Hit Me With Your Best Shot (Improving Your Speaking Skills - part 2)

The day Deb learned not to stand behind a podium

In case you didn't notice, this is Part 2 in a series, so before you do anything else, scroll back to Part 1 to refresh your memory on the first five tips to improve your speaking skills.

Now we're ready to boogie on down the road ...

6. Focus on one theme per presentation. You may add subheadings or points, but don't muddy the water of your one central theme. Repeat it at the beginning, middle, and end of your speech.

7. Include humor to keep your audience awake. Mix it up. Boring is BAD. Use personal anecdotes, illustrations and props liberally. Sandwich seriousness between slices of humor so that the listeners will go away with plenty of meat but simultaneously feel entertained. 

8. Have the audience participate whenever possible. Use volunteers to demonstrate a point. Ask questions and respond to the answers. I like to throw in a funny sing-along song at the end of my women's presentations so that everyone leaves energized and smiling.

9. Prepare a list of what you need and give it to your host ahead of time: CD player, DVD player, lapel mic, small props table, large book table, small music stand for your notes (NOT a podium built for a 6'2" man - see example above), someone to run the AV equipment at your cue, etc. Also make sure you've discussed and agreed upon your fee ahead of time; payment after services rendered is customary.  

10. The close of your speech should be all about take-away. What truth did you want your audience to take home from your talk? In what way will this truth help their quality of life? Was self-application or follow-through expressed clearly? Come across as a friendly cheerleader eager for them to succeed, not as an unconcerned lecturer of dry knowledge. It's cliche but true: Nobody cares what you know until they know that you care.

So what do you think, speakerly friends? Is there anything else you would add?

Hit Me With Your Best Shot (Improving Your Speaking Skills - part 1)

Dynamic presenter. Effective communicator. Awesome speaker.

Are these how you'd like to be described after your next speaking gig?

Of course you would. That's the goal for all of us writers-turned-speakers. But sometimes it doesn't feel terribly achievable. After all, we didn't sign up for this. We only wanted to write ... to hang out in our bathrobes and curlers expressing ourselves on a nice safe sheet of paper without having to worry about our appearance.

Or fumble-tongue mistakes.

Or the judgment we perceive sleeting down upon our heads from unsympathetic gawking eyeballs.

We feel, like Sean Connery so eloquently expressed as the reclusive writer in the fine film, Finding Forrester, "Writers write so readers can read." I'll add another caveat to that: "...and so speakers can speak." Put another way, let someone else get up in front of people and leave poor timid writers alone to do their jobs in their dark, secluded writing caves.

But somehow it happened. The publisher considering the manuscript you've slaved over for-ev-er dropped the bomb: "We'll only seriously consider publishing your book if you'll seriously consider hitting the road as a speaker to promote it."

Gulp. And so it begins. Building your platform. One plank at a time.

I'd like to offer some nails to help hold those planks together and establish a firm foundation for your speaking platform. Some of my suggestions are adapted from the SCORRE Conference I attended last year, a fantastic training workshop for speakers put together by Dynamic Communications International president Ken Davis, and Michael Hyatt, platform-building guru, best-selling author, and former Thomas Nelson Publishers chairman. (I highly recommend you Google SCORRE Conferences and attend one if you're planning a reluctant speaking career). 

And some of my suggestions for improving your speaking skills are from my own experience gleaned from speaking to approximately 200 groups over the past four years.

1. Whatever you thought the point of your speech was, rethink it. The real point is to help each person in your audience in some way. Forget yourself; what can you do for them?

2. You need to know more about your subject than most of your audience does. That means preparation: research, knowing it, living it, and sufficient practice in sharing it effectively.

3. Practice in front of your own reflection; observe distracting mannerisms like swaying back and forth (many moms do this subconsciously), jerky head movements, unpleasant expressions, too few or too grand hand gestures, blinking or lip-licking that appears unnatural.

4. Tape yourself. Listen for gaps, awkward connective phrases like "uhs," "umms," and "okays." Beware of monotone delivery (vary your tone without sounding like a World Series radio announcer). Pace yourself (not too fast or too slow). Work on understandable diction.   

5. Clearly define your objective when preparing your presentation. What do you hope to accomplish?



For the sake of avoiding long-windedness, this list will be continued on my next post. Stay tuned ...

Awaken the Sleeping Giant: Writing Buddies

Writing Buddy Workshop on Merritt Island

My long-time friend and fellow inspirational writer, Ruth, had a dream the other night. An odd dream. 

In her dream, Ruth and her husband were in bed, sleeping soundly. Suddenly, in the darkness of midnight, she was awakened by a presence in the room. 

Startled and discombobulated, and not sure whether the intruder was friend or foe, she glanced about the room wildly until her eyes settled on a figure in the doorway.

Whoa. What a frightening sight. It was me! Her good ole' writing pal Debbie standing there grinning in my jammies. And in the dream, I bounded over to her bedside, proclaiming, "I just had a great story idea; scooch over and I'll tell you all about it!"

