The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 125 - Writing Practice

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, listeners. Before we get to this week's episode, we have some pretty exciting news to share. The Big Ideas Lab is back. Yay! We are so excited about this. If you are someone who has really good ideas, but you don't know exactly how to share them in a meaningful and impactful way, this is for you. You've probably heard Pete and me talking about how we take our ideas and turn them into keynotes and workshops that we deliver all over the globe. That does not happen by luck or by magic, that happens by design. And we'd love to teach you the tools, the techniques, and the skills to turn your own ideas into high impact content that you can share. You can find out all the information at thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/bigideaslab. The next session runs March 22nd to April 30th. This is a very intense six weeks. The applications are closing on March 15th, or whenever the session is full, whichever comes sooner. And last time, friends, it filled up before the deadline, so I encourage you to get over to the website and get your application in if you're interested in joining us. And now on to this week's episode.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer.

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: So, I've got to come clean to our listeners.

Jen: Okay...

Pete: Maybe it's not coming clean. But I guess I need to give some context to the listeners that I haven't given yet this year, which is I'm practicing writing a book at the moment.

Jen: What a coincidence, Pete, because I too am writing a book at the moment.

Pete: And I thought that we should unpack some of the learnings. I mean, at the time of recording this it's February, so it's only been a month. And yet it feels like a lifetime, such is the journey.

Jen: And what's so ironic is I've been writing for a lifetime, but it only feels like a month.

Pete: This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Oh my gosh, I feel like this episode is going to live up to the name of this podcast.

Pete: It's very true. So at the start of the year, we did an episode where we mentioned our words for the year, and I was kind of still deciding on mine. But I was tossing around "practice" and "ease", they were the two words I ended up with. And so, practice has been something I've been thinking about a lot. And one of the things I've started doing from the 4th of January onwards is each weekday, I spend one hour practicing writing. And the extension of that is practicing writing a book. So this came about actually because I woke up one morning, and I had a Slack message from you which said, "I just had a crazy vision. You wrote a book. This is what it's called. I've seen the cover. Over to you."

Jen: Yep. True.

Pete: And so, you put the seed in my head just before Christmas last year. And anyway, so I've been like, "What would it look like if you put that title that Jen gave you up on a page and just practice writing it?" And my goodness gracious me. It is quite a journey. It's quite a journey. So before I go into it, is your writing practice similar? Is it like "Let's sit down for one hour on a weekday," kind of vibe? What is your writing practice?

Jen: It's so interesting, because what you have created with your practice is ease. So good job, Pete.

Pete: It's almost like I deliberately did it.

Jen: My word, my mantra for the year is "Bring it home." Which means that this is the year I will cross the friggin finish line with this book. I don't need it to be on the shelf in Barnes and Noble by the end of this year, but I need to have something to hand to someone who could put it on the shelf in Barnes and Noble. So, I definitely have not created ease in this practice. We're currently in a very messy, thrashy place. Because like I said, I've been working on various ideas and writing for years, and nothing has ever crystallized into something where I'm like, "Yes, this is it." And I finally landed on what it is, which is making it easier. But it is definitely not a practice full of ease at this point.

Pete: Well, interestingly, I mean...you said I've created ease, which I appreciate. And I think you're right. In that, it's like one hour every weekday, that's all you've got to do. But "that's all you've got to do" is so, it can be so hard. There can be a lot of tension and struggle and thrashing that happens. And I think that we're talking specifically about writing books here, but I just feel like you can apply this to the creative process, you can apply this to leadership and business, and kind of anything. Because even in this first four minutes, your process of writing your book is very different to my process or practice of writing a book. And there's no right or wrong, we just have different approaches to hopefully getting a similar result, which is a book at the end of the day. So that's my first like, just thought to say out loud. Is, we're coming at this from two different places, the long and the short. And neither is right, neither is wrong. But both are, I guess, requiring a level of emotional labor, of consistency, of all of those things.

Jen: Well, I just think it's so interesting how you could replace the noun in the sentence, "I am writing a book," and completely change the feeling of it all. Like, "I'm writing a blog post," is so much easier. But it's essentially the same idea. That you sit down and put words on the page. But there is something about that idea that it's a book that gives it so much more emotional heft, at least for me. It feels like it comes in a giant piece of luggage, and I'm carrying this baggage around with me all the time.

Pete: Well, the interesting thing about that metaphor is carrying the baggage with you all the time. One of the things I've noticed, since writing on this particular topic (and the topic is empathy, and empathetic leadership specifically) is, I see it everywhere. It's like now that I've got this big book, this big luggage, to your metaphor, with me, everywhere I go, I'm like, "How can I use this piece of luggage?" Everything I see, every conversation I have, every podcast I listen to is now filtering through the lens of this suitcase that I have, or this book idea that I have, this concept. So it's really interesting, just like observing that.

