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The best time to write about an idea is when it first strikes you.
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I want to find something that grips me that day because then the stakes are high.
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It's like I know if I don't write this today, I'm never going to write it. So, it's now or never.
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What's going to make me roar?
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That's what I want to get to.
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When you feel that way, you could stay up all night writing.
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And I think you're almost willing to because you know if you don't write it down now, the inspiration might leave you tomorrow.
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You know, Shan, one of the things that I find to be so interesting about you is that you're incredibly disciplined in your output and incredibly undisiplined in your schedule and your inputs. Yeah. Um, what can I say? It's quart to 11 now.
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So, it's a little bit early for me.
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No, normally I prefer to get up about 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon.
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You text me yesterday at 4:37 p. m. Hey, man. Sup? I just woke up. Yeah, sorry.
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I I probably missed a good day um a couple of days ago.
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Um but I think when you've got a thread to do every day, when that's the only thing you've got to do, I mean that's what I believe I wake up.
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The one thing that's certain in my life writing on Twitter is that I have to write a thread.
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And when when you've got one objective, one single objective, every other concern, consideration has to fade.
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That's not always a good thing.
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I mean, it means you miss dinners and meetings.
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It means it puts a strain on your personal life, your relationship, your friends, family, partner.
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Um, and the result is that as you said, you're not disciplined hour by hour, but you're disciplined day by day because the work gets done, right?
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You know, it's like um the way I feel is is is it's over if I don't get it done. I'm going to die. The game is up.
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It's time to shake hands, say had a good run, and go home.
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unless I get that that thread done.
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I mean, it probably sounds a little bit silly treating a thread um on Twitter with such importance.
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But but you know, you got to pick something.
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In my case, it happens to be threads.
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We'll see what that is in the future.
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We live in this culture of hyper optimization. Yeah.
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And you are hyper unoptimized.
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You're basically nocturnal.
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You smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and you do all of these things that no productivity guru would ever say if you do that, you will write well. But that's what you do. That's how you live.
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And you get the work done.
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And you just say, you know what?
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If I get the work done every day, literally nothing else matters.
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And you're, we'll talk about this throughout today's episode, but your heart and your mind are so connected to that goal of the work that everything else just kind of doesn't matter. Yeah.
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It's hard for me to really talk this because because it comes the way I think about the world.
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I was shocked when when I was, you know, I started meeting people online and talking about they want to know, oh, what's your writing routine?
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What do you mean what's my writing routine?
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I I don't have a routine.
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I just write and they say, well, you know, you write on Twitter.
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I say, you know, do you use Tweed Deck?
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Is is that's the thing, right? Yeah. Yeah.
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And then I I I ones are called.
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And I'm like, what do you mean? What are these websites?
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Oh, you know, um, you sort of I understand that you can sort of pre-write a thread and then schedule it using some external.
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I mean, all this was completely foreign to me and I was shocked by the idea that they would do that, you know, and they're like, "Oh, do do you plan ahead?
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Do do you sort of, you know, write seven threads and then your work is done for the week?"
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And and I was shocked by that.
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But then they're shocked when I say, "No, no, no.
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I I I have to write I write it every day.
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I I just I just open Twitter, you know, over my laptop, twitter.
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com, press upload tweet and and start writing.
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Um, so with all this, yeah, this productivity stuff, like I I don't want to knock anybody who says, you know, it's good to get up early to to to work out, you know, have a coffee 90 minutes after waking up, um, and drink a certain concoction of water and salt with with, I don't know, parsley in it or something.
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That's fair enough if it works for you.
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Um, I can't tell anybody not to do that.
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I'm sort of skeptical of the idea of of advice anyway when it comes to writing.
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I don't really like writing advice.
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I think to some extent you've got to you you've got to just kind of go at it and and see and find your own way there.
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But all that being said, what I will say is um if you want to write, I mean it's scr if you if you need to write, nothing will stop you.
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And no amount of productivity hacks will get you closer to being there.
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Yeah, if you wake up and there's something you have to write down, that extra, you know, uh, gym. I don't go to the gym. I don't know.
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That extra pull-up, that extra bench press, that extra, um, you know, app that helps you keep track of your sleep and your meditation and and and that extra note-taking method.
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That's not going to get you over the line to write what you need to write.
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Like, either you do it or you don't.
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And that's why I maybe tripped on the word want.
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Um, I don't know if I want to do this, but I I can't help it. I can't avoid it.
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There's a scene in Rocky 4 where Rocky is training for battle or for a fight, and there's Drago, and Drago has all the science, all the tools, all the fancy things. And Rocky has nothing.
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He's just a guy from the streets. Yeah.
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And Rocky just wants it so bad that he's going to get it done.
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And it doesn't matter what he has or doesn't have, what routine he's committed to or hasn't committed to.
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He just has the compulsion and the force of will and the discipline, the dedication to get it done. Yeah. Well, it's you.
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I mean, you know, we use word processors now or laptops.
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It's you and proverbally the paper and the pen.
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And for me to some extent, no there are caveats here, but to some extent it's like all this other stuff, all this all this productivity stuff is just getting in between you and the paper.
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It's almost like excuses.
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It's like if I just get my day right, if I just wake up the right time, if I just get my schedule right, if I just organize the whole of my life properly, then I'll write something good. But that's all noise.
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this this this this destruction and it's getting in the way of you and nothing in front of you which is a blank piece of paper waiting to to to to receive the ink.
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You even have a crappy laptop.
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It's it's not that it's not that crappy, but it's it's crappy by by comparison with what some people use.
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You know, I guess I'm a fairly low tech guy, but again, because it seems to me to be a distraction.
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I mean, it kind of touches on this thing.
