Or open a blog post, read a few paragraphs, then get impatient and scroll down to see how long it'll be—and bail over to YouTube? (Or, worse, save it in your favorite read-it-never app?)

The best attribute of a physical book is its width. A thick book may be a slog, but you know that going in. No surprises. Also, you get bragging rights. People see you schlepping that brick around on the subway or leafing through it in a restaurant, and they're like, you've got a head on your shoulders there. You don't look like a pretentious poser at all with that dog-eared copy of Ulysses. (They think that, don't they?)

Readers pace themselves. Thanks to digital screens destroying our brains, none of us run marathons anymore, either. We're sprinters now. When the flow of words bogs down, we set the text aside and move on to another distraction. Crucially, that sense of reading velocity—the spectrum of "slog" to "breeze"—can be manipulated by the skillful writer. (Well, the skillful writer who cares to keep the reader reading pleasurably since not all do. Plenty of talented sadists out there want their books to be a painful struggle.)

By calibrating the lengths of sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, inserting space breaks or subheads to give the reader much-needed breathers, peppering the text with photos, diagrams, or illustrations, or ending chapters with cliffhangers—even in nonfiction—we can amp a text's "stickiness." Keep noses glued to the words for a little bit longer each session, without fundamentally altering the content itself.

Remember, people can always stop reading your article, newsletter, or book altogether. Longer stretches equates to fewer stretches until the final page. Do you want them to finish or not?

Getting pacing right is a crucial part of the revision process. Reading through your stuff repeatedly, you start paying attention to your own sense of "this bit's been going for a while now, hasn't it?" Then, you slice and dice until the feeling goes away. The goal here is readers wanting to turn the page upside-down and shake out a few extra words, like bonus French fries at the bottom of the bag.

Writing or editing, stick to the same format across all projects. Even though the reader of a book I write sees a very different page—in terms of page size, margins, typeface, justification, etc.—I've observed the translation between 8 1/2" x 11" Word doc and 6" x 9" hardcover enough times in my career to distinguish between dense, sloggish manuscript and breezy, magnetic manuscript. All it takes is a glance at the screen.

This is why I avoid writing in trendy apps that erase page breaks—"pageless" mode in Google Docs, for example—even when I'm writing for an online medium with no page breaks at all.

Wherever you write and wherever your writing gets read, pace with pages. Stick to the same formatting choices while you work, and pay attention to the translation between input and output, whether you're drafting in WordPress for articles that appear on your blog or drafting hardcover book manuscripts in Google Docs. Teach your eyes to recognize writing that's tough to read. Then, do your readers a favor and fix it. Unless you're a sadist.

What could satisfy more oddly than a festering plug of condensed sediment suddenly coming loose with the vigorous release of clear water? Ahhh. I could—and sometimes do—watch videos like this all day.

Blocks are everywhere. Reading queues, for example. I've been working my way through Inferno out of a sense of obligation. ("What? You still haven't read..." Having grown up in a non-literary household, I do a lot of catch-up "canon" reading, even though I haven't encountered someone who would actually confront me about my gaps since moving to the suburbs. No offense to suburban people.)

This is a classic book block. Whenever I sit down to read, I hesitate to pick up the Dante. Even after pushing through the resistance, I rarely make it more than a canto before putting the book down and moving on to other, more enjoyable pursuits. Meanwhile, the many more appealing books in my reading queue go untouched, trapped behind the medieval sediment. While I can and sometimes do pick up the next volume in line after having checked the Dante box, the toll of reading what I don't want to read tends to sap whatever motivation I felt to read in the first place.

In contrast, when I got around to Robert B. Parker—catch-up reading in its own way—I tore through all 51 Spenser novels in a month. The reading equivalent of this. The same dynamics are at play in my film queue, where some genres and filmmakers pull me through effortlessly, and some gunk up the works.

Do you have any gunk in your queues? If so, maybe give yourself a break and clear out the "shoulds." Last week, I moved Miles Davis's autobiography ahead of Dante, and my daily page count skyrocketed.

Our writing is blocked even more easily than our reading. When we approach the craft with an eye toward what we "should" be writing instead of what we want to write, we find ourselves avoiding the keyboard.

Look, if you must write the thing for your job, do it first. Blocks are tough. Pushing through them requires a reservoir of mental energy, one that no amount of caffeine can supply. Use the day's best hour.

If you don't actually have to write the thing, on the other hand, you can diagnose the resistance. For example, if you're avoiding your historical novel, maybe a part of you knows you haven't done the necessary research first. If you find yourself stopping every other sentence to google "popular men's shirt brand, 1800s," get your raw material in order.

