Scott Berkun's Blog, page 15

Starting Today: Berkun Book Club / Making Things Happen

One of my most popular books, Making Things Happen, was published 10 years ago. Originally titled The Art of Project Management, this very popular book on leading and managing projects started my career as an author. I’m grateful to still be writing books with enough success to write about many subjects.

To celebrate I’m rereading the book and I’m inviting you to read it with me.

When: It starts TODAY March 9th, and you can sign up here.

Where: On goodreads. But live Q&As will be hosted elsewhere.

Each week we’ll cover a two chapters, you can ask questions which I’ll answer, we’ll schedule live Q&As and you’ll get far more than your money’s worth for what you paid for the book. You’ll likely witness me arguing with myself as I know I don’t agree with everything I wrote back then. Who knows, it might lead to a sequel or new writing about ideas in the book that haven’t aged well.

Interested? Join the group on GoodReads, which makes it easy to have discussions and follow along.

If you don’t own the book, now is a great time to grab a copy. Hope you’ll join.

How To Write A Memoir

Yesterday I did a live Q&A about How To Write A Memoir. It was a reward for the backers of my most recent book, The Ghost of My Father (the story of my relationship with my father, my family and myself). In writing the book I learned much I wanted to share that couldn’t be in the book. Thanks to everyone who tuned in and asked questions (and helped me keep the lights on). As promised here’s the list of answers.

1. The two truths of writing anything

There are only two things you need to write any kind of book.

Good habits. Books take time to write which means your success depends on regular habits for how you write. For example, I know the way my psychology works I either need to write every day or I won’t write at all. It’s a muscle I have to use regularly to have it work the way I want it to. My advice is simple: have a set time every day, before you go to work, after dinner, before you go to bed, that is permanently reserved and protected by hungry Rottweilers, for writing.
Commitment. Your writing time will come form somewhere. You’ll need to give up one TV-show a night, spend less time with friends and family, or get up earlier each day. No writer in history has written anything without sacrificing time they could have spent on something else. And when you show up for each writing session turn everything else off that distracts you. You might only put a sentence or two down a day, but if you keep showing up that’s all you need to eventually finish a book. If I don’t feel like writing I’ll show up to my session anyway and commit myself to sitting and thinking about the project, or staring at the blank page. That’s commitment. Usually I’ll get so frustrated in a few minutes with how idiotic I feel having nothing to say that I’ll eventually start writing about that. And then, soon, I discover I do have something to say about the book I’m working on, and before I know it I’m writing. But I have to show up and put the time in. There is no other way.

When people fail with a writing project there are only two causes: bad habits or lack of commitment. If you are committed you will continue to experiment with your habits until you find one that works for you. But there is no trick to avoid the work. Every writer in history had to put the hours in and you will too.

2. What books or resources do you recommend for writing a memoir?

Read what you want to write. How many memoirs have you read? Go read some. You can’t write well in any genre unless you are well read in it. You’ll discover how many different ways there are to approach point of view, style, tone, pace, chronology and more. Here’s a list of memoirs I recommend.
Thinking About Memoir , by Abigail Thomas. A simple, short book that explores the basic concepts of what a memoir is and how they work. It includes writing exercises and encouragement. There are many basic books like this one, but I liked it’s concision and straightforward style.
The Art of Time in Memoir, Sven Birkerts. If you write a first draft and read it, you’ll discover the core challenge of memoir is how you, as the narrator, move through time. It’s the spine that makes a memoir work or not. Of all the books I read about memoir writing, it was this book that helped the most with the central challenge of time. The book referred to many memoirs I’d never read before, which I needed to read (at least partially) to fully understand his points, but that was time (ha ha) well spent. The only way to understand the different ways to handle time was to read another writer and experience the choices they’d made.
How To Write A Memoir . This short reader’s digest post by Joe Kita is surprisingly good and honest.

3. A memoir is not an autobiography.

A memoir is a true story about an aspect of your life. An autobiography is a comprehensive telling of you life story. This gets confusing because we often her politicians or celebrities talk about writing “their memoirs“, as in plural, which really means autobiography. Autobiographies are much harder to do well, often span 600 pages and are far less interesting to most people. Alternatively a memoir has more creative freedom. It depends less on how interesting your life is and more on your storytelling talents. There are memoirs about childhood, travel, family, competitive sports, starting a company, almost anything. Rebecca Solnit bends the very idea of memoir by combining elements of history, personal stories and journalism together. The unifying factor is the the book is a true story told in the first person about events that primarily happened to the narrator on a singular theme (at least in the writer’s mind).

