The Common Lie Writers Tell You — YallStayHome 2020 Afternoon Keynote

[Music] [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to Yahoo s afternoon keynote with Brandon Sanderson we are so so excited to have him with us today when we are so honored that he is here to talk to us and as you all know Brandon Sanderson is the author of many award-winning books that have sold many many copies he is the author of one of my favorite books the way of Kings he is a Hugo Award winner and he has hit the New York Times list 15 times most recently with a springer that went number one and was the number one pre-ordered book on audible and his books have been acquired by Fox for Sean Levy's production company 21 laps and they have been published in 35 languages thank you so much Brandon yay my pleasure thanks for having me um thanks for having me all of you watching as well they told us we could bring our cats along and things like that um I have a fantasy novelist Pratt so this is Magellan my macaw he may or may not be good on the stream he's uh he's one year old as of yesterday so we'll see him see how he acts we have plans if he starts getting squawky we mapped it to move him along but he has a brand new toy that I just gave him that he's going to be playing with so afternoon keynote I actually want to talk to you guys today about a lie that a lot of people tell you um this is gonna be a little bit of a downer for a bit but I promise it won't end on it down there plus you have a lovely macaw to look at if you get bored of me um this is a very common lie in fact it's one that we writers tell you a lot media in general likes to tell this lie particularly to teens a lot of well-meaning adults tell it to you teachers included and the lie is that you can do anything you want to now again I don't want to be a downer right it's a pretty innocent line you've probably heard it packaged in a lot of different ways follow your dreams follow your dreams follow your ambitions they will tell you don't listen to your to the naysayers who are telling you things like oh you should be careful about that that's really hard to do this is the sort of thing that in media we really like to tell you because it makes really great novels right mine included will kind of frame people who are naysayers about following your dreams often as the villains as antagonists and we are selling you generally in books and ideal and that ideal is that you can do whatever you want no matter what it is if you just put your mind to it and it's line it really is a lie now it has some good parts to it it's meant to inspire you it's meant to give you hope it's meant to you know help you to overcome and things like this and I don't necessarily think that's bad um I like that it does all these things and my goal isn't to make you feel terrible I'm an optimist I like writing books about people who succeed despite terrible odds like that is my whole thing right people who have find they have hidden talents who are very determined who go forward and try to accomplish something great but I also feel like I need to be upfront and straight with you you can't do anything sometimes determination and grit is not enough some things are simply impossible and even for the things that are possible luck plays a bigger role in accomplishments than any of us want to pretend so my goal tonight yes hello my goal tonight is to kind of cut through the aphorisms and cut through all of the you know the the platitudes they you can do it and really talk about doing difficult things and how you actually go about achieving your goals I mean hopefully I want to give you some real solid advice on doing things that are very difficult I've got for you right here a show-and-tell this is my first published story I published this when I was 18 living in Nebraska and it has a cool story going along with it you see I was in an AP class and one of my my professor there in that II play a key writing class he knew I was the science fiction nerd right he was the person who I was the person in his class who was reading all the fantasy and science fiction novels and this was a science fiction writing course our contest students only and he got in his little box one of the an invitation for his students would submit and instead of announcing the class he walked up to me he sat on my desk me said Brandon I think this is for you and indeed it was for me I had started writing just a few years earlier I will get to how that started with me but I just finished what I thought was a pretty cool story and so I submitted it to this contest um and I took first place my first publication I won $50 savings bond very big money uh uh-huh I felt pretty good about that though true story my the people of the the judges of the the contest came to me afterward and said Brandon there's a really great story you did a really good job though at first when we started reading it it felt really strange to us we thought you were doing something really avant-garde and whatnot and then we realized you had just stapled your story backwards and submitted it which I honestly had done so if you're submitting the contest tip number one I don't staple your story backward um but I loved this I went to this convention found a community of science fiction fantasy fans like myself and really felt like I was coming home when I went to that con because my story's a little bit different than a lot of writers if you haven't heard it before I was not a reader when I was young