Three Interesting Things I Know About Writing

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Writing isn't easy-but it isn't hard either

The key to writing is to know what strategy to follow, so the road isn't bumpy all year long. This episode isn't about going down memory lane. Instead, it's practical advice I wish I'd had—Like how to choose the right coach or the right editor.

Writing isn't all about you. This podcast is about a strategy that's not commonly expressed and approaches writing in a more philosophical, yet practical way.

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In this episode Sean talks about

Element 1: Why a Coach And Editor Are Incredibly Crucial
Element 2: Why Writing For Yourself is A Tedious Process—And To Be Avoided
Element 3: Why the ONE word concept is your compass in the darkness
Right click here and ‘save as' to download this episode to your computer.

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Who is considered the second greatest British person of all time?

When the BBC did a poll in 2002, they expected somehow that Winston Churchill would be in that top ten list. But there in the second position was someone whose name was reasonably unfamiliar. A name that didn’t belong in this century, nor from the previous century. A man who was born in 1806, somewhat mysteriously found his way to the second spot.

His name? Isambard Kingdom Brunel—one of the most famous engineering minds of all time. And Brunel built a magnificent ship—and it was called the Great Western.

At the time of its construction, the Great Western was the longest ship in the world.

There she sat at 236 feet, with one stunning goal in mind—to cross the Atlantic. The trip was to start from Bristol, in the UK, and terminate in New York city in the United States. The goal was audacious because no one believed in the commercial viability of such a long journey.

In 1838, despite many technological developments, shipbuilders presumed that a ship had limited capability. They believed that no ship could carry both—commercial cargo as well as enough fuel—and make the long journey across the Atlantic.

Brunel was a person who thought differently about long journeys

For one, his heart was set on engineering. He developed a theory—a sort of formula that involved the amount a ship could carry and how a ship could be built so that it faced a lot less resistance from the ocean.

Armed with his formula he set about building the Great Western, but then added more technological improvements. Instead of a ship, made mostly of wood. Brunel added bolts; he added diagonal iron reinforcements. He increased the strength of the keel and carried four masts for sails.

And so the ship—the Great Western—embarked on her maiden voyage from Bristol with 610,000 kilos of coal, cargo and seven passengers.

The Great Western on her maiden voyage to New York—powered by steam. A feat never achieved before!

Despite all the plans and engineering, Brunel’s ship hadn’t got off to a great start

In the 1830’s there was a competition to be the first to cross the Atlantic powered by steam alone. The Great Western should have been well on its way, but ran into difficulties before leaving Bristol.

There was a fire on the ship, a minor fire, but Brunel was hurt in the fire and wasn’t able to make the journey. As a result of the fire, 50 paying passengers cancelled their trip.

Finally, the ship made it out of Bristol’s harbour with just seven people on board. What was worse is that it was four whole days behind it’s competitor—another steam ship called the Sirius.

The Sirius left as scheduled, leaving the fire-stricken Great Western still in dock. Now, the Great Western and her crew were well and truly behind—and Sirius would get all the glory.

But Sirius’ trip was anything but glorious

Along the way to New York, Sirius ran into serious trouble. They started to run out of fuel. Her crew was forced to burn cabin furniture, spare yards—even an entire mast because they ran out of fuel. And they took 19 days to get across the Atlantic.

The Great Western, in comparison, arrived like the queen of the seas. She took just 15 days and five hours and with a third—that’s almost 200,000 tons of coal to spare.

This is a story about journeys—a writing journey, in particular.

I didn’t want to write. My story is one of being nudged and pushed into writing. When we started out Millionbucks.co.nz (yes, that was our pathetic first shot at a brand name), I was writing for a fledging portal called MarketingProfs.com.

Back in 2000 everyone was a fledging—and there wasn’t as much content online, as there is at this moment in time. Which is why the founder of MarketingProfs, Allen Weiss, would e-mail me and ask me for an article.

This meant I had to write. I didn’t want to write, but I didn’t have much of an option. We were new in the business—and had just moved to New Zealand. The only way I could get any credibility in the marketplace was to get better known.

And how you can have two sets of people—one battling almost vainly against the headwinds, while the other reaches its destination with amazing grace.

When you embark on the task of writing, the headwinds start almost immediately. I know because I ran smack into trouble when I started writing articles.

Every article was a chore; something I detested and yet I persisted. Over the years, I’ve learned that sheer determination and persistence is not enough. That engineering and planning make a big difference to the journey.

And on that journey, there are three elements that stand out

Element 1: Why a Coach And Editor Are Incredibly Crucial
Element 2: Why Writing For Yourself is A Tedious Process—And To Be Avoided
Element 3: Why the ONE word concept is your compass in the darkness

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Element 1: Why a Coach And Editor Are Incredibly Crucial

Whenever the topic of a child-genius is brought up, one name rises above them all: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This kid, we are told, was a prodigy. Before the age of six, he was already composing music.

Most kids are barely finding their way around school at this age.