4. You have a secret reason for writing (a memoir). Figure out what it is.

My friend, and trained therapist, Vanessa Longracre was my expert guest during the Q&A. She pointed out that many people think they know why they want to write a memoir, but possess a secret, and more honest, reason. That honest reason might be very selish and egocentric: “People will love me if they know my story”, “or I can get revenge on my ex-wife”. You should be honest about yourself. At the deepest level, what do you hope to gain from writing a story about yourself? Do you have any evidence that any other memoir writer got it out of their experience?

People telling you “you have good stories you should write a book” is an insufficient reason. Unless they are gifting you 500 hours of time to do the work, it’s not help. You have to decide your own reasons, the primary one being that you believe it’s a good use of your time to write a book about yourself. I get emails often asking me “Is my book idea good?” and I tell them the same thing: only you can answer that question. My opinion is irrelevant since you will have to do the work.

It’s okay if you don’t know. And it’s ok if your answer changes as you’re writing. But realize you probably have a fantasy about your motivations.  You’ll write a better memoir if you dig deep to sort out what it is you are truly after.

5. Why did you write The Ghost of My Father? What did you want to get out of it?

When this crisis happened in my family I talked to my mother and brother often. These were long, intimate conversations about our family and how we felt about what was happening. It’s a crazy story and we’d laugh at times about how absurd it was. I said to both of them “this should be a book” and they agreed. I don’t know at the time they knew how serious I was, but I’m a writer.  This is what I do. A powerful, complicated true story landed on me and I committed myself to telling it.

I wrote it for many reasons. First, I was obsessing about my father and my family and I needed a constructive place to put that energy. Second, I’m a writer who wants to take risks and this was going to be a different kind of book. Third, all families have problems. What we don’t have are the skills and courage to talk about them. I felt if I told my story well it could help readers figure themselves out. This is what good art is supposed to do: help us understand the human condition.

6. There is power in writing without publishing.

I’ve kept a private journal since I was 19 years old. It started as a class assignment, and most of my early entries are embarrassingly shallow attempts to impress the professor. But after the class I kept writing in it. I found that trying to explain whatever I was thinking or feeling in words had a power, even if no one read it. It forced me to think and feel carefully, and when I wrote something down, even if it was expression of confusion or uncertainty, I always felt like a burden had been lifted. Seeing the words on the page made me feel more comfortable with myself. And then I discovered that going back to entries in the past and comparing my feelings in the present was transformative. Written words persist far better than our memories do, and writing your thoughts down is a gift to your future self.

You don’t need to publish writing for it to have meaning. You can also choose to share what you write with only with a friend, or family. You can decided after you’ve written a draft whether you want to publish it or not, or who you’ll publish it for.

7. How do you deal with the situations you don’t remember precisely? (e.g. names of places, people, what happened exactly, what people said, etc. )

Human memory is highly unreliable and anyone writing a memoir must admit this. Keeping a journal helps as at least you have a written record of what you thought on the day certain things happened. Interviewing other people who were there when events happened can be critical as two or more sources dramatically improves the quality of the facts.

Most important is to disclose to readers what sources you had. Few memoirs do this and it’s a mistake. In most memoirs quoted passages (e.g.’and then Todd said “this is the worst Atari game I’ve ever played!”‘) are inventions based on one person’s recollection of a conversation. How accurate can this possibly be? Unless the author had a tape recorder playing 20 years ago how could they possibly remember the exact quote someone said? They can’t. But written storytelling works better when this kind of precision is provided, so many writers claim poetic license to fill in these gaps.

I think whatever you do is ok provided you explain to the reader somewhere what you did or didn’t do. Here’s what I included on the first page of The Ghost of My Father:

8. Were there periods of doubt while writing this book that were more severe or different than what you have experienced before? Were your habits always strong enough to alleviate these doubts? If not, what parts of your life helped you rebound?

Yes. All ambitious projects come with periods of doubt. If I work on something and never have doubts it means I wasn’t ambitious enough. This is my most personal book and everyone in my family who is in the book is still alive. But I’m a writer. This is what I do.

The habit that matters the most is having faith in the next draft. In each draft I had a chance to reconsider what stories I told and how I told them. I had 5 people read early drafts of the book, people who I know are honest with me about their feedback.

9. Did you have any fears or concerns about how being this vulnerable, personal and open would impact your perception and opportunities with your harder core business audience?