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A lot a lot of people say, "I once ride, I just can't find the time. like I'm busy.
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But the point is every action expresses a priority.
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This is one in fact like every time you do something it's because you chose to do that thing rather than something else.
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And to say I don't have the time to write means you don't want to write because if you really wanted to if you really felt like you had to I think you would find the time there there's an hour there's a there's a half an hour in your day waiting for you to find it within yourself to actually sit down on your laptop and write.
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I mean, how how many how many minutes a day do we spend um of course on our phones?
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I mean, that's the obvious example. I mean, even cooking. All right.
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Why don't you write instead of eating tonight if you want to write that badly?
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And this maybe sounds a little bit extreme, but uh I can't think of it any other way.
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I've probably written every day of my life since I was 10 years old.
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I mean, I've missed some days, you know, when we used to go camping, whatever.
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Although, I would still usually take a notebook and scribble things some things down.
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Um, and at that point, when you've been doing it every day for 10 or 15 years, it becomes this unbreakable habit, what do you enjoy about it?
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Is it the writing of getting something out of your head and seeing the words on paper? Is it the refinement?
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Is it looking back at what you have written and saying, "Wow, I'm proud of that." What is it?
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It only very rarely do I look back at something I I wrote and think, "Well, that's pretty good. I'm I'm proud of that."
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I I sort of have this line I say to people, which is that my my aim is to write one good sentence every day.
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If I write one good sentence, it's been a good day.
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Um, but in terms of what do I enjoy about it, I I don't even know if I would use the word enjoyed.
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Um there are certain elements, oh, you know, you enjoy figuring something out.
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You enjoy, um, oh, I've put a few words there together quite nicely.
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I like the cadence of that paragraph.
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I I'm I'm happy with the way I've expressed these ideas, but enjoyment isn't the right enjoyment is is sort of too is an element of it, but the word doesn't have enough weight, you know?
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It's like, yeah, yeah, I I I don't want to compare myself too readily to an artist.
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I recognize that I'm only writing on Twitter the spar, but of course, Twitter to me is like my my work my work with the threads is sort of something that's happened on the side.
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It's sort of a coincidence.
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You know, I'd be writing even if I was didn't have a Twitter account.
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I've always been writing. It's I have to do this.
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It's I'm being pulled by by by by by something.
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And I think there's a certain childish joy in doing it.
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Like I think there has to be I mean there's that great thing about um Jovovic and um and Jeremy Gif he made this brilliant point where he's like it's almost unfair.
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Jovovich Novak Jovovic obviously he lost to Alcarez recently.
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But but let's say at least statistically the greatest men's tennis player of all time.
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He just loves hitting the tennis ball.
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Yeah, he does hitting the tennis ball.
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I mean that just seems unfair, right?
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But he compares that to Agassy.
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And Agassi was ranked number one.
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But Agassi in the beginning of his biography, he says, "I hate tennis."
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And his father basically made him play tennis and he basically grinded his way.
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But what I think is interesting is yes, he did well, but he also ended up having a a drug addiction.
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and basically shooting up meth after he became number one. Yeah.
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And basically had this huge fall.
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And I think it's what Jeremy says, it's one of the tragedies of the world that maybe it's just someone like Jookovic who just loves playing tennis and for him being aligned with, hey, I just love doing this.
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I feel compelled to do it.
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that that person ultimately wins more than the person who hates it and grits their teeth and shows up anyway. Yes, this is true.
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And then which is why I I suppose I have there's a certain I said almost childish delight in writing and that that's the enjoyment side.
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Like it's just great fun putting words on a page and seeing what happens and just throwing them together, throwing sentences like taking an idea.
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Okay, this is the part I enjoy about writing is the part when you're least constrained, when like something strikes me, you know, sort of the other day this um this idea struck me for a play um and and it's it's a little bit meta.
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It's a little bit ridiculous, but it was like what what if you had a play which was about a play about a play about a play about a film about a play but then this is all actually um in in somebody's mind as having a dream but that's actually all this is also in a book that a novelist is writing that is then in the mind of a sculptor trying to sculpt a statue and sort of infinitely receding and I started writing this play.
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I mean I'm never going to finish it.
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I I just thought it sounded great and I just sort of furiously type in you know the dialogue and and then the ideas and a few a few of the stage directions and that was delightful.
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Then I was just having fun like then I can think a few things more enjoyable than that when when when you're not worrying about why or what or who or when or how.
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Something strikes you and you go.
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Yeah, that's the fun of writing. It's funny.
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I think that one of the things that when I'm with right of passage students that we always have to get people to is the difference between what your heart wants you to write and what your mind thinks that you want to write. Oh yeah.
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What you want to write versus what you think that you should want to write.
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And I can't tell you how many people don't write, write poorly, can't build a writing habit because they're stuck doing what they're supposed to do instead of what's actually true to them.
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I mean, writer's block is a is a real thing.
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Think, you know, but the biggest cause of writer's block isn't actually writer's block.
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It's just that you're not writing what you're supposed to be writing, which is this scenario like I'm like a fan like David.
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Are you a soccer fan particularly or not? Not like you. Are you? No.
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But if I told you like, David, I want you to write me an essay about why Lionel Messi is better than Cristiano Ronaldo.
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You're just going to sit there and like Google some stuff and you're not going to write anything.
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But if you were to say, write a piece about Paul, I've been reading the book of Acts and then also yesterday I bought a biography of Paul.
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And so as long as I have the permission to bring that into my own personal experience, then it can sort of roar.
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And that's a word that I think a lot about like what's going to make me roar.
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You know, like when you're in a conversation, you're you're with someone at the bar and you're going around and there's not a lot of energy in the conversation, then all of a sudden somebody says something, everyone sits up and all of a sudden you people start chirping. People are into it. They're passionate.
