Category: Writing

Last year, when the Caronavirus was still trapped in the lab, and the world was a safe place to travel, my husband and I went on an organized tour of Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan. A month-long trip was paid in advance; the final itinerary was mailed to us two weeks with the name of hotels, daily excursions, internal flight details all spelled out clearly.

Once there, we were met by the guides in each country who took care of everything. Each morning a bus picked us up (there were 25 of us on the trip), took us sightseeing, and deposited us back in the hotel after dinner.

Although we were not allowed to venture out on our own or eat at better places than the run-of-the-mill touristy restaurants, we didn’t have to worry about deciding what to see, how to get there, and how to beat the crowds to get the tickets to the historical landmarks.

This is what learning from teachers is like.

They plan the coursework; they give the instructions; they decide where to take you and how to get there. You follow. You get fully dependent on them. So when the time comes to be on your own, you don’t know how to cope.

That was what exactly happened to us. Everything went fine until we were exiting Egypt and going to Jordan. We were not told there was another country in between – Israel. We had to go through the immigration check, stand in line for three hours for cross-over, travel by bus for fifteen kilometers to get to the Jordan border, buy a visa, and stand in the queue again for an immigration check. Just for half a day, we were left to our resources, and we couldn’t cope.

When we want to learn something, usually, we enroll in a course.

We want to be spoon-fed just like we were in school or colleges. Even Universities follow the same pattern of set curriculum. We think the structured way of learning is the only way to learn. We think that because we haven’t tried the other way.

What is the other way?

Let’s imagine you land in a foreign country and want to explore the place by yourself. You pick up some brochures from the hotel, you search on the internet, you might buy the Lonely Planet guide, and you decide which places you are going to see. You figure out how to get there. You decide how much time you want to spend there. You may not cover the entire city, but you explore tiny increments and see all that you wanted to see in the time you have.

How does this analogy work for learning to write?

Writers used to learn to write on their own until recently, when cashing on the great demand colleges and universities have with courses and degrees in writing. Almost all universities now have a master’s degree in writing. Although they can provide the focus and structured curriculum, they could be expensive and time-consuming.

Many people take to writing at the later stage of their lives. It doesn’t make sense to university to get a degree when there are so many other resources available that don’t cost much and fit in your timetable.

Here are three resources that are enough to make you a proficient writer without a teacher.

1. Books, podcasts and videos

2. Discussion groups

3. Teaching others

All that you want to learn about writing is captured in books podcasts and videos.

You don’t need to go anywhere. Pick any topic you want to learn and research what books are available on it. Read reviews and pick two or three and start.

You can even start by reading blog posts and podcasts. Several established writers are writing beneficial articles on the art and craft of writing, and most of them are available for free. The beauty of articles is that they are shorter and can be read in a single sitting. They usually address one topic at a time and hence are very targeted.

The advantage of podcasts is that they save time. You can listen to them while cooking, exercising, or during the commute. Many podcasts have interviews with successful writers who freely share their techniques and learnings, something you may not pick up in a course.

But if you are learning by yourself, you’d have to take smaller steps.

Let’s say you want to tackle how to write short stories. You’d start with simple questions such as – what are short stories. How long are short-stories? How many characters could there be? How many events can there be? How much dialogue, exposition, and backstory can I use in there?

Then you would move on to more complex issues such as – what is common about different kinds of short stories. Where am I getting stuck? What is my approach writing them? Where does it not align with the kind of stories I want to write.

Usually by this time, when you can’t figure out answers by yourself, you feel stuck. That is when the discussion groups come in handy.

Discussion groups are a must to grow as a writer.

If you want to become a real writer, you have to be a member of a discussion group to get your work critiqued and provide feedback on other people’s writing. You will not only learn from receiving feedback but from providing feedback to others.

Sometimes you can’t locate what you are doing wrong in your writing because you are too close to it but immediately pick it up in other people’s work. Not only that, somehow you have a solution for them too, which is what you are looking for in your own work.

