{"id":13524,"date":"2026-08-09T00:28:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T04:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-how-to-start-when-youre-stuck-finish-what-you-begin-and-stop-waiting-for-inspiration-creative-advice-from-elizabeth-gilbert-seth-godin-joyce-ca\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T00:28:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T04:28:16","slug":"the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-how-to-start-when-youre-stuck-finish-what-you-begin-and-stop-waiting-for-inspiration-creative-advice-from-elizabeth-gilbert-seth-godin-joyce-ca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-how-to-start-when-youre-stuck-finish-what-you-begin-and-stop-waiting-for-inspiration-creative-advice-from-elizabeth-gilbert-seth-godin-joyce-ca\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: How to Start When You\u2019re Stuck, Finish What You Begin, and Stop Waiting for Inspiration \u2014 Creative Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert, Seth Godin, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Lamott, and More (#878)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Please enjoy this transcript of <a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/08\/07\/writing-inspiration\/\">a special compilation episode<\/a> devoted to a subject very close to my heart and currently consuming a large percentage of my waking hours: writing. Over the years, I\u2019ve asked some of the writers I admire most questions like: How do you choose a project and stay with it? How do you begin when inspiration refuses to show up? How do you build a practice that reliably produces pages? And how do you keep going when you fear your pages are terrible? Listen in as some of my favorite authors answer these and other questions as we explore the craft of writing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/08\/07\/writing-inspiration\/#:~:text=All%20episodes-,Show%20Notes,-Connect%20with%20Elizabeth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Books, people, tools, and resources mentioned in the interview<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/08\/07\/writing-inspiration-transcript\/#legal-conditions-writing-compilation\">Legal conditions\/copyright information<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"podcast-player\">\n<div class=\"podcast-player-inner-wrap\">\n<p>How to Start When You&#8217;re Stuck, Finish What You Begin, and Stop Waiting for Inspiration \u2014 Creative Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert, Seth Godin, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Lamott and More<\/p>\n<p><noscript><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.art19.com\/shows\/58dacbdc-646e-4585-9914-19c3de11d1ba\/episodes\/9f261454-c4d9-46aa-91db-4f6340cdab8a\/embed?type=micro\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 30px; border: 0 none;\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/noscript><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Additional podcast platforms<\/h3>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Listen to this episode on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/878-how-to-start-when-youre-stuck-finish-what-you-begin\/id863897795?i=1000780094673\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/5wqPvamXNkrABZ6Scv4BlD\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/overcast.fm\/+AAKebuVUpDc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Overcast<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcastaddict.com\/podcast\/2031148#\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Podcast Addict<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pca.st\/timferriss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pocket Casts<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/castbox.fm\/channel\/id1059468?country=us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Castbox<\/a>,\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/music.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLuu6fDad2eJyWPm9dQfuorm2uuYHBZDCB\">YouTube Music<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/9814f3cc-1dc5-4003-b816-44a8eb6bf666\/the-tim-ferriss-show\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon Music<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.audible.com\/podcast\/The-Tim-Ferriss-Show\/B08K58QX5W\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Audible<\/a>, or on your favorite podcast platform.<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ELIZABETH GILBERT<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>This makes me wonder how you choose, and I\u2019ve wanted to ask you this for a while, and I don\u2019t think we got into it in our prior conversation, which is how do you choose projects, how to spend your time, where to allocate your limited life force? Because there\u2019s, \u201cwhat do you want\u201d which is where a lot of people would start. Although that\u2019s a pretty \u2014 it can be nebulous in a handicapping way because that could take you in all sorts of different directions. But how do you choose your projects, things to spend time on?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Elizabeth Gilbert: <\/strong>I\u2019m kind of a hard-ass about it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, great.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Elizabeth Gilbert: <\/strong>Part of the thing I\u2019ve noticed that people tend to get stuck on sometimes is that they get this inspiration. Inspiration comes first. Inspiration is the breathing in of God. So something, even the most empirical, scientific, atheist people in the world, when they talk about where an idea came from, they say, \u201cAn idea came to me.\u201d They say that. They don\u2019t even know they\u2019re saying that, but that\u2019s they\u2019re reporting accurately what the feeling is because that\u2019s what everyone I\u2019ve ever met who\u2019s had an idea. It\u2019s the eureka moment. It\u2019s like, \u201cOh, I just heard, saw, and felt an inspiration.\u201d I know the difference between something that comes from me and something that comes to me talking about prepositions again, and I think most creative people do as well. Like, \u201cOh, this came to me.\u201d And then it can feel like an assignment or it can feel like a challenge. It\u2019s like, \u201cNow, I want to make this thing.\u201d But a place where I think people get sidetracked and distracted, it\u2019s very, very, very similar to meditation. Meditation, spirituality, and art have so much in common.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This may sound familiar to people who \u2014 maybe you\u2019ve had this experience. You start working on this thing that was this inspiration, and a couple weeks, couple months into it, couple days, another idea comes. And that idea seems more interesting than the one that you\u2019ve already invested some time into. And then you\u2019re like, \u201cBut I want to do this thing. This thing is fresh and exciting. This is the really, really cool thing.\u201d And then you go and do that one, and then another idea comes, and then it\u2019s like you\u2019re dealing with this melee. And so oftentimes people will say to me, \u201cI\u2019m working on a book and I\u2019m halfway through it, but I\u2019ve got this other idea that I think is way better. This book feels really stale and it doesn\u2019t have any life in it.\u201d I always say like, \u201cOkay. Well, I give you permission to quit working on that first project, but only if you have a proven track record of ever being able to finish a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That is so smart.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Elizabeth Gilbert: <\/strong>Right?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yep.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Elizabeth Gilbert: <\/strong>Because then it\u2019s legit. It\u2019s like, \u201cNo, I\u2019ve got this better idea.