In most cases, however, I've found that fighting this resistance isn't worth the effort. If there's something else you'd prefer to work on, go write that. Stop trying to be Dante and release your inner Robert B. Parker. We only get better at writing by writing, so anything that blocks the flow of words represents an existential threat to your craft. Clear it out.

"These disc jockeys," Brooks explained in a recent interview, "they're the same all over the world. They have this imagination that the world is listening. This guy had a map of the United States behind him, and there were these circles in different colors. So from California to Chicago was a blue circle. From California to Nevada was an orange circle. From California to Sacramento was a red circle."

"That's our reach," the DJ told Brooks. "On the weekend, we go to Chicago as easily as here. It travels. In the daytime, we go to Las Vegas. But 24/7, we go through California. If you were up in Sacramento, you'd listen as easily as you would here. So the potential audience at any time at this station is 150 to 170 million people."

"Wow!"

"Anyway, let me finish this up then we'll sit down and talk. Make yourself at home." There's no one else at the station that late, so Brooks wanders around until he finds himself in the transmitter room. Out of curiosity, he peeks into one of the odd-looking cabinets.

"To this day, I never heard that exact electronic noise of an entire transmitter shutting down," Brooks recalled. "Every needle went to zero." Suddenly off the air, the DJ burst out of the booth to find out what had happened. As it turned out, getting back on the air wasn't "as easy as closing the cabinet."

"We sat there for an hour, and nobody called," Brooks said. "The phone didn't ring once. And he's in front of a coverage map of 180 million people." Young Albert Brooks didn't get the gig but learned a valuable lesson in reach.

I was forcefully reminded of this anecdote after reading this article about changes to the way Apple reports podcasting metrics. By turning off automatic downloads for people who haven’t listened to a given show in a while, Apple revealed an embarrassing truth: Many of the world's most popular podcasts were operating with a level of delusion approaching that of the Long Beach DJ.

Since there was no reliable to track listens in the early days of podcasting, downloads became the preferred measure of reach. Since podcast-listening software downloads every episode automatically by default, however, all the numbers really say is that a person hit subscribe at some point in the past. (Possibly the distant past.) Thanks to the change, it's clear that vast numbers of people were subscribed to podcasts that they hadn't listened to in months, if not years.

If a podcast downloads in the forest and no one is around to hear it, etc.

Reach is magical when you have it. Back in college, I did radio with a friend. The students all had Napster by then, but the station remained popular with townies, as well as inmates at the local prison. How do I know people actually listened? It's four in the morning. My friend and I, bleary-eyed, ramble for about sixty seconds between songs. Just as we put the needle down on the next record, the station phone rang.

"PLAY SOMETHING!"

They were listening! They weren't happy, but they were there. It felt incredible.

Reach is the central puzzle of creative work in these days of fragmented attention. It remains stubbornly hard to measure. Plenty of people buy books they never read or read advice without taking action on it. Yet plenty of authors compare-and-despair based on highly suspect sales figures that only suggest true reach. Smoke and mirrors! People read stuff and listen to plenty of stuff, but clearly, a lot of fuss is made over acres of trees falling in an empty forest.

Why bother with comparisons? Look at your own reach. Are actual people receiving your wavelength? How do you know, and what can you do to find out who they are, what they're enjoying, and what else they'd like to see from you? How do you connect?

Don't delude yourself with numbers that mask the truth to bolster your ego (or ad revenue). There's nothing more gratifying for me than learning that a single person got something useful out of one of these newsletters or enjoyed one of the books I had a hand in making. Forget the shadow metrics and focus on living, breathing people.

Team roles are amorphous. They depend on the art form, the genre, and the temperament of the originator—which is all any of us end up being. Originator, not Creator. An old colleague who reads a lot in your genre might be amazing at working out plot inconsistencies and helping weed out clichés. The presence of an old friend might establish the safe and supportive space you need to spitball ideas. And sure, you can seek out professional help with anything from historical research to copy-editing to just keeping your files organized.

If you're struggling with your writing, step back for a minute and look at the team you've assembled. Do you have the right people in the right positions? Seek help wherever you can get it.

In many cases, an author's spouse plays a role, as Véra Nabokov did with her husband, Vladimir Nabokov. Without Véra + Vlad, there would be no Speak, Memory, or Lolita. As Vlad's editor, translator, editor, and inspiration, Véra mattered to the final product. Whether her contribution was less, as, or more important than her husband's contribution may be relevant to students of Nabokov's work, but it's beside the point here, which is this: If you don't find a creative team and leverage the heck out of it, you're striking sparks with flint alone.