At that point you become a teacher yourself.

There is no better way to learn something than by teaching others.

When you learn with the intention to teach it to someone, your learning becomes more focused and intense. You want the concepts to be clear in your head so that you can explain them to others. You pay more attention. You associate new learning with your old learning and come up with better examples and analogies.

When you explain something to others, your subconscious is working on finding solutions where you are getting stuck.

It is no accident that most writers are teaching the craft to others, and that too for free. It helps them with their own learning.

I am not against learning from teachers.

Both my parents were teachers. I know the difference a good teacher can make in your life. A teacher has complete knowledge of the topic and knows how to explain it well. He or she also knows when the student is on the wrong track and quickly bringing her back on the right track.

But learning by yourself has its own advantages.

Learning something yourself might be slower but probably better in the long run. It’s similar to landing in a foreign country and walking down the streets many times.

At first, everything is brand-new and difficult to decipher. But if you walk down the streets several times, you get a pretty good understanding of where everything is located.

You find your own path. You pick up things your jaded teacher might have missed or not in touch with. You might stumble in the dark for a while, but you figure out what you need. The direction you take might lead to discoveries. Even digression has its own benefits.

The key is to walk down that street many times and discover parts of the street you may have missed earlier. You may feel that you will never become an expert, but you’ll be surprised at how much you can learn by pacing up and down and paying close attention.

Finally, when we are learning by ourselves, there is the temptation to start at the top.

I personally think that’s a mistake. It’s better to start somewhere in the middle as there is less pressure to get it right. As you get stuck, you’d have to find a way to get unstuck.

That’s approximately how you can go about teaching yourself almost anything.

That’s how a guide learns. That’s how you can learn too and become a guide for others.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

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Imagine you board a plane, take your seat and find that next to you is sitting your favorite writer. This is your opportunity to have a conversation with him and to learn from him firsthand. You are hoping to get a tip or two from him to improve your own writing. But he is so engrossed in the book he is reading that you dare not interrupt him.

He finishes a chapter, closes the book, and you half-open your mouth to introduce yourself when he pulls out a sheet of paper and starts scribbling on it. You narrow your eyes to read his scribble but stop before it begins to look too intrusive. After about twenty minutes, he places the paper in a folder, looks at you, and smiles. He knew you were watching. You feel embarrassed but couldn’t resist commenting, “Capturing the idea you just got?”

“No,” he responds, “I was summarizing what I just read.”

“You mean from the book you were just reading?” you ask incredulously.

“Yes,” he replies, half-smiling, “Always. It is the only way to get my learning deeper and also have something to refer to when I need it in the future.”

This incident didn’t happen to me, but it did happen to one of the Farnam Street blog readers. While sitting next to Rober Cialdini on a flight, he watched the famous author pull out a sheet of paper and write a full-page summary of what he had just read.

While both reading and writing are the bread and butter for writers, I have found there is one habit that outweighs both, and that is — taking notes.

I stopped taking notes after university.

I was a ferocious notes taker. Then I stopped. There was no need for taking notes for anything other than scribbling a few details at work meetings. All the reading was for pleasure. I wasn’t going to take an exam on the books I read, so why bother.

But then I didn’t remember what I read in a book any more than what I had for lunch two days ago. If I wanted to repeat something interesting I read in a conversation, I fumbled. The idea that was so clear at the time of reading was not clear at all at explaining.

Internet spoiled me further.

Everything was just a click away. I was using Google instead of my brain to retrieve information. On top of that, I copied stuff from the internet and saved it on my computer, never to reread it. To date, I have thousands of articles stored on the hard drive and extra storage I have bought for this very purpose.

Although there is nothing wrong with using technology to aid our memory as our brains can’t hold all that information, I missed out on the side benefits of note-taking. Three side-benefits I can list here are:

1. Idea generation

2. Retention

3. Comprehension

1. Reading not only introduces us to new ideas but it generates them.  

Most of my good ideas come when I am reading. It is as if the passive activity is, in fact, stimulating a part of the brain where the ideas reside. As soon as we relax with a good book, and mind becomes oblivious to the surroundings and goes into another realm.