\u201d But do you have 30 unfinished things? Because if you have 30 unfinished things, now, we have a problem. I have those same things happen to me. Like I\u2019m a third of the way, a quarter of the way, a fifth of the way in a project, and then something so much more interesting comes along. I\u2019m like, \u201cBut I know enough to know.\u201d I\u2019m like, it comes dancing. It\u2019s like a dancing girl. It just comes across the stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I was just going to say the hottest girl at the dance \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Elizabeth Gilbert: <\/strong>The hottest girl at the dance \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>\u2014 just showed up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Elizabeth Gilbert: <\/strong>\u2014 just showed up, and you\u2019ve been married for two months. And you\u2019re like, \u201cOh, I\u2019ve been married for two months, and the hot\u2026\u201d But what I know is that if I abandon my, let\u2019s call it wife, this project that I\u2019ve been working on for a few months to go off with the hot girl, in a few months, she\u2019s going to be just as boring and stale. And then, a new hot girl is going to come along, and I\u2019m never going to complete anything. So stick with the one you came to the dance with. If I\u2019ve got multiple ideas and I\u2019m not sure which one I\u2019m beginning, I actually have a team meeting and I make the ideas make proposals to me about what do you actually want me to do?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>This is like project-based IFS.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Elizabeth Gilbert: <\/strong>Totally. It\u2019s like I\u2019m the angel investor and these ideas are like, \u201cWe want your time and money for this.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, what are you?\u201d Like, \u201cWhat are you? What do you have for me? Why should I invest my money and time in you?\u201d A lot of ideas when I challenge them, they disappear into the ether. Because they\u2019re like, \u201cI don\u2019t know. Something about birds.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cYou haven\u2019t thought it out.\u201d And then, some other ideas like, \u201cNo. I want to write about this very specific thing and it\u2019s going to take\u2026\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cOkay, so this one\u2019s got their act together. So when the bird idea is more formed, come back. Come back when you\u2019re ready. Come back when you\u2019re ready to be real and not just to be tantalizing me with\u2026\u201d So I\u2019m a real hard-ass about it. I don\u2019t mess around. I don\u2019t let these ideas push me around.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ANNE LAMOTT<\/strong><strong><br \/><\/strong><strong><br \/><\/strong><strong>Tim Ferriss <\/strong>\u2026 And I\u2019m going to ask a question that no doubt you\u2019ve been asked before, but I have to ask, what do you think it is about <em>Bird by Bird<\/em> that affected so many people so deeply? And certainly that\u2019s true of many of your other works, but in this particular case, what do you think it is that has that type of effect on people?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Anne Lamott: <\/strong>I think it\u2019s because I didn\u2019t try to con people into thinking that if they just got a book finished, that my agent would want to take a look at it by the end of the week and that it would almost certainly be published. And that then all the Swiss cheese holes inside of them would be healed and they\u2019d be well, and they\u2019d get that FDA stamp of approval and be validated. And then their parents would start to respect them. I said, \u201cNone of that\u2019s going to happen all of that as an inside job.\u201d But I\u2019ll tell you a funny story. When Sam\u2019s little boy, who\u2019s 12 now was five, I was teaching his kindergarten class a writing workshop. And instead of saying \u201cshitty first drafts,\u201d I said, \u201creally poopy first drafts.\u201d And the kids loved me. And after I was done, my little grandchild came up to me and he leaned in and he sounded like Tony Soprano.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He said, \u201cOh, Nana. That was terrible.\u201d And I said, \u201cWhat?\u201d And he said, \u201cYou told people you would teach them how to write a book, but you only taught us how to write one page.\u201d And that\u2019s really what I can help you do is the one chapter on shitty first drafts. So I don\u2019t try to teach kids or grownups how to write really, really well. I just teach them to stop <em>not<\/em> writing. I teach to keep their butt in the chair and to write badly. And that all first drafts of any book you\u2019ve ever read by the authors you esteem most began as unreadable first drafts. And I teach people to take it really small, <em>Bird by Bird<\/em>. Is it okay if I tell the story?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Oh, please. I would love for you to tell the story just so people know the genesis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Anne Lamott: <\/strong>Well, my older brother \u2014 I was like a super superstar achiever in school and my older brother hated school. And he was kind of a rebel. And in California, in the \u201950s and early \u201960s, in fourth grade, you wrote two term papers. One was the Sacramento paper, that\u2019s our state capital. And the other was on birds. And you had to write all year, all semester, a paper on birds. And my brother hadn\u2019t started. It was due on a Monday, and on a Saturday, he admitted to my dad that he hadn\u2019t started. And my brother was a tough guy and he was in tears. And my dad sat down with him and put his arm around him and he said, \u201cJust take it bird by bird, buddy. First you read about chickadees and then you write a paragraph in your own words about chickadees and then you draw a picture. And then you take pelicans and you study up on pelicans, and then you write a paragraph or a passage on pelicans.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I never ever forgot that. And then years later, probably 20 years ago, so in my forties, I heard E.L. Doctorow say that writing was like driving at night with the headlights on. You could only see a little ways in front of you, but you could make the whole journey that way. And I think that is the most profound advice I can offer anyone on any topic. That you can only see a little ways in front of you and you can make the whole journey that way. And another thing that I think helped people when they read <em>Bird by Bird<\/em> was the chapter on perfectionism and how perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. It\u2019s the voice of the enemy. And if you listen to it, it keeps you crazy for your entire life because we all fall short. You\u2019ve written books and you think you\u2019re creating this golden and crystal palace that people can walk inside of and see all of truth and beauty and reality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And you kind of end up \u2014 your books and my books, all of them are kind of shantytowns and like in the [inaudible] the peace marches where people set up tents and thought it made sense to bring their dogs during the rainstorm. And that\u2019s a miracle to have written a shantytown. And so I think these ideas of not knowing what you\u2019re doing and letting yourself do it really badly and to try to help grind down that critical voice. I\u2019ll just mention my husband\u2019s work here. He\u2019s Neal Allen. He wrote <em>Shapes of Truth<\/em>. And the work he does with people in these <em>Shapes of Truth<\/em> is taming the inner critic. And what his position is: \u201cYou\u2019re never going to get rid of it. We don\u2019t get over very much here.