Expert Author Community
host: Kelly Irving
Writers talking about writing. A community of authors talking about the process and craft, story telling vs raw truth, the business and purpose of writing, and a humble mindset for creators.
listen: (download)
watch: (download)
Transcript:
Kelly Irving
What kind of sights or smells could we expect coming from your kitchen?
Derek Sivers
Chocolate chip cookies. I used to host dinners every Monday night in New York City when I lived there for one year. I thought, "All right, I'm here for just one year," so I rented an apartment overlooking the Empire State Building. So I thought every Monday night, I'm gonna have six people for dinner. So I had a set thing that I would cook - since I was right above a Whole Foods, I would get this already-marinated salmon with Moroccan spices, and all I had to do was just drop it in a frying pan for a bit. I'd do that, chop up a cucumber, do some Moroccan couscous, and then as everybody else was engaged in conversation, I would quietly slip away and put chocolate chip cookie dough into the oven. And somebody would always be the first to smell it going, "(sniffs) Is that ... Do I smell cookies?" So that's my real literal answer.
Kelly Irving
I love that. And I love the simplicity in that answer, because I think I've read somewhere as well, like you're a few ingredients kind of person. And this to me, when I think about your answer here, this really sums up your philosophy. Less is more.
Derek Sivers
Well, it's fun to apply that not to everything in life, but to see where it applies. So I I actually just built my own house for the first time ever about 30 minutes north of Wellington, New Zealand, and applied that to the house. And you can see my book covers.
Derek Sivers
Before we get into this, I have to tell you guys, I'm so happy to be talking with other writers, and I know that everybody here is a writer. And it reminds me of the story that I saw on YouTube once, of the first time that Jerry Seinfeld met Chris Rock. They were at some busy, stupid, noisy party, maybe an awards show or something like that, both engaged in inane chit chat with people shaking their hands. And they locked eyes and Chris Rock came over to him, grabbed Jerry's shoulders and said, "Comedian!" And that was the moment they bonded because like, yes, like, only another comedian can relate to another comedian. So, yes, I do a lot of podcasts. But when you guys come in here, I'm just like, "Writers!" Yes, let's talk writing. Phew, it's so relaxing to talk to other writers.
Kelly Irving
I love that. And I don't want to hold you back from that either. So I do want to talk about that because you know, you are very well accomplished. You know, people know you as you know, starting out as a musician and selling your own CDs and you know, growing into this mega successful business CD baby. But I mean, what I love about your backstory is you've probably got one of the most colourful career portfolios, you know, having been a circus clown, is it? So what I want to know is, how does writing fit into this picture? Or where, when and how does writing fit into the picture?
Derek Sivers
I was not a great entrepreneur. My company was not a mega success. It was a success, but you know, let's save the word mega for those that it's words do. But I was, I wasn't a great entrepreneur. But looking back, I think the reason that musicians chose CD Baby instead of Amazon or other competitors that popped up that did the exact same thing we did is that they like the way I wrote. I often wrote these articles to musicians as a fellow musician talking about my previous frustrations as a self-employed musician. And now that I was on the inside of the music business by accident, and sorry anybody if you don't know my backstory. I started the business by accident. I never meant to start a company. I was doing a favor for a friend and then a friend's friend called and a friend's friend's friend called and oops, I accidentally started a business. So I would tell these stories from the inside, almost like a spy reporting, like, "Okay, I'm on the inside of the music business now. Fellow musicians, here's what I found out." But it wasn't contrived. I stumbled into the other side of things. So I think the common thread the whole time was my writing. My writing was the reason that people liked my company, is because they liked how I communicated with them.
Kelly Irving
And so for you, why write? Like what's the meaning for you behind writing?
Derek Sivers
It's just sharing what I've learned before I die. I had this interesting observation just last week as I was reading a book about the Middle East. It said, it was like understanding the Middle East through a story of ten conflicts. So it was ten chapters about ten conflicts in the Middle East and how they help you understand that region. And I was learning a lot. And were to die next week? How odd that I'm learning all this stuff just to go into my smushy brain and then die and rot. How weird to not share what we've learned. So I think I feel a sense of duty that almost everything I've learned, I feel in order to make it worth something, I have to do something with it, whether that's affecting my personal actions or, or and, also sharing it so it can help others.
Kelly Irving
I want to come back to that. Oh, no, maybe I'll ask it now. Because, like listening to you there, like, where is the balance between writing for yourself and feeling like you said a duty, writing for others, or what others may almost expect from you? Where's the balance for you there? Is there a tension point?
Derek Sivers
Yeah, definitely a tension point. It is easier to not write for others. It is so nice and easy, isn't it, to just write for yourself? To journal? Effortless. Emails to a friend? Effortless. Communication among people that know you or just with yourself? It's all effortless. It's when you're subjecting it to misunderstanding by strangers, that we engage all of those parts of our brain that make us writers where you have to think not so much how to be understood, but how to not be misunderstood. That's the hard part.
Kelly Irving
Yeah, yeah. I'm skipping forward a bit because I think what you're starting to get into is almost like some of these, you start thinking about like writers are predominantly sometimes there's this balance or this tension between being in your head and being in your heart. And I think this is what your book Useful Not True and the beliefs that you talk around actually really accomplish. And there's actually a chapter in here I really liked in terms of the inherited paintings in your mind. And you talk about, you know, imagining your mind is in a frame almost and you taking that frame out and changing the frame or flipping it. And and so could you talk, I think, I guess, to backtrack first, because I want to know some of your mindset and your useful, not true beliefs. but for everyone else here, probably first, explain the concept. What are useful, not true beliefs and how do they relate, particularly when you're writing?
Derek Sivers
Sure. OK. By the way, to be meta for a second, I have no need to pitch my book here. Like I know maybe other people come on and they want to sell more books and they think they're going to come on here to like pitch a thing to you guys. I'm happy to just nerd out on writing. We don't need to talk about my book or me at all. So let me just have that said, that we can spin the conversation any way you want that's useful to you. It doesn't have to be about me or my newest thing.
Derek Sivers
So "Useful, Not True," I realized was a common thread behind all of the ways that I had been been approaching life for 20 years, but more particularly, the ways that were the most successful for me, that I saw so many other people misunderstanding. And it's choosing a mindset deliberately because it's useful for you to believe that. A classic example is, say, that you're in traffic and there's somebody being an asshole that's darting in and out of lanes and speeding like crazy, and your first thought is, "What an asshole," and then you do that classic thing where you think, "Wait, maybe they're rushing a sick child to the hospital." And just thinking that makes you exhale, relax, get out of your own head for a second, consider other people's lives and their struggles, it makes you feel better. Now it's probably not true. There's probably not a sick child in the back of that car, but it was a useful thought for you because it made you feel better. You weren't choosing it for its accuracy. You were choosing it for its results. So a similar one is if you get invited to some event full of strangers. Say you decide to go to South by Southwest in Sydney, and there's hundreds of people you don't know. It's terrifying, but you can tell yourself that everybody is just waiting for someone else to break the ice. Everybody's also terrified, and it would be charitable and generous of you to go up to strangers and break the ice for them. Everybody here is a friend waiting to happen. That's probably not true, but choosing to think that can become self-fulfilling. So again, it's choosing a mindset because it's useful, not because it's true. And I did that over and over and over again in so many aspects of life, and I kept having to explain it when people thought I was weird for saying things like, "Men and women are the same." And they'd say, "Wait, no, they're not!" I said, "Well, I'm choosing to believe that because it's useful. It counteracts our tendency to overemphasize the differences." Or I'd say, "I'm choosing to believe that everything is my fault." And they'd say, "Wait, but no, everything's not your fault. Some things are random." I'd say, "No, I didn't say it was true. I said it's useful for me to believe this." So that's what the book is about, trying to share this mindset. No, more like I made up little fables to try to to get the reader into this mindset of looking at life through what would be useful to believe, not just choosing or arguing about what's true.