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They're saying something from their core.
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That's what I want to get to.
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But there's something beastly and almost liony about that where it's ripping out of you and you're outside of your mind.
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And I feel like for me that's when the the best first drafts come because it's like my prefrontal cortex shuts off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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And this goes back to the productivity thing cuz when you're feeling like that, it doesn't matter what you've eaten or how much you've slept or or any of that crap.
14:12
When you're feeling that way, that out of the word beastly, like a beast, right?
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It's it's a very very um potent word when you feel that way.
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All of that stuff doesn't matter.
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And and and with that that that that thrust you you could stay up all night riding and I think you're almost willing to because you know if you don't write it down now the inspiration might leave you tomorrow.
14:40
Um so and which ses on on another point um which which is maybe tangential but but which comes to writing every day.
14:51
You mentioned that the non-discipline discipline thing is because I don't tend to plan what I'm writing.
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You know if if I have an idea I'll note it down which is one of the few pieces of advice which I think was pretty good though.
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I can't even remember where I saw it, but someone was like, "If you have an idea, make sure you write it down straight away because you think you'll remember it and you won't."
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And that was pretty good advice.
15:17
And so, I've got a list of things I want to write about, but but the the trouble with that advice is that the the biggest problem with it is that the best time I find to write about an idea is is when it first strikes you.
15:29
So the best time for you to write that thing is is today basically because you wait a month and you'll have forgotten why it was interesting to you.
15:36
So you know I have a list of it's just on a word documents.
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It's just a list of potential threads.
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Um but most I'll write like I'll have two or three ideas a day and not know them down but but I rarely consult it anymore because I look back and I think oh that's not really interesting to me right now.
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I can't remember why this was this was worth um potent potentially worth writing a thread about.
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And what I do is I wake up and I I want to find something that grips me that day because then the stakes are high.
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It's like I know if I don't write this today, I'm never going to write it. So So it's now or never.
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And you know, I don't know if that sounds artificial, but it certainly feels real to me.
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And I think with writing when you increase the stakes um can't say writing gets better. I hope it does.
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It certainly makes you more productive right if the stakes it's true in all walks of life.
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The lower the stakes the less you care.
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The higher the stakes the more you have to do.
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And we come back again have to must compulsion.
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Tell me about this idea of the daily practice.
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I think that there's a lot of people who would say the greats don't do it every day. Look at Bach. Look at Bach.
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And you've spoken about what Bach did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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And how that's inspired you.
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There were a couple of points there.
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First of all, on what on the greats, right?
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I mean, the first thing I'd say is the greats exist, but no two greats are the same.
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They all have different habits.
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Some of them, you know, I mean, James Joyce, I've not read much of his work, but there's there are famous stories about how he would write 14 15 words a day.
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Um, that's at least some apocryphal story, which I find hard to believe because his his books are pretty long.
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And then there are other writers who would just just write thousands of words a day.
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Bark what's wonderful about Bark is we all he's like the founder the dominating even more so than Mozart or or Beethoven as I understand.
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So Bark what did he do was he sort of you know spending months and weeks on end preparing his work deliberating being careful no he he he was in the thick of it so he was at the the the church of St.
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Thomas Leig, I think, and how he was employed there like he he he he was a chapel the Capel mist.
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It was his job to write a new piece of music every week to be performed in church and then to play it on the organ like you know like he's he's working full-time producing music every single week.
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every single week. um flip side of course is is Vagnner you know or Brahms you know took it took Brahms 24 years or something to write his first symphony took Vagnner over 20 years to write the ring cycle both of them of course are these immense successes which changed
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course of music history forever so so there's no there's no single way and I I guess that's that's pretty important as well as far as writing goes I have some friends who write incredibly slowly incredibly slowly I have one friend who writes poetry takes him weeks to write one line. It's
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It's good poetry, but I'm I'm not I'm not like that.
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Sometimes I wish I was like that.
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Sometimes I wish I could be the slow, meticulous, scrupulous sort of just slowly chiseling away.
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But for good or for bad, I'm just I prefer to bring actually No, I don't prefer I can't help but bring the hurricane to it and just write until I'm so tired.
19:03
There's something deep here. You have no choice.
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And I think that one of the biggest problems that writers have and it's indicative of I think one of the big problems in society is that people are not comfortable surrendering to their nature.
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Looking at themselves and saying this is who I am.
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This is who I actually am.
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And they're stuck being the person that their mind wants them to be rather than the person that they actually are.
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My bet is that if you were taking writing classes, you would not be sitting in the class saying, "Oh, I'm gonna go out for a smoke, spend some time drinking espresso, and just walking around, literally doing nothing."
19:43
I mean, I I've spent some time with you.
19:46
You just walk and you just sort of you just sort of strut and you just think and you're just totally lost in your mind and all of a sudden it just starts pouring out of you.
19:56
And that's just what I admire about you is the way that you have just said this is what my nature is and I'm going to be aligned with it and I'm not even going to judge that.
20:05
I'm just going to surrender to it. Yeah.
20:07
I I I think that's probably a fairly perceptive point and I suspect in the 21st century it's harder than ever to to have the time and the space to surrender to yourself.
20:20
I mean this is this is this is why I advocate for writing letters, handwritten letters.
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I don't do it all the time and I've done it in the past and um you know the world is better for instant communication I suppose on the whole but what we've lost is what it means to write a letter.
20:35
If I'm writing a letter to David I'm I'm sat in my room.
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I've got a sheet of paper and a pen.
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There's no possibility of an immediate response.
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I've got to tell him everything about how I am, what I'm doing or ask him how he is and explain myself.
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And suddenly you can't hide from yourself anymore.