\u201d What he does with people is he has them bring forth the inner critic and actually just put it on the table in front of him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And he thanks them for keeping him alive when he was six and seven, because that critic kept him small and controllable. So he didn\u2019t run out into the street. He didn\u2019t swim out past his ability to stay afloat, but that at the age of 60 or whatever, we probably don\u2019t need it anymore. And so he has his clients give the inner critic a great new job, which might be ethical consultant for the project so that the inner critic can go off to the library where there\u2019s an incredibly comfortable chair and a good reading light and 2,000 books. And he will sit there and read, which he loves to do, and when we need an ethical consultation, we\u2019ll come get him. But we don\u2019t need that constant \u2014 is it okay to say the F word on this show?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Oh, yeah. Yes please.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Anne Lamott: <\/strong>Okay. So in <em>Bird by Bird<\/em>, there\u2019s a whole chapter on K-Fucked Radio, KFKD. And without a lot of help and a lot of transformation and healing, K-Fucked Radio\u2019s on 24\/7. It\u2019s telling you how far short you\u2019re falling. It\u2019s telling you how great you started out and what a disappointment you\u2019ve turned out to be. It\u2019s telling you that what you\u2019re in the middle of is beating a dead horse, on and on and on. And so the <em>Shapes of Truth<\/em> work and the inner critic work and <em>Bird by Bird<\/em> is 90 percent about turning down K-Fucked Radio. Anyway, out of the left-hand speaker is all this stuff about that you can\u2019t do it perfectly, and why bother, and that this has been blah, blah, blah. But out of the right-hand speaker, is like the voice of the people who love you most. The voice of like, for me, Sam or my husband or my two best girlfriends. And they\u2019re saying, \u201cI love your stories. I love how you write. I can\u2019t wait to read more.\u201d But you can turn down the left-hand speaker and it\u2019ll always be there to some degree.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>JOYCE CAROL OATES<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I read a beautiful line from you describing a certain aspect of your creative process. This is from the <em>Paris Review<\/em>, The Art of Fiction, Number 72. \u201cOne must be pitiless about this matter of \u2018mood.\u2019 In a sense, the writing will create the mood.\u201d And you continue to say, later in that same paragraph, \u201cI have forced myself to begin writing when I\u2019ve been utterly exhausted, when I\u2019ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes \u2026 and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.\u201d Could you expand on any of this? I mean, I think it\u2019s pretty well put. But I know that there are a lot of people who feel they need to get themselves into the mood to write. Is there anything else you could add to this?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Joyce Carol Oates: <\/strong>No. I definitely feel that you create your mood by working. And I have a work ethic. I come from a part of the world where people did work rather than just talk about it. And so if you feel that you just can\u2019t write, or you\u2019re too tired, or this, that, and the other, just stop thinking about it, and go and work. Life doesn\u2019t have to be so overthought. You don\u2019t have to wait to be inspired. Just start working. Particularly, I think, first go for a long run and a nice walk, and think about what you\u2019re going to do, come home, and start working. But try not to be interrupted. That\u2019s the problem. Most people are living in families, or they\u2019re living with a partner, and the other person has a schedule and expectations. And while you may love your family, they can be the ones who drain you of energy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For women, that\u2019s always been a problem. Women are nurturing. There\u2019s nothing wrong with that. But women find it very hard to say no. Women writers are always being asked to do things pro bono, to volunteer their time, to do different things, to read manuscripts, to be on committees, and so forth. And the instinct is really to say yes. I say yes on lots of these things. If you\u2019re a careful custodian of your own time, like Philip Roth, for instance, or Flaubert, you would never give away a whole lot of your time. Philip Roth would never \u2014 he wouldn\u2019t do one 100th of the things that I do. He was too smart. He knew how to guard his own privacy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>JERRY SEINFELD<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jerry Seinfeld: <\/strong>Well, my guiding rule is systemize. What\u2019s the problem? The problem is \u2014 like my daughter. My daughter is very creative. She\u2019s extremely bright. She\u2019s got an incredible head on her shoulders, and I\u2019ve seen myself in her at that age. She\u2019s way further advanced than I was at that age, but she doesn\u2019t know \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She has a creative gift. Okay? So I say to her, \u201cWhen you have a creative gift, it\u2019s like someone just gave you a horse.\u201d Now, you have to learn how to ride it. You got to learn how to ride this horse. I\u2019ve seen people that are born by the dozens and dozens, I\u2019ve seen people that were given black stallions, and it usually \u2014 if you have a black stallion, like from that movie, and you\u2019re born, and they just put you on it \u2014 and that\u2019s what happens. They just put you on it. And you either learn to ride this thing, or it\u2019s going to kill you.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And we have many, many examples of that. So she\u2019s trying to write this thing. She\u2019s struggling, \u201cI can\u2019t write. I keep putting it off.\u201d So I explain to her my basic system, which is, if you\u2019re going to write, make yourself a writing session. What\u2019s the writing session? I\u2019m going to work on this problem. Well, how long are you going to work on it? Don\u2019t just sit down with an open-ended, \u201cI\u2019m going to work on this problem.\u201d That\u2019s a ridiculous torture to put on a human being\u2019s head.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s like you\u2019re going to hire a trainer to get in shape, and he comes over, and you go, \u201cHow long is the session?\u201d And he goes, \u201cIt\u2019s open-ended.\u201d Forget it. I\u2019m not doing it. It\u2019s over right there. You\u2019ve got to control what your brain can take. Okay? So if you\u2019re going to exercise, God bless you, and that\u2019s the best thing in the world you can do, but you got to know when is it going to end. \u201cWhen is the workout over?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s going to be an hour.\u201d \u201cOkay.\u201d Or \u201cYou can\u2019t take that? Let\u2019s do 30 minutes.\u201d \u201cOkay, great.\u201d Now we\u2019re getting somewhere. \u201cI can do 30.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m trying to teach my son, who knows how to do Transcendental Meditation, how to do it. You know? I assume you know about that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I do. Yeah, I practiced this morning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jerry Seinfeld: <\/strong>Okay, so \u2014 \u201cI can\u2019t do it 15 minutes.\u201d \u201cOkay, let\u2019s do 10. Let\u2019s do 10. Let\u2019s come up with something you can do. That\u2019s where you start everything. That\u2019s how you start to build a system.