Kelly Irving
Let's stick on the fables, because storytelling and these fables are actually like, they're kind of like a trademark in a lot of your books. Like that's, that's actually how you you write. So I'm curious about whether, well a couple of things, how important you think that storytelling is, but also is this what you feel is your natural writing voice or is it something that you've consciously chosen to work at over the years?
Derek Sivers
Okay. If any of you read my previous book called How to Live, that style actually comes more naturally to me. How to Live had no stories, none. It was just aphorisms, almost like a dense catalog of the most helpful thoughts I've found in my life. I just crammed them all into one book in case I die before my kid grew up. I wanted to compress everything I'd ever learned into one little book, but make it kind of poetic. So that was How to live, no stories at all. And I knew that Useful Not True was going to be kind of paired with the How to Live book. I actually think of it as like a prequel. So this time I deliberately had to do something that felt unnatural to me, which was to come up with a story to illustrate each point that I really just wanted to make bluntly. I wanted to just say it. But instead I forced myself to think of a way to come up with a story that would illustrate this point instead of just saying it.
Derek Sivers
I'm going to reveal a secret right now to you guys, which is there's a chapter in the book that I keep being asked about, which is called "The Past is Not True" about a car crash and a woman I thought was paralyzed. So people ask me about it because I tell the story in first person. I say, "There's this thing that happened to me when I was a teenager. I was in a car crash and I thought this woman was paralyzed. For years I held on to this thing and I went to her doorstep one day and went to apologize." But none of it's true. It's a story I made up to try to illustrate a point that I was tempted to say more bluntly, but I thought it would be more powerful if I made it a story. So I made up a story, and at first I told it third person. There was a person that got into a car crash and misunderstood. And then I did an experiment where I tried a version of it that put me as that person, and that's the one I stuck with. People read the whole book and ask me about that one chapter. It's the thing I get asked about most after people read the book, because it was writte in first person. And they were so affected by that. So much so that I'm very tempted to write more books in the future that put myself into first person stories that may or may not be true. I don't know if I should be revealing that, but I am now.
Kelly Irving
It's so interesting because I feel like that does come up quite a bit, even when you're writing nonfiction, there's this element of truth, you know, fiction versus fact, like, and I feel like, you know, writers do grapple with that sometimes, like, do you reveal all, what elements can you change? If looking back on that now and the result and you know, the fact that that story has prompted so many questions, you said it was an experiment, which I love to test it. Is there anything in that, like what was the biggest learning lesson? And is there anything reflecting back on that you would change for next time?
Derek Sivers
It almost makes me wish that I would have made all of those stories first person, since people like that way more than I expected. They seem more impacted by that. Yeah, that's all.
Kelly Irving
Has it ever made you feel, because people have taken it as fact, has it ever made you feel really uncomfortable?
Derek Sivers
Yes, I've been asked about it on even a few very popular podcasts where I have not revealed that it's not true. And they said, "Tell me about this car crash." I went, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, that car crash. Okay, so I was 17...." - and I just tell the story as it is in the book. And it's only now, if you look at my now page on my website, if you go to my personal site and you click on what I'm doing now, you'll see at the top it says, "I am done with podcasts." Because honestly, guys, this sound booth I'm in right now, after we finish recording today, I'm disassembling this sound booth. That was it. I've done 250 podcasts over the last few years, and this is the last one. I'm done. So I decided it time to reveal some of the secrets and stop pretending. But it did feel really awkward. I would wince a little bit inside when somebody would ask me to tell the story of that chapter. So I decided it was more useful to the audience if I just tell it in character. If that's how it impacted them in writing, I guess that's how it will impact them in speaking. And ultimately, even the fact that I'm standing in a booth and recording this, I'm doing it for the audience, for myself. So if it's more useful to them to hear it in first person, that's how I'll tell it. But you know, hey, we're among writers, so you guys get the real scoop.
Kelly Irving
So we talked about like, why writing and that balance of writing for yourself versus writing for others. And I think there's some good lessons almost even in that story in terms of changing the point of view and how that changed the narrative for the readers. Why write books in particular?
Derek Sivers
Because I noticed for myself, I much prefer laying on the couch reading a book, instead of sitting at a computer, clicking or swiping on a phone. So much of a better input method for me. So I figured there's probably a lot of others like me that even if these articles are all available on my site for free, they'd much rather just lay down and read the book.
Kelly Irving
Yeah. So how do you decide what's worth writing about?
Derek Sivers
I'd be so curious to hear what you guys, how you all decide that.
Derek Sivers
Let me relate it to something I realized years ago, a huge epiphany, about what's worth doing. It's not asking yourself, "What do I love doing?" It's asking yourself, "What do I hate *not* doing? What do I feel icky and deeply unsatisfied if I don't do it?" That's a better way to ask yourself what's worth doing. Same thing with writing. What feels like I would feel constipated if I don't say this? This needs to come out. Sorry for the fecal reference there.
Kelly Irving
Did anybody else say that they'd feel constipated if they wouldn't write? What have we got in the chat here? Figuring out what makes a difference to other people's lives. I appreciate Siobhan saying, I want others to be seen, which I think is really beautiful. Love that. When I keep getting the nudge enough and whatever sits with me for long enough, or it's so strong that I feel like I have no choice but to put it down, which is very similar to what you were saying, Derek.
Kelly Irving
Do you have a litmus test? What's your litmus test for what's worth writing about or what's not worth writing about?
Derek Sivers
Sorry, how do you mean? What do you mean litmus test?
Kelly Irving
Do you have like something that you run for? Cause you're very meticulous. I get the impression you're very meticulous.
Derek Sivers
With the stuff that comes out to the public. My own private journal and rough drafts are full of nonsense. But I try to be considerate for my readers, assuming that they're impatient and I am such a tiny, itty bitty part of their lives that they do not want to spend any more time than is necessary on my words. So I compress the hell out of them out of this humble empathy. But yeah, I'm not like that always. As you can tell, I speak freely, but I write succinctly.
Kelly Irving
So does your writing process, I'm curious then, what your writing process is and how it differs to your editing process?
Derek Sivers
That's a fun question. Thanks for that.
Derek Sivers
There is the ideation stage where you're deliberately putting aside time to just sit there at your page and try to figure out what it is you're saying. Sometimes it can take many attempts.
Derek Sivers
Sometimes you already know what you want to say. Either you've already got the story in you, you've already got this thing that you've talked about with friends, you've already worked it out in your head, and now you just need to get the right words to get it into people's brains in a sharp way. What feels like most of my writing is that. I already have the idea of what I want to get across. I've already thought about it myself. I'm just trying to find a piercing way to get that to stick, like a burr that's going to attach to their clothing and go where they go, or a nutshell they can put in their pocket and carry with them. In moments of decision, they can think about this little nutshell I gave them. I try to keep things small and portable like that.
