Do you know what it is?
What keeps people reading a blog, week after week, year after year?
Let me ask you another question …
Which of your school teachers do you remember?
I imagine your favorite teachers were full of passion for their field. Their enthusiasm made their teaching sparkle, and it made you curious to learn more.
As bloggers, we’re all teachers, too, and our enthusiasm breathes life into our writing.
Enthusiasm may be difficult to measure but readers—like students—can sense it. Our enthusiasm is contagious, making readers curious to learn more.
Want to know how to infuse your writing with your enthusiasm?
A journey of discovery
Last week, I read the book Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard.
It’s a scientific memoir—a fascinating mix of personal stories and teaching. Simard shares her discovery of the interdependence of trees in forests: the “wood wide web.”
Simard’s writing reminded me of the power of questions. For instance, at the start of her career, Simard works in forestry, recommending how to replant trees after a forest has been cleared for the wood industry. She finds the seedlings are struggling, and wonders:
Why did they look so awful? Why, in contrast, did the wild firs germinating in that old-growth patch look so brilliant?
Later on, Simard questions the conventional understanding that trees are in competition for survival:
Are forests structured mainly by competition, or is cooperation as or even more important?
Historian David Hackett Fischer called questions “the engines of intellect.” But questions are more than that. Questions are also an opportunity to share your curiosity with your audience, to take them with you on your journey of discovery.
No matter whether you’re a science writer or business blogger, when you pose intriguing questions, you make readers curious to learn your answers, too.
What are the most intriguing questions you’d like to answer on your blog?
A question may be too big to answer in a single blog post but you can break big questions down into smaller questions and answer those smaller questions one by one in your blog posts.
Agitate against a villain
Fighting against a villain is a common storytelling technique.
As readers, we cheer on the good characters, and we’re eager to find out whether (and how) they’ll defeat the bad characters.
In non-fiction writing, a villain doesn’t need to be a person or a group of people. Preferably it’s not, as there’s more than enough hostility in the world already.
Your enemy can be a practice you can fight against. In Simard’s case, it’s the practice of clear-cutting and replanting trees without considering biodiversity and the health of trees.
Simard’s fight starts when she’s young:
I’d become horrified, at eleven, when the city ran a pipeline spewing foamy water into the river beside my house, where the effluent killed the cottonwoods along the shore. First the tops of the crowns thinned, then black cankers appeared around the furrowed trunks, and by the next spring the great trees were dead. No new germinants got established among the yellow outflow. I wrote to the mayor, and my letter went unanswered.
And:
I was born to the wild. I come from the wild. I can’t tell if my blood is in the trees or if the trees are in my blood. That’s why it was up to me to find out why the seedlings were fading into corpses.
Writing becomes more powerful when you and your readers share a common “enemy”—when you spur on your readers to help you defeat a bad practice.
Which unhealthy practice would you like to help eliminate through your writing?
If you don’t know what you’re agitating against, take your time. Start with answering questions that intrigue you, and over time, you’ll discover more about your passion and what you want to change in the world.
Share your successes
In her book, Simard shares the disappointments of her journey—the pushback from the scientific and forestry communities, the talks that don’t go well, the hesitance to advocate for her research.
But she also shares her successes. For instance, when she discovers that fir and birch are transferring carbon to each other:
Dan’s eyes were ablaze at this initial clue. Me, I was over the moon, ecstatic, the grin on my face irrepressible. I threw my arms up to the wind and I shouted, Yes! Deep down, in our own ways, we both knew that we’d picked up something miraculous happening between the two tree species. Something otherworldly. Like intercepting a covert conversation over the airwaves that could change the course of history.
Did you notice the strong imagery at the start of that paragraph? Eyes ablaze, an irrepressible grin, throwing up her arms, and shouting Yes! As readers, it feels like we’re there, witnessing Simard’s success and celebrating with her.
Here’s another example of the excitement of success:
When I put the fir roots from the mixed pots under the microscope, I almost fell off my lab stool. The roots looked as big and abundant as the strands on a kitchen mop. More strikingly, the different fungal species colonizing them were as diverse as tree species in a tropical forest. (…) I shouted that the firs grown with birch looked like decorated Christmas trees. While the firs grown all alone had fewer mycorrhizas.
We often think of success in terms of a bigger business, more money, or perhaps more awards.
But what about discoveries, fresh insights, and new life experiences? Isn’t that success, too?
And how can you share such joy of learning on your blog?
Write with enthusiasm
Content marketers often talk about metrics like page views, new signups, open rates, search traffic, and number of links.