I’ve had some practice with sharing private thoughts publicly. I wrote a popular book in 2009 called Confessions of a Public Speaker, so I’ve confessed on some things already. My previous book, The Year Without Pants, is a first person story of my experiences leading a team. Of course The Ghost of My Father was far more personal, but the experience with being honest with readers is something I’ve been developing over time.

I want to take risks with talents. To do that means doing things I’m afraid of. I want to bet on fans. If I publish a book they’re not interested in I hope they’ll just wait for the next one.

10. What does a personal memoir need in order to be popular (have high sales) if it’s not about someone who is already in the public eye? Does it need a character arc? Or a realization of a profound truth? What makes it interesting to the reader?

Selling books is harder than writing them. There is no formula. In broad strokes memoirs are harder to sell than novels or non-fiction books. Being famous helps of course as people are interested primarily in the person, not the book. A big part of any book selling well has little to do with the writing of the book. You have to identify the audience, find ways early on to reach out to them, write a great book, and then work hard to let them know you’ve provided something they want.  But the more you write a book to sell it, the less soul the book will have. Making true art demands goals with more depth than sales numbers.

11. Being such a creative mind and tackling so many topics in your blog, how do you decide on a topic & outline for a book? How do you handle “book being already written”, “same old topic”, etc? Really, how do you write great books on topics already addressed?

Every topic has already been addressed many times. So what? If you read the Greek tragedies you’ll discover Shakespeare stole their plot lines. And then if you watch the Lion King you see it’s Hamlet for kids. No one really cares how original it is in the abstract, they care about how good it is in the specific. See It’s Ok To Be Obvious for my take on this philosophy. If you have an opinion go read what someone else said about it. I bet you’ll find you disagree with them or have a better way to express a similar idea. Don’t hide from it, build on it.

11. Did you consider writing it as “fiction” even if it’s mostly true to avoid the issue of criticism of your decisions?

Telling my story as fiction felt like cheating. Many writers have done this and I always wondered why. Even Charles Bukowski wrote Ham on Rye as a novel, despite it being the story of his childhood. In this case I asked myself: am I telling a true story or not? If I am, why call it a novel and introduce doubts? If I’m a good storyteller why do I need to invent things to make it work? Anyone in my family who read the book as a novel would easily identify who they were. So why the ruse?

My complaint about so many films and TV shows about family is how phony they are. And since these are the primary ways we learn about families other than our own they perpetuate the same fantasy mythology about what real families are like. Where does most of your knowledge about relationships come from? Much of it is from fiction and I think that’s part of the problem. Of course fiction can illustrate some things better than non-fiction, but in some cases the opposite is true.

I know many authors wait until their parents are dead to write about them. This feels like cheating too. Superficially it seems like respect to wait until after someone is dead to write about them. But think about that: it takes away their rights to respond. It’s actually a betrayal. It’s a permanent way to go behind their back. There is nothing in this book I haven’t said, or wouldn’t say, to everyone in my family. Does that make me brave or stupid? Probably some of both. To put it another way: how I can consider someone close to me if there are deep things central to who I am that I can’t share with them? Or share, as an illustrative example, with strangers? We talk about transparency and honesty but do we practice it in families? in tribes? Cultures?

12. Did you come to have a different understanding of forgiveness? As a human ability or valuable choice?

I want to say yes, but it’s hard to be sure. The cliche of forgive but not forget is true to me. I don’t hate my father. He is a lost person and I feel sad for him, as he’s his own worst enemy. And I do understand, now, that his failings as a parent have more to do with him than with me. But forgiveness is not a panacea. Dysfunctional families are not fixed through forgiveness alone.  Here’s a more important question: if you are in a relationship that is inherently destructive for you, what obligations do you have to stay in it? And how deeply? That’s not about forgiveness so much as it is about figuring out how to be a healthy person. How do you create healthy boundaries on territory you know is dangerous to you? That’s the hard question. There’s no platitude for solving that one. It’s the struggle most people have in their families: how can I be myself in here? I love these people and they love me, but then why does it hurt so much to get close? It takes hard work to learn healthy expressions of love.

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You can buy The Ghost of My Father on Amazon. Kirkus Reviews called it “A sobering, lucid memoir about the uncanny, precarious nature of family, masculinity and childhood.” Profits from the first edition of the book are donated to Big Brothers Big Sisters.

If you have other questions about writing, or writing a memoir, leave a comment.

 

 

How Do You Know When You’re Done?

