Surprisingly simple exercise to clarify your style

Influence Maps guide your becoming

Joyce Wycoff Influence Map 2024

If what you focus on is who you become, Influence Maps can guide your becoming. they highlight your focus and reveal your style. The map above is an update of the one I did twelve years ago and just recently rediscovered in an old blog post (shown below.)

It was interesting to see the categories hadn’t changed that much … spirals and circles, glass and reflections, nature and color, light and textures, done long before Substack became part of my life.

What about Influence Maps for writers?

However, it struck me that this mapping process might provide insight into my writing life. Were the same influencers calling me? How could I use this to focus my writing? Then came an aha.

What influences me … What influences readers

How to create an Influence Map related to writing my Substack posts posed a question that sent me back to my desk calendar where I could see the results of the past six months … titles and subjects plus stats on each post, such as likes, comments, and restacks. That triggered the thought that an Influence Map process could also be an indicator of what influenced readers as well as reminding me about what pulls me into the writing.

With that in mind, I picked the “best” (defined as the posts with the most reader engagement) and began a review of the top 14 posts from the past six months. With those, I set up a spreadsheet … it’s amazing how often my former life as an accountant comes in handy.

Reflection leads to insights

The first aha hit before I was halfway through the list. What I like to write about differs rather dramatically from what I like to photograph and make art about. In addition to harvesting the lessons from my own back story, I enjoy writing about women and telling their stories, and actually stories of women or men of courage who overcome barriers. The posts involving people and their stories were not only some of my favorites, they had the best engagement numbers … like the old women of Cherán who stopped the criminals stealing their sacred forest, or Marta Becket who wanted to dance so badly that she built her own opera house and painted her own audience, or Banksy who ignited the world of art and helped spark the murals that show up around the world.

While these story posts require a bit more time and research, they are the ones that excite me and engage readers. This is a sign post for the future.

How do you evaluate your own posts?

Where my art leans toward glimpses of beauty, stories are the catalysts for my writing. I’m not sure I’m ready to put together a visual map for Substack as I’m still in the process of exploring what I’ve been writing about for the past six months. However, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this exercise or how you reflect on your posts.

If you feel like playing with Influence Maps, you can Google Influence Map Templates or here’s a site with templates from the original developer … foxorian at https://plasticshards.studio/influence-map-v2/.

If you decide to do a map for your art or your writing, I’d love to see it. Please post it on Notes or in a post and tag me.

PS UPDATE: Life Bingo game yields insights

Images from Life Bingo

This simple game from the post of 6/26 seems to be yielding insights and helping me focus more effectively on what I want and deal with the surprises and unwanted things that show up in every life. There are only four empty squares on the 25-square bingo card, and I’m planning to do at least one more round. It’s almost like a flash journal game. And, it helped me reverse a major decision without feeling flaky.

A reminder about the business aspect of this adventure:

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