\u201d So my daughter \u2014 so I said to her, \u201cYou have to have an end-time to your writing session. If you\u2019re going to sit down at a desk with a problem and do nothing else, you\u2019ve got to get a reward for that. And the reward is, the alarm goes off, and you\u2019re done. You get up and walk away and go have some cookies and milk. You\u2019re done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you have the guts and the balls to sit down and write, you need a reward at the other end of that session, which is \u201cStop now. Pencils down.\u201d So that\u2019s the beginning of a system that to me will help almost anybody learn to write, which is something I\u2019ve kind of wanted to teach in a way, because I think it\u2019s so simple.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think exercise is pretty simple too, but people don\u2019t \u2014 they don\u2019t come up with good, simple little systems. They just try and do it, and to me, that\u2019s \u2014 you\u2019re going to fail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. The simple doesn\u2019t mean easy, and the point you made \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jerry Seinfeld: <\/strong>No, no, no. Not easy \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>\u2014 is to \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jerry Seinfeld: <\/strong>\u2014 but simple.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>\u2014 so important. The incentives. Right? Having a reward. Having a defined format. How long did your daughter end up choosing for her writing duration, or how long \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jerry Seinfeld: <\/strong>I told her \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>\u2014 have you chosen?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jerry Seinfeld: <\/strong>I told her, \u201cJust do an hour.\u201d That\u2019s a lot. She says, \u201cI\u2019m going to write all day.\u201d \u201cNo, you\u2019re not. Nobody writes all day. Shakespeare can\u2019t write all day. It\u2019s torture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. If you taught a class on writing, what other lessons might you have, or resources, or anything, exercises? Because I\u2019m imagining that your daughter could sit down, she says, \u201cAll right, I have an hour.\u201d And then you ask her how her writing session went, and she said, \u201cWell, I didn\u2019t have any idea what to write.\u201d So you\u2019d have \u2014 I don\u2019t know what age the students would be in your course, but what else would be a component of your class on writing?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jerry Seinfeld: <\/strong>Well, I would teach them to learn to accept your mediocrity. No one\u2019s really that great. You know who\u2019s great? The people that just put tremendous amount of hours into it. It\u2019s a game of tonnage. You know?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Totally.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jerry Seinfeld: <\/strong>How many hours are you going to work per week, per month, per year? You might even want to chart that. Or with your exercise, if you want to get in shape. I couldn\u2019t get in shape. I started out as a jogger in the \u201970s, and I would run three miles a day. And then I got older, and I got married late, and I had young kids. And I really had to get in shape, and I picked up this book by Bill Phillips called <em>Body for Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong><em>Body for Life<\/em>, yeah.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jerry Seinfeld: <\/strong>And it\u2019s really, really \u2014 it\u2019s such a system for a primitive brain, and I do it to this day. I think it\u2019s a work of genius, this book. And it really got me in shape, because he broke it down to, \u201cHere\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do. In minute one, here\u2019s what you\u2019re going to do, to minute five, minute 12. And this is going to end in 45 minutes.\u201d Or whatever it is. And every minute, I know exactly what I\u2019m doing, and that turned the key for me. And all of a sudden, I was getting in shape, because I never had to ask, \u201cWhat am I doing now?\u201d Or, \u201cWhat are we doing next?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s like you\u2019ve got to treat your brain like a dog you just got. The mind is infinite in wisdom. The brain is a stupid, little dog that is easily trained. Do not confuse the mind with the brain. The brain is so easy to master. You just have to confine it. You confine it. And it\u2019s done through repetition and systematization.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MARY KARR<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Let\u2019s talk about revision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Mary Karr: <\/strong>Okay, revision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Revision. This doesn\u2019t have to be serious.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Mary Karr: <\/strong>I\u2019m a big revisor. I\u2019m a big revisor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>You are a big revisor. But, so you have said, \u201cAnyone who has read a rough draft of anything I write is just shocked at how bad it is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Mary Karr: <\/strong>It\u2019s terrible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What does the process look like? I mean, I know this is a very\u2014hopefully it doesn\u2019t sound like a really naive question, because I know that there are many, many aspects to revision. So, I\u2019ll lead with just a bit. This is from writermag.com, but Karr says she takes a hard look at every sentence she writes: \u201cCan I make this sentence less boring? More interesting? Prettier? More colorful? More true?\u201d So that\u2019s a teaser. What does your revision process look like? Because I\u2019ve read that you threw out something like 1,200 pages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Mary Karr: <\/strong>Threw out 1,200 pages of <em>Lit<\/em>. Yeah. Finished pages too, that\u2019s not draft. And that was written over about, I want to say, five or six years. And I remember when I threw it out, Tim, I was so upset. I had been\u2014well, first off, they were about to hang me. I was so late. I was like seven years late on a contract. I mean they\u2014and so I finally my agent called me and said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to\u2026\u201d I said, \u201cYou know what? I will sell my apartment and give the damn money back if they don\u2019t shut up and leave me alone. It\u2019s just going to take me a minute.\u201d So anyway, so I\u2019d sent them, I don\u2019t know, I\u2019d sent them like 130, 140 pages. And my editor at the time estimated that I\u2019d thrown out 1,200 pages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And let me tell you, when she said that they sucked as bad as I thought they sucked, I mean, I knew they sucked when they sent them, which is why I didn\u2019t want to send them. I wanted to keep working on them. So I just, I went to bed for like two days and I watched Dr. Phil reruns and a lot of cooking shows. And I ordered a lot of curry. I think I had a whole pizza at one point and slopped around in my bathrobe. And then I called Don DeLillo, who\u2019s one of the people I call, it\u2019s like the nuclear button, who\u2019s just one of the great novelists, and who also happens to be a friend of mine. And I said, \u201cDon, I think I\u2019m writing a\u2026\u201d He\u2019s like, \u201cWhat are you crying about?\u201d I said, \u201cI think I\u2019m writing a bad book.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And he said, \u201cWell, who doesn\u2019t?