Derek Sivers
But I do also love this ideation phase in writing where I haven't figured out exactly what I'm going to say and I'm discovering it. That's so much fun because there you are sitting alone in a room having epiphanies based on nothing but yourself and your own thoughts. It's so much fun.
Kelly Irving
Will you write a bunch of stuff and kind of see what sticks before you then take it into that next kind of space?
Derek Sivers
I write a bunch of stuff and then it's only the stuff that makes me go, "Ooooh, that's good." That's what comes out into the public. I mean, specific sentences. Sorry, like, every Every now and then I'll think of, I'll write a sentence five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times in ten different ways, and I'll keep them all on the page. I just kind of stack them up vertically.
Derek Sivers
Oh, I'd love to talk about this weird nerdy thing about the one sentence at a time thing. But yeah, the whole way I write my rough drafts, every sentence gets its own line. So you can always make sure that you're varying the sentence length and make sure that the first word is a powerful one, and the last word lingers. I always write one sentence per line, and I only at the very last stage put them into paragraphs. So when it comes to crafting each sentence for maximum piercing power, I'll write it many, many times until I find the right ordering of words that makes me go, "Ooh, that's nice. That has a nice sound to it or a nice rhythm." Or, yeah, like I said, like that punching first word and that lingering last word. It's just things like that make me choose a sentence and say "Yes, that's it."
Kelly Irving
And will that be an internal, like, that's a really internal thing that it's like that when you know, where you're like, oh, that's good. Do you involve anybody else in that process? Do you have any kind of litmus test with other people? Or is it all just like an internal thing at first? And knowing when something just really strikes you? How do you how do you test that with other people and whether that's going to strike the same chord with them?
Derek Sivers
95% just internal, my own preferences. If nobody else likes it, that's fine. I'm ultimately doing this to thrill myself or to get deep fulfillment in myself that I've put my best possible work into the world. If nobody else liked it, that's okay with me. But every now and then, I will say something to a friend, or even in a recorded conversation like this, where the person I'm talking to will say, "Oh, that's good," or "Oh, that's funny." And I'll say, "Oh, I should remember that. I liked that." So it was actually my ex-girlfriend: We were in bed together falling asleep when I said something about "Useful Not True." And she goes, "Useful Not True? That's good. You should remember that. That would be a good title. I'd read that book if I saw that in the story. If the book was called "Useful Not True." I said, "Really? Oh, okay." Next morning, I wrote it down.
Kelly Irving
Do people have to like feel like they need to be careful around you? It's like, you could get a nugget out of some conversation and it will spawn into this massive thing.
Derek Sivers
Oh, it did. Okay, guys, so classic example of that. You can look up a brilliant, wonderful musician named Amber Rubarth. Amber Rubarth in New York City is one of my oldest friends. And back in 2009, I was trying to decide whether I should say yes to fly all the way to Australia for this conference to speak on stage for an hour, which would be good for my career and open up some connections. But oh my God, that flight time from New York to Sydney. Should I do that? Should I not? I'm not sure, pros and cons. And Amber Rhubarth said, "It sounds to me like you're not trying to decide between yes and no. You're trying to decide between fuck yeah or no." And I went, "Oh my God, that's good. Fuck yeah or no. I got to write that down." So I asked her, I said, "Hey, is it cool if I write that?" She goes, "Yeah, take it." She's a songwriter too, so she knows. It's like sometimes these things just come up. She goes, "That's yours. it. I was just echoing back at you what it sounded like you were telling me. So I wrote "Fuck Yeah or No" and at the last minute I thought, you know, F word, that's a little harsh. So I changed it to "Hell Yeah or No." And that's the phrase that stuck, that people quote me on all the time. It became a title of a book and I was in a restaurant in Singapore a few years after it came out and I saw somebody walk in with a bag on their shoulder with the bag said, "Hell yeah or no!" And I thought about saying something, but I didn't. But yeah. So anyway, that came from Amber Rubarth. Thank you, Amber.
Kelly Irving
Yes, thank you, Amber. I've got a list of questions a mile long, but I'd love to give others here the opportunity to jump in and ask some. Oscar, I noticed your really great question about the writing process. Would you like to jump off mute and ask Derek?
Oscar
You've written so many books now, and you're talking about the writing process now. What was the writing process like when you started?
Derek Sivers
I'm so glad you guys asked. I wanted to say this at the very beginning in case somebody had to leave early. My best advice for other writers, when anybody brings up this subject, is something I stumbled on to by accident early, and I'm so glad I did, which is to never think that I'm writing a book, but just share each individual idea publicly as a post, whether it's on a social media site or on your own site, but somewhere, just share. Every single individual idea gets its own post, which then can be shared and spread. It puts a spotlight on each idea. Then, after I had released, say, a hundred of these individual ideas on my blog, and I got feedback, I could see immediately when each idea was misunderstood or not, or each idea was loved and spread or not, then I was able to rewrite or rephrase the ones that were misunderstood and compile up the ones that people seemed to like the most. Only afterwards, put 80 of them together and say, "This is a book." That has been my writing process for the first three books I did. Your Music and People, Anything You Want, Hell Yeah or No, were all just a collection of already-public blog posts on my site. But like we said earlier, people really liked that they were bound into a book that now instead of clicking and clicking and clicking, you could lay down on the couch and read a book that had a theme.
Derek Sivers
It was only when I did my fourth book called How to Live that I thought that it needs to be only released as a compiled book because of the certain format it had where each chapter disagreed with every chapter. It had to be understood as a whole in order to make its point. So that was the first time ever that I did the thing that a lot of writers do, which is to write in secret and not release anything until the book was done and think of it as a book. And I got to tell you guys, I hate it. I hate that process of keeping everything to myself until the whole book is done. I think it's terrible. I highly recommend instead doing the opposite of putting each individual idea out into the public, get sunlight on it, shine a spotlight on it, get the world's feedback on each individual idea and later compile them into a book.
Kelly Irving
What was it that you hated about the privacy so much?
Derek Sivers
It was four years for me - "How to Live" took me four full-time years to write and edit. Actually, it was two years to write, two years to edit. And I hated being silent that whole time and not being able to hear what people think about the individual ideas inside. Being so curious what people would think about this idea or this sentence, but not really having a way to put them out individually, because it had to be seen within the context of the whole book. Yeah, it just felt so sludgy, slow, lacking in that back and forth that constantly reminds you, or tells you who your audience is.
Kelly Irving
Yeah, thanks, Oscar.
Chris Harris
I've read that there's two different types of writing, you can write to share what you know, or you can write to find out what you think. I like both of those. And Stephen King talks about sort of a process of excavation almost. He doesn't even know what his story is going to be until he... And you were saying that the purpose of writing for you was really sharing something, but then you said, I'm not sure what I want to write until I start doing it. And so I'm just curious about that juxtaposition, because the process of discovery for me, it's not just how I craft my thoughts, but actually change or at least sharpen my thoughts. How does that work for you?
