Stolaroid Stories
host: Fabio Cerpelloni
journaling vs. writing, blogging, short vs. long writing, storytelling techniques
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watch: (download)
Transcript:
Fabio
All right. We’re live, yes. Hello, Derek. Welcome to Stolaroid Stories. It’s an honor to have you here. One of my favorite people in the online world. Welcome.
Derek Sivers
Thanks, Fabio. It’s wonderful to be here. I can’t wait to talk about writing with you. It’s fun.
Fabio
Fantastic. So yeah, we’re going to talk about writing today. You’re famous for many other things that you’ve done in your life. Like CD Baby, your “Hell Yeah or No” philosophy and book, your Ted talks, giving money to charity, but there are thousands of--
Derek Sivers
We don’t care about that. Let’s talk about writing.
Fabio
Yeah, yeah. So what brought you into writing? This is the first question that I wanted to ask you. What brought you there? Because speaking is natural, but writing is not that natural. Like we’re not born with the desire for writing. We’re born with a need for speaking, but not with a desire for writing. So what brought you there?
Derek Sivers
That’s a fun question. It was the need to tell many people the same thing. A lot of my writing has come from somebody asking me a question. Me taking the time to answer their question. And I mean, you know, speaking. And then somebody else later asks me the same question again. And so once again, I speak the whole answer again. And after 2 or 3 times of doing that, I think I need to write this down. For me it was when I started my music distribution company called CD Baby, I had so many musicians asking me things like, “How should I sell more music? Or how can I get the attention of radio?” And so I’d answer them and then somebody else would ask me that again, and I’d answer it again, and then I’d think, I need to write this down. So I’d write it down and eventually I started emailing these things to everybody, my advice to musicians. And people said that they found those articles really helpful. And I thought, “Oh, this feels good.” And I really like the efficiency, how you can take the time to say something well once and then forevermore you can just send somebody that thing that you spent time on, even if it was ten years ago. You put it into words really well ten years ago. And now anybody that asks you that, you say, “Here, read this, this answers your question.”
Fabio
Wow. Okay. Were you journaling at the time when people were asking you this? Like musicians were asking you these questions?
Derek Sivers
Okay, well, journaling is quite different. Journaling is me sorting out my thoughts. That’s whenever I would get confused or I was feeling lost or upset. I would turn to my journal to ask myself, “What am I thinking? What’s going on here? Why am I upset? What would I like to be doing? How would I like it to be? Well, what’s the real point? What do I want anyway? What didn’t happen? What did I expect would happen?” And I ask myself these questions in my journal to help sort out my thoughts. But that’s just a big mess. My journals are for my eyes only because it’s a big jumble of junk, and only if in that jumble I come up with something that I think other people would find interesting. Then I will open up a new text document and share just the interesting bit.
Fabio
Okay. So as I understand, you started writing blog posts, right? Not books? Because your first book was “Anything You Want”.
Derek Sivers
I never wanted to write a book. Yeah.
Fabio
Yeah. Can you tell us that story. I know that Seth Godin called you and said, you know, “I want you to write a book.” You’re like okay.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of funny that for years people had been asking me to write a book and I said, “No, no interest. I’m just going to write my blog posts. So much easier. I have no desire to write a book. I’ll just keep writing my blog posts.” And then one day my phone rang. And yeah, it was just this unknown number calling. I was like, huh? Who is this? “Hello, Derek, it’s Seth Godin.” I went, “Oh wow, hi, Seth.” He said, “Hey, I’m starting a new publishing company and I want you to be my first author.” I went, “Okay.” He said, “All right, here’s how it’s going to work.” Seth is actually to credit for how short my books are because he said, “I don’t want these to be regular books. I want them to be like little manifestos, 11,000 words, 80 pages, little tight, punchy manifestos. Can you do that?” And I went, “Yeah, I’d love to do that.” So I wrote that first book in ten days because it was just me writing down my stories I had been speaking repeatedly at events and conferences and just conversations. I just wrote down my stories and it took ten days. And I said here and a week later it was on Amazon and that was my first book.
Fabio
Yeah, because when you writing your own stories, I find it’s easier than writing--
Derek Sivers
So easy.
Fabio
Yeah. So--
Derek Sivers
Coming up with some new philosophy that you’re trying to explain. Yeah.
Fabio
Or even fiction. Like, I’ve never written fiction.
Derek Sivers
That’s the hardest. No.
Fabio
You’re not a big fan of fiction like, reading fiction. Oh, sorry. Sorry, no, sorry. Let’s go back. Because I had another question before I forget, the “Anything You Want”. So did Seth give you the structure or did you have free hand in this and write whatever you want? Or did he--
Derek Sivers
It was whatever you want. All he really said was-- actually it went through two stages. At first he said, “Why don’t you make it like a manifesto about the music business?” And after just a day or two, I said, “I don’t know if I have anything to say about the music business.” He said, “Oh, okay, maybe you can write it about how you started and grew and sold your company.” I went, “Okay, now that I’ve got something to say about.” Because not just to tell you my story, who cares about some guy that started a business. But in starting and growing and selling my company, I learned some really surprising lessons. So that’s why it’s like, “40 Lessons For A New Kind of Entrepreneur.” By the way, the title Seth picked that title. I wanted to call it “The Music of Business”. He said, “No, that’s cheesy.” He said, “We’re going to call it Anything You Want.” I went, “Oh, anything you want. Okay.” They picked the subtitle “40 Lessons For A New Kind of Entrepreneur.” They picked that and he picked the cover and everything. But now it’s it’s republished. I made the this little tiny hardcover version.
Fabio
Got the old version.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. I bought back my rights from Penguin. Seth sold his company to Penguin, and then I bought back my rights from Penguin so that I could self-publish. Then I added eight new chapters that I wished had been there all along and republished the kind of the final version.
Fabio
Why did you not write those chapters at the time? Like did you--?
Derek Sivers
Well, I told you that I wrote the first book in ten days and so after it was released. In the following weeks and months, I went, “Oh, I really should have included that. You know, there was one more thing I should have said that’s really important.” And I went, “Oh, well, too late.” And then ten years later, when I bought back the rights, I went, “Okay, now I can put those back in.”
Fabio
Cool. And in that book. Well, it’s my favorite book.
Derek Sivers
Thank you.
Fabio
You know, among your books, I know that you’re very proud of “How to Live”. We’ll get there.