\u201d And I thought about that. And I thought, \u201cGod, he\u2019s right. Tolstoy\u2019s written bad,\u201d but I mean, people I read, every writer I know has written a bad book. So, okay. So, okay. So maybe it\u2019s just going to be a bad book, but it\u2019s the book that\u2019s standing in line to be written. And I think I became willing to fail to just say what happened. So basically what it looks like is just clawing through a line at a time or a sentence at a time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think one example I give in <em>The Art of Memoir<\/em> is that when my mother is driving me to college, and I think the sentence I started with was something like, \u201cMother drove me to college in her yellow station wagon. We stopped every night at the Holiday Inn and got drunk on screwdrivers.\u201d I can\u2019t remember. Might\u2019ve said puking drunk on screwdrivers. And so I somehow was able to remember being in that car. The thing about my mother\u2019s yellow station wagon was that it didn\u2019t have an air conditioner. So at that time you could buy an air conditioner that strapped under the dashboard. Well, it would build up condensation. And when she turned right, and I was sitting in the shotgun, the water in the air conditioner would spill out onto my bare feet. And it was icy, icy cold water.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I remembered that we had stopped and gotten a bushel of peaches in Arkansas, and she was drinking vodka. Driving, drinking vodka and orange juice, and eating these\u2014watching her eat a peach. When you\u2019re 17 years old, to watch your mother eat and show any desire for anything is just so horrifying. You just want to die. There\u2019s just nothing uglier than watching your mother eat a peach when you\u2019re 17. You just think, \u201cMy God, woman. Shut your mouth. Take a smaller bite. Jesus, it\u2019s not going anywhere.\u201d But the smell of the peaches and being in the\u2014and suddenly I remembered that I had a copy of <em>One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/em> that I had got, it was her book, but I had started reading, and she said, \u201cRead it aloud to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I remembered reading that book and driving, and I remembered the\u2014you grow up around these Texas dirt farms. I mean, there\u2019s plenty of corporate farming in the state of Texas, but then you get to the Midwest and it\u2019s just so organized. It\u2019s just there aren\u2019t the rusted cars in the yard and the refrigerator on the porch. It\u2019s these rows and rows of corn and these big, cinnamon-colored silos. And I remember driving into that landscape up to that college and reading that book and thinking I could be a writer. I somehow was able to remember those details and occupy that body in space and time and remember how disgusted I was by my mother and how terrified I was that I wouldn\u2019t do well at school, that I would fail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019d been such a screw up. I\u2019d been arrested the year before with a bunch of kids and there was a bunch of dope and some of them went to jail and I didn\u2019t because the judge was a guy who had known my mother when she was a reporter for the local newspaper. And I still remember sitting in\u2014she came to pick me up wearing a leopard\u2014she had leopard skin pajamas. It was July 4th. And she had on a beaver coat with a mink collar and those leopard skin pajamas on this hot night and Kountze County, Texas, and here sits this judge behind this\u2014this liver-spotted judge with these palsied hands and every meal he\u2019s ever eaten on his tie when she came to pick me up. And he said, \u201cI remember your mother. She was the most beautiful woman I\u2019d ever seen.\u201d And she said, \u201cOh, you old fool.\u201d I mean, I was just like, \u201cOh, my God, Mother, get me out of here. Sucking up is underrated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So anyway, yeah, I think it\u2019s memory. I do an exercise with my\u2014I just did it the other day for a colleague of mine, Dana Spiotta, wonderful young novelist I teach with. And she\u2019s teaching an undergraduate class, there are 90 kids in the class. I said, \u201cI want to do this writing exercise.\u201d She said, \u201cWell, the writing, it\u2019s been uneven.\u201d But I said, \u201cTrust me, everyone will write well.\u201d And you have them focus on a room they grew up in and to try to occupy the smell, to try to remember a room you were in where your mother\u2019s cooking, your grandmother, wherever you had a good meal when you were little and try to close your eyes and smell that, because smell is the most primordial memory and the most emotional memory and it\u2019s stored way back in that snake brain hypothalamus we have that is where all the trouble starts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And you try to get in that memory and interrogate your body about what you can smell, taste, touch, and then finally what you want, what are you yearning for and what\u2019s keeping you from getting it? Maybe it\u2019s a bite of the brisket or some of the barbecue or daddy\u2019s oysters coming up out of the fryer, or what\u2019s going to keep you from getting it? It\u2019s my big-footed sister, who, as Daddy said, \u201cNothing ever got between her and a bag of groceries. She\u2019s going to get all the oysters and I won\u2019t get any.\u201d And so it\u2019s really more about trying to occupy a former self, because I think as you know, just as in trauma, the body remembers. The body also remembers beauty. It also remembers pleasure and love and those other things, too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>BRANDON SANDERSON<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim:<\/strong> Are you still teaching the creative writing class at BYU?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Brandon Sanderson: <\/strong>Yeah, I am.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Brigham Young University. What is the first class?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Brandon Sanderson: <\/strong>First class, so first class is some things I just told you. I get up and I say to them \u2014 actually, the very first thing is I say to them, \u201cDuring this class, we\u2019re going to pretend you want to be a professional writing writer, earning a full-time living from your writing in the next 10 years. That we\u2019re going to pretend, because most of you\u2026\u201d that\u2019s probably not why they\u2019re there. Most of them, they\u2019re just curious. They may have a book of them, and we have this curious relationship with art in our society. It is, as soon as you say, \u201cI\u2019m going to write something,\u201d people are like, \u201cOh, when will you monetize it? When will you earn money from it?\u201d And that can be kind of destructive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like you mentioned you\u2019re writing a book or you wrote one just because it was an itch. You enjoyed it. I think writing is legitimately just good for people in the same way that working out is good for people, learning to write a narrative and get those thoughts out of your head on a page, it\u2019s just innately good. Most people, when they go play basketball, if they look like me, people aren\u2019t going to be like, \u201cSo when are you going into the NBA?\u201d But if you write a book, people will say, \u201cSo when are you going to publish it?\u201d And I say to the students, \u201cIt\u2019s okay if that\u2019s not your goal. If you want to write just for you \u2014 if you want to be on the, I spend 20 years and then produce one book route, totally fine. However, I want you to know everything you would need to shoot for the highest level, which is earning a full-time living as a writer. And everything else falls underneath that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So during the class, we pretend that that\u2019s your goal. Once you walk out of it, you can make your own goals, whatever they are. But while we\u2019re there, we pretend that. And then the second thing I say is, \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to learn when to ignore me.