Jen: Yeah. When I did the writing retreat a couple years ago with Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen...whose books are amazing, and you should all definitely read them. I'll drop them in the Box O' Goodies. Sheila used to use the phrase, "Seeing the world through book-colored glasses." And I've actually adopted that phrase when I'm working with actors on a role. Like, "See the world through role-colored glasses." That everything...if you pay attention, everything can serve as inspiration and fodder for your book. And what's interesting, Pete, is I'm realizing, just based on this conversation, I'm actually carrying around two pieces of baggage. One is the piece that I'm really happy to carry around, which contains my book-colored glasses, where I am able to see things that are inspiring to me. But the other piece is the deadline.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: That's the heavy piece.

Pete: Yeah. That's a really interesting point, because I've almost given myself permission to remove that piece, because of the word "practice." Like, I have very intentionally framed it as, "Practice writing a book and see what happens." So hopefully it'll end up in a book, but maybe it won't. And maybe the point is that I just practiced writing. Which helped me crystallize thoughts, which it's definitely helping doing. Helped me connect dots, which it's definitely helping me doing. Helped me have interesting conversations with you about the process and the practice of writing, which it's definitely doing. Helped me with the authors that I'm working with. Like it's giving me all of these other benefits, because I'm framing it as a practice. And I don't necessarily have the the tension of, "There is a deadline. You have to ship it by this point." Which I think I'm starting to realize is potentially a hiding spot for me, which we can unpack some more. But I don't have that tension at the moment.

Jen: It's so funny because the pendulum for me has swung in entirely the opposite direction. Because as you know, Pete, I actually hired an editor. I signed a contract. I paid money. And I have a ship date. And if I don't meet the ship date, she doesn't have to work with me beyond that date. So, I have a very specific overarching deadline. But then when we meet, she tells me what is due on Friday. And I ship it to her on Friday. And then I get the feedback on what I shipped on Monday. So I have to have something to send by the end of each week, which is really, really, really good for me. I was saying to her yesterday, "I could plan to write this book for the rest of my life." I'm so good at planning. But the actual task of doing it, it's good for me to have to hold my feet to the fire. And because I am a Questioner, if you follow the Gretchen Rubin framework, an accountability partner in this doesn't necessarily work for me. If I wasn't paying her, I don't know if I would get this work done. So, I've been able to run myself through the logic of why I need someone with this specific area of expertise helping me through this process.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, I feel like that is a whole other episode that we're definitely going to do.

Jen: Totally, totally.

Pete: Which is, what happens when you intentionally add tension through payment, and hiring, and all of that. That's a juicy whole episode.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So the practice that I've been thinking about, and the way I've framed it, and the fact that I've done an hour, I've been having such different experiences within that hour on any given day. And it's just so fascinating. Like, some days I will sit down and go, "Huh, easy." Eight hundred words, nine hundred words, a thousand words. Like, no problem. And then other days, I will literally...the other day, I literally wrote twenty-three words in forty-five minutes. It was excruciating. And then in the last fifteen, in a flurry in the last 1 fifteen I, you know, got four hundred words down, or something. And then I was kind of like, "I wonder if I ever would have got that four hundred words if I hadn't have had the excruciating forty-five minutes." Like, how does that whole thing work?

Jen: It sounds like this concept I've been playing around with lately (which I think I mentioned to you), of latent momentum. Where those forty-five minutes, you weren't aware of the momentum that was building up during that time. But then all of a sudden, it clicked and you were off and running. And very likely, you would not have had those productive fifteen minutes if you hadn't first had those forty-five where twenty-two words came out.

Pete: Right. And I think the really important part of that, in my head, is there was an endpoint. So I, I'm going to put this in the Box O' Goodies. There was an interview with Jerry Seinfeld, that...I haven't heard him do many long form interviews before. And he did this interview on the Tim Ferriss show, and just like laid bare his creative writing, or his writing process. And it is an absolute masterclass, and so interesting in how he thinks about showing up to write. I've listened to it three times, I've taken so many notes. But one of my favorites is basically like, writing is so counterintuitive to how we are as humans. It is one of the hardest things you could possibly do. So you need to treat yourself that way, and like set up little reward systems. And he kind of jokes about, "You've got to treat yourself like a little puppy dog. Where if you do the thing, you give yourself a treat." And so he says when he sits down to write, he always has an end time. So it might be an hour, or two hours, or three hours. And then at the end of that timeframe, he pats himself on the back and says, "Good job for today. Nothing more is required. You did the thing, and now you can move on with your day." And building on that, the other thing is never judge or share anything that you wrote that day. Because otherwise, it just diminishes the fact that you sat down and did it. You'll start to go, "Well, I just wasted my time." Whereas if you can just sit at least for twenty-four hours and go, "That was a thing that I did. Good job," then it gives you momentum to do it again the next day, and the next day, and the next day. So anyway, I've been thinking about that a lot. So I think that having an end time, rather than, "I'll just write all day," it's just sort of so loose.