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Fabio
But “Anything You Want” to me, it’s probably because it’s the first book that I read. The first Derek Sivers book that I read, and I love the stories. I love when there’s there’s not just advice, because anyone can give tips, like, even people who are not expert in a subject or in a discipline or in an art, they can give tips. I mean, I can tell you how to go skiing even though I’ve never done it before. But I don’t have a story to tell you about that. Whereas when you have a story, I think it all comes to life. Everything, the advice comes to life. And this is probably why Medium now Medium.com I think you’re familiar with that. It’s so popular because people share their stories giving advice. But you said, fiction, so it would be hard to write fiction, we said. But in this book in “Anything You Want”. You’ve got the most successful email. So one of the most successful thing that you’ve ever written and it’s a fiction thing.
Derek Sivers
Oh, but that’s just a few lines of silly nonsense. I think what’s hard about writing fiction is if you’re trying to really write a story and get people to care, and then it has to have engagement and surprise, and that’s such a different thing. Yes, I wrote a silly email of some silly nonsense, but I don’t think that’s really fiction. You know.
Fabio
You wouldn’t compare yourself to Stephen King?
Derek Sivers
Hell no.
Fabio
Okay. How much of your writing do you feel has been influenced by what you read? Because you read a lot.
Derek Sivers
Oh. I’m often negative influenced or anti influenced. When I read a book that is 350 pages, but really the idea could have been done in 20 pages. I read it going, “Oh shut up, shut up, too many words. Why are you doing this? You’re just saying the same shit over and over again. Why are you doing this? You’re making the book unnecessarily long. Does it make you feel important? Or are you just doing this because the publisher told you it had to be 300 pages? Why? You’re wasting everybody’s time.” So I get anti influenced by that and I think, “Damn it, my books are going to be short.” So short because I’m going to just take the good bits and then throw away everything else instead of making you read the bad bits to get to the good bits. I’ll just publish the good bits and just, you know, keep my book short. Which, by the way, I was surprised that publishers don’t like that. If a book is too small, they can’t sell it for enough money and it’s not as visible on the shelves. So publishers actually want you to write a longer book. So I think a lot of those books that were too long, it might have been the publisher telling them to write a book that long. But hey, if you’re self-publishing and especially if it’s digital, it’s so considerate to make it short. People thank me for having such a short book and they tell me it makes it easier for them to give my books as presents to other people. Because it’s easy to give somebody a short book, a little one hour book going, “Here, you should read this. You will like it.” Instead of giving somebody a big 900 page book saying, “Here, you should read this.” That’s a bad present.
Fabio
But do you ever read the the reviews of your books?
Derek Sivers
I have in the past. The bad ones don’t upset me because I please myself first. I make a book that I’m really proud of and I honestly don’t care if nobody else on earth liked it, I would still love it. And so if somebody says that they don’t like it. I actually just smile. I think, “Oh, wow. Cool.” There’s a big one star review on Amazon of my book “How to Live” saying, “Conflicting advice. He can’t make up his mind. The chapters disagree with each other. I shut it down after chapter 2.” Or one guy said he only got, I think, onto the first page. He said, “On the very first page there was something telling me to have more than one romantic partner. Screw this book. One star.” And I think, well, if he would have just read two more pages, he would have seen that the next chapter disagrees with what I had just said in the first. But he didn’t make it to page three. And so there’s a big one star review on Amazon and it just makes me smile. I just don’t care.
Fabio
Yeah, I asked this question about reviews because I’ve read many reviews saying not just about your books, but in general, even Seth Godin’s book. Saying, “Well, this is just a collection of blog posts. This is not a book.” Which makes me wonder is there one right way to write a book? Like even a recipe book is just a collection of recipes. So no one says, “Oh, this is just a collection of recipes.”
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Yes, Fabio, there’s one right way to write a book. And I’ll tell you what the one right way is. No, I think it’s a different thing. Some people want a single argument made throughout. And then some people appreciate a variety of ideas in one. I like Seth Godin’s books that are a collection of individual ideas. But I have also enjoyed books that are one single idea. My new book called “Useful Not True” is one single idea, and one early reader told me that they were disappointed in that. They said, “Oh, I kind of miss how your other books are like a big collection of a bunch of ideas. This one is really just saying one thing throughout. It was a little disappointing.” I went, “Oh, how sweet.”
Fabio
Cool. Talking about your your writing, well we’re going to talk about “Useful Not True” for sure. Well, actually, let’s talk about it now, “Useful Not True” which I’ve read. I’m one of your beta readers. You did a lot of research for this book. So you read about the subject of nihilism, all these philosophies, which I can’t remember the names. Do you feel that more research leads to better writing?
Derek Sivers
Ooh. Not better writing. You can be better informed. You can have more thoughts, but better writing is a different thing. We’ve all probably read books that have brilliant thoughts and probably a brilliant person writing it, but some books are so badly written. It’s a different skill to communicate than it is to just have the initial thought. So no, I can imagine somebody doing a lot of research and writing a very bad book. I think that happens often or somebody doing very little research and writing a beautiful book. So no, just for this book, for what I wanted, I wanted to understand this subject more. You know okay actually, Fabio. So instead of waiting for you to ask me this, I’m going to bring up a new subject, which is about the different reasons we write. I wrote my first book just because Seth Godin asked me to, and it was just to tell my tale. Here’s what I did in the past. Here’s my story. Here’s what I learned. And the reason I was excited to write that first book was to be done with it. I said, “This is something I don’t want to talk about anymore. It was a time in my life and it’s done. Here’s my story. This is everything I have to say on this subject. Here’s my book. I hope I don’t have to talk about this anymore.”
Derek Sivers
Then yes, my next two books were a collection of articles and thoughts on my side around a theme. So one book that was all of my advice for musicians from all these separate articles put into one book and then “How to Live” was its own interesting artistic project really. That was a piece of artwork, for me. But then this new book was a subject that I didn’t know much about. I had some thoughts about “Useful Not True”. But it was a subject I wanted to learn more about. So two years ago, I started writing this book as a way of learning more about the subject. I wanted to learn what other philosophers have said and what religions say about belief, and what these philosophies say about pragmatism versus nihilism, and trying to understand where is this coming from. So the reason for writing this book was to learn more about the subject.
Fabio
Okay, so writing about what you didn’t know. Which makes you, I think, understand more about what you’re learning.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It was a fun way to do it. I recommend it for anybody that if you find that you’re very interested in a subject, then before you even know everything about the subject, you can decide in advance, “I’m going to write a book about this.” And as you’re learning, you’re sharing what you’ve learned in a way that’s hopefully interesting to others.
Fabio
Yeah, this is a nice way to look at it, because many people might want to write a book where they say, “Well, I don’t know what to write about. I’m not an expert in anything.” Well, you can become an expert by writing a book. Yeah cool. Yeah “How to Live”, it is a masterpiece. I think that if someone doesn’t know you and they buy “How to Live”, I think they would be quite disappointed because they don’t know--
Derek Sivers
Well thank you.