Reading makes us think. But thoughts are like bubbles; they disappear as quickly as they form. If I don’t capture them as soon as they appear, they are gone.

Reading makes us think on a different level too. The book I am reading at the moment is on memory research. I am no neuroscientist. The theories I am reading in the book have generated so many ideas that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise.

Coming up with ideas is one thing; writing them down so that I can use them when the time comes. That is why I don’t start reading until I have a pen and a notebook in hand. Pencil to underline the interesting passage, pen, and notebook to capture ideas and to summarize what I read in my own words.

2. Summarizing helps retain information.

Most people don’t remember what they read as soon as they finish reading a book. They will recommend the book but can’t tell you why it is a good book. Even if you ask, “Can you tell me one thing that was interesting in the book?” their usual response is, “There is more than one thing. Read the book.”

“Tell me one.” you press.

“I don’t want to spoil it for you. Just read the book.”

But clearly, they don’t remember anything. Or if they do, they can’t express it or explain it in their own words.

As you summarize, you are directing your brain to commit the new information to the long-term memory. Especially if you write by hand. There seems to be a special connection between writing by hand and memory vaults. Notes written in a notebook stick better to memory than the notes typed on a keypad.

The time you will take to summarize will not go wasted on another account.

3. By summarizing you learn the ability to express yourself

There is no point in having the knowledge if you can’t express it. Ideas and concepts need to be expressed in words, spoken or written. A person who says he understood the concept but cannot express it usually hasn’t understood.

Summarising helps you to test your comprehension and give your brain a chance to assimilate the information before you continue reading. In his book, The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills, Daniel Coyle writes:

Research shows that people who follow strategy B [read ten pages at once, then close the book and write a one-page summary] remember 50 percent more material over the long term than people who follow strategy A [read ten pages four times in a row and try to memorize them].

We are drowning in the ocean of information.

Too many books, too many videos, and far too many podcasts and audiobooks. And if you’re like me and love to learn, there’s no such thing as too much information. And yet, that information monster does bite. We start to read or listen, and we can’t keep up. Well, I couldn’t keep up at all. Yet notes-taking on top of that, where will we get the time?

You don’t have to make notes about everything. We don’t need to commit everything to memory. Most of the reading has to be for pleasure; otherwise, we will stop enjoying reading and dreading it.

But wouldn’t it slows down my reading.

It definitely does. Today, for some reason, we are in a race to read more and more and to understand and retain less and less. I have started resisting the pressure to read more. Even Henry Miller advocated for reading less. In his book, The Books in My Life:

One of the results of this self-examination — for that is what the writing of this book amounts to — is the confirmed belief that one should read less and less, not more and more…. I have not read nearly as much as the scholar, the bookworm, or even the ‘well-educated’ man — yet I have undoubtedly read a hundred times more than I should have read for my own good. Only one out of five in America, it is said, are readers of ‘books.’ But even this small number read far too much. Scarcely anyone lives wisely or fully.

By reading less and savoring the book I am reading, I am getting much more out of it. The book I am reading at the moment, Diving for Seahorse, is a fantastic account of memory research. It took me weeks to finish it because I have to stop every few pages and take notes. I have already drafted two articles based on what I learned.

How about you? Are you reading too much and retaining too little. How about introducing the habit of note-taking back in your life.

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Imagine that you are in year twelve, and the Education Board decides to introduce entrance test to Medicine School. You are to be tested on four subjects in a single three hours test. You are to recap two years’ worth of Zoology, Botany, Physics, and Chemistry in a day.

‘It-can’t-be-done,’ you would think. Wouldn’t you?

That is what I thought too.

So strong was my conviction that I thought none of my friends would be able to do it either. I was certain we were all going to fail. And no one will get a seat in Medicine.