But such figures feel abstract to me. They don’t make me super-enthusiastic to write a new blog post. What makes me enthusiastic is sharing my love of good writing with you.
Let’s not forget that we’re humans communicating with other humans.
Just like the trees, we’re interconnected.
And instead of sharing carbon dioxide, we feed each other with knowledge, wisdom, and a spark of enthusiasm.
Recommended reading on writing with enthusiasm:
How to write with passion
How to write an inspirational success story
Tone in writing: 5 techniques to engage your readers
Hi Henneke,
What a great article! I have been trying to write a book, and I learn a lot from all the articles you share on your blog. I have gained so many insights that have helped me finesse my writing skills and become a better writer. It was an amazing read as well. Since I am writing fiction, I will have to incorporate a lot of things in my book and enthusiasm will be a perfect addition to make my story engaging. Thanks a lot for sharing all of these helpful tips. This helped me a lot.
People often treat fiction and non-fiction writing as two completely different disciplines. But while there are of course differences, there are many similarities, too. We can learn from any good writers, no matter whether they’re writing fiction or non-fiction.
I’m glad you’re enjoying my blog, John. Good luck with your book!
Yet more inspiration to help me blog.
Thank you Henneke for giving me yet more tools and for helping me to sustain my interest in blogging.
Your comment makes me happy, Melanie. Thank you, and happy blogging!
Thank you for another excellent post, Henneke! This was so great, I had to share this with my audience today–it’s much too good to keep to myself.
I always look forward to reading your blogs–your enthusiasm and passion are part of your magical formula that keeps me coming back week after week, year after year!
Thank you so much for your lovely comment and for sharing with your audience, Melissa. I much appreciate that you continue to read my work 🙂
Another great post. Thank you Henneke. When I was 17, I started working as a logger, setting chokers on a sidehill in northern British Columbia, Canada.
We called it “the bush”, as in “going out to the bush.”
“Work in the bush.” Never called it “the forest.” I haven’t been a logger for a long time now, but I will never forget walking in the tall timber in B.C. It’s magical. When I retire, I’d like to try my hand at growing seedlings. I need to pay back the bush. “Finding the Mother Tree” sounds like a book I should own. Thank you again.
Simard is also Canadian, and she also worked as a logger before becoming a scientist. Walking in the bush sounds magical!
What a great post. I am delighted to see such passion being shared and am rather interested in finding Simard’s book to peruse on my own. Thank you for your statements around creating community and inclusiveness in our writing as an attempt to engage readers. I feel like the world could use a little more community engagement and I absolutely agree that using these techniques in our professional writing will help to draw and bring on board those who aren’t so sure about the topic at hand. Utilized appropriately, I think the writing tools you mentioned are incredibly powerful and will help any writer to retain and cultivate a dedicated following. Thanks again for the book recommendation.
Thank you for stopping by, Angela. I hope you’ll enjoy Simard’s book. It was so interesting to learn about trees and how they support each other. Just like human communities.
Absolutely wonderful post and point! We search for happiness in everything and enthusiasm is always part of that recipe 🙂
I like how you phrase that … searching for happiness in everything.
Thank you for stopping by again, Virginia!
For me two things always apply and control the outcome of my writing. If I am happy, I write new novel chapter, if I am sad I write love poetry. The rest of the time, I love writing anything else.
That’s so interesting, that you vary what you write depending on your mood. I like that idea. Maybe I should try it, too!
Thank you for sharing, Carl.
I agree that enthusiasm is a much better metric of success than the stats. The good thing is that if you are enthusiastic yourself, and let yourself express that enthusiasm freely, it will spill over into the writing without much effort and be contagious.
I really like your blog posts. They aren’t focused on tips and tricks to build page views and clicks – they are devoted to the craft of communicating ideas and emotion, and forming connections in the process.
You also teach by example when you tell us to write easily-digestible tasty morsels. That is what each of your blog posts are.
Thank you for being a fresh voice in a sea of copy-paste hustle. And for sending emails that are worth reading!
Thank you, Ann, for your lovely comment and compliment on my writing.
I agree with you that if we let ourselves express our enthusiasm freely, it’ll spill over into our writing. It feels good when that happens!
“I imagine your favorite teachers were full of passion for their field.”
This is SO true, and I think I know why. They were both math teachers and although I struggled to make a decent grade, I loved the classes they taught. My pre-algebra teacher was Irish and called everyone “Honey” and loved us until we just HAD to learn, whether we wanted to or not.