Fabio
No, no, wait, wait disappointed because they might see okay it’s a short book I’m not used to-- I’m talking about this reader. I loved “How to Live”. And they say, “Well, it’s just a collection of sentences. There are no real, you know, conventional paragraphs. He can’t make up his mind and the conclusion is a picture. So is this a book?” Some people might hate it, but if they knew what you did to write this book like, I’d say it’s really a masterpiece. It’s a work of art, like you said. So I know that you’ve talked about this thousands of times, but can you can you tell us how for people who don’t know so they can maybe-- yeah. How did you write How to Live? Because it took you four years.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. For four years of almost full time, sometimes 16 hours a day. Just working on it. So there is a book called “Sum” by David Eagleman that is done in a brilliant format, which is 40 little chapters that answer the question, “What happens when you die?” And each chapter disagrees with the other chapters and it’s so exciting to read because you read one chapter and it says, “When you die, you find out that you were an Artificial Intelligence program and the little caveman that created you are trying to figure out the answer to the meaning of life.” And the next chapter says, “When you die, you find out that you chose to be a man in your last life. But now you can choose to be whatever animal you wan,t every time you get to choose.” And the next chapter says, “When you die, you sit in a waiting room for decades until the last person on earth that knows your name has died, and only then do you get to go on to heaven.” And then you know the next chapter “When you die...” Okay it keeps going. And it’s such an exciting format to read. And I love how the chapters disagree with each other.
Derek Sivers
I loved that book, and I read it twice over two years, and after the second time I read it. I had this epiphany of like, I want to write a book called “How to Live”. That is going to do the same format, but about how we should be living our lives, because somebody will say, “You must live for the future. Everything you do is preparing for your future, live for your future self.” And somebody else will say, “No, the power of now, there is only now. The future is an illusion. The past is an illusion. All we have is now.” And somebody else will say, “Follow the pain. Whatever hurts you is good for you. You must do whatever hurts and that’s the way to live.” And somebody else will say, “Living is loving, you must love.” And if you read a bunch of nonfiction books, you feel the conflict from all these different. Bits of advice, each one thinking that they have the answer. So I thought, God, wouldn’t it be fun to write a book called “How to Live”, where every chapter insists that it has the answer to how to live your life, but every chapter will disagree with the rest.
Derek Sivers
And it coincided with me having a young child for the first time and the last time. And feeling like I also want to try to pack everything I’ve learned in life into this one book. So that’s why the rough draft was 1300 pages of everything I had ever learned in life. But of course, I would never want anybody to read that much. So I spent two more years compressing 1300 pages of everything I’ve learned into 112 pages of succinct little sentences. So almost every sentence you see there in the “How to Live” book used to be a whole page or more, and I would find a way to like, how can I really communicate that whole idea in one sentence. And so that’s why it’s meant to be read slowly that each sentence has a lot of weight. But man, it was a fun project and I’m so, so proud of the way it came out. I feel like if I did nothing else with my life but write that book, I could die happy. Like if that’s all I did of my time on earth was make that book happen. That’s good enough for me.
Fabio
One sentence per line. Like the way you wrote “How to Live” was that influenced also by another book that you read called I’ve got it Here, “Several Short Sentences About Writing”?
Derek Sivers
No, I found that later, because of the way I write, I saw that book on Amazon and I went, “Ooh, this sounds like somebody that writes like me.” So for years I’ve always written one sentence per line. I don’t write in paragraph format. Anytime it’s a new sentence, I hit enter, I make a new line and I find this so useful for so many reasons. All right, we’re talking to writers here, let’s talk about this. I highly recommend this for everybody. You don’t have to publish one sentence per line, but in your raw text editor, wherever you write your words, consider separating each sentence on its own line for a few reasons. The first is for line length. If every sentence you write is the same length, it starts to get boring to the reader. But if some of them are short and some of them are long, and some of them are very long and go on in a flowery way with lots of adjectives and a big bam at the end, it’s more powerful. And when you’re writing it one sentence per line, you can see the variety in your line lengths or see the lack of variety. So that’s one big reason to write one sentence per line, to make sure that you’re always aware of your sentence lengths. The other one is it helps you see your powerful words at the beginning and the end of each sentence. The first word of any sentence punches. It’s the first word people hear.
Derek Sivers
It has more of an impact. And so you should put strong words at the beginnings of your sentences. Like, for example, you don’t want to say, “In my personal opinion. Everything is worthless.” You’ve just wasted some beginning lines. It would be so much more powerful to say, “Everything is worthless.” Instead of in my personal opinion, because bam it’s the start of the sentence and then the last word of a sentence has a powerful effect because it lingers in the air, in the sound when each sentence is done. That word reverberates. So again, when I said, like, “Everything is worthless.? Ending with the word worthless, has more of effect than if I would have changed the phrase in a bit and and had the word worthless in the middle in some meaningless word at the end, it would not be as powerful. You can hear stand up comedians do this. Comedians are very careful with where the funny word lands. Usually the funniest word is the last one, because they know people are going to laugh and there’s going to be a bit of a pause there. So they structure their sentences so that the funniest word lands at the end, where they’re going to pause. Unless they’re doing it for deliberate effect, where they’re going to pretend that they were about to just keep talking, and they know that that’s what’s funny about it. So somebody could say, “Well, you know, my mother asked what I was doing today.”
Derek Sivers
“So I threw the spaghetti in her face but then I continued walking out the door.” And they know that the thing that they said in the middle was funny. And that’s why they’re continuing to talk, to act as if that’s no big deal. Like, oh, surprising you found that funny. Anyway, we put the same attention on to the words we write, the sentences we write to structure them in that way. Powerful word first, powerful word at the end. Watch your sentence line lengths. These are all the reasons why, for years and years and years, I’ve written one sentence per line and then when I publish, it just shows up in paragraph format. Because I put it in HTML into Epub and that gets rid of the line breaks automatically. But then for me, when I was getting ready to publish “How to Live”, I was looking at it in paragraph format, going, “No, no, no, it is too dense. That is, each sentence contains a powerful idea. And to make a paragraph of eight sentences, no, that’s too much.” So I said, “Oh, it looks kind of extreme, but what if I were to separate it and one sentence per line. Ooh, yeah. Now it looks like poetry. And I think it slows down the reader.” So that’s why I printed it that way. But even if you never print one sentence per line, I highly recommend writing one sentence per line.
Fabio
Wow, I love this. I love the nerdy stuff about writing like this.
Derek Sivers
Me too.
Fabio
Yeah, so one sentence per line. Do you think because you used to write songs as well--
Derek Sivers
Yes, very similar.