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You can't hide from yourself when all these other distractions are gone.
20:54
And and I hope that makes sense and and that's why yeah I try and well I don't try is the wrong word but but but perhaps sometimes I do make sure that I have enough hours in the day to do nothing to do absolutely nothing.
21:08
And and what I mean by this is you know there's a lot of um sort of uh practiced doing nothing nowadays. Um, meditation yoga. This stuff is great.
21:21
You know, I've done a bit of yoga. I enjoy stretching. You're good.
21:25
Have some good downward facing dial. Yeah.
21:27
No, I'm I'm actually I'm a fairly flexible chap.
21:29
Um, but but I suppose it's the art of zoning out in some sense cuz people ask me, "Oh, where do you get your ideas from?"
21:36
Which I always find to be a very weird question because it's or or you know, how do you make these connections?
21:44
And and I and I I don't know, but I think it's because if if you read a load of stuff, just read and really really read and then spend five hours doing nothing, like literally nothing, as I've said, walking around on the streets, just just just looking at the floor, seeing what you see.
22:00
Um, your brain will do the work for you.
22:03
It's a remarkable machine we have here.
22:05
remarkable machine we have here. and and and the more you the more you use it like when you're using actively doom scrolling it can't do that thing where it ticks along and just figures things out in itself I mean this machine is so powerful we don't even understand a single thing about it basically I'd go a
22:19
step further you go a step further I think it's something outside of us I think it is something beyond far beyond the intellect whether you want to call it the hand of God whether you want to call it the universe I see creativity more and more as a pattern of listening rather than doing and as a sense of awareness and connection. Yeah. No, I love this idea. Something Yeah. No, I love this idea.
22:45
Something outside of you turn yourself into a conduit. Boom. Right.
22:50
Rather than you being sort of the the source, rather than you being the thing from which it flows, it's like if you use a tune in your ears and your mind and your eyes, things will just come to you and then you transmit that onto the onto the page.
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I had a moment yesterday, a friend asked me a question and we've been grappling with something on Monday.
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He texted me and said, "Hey, I think I have an answer."
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And I saw it and I was like, "No, that's not right. I think it's this."
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And then he goes, "Freaking love that. There we go."
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And it was one of those things where I had this huge epiphany about the relationship between people, fear, and God, and how all that plays together to create sanctification.
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And I'd just been wrestling with this on Monday.
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And by Thursday, it all came clear to me in one sentence, one idea.
23:42
And I did no work in order to discover that. How did that happen?
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How can I tap more into that?
23:47
some of the threads that I've written on Twitter that I've done the best um weren't ones that I they just started typing.
23:59
I just started typing and then it just sort of happened.
24:02
Um and then the the example I'll give is and we may touch on this from a different angle later on is um the danger of minimalist design.
24:12
you know the thread I I wrote it and it got half a million likes on Twitter.
24:20
The thread heard around the world. Yes.
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Which was and I had about you know 15,000 followers on Twitter at the time and that one really um boost gave me the uh you know the critical mass to take off.
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And you know looking back I would probably rewrite every word of it and my opinions have changed. I've learned more.
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But the point is it happened.
24:41
It took me about 5 minutes to write it probably and normally your thread could take me anywhere between 2 hours and 12 hours.
24:49
That one was just like this.
24:49
But that that that 5 minutes of writing was the result of probably 10 years of thinking and then reflecting my observations and then which is this point about being a conduit, right?
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And then this sudden I mean the hand of God what whatever one chooses to call it you observe and you listen and you think and you reflect eventually without doing any work without you actually it'll just come out of you.
25:18
You know you look at David Foster Wallace I live in Austin and at the University of Texas there are his archives and you can go and you can see that he wrote by hand.
25:29
So he would write and write and write and there's been things that have been said about writing by hand.
25:36
There's a special connection that you have to your writing all these sorts of things.
25:39
Well, one of the biggest things that I think you get in writing by hand that you don't get with writing on the computer is the delete key is too available on the computer.
25:50
And I've been wondering why people actually why I have more personality, more voice when I speak versus when I write.
26:03
And I think that the delete key hurts me that when I speak there is no delete key.
26:07
The words have left my mouth.
26:09
And that's how handwriting is.
26:10
But when I write, I can say, "Ah, I didn't like that.
26:12
I'm going to bring it back and rewrite it."
26:14
And there's a homogenization of keyboard writing that isn't true for handwriting. I love that.
26:20
that that that's I've not heard that before, but that's a fascinating idea.
26:23
I mean, that's that's sort of so there are two things I like about it.
26:28
First of all, I love these stories about how little bits of technology completely change a world in ways you don't expect just by having a backspace.
26:36
It just changes the way we think and the way we speak and talk and and you know, well, the way we ride and huge butterfly effect, but also, yeah, that's probably true if you're riding by hand.
26:49
You know, if you look at sort of drafts of novels from the past, you know, they're just all scrolled out, notes in the margins, lines all over the place, corrections, and it's certainly it's not just it's not it's a different type of writing. It's not just writing.
27:08
It's not like writing with two different kinds of pens like writing on a laptop versus running by hand are perhaps two different ways to write.
27:14
But the truth is when it comes to my stuff, I do I've always, you know, I was raised typing or at school we wrote by hand and um but I've I think typing appeals to me because of the speed at which you can do it, right?
27:26
Because you can write quicker by typing than you can by hand and I'm I'm a volume writer rather than precision.
27:34
I mean, I just said that and I always type by keyboard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
27:38
There is something that comes out in a handwritten letter that I think special.
27:42
I want to jump into your story. Sure.
27:46
In a little bit more than a year, you've gone from basically flipping burgers at McDonald's to a million and a half Twitter followers. Yeah.