In part, amateurs shy away from the idea of collaborating with others, especially those with more experience in key areas, because of this false notion that pros do it alone. In my experience, some pros invest effort in disguising or minimizing the efforts of collaborators, and others cheerfully share credit. But they all have teams, and whether those teams are visible or not doesn't affect the audience's reception either way. However, the creators who insist we pay no attention to the wizard behind the curtain do a disservice to aspiring creators by implying that anything as complex and challenging as a great book, album, film, or work of visual art could ever be a purely solo endeavor.

(If you're already thinking of a great "solo" work as an exception to this, check its Wikipedia entry or iMDb page before you email me.)

The anxiety we experience around keeping Who Made This clear damages not only the creative process but also the audience. For example, the ludicrous "auteur" theory of filmmaking—a concept only a lazy critic could love—leads viewers to pin credit for something they enjoyed on one among many significant collaborators. This denigrates the contributions of the team and makes it more difficult to surface other worthy films.

George Lucas isn't the recipe for The Empire Strikes Back. You get Empire by mixing Lucas with screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and producer Gary Kurtz (and others, of course). Subtract Kurtz's contributions on the third film—after he got tired of Lucas's prioritization of merchandise over movies—and it doesn't taste the same. Instead of Empire, you get Return of the Jedi. Instead of "No, I am your father," you get, "Yub Nub."

Giving all the credit to a single creator this way gaslights the audience, never a good idea: "I know something isn't right about this, but it's the same person. What happened to them?" Don't fool yourself. The greater your creative ambitions—and regardless of what you're making—the more you will benefit from a well-picked team of talented collaborators. Let each contributor play to their strengths, and watch that shack become a skyscraper. Sort out credit and bylines when you're finished. First, create something worth taking credit for.

As human beings, we're biased to assume everyone thinks the same way. Our brains tell us that the people around us share the same desires and ambitions to the same general degree. Not the case, says science! Some people want completely different things. Meanwhile, other people want the same things, but more, or not as much.

I assumed the other kids cared about winning the scavenger hunt as much as I did. They did not. Not even close. They were just bored. They would have thought I was weird if they could see inside my head and understand just how much I cared about winning no matter what.

Jerry Seinfeld tells a story about members of an orchestra stranded by a blizzard on their way to a big performance. Trudging through the snow in their tuxedos to find help, they peek inside the window of a house along the road and see a big, happy family snuggling by the fire and enjoying hot chocolate. The oboist, cold and miserable, turns to the conductor: "Suckers."

The fact is, you never really know. People play things close to the vest. Someone acts casual about their career while gunning for the big promotion. Someone else plants themselves at the coffee shop at dawn seven days a week but writes their novel with complete indifference to the idea of being published.

Whatever ambition you have for your work, pay no attention to the appearance of competition—or its seeming absence. Keep your nose to your own grindstone. You might be outmatched, but entering the match is the only way you'll ever find out.

The staff rounded us up in an activities room, maybe thirty tweens and teens, and gave us a list of objects to gather from around the hotel: napkins, matchbooks, letterhead. None of us knew each other because we were only there for a week's vacation at most, but once assembled into small groups, we quickly bonded around our hatred of the other groups. (In other words, we replicated the 1950s Robbers Cave experiment.)

We would win this thing, damn it! By moving faster and thinking smarter, we'd crush those losers, returning victorious with every item before the night was through. To this day, I can still remember how vitally important this goal felt. We had to win! Why? Because all the other kids were saying the same thing: talking trash and displaying enormous self-confidence. I didn't feel confident—I barely knew my way around the hotel, and the list had way too many things on it. But they were confident, so I had no choice but to go all out.

I'm forty-five—that night was peak motivation. I've never felt the same drive to win since. So we moved fast and stayed on point. As the hours passed, we knocked one item after another off our bucket list. (We had a bucket.) Every time we passed another group in the hallway, intent on its own quest, I felt a pang. "You're going down!" Watching the other teams move with purpose, I felt even more intimidated, as though everyone knew a secret I didn't.

Near the end of the evening, I couldn't help but notice that the hallways had cleared. A thought occurred to me: Had another team already completed the hunt? Worse, were all the other teams done for the night? My mind ran with this nightmare scenario: Not only had all the other teams already finished playing, but the staff members had forgotten we were still there and returned to their rooms. How embarrassing.

Regardless, we stuck with it. What choice did we have after all the boasting we'd done? Honor demanded we finish the job. So we did. At around eleven p.m., we limped back into the activities room, dragging our heavy bucket. We found a bored staff member sitting at a table, legs up, reading a paperback book. He lit up as we presented our haul for inspection.

"Nice work, guys!" he said. "You actually found everything on the list." He seemed surprised as he handed out gift certificates.

"Where is everybody?"

"The other teams were done like an hour ago."