Derek Sivers
I'm so glad you brought this up. Most of what I've ever written publicly have been things that have already come up in conversations with friends. We're bantering around ideas, we're talking about something, a stranger at a conference asks me a question, I come up with an idea on the fly and they say, "Wow, that's really helpful." And I say, "Really?" And so I share that in writing. So most of my public writing were things that I had already worked out in conversation. But you're right, it wasn't until this last book, Useful Not True, that I went into it not sure what I had to say on this subject. I knew that this subject was underlying my approach to life, but I had never really talked about it much. So I ended up researching the subject for two years. I read, you can see at the end of the book, I actually give all my references, I read something like 25 books about philosophy. I contacted philosophy professors and asked for more and dove deep into religion, which I knew nothing about, and pragmatism and skepticism and nihilism and all these things I had never looked into before because I was trying to find out what other smarter people have said on this subject over the years, not to just share it directly, but to figure out, like thinking on this subject. And it was a blast. It was so deeply fun to sit alone in a room and explore your mind and change your mind and sharpen your mind and express your mind. I loved it. So I'd love to do more of that. Yeah, but that was my first time doing it.
Chris Harris
Yeah, that's great. For me, one of the funnest things is to read something that was written 50 years ago and realized that's what I just thought. That's exactly what I just thought. I thought it was me, but no, it's not. It's been a thing, but I can do it in my own way. And I feel a little validated, but also can do it in my own style. So thank you.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. By the way, Chris, I'm right now reading a book from the 1700s by a German mathematician philosopher - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - the book is called "The Waste Books." Apparently, it's a very well-known book of aphorisms that influenced Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and other philosophers. So I decided to check it out, and I'm loving it. It's one of those ones that I think I'm going to read for 20 minutes before bed but is very exciting and it's very relatable. So many things feel like something that a friend and I would be talking about today.
Chris Harris
Good, I'll check it out.
Kelly Irving
Derek, before we ask another question, because I think this is related to what you've been talking about with Chris, like what would you say for writers who are struggling with that? Like I hear a lot, it's like people feel like they need to have the idea first, before they need to have a crystal idea. Some people feel like they need to have this crystal idea before they start writing. And what you described, especially with the second book was a process of exploration and figuring out almost what the topic is and where you want to go with it and where to explore. What would you say to people who are doubting that or struggling with that, but I feel like I need to have the idea first?
Derek Sivers
My one bit of advice on that is to keep a separate document that you know in advance this is just private. So that everything you put in there you know it is for your eyes only. And you can ask yourself questions, "What the hell am I doing writing on this subject? I don't even know what this is about. What is it about? What's the whole point of this? Why am I even sitting in this chair? Why am I even alive? What's going on now?" could be completely stupid and transparent, knowing your eyes are the only ones that will ever see this. No word you type here is ever meant for public consumption. You do that to work out your thoughts. And when you find an angle in there, you can switch to the other document and start typing things for others.
Melo
Nice to see you all and great to meet you, Derek. Some great things going on here. My question is around how you sound amazingly creative and it doesn't sound like you've lost any of that creative flair even after writing all these books. and this might be a little extension from what Oscar was saying. This is your fifth or so book. And so my question is like, how do you balance the creative aspect as opposed to the business aspect? So the publishing process, getting a book out there, how does it fit into your business ecosystem? So how do you keep that balance?
Derek Sivers
I'm so sorry, I'm going to have a stinky answer for this, which is: I don't. I'm lucky enough that I've done enough stuff in the past, whether it's on stage or on podcasts or just my past writing, that luckily I have that thousand true fans type situation. So I don't make books for the marketplace. I just make them for my existing readers. In fact, I forgot to put my last book on Amazon. I didn't even think of it. A year went by, and I went, "Oh, I'd never put that on Amazon, did I?" Because I'm only thinking of my existing readers. I'm not thinking business-y at all. I'd be a good candidate to hire a business manager to handle that side of things. But honestly, I just don't care enough. I'm into it for the intrinsic reasons, and I'm into it for pleasing my existing fans. That's it.
Melo
That's not a stinky answer. That's the perfect answer.
Kelly Irving
I was going to say that too, because Derek, I really appreciate that answer and the honesty in that, because I think for a lot of writers with people that don't have a thousand true fans yet, we can compare ourselves to you, to James Clear, to this person, to that person, to that person without seeing or understanding, you know, the work or the the things that have happened in the past along the way to build that fan base. And so I think for aspiring authors or newbie authors, it's a, it's a really hard expectation that we have on ourselves without understanding the true grit and the true this and the things that have happened through that journey. So I actually really appreciate that answer because I think that's a really honest answer for people. Melo, while you're on here, because also what you're touching about, Derek, I'd actually kind of challenge you in terms of not having a process or model. You actually do have a pretty unique business model for your book, which is you sell them all from your website. And all that money goes to charity. Can you talk us through that? Because I also want to grab onto that. How did this happen? Because now I'm thinking maybe this was an accident, because you once forgot to put your book on Amazon?
Derek Sivers
Oh, um, it feels a little weird to talk about because please understand that nothing I'm saying here is prescriptive, right? As if you were to ask somebody what they like to have for breakfast, they're not saying you should all be having this for breakfast.
Derek Sivers
So for me, I did some soul searching, very privately, just journaling about why even bother writing Why not just keep them on my site? Just have blog posts. Sure, I'll put it into a PDF. "Okay, everybody, you can go download the PDF, print it if you want." But then I just looked at my own reading habits, and I don't like reading on a screen. I like reading on the couch. And I thought, alright, if I'm doing something for my own self as a target market, it would be paper books.
Derek Sivers
Knowing that I'm printing paper books makes me a better writer because I want to kill as few trees as possible. It made me even more succinct. It made me chop out chapters I would have included because I thought, "Is that really impactful? Is that really powerful?" You know, if I chop it, it'll save ten pages, which is less trees being killed. So I think knowing I was printing paper books made me a better writer.
Derek Sivers
But then when it came to the money, I thought, I've already got, I'm sorry, this is just weird to talk about, but I've already got more money than I'll ever be able to spend in my life from selling my company. Even then, I gave as much as I could away, but even what was left is more than I need. And so I put out these books thinking they were just going to be for my thousand true fans and I ended up selling like 20,000 copies, which is way more than I was expecting. And I did the second, first and second book actually came out about the same time. So suddenly I sold $500,000 of books in a few months. And I went, "Oh my God!" I was really happy for a bit.
Derek Sivers
And then I thought, "Well, what the hell do I do with $500,000?" And my friend said, "You should celebrate." I went, "Celebrate what? Like, buy a bottle of champagne and get drunk? That's not celebrating. I could do that two months ago." And she said, "Well, maybe you could, maybe there are other ways of celebrating." I said, "Well..." She was also an author in Lithuania. She's an old friend of mine. And she said, "I'm going to celebrate someday when I get my first screenplay, you know, bought from a movie or TV show. I'm going to celebrate by buying a piece of forest in Lithuania and doing nothing with it and just leaving it for nature." I went, "Oh, that's nice." So it was actually my Lithuanian friend that got me thinking that charitable giving can be a form of celebration. It's kind of celebrating abundance. It's celebrating sharing. And it's honoring the imbalance of the universe and trying to balance things a bit. So it was after a conversation with her that I went, "Actually, yeah, that would feel nice. Like this $500,000 that came in, I don't need it." So I went and started learning about effective altruism. How could this money save the most lives possible instead of some vanity cause to save a bell tower or something? There are people dying. I want to save them instead of a bell tower. So yeah, I just looked into effective altruism and did that. But that It wasn't part of the original plan. It was how to deal with the surprise that came up. I think I might have gone astray from your question about selling on my site.