27:54
This is certainly a long way from from McDonald's being in here.
27:58
Um there's a short story, there's a long story.
28:07
I I'll I'll give the short story first because and it's just one line.
28:15
The thing that changed is that I started writing online and of course I know with right of passage that's what you do and I I'm not merely saying this to sort of you know um um to to to blow smoke up your backside rather it I mean this was before I even met you.
28:31
So but it's true the thing I changed was I started writing online. That's the short story.
28:38
Um the slightly longer story is that so what are we now? It's 2024. No, it's 2023. Sorry 23.
28:44
So in 2022, let's rewind the clock 14 months.
28:49
April of 2022, I'm working at McDonald's.
28:57
Um the reason I'm working there is because I need money. I needed a job.
29:00
Uh if you need money, what do you do?
29:03
you you you apply for a job or you just do whatever you can. I needed to pay my rent. I know what I owed. All my friends money. I didn't have any money. Um so I needed a job.
29:14
I applied to Pizza Hut and Tesco and McDonald's and they all rejected me apart from McDonald's.
29:20
Um there's a there's I suppose you know people are like well Sheen what the hell you know why don't you just you know you have a law degree why don't you go and become a lawyer?
29:29
I think it's because I knew I I didn't want to commit to a career.
29:35
So, and I also just I didn't want to be a lawyer.
29:37
I don't want to get in the office and start, you know, drawing up contracts or all that. I want money.
29:43
I'll do some simple honest work. Working on McDonald's.
29:45
I've been I've been writing every day my whole life.
29:46
I've got about, you know, three or four unpublished novels which I've tried to get published in the past which no one wanted.
29:53
Um, I've got hundreds of thousands of words of just of all sorts on on my laptop.
30:01
Plays, poetry, drama, essays, articles, philosophical dialogues, whatever I was writing, journals.
30:05
I I used to keep a very detailed journal.
30:08
Um, and you know, my dream, let's say, had always been to be a writer.
30:15
Of course, I think I've since learned that if you write, then you're a writer.
30:19
Doesn't matter whether you're a published novelist or everyone you have a big audience.
30:22
If you write, then you're a writer.
30:24
But I wanted to be a published writer.
30:26
I think what had happened is that I got complacent.
30:28
I'd started to believe that eventually something would happen.
30:33
And so I'd started to to to believe that someday someone was going to knock on my door and say, "Hey, Sheen, um, we heard, you know, you're a diamond in the rough.
30:42
Why would why don't we give you, you know, £50,000 to run a book for like I didn't you know that's I didn't actually believe that but I'd become complacent in which I thought life would just hand me what I wanted.
30:55
So I I quit my job at McDonald's and I applied to film school because I love cinema.
31:02
Maybe one of my maybe my oldest passion is cinema.
31:04
Maybe I applied to film school.
31:06
I also applied to join the British army um which is something I'm also passionate.
31:14
People were quite shocked when I told them but it was a very serious um choice and well film school rejected me.
31:21
The army accepted me and then my friend, my very good friend Harry Dry, he was going to Tenneref on holiday for 2 weeks and he invited me.
31:30
He said, "Do you want to come?"
31:30
And I was like, "Well, I can't. I don't have any money."
31:36
Anyway, so that you know, my my um my mother bought me the plane tickets for my birthday so I could fly to Tennere and back.
31:44
and we were staying there for free because it was Harry's brother's friend's apartment.
31:50
So, it's like I quit my job and somehow the the world had conspired to give me a chance.
31:59
It was like, okay, quit your job and I here are two weeks um to change everything.
32:04
So, the first thing I did was I thought, okay, the priority was making money.
32:09
like I'm not going to sort of pretend that that that I really wanted to that I wanted to change a world or or I I didn't even think I was going to get an audience online.
32:17
I just wanted to make some money.
32:19
So, film school army also started writing I I read a few articles for this website called list verse. It's like top 10.
32:27
It's like top 10 most interesting tables or I don't know just just some crap like that.
32:32
They pay you $100 for an article.
32:35
I also like made accounts on Fiverr.
32:35
you know, five of the website and um Upwork.
32:41
I was like, "Oh, I'll edit your essays for you, whatever."
32:43
And then I also thought, "Okay, well, my friend said to me, a good way to make money is tutoring."
32:50
You know, I've got a friend who makes, you know, 50 quid an hour tutoring. That sounds great.
32:54
You know, I'd love to I like talking to people.
32:56
I like talking about stuff.
32:58
So, so I'm going to try and start tutoring.
33:00
I I I didn't want to tutor maths or English or anything. I have a law degree.
33:03
I'm going to try and tutor law.
33:05
So I post on about 150 Facebook groups being like, "Does anyone want law tutoring?"
33:10
Obviously, obviously no one says yes.
33:12
So I Okay, what can I do?
33:15
What can I do that's special?
33:16
I thought maybe I can tutor people.
33:20
You know, a lot of parents want their kids to be well-rounded.
33:22
A lot of adults want to be wellrounded.
33:24
So maybe I can tutor people about the things they don't teach in school.
33:29
A bit more art, architecture, history in a more general sense.
33:33
I thought this could be it. So I committed to it.
33:36
I made a website um and had a website offering tutoring um cultural tutoring.
33:44
And then my friend said, and I posted online about this as well in various forums and got no traffic.
33:53
My friend said, "Well, why don't you start a Twitter account?" This was Harry. This was Harry.
33:56
He he said, "Start a Twitter account to drive traffic to your tutoring business," as he kept calling it.
34:03
whereas I I I struggle to believe that that I'll ever run a business.
34:05
But anyway, I made a Twitter account and for the name of it, I chose the cultural tutor.
34:13
Um because that was literally what what I was doing.
