is all about ROI, after all. It’s designed to create action and at a certain point, too much polish just makes it slippy and people stop getting a hold on it and there I go doing it with this metaphor…

But there are some kinds of writing where it’s worth the extra work!

Those are your labours of love. Your real writing. The stuff that counts.

I love poetry, so I slave over it.

It makes me next to nowt. A few thousand bucks here and there for Children’s books, a few bucks here and there for hymns, a few nothings here and there for other poetry.

But I never care. I write it anyway - because I love it.

Monday just past, I was writing all afternoon on various content projects, work for hire where I’m creating audio content for Bible apps.

I made around $500 from a few hours work.

Not bad.

And then I crashed after a long day doing that and other stuff, poured myself a rum, lit up my pipe (The Lorenzeti, filled with Peterson’s Perfect Plug) and relaxed…

…by writing poetry.

There I was scribbling in my lime-green moleskine notebook, puffing away, wondering why the rum was always gone, and having…

the time of my life

Yes, I relax from writing by writing. I know. It’s odd.

But it’s why your here, because you and I both love this curious craft we have found ourselves in.

But more on that in Craftsman’s Corner because I had an important realisation that’s more relevant there.

For now I’ll just bid you goodbye with the encouragement to let your pipe always be lit, and your writing always be loved.

Yours,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

fin.

Today’s Craftsman’s corner is a powerful exercise to help apply this issue of the Write Way effectively, see the green box below, dear subscribers.