The more creative the project, the more subjective the answer is for when it’s done. If the project was to eat an apple for lunch, you’d know you were done when only the core remained (unless you were very hungry and ate the core too). But if the project was to create a powerful dramatic film about a troubled marriage or a believable science fiction novel about a civilization powered by core-less apples, success is not objective. In fact what makes a work loved by some people are exactly the reasons why other people will hate it. Accepting a project as finished means, in part, seeing its flaws but accepting them as necessary to achieve its graces. A perfect work of art, if there is such a thing, would be perfectly boring.

Many people complained, and still complain, about the long, silent sequences in Stanley Kubrik’s 2001 A Space Odyssey. Yet it’s one of the most influential science fiction films of all time. Gauguin, and most of the art world, thought Van Gogh’s paintings were underworked and unrefined. And Gauguin was right in a way. But given what Van Gogh wanted to do they were fantastic. Who is right? No one is really. The value of art is decided by two people: the artist and the viewer. Critics and experts have their say, but if you look at something and appreciate it no one can get in your way. And if you hate it, the fact that it’s famous or won awards only makes you hate it more.

We’ve all read books or seen movies we didn’t think were finished, or good, or worth our time. Some are simply overdone and over the top, and perhaps too done (When Dreams May Come isn’t so much a bad film as it is a saccharine one). We forget that even the films and products we hate took years of effort by people who probably did think they were done. One my favorite books is The Old Man And The Sea, a novel I think is near perfection, yet many find it childish and overly simple. There is no one singular answer. And much of the criticism and feedback artists hear is really about the wish of the critic to describe a different work, not necessarily a better one.

I have goals for each book when I start, but the goals shift. I’m learning about my ideas as I try to make them real. Even on a successful book it feels like a spiral going around the same core notions, stretching and tightening with each draft (and loop of the spiral). There are false starts. There are wrong directions. Sometimes the best choice is to pivot: this isn’t a drama, it’s a comedy! And with that single change waves of new energy ripple through the entire work. It’s scary to make big changes, but there are no rewards without risks (and that’s what the undo button is for). But with each draft I expect the scale of the problems to get smaller. Eventually the problems I see are about polish, in sentences or paragraphs, rather than chapters and themes. I believe in testing drafts of work by consuming it the way readers will. If I’m in doubt about a book being finished I’ll sit down and read the entire draft from the first page to the last. I’ll ask honest friends to do the same and listen to their opinions. That’s the only way to refresh in my mind what the draft really is, or isn’t.

Questions to ask if you’re not sure if it’s done:

What were you trying to do when you started?
What were you trying to do last time you felt you knew what you were doing?
How does what it is now compare to what you were trying to do?
Have you gotten feedback from someone who will be honest with you? (and not merely give you a pep talk)
Is it finished, but you just don’t like it anymore?
Do you just not want to do the grunt work required now that the ideas are set?
Do you see ways to simplify? You may have 300 pages of a great 200 page book.
Put it away for a week or more. Then look at it with fresh eyes. How do you feel now?

Always remember creation requires risk. If you knew for certain what you were making when you started and that you had all the skills required to do it, why bother? If you are ambitious, not all of your projects are going to work out. Every novelist and entrepreneur has abandoned projects over their career (Michelangelo and Da Vinci were notorious for not finishing works). Or released mediocre work into the world (e.g. Bob Dylan). You may decide a project isn’t done, but it needs to be put away for awhile, while you work on something else. That’s fine. Abandoning works isn’t a crime provided that’s not what you do on every project. But all ideas demand grunt work that has to be done. If you’re not committed enough to do the grunt work for your own ideas, who will?tag=scottberkunco-20

The more works you release into the world and say “it’s done!” the better your judgement will become about when something feels finished to you, the maker. And the less afraid you’ll feel about handling the feedback from the world. Charles Dickens released most of his books a chapter at a time: maybe you need to work in smaller chunks of doneness. Every time you say “it’s finished” you’ll get better at sensing if a project just needs another round of polish, or that it really does need to go back into the shop for an overhaul. Your intuition as a creator needs mileage to get improve and you can’t get it if you never finish anything. You want to be a creator who can look back to past finished projects to compare with the unfinished one you’re working on now. There’s only one way to get there.

Can bad workplace communication be fixed? An interview with Phil Simon

My friend and fellow author Phil Simon has a new book out today on on one my favorite subjects: the poor state of communication in the working world.

In his new book Message Not Received: Why Business Communication Is Broken and How to Fix It, Simon explains how we got into this mess and what we can do to make things better. I interviewed him about the book and the state of communication culture.

Q: Films like Office Space lampooned the ridiculous jargon and business-speak used in American workplaces. It’s a problem we’ve had for a long time. Why is it so common?