34:17
I mean people ask me where the name comes from and it didn't come from a position of believing that I had this this knowledge to impart.
34:25
Well, I mean, I was literally offering cultural tutoring as uh in order to make a bit of money, call it the cultural tutor and start writing on Twitter.
34:35
And I kind of enjoyed it.
34:37
I enjoyed writing threads.
34:39
Um, and it became clear very very quickly that no one was interested in my tutoring, but people did kind of like what I was writing.
34:52
And I think by the time we left Tenneref, which is where we were, which is two weeks, I had a thousand followers on Twitter and I'd sacked off the tutoring.
35:02
I was like, I'm going to grow this Twitter platform.
35:04
Harry said, "Start a newsletter."
35:05
Um, and then maybe monetize the newsletter.
35:09
That's how you can make money.
35:10
I said, "Okay, I'm going to go for it."
35:11
The money is going to have to wait, but um, let's go for it.
35:15
Talk about some of the work that you did early on.
35:17
So, you would write a thread and then you would reach out to at least 20 different accounts. What would you say?
35:22
What was that early distribution process like for you? It was brutal.
35:26
It was um write a thread and actually in the early days I used to write like two or three threads a day. Is that right? Yeah.
35:31
Because it just the beauty of beginning something new is that there's just there's there's a simplicity to it and you don't second guess.
35:39
You don't think should or shouldn't I?
35:41
You just what feels right you do it.
35:42
So I would write three threads a day and you know Harry was like just do one.
35:45
I was like no I want to write three.
35:46
And then what I would do is the way I'd build up my first few hundred followers was literally I mean to begin with you just follow a bunch of people random people who follow accounts that and then hope for some followers back get your friends to follow you.
36:02
You've got 10 or 15 followers that way you'd start tweeting.
36:07
In the early days your threads maybe get one or two likes.
36:09
Um just keep the process going.
36:12
I was I was always trying to follow people online.
36:15
Like I would search for a for like a thread about something I'd written about as well that I' done quite well but from a different account and then then then follow that person and hope that they followed me back.
36:27
And then eventually you start to get three or four likes on a thread and then every time you upload a new one you I messaged everyone individually who had ever liked or retweeted any of my threads being like, "Hey, I've just done a new thread by the way.
36:39
You might like this as well."
36:42
um and so on and so forth.
36:42
And then I I messaged some bigger accounts, people with 2,000 followers, people with 5,000, 10,000, mainly just asking for advice.
36:52
And some of them very kindly followed me, retweeted, liked, but this is really grinding, grinding it out.
36:59
I I remember it was like one night I'd written this thread and got one on in the morning and I stayed up till 4:00.
37:06
I spent 3 hours just messaging people um doing a dog's body work.
37:08
and it's not glamorous, it's not fun.
37:11
But when the motivation was there cuz it was like I don't have any money. Like it's do or die. It's do or die.
37:17
Like if I want to go back to working at McDonald's, then I can give up.
37:19
But if I want to do something, if I want to make a bit of money, um make a living.
37:22
I mean that that was I suppose the main inspiration, the main motivation, the main motivator.
37:30
Who else throughout history has had this sort of motivation where they've needed to make money and have written something great because of it?
37:38
It's every writer or every artist who's ever lived, right?
37:40
The trouble with artists is that they're in some sense useless and they have to find a way to make money.
37:47
And if you want to make money, usually being an artist is not the right way to do it.
37:50
So there's a Thursday afternoon and I remember it distinctly because you started in May.
37:57
So, this would have been mid June 2022 and I'm on the phone with a guy on our team at Ride of Passage and you had just hit 100,000 followers and I saw that and I was in love with your work.
38:12
I was like, I have scrolled I mean in terms of how many miles my thumb has scrolled in my life, you know, I've scrolled hundreds of miles on Twitter more than that. Yeah.
38:22
And I said this is one of the best people I found.
38:25
and you had just hit 100,000 and to launch that you were gonna do a paid newsletter to finally make your money.
38:30
And I remember seeing this and saying that's a terrible idea.
38:37
That's terrible idea because you were growing so fast and I was worried that you were going to get so obsessed with the paid newsletter that you were going to constrain your growth.
38:44
And so I was sitting there, I was in my apartment and I was like, I don't know who this guy is. He's a statue account.
38:52
who knows what continent he lives on.
38:54
I need to get in touch with him so that I can tell him to not launch the subscription newsletter.
39:03
As fate would have it, Harry Dry, who you spoke about earlier, he responded to that Twitter thread with a photo of you and Tenneref.
39:11
It was an old film photo and it was It actually wasn't.
39:16
It was his crappy phone that sort of fuss.
39:20
So his photo the his phone photo was so bad that it looked like a film photo, right?
39:25
And it says, "Proud of you, brother." And I'm like, "Okay." So I WhatsApp Harry.
39:32
I'm like, "Who is this guy?
39:32
You need to put me in touch with him."
39:34
And we get on the phone and I was just going to basically fund you to just to just keep writing.
39:43
And I was like, I got to convince this guy to do it.
39:45
We started talking and and then you said, "Hey, you I'm interested."
39:49
It was funny because to your bread and salt point.
39:53
You said, "I can live on about £25,000 a year and I just need enough money to move out of my parents' place and get my own apartment."
40:03
And we ended up giving you a little bit more than that.
40:05
And then you were sort of off to the races. Yeah.
40:08
No, that that was um I mean I remember the week I was at home.