"So they won?"

"Well, we gave them their certificates, but none of them found everything like you did. They just stopped playing."

This formative experience cast a light on every subsequent competitive situation. In high school, for example, everyone I knew acted like we had no chance of getting into a good college. All we heard about was how so many kids were applying, just this vast wave of kids across the country applying, and they were all amazing and talented with incredible grades, extracurriculars, SAT scores, and school legacies. What chance did any of us have? My guidance counselor told me to pick a city college as my "reach" and work my way down from there. I ignored her, applied to top schools, and got into most of them.

It's easy for others to psych you out, but easier to do the job yourself. Advice on publishing success emphasizes the scale of the competition—this many proposals on every editor's desk, that many books being published every year—as though the size of the entry pool matters. It doesn't. Nearly everyone gives up or does a terrible job at pretty much everything. This happens less because of talent than the crippling, often buried, belief that their book will be lost in the shuffle. A little voice says: Why bother?

The true field of competition will always be small. It's a natural law of the universe, like gravity or thermodynamics. The real contenders, like my scavenger hunt team, are the handful of lunatics who successfully delude themselves into thinking they might win. Not many people can do that! But you should try. Once you believe victory is within reach, you bring it closer.

In The Inner Game, W. Timothy Gallwey, a tennis pro, distinguishes between Self 1 and Self 2.

Self 1 is you: the conscious entity who observes your performance, judges it according to some standard, and attempts to correct it, i.e., "No, I'm not supposed to hold the racket like that. The book said..."

Self 2 is the you who actually performs: swings the racket, blows through the saxophone, writes this week's newsletter. This means Self 2 includes your body, of course, but it also encompasses the unconscious part of the brain that controls the body (and does pretty much everything when we're in a flow state, including write.)

Self 1 and Self 2 operate in very different ways and speak different languages. Since Self 2 doesn't really understand Self 1's instructions—"Raise that racket higher next time!"—all that self-judgment only gets in its way. Self 2 learns by doing and observing the results in a state of flow. We fail to improve—at tennis, writing, or any other skill—when we allow Self 1 to interrupt Self 2's natural learning process.

To win the inner game, Gallwey argues, Self 1 must get out of the way completely. Instead of judging and correcting Self 2, it must relax and allow this non-verbal, unconscious entity to figure things out for itself:

[This] doesn’t mean positive thinking—for example, expecting that you are going to hit an ace on every serve. Trusting your body in tennis means letting your body hit the ball. The key word is let. You trust in the competence of your body and its brain, and you let it swing the racket. Self 1 stays out of it. But though this is very simple, it does not mean that it is easy.

I've suggested similar things here, but I like Gallwey's simple distinction between Self 1 and Self 2. Self 2 does the writing. Self 1 gets in the way—if you let it. One way to guarantee interference by Self 1 is to read book after book about writing. All those tips, techniques, and systems we collect are profoundly unhelpful when we sit down to write. Sure, some techniques can aid the revision process, but writing advice combined with blank pages generates absolute misery. According to Gallwey's model, writer's block is the result of Self 1 telling Self 2 how to write.

As I've quoted before, screenwriter David Milch always told his writing students that "any time spent thinking about writing is wasted except when one is in a room writing." In other words, Self 1 must leave Self 2 free to work for as long as possible before stepping in. Here's Gallwey again:

In some ways the relationship between Self 1 and Self 2 is analogous to the relationship between parent and child. Some parents have a hard time letting their children do something when they believe that they themselves know better how it should be done. But the trusting and loving parent lets the child perform his own actions, even to the extent of making mistakes, because he trusts the child to learn from them.

Saying this is easy enough. Letting go of control and trusting Self 2 to do the writing is harder. In my experience, anyway. To do it, I remind myself that Self 1 is a lousy writer. When I'm deliberate and considered in my writing—when Self 1 tries to cobble words together—quality goes away. Self 2 may be inscrutable and unpredictable. It still delivers the best material. So I trust it. I have no other option.

I'm guilty of this myself. In college, a friend and I wrote a Seinfeld script. We put a lot of work into writing it but not an ounce into figuring out how one gets a television script considered. We didn't even know that we'd need representation. Naturally, our masterpiece was rejected without even being read—along with the cigar bribe we'd stuffed into the envelope.

(Don't feel bad for us. We got off easy. Without our contribution, Larry and Jerry were forced to go with that jail finale.)

I've written before about how the blacksmithing reality show Forged in Fire is an excellent learning metaphor for the writing process. What works for those blacksmiths will probably work for you and the book you hope to "forge."