So poor befuddled Ruth quickly scooched over toward her husband, nearly knocking the sleeping man off the bed in the process, and I climbed in bed beside her, nestling happily down into the warm covers. There we lay, the three of us, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.


Writing buddies. All writers - aspiring or advanced - need them.

Maybe not to crawl into bed with us in the middle of the night, no. But certainly to bounce our ideas off, critique our work honestly, and to provide us with accountability when we can't seem to keep our butt on the computer chair. And more important than anything else, to truly understand and sympathize with the crazy frustrations we go through in slogging through the mud on the path to publication.  

No matter where you are in the process, you need a writer buddy. I need a writer buddy. All God's chil'ren need writer buddies.

You never know where relationships with writer buddies will lead. I co-wrote a book with one of mine. I co-founded an annual writers retreat with another. Yet another wrote a piece about her writer buddy relationship with me that was published in a national trade journal.

So don't go it alone. Ditch the isolation blues. Grab a chi tea latte and a table at Starbucks to hash over that problem spot in your manuscript with your writer bud.

Just, for heaven's sake, stay out of her bed.   

Cool Word Contest

Deb making new friends

I ran across these cool word facts recently and thought you writerly types would appreciate them.

+ "Facetious" and "abstemious" are the only words that contain all the vowels in the correct order.

+ "Almost" is the longest commonly used word in teh English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

+ "Teh" means "cool" in Thai. It's pronounced "tay." (Now you can tell everyone you meant to do it when you make typos like the one above!)

+ "Fortnight" is a contraction of "fourteen nights," which has been generally replaced by "two weeks" in modern English.(Of course all you Shakespeare groupies already knew this!)

+ If you were a Lone Ranger and Tonto fan, you'll like this one: "Kemo sabe," meaning "all knowing one," is actually a mispronunciation by Native Americans of the Spanish phrase, "quien lo sabe," meaning "one who knows."

+ "Rhythms" is the longest English word without the normal vowels a, e, i, o, or u. 

+ "Ough" can be pronounced in eight different ways. Here's a sentence containing them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully." (Note from Deb: These days we spell it "hiccuping," but this is the acceptable old-world spelling.)

Okay, now for you word geeks, a few for you to figure out (don't cheat by looking them up!):

1. What's the commonly used word that's spelled the same in English, French, German, Swedish, Portuguese, and Dutch? (Hint: Travelers use this word frequently.)

2. What's considered the toughest tongue twister in the English language? (Hint: It has something to do with ill livestock.)

3. Name the only English word that ends in the letters "mt." (Hint: It's something you probably did last night.)

4. What is the only spelled-out numeral whose number of letters in the word equals the number? (If you're observant, I've already given you a really BIG hint!)

5. What's the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand? (Hint: It's the out-of-date plural form of a well known profession.)

E-mail me your answers at deboracoty@gmail.com and I'll send everyone who gets all five correct an autographed copy of my new book, Fear, Faith, and a Fistful of Chocolate.   

Happy wordsmithing! 

Unrequited Love

Deb's Book Signing

In my books, I tell a lot of stories. Some funny. Some poignant. All true - well, at least they're based on truth - and many are about people I know.

In fact, it's a standing joke among my friends that you'd better watch what you say around Deb because it very well might end up in a book. 

So fair's fair. It's time to tell a hilariously embarrassing story on me. One that seems especially fitting a few days before Valentine's Day.

I had a book signing yesterday at a local bookstore. We (the manager and some awesomely loyal readers and faithful friends in my community) were celebrating the release of Fear, Faith, and a Fistful of Chocolate. 

The morning looked promising enough. When I arrived twenty minutes early for the well advertised event, three people were already waiting at my book table for my signature in the copies they'd already purchased before I got there. Super duper.

I happily chatted and signed copies of F3 with the first two as Rick, a dear man from my writers group whom I had known for several years, stood back in gentlemanly fashion to let the others go first. He really is a truly nice guy, this Rick - an excellent writer on his own merit and always supportive of my books, even my current series for women.

When it was his turn, Rick plopped two books in front of me, stating cheerily, "One of these is for Joy, and the other is for my niece."

"Great," I said, flipping the cover open. I didn't know Rick's wife, but I was sure if she was married to this perpetually smiling man, she must have a dandy sense of humor.

"For Joy," I penned inside the flap, "I love your husband!"

I was intending to write more but at that moment, Rick, who was peering at the inscription as I scribbled, hesitantly broke in. "Um, Deb ... do you know Joy's husband?" he asked with a strange little quirky grin on his face.

My pen froze in mid-air. "What do you mean?" I asked, a premonitory seed of doom sprouting somewhere deep in my innards. "Isn't that you?" 

Suddenly it hit me. The conversation Rick and I had had several months before about the mutual friend who was my professional hand therapy colleague and his next door neighbor. Joy. 

Uh, oh.