Kelly Irving
No, not at all. And actually, what you described was the process. It was kind of what I was curious about. Like, did you initially set out with the idea of, I'm going to write books and all my money is going to go to charity or did it progress along the way? So it sounds been a progression more than anything else.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, which is something I actually, I would prescribe this to anybody. Consider this, any of you, for any future things or any future people you talk about: I was running CD Baby for 10 years, and I heard from thousands of musicians that were putting out charitable albums, especially after September 11th attacks in New York City, there were a lot of my New York City musician friends, were like, "I'm going to put out an album to raise money to help the families of September 11th." I thought, "Oh, that's sweet." And then the next day, three more musicians called doing the same thing and five more doing the same thing. I went, "Okay, all right."
Derek Sivers
My point is: When somebody's initial plan is, "We're going to do such and such for charity." My recommendation is just focus on making the such and such the best damn thing it can be and then as an afterthought, if you actually get successful with it and raise money, then you can give that money to charity. I find that anytime people mix it into the original idea, it ends up lowering the quality of everything else involved with that because they're expecting this word "charity" to somehow make it all worth it. Whereas, why would you go listen to an album that wasn't very good just because it's raising money for charity? Or you're not going to spend 10 hours to read a book that's not great just because the proceeds go to charity. The charity bit always has to be an afterthought if it's successful, but first focus on making it the best thing it can be and a successful thing. And then you can donate the profits if you get profits.
Kelly Irving
Mello, did that answer your question?
Derek Sivers
Sorry, we took a few tangents inside of there. And you know what, as long as I'm at it, and because I feel like I didn't really answer your question about the store, I'll just do this one really succinctly.
Derek Sivers
I also had to do this same soul searching process to make my own bookstore from scratch, because I don't really feel like selling on Amazon. How should it be? In a perfect world, how would a bookstore be directly from the author if I was in total control of it? How would it be? And I thought about that thing about how I, in the past, have bought a book in paper form, loved it, bought it again as an audio book, and then 10 years later bought it again as a Kindle book. And it didn't feel right that I was paying for the content each time. Like, I already bought that book. Now the contents all over again? That doesn't feel fair. So I thought, in a perfect world, you buy the contents once. That's it. You have now purchased the contents of this book. Whether you want it in video, audio, e-book, or some kind of hologram beamed into your brain, that's just a format delivery. You've already paid for the contents of that book. You shouldn't ever have to pay again. The only catch was that paper costs money. So own the contents to this book in any format ever invented for all future time. But if you want a paper book shipped to you, you just have to pay the break-even cost of the actual paper to print it. That's it. So that's my business model from my site. I couldn't force Amazon to do the same. But when you buy my books directly from me, it means you just spend 15 bucks once, and you get all formats forever. And that was my perfect world solution.
Melo
I love it. That's great. You've answered the question perfectly, actually. But what I do like is how you said to have the intention that you're writing this book for charity or for a bigger cause or something bigger than just making money in the business. And part of my work also, part of the work that I do, speaking in the book and other things in the corporate world, goes back to Africa and goes back to help children in Africa. some of the work that I do. And I think that's what probably lights me up even more than the actual business aspect of it. So, yeah. Thanks for sharing.
Kelly Irving
I also love in that, Derek, you know, like you touched on something that all of us here are kind of bound between when everybody enters the EAC, it's always about write a good book first. Like write the best work that you can. And I really, really get that sense from you and all of the work that you do that that is a, you know, it's kind of like your guiding North Star, your guiding light in a lot of ways in terms of how you create great work. It is about wanting to create great work for people first and foremost.
Derek Sivers
Well, for yourself first and foremost, and then for the audience second, for your actual fans second. But it helps then that if your book doesn't sell as well as you hoped, or it's not received the way you were hoping, as long as you made yourself happy with it and you made the best damn book you could make, it's okay. It's fine if people don't understand it. My second book was like that. It's called "Your Music and People." And I think it's my most underrated book because people assume, "Oh, I'm not a musician. That doesn't apply to me." And it It was meant to be read metaphorically for whatever your pursuit is. But most people misunderstand it. Oh, well, it makes me happy.
Kelly Irving
I'm gonna go and look at that one. I love that underrated book. They're usually my favorite.
Leah
Hello. I just I find it very fascinating, the unintentional parallels, Derek, that I'm kind of hearing through your writing books for your fans and you posting the blogs and sharing them to get that feedback and understand what lights other people up, what lights you up and kind of finding those nuggets and you're also inadvertently getting feedback kind of along the way and one of the things that Kelly politely forces or strongly encourages our members to think about when they join the AAC and when they're also kind of first starting to write books is to announce it and to make it a bit of a public declaration so that you can start to build those champions and those people that oftentimes don't necessarily aren't incredibly vocal until you're further along or are kind of just your silent warriors and are there continuously with you cheering you on. And it is consistently, uh, an internal debate. So just to zoom out a little bit, the EAC, um, we have a bunch of different, if you have a question, we encourage people to post it in our community space because very often somebody else will have this question or who has gone through it. And so we want to make sure everyone can have the same knowledge base and support of each other. However, every single start of an intake, we always have someone saying, "Oh, I don't know if I want to post. Oh, I did post and some people that I wasn't expecting now are, you know, championing me and are really excited. And do I share my work or is that, should I hold it back?" And these debates, I feel like once and for all, we can now forever say, "Well, Derek Zivers agrees." So- - And I decide these things. - And theirs, it shall be said. So thank you for closing and giving us the best closing line on all of those pieces now. And if you are one of those people who hasn't yet, this is your polite reminder.
Derek Sivers
I totally agree with you about how sharing along the way can be actually promoting along the way as a side effect. That I didn't do this. Well, maybe I did. But let's say if I would have known in advance, this next idea is called "Useful Not True". I could have whether on my own personal site or go on and register to usefulnottrue.com type domain, I could have started posting ideas to that as an ongoing reminder that this book is coming, this is in the works, do you want to see the kitchen right now? Do you want to look behind the scenes and see the making of? Any opinions, any early feedback? There's some people that love that and some people don't. So I agree that that can be a great marketing tool as well. It's a great creative tool. Keep you uncorked, keep you unstuck, keep it flowing, keep the ideas going, keep the feedback, keep you in communication with your potential future customers for the book. I think it's a great idea. I didn't do it exactly like you described, but I think the way you describe it is ideal.
Kelly Irving
Derek, before I know Emma's got a question, I'm curious because of what Leah brought up about the EAC and like the kind of community support that that's basically what we are. So we're all writers, connecting, supporting each other, cheering each other on. Who is in your support team? Who do you surround yourself with?
Derek Sivers
I have no team business-wise. I should mention that I have no assistant or team at all. So as I'm ideating or figuring out how to express an idea, I literally just call my five or ten best friends around the world. Sometimes I just go through the list. I call Aly. Ah, no answer. Okay, let me try Mitra. Ah, no answer. Okay, let me try Zita. "Hey, I got an idea. Let me run it by you? Okay? You got a minute?" Actually, Amber Rubarth, who I mentioned earlier that came up with the "Fuck Yeah or No." We often do this to each other. She calls me with a song idea. I call her with a chapter idea. We just bounce ideas off each other like that. Sometimes you don't even need your friend to say yay or nay, you just have to hear yourself expressing it out loud to another person that's never heard it before. And I particularly like doing the out loud bit. I like my sentences to sound good. If I notice that I keep stumbling on a certain word, when reading it, I make a little note like, "Hmm, that word didn't flow so well when spoken." So these things all help.