Forged teaches us the importance of parameters. One of the most common mistakes on the show is the failure to meet them. In every other episode, an experienced blacksmith will produce an objectively superior knife...only to be disqualified because it's half an inch too long. Or it doesn't have the right serration along its edge. Minor, fiddly details, sure, but the parameters are explained at the top of every show, and each blacksmith has a Sharpie to write them down. The other smith's "knife" might be little more than a blackened lump of steel, but if they remembered how to use a ruler, they move to round two.

First, meet parameters. This is the easiest win I'll ever hand you. "But my thing is so good it won't matter!" No, it isn't. Even if it were, the gatekeepers will never know. There are too many projects to consider—it's simply unmanageable not to filter out the stuff that doesn't meet arbitrary specifications. If you expect their time and attention, respect it by following their instructions.

Of course, there's more to meeting parameters than using the right font or submitting in the right category. Every genre has its unwritten rules. Learn them well, especially if you think you're talented enough to break them. I can't tell you how many people I've met who want to write business books without ever having read one. Genre conventions are parameters, too, and the Picassos who successfully defy them only do so successfully because they mastered them a long time ago.

p.s. Dave Crenshaw and I chatted on his podcast recently. Take a listen:

‎The Dave Crenshaw Success Project: The Book Whisperer, David Moldawer on Apple Podcasts

‎Show The Dave Crenshaw Success Project, Ep The Book Whisperer, David Moldawer - Sep 27, 2023

Apple Podcasts

As a book editor/cultural gatekeeper, I acquired many books, and the truth is I never knew which ones would work until after the fact. Success surprised me every time. "It hit the list? Huh."

If I'd tied my ego and self-worth to acquisitions, I'd have been mentally and emotionally crushed on a monthly basis. But I didn't try to pick stocks. As William Goldman said, nobody knows anything. I got stuff made and put it out there, not because that was my best option but because there was no other option.

If you think there is, you're kidding yourself. You know how people cheer for their pick at a horse race? It doesn't make the horse go any faster, does it? Don't waste your energy getting attached to outcomes or trying to pick winners from among your efforts. If you want to make it, make it, and move on. If you make something, it might succeed. If not, it definitely won't. It isn't rocket science.

Steve Keene paints a lot. At a pace of "eight hours a day painting, up to 120 canvases at a time, 52 weeks a year," Keene has made and sold well over a quarter of a million of his distinctively garish, plywood-panel paintings. They go for about ten bucks a pop. (Good luck buying one, though—his site has said he's "swamped" for a while now!)

“[Keene] doesn’t want to even think about, like, is somebody going to think one is good and one is bad,” his wife told an interviewer, “which is why he makes so many.”

You might hold up the famously selective Daniel Day-Lewis, who has acted in only six (world-class) movies over the last two decades, as the perfect contrast. Yet Keene and Day-Lewis both make stuff at a relentless pace. Different products, very different timelines, but I bet neither gives a second glance to anything they make once they've made it.

Don't mistake either approach for perfectionism. Ultimately, that's simply an unwillingness to move forward until success is guaranteed. Perfectionism is the only way to really fail. As the princess said, let it go.

Daniel Day-Lewis's oeuvre is qualitatively unimpeachable. Keene? In the eyes of some, he does great work. What else matters? Even at ten bucks a pop, the system works for the guy. He can keep the lights on, and he's even secured cultural relevance. His first catalog came out last year:

In essays and commentary by Shepard Fairey, the downtown gallerist Leo Fitzpatrick, the artist Ryan McGinness and the musician Chan Marshall (Cat Power), it makes the case for Keene as a cultural signifier, a subversive success — an artist who, though he has shown in galleries, art fairs and museums, still sells (and packages, and ships, via UPS) his work entirely himself, prizing accessibility above all.

What else do you want? Forget great. Optimizing for quality is unhelpful and counterproductive. Optimize for productivity. Optimize for whatever gets stuff done and out the door, regardless of the consequences. Don't spend another minute worrying about great, whatever that means.

Yes, I shouldn't have done it. Even in the moment, I knew I shouldn't do it. Trust a kid with my pen? But I did it. I handed it over. And in about two seconds the girl had broken my whole portable writing setup. That was it. She didn't even apologize.

No, I didn't lose an amazing, breakthrough idea while I was at the table. But maybe I would have had one...if I'd had something to write it down. Without a pen, I'm just not tapped in.

According to this 1995 profile in The New Yorker, Stevie Wonder has always prioritized his creative setup. His is a bit more elaborate than a pen and pocket briefcase. To capture new song ideas the instant they occur to him, Wonder uses "a synthesizer that hooks up to a computerized sequencer capable of making and playing back detailed multitrack recordings." (At least, he did in 1995.) Wherever Stevie goes, so does this gear:

On tour, for instance, an assistant will rig up this hardware in Wonder’s hotel room (the job takes about ten minutes); then, at the appropriate time, the assistant will pack it up, transport it to Wonder’s dressing room, and set it up there; and at the end of the evening he will take it down again and put it back up in the hotel room.

