The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers

good morning believe Nation today we're going to talk about the top 10 writing tips and advice from famous authors the great thing about our profession is there are no rules think for a minute what it's like if you want to be a classic ballet dancer or if you want to be a great violinist or if you want to be a Symphony conductor or if you want to be a painter uh if you want to be a movie maker all those fields involve communal apprenticeship personal instruction time practicing many many rules many many ways to do it but a lot of rules and rules that inv involve other people our profession the profession of being a writer doesn't involve any of that all you need is is a computer and a word processor ing program or a typewriter in some paper and you can create your whole novel you can create a war in peace or you can create um the old man in the sea you know a short lyrical novel or a great big Saga you can do it all right there at the keyboard you make it happen and it's it's the most wonderful profession because you can begin it at any time you can do that writing anywhere you can do it in a cafe with your laptop you can do it at a kitchen table you can do it in a garage office and and every year somebody makes it to the bestseller list who started out that way in their bedroom riding late at night or at the kitchen table it it's always been a profession where Outsiders can easily break in because it doesn't require equipment it doesn't require tutelage it doesn't require advancement amongst a group of people you do it all yourself how do you start writing a book well the starting point is you look within yourself and you ask what message do you have that could really benefit or help or change other people what message do you have that you would want your children to know to be able to live a better life what message do you have inside that burns inside of you you you like to talk about it and and explain it and when you when you see articles in the newspaper about your message you've got an opinion you you you want to say or something comment something this is where you start it's got to come out of you and then what you have to do is remember that the Great rule of life is prioritizing is you have so many ideas but you've got to select one and then what you do is you write at the top of a p piece of paper what are all the things I would want to talk about or include in this book if I was going to write it and then you just simply write your answer to this question well I want to mention this and I want to mention that and I want to mention this statistic and this quote and this story and you just start writing when I started to write a book this is my technique and I'll end up sometimes with three long pages of points point point point point this is the starting point it's almost like starting off down a hill when you're skiing you then start to move faster and faster um I was just wondering what advice you would give young people who are considering careers as writers [Music] well I think you ought to read a lot and I think you ought to write a lot and those are really the two major things you can't put it off you you have to uh you have to really do the work you have to be you have to be well read I don't have any patience with people who say oh man I want to be a writer but I don't have time to read well if you don't have time to read you can't be a writer you got to read just about everything so I think that's the most important thing and then you have to you have to read and I mean you have to write in order to develop a style to create a style of your own and when it comes to the Reading part of it there's a Magic Moment a really magic moment if you read enough that will always come to you if you want to be a a writer where you put down some book and say this really sucks I can do better than this and his bad public a book if it's going to succeed at all if it's going to have any chance of succeeding it's got to be vibrant and alive and it's got to have a beating heart it's got to be organic and and then it stands a chance if it if it's not any of those things then it's got no chance I'm not saying it's guaranteed success because that's in the lap of the Gods but to get to the starting line you got to have a Vitality to the book and the only way you can get that vitality is to have one mind working on it which is yours if you sit down to write a book and you say this is what I really want to do but this author says do it this way and that author says no do it this way and the third author says well what about this if you start doing it by committee you're lost it has no Vitality it just comes out like like a cardboard thing and so the best advice for a budding writer is ignore all advice I have some basic advice about how to approach writing but you must remember what I said there no rules so if what I say isn't useful to you forget it but what has always helped me was something a friend of mine Floyd salace a novelist told me in Berkeley years ago he said go where the pain is when you're write go where the pain is and and I think what Floyd meant was right about what hurts go back to the memory that causes you conflict and pain and almost makes you you know makes you not able to breathe and and and write about it explore it in the privacy of your room with that keyboard go where that pain is don't be afraid of that well I would add another rule to Floyd's go where the pleasure is go where you really want to be in writing write the exciting thing that you want to write write the book that's interesting to you if if you find that you're bored with the book don't don't give it up and put it aside think okay what do I have to do to this book to make it interesting to me should I maybe change point of view should my character have a revelation should he just jump up and do something completely different I mean what do I have to do to make it exciting to me and and if you keep doing that with the book If you keep making exciting it exciting to you if you keep doing what's interesting to you pretty soon you'll be getting out of bed in the morning and thinking I've got to get to work because I want to find out what happens I mean that certainly is what happens to me when I'm riding I'm riding away you know and and and I get up and I think oh my God I have to know what Reuben is going to do up at nidc point I I left all the characters you know doing this and that I have to know what's going to what's going to happen what what we're going to find out and what we find out has to be exciting to me and if you follow that rule at least if I follow it a book results and that book is exciting to me and it's exciting to other people not all of them for every every book I've written has gotten reviews on Amazon that