Many reasons. We can start with management consultants, arguably some of the worst purveyors of jargon. They try to make business and management more complicated than it is. Management is a discipline, not a science. There are no immutable laws of management. Period.

Of course, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Many executives bastardize the language, and it’s natural for underlings to ape the words and expressions of their superiors.

I’d also blame marketers and salespeople. Researching the book, I discovered what I intuitively suspected: there’s greater competition than ever to occupy the top result on Google search pages. You can pay to play, but that gets pricey. Ideally, your company, service, or product shows up organically. You don’t do that by parroting the terms used by other companies.

For years many leading minds, including George Orwell, have complained about abuse of language. Are things worse now? Why do you think this is?

You’re right about Orwell, but people have been complaining about the misuse of language for centuries. (Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation is worth checking out.)

In short, yes, things are worse now. There’s the SEO argument (see above). Beyond that, there’s more content that ever out there. When you and I grew up in the 1970s, we were exposed to about 500 ads per day. That number now is 5,000. This is a ten‐fold increase over the past four decades. Even if you believe that the rate at which people use jargon has remained constant, the sheer number has increased. It’s not debatable at this point.

Lastly, we’re living in an era of accelerating technological change. Stalwarts like “friend” (now a verb) and “like” (now a noun) are taking on new meanings. There’s even a dictionary just for Twitter terms.

Neil Postman once wrote “Information is a form of garbage.” How can people more easily spot emails and internal communication that is garbage information? Are there warning signs they can look for?

Let’s start with the quantity of the emails sent. We all know people who send too many. I used to be one of them. In the book, I detail my own Pulp Fiction-like moment of clarity around email. I remember the very day that someone called me out in 2007 for confusing the team.

Some people just send rubbish, but the larger question to me is why something has to be communicated via email in the first place. Over the past two decades, email has become the de facto tool for internal communication. It’s one of the killer apps of the Internet era. As you know from your time at Automattic, that need not be the case.

Let’s say that you and I and some of our friends are scheduling a call. I can send a clear message about my availability, but so what? Even if an email is clearly written, it’s often not the best tool for the job. That goes double for task management, project management, and general collaboration. This is not 1995.

In Message Not Received, is there a story of an organization that used to depend on email but switched to modern tools? What can other organizations learn from them?

Chapter 8 contains three case studies of organizations that broke away from email as their primary communications vehicles. I detail a small business, a startup, and a larger company.

There are plenty of lessons that organizations of all sizes can learn from them. First, you don’t need to boil the ocean. You can start in a pocket of the organization and see how a tool takes root. It’s often wise to start small and iterate.

Second, realize that perfect is the enemy of good, to borrow from Voltaire. There’s no one perfect tool. One organization may love HipChat while another prefers Yammer, Jive, or Smartsheet.

Many organizations spend years searching for one, only to stick with deficient technologies at considerable cost. Thanks to cloud computing, open source software, and the freemium model, it’s never been easier to date before you get married.

Finally, don’t try to control your community. The three case studies showed me that tools evolve very organically. For instance, ride-sharing app Sidecar rolled out Jive. Its drivers don’t work in a proper office with, you know….facilities. It quickly became apparent that drivers needed information on the best local lavatories. Sidecar quickly integrated that functionality into Jive.

Most people don’t control their coworkers. If a someone reading this wished their colleagues communicated better, what can they do?

It’s important to remember Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. In the context of your question, remember that most people aren’t actively trying to confuse others. They just don’t realize that they’re bloviating. We all suffer from the curse of knowledge; most of us just aren’t aware of that.

The answer to your question hinges upon a number of factors. Is the person higher up than you on the totem pole? What’s the company culture? Have you known that person for a long time? For instance, in a rigid culture, you might be cutting your own throat by questioning the words of more senior employees, even privately in a diplomatic way. All communication is contextual.

When someone is routinely confusing others, don’t be afraid to call bullshit on jargon. At a minimum, say, “I don’t follow. Could you please explain what you mean by that?” In the words of Albert Einstein, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Remember that the word communicate means “to make common.”

Second, resist the temptation to respond via email. I abide by a three-email rule: After three, we talk. I’m not afraid to invoke it, and many groups, people, and organizations would benefit from doing something similar.

Next, ask people to define their terms. I’m a big fan of the active voice and short sentences. Message Not Received is not a tactical book, but I did include some tips on effective communication.

If the problem persists, a more serious conversation is in order. Jargon and excessive email aren’t just fodder for Dilbert cartoons. Horrible business communication is a really big problem. It inhibits true understanding and successful results, never mind overwhelming individual employees. If someone doesn’t take to constructive feedback, a new role and/or job might be in order.