40:11
remember the week I was at home. I was with my mother and um yeah I just after 6 weeks I'd hit 100,000 followers so it was wonderfully quick I mean the the early days of any project always sort of take on this glow these hion days and it certainly looking back it felt like that
40:28
because everything is so simple and a race to 100,000 I was getting fit for the army you know running every day and and stuff and um hit 100,000 followers and to mark 100,000 launch a newsletter then I get the for or Harry tells me there's a guy who wants to speak to you. Um, and and what a moment I remember we
40:46
Um, and and what a moment I remember we spoke on the phone.
40:48
I went outside on the streets cuz I like to I can't sit still when I'm on the phone.
40:52
I have to walk around when I'm funny even for this podcast.
40:56
You were like, "Wait, I have to sit down for a few hours to record this."
40:58
You're like, "Can I walk around?" I was like, "No, no, no.
41:02
You got to sit in that chair.
41:04
I'm going to try and stay in the chair."
41:06
Um, and and what a moment.
41:06
I mean, in terms of what any writer wants, imagine imagine somebody saying to you, I'm going to pay you to write.
41:20
I'm not going to pay to write anything in particular.
41:21
I'm not going to ask you to do anything for me.
41:24
I'm just going to give you enough money to live on and all I ask is that you write every day.
41:27
So, that's what you gave to me.
41:29
And it it was um yeah, we're looking back one of the best days of my life because after 6 weeks of of of sort of killing myself to to to do this thing.
41:41
Um you know, writing a thread every day on Twitter, there are far harder things to do in the world than that.
41:47
Um and writing is what I love is what I can't help but doing.
41:51
So I'm very lucky in that regard.
41:52
But from a certain point of view, it's not easy um to do one every sing every single day.
41:56
no matter how you're feeling, how how ill you are, what you've got planned, whatever you want to do.
42:00
And then for that to to to happen that that moment when we spoke on the phone and you said, "Yeah, I'm going to pay you."
42:06
It's like doesn't get any it does not get any better than this.
42:10
So that was um you know, a stroke of luck. It's funny.
42:16
We've we've had a lot of conversations since we started and the only thing I've said is just Twitter thread every day, focus on email and don't do other things.
42:26
And you know, we're talking about a point of view and that has been my point of view.
42:31
My point of view has been if you can really grow this Twitter account to where you've grown it and have this newsletter of a couple hundred thousand people, you are just going to be set for whatever it is that you want to do for the foreseeable future.
42:47
And I think that one of the things that frankly a lot of the mistakes I've made in my career I really didn't want you to make and I became very distracted and I lost sight of the eight-ball and I got distracted by the glitz and all the different things that came and I think that you learn these lessons for a reason.
43:12
But some of my regrets which really sting me are losing track of my essence as a creative and I didn't want to watch you do that cuz I'm now facing some of the consequences of having of having lost that and just trying to get back into it and it's hard.
43:38
I I suspect it is quite it sounds quite scary to me that thought losing losing your essence as a creative as a writer.
43:48
Um, it was good advice you gave me to to and also you gave me the money, you gave me my bread and salt, you gave me you commissioned me in some sense.
43:58
You were my patrons still are of course and I and I think that as I say the proof is in the pudding and looking back it it's kind of worked out because if I'd continued with that paid newsletter then my attention would have been diverted.
44:13
I would have probably stopped writing a thread every day.
44:17
You talked about Instagram.
44:17
There were some really early people who reached out say, "Hey, let's do this." Exactly.
44:22
And I mean, what I always said to you is everyone's underestimating your worth who's reaching out to you. Yeah. Yes, you did. You told me that.
44:31
You told me that and that was very much appreciated.
44:33
But and I think there there is an important broader point here as well which comes to narrowing your focus, right?
44:40
It's doing one thing well.
44:44
It's being the best in the world at one thing.
44:46
Um, and I suppose, yeah, in a different there's a different world in which my head gets turned by by this offer.
44:54
Somebody wants to work with me. It happened.
44:55
People immediately were like, "Hey, do you want to do X, Y, and Zed?
44:58
Do you want to start this YouTube account with me?
45:00
Do you want to Good offers."
45:02
And I' probably had I'd probably remember that you sent me that short video.
45:04
You said, "Hey, what do you think?"
45:06
I was at the I was at Union Station in Washington DC watching this video and I think I said to you, "It's fine, but I think it's a distraction." Yeah, precisely.
45:16
And there's there's there's another world in which my head gets turned and I'm doing this other thing and look, maybe I'm having a good time, but I probably don't have x number of followers on Twitter that I do now.
45:28
Um, and that's the value of doing one thing and doing it well.
45:31
And I suppose as a writer in terms of whatever rising advice I I I might give is is is I think you got to be a finisher as well. It was funny.
45:45
We were together and someone must have recommended something reset. Hey, read this essay.
45:54
great essay from 10, 15 years ago and you were just like, "Okay, but I really try not to read anything written in the last 50 years." Yeah. Why?
46:10
Um, there's a few reasons for it.
46:10
Um, one of them, I mean, I'll I'll just go straight down the bar with the simplest the simplest reason of all.
46:20
The simplest reason not to read something published in the last 50 years is because that's what everyone else is reading.
46:25
The only books that people read that most people read are books published in the last not even in the last six years in the last the last two years, right?
46:32
You know I I'm not disparaging these authors.
46:36
They've done incredibly well for themselves and and and you know I have no doubt their books are filled with marvels and wonderful wonderful things.
46:44
But the rest of the world is reading them.
46:47
And and it's a simple fact of life that if you consume, if you read what everyone else is reading, then the likelihood that you will write what they are writing and and worst of all think what they are thinking is, let's say, increased.
47:05
It's not certain, but if all if we all read the same books, we all think the same things, right?
47:12
So if all you do is read something different, if rather than reading Atomic Habits, you know, is the first one that comes to mind as one of these books which is like everywhere, you know, if rather than reading atomic habits, you go and read, I don't know, Botheus, the consolation of philosophy, just one example, um then your output is going to be different.