And yet, we are told, Mozart was already competent at playing the piano and the violin. He’s also rumoured to have transcribed entire scores of music on a single hearing. How much of this is true, and how much was stage-craft, we’ll never know. But one thing we know for certain—Mozart had a coach.

You don’t think of a coach when you hear the name of Mozart, do you?

Yet, Mozart’s coach was his dad—Johann Georg Leopold Mozart. And Leopold Mozart wasn’t your average-let’s-play-music-dad. He was already a famous author on violin playing and celebrated enough to be the deputy director of music to the Archbishop of Salzburg.

Plus there was Nannerl, Mozart’s sister. When Nannerl was just seven, her father decided to give her piano lessons because he believed she was gifted. So there was Mozart—baby Mozart—surrounded by all these incredible musicians—but primarily—coaches.

Without coaching, you can go far—but it takes a lot of time

When you read studies that quote the concept of 10,000 hours to mastery, what fails to emerge is the factor of mistakes. As a beginner, you’re expected to make mistakes. You aren’t aware when or where you’re making the mistakes.

All you feel is this frustration—this resistance that ships often felt back in the day of Isambard Brunel. Something is wrong with the engineering, but you’re not sure what to fix. And if you can’t figure out where the mistake lies, the journey ends up with furniture and masts being burnt up—so that you can complete some sort of journey

Coaching is valuable—that we already know—what’s hard is knowing how to find a great coach

For me, this process of finding a coach has been streamlined to a single factor: skill vs. information. I call it “preacher vs. teacher”. Is the coach going to give you more information, or is he/she going to give you a skill?

Alex Blumberg, ex-Planet Money, now co-founder of Gimlet Media is a coach. How do I know? Because in the world of telling radio stories, Alex doesn’t pound you with needless information. Instead, he has a method, even a formula of sorts. For example, when telling a story, he shows you how to evaluate the story.

Let’s say you’re writing a story about homeless people—how would you use the formula?

The formula runs like this: The story is about X, and it’s interesting because of Y.
So the story is about “homeless people” and it’s interesting because “20% of them are college graduates”.

Immediately that stands out from a line that goes like this: The story is about homeless people, and it’s interesting because “many have mental problems”.

What Blumberg teaches us is how to eliminate the vagueness and lack of interest in the story. In his courses, he goes about things systematically, taking about editing, music, etc., in the world of podcasting. And you end up not full of information, but with specific skills.

When you look at Mozarts, the Phelps, the Brunels of the world—they all had coaches.

Coaches that enabled them to find their mistakes and move forward. And in article writing, going it your own way is the slowest boat to anywhere.

I know because I took that boat. I took that boat in the field of cartooning; in the field of article writing too. And it took me ages to figure out the connectors, the “First 50 Words,” the endings, the beginnings, the structure—all of that misery could have been reduced if I had a coach. A coach that had a system; who would point out the errors—and get me quickly down the road.

To me, of all the skills you have to learn as an entrepreneur, article writing stands out because you have to have a precise structure when writing. You have to be interesting; you have to tell stories; you have to stand out in a sea of content.

Which is why, even today, I will go to workshops, buy a course, read books—because that’s how you get better at what you do.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that without a coach, you’re floundering even when you’re pretty good. To get outstanding at what you do, you have to find Johann Georg Leopold Mozart to help you along.

And you're going to need not just a coach, but an editor as well

You can be the best writer in the world, and you’re going to need an editor. I have five or six, at the very least; sometimes more. There’s David, Pamela, Teresa, Renuka, Alia, Philip—and Zack (I can hear Zack’s voice here).

And every one of these editors come from a different angle; they have a different perspective. They force me to relook at what I’ve written so that I fit their needs. I remember the time I was writing a book, and I’d written more than ¾ of the book when I showed it to Philip.

But Philip wasn’t impressed

“All your books, they show me how to do things,” he said. This one is all information. Nice information, but not a lot I can implement.” There’s no use fighting these editors. And I’ve tried.

There was a time when I went “hand-to-hand” in a battle with Pamela. She wanted me to chop out two whole pages from my pre-sell book. Those two pages were about how crummy marketers use pre-sell.

Pamela wasn’t interested in reading about the other marketers—even though no names were mentioned. I fought back. I kept it down to a page. She came back and told me to get rid of it.

I kept half a page. No dice. I tried a paragraph—and then finally buckled in. Pamela was right all the time, but I couldn’t see it at the start. I was too busy and too in love with what I’d written.

But we’re talking about articles, not books. So would I do this for every article?

Going back in time, yes, it’s what I did for every article. One of our earliest clients, Chris Ellington, would pore through all my work and shred it a bit more than I liked.

It made me a better writer.

But even now, I’ll post a series in 5000bc.com, and there are questions; lots of questions. The questions are a form of edit. They show what’s missing from the series and what needs a repair job.

Plus, alongside every article we have a “what bugs me” on the website. So years after an article is written, you can have retrospective feedback.