Kelly Irving
Do you talk aloud? Because you've got like one sentence, you've almost got like 10 of the same sentence in different ways. Would you, do you actually go through a process where you speak each sentence out to see how they sound?
Derek Sivers
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, okay, nerdy little aside among writers here. If you listen to my audio book for Useful Not True, I recorded it in this booth in one take literally minutes after I was finished writing the book. Because I had been speaking it out loud the whole time to make sure this chapter sounded good, I'd been just reading off my computer screen for so long that when I could just tell, like, "That's it. I'm done. I'm happy with it. I'm good." I went right downstairs into this recording booth, turned on the mic, shut the soundproof door, and hit record and did the whole audiobook in one take in 100 minutes. And that's the one that's for sale.
Emma
Yes. Hi, Derek. I've got two questions, actually. One that has that I, you just brought up Australia again. Did you come to Australia at that time?
Derek Sivers
No, it didn't pass the "Hell Yeah or No?" test. I've been since and I love it. In fact, I think I'm happy here in New Zealand. I think I like Australia more. No offense, New Zealand.
Emma
And then my other question, I've just been stalking you and struggling actually because you're not really on social media at all. And I guess you have built enough fame and credibility and you do everything through your website to be able to sell all of those books. So my question really is do you think social media is important for up-and-coming authors?
Derek Sivers
Yes. I've chosen not to do it because bluntly put I was already pretty famous before social media was invented. So I was already fine without it. And I looked into it. There was a time in 2007-8 where I was on it for a bit, and I just didn't like the noise level. And I live a pretty offline life. In fact, I've just moved to a house that is offline. That's right. When I said that I'm going to disassemble this recording booth I'm in. This is it. I'm in my old house right now. There's nothing left in this old house but one sofa and this recording booth. I've moved to a new house that is in the woods and it's offline. It has no internet access, no phone access. And that's where I do all my work and writing now. I moved there a month ago. So I'm just an offline kind of person. I don't like when my phone buzzes and sends me notifications. I don't like living like that. So I could understand maybe hiring somebody to manage my social media for me and let it be known this isn't my personal thing, but put out Derek Sivers announcements or something like that. But I just don't care enough. So sorry, don't look to me for guidance on that. I'm a bad example.
Emma
Yeah, but you're saying it probably is something that us mere mortals need to...
Kelly Irving
How about if I frame that into a question for you, Em? So Derek, if you haven't yet built your 1000 true fans, what would be your top three tips for people?
Derek Sivers
Nothing surprising, but yes, use every means possible. TikToks and YouTubes and who knows what and every social media out there. But make sure that you've got your own site where you're ultimately sending all that traffic. You ultimately have to get direct relationships with everybody. I depended 100% on email. I said if all the benefits will come by email, email me anything, reply to every email. Everything good for me is always going to come through email.
Derek Sivers
Now it's kind of weird that as I'm spending more time in China and India, people in China and India don't use email. Everybody in India is just on WhatsApp, and everybody in China is just on WeChat. And when they hear the word "email," it's like us hearing the word "fax machine." It's like, "Email? Ugh, I think I have an account. I never look at it, but if that's what you need, okay." So I've been wondering if I were to do it all from scratch again today, I think I might actually focus on the phone number. I'd say "Anybody that wants my updates, you want the behind the scenes, you want my best stuff, you want the free things, give me your phone number and we'll do like a WhatsApp group, a WeChat group, whatever."
Derek Sivers
The point is to make sure you get direct relationships, even if it takes years and years and years. I mean, I've been doing this for 30 years now. So yeah, this, my mailing list of half a million people that I've built up has been since 1995. Person number one is me in my database of people and person number two was somebody that I met in 1995 that said she wanted to get on my mailing list and she's still person number two in the database. So I've been doing this that long, but that's my recommendation.
Emma
So not borrowed channels. It's basically what you're saying is really focus on the things that you own.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, use them. Use them to pull in people into your direct channels.
Justin
Derek, loving your sessions. I had the privilege of watching you on the Community Collective yesterday as well. I think you said this was your last podcast, certainly from the current house that you're in. So you're open to going a little bit deeper?
Derek Sivers
How so? How do you mean?
Justin
Well, so let me, I have a view that who you are is how you write. And I absolutely love your philosophical kind of style. I'd love you to just kind of peel back the layers of the onion a little bit and maybe what could you share around how that style has evolved for you over time? If you go back in your kind of life, what's led to you crafting that style that you now have?
Derek Sivers
Being on the receiving end of reading things by Seth Godin and Harry Beckwith as positive role models. And being on the receiving end of those kinds of nonfiction books that we all know - that are 300 pages that really should have been 20 pages. And the pain of that over and over again. Writers treating me like an idiot by over-explaining something that I understood 100 pages ago. "Why are you still over explaining this? I'm not an idiot. Come on, respect your audience. I got you. You could have said three sentences and I had it. Instead, you're doing 30 pages on it. Stop it. I have other things I want to do with my life than read your damn book. I just wanted the idea!" And so I felt the pain of that and the pleasure of reading succinct writers that kept the focus on the idea itself.
Derek Sivers
I didn't think of myself as a writer until maybe seven years ago. I thought of myself as a programmer and entrepreneur that was also sharing what I've learned. That's it. Everything I wrote for the public was just also sharing what I've learned. But then seven years ago, I realized I don't admire any entrepreneurs. I don't ever want to start a business ever again. I like programming, but just as a hobby. Really, all of my heroes are writers. And who you look up to indicates which direction you are facing in life. And I realized that that's indicating that I'm a writer. So for seven years, I've been calling myself a writer, but it was as a side effect of just sharing what I've learned in a succinct, considerate way.
Justin
Yeah, thank you. You just triggered the another thought around if you'd given me more time, I would have written less. So you get really frustrated with a lot of that kind of noise. You just want to get to the core and you like to do all that thinking before committing it to paper.
Derek Sivers
My rough drafts are long. My previous, previous book called How to Live, the rough draft was 1300 pages. And then it took two years of full time work. I mean, I put aside 40 hours a week for two years to turn that 1300 pages into the 110 pages it ended up as. Each page got turned into a sentence, basically. It was a lot of hard work, but damn, I am so much prouder of it as this succinct poetic little thing instead of the bloated mess it could have been. So yeah, the original rough drafts are always a mess. And I posted something on my site once. I know the short URL because it's as short as can be. It's https://sive.rs/7 - and it's my seven tips or my seven step approach to writing. I haven't looked at it in years, but off the top of my head, it was something like, have some stuff to say, figure out what I'm saying, blather all of this into a journal until I have nothing more to say and I hate what it's become. Step away from it for a while. Come begin with disgust and repulsion of how messy it is, scrap the whole thing, make a little outline to just hit the essential points, and then publish the outline. And that's it. A lot of my books and articles are essentially just the outline, catching the main points of what was a hidden mess.
Justin
Thank you.
Kelly Irving
I think you just touched on the EAC process, Derek.
Derek Sivers
Really?