Maybe you don't have that many ideas during the day, but if you don't have a trusted system for capturing every idea the moment it arrives, part of you knows not to bother. Wonder prioritizes his setup "so that inspiration, which cannot be relied upon to call during office hours alone, can be seized ... 'when the heavens send.'"

Set it up.

p.s. Jay Clouse had me on his podcast, Creator Science. We had a fun chat about who should write a book, when they should write it, and why. Take a listen.

Professional chefs understand the importance of prep, of thinking ahead. They get their tools clean and sharp. They organize their workstations. They bring the steak to temp, chop the necessary vegetables, and thaw anything frozen before the recipe "suddenly" calls for them. When they start cooking, creative flow takes care of itself. (To see what happens when cooks don't prepare, watch The Bear.)

Writers tend to be less diligent. Is it because they see themselves as "artists"? I'm not sure—people describe chefs as artists all the time. Chefs still prepare. I suspect part of the problem with writers is a healthy instinct against overpreparation. No one wants to be the person who spends years researching a book and never actually writes it. Martin Sherwin compiled 50,000 pages of research for his Oppenheimer book before a co-writer helped him get something on paper. American Prometheus was a great book, but it shouldn't have taken 25 years to write.

So I get the instinct to just plunge ahead. Except don't. You won't become a Sherwin by spending a morning planning out your writing process and getting your desk in order. Come on, dude.

For instance, how will you secure your data? I've been writing on computers since my dad brought home an Apple II+. I quickly learned that backups were a must. Losing a file a couple of times would drive the lesson home. My dad, who'd been working on mainframes and mini computers for years, would get mad if I left a floppy disk flat on a desk. "Store it vertically in the box," he'd say. "Fewer cosmic rays." Sounds crazy, but that's actually a thing. Cosmic rays knock bits of data out of alignment all the time. Today's computers can maintain data integrity, but in the early days of computing, files would get corrupted this way.

In high school, other kids would lose hours of homework to a crash or power outage. I thanked my headstart for good backup habits, but as we got older, people kept losing essays, papers, and manuscripts, first in college, then at the office. Next week, I'm turning forty-five, personal computers have been around for about forty of those years, and clients still manage to lose their only copy of a manuscript draft.

Time Machine. Dropbox. Backblaze. Make a plan. Keep it simple, but get it done. And backups are just a microcosm. Conduct your competitive research so you understand where your book fits into the larger constellation of that subject. Assemble an outline so you can direct your research efforts proportionately. Map out your word count plan using a spreadsheet or dedicated tool so you don't find yourself halfway to your deadline with a quarter of your manuscript.

Going pro also requires a shift in financial mindset. Book publishers operate at their own pace. Publishing people read long, boring books for a living, so maybe it's a cultural thing. Regardless, a book deal is a beautiful thing, but don't count those eggs until you've become chickens and those chickens are busy filling their 401Ks. A run-of-the-mill contract can take months to finalize. Once it's signed, publishers don't rush the check out, either. (No offense, publishers.)

As an editorial assistant, I fielded more than a few panicked calls from authors who had naively pinned their financial solvency on an expected book payment. This is, in a word, dumb. Longevity in any freelance or contract work depends on a healthy spending reserve, but this is doubly true of writing. Setting something aside makes it possible to weather the inevitable gaps and keep on writing. Don't wait until you need those onions to start chopping.

"If only I could get my foot in the door." That's what we tell ourselves. Well, Apatow had his foot firmly in the door at Saturday Night Live. Now what? Wiggle it in further, of course! During those brutal Tuesday sketch-writing all-nighters, Apatow would call in from Los Angeles and punch up sketches for Sandler and other cast-member friends like Rob Schneider. At one point, Apatow convinced Sandler to slip an original sketch onto the read-through pile. That rogue Apatow sketch ended up on the show, unbeknownst to anyone. That success convinced Apatow he could cut it. It was only a matter of time.

Then, Sandler called, but not for the reason Apatow expected: "I had your packet," Sandler told him, "and [SNL writer Jim Downey], after months, was holding your packet and talking to me and [Rob] Schneider, and he was asking about [you], and I was telling him he should hire you, and Schneider said, 'I don't think he's ready.'"

Et tu, Schneider?

