[note]This is the first post in a series of 5 posts on how to be interesting so your audience will stick around. We’ll be featuring three very interesting people in one question interviews.[/note]

“You’re boring.” declared Seth Godin.

I could swear he was pointing at me.

“The only path left is to lean out of the edge and become interesting, noteworthy and yes, remarkable.”

‘But how do I become interesting?’ I wondered. Before I could voice that question, he’d gone off to his next post. I wanted to scream after him to come back and tell me how to be interesting. I didn’t want to go through his archives. I wanted my answer right now!

Knowing I’d fallen for Seth’s trap didn’t stop me from grumbling. He’d forced me to think and wonder about how to be interesting. I don’t know about you, but there was no way I was going to fumble around in the dark making a fool of myself in an effort to be interesting.

Of course, one could argue, that making a fool out of myself would be extremely interesting for a number of people.

I figured if Seth wouldn’t tell me (not that I asked him), I’d ask other people through a one question interview. Three stellar and totally awesome people replied to my one question interview.

I asked them:

What is the one thing we should change about our approach to become more interesting?

Yes, I realize. That’s got to be the world’s vaguest question. I was going to chicken out of sending the email to them if I hadn’t sent it when I did.

What I really wanted to ask was: “How the hell do I become interesting so that people like you will visit and read my blog? How do I catch and hold your interest? Tell me for God’s sake!!!”

The nice, professional blogger that I am, I couldn’t possible ask in exactly those words now could I?

So I sent the first question that popped in my head without stopping to frame it properly. And I got replies! Imagine my shock when the first email popped in within 24 hours! It didn’t even ridicule me or tell me to go get my act together.

Starting tomorrow, The Base will be featuring one interview per day for three days. Learn how to be interesting from three of the most interesting people online who know what it takes to keep their readers riveted.

Tomorrow, Michael Martine of Remarkablogger fame will be sharing his view on how to be an interesting blogger.

Tune in tomorrow to find how we can become interesting bloggers, the Remarkablogger way.

P.S: The Base will be updated every day this week and the review of Unit III of the Staff Blogging Course will return next Tuesday.

Image credit: Scragz

If you’ve ever posted any content online, you know spam.

It’s like the neighbour who wouldn’t stop coming over to ‘borrow’ something or the other. You politely tried to dissuade her, gently but firmly told her no, talked to her about how annoying it is when people ask for things continuously and never return them or the favour back but nothing worked. So you trained your kids to always be  on the lookout for Mrs Can-I-borrow-it-forever from next door.

You even tried to hide in your own home and pretend you weren’t there.

The neighbour still comes over and you still get spam.

Until one day it all mysteriously stopped. The neighbour stopped coming and you could opened the kitchen window and allowed your kids to play in the garden.

A few weeks ago, spam stopped coming in completely. I went from receiving over 200 spam comments a day to zilch. Zero. Nada.

Then I got one spam comment. I pounced on my spam folder sure that it was genuine comment caught up by mistake. At first look it did seem like it. The comment said: [note]Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this issue,so thanks for posting. I’ll definitely be coming back to your site.[/note]

I was ready to pump my fist in the air for catching an authentic comment in my spam folder when I noticed which post they’d left the comment in. That can’t be right. The person in question had been wondering about the issue of keeping my zen seat warm.

I checked the email and the domain looked fishy. So I let it remain in the folder to see if it was genuine or more of the same would follow.

A few days later, another comment got caught by Akismet. This one seemingly innocent with a request to copy the post to his website. It had google.com as its website and the post it question?

Yeah, you guessed it. Why spammers are so interested in my seat of zen is beyond me. It’s in my loo for heaven’s sake you dumb bots! I would flush each one of you down given half the chance.

Finally I got another comment caught in spam. [note]Nice Theme buddy! Can you tell me the download link for email.[/note]

Thanks, I love my theme too. I would also tell you where I downloaded it from if your website and email address didn’t promise the enlargement of a part of human anatomy that I don’t even have.

So got any smart s-p-a-m lately or am I the sole recipient of their newfound intelligence?