Guess what happened?

All of my friends got through, except me.

It was not that I wasn’t bright; I was one of the top students in the class, having topped the district in years nine and ten.

I had the capability. What I didn’t have was the right mindset.

What is the mindset?

Mindset is the mental attitude that determines how we interpret and respond to situations.

It plays a critical role in how well we do in life. Although the word “mindset” is considered relatively new, having first been used in the 1930s, its evidence is as old as human history itself.

From the cave days, humans had a curiosity mindset. We want to learn about everything, and we want to figure out how things work.

Soon humans developed a problem-solving mindset. That is the reason we have advanced from living in the caves to living in air-conditioned houses. We have cars to move around and planes to fly.

Quiet recently, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck discovered that humans have a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. When faced with a challenging problem, the fixed mindset people think is impossible to solve and give up before starting. While the growth mindset, people view it as a challenge and tackle it as a learning opportunity.

Then there is the “dabbler’s” mindset.

What is a “dabbler’s” mindset?

People with “dabbler’s‘ mindset will dip their toes in the water but have no intention of jumping in and swimming to the other end.

I couldn’t get through the entrance exam because I didn’t approach it with the mindset of a person who is going to succeed. Instead, I approached it with the “dabbler’s” mindset.

The“dabbler’s“ mindset is what most of the newbie writers have as well. They want to start writing their book and see how they go. They have no plan, no preparation, and no deadline in mind.

What is the author’s mindset?

For an author, every book is a project. He prepares an elaborate plan to finish the book. Just like a project manager, he uses spreadsheets to monitor the progress of his book.

He knows he has only a certain amount of time to finish it.

He knows that if he needs certain information to include in the book, he will have to research it and find it in that finite time.

If he lacks any skills to write his book (whether it is fight scenes between martial arts fighters or trading in bitcoins), he doesn’t put his hands up in the air and say “too hard” and give up. He learns everything there is to learn about it and gets good at it to come across as a novice when he uses it in his book.

Can we develop an author’s mindset?

“Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing.” — Donal Barthelme.

The not-knowing is crucial to art that permits art to be made. But that doesn’t mean your approach to writing should be of not-knowing too. You got to known where you are going, how you will get there, and what steps you will follow to write a book.

There are three distinct attributes that you need to develop if you want to stop the “dabbler’s” approach and write like an author:

1. Begin with an end in mind
2. Map the route
3. Build a system

1. Begin with an end in mind

Nothing is more important for an author’s mindset than Stephen Covey’s Habit # 2 — Begin With An End In Mind.

When you start a book (or even an article or a short story), think where you want to take it. By that, I don’t mean how it will end but what you want to do with it. Who will be the readers? How long will it take you to write it? How many revise? How will you edit it? Will you do it yourself, or will you hire the services of a professional editor? Will, you self-publish it or go the traditional publishing way?

I know many writers who are stuck in the first draft of their book because they haven’t planned what will happen when they finish. That is why they will never finish their book. It becomes their default position.

Writing a book is not just a wishful thinking; rather it is astute planning to ensure that you accomplish what you started.

That takes us to the next attribute.

2. Map the route

Let’s say you landed in New York and hired a car. Would you hop in the car and start driving, or will you turn on the GPS, enter the hotel address and let it map the route. Even if your hotel is not far from the airport, you still know you will be driving around in circles and waste too much time.

You need to map the route to take your book to the finish line and then get it published. Each one will have its own milestones, its own checkpoints, and its own deadlines. Then you will find the same with your next book.

Successful authors don’t just think about one book. They think way beyond the book they are writing. They write a series. Several series. To be able to do that, you are going to need a system.

3. Build a system

Systems get things done efficiently and effortlessly.

The beauty of a system is that it takes you from conscious mode to autopilot mode where you don’t have to think. You brush your teeth each morning on autopilot mode. What if you write a book like that. Your system can help you do exactly that.