I didn't like books I felt the books were boring and indeed when I was in middle grades when I was in middle school I was given a bunch of books that people are like oh you like this one and it felt like every one of them was about a kid with a pet dog and then the dog died I swear I read like three in a row of that and I was just not interested in that I had a really great teacher mrs. reader or ms reader um it's true story and she got me reading a fantasy novel for the first time she thought yeah I think you'll like this and indeed she matched me to that book really well and I fell in love with the fantasy genre and decided I wanted to be a writer right then and there I can still remember talking to my mother about it my mother is a wonderful woman my mother is incredible she graduated first year class and accounting in a year where she was the only woman in the accounting program right um but she's an accountant and to her becoming a writer didn't really add up she was really worried about me she pushed me to become a doctor or a scientist instead cuz I was skilled in some of these things and in many of those times I used to tell this story my mother was kind of in some ways the antagonist right you've seen this well-meaning parent who has a child that has a dream and the parent says wait wait wait wait wait are you sure about that um and the older I've gotten the more I've learned the more I realized the wisdom in what my mother said because I came out of you know that falling in love with fantasy novels with two big desires right one was to become a famous novelist and the other was to have a pet dragon so speaking of Dreams that are not quite possible that are impossible I can't have a pet dragon right even as as a kid when I was thinking oh you know maybe we can bioengineer dragonus how hard can it be put back wings on a lizard we have dragons this is not possible with our current understanding of science maybe one of you will figure it out but I cannot have a pet dragon instead I have Magellan who I love quite a bit he's great he might even do its trick for you let's see if he'll do his trick big Magellan Magellan yeah use the Force yeah good bird he if he uses the force he gets a treat uh-huh we'll talk about dragons a little bit more you might be saying to me okay Brandon we know that when authors say you can do anything what they really mean is yes we understand you can do anything as long as it doesn't violate the laws of physics and reality we get that we understand that um but becoming a famous novelist you obviously did it Brandon you have done it you want another one you have to get the you have to be told to do it okay use the Force okay he really likes almonds so he tries to use the force all the time to get almonds now um and yes it did work out for me and I don't want to tell you don't do what I did right like that's not at all what this is about this is about me trying to be realistic about what you can do to achieve your dreams um and I worried that sometimes media in the media I create goes too far that we profit off of selling you a dream without giving you the warnings without giving you the realism without you know without actually talking about the stakes and the probability um I feel like sometimes we are selling this to your detriment and so let's start off I'm gonna have three things with you you three piece of advice for you that I think will really really help you moving forward to achieve your dreams whatever they are but first off you need to understand something called survivorship bias right survivorship bias is this really interesting thing it is the our psychology works human-beings really want to trust the word of someone who's been successful makes sense right successful person knows what they're doing and has been there before you should have good advice this can become a fallacy though let's uh let's say that we did not know that flipping coins was random the results of a flick point left she pretended there was something we didn't know was random but it really was and we had a big coin tossing contest where we got a thousand people together to flip coins and we were gonna see who would flip heads the most times and at the end of this we crowned a victor right this person who had flipped the ted's the most times not knowing that was an um a completely random event we might send that person on book tour after they write a book on how to flip coins correctly we might have them on talk shows we might have them give inspirational speeches to teenagers saying follow your dreams you can be the get best coin flipper to just follow my patented method I flip coins who got heads all the time because I ate only broccoli for 10 years of my life and if you do that you indeed too can win the coin flipping contest this is survivorship bias we don't know how much of what put me right here right now was still how much was talent and how much was luck we can't we can't divide that out certainly all three play a part and you can control some of those things and not others this is Dallin right this is dower it's kind of negative I warned you the first half would be a little bit negative but that's not my intention as I warned you my intention is to get you to be aspirational and to really believe you can I want you to have success I want you to do it not though with me I can do anything that's where you start I want you not even to say it'll be really hard but stick in there that's true too but I want to take the