Kelly Irving
Well, in a way, yeah, because so our approach is really not what goes in a book, but what should stay out. And we have a tendency when we think about what we wanna put into a book, is like jamming in absolutely everything. But you need really succinct ideas and concepts and you need to go deep onto that concept, not jamming, you know, multiple things like everywhere. And I also really like the fact that what you've explained, because I think this is a really common misconception with writing. People will look at the side of the book and go, oh, well, that took about 30 minutes to write. And you've explained how, you know, four years and then reworking. And so your your process is you know, refining, rewriting, making sure in a very meticulous, methodical way, sentence choice, but you know, paragraph choice, sentence choice, word choice, even to make sure that everything has its place and everything is saying what you want and everything in that sentence has value.
Derek Sivers
It's such a joy when I get reviews that say, "Not a wasted word." I'm like, "Yes! Mission accomplished!"
Derek Sivers
But hey, actually, wait, I thought of one more example that we all know. If you guys have ever received email newsletters, whether from people or companies, that are these giant emails that are four pages long. And I'm assuming all of you are kind of similar to me that most of us check our email in somewhat of a hurry. It's like, "Okay, oh my God, 30 emails. Okay, next, next. Newsletter. Oh, gee, seven pages. Maybe I'll read that later." And we never do, right? But what if the business or the person who just sent you seven pages would have sent you four sentences? You would have read it. It would have had an impact. You would not have procrastinated if it's four sentences. So, I think of that with my writing. I try to make everything I have to say publicly be so succinct that you will not procrastinate reading it.
Leah
Just I wanted to double click into you saying that it was only about seven years ago that you finally considered yourself a writer, right? And I think that there's probably this tension and cognitive dissonance because when did your first book come out, Derek?
Derek Sivers
14 years, 2011.
Leah
So just, so you were actively publishing books and still not considering yourself a writer, which I think is just so human and so beautiful to kind of admit those things out loud. And you considered yourself a programmer and an entrepreneur. And I think again, kind of a similar, perhaps cognitive dissonance that a lot of our members perhaps face who are business owners and professionals kind of trying to figure out how to bridge that gap of saying, yes, I'm all of these things and I'm an author and I'm a writer and I'm these other things as well. And I just, I really appreciated you being honest about that. And I just wanted to say it again once for everybody in the back, Derek had already published some of his books and then felt like he could call himself a writer. So I think that's a lesson for all of us that maybe it won't take everyone else as long. Hopefully we're learning from you in that sense, Derek.
Derek Sivers
You didn't say it directly, but the idea of imposter syndrome: I don't understand imposter syndrome because I assume that none of this is about me. That if a conference asks me to get up on stage and talk to a room of people, I don't get up and introduce myself and say, "Let me tell you about my past. It began long ago." I just say, "Okay, forget me, I don't matter. Here's some useful stuff that I can share with you that will help your life. If you feel like looking me up later, go for it." That doesn't even get mentioned from the stage. This isn't about me. I assume that nobody's thinking about me for five seconds. They're thinking about themselves and how they can apply what they're hearing today, no matter who the source is. So I've never felt that sense of imposter syndrome, because I just think of myself as like a public servant. If I'm doing something for the public, it's like, I'm just here to benefit you in some way. I don't have to be doing this. I'm choosing to do this to be helpful. This is like my community service, my giving back. Here's something that might help you. There's no way to feel like an imposter if you're just helping.
Leah
It's a really beautiful way of framing it.
Lisa Taylor
I really love and appreciate the heartfelt warmth, I suppose, that emotional - because sometimes it feels like a struggle to share the most inner parts of you that are really, you know, important without kind of thinking are people going to think I'm an idiot or is, you know, what's the worst. But remembering that there is this deep knowing that I have something unique to share with with the world, my view is unique. I suppose I wanted to just ask you, as a sensitive and beautifully warm human, how do you hold on to that and not sort of be knocked around in the world of, you know, you should be this or you should be that?
Derek Sivers
There are infinite ways to think about it. So obviously you have to find the framing that sits right with you. I love thinking that I don't matter. That I am moot. This isn't about me. Nobody cares about me at all. Nobody cares about me one bit. In fact, I just like to bluntly assume that nobody loves me on earth. And somehow that idea comforts me because it's this pessimism where everything else becomes the icing on the cake. I just turned the whole cake to icing, that's it. So that works for me to think that I don't matter here, even if I'm sharing a personal story that I feel like sharing with the world. And in fact, if any of you get onto my email list or whatever, the next things you're going to see from me are going to be more personal. For each one of those, I'm assuming that anybody reading this doesn't know who I am, doesn't care who I am, doesn't need to know or care who I am. All that matters is, is this idea something that they're going to use? And then ultimately, I just try to balance my need to express that thing with trying to make sure that it's useful to others. Does that help?
Lisa Taylor
Yeah, it does.
Derek Sivers
It's useful for me to keep framing it that way. Like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got this thing to say. How does this matter? What is that for? Why do they care? How is this going to help?" I kind of filter it through that and then maybe I end up keeping some to myself that isn't going to be useful to them.
Kelly Irving
Great question, Lisa. Derek, I'm curious, I want to actually go back to the what I mentioned much earlier in the piece about hanging inherited paintings, because, you know, what we're talking about here, like a lot of writing, a lot of what like Lisa's touch, it's like mindset. And like you just said, you know, I don't engage with imposter syndrome, really, like you know, you've set up these boundaries for your mind in a way. Like, is this naturally you? Or are they like, what's one thing, one example that has really thrown you that you've had to deal with, whether it's about writing or putting yourself out there, like something that you've really had to grapple with and go through that process of reframing that belief.
Derek Sivers
Okay, yeah, none of this is natural. Every philosophy or viewpoint you hear coming out of my mouth today is all deliberately adopted. I started reading Tony Robbins when I was 18 or 19 and my boss at the circus who I had a crush on. I think she had a crush on me too. But she was my boss and so we had the boundary. She knew me very well. We spent thousands of hours together over 10 years. And she read it first and she said, "Oh Derek, you need this book. You're going to love this. This guy's great. This is going to change your life. So of course coming from her, I read every word with intensity. I brought that into my soul. And one of the key messages of that book called Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins is that every viewpoint is deliberate. Oh, actually, no, let's sum it up even better. If I had to put that whole book into one sentence, it's "You can help the way you feel." People often say, "Oh, you can't help the way you feel," as if that's a truism. What he was saying is your deliberately chosen viewpoint can and does shape your emotions. And then those emotions are the things that ultimately create your actions. It's your emotional state that makes you choose good actions versus bad actions or taking action versus no action. All of that comes from your emotional state. And your emotional state comes from how you see the world. And if you discover that you are seeing the world in a way that's making you depressed or stuck, you can try on different viewpoints. You could think, "Okay, well, how else could I think of this?" And I love this example where you say like when something goes wrong, your instinct is to say, "This sucks. This is terrible." And he advises in that book to say, "Well, what's great about this?" And saying your instinct will always be to say, "Nothing. This is just bad. There's no other way to see it. This is 100% bad." Say, "Okay, well, what could be great about this?" And you just keep searching until you find another viewpoint that works for you. And maybe don't even stop but the next one you find. But the second, the third, the fourth, you keep exploring in your private journal or in private conversations with friends or just staring at the ceiling and talking to your cat. You find a viewpoint eventually that works for you and you notice in yourself that it either brings you a peace that wasn't there before or it makes you take action for the first time. And then you just deliberately adopt that. You go share the idea with friends, you journal about it, you decide I'm adopting this persona because or I'm adopting this perspective because this works for me. That's what almost everything I've said here today is from that deliberate process.