We hooted with laughter at the same time as we realized my mistake.

I just hope Joy does the same when she sees the written confession of her husband's love affair with a crazy writer who oughta stick with just signing her name. 

You, too, can do Extraordinary

Aspiring writers often ask me tips on how to get published. They do this, well meaning enough, while showing me their "completed" manuscript, which they finished writing just yesterday and think is ready to submit to publishers and editors and agents and anyone else in the free world who'll appreciate their exquisite work of art.

My answer: Let me tell you a story.

Last year I got a new kitchen floor. The sample tile was so beautiful, shining like a slice of sunshine there in the store, I couldn't resist. I was was tired of the dull, lifeless, uninspiring tile that had besodded my kitchen for decades. (I don't think besodded is a word, but it should be.) I was ready to wow unsuspecting house guests and awaken every morning to a cheerful, gleaming floor.

But a strange thing happened once we got the tile home and installed on the kitchen floor. Within a few weeks, it began to lose its luster, become boring, quite ordinary. Annoyingly ordinary.

Every time I mopped and air dried my new floor - like I always had my old floor - it was dulled even more by dried water spots. I asked around and tried many expensive gadgets, products, and techniques that I'd been told would restore the glow, but nothing worked. I was extremely disappointed that I'd put so much thought, effort, and work into my new floor - which I knew had wonderful potential, for I had witnessed it firsthand - but no one would be able to see it.

And then one day, out of sheer desperation (guests were coming soon but the floor needed mopping), I grabbed two old terrycloth towels from my linen closet and donning one on each foot, ice skated around the newly mopped kitchen to speed up the drying process.

Oh. My. Goodness. The tiles gleamed like a newly polished silver tea service. The shine was nearly blinding. Gone was the ordinary. Present was the extraordinary. Big wow! The gorgeous floor I knew was there all along became a show-stopper and immediately caught the attention of every single person who walked in my house from then on.

Manuscripts are a lot like a kitchen floor. Ordinary is fine. Ordinary is functional. Ordinary is what everyone has. It is sufficient enough for you to say, "I've written a book." But it will likely remain unpublished and end up in your bottom right desk drawer, appreciated by no one and gathering dust.

But with a bit more work - okay, a LOT more work - that manuscript can be copy edited, content edited, and rewritten until it's polished and gleaming and extraordinary. Extra-ordinary; above-ordinary. The wow factor will suddenly appear. Your piece will shine brightly enough to attract the attention it deserves and will very likely eventually GET PUBLISHED. 

So take my advice. Have your manuscript professionally edited by a specialist in your genre. Someone who knows how to ice skate in terrycloth booties.

Slap on the Chaps and Hit the Promo Trail

Well, it's book release time again and my promo stallion is chomping at the bit.  

Fear, Faith, and a Fistful of Chocolate hits bookstores in less than two weeks, so it's time to hit the promo trail once again. Nobody ever said this writing journey was easy, and believe you me, I've got the saddle sores to prove it.

It takes a lot of planning to get those doggies movin' and keep 'em movin' movin' movin' ... rawhide! (If you're humming that TV show jingle right now, you're as old as me!)

I received my first media interview this week from CBA Retailers + Resources magazine, and it was a great start:

"Books about fear typically aren't fun to read, but this one is. Coty's humor is natural and unforced, and she strikes the perfect balance of lightheartedness and seriousness. Her chatty, relaxed tone will put readers at ease, and her approach to Christianity is genuine and non-preachy. This book would make an excellent group study, but it's also valuable for individual use."

That review - perfectly timed to coincide with my book release date - was possible because my astute publicist sent out pre-pub (also called galleys or ARCs for Advanced Reader Copies) weeks ago. Also strategically timed are articles set to come out in two different newspapers - one next week, and the other the following week.

My first interview about F3 was last night with Dottie Coffman and will air today on several weekday radio shows in the Atlanta area and on two different internet radio shows, www.wimoradio.com and www.moralradio.com. Several other radio interviews are already lined up and new requests should start trickling in almost daily via my publishing house PR department, and the freelance publicist I hired. 

I have a local LifeWay bookstore signing scheduled for Feb 9 (from 11 am - 2 pm at the Brandon LifeWay on 169 Brandon Town Center Dr if you're in the Tampa vicinity), and my big FaceBook launch party is on March 7 at 8 pm EST. Click on this link to find out more and sign up to win awesome prizes that night http://www.facebook.com/events/451567044892122  I hope you'll plan on joining me for a real blast with fun folks from all over the planet. 

Invitations to speak at Valentine's and Mother's Day events are beginning to roll in, and I'm in the process of nailing down dates for engagements from Alabama to North Carolina to south Florida.

It's a fun time, a busy time, and also a time to be extremely grateful to Papa God for the opportunity. And I truly am.

So the new calves (books) are branded, roped and corralled. Now I just have to figure out how to get them from the ranch into the wild, wild west. And east. And north and south!