step beyond what we normally tell you which those two things and I want to try and give you some tools so let's revise that phrase but you can do anything let's revise it to say what I want you to think instead which is I can do hard things doing that hard things has intrinsic value and they will make me a better person even if I end up feeling what does that mean well tip number one all right tip number one is in making goals I think we need to learned maybe as a society certainly as creative individuals who want to achieve great things to understand goals to understand how important their but where they fall short it's an example I teach a class at the local university how to write science fiction fantasy to get into this 15 person workshop oh you want another one all right can you do your other trick all right do dragon you dragon good bird dragon is where he flaps his wings so to get into this class you need to submit an application and be bet one of the best writers when the 15 best out of the hundred plus applications we get the people who are in my class are really serious about their writing they have often finished multiple novels they are really good at what they do and of those 15 every year I have one or two who end up going pro and making a living at least part-time as a novelist so that's maybe better odds than people have told you in the past that becoming a novelist is one in a million but these 15 all have the skill and the talent to become professionals they are all really good writers and of them you know 10% of them make it in the writing field that's because writing involves a lot of luck let's think about this right let's think about an Olympic runner one of the fastest Pete in the world in fact you know someone who takes fourth place in a lot of events they're probably faster than 99.99% of people who have ever lived probably with many more nines after that they are one of the fastest people ever but if their goal was win an Olympic medal and they took fourth place they did not win an Olympic medal are they a failure because they didn't win an Olympic medal well I guess it depends on how they set their goals how they think about their goals how they think about the thing that they're doing they can't control who they're gonna compete against right in fact many people will take fourth in an Olympic event in a year win if they had competed for years before they might have gotten the gold just because you can't determine who you're gonna be competing against you want another one okay use the Force use the Force know you're facing the wrong way you have to turn around yeah okay you just want to watch watch the people know you want to get your nut all right use the Force yeah really good so you can't control who you're gonna end up competing against um I kind of had a crisis of faith about my profession um in the year 2002 right um this is where I have been trying to write I'd won this award right I had won the the Andromeda one student Writing Competition and I went to college thinking I'm gonna become a famous novelist this is my goal and I've spent the next ten years of my life writing novels in fact I wrote thirteen novels this story takes place when I was writing book number 12 none of these had souls I finished book number 12 and I was submitting these books around to publishers and I kept getting rejected the books I'd written that I really loved books six seven and eight got rejected by the publisher say these too long plus they're not dark enough everyone wants dark fantasy right now can you write something really dark and so books 11 and 12 in particular I tried to write my george RR martin I'm like well he's selling I'll write books like them and they were terrible these books of mine they were awful books I'm not going to write books like george RR martin writes books or at least I'm not meant to try to chase the market in that sort of way and so these books were really awful they were dreadful and I had this this crisis where I'm like I've written 12 novels right you might have trouble paying attention to me with a bird on my shoulder I apologize but written 12 novels and they're pretty good novels I think but nobody wants to buy them right what am I doing with my life right writing all these novels having them fail getting rejected I try to write what I want people tell me it's not good enough I try to write what they want and they still get rejected plus they're just terrible books like what am i doing this was one of the most important points in my career because I decided after a lot of soul-searching I decided myself why am i writing these books right what is the point why am i doing this is it because I want to be a famous novelist yes it is because I want to be a famous novelist should it be that I think that's a worthy thing to have an effort as an aspiration but it shouldn't be the main reason I'm writing I looked at what I'd done and I realized I sincerely loved writing these books I when I sat down to write everything else fades still does and I enter a place of just pure creativity that I love and I realized at that moment if I never sold a book and I died let's be you know let's be optimistic at age hundred and five and I had written a hundred unpublished novels I was a bigger success in that case than if I'd given up because I loved it sincerely loved writing and at that moment my goal changed my goal changed from being a famous novelist from becoming a famous novelist though I still wouldn't