When we don't get the writing gig, or our book proposal gets rejected, it's hard not to dwell on nightmare scenarios: some random person at the table capriciously knocks us out of contention. Sheer, arbitrary malice. The cut of our jib. What did I do? What did I say? Usually, we're letting our paranoia run wild when we do this. Usually, we don't understand how the sausage gets made. The rejection would make perfect sense...if only we had more context. In this case, however, the nightmare played out as imagined. Apatow had what it took, and Schneider capriciously blocked his shot, whether due to jealousy, resentment, or fear.

"At the time, it was very annoying," Apatow said in a recent interview. Lucky for us, he got over his frustration. Had he let bitterness over missing a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity like writing for SNL derail his career, Apatow would certainly be less sanguine about Schneider's betrayal. Instead, he stayed the course, seeking out alternate paths.

"I don't think he's ready." Today, Apatow says, "almost every good thing that's happened in my life is the result of those words." If he'd gone to SNL, Apatow would never have connected with Ben Stiller. Without Stiller, he would never have helped develop The Ben Stiller Show. Without The Ben Stiller Show, he would never have won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series...beating the writers of Saturday Night Live. From there, no Freaks and Geeks, no 40-Year-Old Virgin, no Knocked Up... Apatow would never have met his wife or built his family, either.

"None of it would exist if I went in at that time," Apatow said.

Aspiring writers are distinguished by their extreme sensitivity to rejection. They see it as an indictment of their abilities and a sign that (a) the world has no taste or (b) they have no talent. Yet, successful writers encounter tons more rejection and failure than newbies ever do. So they must be framing it differently in their minds. On a long car ride with a college professor, I expressed frustration and jealousy over the success of an "undeserving" young writer—even though I'd yet to even begin trying to publish my own stuff. Rather than correct this childish attitude, my professor, a noted playwright, encouraged it: "Revenge is a great reason to write," she said with a smile. "That's what keeps me going."

"I was obliged to be industrious," Bach wrote. "Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well." Sure, Bach. Sure.

Of course talent is a thing. And yet...as both an acquiring editor and a collaborator, I've sat across the table from more than a few pre-successful people. In retrospect, the common theme to the ones who rose ain't talent. It's, I don't know, sticktoitiveness. Grit. Whatever you want to label it. The people who persist have no other option—they've convinced themselves somehow. The question in their minds isn't whether they'll succeed. Just how, when, under what circumstances. Plan A and Plan B are just opening moves.

Getting a book published successfully doesn't just take time. It takes ceaselessness. Unflappability. Because the process will try to flap the hell out of you. Writing a book—an exercise in frustration (if by exercise you mean running a marathon doing kettlebell swings)—is table stakes. Even when agents have your submission exclusively, many will sit on it for weeks, even months, before reviewing it, only to pass on it more often than not with a bloodless sentence or two. (Not every agent. Not the agents I prefer to deal with. But boy, it happens.)

If an agent passes on your book after all that bated breath, it takes a special degree of commitment to get up, dust yourself off, and hand it off to another. And another. And still another. Doing the same thing and expecting different results—isn't that our definition of insanity?

If so, to quote Michael Keaton, let's get nuts. You're going to do it all over again with book publishers.

Think adaptation. Crab-like creatures have evolved independently at least five different times in Earth's history. Why? The pincers, the beady stalk-eyes, those scrabbly little legs—on the sea floor, the formula just works.

Approaching a book rationally doesn't work. "Normal person" isn't the right shape for that environment. That's because the evolutionary pressure just isn't as intense in the real world. Enter this ocean, and you'll quickly be eaten alive. Success in the author ecosystem requires a metamorphosis. Luckily, humans can Darwinize themselves when necessary. I've seen it happen with the many normal people—journalists, academics, entrepreneurs, leaders—who deliberately evolved before my eyes into the sharp, angular form of a successful author.

"The structure of every organic being is related," Darwin wrote, "in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all other organic beings, with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys." The authors who manage to adapt do so by networking with other, more successful authors. They immerse themselves with other organic beings in competition for the same shrimp, prawns, and krill. Then, through vast effort, they adapt: Shell hardens. Pincers and eye-stalks emerge. By pub date, they're scrabbling successfully along the sea floor just like all their peers.

Apparently not: "I am definitely well into the not-giving-a-shit zone of my career," Metheny told an interviewer. If he's collected all the brass rings—which he has by any objective measure—why's he still strapping on the guitar?

Years ago, I read a book that said to lean into the discomfort of difficult tasks. The author, whom I won't call out here, claimed to do this even as he wrote. If someone mowed their lawn, he'd open the window wider to make concentrating even more difficult. Call it the Wim Hof approach to creativity. I've thought about that advice ever since.