Get Message Not Received on Amazon.

Reading Group: Making Things Happen (Starts now)

One of my most popular books, Making Things Happen, was published 10 years ago. Originally titled The Art of Project Management, this very popular book on leading and managing projects started my career as an author. I’ve moved on to write about many other subjects but this book holds a special place on my bookshelf.

To celebrate I’m rereading the book and I’m inviting you to read it with me. It’s rare to get a chance to read a book with the author and ask questions as you go – I hope you’ll take advantage and join in.

When: It starts March 9th, and you can sign up now.

Where: On goodreads. But live Q&As will be hosted elsewhere.

How: We’ll read two chapters a week. You can join late, just catch up!

Each week we’ll cover a couple of chapters, you can ask questions which I’ll answer, we’ll schedule live Q&As and you’ll get far more than your money’s worth for what you paid for the book. You’ll likely witness me arguing with myself as I know I don’t agree with everything I wrote back then. Who knows, it might lead to a sequel or new writing about ideas in the book that haven’t aged well.

Interested? Join the group on GoodReads, which makes it easy to have discussions and follow along.

If you don’t own the book, now is a great time to grab a copy. Hope you’ll join.

 

 

Read My First Book With Me? Book Club Forming

One of my most popular books, Making Things Happen, was published 10 years ago. Originally titled The Art of Project Management, this first book both started my career as an author, but also reflected on my first career of my past: leading teams of creative people.

To celebrate I’m rereading the book and I’m inviting you to read it with me.

Each week we’ll cover a couple of chapters, you can ask questions which I’ll answer, we’ll schedule live Q&As and you’ll get far more than your money’s worth for what you paid for the book. You’ll likely witness me arguing with myself as I know I don’t agree with everything I wrote back then. Who knows, it might lead to a sequel or new writing about ideas in the book that haven’t aged well.

Join the group I set up on GoodReads, which makes it easy to have discussions and follow along. If you don’t own the book, now is a great time to grab a copy. Hope you’ll join.

 

28 (Better) Things No One Tells You About Publishing

The recent Buzzfeed post by Curtis Sittenfeld called 24 Things No One Tells You about Publishing was fun to read. I’ve written 6 books with two publishers and I agreed with much of what she said. But having been an author over a decade and hearing every question and myth, here’s my own list of things I wish more people people knew about writing and publishing.