Fabio
And I love my favorite song. I don’t know how to say this my favorite song of yours. Is that how I should say this?
Derek Sivers
That is okay.
Fabio
My favorite song of yours is “Answers”.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. Yeah, honored that you actually went and found my music. Most people never do.
Fabio
Oh, okay. Well, strange, because you’re a musician. Well, okay. You were a musician, at least. Do you think that-- your writing is very punchy and succinct, concise. Do you write in this way because you were influenced by the way you used to write songs? Because you said in a podcast, I can’t remember which one, but you said, you have metrics. You have the verse, you have syllables. You have to work within the boundaries of syllables. So can you tell us more, please?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. When you’re writing songs. Usually you, no, always. You always have to make the lyrics match the melody that you’ve come up with. Even if you started with a lyric first and just started, you came up with some lines and you started singing them. Well then for the second verse and third verse, of course, you have to make it match the same melody that you did the first time. So every songwriter has to think of how am I going to say this thing I want to say, but say it in just seven syllables or just thirteen syllables with the emphasis on that word and here. And that’s the challenge of lyric writing, is how to say what I want to say knowing that the emphasis of the syllables has to come in these places. And it has to rhyme. It means that you’re thinking of many different ways to say something. I was saddened. I was bereaved. I was devastated. No four syllables, I was sad. That’s only one syllable. Now, I was more sad. No, that’s lame. I was heartbroken. Oh, yes three syllables. There we go with the emphasis on the first one, heartbroken. That’s the word I’ll use. And so now, yes, I did that. I wrote over 100 songs from age 14 to 29. So that’s 15 years of my life. And so it’s no surprise that now I take the same approach to this writing that I constantly review and change sentences I’ve written to get a rhythm that I like better, or to look at what word maybe has a nicer inner rhyme or alliteration so that each sentence has more of a musicality to it, or just a rhythm, or just finding the word that’s more powerful. Whereas I could have used six words to say the same thing. I’ll find two words that ooh, yeah, now that sounds profound. So I’ll really edit my sentences a lot, to find the punchy, profound way to say something.
Fabio
And how do you know when you’re, “Okay I’ve got it.” Like, is it a kind of--
Derek Sivers
Oh just from my own taste. Yeah. There’s no other way. Just I go like, “Oh, that’s good, I like that. Yes.”
Fabio
And do you have a sentence-- this is a, I don’t know if it’s too nerdy, but do you have a sentence that you are very proud of? Well, I guess all the sentences in “How to Live”.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, every every sentence in “How to Live” but okay, you’re thinking ones that I’m exceptionally proud of. You know what? There on the website for the book. If you go to sive.rs/h for “How to Live”. I put there some of my favorite sentences from the book highlighted in yellow on that home page. So that’s my answer. They are there.
Fabio
Okay. Talking about books, books about writing. I know that you’ve read “On Writing. Well” by William Zinsser. I think it’s called. And he says this, “Never hesitate to imitate another writer. Imitation is part of the creative process for anyone learning an art or a craft. This is especially true of writing. Don’t worry that by imitating them, you’ll lose your own voice and your own identity. Soon enough, you will shed those skins and become who you are supposed to become.” My question for you is, have you ever imitated other writers, like have you ever maybe when you started writing, was there someone who you were like, “I want to write like this guy or like this woman.”
Derek Sivers
Yeah, and he’s not very famous. It’s Harry Beckwith. Harry Beckwith wrote four short little books about marketing, and each chapter was short and punchy with one idea. Often telling a little tale or just making one point. And I just loved how punchy they were. Seth Godin does this too, and he’s famous for it. But Harry Beckwith did not get as famous. But his writing had such a big impact on me that definitely I was imitating Harry Beckwith in my early writing to musicians in all those years. Another one was Mathieu wrote a beautiful book called “The Listening Book”. That again was a collection of short little observations about listening and about music. And I just loved the way that was written, and it had such a big impact on me that later I was definitely imitating him. There are some other writers that I love. The other best writer out there today, in my opinion, is Mark Manson that wrote The “Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck”. Not only are his ideas good, but the way he writes is so powerful.
Derek Sivers
Almost any writer, even if some of my favorite books, you could give me a page of their book and I’d find a way to improve it, in my opinion. To make it more for my taste. And to be clear, I’m not saying it’s like an objectively better. It’s like a chef just changing a dish a little bit. You know, even though my mother made it this way, I like it a little more that way. So almost every writer I encounter, I can take their ideas and improve them, improve the way that they’re written. Except one, I’ve never been able to improve on a Mark Manson sentence. He writes the sentences the way I like them to be. And to me, he’s about the only writer out there that when I read his ideas, I think, “Man, I could not have said that any better.” And sometimes I’ve even tried, sometimes I’ll sit for 15 minutes with one of his paragraphs and think, “How could I improve this?” And I’ll try a bunch of things and I’ll say, “Nope, can’t do it. Mark said it as good as it can be said to my taste.”
Fabio
You also said that you recognized his style when you were reading, well, this book, which is actually here, “Will”.
Derek Sivers
Will, yeah.
Fabio
Yeah, you said, “I can see when it’s Mark that is writing and when it’s Will.” Because it was co-written.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, the book doesn’t tell you when he’s switching voice, but I know his writing style enough that I can tell, like, “Okay, this is this is Will speaking. This is Mark speaking.” I mean, Mark wrote the whole thing sitting with Will, but some things you can just tell, like, yeah, this is coming from Mark’s head, not Will’s head.
Fabio
I was listening to a podcast and this writer was saying that if we keep-- like, he doesn’t read any of the books that were written recently. So he reads only things that were written in in the past, like 15 years ago. Because if we keep reading the same books, we end up-- this is his theory. We end up writing the same things and thinking in the same way. That’s the danger. Do you agree with this?
Derek Sivers
Somewhat. My new book called “Useful Not True”, is mostly about reframing. And there’s a famous author right now, Scott Adams. Who I’ve liked one of his books in the past, and he has a new book put out last year about reframing. And I think in his case, it’s actually just called Reframing Something. And a few people have asked if I’ve read it and I was like, “No, I do not want to read it because that would be too close to home. I would not want my book to be influenced by his at all, because that would be two books about reframing coming out a year apart from each other.” So there would be two similar. I want to make sure that nothing I’m writing has been has been influenced by him. But sometimes if you go back even 30 years, the books are not that different, they’re dated. But I could see how for the sake of not wanting to make the echo chamber, the bubble where we all think alike. We all agree. Yes. I think that whoever said that has a very good point. I think Nicholas Nassim Taleb says that he doesn’t read anything new for the reason that he only wants to read books that have stood the test of time. He thinks, “Okay, 100,000 books will come out this year. I only want to know what books are still in print after 30 years because they were so good. I used time as a filter to only read the things that are powerful, powerful enough to have stood the test of time.” That’s another reason.