\u201d And that is really hard to do because I\u2019m an authority. I\u2019m up there. Survivorship bias says who knows what I actually say is going to be relevant? Some of it hopefully, but I can\u2019t really determine what really played a part in me being successful and what didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I want to approach it as a toolbox, giving people all of these various tools, some of which are contradictory. Self-contradictory. I can give you examples of that if you want, but you can\u2019t use them all. So you\u2019re going to have to ignore some of the advice of major authors. Some of the things that Stephen King tells you will be wrong \u2014 some of the things for you. Some of the things that I tell you will be wrong for you. You have to find your own way. And so I kind of start off with, \u201cI\u2019m going to pretend you want to be a professional writer.\u201d And then follow it up with, \u201cBut learn when to ignore me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What are some of the contradictory tools or approaches in the toolkit?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Brandon Sanderson: <\/strong>The one I generally use as my prime example is when I was studying this before I broke in, two authors that I admired, I read their books. I read <em>On Writing<\/em> by Stephen King and <em>How to Write Sci-Fi and Fantasy<\/em> by Orson Scott Card. And I read these books, and I honestly can\u2019t tell you 100 percent if it was in those exact books or other writings of theirs on their websites and things. But Stephen King at one point said, \u201cDo not make an outline. Do not use a writing group. These will destroy your writing.\u201d And Scott Card is like, \u201cI need an outline. It is fundamentally vital for me in order to build my book.\u201d Now, Stephen King is what we generally call \u2014 these are George R.R. Martin\u2019s terms. He\u2019s wonderful the way he speaks about fiction. If you\u2019re really interested, anything George says is golden. He calls them gardeners. Stephen King is a gardener. For Stephen King, exploring and discovering his story is the thing that makes him excited. He wants to take a seed. He\u2019ll often say, \u201cI take two really interesting characters and I put them in conflict and have something go wrong, and I see where the story goes, and I just write.\u201d And he says if he has an outline, he feels like he\u2019s already done that process in the outline. So when he sits down to write the book, he has no motivation. He\u2019s not exploring and discovering anymore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The other group we call architects. Architects like to build a structure and then kind of go and take this little piece and then polish that little piece and see where it goes, and then take the next piece that they\u2019ve already built as part of their structure and build a story around that. And most people are somewhere in between these two extremes. But those were two extremes where I realized I can\u2019t do both of these. I can\u2019t both not have an outline and have an outline. I can have a hybrid approach. But if you try to take both of their advice equally weighted, then you\u2019re going to get nowhere. You can try both methods in different ways, you can try some hybrids. But a lot of things you\u2019ll learn in writing you kind of have to choose one or the other and try it out and see how it works for you.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What are some of the assignments that have most resonated with students or you think best served them even though they might not recognize it?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Brandon Sanderson: <\/strong>So what I generally do is I follow a focus on habits approach. Instead of giving them specific writing exercises, if someone comes up to me and says, \u201cI\u2019m having trouble with X,\u201d I\u2019ll give them a writing exercise to work with that. If someone comes up to me and says, \u201cI am having a lot of trouble going back and revising my chapters over and over again, instead of writing the next one,\u201d I\u2019ll say, \u201cOkay, try writing longhand.\u201d This works for some people. You go, you take a page of paper, you write it longhand, and you tell yourself, it doesn\u2019t have to be perfect until I put it into the computer. You start each day taking what you wrote before and putting it to the computer and then leave it alone and write your next chapter longhand, and then use that process to kind of get yourself back into the writing, but then forcing yourself to do something new. That works for some people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If people are having trouble with dialogue, I say, \u201cAll right, go do the exercise where you sit and listen to people on campus and you just write down exactly what they say exactly as it\u2019s said, and then take it and try to write it under different styles of dialogue.\u201d If you\u2019re writing like Soderbergh, how would you do it? Pick some of your favorite people, go watch their movies, write down the dialogue, and compare that to their real life, and just kind of figure out what kind of dialogue you like to do. Those are exercises.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But in general, I\u2019m only doing that when I\u2019m diagnosing a problem. For the class I\u2019m saying your job, if you want to try to be a professional writer, you\u2019re going to have to write consistently.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Brandon Sanderson <\/strong>\u2026 Nine out of 10 writers that I\u2019ve found do better with consistency. One out of 10 is a binge writer. I don\u2019t understand binge writers as well, but I can talk about that. Those are the people who go rent a cabin, take two months, walk in without a book, come out with a book, and then they don\u2019t write for 10 months. Most people are better served by writing a certain amount every day really consistently, or at least two or three times a week, and building a novel out of good habits. And I focus on that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m like, break it down, set a goal, have a spreadsheet and try to hit your word counts, or at least your hour counts. If you\u2019re having trouble doing this, go to a specific place every day that you do this, that you don\u2019t do a lot of other things. Go to the coffee shop, go to a certain room in the house, turn on certain music that you only turn on when you\u2019re writing. Build that habit so that you are very consistent. Batch your writing time. If there\u2019s something you already do every day, if you already have built a habit to go to the gym, then try to align your life so that you go to the gym and then have an hour to write. Think about what you\u2019re going to write at the gym, sit and write for an hour so that you are adding onto a habit that you\u2019ve already built.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that\u2019s my focus in the class is to really be consistent. See if you can write, the goal is in the class to write 35,000 words. Class is around a third of the year, if you do that all year, you will end up with 100,000 words, which is your average novel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So let\u2019s hit some top line habits from Brandon. How many words per year on average would you say you put down?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Brandon Sanderson: <\/strong>My goal is 2,000 to 2,500 words a day. So whatever, 10 pages to 20 pages is what I\u2019m looking at. Depends, I mean, I write in the old school manuscript format where everything\u2019s 12 point and in Courier and it\u2019s a holdover from the days when certain typesetting things are done that are too nerdy perhaps to talk about here. But I think in words, so I do 2,000, 2,500.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Those are new words?