PNTV: On Writing by Stephen King (#155)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book on writing by Stephen King. On writing. Stephen King, Philosopher's Notes. My favorite five big ideas. Let's jump in. Stephen King, I think time of the writing of this 10th anniversary of his book, he had written over 50 books, every single one of which was an international bestseller up to this point. He sold something like 350 million books. I would say he has a thing or two to offer worth 350 million on the craft of writing. The book is part memoir, part just packed with big ideas on the nuts and bolts and mechanics, just the overall processes of writing, etc, etc. But it's also just a great read in general. No matter what you're doing, what craft you want to master, it's worth reading. And of course, it's incredibly well written, super funny and just genius. So, five big ideas. Number one, spikes. Spikes. What's up with spikes? What do spikes have to do with writing? Well, well, imagine young Stephen. He's been a passionate reader and a passionate writer for a while, and he's starting to submit articles to journals and publications, whatever that he thinks would like his mysteries and other fiction. And what happens? Well, he gets a rejection. He gets a rejection letter, gets a little nail, hammers it into the wall and pins that rejection letter on the nail. Keeps on writing. By the way, when he pins that one, the first one on its nail, he actually kind of kicks back and he smiles. He felt pretty good about it. He had a growth mindset. He didn't get that rejection slip and think, oh, man, I got rejected. That must mean I'm an idiot. I'm not going to try again. That would be a fixed mindset. He embraced rejection and he actually craved feedback. When a publisher would write a little note on the bottom here, form letter, we are not accepting this. Then they'd write a little handwritten note with just a few words. He'd eat it up. Oh, wow. A little insight. And he'd get better, and he'd get better, and he'd get better, but he kept on doing it. And what happened? He kept on getting rejection letters, got a ton of them. That little nail didn't do the job anymore. So what did he do? He got a big old spike and he nailed the spike into his wall. And it took that spike to handle the weight of all the rejection letters he got. That is awesome. That is the epitome of the growth mindset. As a recovering perfectionist back in the day and certainly When I was his age, one rejection, even the idea of getting a rejection would have stopped me in my tracks or a fixed mindset person in their tracks and would have said, oh, I'm not that into it. No big deal. Now you need to have a growth mindset, move toward failure, fail more often if you want to succeed. That's the first big idea in writing. Well, embracing rejection. The second big idea is your man muse. So Stephen talks about the fact that there is a muse. Muses do exist, but they aren't these pretty little women, at least for him. They kind of float into your or fairies that float into your room and sprinkle magic dust on your keyboard. His muse is a cigar smoking man muse who lives in his basement and sits there admiring his bowling trophies. He says, right, and we need to do the work. We need to do the grunt work to make sure the basement is well furnished. So our man muse feels great. We get to dust off his bowling trophies and show up day in and day out and do the work. If we want the muse to be there for us and occasionally sprinkle the magic dust, which he does have. But he doesn't just show up out of nowhere. We've got to do the work. So think about that. Think about your man muse. And he says, I quote, if you aren't willing to work your ass off, then don't even try to be a great writer. You need to work incredibly hard. Nothing new there. But think about your man muse. Third big idea, the prime directive. So the prime directive for writers. If you want to be a good writer, you need to do two things. You need to read a lot and you need to write a lot. Not particularly complicated. You got to read a lot. And as you're reading, you're learning your craft. You're seeing great prose and you're seeing not so great writing. You're learning as you read. And then of course, you need to do the work. Showing up, reading a lot, writing a lot. And he makes the important point. Well, first he reads. How much do you think he reads? How many books a year? 70. I think he said the 80 or so books a year is what he does after he shows up and he clocks in his morning writing time. He reads in the afternoons and evenings. And every single moment he can, he always has a book with him. He's in a doctor's office and he's got a few minutes. He reads anytime he can, he grabs that space and he reads. And he doesn't read to improve his craft. Reading improves his Craft. But he reads because he loves to read. We're going to talk about this in the final big idea. He loves it. Again, we talk about passion all the time. You can't put in the amount of work necessary to achieve elite performance and greatness unless you love what you're doing. Stephen King loves what he does. Absolutely loves writing and reading and stories and telling stories, etc. Etc. So that's our prime directive. Whatever you do, what's your prime directive? How do you get more engaged and show up and day in and day out, if you aren't willing to, quote, work your ass off, then just go back to being competent. He says, alright, next big idea. Jumper cables. This is another good one. Talks about the fact that after he graduated from college, he spent two years teaching. And he actually really enjoyed teaching. He loved his colleagues, he enjoyed the students, even the Beavis and Butt Head types he said he found interesting. But at the end of the week, his brain felt as if he had jumper cables attached to it. And it was really hard for him to settle down his brain and write. Now he did it anyway and he pushed through those two years. And he talks about his wife Tabitha and how supportive she was during that process. But it was the one time in his career where he most despaired whether he could make it or not because he felt like he had jumper cables attached to his brain. Now you may feel like that you, you may be going out and doing this job and then coming home and trying to do your creative work and you got jumper cables on your brain. Well, you need to grin and bear it, do what you can to move through that phase, right? But a lot of us have self imposed jumper cables. We're actually close to doing what we'd like to do. But then we set our brains up on jumper cables by constantly checking our emails, constantly checking social media, having our cell phones on while we're trying to do something creative and we're literally our brain all day long. You can't do anything creative without the door shut. As Stephen King says, shut your door, turn off your phones and create. We talked about Paul Graham's post on maker versus Manager schedules. I'll put a link to that again. You need to create space, blocks of time where you can create and don't hook your brain up to jumper cables. Not a good idea. If you want to write or create or do anything truly great. That's the fourth big idea. The fifth big idea is joy in money. So he says, look, almost every time I'm anywhere, people ask Me, the question, did you do it for the money? Did you do it for the money? Do you write for the money? And he says unequivocally, I have not written one word with money on my mind. He does it because he loves it. He does it because it gives him an extraordinary amount of joy. Now, he happens to have made a ton. I think his official phrase was a boatload of dough. He's made a lot of money doing it. But that wasn't his intention, primary intention. He loved what he does so much. He loves what he does so much. And the money was a byproduct of him committing to his craft and serving his audience by creating something that they really, really love to read. That was what he committed to. The joy of creating. The byproduct of that. And his commitment to the process of mastering his craft and creating something that people would absolutely love and serving them profoundly led to an extraordinary amount of wealth. But it wasn't the other way around. So check out your motivation. Make sure that you start what you're doing here. Intrinsic motivation. It gives you a deep sense of love and joy. Take the jumper cables off your brain. And, you know, if you're doing things that are just firing you up, settle down. Prime directive. Read, write a lot. Work your butt off. Remember your man, Muse. He lives in the basement. Not fluttering up on some, you know, beautiful little fairy wings and stuff. He's got the wings, but he lives in the basement admiring his bowling trophies. You've got to build out the basement, keep it furnished, keep it warm. Do the work. Do the grunt work to make him happy. And then he'll come over and sprinkle some magic dust on, and then the spikes. Embrace our failures. Rejection is inherently part of the process, and we need to embrace it. Fail more if we want to succeed more. That's growth. Mindset 101. There you go. Hope you enjoyed. I love this book. I think you will, too, and I hope you have an awesome day. See you.