Fabio
Do you do anything to actively improve your writing? Like, for example, Ryan Holiday, I know that he uses cards to note down new words when he learns a new word, when he finds a new word in a book. It’s like his way to learn new vocabulary. Do you do like anything consciously to learn to improve your writing or to, I don’t know, make it more? I don’t know.
Derek Sivers
I guess not, just the constant struggle of improving every new sentence I write. And that feels like the work for me. It feels like the work is the practice. You know, like a sculptor who’s sculpting every day is practicing sculpting while creating sculptures that will be given to the world. So every idea I have, 99% of the words I come up with for that idea get thrown away. I chisel, chisel and chisel and I’m left with that one. So that the act of doing that, the self-editing, feels like my main practice. But I don’t have a separate practice. I think the closest thing that feels like a separate practice is when I do occasionally take an idea I’ve heard. I know that I didn’t come up with this out of my own mind. I know that this book that I read 20 years ago had this idea. But I want to say it better than they said it. So I’ll share mostly their idea as I heard it 20 years ago, but I’ll find a way to say it in a punchier way, like we were describing, you know, with a better first word, a better last word. Getting rid of all the unnecessary words. Finding the inner words that have a nicer rhythm and inner rhymes. So that in the end, when I come up with this sentence or two that communicates the idea it feels like, “Whoa, wow, that’s quote worthy.” But that was taking somebody else’s idea. Almost like doing a cover song. You know, musicians do this thing where sometimes they write their own completely original songs, and sometimes they will take an old standard song or a Beatles song and do their version of it. And that’s part of their craft as an artist is to say, “Here’s how I would perform or interpret this Beatles song.” And that tells you something about them as an artist, because you realize that this is how they twist things.
Fabio
Yeah, it’s still a creative act for sure. What about writer’s block? Do you have that? Does it exist? Seth Godin because, you know, we were talking we talked about Seth. He says, “No, it’s a myth.”
Derek Sivers
Yes. Seth Godin says, “Well, nobody has speaker’s block, but actually I think we do. There are times when your friend calls you and says, “Hey, Fabio, what’s on your mind?” And you go, “Nothing, I’m just tired.”
Fabio
The question, how are you? How was your day? That’s already speaker’s block. Good. It was good that’s it. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Well, yeah. But even if a friend says, “Come on, Fabio, what’s on your mind lately? What are you wondering? What are you thinking?” Sometimes the answer is nothing. And. I’m like that a lot. I switch gears every week. Every week I spend about 30 hours with my boy who is 12 years old now, and whenever I’m with him, I shut down all of my intellectual creative pursuits. And I put everything on pause and I give him my full attention. And I do find that every time when he goes off to school or goes away for a day or whatever. It takes a while for me to turn me back on, you know, because I put everything on pause to be fully present for him. Sometimes, yeah it takes a while for me to get back into, like, “All right, what was I talking about? Okay “Useful Not True. Okay. Section four. I’m trying to explain this.” And it can take hours to get back into that flow of like, “Oh, okay. Yes. Now I’ve got it. Now I know what to say. Okay. Yes, I have a lot to say. Okay.” You know what I mean it takes a while to come back into that so I could see that on a big level that might happen to somebody over the course of a year, that you might have a year in your life where you just feel that you have nothing to say.
Derek Sivers
And that’s okay, they should go do other things, read other books and go live your life and you’ll have something to say eventually if you want to. But I think the problem is expecting that you’re supposed to say something no matter what. That’s why I don’t do the daily.
Fabio
Yeah, I was about to ask.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, Seth Godin does a blog post every day. I tried doing that for a while. I think it was October 2019. I did that for a month or two. I did a blog post every day. I didn’t like it. I found that I was trying to think of something to say instead of the opposite. Which is only saying something publicly if I feel like it must be said. I like that filter for me better, knowing that if Derek Sivers posts a new thing, you should pay attention because it’s going to be something worth reading. Because I didn’t publish the other hundred things that I felt were a little interesting, but not interesting enough. I raised the bar because that works for me. I journal every single day. I have plenty of mushy ideas that aren’t crafted for the public, and only the best ones of those will I put in the extra effort to craft them for the public.
Fabio
The period when you were publishing daily. Was that when you started your podcast, like the one minute, two minute bits?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Those were those. That was just a side effect. You know, I have a good microphone. So whenever I’m finished writing something, I’ll just hit record, speak it into the microphone, save it as an MP3, put it on my site. And then I wrote the little script that turns that into a podcast. I will do that again someday. And honestly, I’ll tell you that I’ve got a lot of things queued up. That I do want to say after this book is done. Right now, anytime I have any hour of my time, I’m putting into finishing this book and it’s almost done. So when the book is done, all of these various mushy thoughts, I’m going to be turning them into blog posts and, and crafting them more. So I think there is going to be a lot more to say on my site publicly very soon and I’ll turn those into a podcast too. But yeah, in October 2019, when I did that experiment for a month of posting every single day, that was just an experiment because Seth says to.
Fabio
Okay. Yeah he said something like posting daily forces you to think, forces you to notice things you know, in your mind, in the world. And to be honest, I’m now in that phase. I’m experimenting with this and I like it. Sometimes I’m like, “Oh my God. What should I say today?” And if I don’t have anything to say, I don’t publish anything. But there is this also-- well you’re not in the business of building a business, but there’s this thing that you have to post daily, otherwise people will forget about you. You know, we are in the creator economy now where everyone wants to be seen and subscribe and like me and all these things, so should we post daily otherwise people will forget about us? I don’t think so I don’t think so. But yeah.
Derek Sivers
If that’s what you want though, you’re right that the algorithms of YouTube and TikTok and Instagram or whatever, maybe even Substack and Medium, I don’t know, they reward people who post often. And so if you want to try to game those algorithms to kiss the algorithms ass, if that’s what you want to do, then that’s a good way to do it. Seth does it not for the algorithms, but just for his own creative flow, like you said, for noticing. And I think that’s wonderful. I do find it sad-- no. I find it a little sad when people seem to clearly just be churning out content for the algorithm. But maybe like Bach had to churn out music that was commissioned by the King or I don’t know, the priest or however it worked back then that he created works of greatness in between the commission. In between the requirements. And same thing with some of the best writers, I think were former journalists, because journalists have to produce a column every Sunday for the newspaper. You know writers for TV shows that have to come up with a new episode every week. You can come up with some beautiful, wonderful work. Amongst your other bits. If you’re having to do something every day or every week, so it still could be very worth doing.