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Brandon Sanderson: <\/strong>Those are new words. Now when I\u2019m doing revisions, I\u2019m not writing new words. And I would say around a third of my time is spent on revisions depending on the year. And this is the thing, some years I\u2019ll do a lot of words. Some years I do a lot more revisions. And so it really depends. But if we\u2019re looking at 2,000 words a day times 50 weeks, that can produce quite a lot of words. So 10,000 words a week is what that would turn into. That\u2019s 500,000 words a year is what I could theoretically produce. Now, a third of my time\u2019s done to revisions. So really I\u2019m looking at around 300,000 words. A <em>Stormlight Archive<\/em> book is 18 months of work for that reason and things like that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>SETH GODIN<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>All right, so I\u2019m going to personalize this selfishly because that is my nature, right? To flash back, now I\u2019m going to create a montage of dinners with Seth. This is just a portion of our exchange in the last dinner, same dinner where I misattributed this book to you as a recommendation, where I asked you for advice because I was feeling stuck with writing. You very, very observantly replied, \u201cDidn\u2019t we talk about that eight months ago, the last time we had dinner?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I said, \u201cYes indeed, we did. It shows you how little progress I\u2019ve made.\u201d Whether this is just an opportunity to showcase my insecurities, I don\u2019t know, but I would love to hear what you think it is that I torture myself with, or that tortures me that leads me to ask you these types of repeated questions on different occasions because you are as much as anyone I know, you seem from the outside looking in. Maybe it\u2019s like the calm duck on the surface kicking like hell underwater, I don\u2019t know. You seem to be a relatively unconflicted person. You\u2019re not like biting your nails, fretting about doing A or B. You seem to pretty calmly do your thing, and I wouldn\u2019t describe myself that way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In what you\u2019ve seen, is there any outside perspective where you\u2019re like, \u201cI think that these are some of the reasons Tim gets tied up and nuts?\u201d Is there anything that you have to \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>Okay. Well, first of all, if I\u2019m making you miserable at dinner, I apologize. That\u2019s certainly not \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>No, no, no, no, you\u2019re not. No, I love our dinners.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>I think that you left \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>This is just a segue into conversation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>You left out the thing I said after I said the thing about eight months, which is \u201cWhere is your bad writing?\u201d And there\u2019s no such thing as writer\u2019s block. Writer\u2019s block is real, but it does not exist. What it really is is misnamed. \u201cI have a fear of bad writing. I have a fear of what the world will say when it encounters my bad writing,\u201d and the way through is to do your bad writing. You don\u2019t have to ship it to the world, but you have to do the bad writing and bad writing over time, if you do enough of it, can\u2019t persist. Good writing will slip through, and I learned this from Isaac Asimov. He and I worked together on a project years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He published 400 books back when it was hard to publish a book, 400 books, and he told me that every morning \u2014 sorry, that\u2019s the volunteer fire department. Every morning for six hours, he would sit and type. It didn\u2019t matter if it was good or not, he had to do six hours of typing. Now obviously, he didn\u2019t have a typing problem. Just about anybody can do six hours of typing and then at the end of the shift, he would look throughout the bad writing, whatever was left, what was left and the subconscious understood that if he\u2019s going to type anyway, you might as well type something good.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He got through the bad writing thing and in your case, you have so much skill and such a benefit of the doubt from people you\u2019ve earned it from, that it\u2019s really likely that you\u2019re saying, \u201cWhy do I need to get back into that? There\u2019s nothing but downside for me,\u201d because you know how to make one of the world\u2019s best podcasts, you do it on the regular, people really like it. When you write a book, they roll their eyes, they read the whole thing. \u201cAren\u2019t you proud of me?\u201d What a pain in the neck. It takes a year; just do the other thing. I totally get that feeling, and this is where we lead to the second part about being conflicted, and it\u2019s a small Nike riff, which is \u201cJust do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019re not going to go into the origin of that phrase coming from a mass murderer, but just do it implies \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Hold on! Is this like a Manson family reference, or?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>Gary Gilmore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Wow, I have no idea. All right, that\u2019ll be for people to have research on their own.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>That was the last thing he said before they killed him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Wow.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: \u201c<\/strong>Just do it.\u201d Now you\u2019ll never be able to unsee that image, sorry. Just do it implies \u201cWhat the Hell? It doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d That\u2019s not a good way forward, because it pushes you to be a hack who\u2019s not responsible for your own work. The alternative is to replace the word \u201cjust\u201d with the word \u201cmerely.\u201d Merely do the work that the time you are spending narrating yourself doing the work, the time you\u2019re spending catastrophizing the work is not helping anything. I was a really insecure flailing, failing entrepreneur for at least eight years in a row, just consistently failing, barely breaking, even getting close to bankruptcy on a regular basis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was willing things to work out, and I was spending a lot of time dramatizing all of the perfect problems that I was confronting. Then I was able to shift to merely doing the work without the narrative and without the drama. As soon as we can merely do the work, then there\u2019s room to see what needs to be seen. I don\u2019t believe in the muse at all. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any outside force. I don\u2019t think talent really matters. I think what matters is choosing to find your smallest viable audience, understand your genre, and explore what it means to make magic in the small, so you can do it again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Mm-hmm (affirmative). Two things, the first is you are a delightful dinner host, and I love our dinners so not to cherry pick and make this look like a \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>Okay, you\u2019re invited back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, this is not a video collage of like NASCAR accidents that I want to paint as the experience at your house, that\u2019s not the case at all. Number two, I would love to ask about the decision, the point at which you decide you have something that you would like to publish or share, and that quality cut off or how you think about it because in my head, the helpful and self-defeating depending on how you want to look at it perfectionist side of things will, for instance, look at something I wrote in 2010 and say, \u201cI can\u2019t do that anymore and if I practice, I could still practice for weeks and publish something on the blog, and it would not be that good. Therefore, I\u2019m not going to publish because I feel like people will be disappointed, or I will be letting them down and that the attention they\u2019ll spend on it will not derive or return as much value to them,\u201d right?