Selling books is harder than writing them. There are 300k books published in the U.S. every year. And 30% of Americans read only 1 to 5 books in 2014. Writing a book is purely up to you. But getting other people to buy and read you book is another matter.
Everyone obsesses about tiles and covers but it’s hard to prove their impact beyond above a basic level of quality. It’s easy to find popular books with lousy titles and covers, and unpopular books with great titles and covers. There are too many variables for magic answers.
Some books, like The Great Gatsby or Moby Dick, don’t become popular until decades after publication. It’s a strange world. Books have lives of their own, typically quiet lives. We judge success by sales, but many factors that have nothing to do with the book itself impact sales. Bestseller lists are not a meritocracy.
Your reasons for writing must transcend fame and wealth as neither are likely from writing alone. Most books you read are written by writers who pay their rent through other means. If you want fame and wealth from writing be committed to the long term. This takes the pressure off each book, and you’ll open to learning instead of foolishly trying to hit a grand slam at your first at bat.
Fame will likely ruin your writing or your life. Study the history of famous writers if you doubt me. Fast fame is a curse, or a trap, as everyone wants you to repeat exactly what you did before.
The publishing industry is slow to realize authors need them less than ever before. Unlike 20 years ago, you can do much of what a publisher does yourself, perhaps not as well, but that depends on how entrepreneurial and self aware you are. Learn about self-publishing simply to be informed about your business end to end. Some publishers do great work, but many are stuck in an antiquated notion of their value.
Many authors are lazy. They’re arrogant too. They don’t want to do PR, they don’t want to do their homework and they are in denial of how many other authors there are. They, like some publishers, believe in romantic notions of how publishing works.
Some publishers/editors/agents are amazing. Some are bad and incompetent. YMMV. Don’t judge them all by the one you worked with.
A great editor at a mediocre publisher can be a better situation than a mediocre editor at a great publisher. Editors represent you for dozens of decisions the publisher makes for your book that you can’t participate in.
Many editors don’t “edit”. They’re more like strategic project managers. There are three roles editors play, often played by different people. Acquisitions editors sign authors. Development editors help you draft your book. Production editors are the ones who spend the most time with your words, and even they depend on copyeditors and proofreaders. Many people will touch your book.
Don’t believe everything depends on finding agents or publishers. They both want you to already have a fan base, which is a paradox. There are many paradoxes to face in trying to break into any field that many people want to be in (e.g. being a movie star). To find an agent requires hard work and this is on purpose. There is a far greater supply of people writing books than demand from publishers.
Always remember you can upload a PDF of your book to Amazon and have it on sale on Kindle in minutes. Don’t get lost falsely depending on others. No one can stop you from writing a book and selling it except yourself. Promoting a book well is another matter (see #1), but publishers struggle with that too.
No one will come to your book reading/signing unless you are already famous. The packed author readings on the news are only packed because the author is already very well known. It’s another paradox related to #1. Read The First 1000 copies by Tim Grahl, or APE by Guy Kawaksai for a good start on how to market books. Book readings at bookstores are among the worst uses of time for a new author.
Publishers only invest in big PR for famous authors. For new authors there’s little reason to believe the investment will pay off. Would you spend 50% of your annual marketing budget on an unknown? Neither would a publisher. Publishers do love authors who are investing their own time and money in marketing, and the good ones will augment and assist with your plans.
Most people think they want to write, but really they just like to think about writing. If you have a 6th grade education you know how to write. The question is are you willing to put in the hours?
You can spot these people because they spend more time complaining about how hard it is to write than doing it. Don’t complain. No one is making you torture yourself but you.
Distractions say more about your lack of commitment than anything else . Learn to concentrate. Concentration is a skill anyone can develop and if you are serious about writing you you will. If you were starving to death and writing a book would get you food, you’d write. We are all capable of writing if suitably motivated.
Anyone with sufficient commitment can write a book. It might not be a good book, but most books by published authors aren’t that good either.
A publisher is a venture capitalist. They are giving you money before your work is done. Before you complain about the size of the investment they are willing to make (or not make) in your book, are you are willing to make the same financial investment? Few authors are. It’s a business. They owe you nothing beyond what they agree to.
Your friends, family and colleagues are you best assets for finding an audience for your writing. Everyone has friends and family. Ask for their help. Make it easy for them to help you. Reward every new fan as if they were your only fan (because at first they will be).
Learn to take feedback well. By this I mean you want to be a better writer on the next book than this one, yes? That only happens if you listen for ways to improve. Arrogant writers, are they are legion, rarely improve.
Learn to take rejection well. It will be everywhere. If you think rejections from agents and publishers are tough, wait till you get rejected by reviewers and readers (e.g. The Great Gatsby has 235 1 star reviews). Look for a nugget of merit in every mean-spirited critique you hear. Be grateful anyone read your book at all.
Stop looking for secrets and tricks. You’re a sucker if you think there’s a trick as every great writer in history never found one that let them skip the work. Tips only help if you are writing every day and can put tips to use.
You build a following, or in publishing jargon, a platform, by publishing regularly. There is no magic place where people will come to you just for showing up once. It doesn’t matter where you publish, but put something into the world regularly. Be willing to learn as you go and experiment. There are many ways to build an audience but they all require effort.
Publish once a week on a blog. You want to build an audience before your book is finished, not after. Write briefly about topics that relate to your book. Share excerpts and ideas you’re working on. Read other bloggers who write about subjects like yours and get to know them. Invite people you know to be interested to follow along. It will feel weird at first but work to get comfortable with being visible and making connections, as you’ll need those skills when your book is out in the world.
Don’t be precious. No one is going to steal your ideas. Ideas are easy, it’s the work of delivering on an idea in 300 pages that’s hard.
Get feedback on your ideas and drafts early. Find people who are honest with you – they are hard to find. Grand praise of your drafts does not make them better. Separate useful critiquing (“this section didn’t work”, “you should read Rushdie”) from the moral support your friends give over beers (“you can do it”, “keep going”). Get the tough feedback early enough that you can still do something about it.
Only your name is on the book. Your publisher will publish dozens of books every month. You will publish one book every few years, or maybe just once in your life. They will never care as much as you do about your book. You have the right to veto and argue, politely, with anyone who works on your book. Stand up for yourself, but earn that right by taking writing and publishing seriously. Do your homework. If you don’t take shortcuts, no one will try to take shortcuts on you.

Related:

 My Writing Process
The Three Writing Mindsets (Raw, Run, Review)
My Process for Blogging (and my daily “process”)
Video of me writing a 1000 word essay (timelapsed to 5 mins, w/commentary)
How To Get From an Idea to a Book
How To Revise a First Draft
How to Write a Second Draft
What Copyeditors do
Why You Fail At Writing
How To Stay Motivated
Is Your Book Idea Good?
See all of my posts on writing

Live Q&A: How To Write a Memoir

Interesting in writing a memoir? or did you read The Ghost of My Father? Or both?