Our geometry teacher used a huge wooden compass that held chalk, to show us on the blackboard, how to create all the various shapes required, and then would stand back and proudly consider his creations and exclaim, “Ain’t it pretty!”
I need to learn how to do that; I need to love my reader and have pride in what I teach. Going to read (re-read?) the supplemental material you linked at the end. Thanks, as always, Henneke!
I love the stories about your pre-algebra and geometry teachers. Thanks so much for sharing, Katharine.
You seem to already have much pride in what you teach and also love for your reader. You seem to have a real commitment to help.
Oh, I do, but my biggest commitment was to writing. I love to write, to line words up in a way that folks find fun to read. However, one day I just had too much to do and took a hiatus. That led to feeling free to accept other to-do’s and before I knew it, I just was tired of writing and finding other things also fun.
However, the love for sharing my expertise is surfacing. It was a long hiatus and many (perhaps) needed experiences before I should write again. And I was wondering what I should do. Feeling full of direction, now. Thanks again!
I’m sure you’ll get back into the swing of writing soon enough–when the time is right for you!
This blog opened my eyes on how imagery breathes life into a scene.
So I’ll do more of it for my blogs.
Thanks for sharing this blog Henneke. 🙏😊
I’m glad you enjoyed it, Akshay. Happy blogging!
Thank you so much for your advice. They inspire me to become a better writer.
But being in the legal domain and needing to write legal actions for judges, my writing needs to be technical (and boring).
What do you think is the best technique to capture the judge’s attention and make him/her hear my side of story?
Thank you!
I don’t know much about legal actions but my guess is that being clear and concise is key.
A text is only boring when it wanders too much in irrelevant directions. When writing is clear and concise, it’s not boring. It helps the judge see what’s important and what they need to make up their mind.
As always, I enjoy reading your blog posts. This one especially caught my attention. Not only do you exemplify in your own writing what you share with us, but I also learned something new about tree growth in forests from the examples you shared. As I learned that mixing trees when replanting a forest is beneficial, I found myself remembering how I used to plant marigolds near some of the veggies in my garden plots as they work together to control such pests as nematodes that can harm root veggies. Nature is amazing! Thank you for the great tips on how to share excitement and enthusiasm in our writing and for introducing me to another interesting book–Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard).
Thank you for your compliment on my writing , Romay.
Isn’t it wonderful how nature works? It strikes me that we can learn a lot from it. I hope you’ll enjoy “Finding the Mother Tree,” too.
By the way, I’ve finally got a website I can add to my comments!
Congrats on your new website. I love of the photography. Also, this idea: “Italian is so much more than a language, it’s a celebration of curiosity and life.” Fab!
I’d heard about this idea of trees warning each other. Love it, of course especially since they’re doing this incredibly quietly.
It’s inspiring especially after this last year. Instinctively, we’re all connected and want to help each other survive.
Henneke, like usual, thanks for a wonderful, thought-provoking post. And for reminding me of what good writing is.
Yes, so true … the quietness of the trees is beautiful. I love the imagery of interdependence and also the idea of trees having wisdom. I’ve always enjoyed walking in the woods. After reading this book, walking in the woods feels extra special. Are the trees whispering their wisdom to us, too?
Such a fascinating concept, too. Trees warning each other.. just lovely. It reminds you of how arrogant we, people are.
You are reading some fun books!
It is indeed a fascinating idea … trees warning each other but also nurturing each other. It was also interesting to read how they designed experiments to actually prove this.
I’m enjoying reading books like this!
Henneke—your own enthusiasm is contagious! Thanks for sharing these examples mixed with your wisdom.
Thank you for your lovely compliment, Jon. I do my best to follow my own teaching, too 🙂
Love this informative and sparkling blog post, Henneke. You always write with enthusiasm and that’s why I like reading your blog. “Questions are also an opportunity to…. take them with you on your journey of discovery.” I recently included what I thought was a rhetorical question in a piece of writing and several readers wrote answers back. I hadn’t expected it, but it was wonderful. It made me feel like, indeed, the reader and I were on a journey together.
Thank you so much for your compliment, Christine, and for sharing your experience–such a good example of the power of a question.
I’d do some back flips over this post!
But I just got up.
I’m not warmed up.
And I don’t feel like pulling a muscle just yet.
Maybe wait til the coffee kicks in.
Inspiring message. Long lasting. Forever, I hope.
Better start to the day than a cup of joe.
Many thanks Henneke!
What a lovely compliment, Phil. Thank you.
Enjoy your coffee! 🙂