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s the voice that is the deliberation that I have in my own head, and I do actually have hundreds of drafts. I have shitty stuff, but it\u2019s never quite crossed the chasm into good enough to publish. I\u2019ve been stymieing myself in that respect, and there is part of me that\u2019s like, \u201cYou know what, the podcast is easier, it\u2019s fun. I feel like it\u2019s a craft I\u2019m still improving on. Why don\u2019t I just do that?\u201d There is part of me that says that, then there\u2019s another part that says that\u2019s a cop-out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, the writing helps you to learn to think as Kevin Kelly, to invoke that name again, right? He writes to think, he doesn\u2019t think and then write, and that I\u2019m shortchanging myself by using perfectionism as an out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>If hearing all that, what comes to mind for you?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>Well, I\u2019ll share my personal experience, but first, I want to challenge something you stated as fact, which is \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yes, please.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>\u2014 that the writing isn\u2019t good enough to publish says who?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Says me, right.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>Right.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That\u2019s me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>Right. It\u2019s not that the writing isn\u2019t good enough to publish. It\u2019s that when you look at the writing, your analysis of where you are in the marketplace and the promise you\u2019d like to make and keep doesn\u2019t match the writing that\u2019s in front of you, but I dare say as talented as you are at so many things, this might not be your best skill knowing when it\u2019s ready to publish \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, true.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Seth Godin: <\/strong>\u2014 and it may make sense in this world where it is ever easier to hire somebody to do the thing they are good at, to say to this person, \u201cHere\u2019s 5,000 words aimed at this kind of reader. Tell me where I\u2019m got light and tell me where I should take stuff out,\u201d because the way you get \u2014 my friend who I went to business school, Evan, climbed Mount Everest back when that was a very big deal. I mean there was no YouTube or anything, and I was quizzing him, \u201cWhat\u2019s that like?\u201d Well, he said that the first weeks are just spent walking up this trail, that\u2019s not that hard a trail to walk up, with tea houses along the way and stuff like that. It\u2019s only toward the end, once you\u2019ve committed to climbing Mount Everest, that Mount Everest actually gets really hard to climb.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s a fortunate coincidence for the climbers that it happens in that order because your sunk costs have increased so much by the time that it gets serious that you\u2019re too embarrassed to turn to your peers and say, \u201cI can\u2019t put in the work.\u201d What you\u2019re doing before you get to the hard part is you\u2019re inventing a reason to stop, and you said something was really poignant, which is you look at stuff you wrote in 2010 and you say I can\u2019t do that anymore. Well, two things happened to me. First, 20 years ago, I wrote a book called <em>Permission Marketing<\/em>. It became a <em>New York Times<\/em> bestseller and I said, \u201cI\u2019m done. What could I do the first time out of the gate because I\u2019d been a book packager before? This is my first \u2018real\u2019 book. How can I beat that?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I stopped. I just stopped and I sat in the dark for a year. I just didn\u2019t do much of anything because I said, \u201cI can\u2019t hit lightning like that again,\u201d and thanks to Malcolm Gladwell, he was unknown. He sent me this new book called <em>The Tipping Point<\/em>, and he asked me to write a blurb for it. I read it in one night and realized that without knowing it, I had been writing a book about how ideas spread. In the next 12 days, I wrote a 225-page book and I sent it to Malcolm. I said, \u201cLook, if you want me to not publish this because it seems like you unlocked the key, and I don\u2019t want to take away anything from <em>The Tipping Point<\/em>, I will stop and just throw it out, but I needed to get this out of my system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was such a mensch. He gave me his blessing and wrote the forward, and I realized in that moment I couldn\u2019t write <em>Permission Marketing<\/em> again. That day was gone, but I could write this book and someone would benefit from it. Then 10 years later, same 2010 you\u2019re saying, \u201cI wrote a book called <em>Linchpin<\/em>, and I will never be able to write a book that good again. I will never write a book that goes that deep close to my bones, that makes me feel the way that book made me feel.\u201d After that book came out, I felt the same way again, which is \u201cWell, if this is the journey, I found the end of the journey.\u201d I realized six, nine months later, that that was selfish and that leads to the other key thing I want to talk about, which is generosity. Because generosity doesn\u2019t mean free.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People pay for a surgeon who\u2019s going to save their life. Generosity means that you\u2019re expending emotional energy, emotional labor to help somebody else and as soon as I could shift it around in my head to say there\u2019s somebody over there who could use a hand, then it wasn\u2019t about me anymore, and I wasn\u2019t parading anything. It got way easier to merely do the work without commentary because there\u2019s somebody over there I\u2019m doing it for, here we go.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<h3 id=\"legal-conditions-writing-compilation\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">DUE TO SOME HEADACHES IN THE PAST, PLEASE NOTE LEGAL CONDITIONS:<\/h3>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Tim Ferriss owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>WHAT YOU\u2019RE WELCOME TO DO:<\/em>\u00a0<em>You are welcome to share the below transcript (up to 500 words but not more) in media articles (e.g.,\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times<em>,\u00a0<\/em>LA Times<em>,\u00a0<\/em>The Guardian<em>), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Medium), and\/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to \u201cThe Tim Ferriss Show\u201d and link back to the tim.blog\/podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>WHAT IS NOT ALLOWED:<\/em>\u00a0<em>No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Tim Ferriss\u2019 name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another\u2019s products or services. For the sake of clarity, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Tim Ferriss from\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>the media room on tim.blog<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0or (obviously) license photos of Tim Ferriss from Getty Images, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Please enjoy this transcript of a special compilation episode devoted to a subject very close to my heart and currently consuming a large percentage of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}