say this is the worst book ever published this woman does not know how to write so you know you can't bat a thousand you can't win them all but if you follow that advice I think you will turn out the book that that that you yourself are proud of the book that you love and the book that you want to take out into the world I often get asked by by um younger readers what I would advise if you want to be a writer this is the way I did it so that's the only advice I can give you got to read as much as you possibly can because that's the best way to recognize good writing and to learn what makes bad writing and those are very good things you probably go through a phase where you imitate your favorite writers that's perfectly okay that's another learning process you resign yourself to writing lots and lots of rubbish you just got to write that out of your system and sooner or later you'll hit what what you know you really should be doing and what is your genre and perseverance you've got to persevere because it is a it's a a career with a lot of knockbacks but the rewards are huge I don't mean in the sense that if that's what you really want to do to be able to do it lifelong is the best thing in the world very rewarding but it's not a career for people who are easily discouraged that's for sure and to their parents um don't tell them it's unrealistic never never say that because even if they're not published writing well writing is the passion of my life so it's an important thing to do the key like to me the key of writing is to this is it which is if if you guys want to write or and wants to write is my first thing is I assume no one cares whatever I'm writing about I assume no one cares about what I'm writing about nobody cares about me nobody cares about what I have to say no one cares about the things I care about and if you just go from the premise that nobody cares and how can I make them care from the first sentence from the first paragraph you know at the end of that chapter how I'm going to make them turn the next chapter to me my main goal is to keep it interesting for the people and assume no one's interested what is inspiration inspiration is breathing right so you put what is outside inside of you and then you expire so inspiration is something that everybody has not only writers everybody has when you or she or he do things with love it is connected to this energy that we don't understand we can explain explain explain but it's is connected with the energy of love if you enjoy what you're doing you're going to be inspired to share with other people however inspiration you cannot guide inspiration inspiration is a boat and you are in this boat in a sea so that is this gigantic sea and your boat is taking you inspiration is guiding you inspiration is this wind that is guiding you towards your destiny if you try to guide inspiration you're lost you can do it of course but then go and write a technical book what you need to do what at least I need to do when I sit down to write is to have overal idea as I mentioned in my previous podcast but then allow myself to be guided by this overall overall idea I go into this boat of inspiration sit here every morning when I'm writing a new book when I was writing a laugh normally I started at 11:00 in the morning and then of course I had the ideas of the previous night where I was upstairs in my bed thinking tomorrow I need to write about this this and this and this and I took a lot of notes then I sit here I read these notes and I said oh let's let's try to do this but I know it's not going to work and then you start using your notes to write the next page the next chapter but the notes are not connected with your inspiration or my inspiration so after half an hour trying to do this or that [Applause] I finally get into this boat because you need the discipline also to go into this boat and I allow myself to be guided the first even though I'm not a fiction writer at this point who knows maybe I'll try that make a mess of things but uh Bird by bird for for all the psychological trials and tribulations Bird by bird is the book that I read when I feel like I'm going into the abyss or having a complete meltdown it's it's a wonderful book for getting out of that but I also would say like when you're stuck when you're not sure what to write tell a story so like show don't describe it show it so if you're like oh how should I describe this point do this do that like bullet point this bullet point that give an example give a story just so what's an example of how you did that in the 4-Hour Work week uh well anytime I I hit a sticking point which was very very very often uh I would would there were a couple things that I would I would ask myself who whose story can I tell like who embodies this point or this principle I mean Jack obviously is a master of this style of Storytelling and secondly uh po Bronson who's is's a great writer and has written many many good books at one point I heard him on a panel and somebody in the crowd asked him about writer block and and uh he said well when I get writer block I think about what makes me really really angry and I write about that and it's actually fantastic advice if you write about what most frustrates you why it frustrates you and then like what you did about it uh you usually come up with something good and I would also emphasize sorry I have a lot of thoughts on this but like the book is the most important thing you need to bake the product the marketing into a good book like that's that for me that is almost all of it and then the rest a lot of it takes care of itself but what I would say is make your quota really small so two crappy Pages a day that's your quota uh for me that's the only way I can slog through a book I canot crappy Pages a day this idea of two is is I think you're hitting the number two yeah all right yeah I I cannot think of a book or I'll just want to like cry into my pillow and go to sleep I can't do it the biggest advice I can give you is finish one book when you finish one book even even if it's the worst book ever written in history something changes in your mind and you think wow I finished a book I can write a book and it becomes much easier and then it's like piano or football or uh singing Anything practice makes you better so write another book and keep writing and you'll get better and you'll get published and you'll come visit us in America and we'll scream me I think the best thing to do is to remember that you have to send it out lots of people think that they have a best selling book but it's downstairs in the third drawer of their of their desk now you have to send it out the Publishers cannot be inspired they cannot come to your house with a demolition gang saying we understand there's a there's a manuscript here you have to send it to them and