Join me for a live Q&A about my book and how to write a memoir of your own.

When: Wednesday March 4th, 12:00pm PST

Where: Anywhere! It’s online.

How: RSVP here

I’ll answer any questions you have about the issues raised in The Ghost of My Father (FAQ, free excerpt here), or questions about how it was written and what advice I have for you if you’re interested in writing a memoir yourself. Trained clinical therapist, and friend, Vanessa Longacre will join to provide expert commentary.

If you can’t make it, leave a comment with your question below, and I’ll answer here or during the Q&A (which will be recorded).

Live Q&A: How To Write a Memoir / Ghost of My Father

Interesting in writing a memoir? or did you read The Ghost of My Father? Or both?

Join me for a live Q&A about my book and how to write a memoir of your own.

When: Wednesday March 4th, 12:00pm PST

Where: Anywhere! It’s online.

How: RSVP here

I’ll answer any questions you have about the issues raised in The Ghost of My Father (free excerpt here), or questions about how it was written and what advice I have for you if you’re interested in writing a memoir yourself. Trained clinical therapist, and friend, Vanessa Longacre will join to provide expert commentary.

If you can’t make it, leave a comment with your question below, and I’ll answer here or during the Q&A (which will be recorded).

How does physical fitness help productivity?

Each Tuesday I take the top voted question from readers and answer it.  With 143 votes, this week’s winner was from Naveen Sinha:

Many companies are now providing standings desks, healthy food, and fitness trackers to promote the health of their employees. What patterns have you seen between the workplace environment and employee productivity, especially in terms of health and fitness?

Sick workers are not productive, which means any sane organization will invest in keeping its workforce healthy. More than 1/3 of American adults are obese, which may lead to more preventable illnesses and missed days of work than almost any other factor. Since 80% of jobs today are sedentary, and employees spend half or more of their waking hours at work, there’s a systemic trap that workplaces contribute to a problem that the workplace itself should be helping to solve.

To make the point another way: could you imagine a company that made their workplace as hazardous as possible, with typhus laced spikes jutting out of floor and trap doors, with starving lions inside, around every corner? Companies invest millions of dollars into their employees and want to get as much out of them as possible for as long as possible. Fitness is simply an important element of health, and organizations naturally care about the health of their workforce.

Productivity beyond basic health is trickier to measure. Productivity itself is also hard to define for creative kinds of work. There are plenty of examples of people with unhealthy lifestyles being extremely productive, as any story of an entrepreneur in a garage living off ramen noodles attests to. Some of the most productive years for Van Gogh, or your favorite rock band, included abuse of alcohol, other drugs and sleep deprivation.  These are anecdotes of course, but there are so many examples of highly productive creatives, at least in the short term, who made poor health choices. Everyone’s biology and temperament are different, different enough that there is no single answer to what factors makes one specific person productive or not.

But in the longer term there’s much support that regular fitness only helps workers and workplaces. There’s evidence it improves concentration, lowers stress, makes workers happier on days when they exercise, and even helps with depression. I think the inability to concentrate is a  fundamental problem that explains what’s wrong not just workplaces, but culture at large, and exercise contributes to developing powers of concentration.

I looked for studies claiming that exercises reduces productivity and didn’t find a single one. Of course that could mean that there’s not much funding in disproving the benefits of exercise, but that’s beyond even my level of skepticism about studies. The human body evolved to sustain exercise, 20,000 years ago we had to work our bodies every day just to eat and find shelter, and it makes sense that our bodies work best when we use them regularly. Even the U.S. government recommends 30 minutes of exercise per day for everyone.

My favorite reference about the value of exercise is about its relationship to stress and worry:

If you are one of those chronically upset worriers, Dr. Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, has a prescription for you: exercise. “If you could give one magic pill that would improve physical health, mood, reduce weight,” this would be it, Waldinger says.

I couldn’t find data to support it, but my hypothesis is any workplace that provides standing desks, fitness membership discounts and even healthy food, recognizes that employees are adults and should be enabled to make choices about not just lifestyle, but workstyle. It reflects a philosophy of empowering employees and giving them choices, rather than dictating policy. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was a correlation between organizations that had these perks and ones that allow workers to choose to work remotely.

If you’re looking for advice on how to craft an exercise program, James Clear is the place to start.