Jen: The thing that I love about what you just shared is there's also this closing ritual. It's like, on the absolute worst day where you're like, "Everything I'm writing is absolute shit," at the end of the time, you pat yourself on the back and you're like, "Good job. You did the work." And on the day where you're like, "I am the next Hemingway," you pat yourself on the back and you say, "Good. You did the thing today." And I love the idea that there's like some sort of closing ritual that is performed whether or not you liked what you made that day.

Pete: Mm-hmm. I feel very called out with those two extremes. That's real. That's real. Which I think is part of the fascination with the process. I feel like everyone should at some point go through a process where they sit down to practice writing for a period of time. It is an unbelievably strange and bizarre and hilarious and scary and joyful exploration of your own brain. And it's just, it's truly bizarre. Truly bizarre.

Jen: Yeah. I don't know if you've ever done this. Someone once told me that sometimes when you're writing and you're feeling stuck, you just keep clicking the word count button to see if you could stop. Not that that's ever been me. Four hundred and fifty seven words? Okay, just got to get to four hundred and sixty. Write thirteen more things. Okay. Four sixty, okay, got there.

Pete: Then you realize that you need to delete the sentence. There's nothing more crushing than going backwards.

Jen: Oh my gosh, it is so hard. It's so hard. But what's really funny, Pete, is when Seth Godin came in and did the podcast conversation with us in January, he answered a question I had asked him about finding success in a career path as an actor right now. And he said, "Learn how to write." And that really shook me in a really good way. I'd heard people say that many, many times before, but for some reason, I heard it differently this particular time. And so in addition to my mantra of the year ("Bring it home."), I've identified what I'm calling my three guiding principles for this year. One of which is, "Learn how to write." And so I recognize that even though I have a deadline, which is... I can't say it's flexible, it's pretty fixed. I still acknowledge that I'm a student of writing. I am learning how to write this year.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Learning how to write, to me, is similar to how I framed it with the practice. So the thing that I've realized recently (I kind of flagged this earlier), that I think I'm hiding in framing it as a practice. Is, I've heard basically any author I've ever listened to talk about how hard it is to write a book. And I am an Upholder, so I'm quite good at committing to something and doing it. And you were joking about this, when I told you. I was like, "Oh, I'm going start this process." You were like, "Oh, you're going to get there before I do."

Jen: Yep.

Pete: Because that's what Upholders do. Which is interesting, because I don't find...well, I wouldn't say I don't find it hard. But I don't think the process of actually writing the thing down is the hard part for me. At this point, I actually think the terrifying part is sharing it, is shipping.

Jen: Mmm. Yeah.

Pete: Like at the moment, I just get to go to my computer in...I've got a little separate table that I use. And I just type for an hour. And yeah, like sometimes I'm tearing my hair out, but no one sees it. It's just me and my thoughts. And so observing, I don't know if the writing part of it, the typing for an hour on my own with my thoughts, I don't actually know if that's the hard part. For me, I've realized that the thought of telling people about it, the thought of spruiking it, the thought of having something finished that you share with people, I think that, for me, is ultimately the hard part, the scary part. And I could tie that back to our fear onion episode, where we talked about the fear of people's opinions being the core or the root of all fears. And so I've gone through this, like, "Oh, everyone says writing a book is so hard. That's interesting. I feel like I have a pretty solid practice, a pretty solid process. You know, I have fifteen thousand words. Like this is, you know, if I keep showing up, I get it, I build words." But then I'm starting to be like, "Oh, but when you share it, that's the scary part, in my mind. That's the bit that's truly terrifying." Is that consistent with your experience?

Jen: Oh my gosh, you're speaking to my soul right now. Because eventually, you will have to share it with someone. Because right now, your practice is about it getting easier. But until you share it with someone who has the skill to provide you the critique that you need, your practice isn't necessarily yet about getting better at writing. It's about getting writing. And at some point, you're going to want to improve your skill and your craft and your technique as a writer, which means you're going to have to share it.

Pete: And that will be the fun part. There'll be, I'm sure, another episode in the future where I'm ripping my hair out because I've shared it and I'm not sure how I feel about it. But that was kind of the whole point of this whole episode. Is, I want to start sharing out loud the thing that I'm writing in the quiet of my room over there. So, I don't know if we take anything away from this whole episode.

Jen: I think what we take away from this whole episode is that writing is not solely for people who already know how to write. That we can all get better at writing by practicing writing, and then sharing it with people who can help us improve our craft. And that doesn't necessarily need to show up in the form of a book. Like, you and I are both writing books. It could be a blog, it could be an email, it could be copy for your website, it could be texting your kid. There are so many different ways writing shows up in our lives. And if we get better at understanding what writing can do for our communication overall, then (to bring it back to what is usually the point of this podcast) we have a better chance of making the change in the world that we seek to make.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.