This is my first learning in article writing

That at all times you need a coach, finding structural mistakes, helping you to get better at the core skill of writing. And then once you’ve written, you need someone to pick out the holes and make the work get to the level it deserves.

Yet, to get to complete the article, you have to write it. And there’s a big barrier in the way.
It’s you.
You are the barrier.

Why are you the barrier? This takes us to Element 2.

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Element 2: Why Writing For Yourself is A Tedious Process—And To Be Avoided

Simone Young is a world-renowned conductor from Australia. Alondra de la Parra is also a world-class conductor—from the other part of the planet—Mexico. In a BBC podcast interview featuring the two conductors, there is a moment when they describe fear—Fear and anxiety.

Young pipes in first. “I’m always anxious before I get on stage,” she says.

“And that’s because I’m thinking about myself. The moment I get on stage, I start thinking about the audience, and my fear goes away.” At which point, de la Parra chimes in. She talks about the “cocktail party” in your brain.

About how everyone is seemingly talking about you, and they’re not saying good things. The “cocktail party” chatter never seems to end, or so it seems.

This is what you’d call “writing for yourself”—or at least what I call “writing for myself.”

When I write an article, my first act is to ask a client for a question. If they ask more than one question, I’m a lot happier. If they have a list, I’m the happiest. Why? Because now I can stop the silly “cocktail party” in my brain. This cocktail party pops up every single time, no matter how good you get at the craft of article writing. Most times, I’m just writing an article, but sometimes that article becomes a book.

Like the time I wrote the book on “Dartboard Pricing”, for instance

I couldn’t figure out whether it was good enough. I couldn’t understand why anyone would buy the book when I’d written so many articles and done so many podcasts on the topic. Of course, I knew—I knew it’s an entirely different experience reading a structured book vs. random articles.

But even so, you think about the “cocktail party” a lot.

I had no such trouble when coming up with answers for a future book on “The Three Prong System.”

A client and friend, Paul Wolfe, decided to do a series of three interviews with me on the topic of how I take breaks; how I manage to take a three-month vacation; how we handle vocation and vacation. And Wolfe had a series of questions—some prepared in advance, and some that organically sprouted from the discussion in progress. It’s not like I haven’t tried to write the book before. I’ve created an outline, started on the project and then abandoned it repeatedly. And it’s not because of a lack of skill, either. I can easily write the book—possibly in under a week.

The problem is that I’d have to clamber into my brain to write that book.

When Wolfe asks me the questions, I’m not trying to think about me. I’m thinking about the person asking the question—and occasionally other clients too. And the interview brings up a wealth of information—practical information too!

When a client (or interviewer in this case) asks the questions, the cocktail party syndrome disappears, and it’s replaced with a focus on the audience. To write quickly and write a lot, I need questions—a lot of questions.

But where do we get the questions?

I get most of my questions in 5000bc. Clients ask a ton of questions and get articles in response (yes, I know, it’s a mad system). However, I also get a lot of questions through the podcast, e-mail, through consulting (I rarely consult, but every time I do, it’s amazing).

Questions come from chats, after I make a presentation, and through just listening and reading.

What I’ve learned is that I can’t just look for a random person asking a question online. That doesn’t fire me up at all. Instead, I have to have a specific person asking me a specific question. And when I’m writing the answer, I’m thinking of that person.

Which is what gets me to take a walk in those shoes and write with far more fluidity than if I sat down with a blank screen staring back at me.

But where do we get the questions?

We all wonder: Hasn’t this question been answered before? Aren’t there fifty thousand and three variations of this question already on the Internet?

And the answer is NO. No one is going to answer the question like you do. For instance, there are whole books on the topic of focus. But my angle on focus—and focus in a distracted world—is different.

I take three months off every year, still meet our “fixed revenue” goals and still manage to write books, conduct courses, do workshops, paint, cook—in short, do whatever I want, despite the distractions.

So my angle is always going to be unique; my voice is going to be unique. And yours will be too. Your voice, your tone, your language—even the structure of your answer will be different. The question may have been asked a million times before, but the answer—your answer—is different.

And you get questions from many sources, but you have to listen—that’s what I’ve learned.

When others speak, they’re asking you the questions and doing so in many forms. You’ve got to listen, answer those questions and then keep a writing pad right next to you.

Why a writing pad and not a recording? Well, have a recording, but the writing pad is vital because it captures the gist of the conversation. Then, while the ideas are still fresh in your head, you sit down and write.

And the orchestra in your brain begins to play.

You may not be a great writer yet. You may struggle as I did.

But even in the middle of that struggle, you’ll notice the emotion. You’ll realise that everyone has gone home from the cocktail party, but you’re not quite alone. You’ve got words on paper.

Writing for yourself is disgustingly difficult.

It’s hard to reach into your brain and work out how to write an article, a report or a book.
But write for others and you get the feeling that Young and de la Parra talk about.

Suddenly, you feel free.

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—A coach, an editor. They help you along.
—The client and her questions—they bring out the orchestra in your writing.
—And there’s the article itself. It is also a guide—a big guide.