Photo credit: cursedthing

I haven’t spread link love in a few weeks. The following links were my food for thought this week when I finally managed to catch up (somewhat) with my RSS feeder.

The Renegade Writer has two posts that had me going ‘hmmm’ for a couple of reasons.

The freelancer’s guide to getting paid reminded me of my unpaid invoice. 

5 Tips for creating an inspiring workspace got me thinking of ways I can set up my own corner. Right now, there’s a stack of books, papers, a phone and a lamp. I’ll post a pic up soon, and you’ll see that decorating skills are absent in me

Over at Freelance Folder, Laura Spencer shed light on the uncomfortable facts about plagiarism. Thankfully, I’m nowhere near being a popular enough blogger to be plagiarized. I agree that blogging success has nothing to do with plagiarism but I do believe that it reduces the chances of having your writing stolen.

Sean has the second place in my list of bloggers who I read religiously. As in every post and every word written by them that I come across. And my list is only 4 people long. His post, An exclamation point is like a promise made me stop and think about my own use of the exclamation mark. Do you use it too often? 

If you’re struggling with blogging (and the best of us do) head over to Confident Writing where Joanna tells us about 10 Things to do when you lose your blogging voice. 

What have you been reading online lately?

If you’re having trouble writing, take a good look at your word processor. Give it a mean look (like really mean), then step away from it.

Instead, pick up a paper and a pencil and discover the magic of writing like I did. MS Word got the boot by me about a week ago. It was being mean – the blinking cursor was laughing at me.

At the verge of giving up, I noticed the blank page at the back of a printed sheet on my desk. It didn’t look right. A paper just shouldn’t be blank, y’know?!

I picked it up and started doodling while I brooded over my word processor’s meanness. Soon I started writing. This time, I wasn’t chasing after my ideas with a paper and pen, I was capturing them! I kept writing all week.

Here are a few things I discovered during my journey to fill sheets of paper with my writing.

Writing by hand composes your thoughts

As you hand write the points, your brain gets the time to compose your thoughts into a coherent sentence. The chances of the perfect sentence forming grows tenfold because you’re able to form, reject and reform different sentences as you write.

A word processor doesn’t give us the time to do that. We type too fast and the longer we keep our finger poised over the keyboard thinking how to compose the next sentence, the more we feel like we’re stuck. Until we do get stuck!

Connect, highlight, refer, repeat.

When writing on paper arrows become my best friends. They tell which point they want to get connected to and which way they want to go from there.

Similarly, highlighters turn into my favourite people. After I’m done writing, I highlight the points I want to make a subheading out of, underline the things I want to elaborate in that subheading and use arrows for further extentions.

Then I pin it up on the wall in front of me and refer to it as I type in the word processor. Much easier than clicking between browser windows and losing my writing tempo.

Doodle!

Ah yes, the love of my life. Doodling is a habit everyone has. Unfortunately, you just can’t doodle in a word processor. You know how everyone says to write well you have to write everyday? I say to write well, heck to just write, you have to doodle along the way!

Your hand shouldn’t stop. Even if you’re just doodling your name. A moving hand means a moving thought process.

No Distractions

There is no email, gtalk, twitter or facebook – there is no internet, period. It’s just you, your pen and a piece of paper.

Something that would take ages to write between twitter and email (which you check everytime you got a little stuck) gets drafted in half an hour on paper. There’s no finicking over spellings and formatting, instead you’ll find yourself writing in short hand.[note]So the summary of this post is that hand drawn arrows are my best friends, highlighters my favourite people and doodling is the love of my life.

Oh and that your brain responds better to your hand writing.[/note]

Has your writing been completely digitalized? How often do you use paper to write on and what difference do you feel between the two?

[Photo Credit: Prodigal unlimited13]

I’ve had this thought about a thousand times already. I love freelancing for what it teaches me on the job. In a given week, I learn about at least 3 new topics. Not to mention the various skills I keep learning!

I’ve started listing the new topics I learn about on a piece of paper. This week alone, I’ve learned about dogs and their various accessories, cloud computing and mobile/facebook applications development.

Needless to say, the diversity of the topics I can learn on a given day is exhilirating!

What topics/subjects have you learned about this week?