Writing is still a struggle. I've always looked for ways to make it more efficient. That book made me question my whole approach. Perhaps if I made every aspect of writing more challenging on purpose, I'd rebuild my feeble, inadequate writing capacity. It might suck at first, but I'd come back better, stronger, faster.

In retrospect, it's a good thing I never had the heart to conduct this experiment. Because fifteen years later, grit guy has yet to write another book. Sure, maybe he didn't feel the need to publish anything, but I suspect returning to the grind just held no appeal.

What good are muscles if you hate the sport?

Creation is intrinsically difficult. To keep doing it, you've got to get to the point that you love it. Even when it sucks, which it often will. Watching ChatGPT effortlessly spit out paragraph after paragraph of pretty much anything you can imagine—my daughter had it tell a story about Rapunzel meeting the Terminator this morning and grandma was impressed—is a reminder that writing isn't, can't be, just be about outcomes. The process matters, perhaps more than any other aspect.

Of course you keep pushing yourself. Of course you try to get better. Metheny works incredibly hard. That said, he doesn't punish himself, because that would just make him less likely to return to the work: "As far as my own thing, I am extremely critical. But not in a bad or negative way. I just do my best to try to understand what exactly is between where my work is and where I would want or hope it to be. I would say it is less about being critical and more about being realistic." Metheny takes careful notes after every performance and reviews those notes regularly. He is always looking to improve. Ultimately, though, he seems to do it all with the goal of enjoying the process:

It is a lot more fun and satisfying for me now because I am many times more effective at representing what I hope to have come out of the ax or the pen or the band than I used to be. It has been immensely rewarding to know I can get to stuff with a much higher degree of precision—that what is coming out is so much closer to what I’d hoped for.

Skill makes creation more fluid and therefore more rewarding. Today, Metheny's favorite way to spend time is "in a room for ten or twelve hours a day ... working on music in whatever form it happens to take." It's important to note, however, that he wasn't born with this attitude because nobody is. Metheny cultivated a love of process. For example, he sticks to regular routines like sitting down to compose every single morning: "It is like fishing. You gotta go to the pond. You might go and not catch anything. But if you don’t go, you definitely won’t catch anything." (It's no coincidence that another creative "lifer," David Lynch, uses the same fishing analogy.) Rather than try to be more productive, Metheny tries to make work so enjoyable that productivity takes care of itself.

If you don't enjoy sitting in that boat regardless of the weather or whether the fish are biting today, it doesn't matter whether you're the world's best caster. Over time, you'll just stop going out on the water anyway.

I've wanted to discuss the Believer's interview with Michael Imperioli since the magazine came in the mail. However, they don't post the newest issue until well after physical copies arrive. In fact, I'm pretty sure people could stream Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania more quickly after it left theaters. (They didn't, but the point is they could.)

Fun Michael Imperioli tangent: In my first summer job as a Mac repairperson in the 90s, everyone in the shop called me Spider and told me, frequently, to go get my shine-box. Having no idea what they were talking about, I'd just laugh and go back to work. On my last day before school started, one of them finally realized I'd never seen Goodfellas and rushed out to grab the VHS cassette as a parting gift. It wasn't until that night I realized my co-workers didn't like me very much.

In any case, Imperioli, famous for the role of the hapless Spider and that of Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos, has cultivated a wide and varied creative career as an actor, novelist, screenwriter, and meditation teacher. Imperioli's interest in Buddhism comes through in his thoughts on creativity:

At the inception of a project—say, if you’re an artist, right? Once your consciousness gets tuned to whatever it is—an image, a story, a chord progression, a melody, and you’re working on it; you know, it might be a year, not all the time, but you’re working on it—once your consciousness gets tuned to that, anything that comes into your head related to that idea, you have to respect it.

This idea of being tuned in to an idea parallels what I'd previously shared about the plate of shrimp theory of the universe. That book you want to write becomes planted in the mind, humming like a tuning fork. Inevitably, other elements resonate with that guiding frequency. These are facts, phrases, images, or ideas you wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't already been tuned in.

Whatever you do, don't ignore these serendipitous resonances:

You may not use it, but you better write it down. Because at that point there’s no random thoughts. Your consciousness—your compass, if you will—is tuned to that. Whatever is coming is filtered through that. You can’t ignore any of it. That’s how I trust it.

If it comes up, write it down. Write everything down. Once you're tuned in to a big idea, your brain sifts every new experience for raw material. That's a good thing. Tune out the things you've tuned into, and it eventually stops. That exciting project no longer feels all that important. You can't even remember why you wanted to write it in the first place.

"Sometimes you just have to start," Imperioli said, "even if you just have one scene, one image, one moment. Just start playing with it. Sometimes that opens a box. That opens and then there’s another one."