Writing 80,000 words book in a year is hard. But writing 800 words a day is easy. An average person can do it in 40 minutes. Your system will ensure that you write those 800 words every single day without fail. If you do that, write the book in 100 days, leaving you 265 days to do revisions and publication. That is efficiency. You are only writing just 40 minutes a day. That is effortlessness.

Is there any guarantee that you will succeed?

There are no guarantees in life. Yet, the right mindset wins half the battle; preparation wins the other.

The right mindset will ensure that you prepare for the whole journey. You will not only carve the whole path, but you will have a way to get there too — your system. And you will form habits for writing future books as a mindset is nothing more than the habits of the mind formed by previous experience.

Whatever you do, don’t develop the “dabbler’s” mindset. The one I developed when I failed to secure a seat in Medicine. I told myself that I didn’t want to become a doctor anyway. I thought there were better careers than spending your life among the sick people.

But the truth was my “dabbler’s” mindset let me down. It attached a stigma of “failure” to my name, which took me decades to overcome.

You don’t want that to happen to you. Do you?

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In 1975, Junko Tabei became the first woman to climb Mount Everest. She was considered a frail child, but nevertheless she began mountain climbing at the age of ten, going on a class climbing trip to Mount Nasu. Although she was interested in doing more climbing, her family did not have enough money for such an expensive hobby. Junko made only a few climbs during her high school years. But the idea of climbing took hold of her.

After graduation, once again she returned to her passion. She joined men’s climbing clubs in Japan. While some men welcomed her as a fellow climber, others questioned her motives for pursuing a typically male-dominated sport. Nonetheless, she learned the skills and built her stamina. Soon she climbed all major peaks in Japan, including Mount Fuji.

Seven years later, in 1969, she established women’s only Mountaineering Club. Her women-only team successfully climbed many mountains in Nepal including formidable Annapurna.

Yet it took her another six-years to lead an expedition to Mount Everest. In that expedition, when her team was camping at 6,300 meters, an avalanche struck. Junko and four of her fellow climbers got buried under the snow. Tabei lost consciousness until sherpa guides dug her out. Even that mishap didn’t stop her. She continued climbing and reached the top.

In a way, Authorpreneurship is like mountaineering.

The idea to make a living with your writing takes hold of you. You become desperate to write. You write some articles, publish some stories and even start a blog. But what you really want to do is write bestselling books. That would be equivalent to planning your own Mout Everest expedition. It will take you years to get to that stage. Like mountaineering, authorpreneurship demands a lot of preparation.

What is Authorpreneurship.

If you are not familiar with the term, don’t fret. I invented it. It stands for all those twenty-first-century writers who build themselves a significant career as authors using online connectivity and self-publishing.

In less than twenty years, the internet has changed the publishing world forever. It is another one of Gutenberg-moment-in-the-history-of-mankind. Gutenberg’s printing press gave people the opportunity to publish their thoughts and ideas on paper. Now the Internet has given us the opportunity to the same but digitally.

Gutenberg’s invention changed the writing world. For six hundred years authors thrived on Gutenberg’s invention. But they faced many hurdles. There were publishes who acted as gatekeepers and decided what will get published. There distributors whose services were needed to promote the books and get them available in the bookstores. Only a limited number of people bought books and there were only a handful of bookstores.

Today we are on the brink of another change. Anyone can publish their work. No publishers or distributors are required. The number of readers has swelled beyond comprehension and physical bookstores are not needed. But there are new hurdles. Authors not only need to write their books but need to promote them too. You don’t need to share your proceeds with anyone but need to do all the work yourself too.

You need to establish yourselves as authorpreneure.

And that is where mountaineering analogy comes handy. Although authorpreneurship is not as hard as mountaineering and will certainly not take that long, you will have to follow the same strategy as Junko Tabei.

