Notes from ‘Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t’

In continuation of the earlier three books by Steven Pressfield, titled ‘The War of Art‘, ‘Turning Pro‘ and ‘Do the Work’, I recently completed the fourth one ‘Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t’. While the earlier one are for writers when they just start, this one is for authors who have some work under their belt but want to know more. Hence, it focuses on the art of writing stories.

Overall, it provides advice from the author’s experience writing advertisements, movies, plays, fiction, non-fiction and self-help. To that extent, it is all over the place and not as sharp and focused like the others. Nevertheless it is a quick read and, like always, I made some notes while reading it. Here are some worthy excerpts from ‘Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t‘:

The first thing you learn in advertising is that no one wants to read your shit. It isn���t that people are mean or cruel. They���re just busy.

When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you.

When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy.

You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs���the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your reader/gallery-goer/customer.

A concept takes a conventional claim and puts a spin on it. When you as a writer carry over and apply this mode of thinking to other fields, say the writing of novels or movies or nonfiction, the first question you ask yourself at the start of any project is, ���What���s the concept?���

The pros understand that nobody wants to read their shit. They will start from that premise and employ all their arts and all their skills to come up with some brilliant stroke that will cut through that indifference, that clutter, that B.S.

Problems seeking solutions. This is a very powerful way of thinking about the creative process. If your job is to find that solution, the first step is to define the problem.

The problem in fiction, from the thrashing writer���s point of view, is almost always, ���What is this damn thing about?��� In other words, what���s the theme?

A real writer (or artist or entrepreneur) has something to give. She has lived enough and suffered enough and thought deeply enough about her experience to be able to process it into something that is of value to others, even if only as entertainment.

If there is a single principle that is indispensable to structuring any kind of narrative, it is this: Break the piece into three parts���beginning, middle, and end.

A single idea holds the work together and makes it cohere. The Inciting Incident is the event that makes the story start. If your Climax is not embedded in your Inciting Incident, you don���t have an Inciting Incident.

Your job as a writer is to give your hero the deepest, darkest, most hellacious All Is Lost Moment possible���and then find a way out for her.

A great epiphanal moment not only defines the stakes and the jeopardy for the protagonist and for the audience, but it restates the theme and answers the question, ���What is this story about?���

The conventional truism is ���Write what you know.��� But something mysterious and wonderful happens when we write what we don���t know. The Muse enters the arena. Stuff comes out of us from a very deep source.

Write your nonfiction book as if it were a novel. I don���t mean make stuff up. That���s a no-no. I mean give it an Act One, an Act Two, an Act Three. Make it cohere around a theme.

From the first day I start to think about an idea for a novel, I ask myself, ���What is this damn thing about?��� To make the protagonist a star, make the theme and concept a star.

As powerful as is the negative, destructive force we name Resistance, so mighty is the positive, creative force we call the Muse. Sit down. Open the faucet. The stuff that will appear, sometimes anyway, will exceed your fondest visions. You will stare down at it and exclaim, ���Where in the world did that come from?���

The artist enters the Void with nothing and comes back with something.

We���re believing that the universe has a gift that it is holding specifically for us and that, if we can learn to make ourselves available to it, it will deliver this gift into our hands. Believe me, this is true.

What Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit means is that none of us wants to hear your self-centered, ego driven, unrefined demands for attention.

What Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit means is that you/we/all of us as writers must learn to leave space for the reader, to work our offerings like a miner refines ore, until what comes out on the page is solid, glistening gold.

***

The post Notes from ‘Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t’ appeared first on Ranjit Kulkarni.