Kelly Irving
Thank you. Final question, I want some final questions in the chat or just stick the raise hand feature so I know who you are. While that's happening, I want to go back to something that Emma said, or came up in Emma's conversation, like: Given the fact that you have built a house in the woods, apart from the fact that you've built a house in the woods:
Kelly Irving
How do you stay clear on what truly matters and set boundaries so you protect your time for things like writing?
Derek Sivers
I don't. I'm too susceptible to diving down rabbit holes and weird curiosities and letting my writing suffer because of it. So it's like asking a person who's horribly out of shape, "How do you stay in shape?"
Kelly Irving
What about when your mind has got, I don't know, 47 different things, 47 different ideas, 47 different things going on? How do you, what brings you back to the thing that you should be focusing on or want to focus on?
Derek Sivers
Okay, I do have an answer for this. And it's the very popular book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. It's renowned for a reason. It's great. I just reread it for the first time in 20 years, a couple years ago. It's even better than I remembered. It's so good. This guy was a business consultant for so many businesses and fancy-ass CEOs, and he really did find a great working system for that question you just asked. And in short, he said, "You've got to get everything out of your head and onto" -- he He says paper, but type it, doesn't matter. Get it out of your head. Every little idea, every "I want to do this someday," every "Ooh, I'd love to live in Italy," whatever it is, get it out of your head, put it somewhere. He actually gives a framework for the Inbox, the Projects, the Someday, and the Waiting-On. I think those are the four. In means things you can handle in less than two minutes. Everything that takes over two minutes, that's your Projects folder. Then there's the "Someday" which is just your ideas, there's nothing you're going to act on right now, but you had the idea, get it out of your head, put it down, put it into a folder called "Someday" and then "Waiting-On". Everything that's still buzzing in your head because you're waiting to hear back from somebody or something needs to happen first, I need to get my Italian passport first before I can move to Italy, you put that in your "Waiting On" folder. It's a beautiful system that helps organize your stuff. And then he advises going through your priorities and your projects in your inbox, not only every day, but putting aside time every Sunday to review at a high level and make sure you're actually spending your time on what matters to you. Highly recommend just following that system. I think I just, I am just following his system.
Leah
Jess wanted to ask what I would like to know, in my opinion, with being creative, two things are needed, space and a mind wandering. And so the question is, how do you bring about these two to help make creativity breathe and be consistent with it? and Jess goes on to say, "I personally feed off of my creative energy a lot, but with that comes too many ideas. And as someone who is susceptible to rabbit holes, this is perhaps a very interesting question."
Derek Sivers
Have you guys read the book called "Daily Rituals?" I don't remember the author's name. It's on my website on my collection of books I've read: https://sive.rs/book That's where I have 450 books I've read in the last 18 years and my notes on each one. And "Daily Rituals," I forget the author's name right now, but he went back through history and found the autobiographies and biographies of highly successful creators, whether it was Mozart or Einstein or Stephen King or everyone, and put them all into one book to see what were these people's daily rituals for creating the way they did. And the fascinating thing is what a huge variety there is. Some people, actually a surprising majority, but let's say 60%, have a real set routine. "Every day I wake up at 7, have my breakfast at 8am, I go into my writing studio and I do not come out until 12 noon, at which point I break for lunch and then from 1 to 3 p.m. I do correspondence. From 3 to 4 p.m. I go back to review what I had written that morning and make little improvements and then I do not touch it until the next morning at 8 a.m." A huge amount of professional artists and creators of all types followed that set routine. But then also a huge amount, a minority but still a huge amount of them, had these crazy routines where just whatever inspiration hit in the middle of the night, or off to a retreat for two months and not talking to anybody for two months of intensive creating and then nothing for a year, or journalists that are used to catching every little moment. They've got five minutes before somebody shows up, so they write for five minutes on their newest piece until the person shows up. It was inspiring to see that there's no right answer and that each person found the methodology that worked best for them. So I personally love being unbounded. I do not like saying I'm going to write for four hours. I like to do the other stuff first and say, "There, my emails are answered, stuff I have to do is taken care of, now the rest of the day is just for writing." Like you said, like her question had in it, the space. I love that feeling of unbounded space and time to work on this thing now. That said, I'm not a journalist, I have no deadlines. If I had a deadline, it might be different, but that's what works for me.
Kelly Irving
I would love it as we start to wrap up today, if you could share in the chat a takeaway from today's session as a thank you for Derek. Derek, you have been so generous with your time, your wisdom, your honesty. And I think it was Oscar or that that mentioned it in the chat earlier. Your humility, I think, is the thing that really shines not just in conversation, but in your writing as well. And I've really loved the opportunity to dig into that and that process with you. So so thank you so much.
Kelly Irving
A final question from me would be: What didn't we talk about or ask you today we should have.
Derek Sivers
Well, I'll do my own mini recap. I don't think there was a question that didn't get asked, but for my fellow writers, the most important things that if you said, Okay, Derek, you've got 60 seconds to speak to other writers, what would be your 60 seconds? Mine would be the number one, the idea of letting the book writing process be a flow, not a stopped-up process: to share all of the ideas along the way. But you already talked about that you already have a methodology in this group for doing that. I was so happy to hear that. That would be my number one thing. But my number two was the act of writing one sentence per line. It's a nerdy little thing. In fact, I can give you the short link URL on my site, to go to: https://sive.rs/1s - standing for one sentence at a time. That single hack has helped my writing so much. It helps you see when your line lengths are too repetitive. We all have a tendency to like to keep a certain rhythm, but breaking up that rhythm and introducing short sentences and really long sentences is so considerate for your readers, helps you see when you're using too many passive verbs and not giving the strong punch at the beginning of words, and helps you restructure things to let that last word echo and reverb in their minds. Writing one sentence per line is so handy. It's my single favorite hack to share with other writers. And then only at the last minute, you could hit a single keystroke to turn sentences that are stacked up onto each other into a paragraph, formatting for people to read it. You don't need to publish one sentence at a time or per line. But writing that way changed everything for me. So those were my two main things I wanted to share.
Kelly Irving
Thank you so much, Derek. I have so enjoyed this session with you. And I know that there's been some incredible takeaways shared in the chat that I will share with you afterwards as well. Not that you need pumping up at all. But I did see, I've seen some here, "I don't matter here" was Jenny's takeaway. There's some selflessness and service in what we do as writers.
Derek Sivers
Wait, wait, before we go, wait, I forgot to tell you guys earlier, a tiny, cute little story, and I swear this one is true. When my boy was four years old, little, little kid, we went out to the beach one day, and I swear I had not talked about this subject with him. And we, he and I both do not know where he got this from, but he was playing with a crab on the beach. It was a dead crab, but he was like flipping it upside down. And he just started singing on camera. I just happened to be recording because it was a big interesting crab, he started singing, "Everything's okay if you don't matter. Everything's okay if you don't matter." My jaw dropped. I went, "Where did you get that?" He goes, "What? I don't know." We just have it on camera, this little "Everything's okay if you don't matter." I love that. Sorry to interrupt. I meant to throw that in earlier. I just had to share that since you mentioned it.
Kelly Irving
It's a fantastic motto to take into our writing, I think.