say no to that we came along my goal became I'm gonna get better with every book I'm gonna write the books that I love and I'm gonna do it my way and I'm going to acknowledge that simply doing this is good for me even if it's hard cuz writing books is hard now my story hasn't really happy ending I sold a novel right soon after that I wrote book number 13 that one didn't sell it was actually book number six that I had a lot of faith in before it gone through a bunch of rejection letters I'd given up on it and it ended up on an editor's desk and sat there for 18 months I thought nothing was gonna happen and that editor eventually read the book and bought it that was the laundress my first epic fantasy least first one that's all so fairy tale ending right but I think you need to focus on making goals that you had control over I did not have control over whether I became a famous novelist I didn't even have much control over whether I got published or not I have a phrase in a Stormlight archive this is the book the way of Kings is the book I wrote as book number 13 after I decided that I was no longer going to you know chase the market and I was not going to worry as much about publishing an absentia same of the book the way of Kings is a phrase journey before destination I embedded this into the lore of this world because I realized I can control my journey even if I can't always control my destination um the journey is what makes the destination worthwhile in my opinion and so I could say I'm gonna get better with every novel I could say I am going to keep writing books even if I fail at it time and time again that I can do but I couldn't for instance say I want to win awards cuz I don't have control over that I want to write books that are worthy of awards that I could do and I think that I have early in my career there's a there's an award in the science fix it's basically the Rookie of the Year award right and I really wanted to win this award and I didn't actually John Scalzi won it Scalzi scalzi became my nemesis by the way during that time our names are right next to each other on the shelf we published it around the same time everywhere I went felt like John Scalzi had gotten there before like i do sign books a book store and there's a bunch of sign john scalzi books and you know just happened mint enough times that when we both got nominated for the for the award the Rookie of the Year award I'm like huh I'm gonna lose the stalls here tonight and you know the thing about that award is you're only eligible two years I lost for the next year tonight I mean Ovid who is a fantastic writer John is actually an amazing writer as well and I then what's not eligible anymore I can never win that award it's impossible I lost it twice and I'm done this is why setting your sights on the right things can be so much more valuable than things you don't have control over instead of saying I don't have a pet dragon I ask myself what do I want a pet dragon I want a cool intelligent pet that can hang out with me they can talk to me they can do all these things and I realized I already had one at that age I had I love my bird hawk and ever since then I've had parents because I love parrots that is a goal I could achieve and I'm really happy that I like Magellan why you screeching okay okay okay no you want scratch no you're a little worried oh you just want to get up down to my shoulder again so you can play with my hair um so tip number two let's move on from that one to tip number two where did I put it I lost it that's all right we've got another one here so tip number two I probably put in my pocket somewhere but I have like three of those have them so I'm just gonna write this one in blue tip number two right after your goals tip number two is learn how you work all right there's another kind of lie that people tell you and I hate this one um I hear it all the time people will you know young writers will we'll see the writers and this isn't just writing I hope that this can be applied to whatever your goals are in life but I know a lot about writing and I'm tanging these communities and people will say some variation on a question of how do you know if you're meant to be a writer and the writer will respond somewhere or something along the lines of oh you'll know if you can do anything else in life you should do it because being a writer is really hard and being a writer is terrible and you will know if you have this overwhelming compulsion to write if you're to be a writer otherwise run away and I hate this answer I absolutely hate it because I don't think it's true at all I think there are some writers who have this overwhelming compulsion but I think this narrative is damaging I think that it tells you that oh if I don't naturally want to go and do this if I if I feel like I want to do it but I'm not able to you know if I fail at it if my you know my life I for instance sit down and want to write and I end up playing a video game that must be a sign that I'm just not meant to be a writer well maybe maybe it is but more likely you're just human being human is all about figuring out how to have done the things you want to have done right most everybody does not want to do hard things because they're tough I love writing but starting writing in the morning still many times can be really hard right and writing is tough it just is and I'd rather be playing the Nintendo switch let's be honest anyone who says otherwise well maybe they're just have a