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Sales Made Easy 10 – My Four-Word Rules For Success – #10 in a series.

We’ve spent the last few weeks discussing my four-word rules for business success. My goal remains simple: I want to give you easy-to-implement tools, tactics, and techniques to improve your business.

Each rule is only four words long because often that’s all it takes to make a huge difference when you build your brand and your business.

If you missed any of the rules, you can find them all on my website’s blog page.

Sales Made Easy – #10 in a series.

But first, a story.

Listen to enough writers and sooner or later it’ll dawn on you that writing is thought of in many different ways, few of them pleasant.

Ernest Hemingway found searching for his writing muse torturous. According to legend, Papa described it this way: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

Jack London said, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

1. Somerset Maugham believed, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

Sales Made Easy – #10 in a series.

Having spent the last 15 years hammering out this blog week after week while writing new books, countless speeches, articles, and TV commentary, as well as keeping up with my client assignments, I’ve learned a little bit about how hard it can be to maintain consistent good writing.

But of all the things I’ve learned, regular writing reminds me of two universal truths that assert themselves time and time again:

The key to good writing is not writing. It’s rewriting. And,

The Muse is a jealous taskmaster.

I’m not the first to discover these two points. When researching quotes for this article, I’d already determined my two truths but wasn’t aware that others had already explained them.

Vladimir Nabokov said, “I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

Hemingway, too, was pretty clear on this point when he wrote, “The first draft of anything is shit.”

Because rewriting is the most essential part of good writing, I try to write my posts with enough lead time to read them over and over, crafting them a bit tighter with each pass.

As for point two, the jealousy of the Muse, if you want to write books, ads, blogs, IG posts, sales notices, proposals or whatever, besides putting in lots and lots of hard work, you must discipline yourself to stop and write whenever an idea strikes you. Because if you wait for a more convenient moment, your good ideas will be gone.

To benefit from the thinking time I get when I run, I keep a miniature Sharpie Magic Marker tangled in my sneaker laces to write inspirations down on the palm of my hand right when they pop into my head. I keep a pad and pen on my bed stand when I sleep to capture those 3:15 a.m. brainstorms before they disappear. During the day, I always try to have my laptop, iPad, or a simple notebook within quick reach so I don’t risk missing good ideas whenever and wherever the muse shows itself.

Steven Pressfield, author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The War of Art, already knew about the Muse’s demands. Pressfield explained it this way:

“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.”

Sales Made Easy – #10 in a series.

But just because the words and ideas might appear when you pay attention and work at it doesn’t make writing easy. Why? Because we writers are always our own worst critics. As Thomas Mann said, “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

This is why my four-word rule for Sales Success 10 is Never Ignore Your Muse.