Derek Sivers
But as a consumer, I prefer it when the act of somebody releasing something to the world means like, okay, this is worth your time. Not I’m just going to put out something every day, no matter what or every week. Yeah. When somebody puts out, say like a musician that only puts out an album every few years and, you know, like, “Okay, stop. Pay attention, Billie Eilish just put out a new album. It’s going to be good. She hasn’t done one in a couple of years.” Versus there was a musician years ago named Jonathan Coulton that wrote and recorded and released a new song every single day.
Fabio
What.
Derek Sivers
I admire that he did that. Good for you. But I don’t know if I would have wanted to tune in to listen to a new song every day. It sounds like it might not have been the best use of my time versus somebody that might say, “I write and record a song every day, but only at the end of the year my ten best songs out of the 365 I will release as an album every year.” I think, “Ooh, that’s badass. Just give me those ten.”
Fabio
That’s why I like your your newsletter. Because every time I receive an email from you, it’s because okay, something happened. You know, there’s a new article or there’s a new book or, you know, it’s quality.
Derek Sivers
It’s not even a newsletter.
Fabio
Yeah. You call it private email list. But, you were talking about this. And something made me think about “Your Music and People” I’ve got the book here, but I can’t remember the chapter. Where you say, you constantly have to produce things because who am I going to refer? Like if you make metal music and you-- I can’t remember Derek, sorry.
Derek Sivers
Right no, it’s okay
Fabio
For the time. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Staying at the forefront of people’s mind. In the book “Your Music and People” that was kind of more about marketing and it was about staying in people’s minds. So I talked about how as I was running this music company, there were some musicians that would just stay in touch with me more often.
Fabio
Yeah I just found the chapter.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And then I found that if then that later that day or the next day, Film Music Company was saying, “Hi, you know, I’m calling from Hollywood. Who do you recommend for a kind of power pop?” And I think the Rosenbergs. I was like, “Yeah, I was just talking to that guy earlier today. Yeah, they come to mind, you should check out their music.” Whereas there might have been a great band that I heard of a year ago, but I’ve forgotten them because they didn’t keep in touch. So that was an experience that I guess could be translated to these YouTube and Instagram kind of algorithms that show you stuff generated by channels that are producing lots of stuff, and by doing that, by putting out stuff more often, you’re not only staying at the forefront of your fans minds, but then the YouTube algorithm helps you stay in front of people’s eyes, strangers too. So I guess it’s still a good lesson there. But ultimately, you’ve got to know your own internal compass of what’s exciting you and what’s draining you. Because no matter what Fabio and I are saying here to the audience, if you’re hearing an idea and you’re thinking, “Ah, yeah, Fabio is right, I should start publishing every day. Fuck.” If that’s how you’re feeling, then no, this is not for you. But you should try it to know. You gotta try it for real. And then just notice your internal compass. Notice if this is helping you or hurting you.
Fabio
Yeah. You should journal about it and and question the answer like you do. Okay as I told you at the beginning-- well, I don’t know if it will recording already, but I have a lot of questions. Maybe we could do a very quick lightning round?
Derek Sivers
Sure.
Fabio
Let’s see if I’ve got, uh, something left off this list. How would you describe your writing style? In three words. Sorry.
Derek Sivers
Succinct. Punchy. There, I’m only going to use two words. You don’t have to fill up the whole requirement. Well, I like that. Yeah do it in three words. Well, I’m going to give you only two words there. Actually I’m going to just tell you a nice rule of thumb I like, if the reader wishes you would have said a little more than you’ve said, just the right amount. I really like that to say a little less than I could. I know I could elaborate, give you more examples, be more clear, and really be thorough to make sure that you really got this. Or I could say a little less and make you go, “Huh? I wonder what he meant by that.” That’s what I want.
Fabio
And you leave it to the reader to,you know, to fill the gap, which is great.
Derek Sivers
Right. With their own meaning. Because this isn’t about me. I’m just trying to share something for you. So if you say a little less than they wish you would have said, then they will fill in the gaps with their own meaning.
Fabio
Next. Is there anything you’re still learning or want to improve as a writer? I think we talked about this, but.
Derek Sivers
Oh yeah, I’d like to-- well, you noticed that my last book, “How to Live”, had no stories. And my new book, I’m deliberately coming up with stories for the first time in my life. This is something I had never done before, which is instead of saying a point, I would think, how can I make up a little story that would illustrate this point. So it is kind of fiction writing, but, you know, the average chapter is only 20 sentences. So I come up with a little 20 sentence long fable to illustrate a point instead of just saying the point, because hopefully it creates a visual image in your head that you will now remember the two aliens observing the earth, or you will remember the beagle that chewed up everything. Or you’ll remember my car crash and the woman that I thought was paralyzed. And these images will come to mind to help the point stick in your head. Better than if I had just said the point. So that’s something I would like to practice getting better at.
Fabio
Okay. Why do you not use semicolons?
Derek Sivers
Because Kurt Vonnegut said not to.
Fabio
Who’s this guy? I don’t know.
Derek Sivers
Oh, Kurt Vonnegut, famous author, American author in the 1960s and 70s mostly. He said in a writing workshop I went to once in New York City that there is no need for the semicolon. He said, “I’ve never used one. Neither should you.”
Fabio
Okay, cool. Okay, I’ll follow that advice. Do you read books with the mind of a writer?
Derek Sivers
Yes, unfortunately. There are so many books that have good ideas, but I hate their writing and it frustrates me so much. I get angry at the book for being such a bad writer because it distracts me so much from the ideas inside. So if you look at my book list on my website, if you go to sive.rs/book, you will see the 400 something books that I’ve taken notes on. And many times in my little one sentence critique of the book, I will say something like, “Good ideas, but terrible writing. I couldn’t get past writing.” It’s one of the only times that I’ve had to quit a book halfway through. Is if I just hate their writing style, it’s just too many words or blah blah blah going on and on. It’s like, I know there’s some good points in here, but either too many words, shut the fuck up or trying so hard to be formal. You know, like this academic style of writing. Where, like you said about Ryan Holiday, they’re trying to use the new big words that they’ve learned, or they’re trying to impress other professors and academia and good for you. I hope that you get tenure at your university. But this book sucks because it’s so hard to read. It upsets me a lot. So, yes, unfortunately. I listen to music like a musician. I get analytical about everything I hear musically, and I read books as a writer. I am reading them, wanting the benefit of the thoughts and ideas in the book, but unfortunately, I do critique in my head their writing style too.