different sort of mindset than the rest of us but for most of us we just have to figure out what motivates us and this is different for you you should not feel bad that you have to kind of hack your brain to make yourself do the things that you want to have done and figuring out out makes you do your work the things you want to do is really really useful in life some of us respond very well to sticks right if I don't do this I'm gonna be in trouble if some of us respond really well to carrots carrots are you know if I do this I get this nice reward some of us respond really well to a deadline like having a writing group where your writing group is going to write read your stories and if you don't submit on time you're gonna feel guilty about it a lot of us that works really well for motivating us for me the thing that motivates me most is keeping track of my daily work count if I make a spreadsheet and I write my daily work count every day and I get to see that count up toward a goal word counts making your goal right then I'm intrinsically more likely to do my writing the next day if I have been able to get that sort of ding that sort of feel do you get from playing a video game where you see your character level up i've gamified writing for myself that's how I make myself do my writing find out what works for you don't feel bad if you want to play video games instead sometimes maybe you want to read books instead of write them you eating about me don't you and then everybody is like that and you just have to figure out what makes you do what you want to do it's almost like you have to trick yourself the more you just kind of figure out what it is that you that makes you do what you want to do all right Magellan oh I know you want to be on my shoulder I know you're distracted screeching a little too much I'm sure that they are very much liking having you along but be a good bird eat your nut and let me go on with it so listen we're experimentation is important learning what it takes to be successful in the way you want to be successful requires you to try a bunch of different things try a writing group try not having a rendered some people writing is terrible for their motivation for whatever and if you want to be a successful writer or musician or athlete or anything else difficult though you're gonna have to figure out what makes you do the things you want to have done alright so let's move on to number three number three the last of my tips on doing hard things is to break it down both I'm writing right now is one of the sequels to the way of gangstas the fourth book in the Stormlight archive series these are really big books I love big books and I cannot lie but it's quite an undertaking just for frame of reference this isn't bragging this is how it is the entire Hunger Games series is 300,000 words the divergent series is 321 thousand words the last book that I wrote of the Stormlight archive was four hundred and sixty thousand words alright it was two of the entire Hunger Games I know it was the it was one and a half of an entire Hunger Games in one novel it's a big book they are really daunting even if you're me to approach writing one of these how do we do this how do I make it happen Magellan what do I do I break it apart now you trying to use the Force oh now I said use the Force I don't think I have any more treats for you you know I'm out of treats I'm sorry buddy oh maybe a little piece of OneNote yeah play with this you really like these yes um break it down I write a book four hundred and sixty thousand words long word by word by word setting goals and achieving them is often more about breaking that goal into small manageable pieces than it is about simply sitting down and doing something big something great something much wonderful but you got to be on that journey you've got to figure out what about that journey you're going to enjoy and how you can have little successes along the way toward what you want to do and in this my mother was right the reason my mother was so worried about me becoming a fantasy novelist is she couldn't see a path toward me doing this that's the problem with a lot of creative professions right these creative fields let me tell you story about my my roommate in college he kicked his major by picking the major that paid the most money for an undergraduate degree in the college happened to be chemical engineering at the time he's what devilish yes which one pays the best and he picked that one that's what he wanted the one that paid the most money then his classes were tough his classes were really hard he would get back from crashes and be like man I got a 60 on that test and me as an English major I got 60% my whole life that's terribly like done enough that was like the third highest grade I'm fine um this kind of class meanwhile I wanted to be a novelist and nobody was saying to me what I have to do to be a novel there were my classes we're telling me read these stories read these wonderful books aren't those great wouldn't you like to do that and I'd be like yeah how do I do that like oh right then just write them just write the maybe and in some ways that was right but that is not a very good pathway it's not a really good road map to becoming a great novelist the way you become a great novelist is you practice a ton and well my roommate had these huge massive batches of homework he had to do I was not given much homework I had to do it myself and that's kind of the problem and our system