And the Strategy is:

1. Learn the skills

2. Build the stamina and

3. Conquer the small hills first.

1. Learn the skills

To make money from writing you need to be able to write the kind of stuff that the people are willing to pay money for. That means subject matter as well as quality. It takes years to learn the art and craft of writing. The good news is that it can be learned. It took Junko Tabei six years to learn basic mountaineering skills after joining climbing clubs. You need to give yourself the same amount of time.

In addition to learning the art and craft of writing, you will also need to build a following that likes your work and wants to devour every word you write. Although social media has made it easy to build a following, it still takes time. You don’t need millions. 1000 true followers will do (Thanks to Kevin Kelly who actually managed to apply mathematics to a vague concept and give us a concrete number).

Social media has many advantages to attract a huge following, you don’t need just anyone to follow you. You need to select your target audience very carefully. People who follow anybody keep changing their loyalty. But your true followers like your writing and more importantly like you. Your writing draws them in, your personality keeps them there. Your personality and everything that comes with it, your thoughts, your insights, and your life become your brand. And build a brand requires skill and stamina.

2. Build the Stamina

You are going to need the stamina more than anything else. You will be writing for hours at stretch, sometimes weeks and months at stretch and will have several projects going at the same time. Think of how much stamina Junko would have needed to climb Annapurna and other Napalese peaks before even attempting Mount Everest.

And then there will be avalanches. The zooming deadlines. The sick team members and broken bones. You can’t put your hands up in the air and shout, “Enough! I want to go back.” The only way back is by climbing down. You might as well go all the way up. And you are going to need stamina for that.

3. Conquer the small hills first

That is what the new writers don’t get. They want to write the very best book in the very first attempt. You wouldn’t even ask Junko why didn’t she climb Everest first and then Annapurna and other Himalayan peaks. The question is so stupid that you would want to make a fool of yourself by asking it. But then you want to do it yourself.

Climb the small hills first. Write short stories, a novella maybe. Write in online magazines and maybe newspapers if they like your work. Don’t go for Everest in the beginning. Leave it for later when you have developed the skills and built the stamina.

Why do I need to do all this. Why can’t I just write my book and be done with it.

You can if you want to go the traditional publication way. But be prepared for lots of work that will be needed to send your manuscript to hundreds of publishers and collecting rejection slips. Many won’t even bother to read your manuscript if it doesn’t meet their formatting requirement. Publishers get so many manuscripts that they look for the tiniest of reason to reject them.

Traditional publishing is dying a slow death anyway. Online competition is killing them just like it has killed the newspaper industry. The publishers usually don’t recover any money from 80% of books they publish. That is the reason they want to stick with the known authors so that they can recover the cost of printing all those unsuccessful books and make a bit of money on top of that. It makes business sense.

Even if, with the strength of your writing you do manage to find a publisher to publish your book, you still will be expected to market your book. The responsibility of marketing your book doesn’t lie with just your publisher anymore.

Why I can’t I go Traditional publishing way.

The first thing a publisher would look for, after being impressed with your writing, is how big is your email list. Bigger your email list, more are the chances of making sales to your existing followers. That brings us back to authorpreneurship. The whole aim of authorpreneurship is to stay in touch with people who like and enjoy your work. That too with the thing you enjoy doing – writing.

You may not be able to make a career by writing just books but you certainly can make a career by writing books and articles.

I am no JK Rowlings, will I still be able to make a living from my writing.

You don’t need to be JK Rowling to be successful these days. JK Rolling was talented but also lucky. She chose the traditional publishing route to publish her books. And you are right, not everyone can have her’s kind of luck. But keep in mind she had to sell millions of copies of her books to get the kind of commission she did. Even with her kind of success, she was not making more than 15-20% of the retail price of each book (a very generous guess). With self-publishing, you get to keep 100% of the proceeds.

For your journey from a writer to an author, you can either follow the “Rowling Approach” or the “Junko Approach”. One needs luck other needs preparation. The choice is yours.

Photo by Jonathan Ouimet on Unsplash

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