Fabio
I read in a book called “Why We Read” I think it’s called. That academic writing is so dry and, you know dry, boring, impersonal. Because it has to be that way. Because it’s as if it were science speaking like this universal, you know, no judgment, no personal, subjective opinions. It has to be that way. And I thought, wow, okay. Makes sense. Makes sense. I know it’s boring to read an academic paper unless you’re an academic.
Derek Sivers
But even the word choice. There is a dry way that you can say what you’re saying with more clarity, instead of these fancy words that take a lot of mental effort just to understand the sentence itself. You know, the embodiment of the river that with the river, blah, blah, blah. And this and I look at the sentence and I sit with it for a while and I’m saying, so what you’re saying is you could be this. Like those four words say the same thing as these 25 long words, but all you’re really saying is you could be this or, you know, that didn’t work. It’s not just that they’re trying to keep their personality out of it. That’s fine. I think it’s admirable sometimes when people keep their personality out of the writing and just stick with the message itself. But the word choice can be very off putting. Maybe I’m just too stupid.
Fabio
No, no, no.
Derek Sivers
I mean it. Maybe I don’t know these big words. And it takes me too much effort to understand these big words. And I would appreciate it more if they used everyday words. That’s why I was actually surprised when you said that thing about Ryan Holiday. I don’t make an effort to add new words to my vocabulary because I want to use words that everybody knows. I know that there are way more English speakers for whom English is their second or third language. Then there are English speakers where it’s their first language. I write for people that have English as a second language. That’s my target audience. If native speakers also understand it, good. But I’m primarily writing for people for whom English is their second language. I want to make sure that it’s very clear. So that somebody who only speaks English occasionally is still immediately affected by it.
Fabio
And that’s why I opened last year a little book club with my students of English to read “How to Live”, because it’s--
Derek Sivers
Yes, I remember that.
Fabio
You remember. Okay.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, because I remember, I emailed you the text because you asked for a PDF.
Fabio
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
And I was like, PDF. I was like, here, let me just send you the plain text by email. So I remember that I just went to my draft and I did. I’d never done that to somebody before. Like, never just emailed somebody the raw text of my book. But I just sent you the raw text in the body of an email for chapter one of “How to Live”. And yeah, I aim to use simpler words even when I know a good, complicated word. I will find the simpler way to say it so that everybody can understand it.
Fabio
There was a student. Well, I must tell you this there was a student who said-- he didn’t know what the book was. He didn’t know how you wrote it. And he said, “Well, this looks like it was written by an AI.” And I thought, you understand you don’t understand. You have no idea how this was produced. But of course, I couldn’t even I couldn’t argue, you know?
Derek Sivers
That’s that’s fascinating feedback. I wonder if it’s because it’s not written in a talky, conversational style. It’s not written the way that one friend, would talk to another over a beer. It’s short imperative sentences. Yeah, he’s got a valid point. But it’s funny. I never considered that.
Fabio
Next book. I’ve got this question. Next book?
Derek Sivers
After “Useful Not True”?
Fabio
Yeah, yeah.
Derek Sivers
No, I can’t even think about that yet. No, I just have.
Fabio
Tech Independence?
Derek Sivers
Oh, maybe. But I try to write timeless books that if I’m going to print them onto paper and ship them around the world. I like to think that somebody could pick it up in 30 years and it would be completely valid. In fact when I was doing this one, “Your Music and People” I went back to my original blog posts that I had written for musicians, and I removed everything that was timely so that I was really imagining, okay, it’s the year 2060 and who knows what humanity’s doing in the year 2060. But I want this book to be completely valid to any creator of anything in the year 2060. So any references to anything timely? I found a way to make it more generic, timeless. So a book on tech independence, no that would never be a book. I considered it for about five seconds. I went, “No, I want to write timeless.” But no, what I’m doing right now to explain is that there are so many things I would like to be doing right now. I would like to be traveling. I would like to be learning Chinese. I would like to be learning the new Go programming language. I’d like to be building an app. All of those things just have to wait until I finish this book. I’m like 98% done and I just have to deliberately like meditation. When thoughts come into your head and you just let them go back out again, just everything else is just going to wait until I finish this book, and once I feel it’s done, I send it off to the printer. Then I can turn my attention to other things.
Fabio
BSo this tells me that you’re very disciplined. But in a recent podcast, you said-- a woman from Australia, you were recording a podcast in her house, I guess in Noosa probably.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah.
Fabio
She asked you that question, “Are you disciplined?” And you said no, but then you started talking about something else. But you are disciplined. Like if you have this, you know, monomaniac mindset. That’s a sign of discipline to me.
Derek Sivers
Maybe just a little bit. You know there’s some people that eat healthy but wouldn’t call themselves disciplined. But they would never eat a big custard filled chocolate donut. But they don’t think of themselves as disciplined but they are. Maybe it’s all a spectrum, right. You know, there’s absolutely no discipline, there’s absolute discipline. And then all of us are in between. So I consider myself to be on the not disciplined half. But there are some things like this where I don’t consider it discipline. I consider it that I really, really, really want to finish this book. And I just know for a fact that you won’t finish one thing if you keep saying yes to other things. Yeah, so I just say no to everything else until one thing is done, and then I turn my attention back to all the other things I’d like to be doing. And then again, usually then I’ll pick just one of those and I’ll give it my full attention until that’s done. And then I’ll turn my attention to the next one. So again, I don’t think it’s discipline. It’s just having learned from experience that if you try to do everything at once, then nothing will get done.
Fabio
Yeah. I’ve experienced that many times.
Derek Sivers
Sorry.
Fabio
That’s okay. Okay. Last question. Is there anything you feel I should have asked but didn’t?
Derek Sivers
No, I don’t think that way. It’s funny, you know, that a few people asked that. Like, what question do you wish I would have asked? I think, man, I’m not coming here with some agenda.
Fabio
No, but I mean more about something that maybe you were going to say. But then we didn’t, you know, something that’s left, something like this.
Derek Sivers
Tangent we didn’t close.
Fabio
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Your audience are writers. I would like to challenge your audience to try writing something much shorter than you could. For this new book like I said, it was a subject that I was learning about, so I went and read 20 or 30 books around the subject of philosophy and religion and beliefs and cognitive behavioral therapy, all these things that are related to the core idea of “Useful Not True”. And so I had a lot to say. My rough, rough draft of the books from a year ago were blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. So many words and it felt terrible. I thought, “God, this book is gonna suck. I have too much to say.” And one day, about six months ago, I did an experiment where I opened a new text document. And I wrote a tiny little fable. That just went like this. I can just do it off the top of my head. I said, “What time is it right now? For who you? I’m in New Zealand, but whatever the current time is for me. That’s not the current time for most people in the world. Well, what day is it? For who you? Well, I’m in New Zealand, so it’s Saturday, but for all of my friends in America, it’s still Friday. I went to Fiji, to the island of Taveuni, which is where the International Date Line crosses, where there’s a sign and there’s a line on the ground that you can step back and forth across this line. Right foot, Saturday, left foot, Sunday. So turn around, now left foot Saturday, right foot Sunday. It reminds you that dates aren’t true. But your feet are in the sand. And that’s true. When does summer begin? Well for who you? For half of the world. Christmas is summertime, and then it’s freezing in July. Well, this is a silly but important reminder that everybody just speaks from their current perspective. People say things like, “You can’t do that.” Or, “Here’s what women want.” They say it like it’s a fact and they feel it’s a fact, but actually it’s just coming from their current point of view. They’re not necessarily wrong. It’s just not the only answer.”