then by doing that you have to have to risk rejection if you don't go to a dance When We Were Young if we didn't go to a dance then you didn't have the humiliation of people passing you by and not dancing with you but you also had no fun and uh don't send it to other writers if somebody sent me a manuscript I have my secretary and I would have a note ready saying I'm returning your manuscript to you un R you and I are in competition with each other I'm the wrong person to write to and that's actually the truth because I might accidentally steal an idea from something or I deliberately if I was that kind steal an idea from somebody so um uh it has to be a publisher or an agent and it is absolutely wearing getting all those rejection slips I could have papered the house with rejection slips and even if my first novel I got five rejection SS and I sending it out the sixth time I really was very very depressed about it and the sixth person uh rang up and said it's wonderful it's going to be a bestseller so uh you know as the as we often laugh and say the first first five must be a bit sour now and so that's what you always think about you have to be full of confidence and send it out there and risk the rejection because you're never going to get anywhere until you put your first putot on that lad thank you so much for watching I made this video because manelle Mitchell asked me too so if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in the next edition of believe life let me know leave in the comments below and I'll see what I can do I'd also love to know which of the clips resonated with you and why what of the advice meant the most to you uh as someone who's just finished writing his first book I wish I had some of this knowledge sooner but I'll definitely apply it to future books that I write so let me know what you think what did you really enjoy about it what future topics as well do you want me to cover in believe life for this series leave it down in the comments thank you guys so much for watching have an amazing day continue to believe and I'll see you soon the best writing advice I ever got and I got this early on and I'm glad I did was to write a certain number of words on a regular basis a quota of words because then you look up 3 months 4 months maybe it takes a year but you look up at some point and then you've got a completed novel and you learn so much by completing a novel and uh that's why I have people like Ed mcbaine also known as Evan Hunter looking over my shoulder saying write you fool right I mean he was incredibly prolific under two or three pseudonyms over there is John D McDonald the guy with the red hot typewriter they said he was incredibly prolific because he did it as a regular as a job he treated it as a job now I used to do a daily quota but that proved to be very onerous I I felt like I was a slave to it and you know if I messed up if I missed a dat I would really beat myself up uh so I do a weekly quota now and I divide it into days and if I miss a day then I know that I can make it up on another day plus I take one day off a week to recharge my batteries now you do that day after day after week after month after year you become what's called a prolific writer I do not ask my readers what they want and then write that book but I will pick and I will cherry-pick little bits and pieces uh uh but I think ultimately Steve Jobs said this Henry Ford said it like people don't really know what they want right you know what I mean y it's like what do you want I want a faster horse not a m te yeah a lot of people will do that they'll survey Their audience and ask what they want or think of what'll be big or what'll be popular and the thing is I talked with rock bands a lot about this a lot cuz I interview a lot of rock bands I said all your audience knows is what you've done before they don't know what you're going to do next so all they want is what you've done before and if you keep doing what you've done before they're going to get bored yeah and you're going to get bored too you're going too and so to me it's like I how I choose what I'm going to write about is I stay one I really always try to stay one step ahead um but it's not even trying that I write about what I care about the most in that particular moment of my life and because it's going to have that passion I mean I talked to I've seen people I was talking to a writer today and uh and he has over a million Twitter followers um and a very big platform and he wrote a book that did not do very well yeah um because I think he wrote what was a clever book everyone would like versus writing something he really really cared about that was important to him and literally um I think you can make anything interesting if you really care about it enough if you care about that pillow and the story of that pillow and where it was made and how it was made who made it what their story is you you can dive into anything if you care about it and make it interesting once you do finish that book once you've got it don't take no for an for an answer from anybody no matter how many rejections you get keep going keep going don't listen to anybody who rejects a book and never revise that book because you got a rejection from an editor with a bunch of you know negative advice never do that any editor who rejects your book doesn't get it don't revise for that person wait till you get a letter from an editor that says we really love your book we'd like to publish it do you think you could see way clear to maybe shortening it a bit or changing this or that that's when you listen that's when you decide now say you've written your book you you've sent it to every New York publisher you know of and they've all rejected it what do you do then do you give up no you do not give up self-publish it's never been easier there are all kinds of ways to do it and there are stories every few weeks about self-published authors who are suddenly being picked up by New York Publishers they're being discovered or they've made hundreds of thousands of dollars on their own I mean we hear about it all the time so if you're out there if you're writing you need stubbornness you need courage you need faith in yourself that's as strong as any Talent you may possess and you need to write that book the way you want to write it and keep trying to get it published and if that doesn't work self-publish it that's the best advice I can give you or any other writer and again if this advice doesn't work for you throw it out the window

Channel: Evan Carmichael

Views: 107,324

Keywords: business, success, advice, help, entrepreneur, how to, better, life, money, work, job, career, company, motivation, education, inspiration, Evan, Carmichael

Id: Bc47jc3MSjs

Length: 21min 47sec (1307 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 12 2016