sometimes oh there it goes sometimes does this with with creative professions is that there isn't we aren't given a good road map we're just told do it and just do it as good but my road map was I needed to write 13 novels before I sold one it's a hard long road for something that might not have ended up making me any money and if you're gonna do this you need to be aware of it you need to be aware that you control everything I often talk about writing in the same way I talk about some of my friends who like to play basketball now we are middle-aged guys my friends who play basketball are never going to the NBA but it's interesting if you tell people I'm writing a book one the first things they will say to you is oh great when you're going to sell it how much money is it worth and this I think gets into our us writers this sort of false sense that if we aren't making money off of what we do then it has no intrinsic value and I think it is actually the opposite writing has great intrinsic value just like going and playing basketball right I think it's really good for my friends to go play basketball I could probably do well to join them now and then you it's good for you to write books it's good for you to get better at writing books it's going to make you better expressing yourself it's gonna get those dreams out of your head those on the page so you can share them with people it's a little bit like telepathy writing a story getting to share what was in your brain with someone else and then getting to talk to them about it and see how they felt and how they saw the characters there's nothing else like it it's amazing it's wonderful it's incredible and it is worth doing even if you never sell a book even if you were those students in my class where 13 of them or just as talent as the others just never end up making it well if they have the right goals and that's okay that is mine that is my speech to you today I have a little thing I want to show you at the end but I have to get Magellan off of me because he will try to eat it I'll let him hang on here for a minute oh he really wants my buttons you can't have my buttons I know what what come on yeah I know I know taking away the buttons this man a piece of show-and-tell this is yeah you really want to eat this he loves Legos this is the first and only scalzi award this was made for my friends the year that I was nominated but made by my friends and the air I was nominated for that Rookie of the Year award they actually went to the Lego store which was nearby where the award is being held and they built me a little rocket ship because the awards that are given out at that ceremony look like rocket ships and then they took these Legos to the bottom and they went to John Scalzi signing and they got him to sign it for me and then presented it to me at the end after I lost the awards they said well you lost that one but you won the Scalzi award which actually I am tickled about I've kept this ever since I love it it's a it's a sign that I had good friends and it's also a sign to me that I can't control how people vote I can't control how good my competition is right John and I only have fantastic writers I happen to go up against them I don't know if I would have voted for myself against either of them they're really good writers they it's it's a reminder of me to focus on the things I can control so I want to end today talking to you about the concept of hope just briefly hope is a wonderful thing hope is what keeps us going when things look dark hope is what kept me writing books all of those years but I want you to learn to temper your hope I want you to learn to combine it with these things I want you to take that hope and I want you to put it in goals that you may you have power over I want you to take that hope and I want you to let it guide you through the difficult times of figuring out how your psychology works because it isn't easy to figure out how your own psychology works you're gonna fail a lot you're gonna get end up playing you know the switch instead of writing your book a few times now and then you're gonna end up with all these things you're like maybe I'm not meant to be a writer maybe you're gonna have a moment like me really like what on earth am i doing my mother was right I'm gonna be begging for beans by the side of the road I'm never gonna sell any books now hope got me through it the hope is important but at the end of the day I really want you to take that hope and I want it to drive you to look at your goals and say all right what is my actual path to victory what can I do to accomplish these things that everyone tells me my potential is limitless all right what am I gonna do today to achieve those goals and if you do those things you will have success even if the things you can't control prevent you from winning the gold medal because you're the fourth best at something that is really hard to do and that you should feel really proud of yourself for keep going you can do hard things and it is difficult but worth doing and I have been Brandon Sanderson this has been Magellan who has been mostly a good bird yeah mostly a good bird except he really wants my buttons thank you guys so much for listening to this random rant of mine thank you so much for going to y'all stay at home or not going to it as the case may be and thank you very much for reading I hope to see you guys around many more times in the future thank you very much yeah yeah I know you just love buttons