Derek Sivers
Okay, so that little fable I just told was just 25 sentences or something, and it communicated better an idea that I had been talking all around in a page full of words. Blah blah blah. You know, “Ideas are, you know, everybody facts and perspective.” And instead it just felt better to make this tiny little example. Then for the next point I wanted to make, I started a new page and made a new little fable. And these communicate the ideas, but they don’t try to say everything. They just say just enough to communicate the point. And leave more of it up to the reader. It felt so much better. So now, obviously that’s how the whole book is. It’s just a collection of little tiny fables and short little chapters, just 20 sentences, each about 20 sentences each on average. And I challenge any writer here to try that. Try saying less than you could, try saying just a few sentences and then stop and let the idea sit with your reader so that they can turn it into something themselves instead of you trying to say everything for them.
Fabio
Brilliant. That’s the advice that you would give to all the writers that are listening. And with that, I think--
Derek Sivers
Even if you don’t stick with that. Yes, even if you say, “Well, no, Derek, I tell very flowery stories full of lots of details.” I think good for you. But just try this once. Try this just to see how that feels and then send it to somebody. The first few people I sent these little fables to both said the same thing separately, which was like, “I love how much space you’re leaving for me to fill in the gaps myself.”
Fabio
Writing by implication, I think this is a concept that I’ve read in “Several Short Sentences About Writing”. Yeah, I think it’s there. Which is fascinating, like my favorite sentence, because before I asked you what’s a sentence you’re very attached to. Mine was in the only book that I’ve written, “Any Language You Want”. Which was inspired by “Anything You Want” and “How to Live”. But the sentence there is a three word sentence. I was telling the story in chapter one where I went to London and I went to this recruitment center of this big coffee shop chain. And the guy at the desk said, “Okay, you’re going to have to do a trial day and see if people like you. This is how it works here.” And then I started writing the whole story of me going to the store, waking up anxious, going to the store, meeting the manager, and doing all the things that I was supposed to do. But all this was too much. Like the reader, didn’t need to know all these details about the trial day. All the reader needed to know was that I passed.
Fabio
You know, I passed the test. I passed the trial day. So I was there I was like, how can I say this without telling the whole story of the trial day? And I came up with a sentence that was three words, and it was “They liked me.” So the previous sentence was something like this, “I had to work for four hours in a in a shop, and if they liked me, I would get the job. They liked me.” That sentence, I was like, wow, I like this. You know, I don’t need to say the whole story. I don’t need to tell the whole story. All my reader needed to know, was that they liked me. And that’s what I wrote. They liked me, and the story moved on. And that’s not the best sentence. It’s not quality, just three words. But in that context it was very powerful. Yeah. And it’s one of the best sentence that I’ve ever written in my short career as a writer.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, I think I can say off the top of my head that Seth Godin, in a recent interview said that his favorite blog post out of the thousands that he’s written had the title, “You don’t need more time.” And then the body of the post was just one sentence, “You just have to decide.” And that was it. One sentence for the title. One sentence for the body. And yeah, he said that was his favorite ever because of course, it replaced a lot of things he could have said.
Fabio
Nice. Well, you can feel you can fill the gap in so many ways there. Like you don’t have time. You have to decide. Decide what? When? Great.
Derek Sivers
So by the way, that book that you mentioned earlier, “Several Short Sentences About Writing”, I do also highly recommend that every writer read that, because it’s very different from any other book about writing that you will ever find. And that’s very appreciated. It’s not like anything you’ll find online. It’s not like any blog post you’ve ever read. It’s very unique and has some very good points. And yeah, I think everyone should read that.
Fabio
Yeah, it tells you how to think even, not how to think, but it gives you a perspective on how to think when you’re writing. Yeah, I love it, too. I’m reading it now, actually. I’m on page 119, and there are so many things like, you know, when you want to highlight everything and you’re like it’s too much. How can I remember all this? I don’t take notes.
Derek Sivers
If somebody wants a preview, if you go to my book page sive.rs/book, you’ll see it’s one of the books near the top, “Several Short Sentences About Writing”. So you can look at my notes on it, if you want the quick overview, which does not replace the book, of course. But if you look at my notes and you read some ideas in there that you like a lot, then you should read the book.
Fabio
That’s how I found it.
Derek Sivers
Good.
Fabio
I found it there. Okay Derek, no more questions. It’s been an honor to have you here and to talk about writing with you. One of my favorite writers. And you’ve inspired me so much. I didn’t tell you this before, but without exaggeration, you are the person I’ve listened to, watched, and read the most since 2001, the day I got an internet connection.
Derek Sivers
Wow. Thank you.
Fabio
Yeah. All the podcasts. You know, you made me, like cleaning my house because I listen to podcasts when I clean my house and I’m like, let’s see if there’s a new podcast with Derek Sivers. And I go on YouTube, you know, recent uploaded. And if you’re there, okay, even if you talk about “Hell Yeah or No” I will still listen to that. I’ll never get tired of that.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. I’m honored. That’s amazing.
Fabio
And yes.
Derek Sivers
And it’s fun to nerd out on the subject, you know, I saw your podcast and what you’re doing, and I went, “Oh, yeah, that would be fun to nerd out on the subject of writing.” So thanks for having this podcast and doing this for other writers.
Fabio
Great. Do you want to do your CTA, Call to Action? Where can people find you?
Derek Sivers
You know what I’m going to say probably. You’ve probably heard me say it 20 times by now, which is that I actually really enjoy getting emails from people around the world. This morning I just got an email from a doctor in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I’m like, “Wow, cool.” And I just think it’s so cool to get emails from people around the world. And it’s like, my favorite hour of the day is I start every day and I answer every single email that I received that day. So anybody listening to this, yes. Just like Fabio did years ago, you should send me an email and say hello and introduce yourself.
Fabio
Great. All the links in the show notes. Thank you. Derek. Thank you so much. Thank you. See you again online somewhere. All right.
Derek Sivers
Take care.