Multiple Streams of Writing Income Part 4: Vision Description and Leveraging Your Writing

The Inspiration Gap

As you will see in the coming articles, your vision, with its purpose and mission, have to drive an enormous amount of energy from where you are to where you want to be. I call this the Inspiration Gap. The inspirational gap powers the energy to create your vision and propels you into action toward what you desire. This gap is the bridge that spans the distance between where you are, who you are, and who you see yourself becoming. Like any bridge, if it is not engineered properly, it will never serve the purpose it was designed to serve.

The Inspiration Gap must be big enough to stretch you out of your comfort zone, but not so far outside your zone that it deflates and paralyzes you. Make it edgy, but not overwhelming. And remember as we move through the strategies and tasks coming up, that it's always a matter of placing your attention on a few important tasks at a time, instead of trying to take on everything at once. More on this a little later.

Your Vision Description

Now, you are ready to combine all of your previous thoughts and writing and create your Vision Statement. This is a description of your dream, your purpose, your mission, all based on your values.

The description will answer many questions, some of which are listed below:

How do my values impact what I am writing? Why does my writing exist? What does my writing represent? Why I do the writing I do? What do I aspire to? What is the experience of my readers? Who is my intended audience? What is my purpose for writing? What are my objectives and when will I accomplish them?

Vision Recap

Let's recap what you've learned with respect to writing a vision statement:

* Your vision needs a purpose.

* Your vision needs a mission that is achievable and concise.

* Your vision needs a description that includes words that elicit emotion and paints a picture in your mind.

* Your vision needs to include and align with your values.

* Your vision needs to have an inspiration gap.

* Your vision needs to motivate and inspire.

* Your vision needs to provoke you to action.

Leveraging Your Writing

Now that you have a clear vision with a purpose and mission aligned with your values, you can determine what strategy will best help you attain your vision. To do that, the first step is to look at how you might leverage your writing in different mediums and formats.

A frequent conversation I have with my writing clients is how to best utilize their writing to gain more exposure and to create more income. If there is one thing that will accomplish both of these objectives, it's learning how to leverage your writing.

I suggest that you write something once, then use it in various mediums. Let me give you an example. I was asked to present a teleclass for a Special Interest Group through CoachU called the e-publication SIG. I spent several days developing the content for that free offering. Around the same time, I was approached to participate in a book promotion for an author in my series who was launching her own book. Since I was already writing a course, I decided to offer that as a bonus gift for the promotion.

As I was developing the marketing content and web pages for the promotion, I saw that if I expanded the content, I could create an e-book to sell as a companion piece. I will eventually use the initial writing and combine it with other marketing material to use in a printed book, and will record that book for sale as a book on CD and mp3 files. I also use the writing as a tool with my writing clients. At this point, I have used one piece of writing five times, some for direct income, others for marketing purposes, and always for learning by my readers and clients.

The next step is to submit portions of the content to magazines and online sites that are seeking guest columnists. And finally, I will be expanding the content to begin offering live workshops and retreats for potential writers.

My goal is to use any writing I create a minimum of five different ways, more if possible. From my example, here are the methods I am using (I'll discuss these in more detail in my e-book):

* eMessages

* Teleclass/Teleseminar Content

* Web logs (Blogs)

* Podcasts

* Recordings of Teleclasses

* MP3s downloads

* Workbook

* e-courses

* e-books

* Articles for magazines

* Articles for online sites

* Physical Book

* Book on CD

* Book on Tape

* Workshops/Speeches

* Retreats

* Webinars

* Live Conferences

* Video/DVDs

* Continuity Programs

In my next article, I will discuss how to create your strategies from these mediums.