Channel: Brandon Sanderson

Views: 140,091

Rating: 4.9624872 out of 5

Keywords: Brandon Sanderson, Writing Advice, science fiction and fantasy, science fiction and fantasy writing, sci-fi writing, fantasy writing, short stories, Yallwest, yallstayhome, yallfest

Id: oH9sJrAVeC0

Length: 39min 22sec (2362 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AliceTheGamedev]

To summarize a bit for those who don't have time to watch:

• The lie he refers to is "you can do anything if you just set your mind to it"
• Sanderson emphasizes the importance of luck in making it as a writer (and not just skill and talent or determination).
• He encourages people to set realistic goals rather than having big dreams that may be incredibly hard to achieve
  
• his own goal eventually became to become a better writer with every book that he wrote, when he wasn't selling books yet
  
• This is reflected in the message of "journey before destination": The Way of Kings was the first book he wrote after deciding to write for himself rather than chasing the market/trying very hard to become a famous novellist
  
• He couldn't have a pet dragon so he settled for a parrot and it is a very good parrot in this very video.
  
• He strongly disagrees with the notion that people without an overwhelming compulsion to write should not try to be writers
• He recommends learning how you work best: figure out how do make yourself do the things you want to have done, wether it is deadlines, threats, rewards... He tricks himself into wanting to write using a gamified spreadsheet.
  
• Break down goals into manageable chunks
  
• See intrinsic value in writing for writing's sake, instead of only considering writing to be of value if you're able to sell it.
• Focus on the things you can control

So yeah, perhaps nothing groundbreaking, but stuff worth keeping in mind I'd say, for anyone who wants to write books themselves :)

[u/red_sed]

A lot of people are taking this to show that he is being condescending. That’s not what I took from it. I think he acknowledges that you can do it but he is emphasizing the reasons behind what you are doing are very important because not everyone will experience success even if they have talent. Thus, he isn’t really saying you can’t do it. He is saying that your motivation for doing it can’t be something beyond your personal control. In essence, it’s okay to be a writer as a hobby even if you never get published but you have to find your own personal motivation, willpower, and goals outside of what the world views as success for a writer.

His basketball example really speaks to this. Why do people immediately assume you are trying to become a professional writer if you tell them you are writing a book? On the other hand, they understand that you never intend to be a professional basketball player when you go out to play with your friends. The societal expectations on writers are skewed.

His advice really boils down to how to establish your own willpower. I’ve found a similar approach works for me in many areas. I don’t have aspirations to be a writer but I did decide to do the 52 books in a year challenge. My goal is simply “read for two minutes a day.” It turns out that I often exceed my goal. On the days that I don’t make it past the two minutes and choose to play my switch instead, I still feel satisfied and realize that my consistency adds up over time.

Overall, his message seems to actually be an encouraging one. Sure, most of us won’t become famous writers but that is not what truly matters. Did you enjoy writing? Did you overcome difficulties to accomplish your writing? Did you become better in some way? There is value in that. There is value in the journey even when the final outcome is not becoming the hero who saves the world. There is still hope. You can still achieve your goals and you can exceed them as well.

[u/madmanwhich2]

And here I am playing Splatoon on the Switch instead of writing.

[u/laiot_]

A professor told me the exactly same things one year ago, very helpful in life.

[u/MrFiskIt]

I think the message was pretty clear in this. Work hard, put the time in and you can be as good a writer as Brandon. Or better, even.

Once you get there however, there’s a high chance you still won’t make money or win awards.

And that won’t matter as much if that wasn’t your goal in the first place.

[u/thetwopaths]

Solid advice. Writing is tough, but it can be so gratifying even if you aren't a "famous novelist." I guess I write for my characters first, because if I did not, they would just dissipate into nothing. Word count is a great driver when you write the first draft but it's not that useful for me in revisions. I build another list of problems I want to fix and use those as my goals. It works well enough.

[u/Chilcott_Harry]

I watched this and got hyped up and inspired so I decide to do the first bit of writing I've done for months. 30 minutes later, after reading the small piece I'd done, I remember why I stopped writing. HINT: it's because I'm fucking shit at it!

[u/Shanbear16]

Is this the whole keynote speech? I was going to attend, but life happened and I missed it.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]