47:37
And if you want to I mean this all sounds a little bit calculated and it's it's it's not really calculated on my part but but it's it's just a fact.
47:44
If you want to stand out as a writer, if you want to find your voice, have a voice, be distinctive, all the things that we say writers should have and should want.
47:51
Um then just by reading something different, you will achieve that.
47:57
I mean that that that that's one reason why I try and avoid it.
47:59
And also I just think it's impossible.
48:05
the the quality filter is I mean I to some extent I think you should just read whatever you want and decide for yourself if it's good but problem is we're not alive for very long there are like 180 200 million different books in
48:21
the world different books you could read any of them you could read any book you want in the world tomorrow you could start reading any book that's ever been written well with a few caveats So you can read any book, but you can't read every book. So you've got to choose which books you
48:39
So you've got to choose which books you read.
48:40
Therefore, it matters what you read.
48:42
You can only read so many books in lifetime.
48:44
I mean, part of me thinks we'll be better off picking one book and never reading another book and just getting to know that one book very well.
48:52
Unfortunately, that's not the case.
48:52
Um, so you have to choose and and if a book, let's say I mentioned Botheus, that was basically a bestseller.
49:03
um for about 1,200 years.
49:05
And if a book has been held in such high regard for over a thousand years, um it's it's not unreasonable to assume that it has something of real value in it.
49:20
And at the very least, even if the book itself is god awful, the fact it's been read for so long means it has had an immense amount of influence.
49:28
And by reading that book, you will then understand so much more about the world regardless of the quality of that book itself.
49:34
So, so you have a choice really.
49:37
Whose recommendation do you take?
49:37
The recommendation of of the readers of the New York Times or whatever the New York Times I don't even have a calculator.
49:44
The New York Times bestseller is or father time. Right. Right. Yeah.
49:47
Father time is the best recommendation there is.
49:50
1,000 years, 50 generations of the greatest minds in in the world or whoever happens to to be buying books.
50:02
Well, we've moved from a space bias to a time bias in terms of our relationship to information.
50:07
So if you go back to 16th, 17th, 18th century and you're in southern England or you're in Austin, Texas, and you walk into a bookstore, ask people what they read, a library, what you find is it is very geographically constrained.
50:28
So the books in Austin are from Austin.
50:31
The books in southern England are from southern England or the surrounding area, but they're from many different time periods.
50:36
There's some stuff that's going to be 50 years old, some stuff that's going to be 100 years old.
50:43
But now, if you take how people consume information, so that was the space bias.
50:48
Now we're in a time bias.
50:48
And the time bias is if you open up your Twitter account, you'll see information from anywhere.
50:54
Your first few tweets will be India, China, from Australia, United States, from England, Germany, be from all over the world, but everything was created right now.
51:04
And so it used to be that if you wanted to get new ideas, what would you do?
51:08
You'd get on a ship and you'd go to another continent and you'd find new ideas.
51:11
Now, if you want to find new ideas, the frontier, the geographical frontier is gone. So what do you do? You go back in history.
51:18
And when you do that, it's the equivalent of traveling through space. 300 years ago.
51:25
Now you travel through time.
51:27
I love the way you describe this and there's a few things to to say here.
51:32
I mean the first thing there's a brilliant line from Chaucer which I can't remember and and something like all is about how how all the new ideas that men have all the new ideas come from the from the treasure troves of old books or something.
51:48
Chaucer said something like this and that was back in the 14th century.
51:51
So 700 years ago, a guy is saying the same thing that you're saying, which is kind of again um speaks to the to the truth of it perhaps.
52:01
Um but yeah, this thing you you've spoken about this before very eloquently and written about it very well, which is the 24-hour content.
52:08
The never ending now, you know, the never ending now.
52:12
It's um it's really quite quite quite terrifying.
52:15
You the internet actually does have all this stuff on it.
52:19
I mean um you know the almost um I think of what it was like in the past if you if you get an old book I mean in fairness we've got quite a lot of old books around us here if if you look at the care with which they're bound and the care with which they're treated and looked after that's cuz books were incredibly valuable and now the internet we have all the books that have ever existed.
52:42
These are things which the people our ancestors or riders people from the past from all around the world they couldn't have dreamed of it.
52:50
I mean think of any rider I mean like Arasmus he's one of my oh there we go Arasmus or one of my heroes.
52:55
What would he have made of the internet you know every book ever written for free?
53:03
I mean you know you have to be able to before the internet but once you're past that every book ever written I mean what a wealth of knowledge. So I bought you this. You bought it for me? Lord Byron. Yes. Sure. From 1812. Holy crap.
53:17
So I was in a London 1812. 1812.
53:22
So I was He was still alive at that point. Yeah. So here. So this is for you. You can open it up.
53:28
And uh you can see the pages have been I mean they look like they've been through a fire or something. 1812.
53:36
And then there's a note here from 1850. Wow.
53:39
And I know you really like him.
53:43
So, no, I that's wanted to give that to you.
53:47
Oh, it's Charles Harold's pilgrimage. Uh, Aliceville. Thanks.
53:51
That that's incredibly thoughtful and kind.
53:54
See, the problem is when you give me books, I immediately get lost in them.
54:02
See, but then back to the point.
54:04
This book is 200 years old. Warning, 200 years old.
54:10
warning to a warning only 200 years old precisely.
54:13
So this is a beautiful copy of Byron.
54:17
You can also get a copy of Byron in the bookshop for probably less than the cost of of a coffee.
54:23
Um I'm just going to put this on the table for now.
54:26
Although I may have a look through it later on and find something for you.
54:29
Um I I I me I keep mentioning Botheus and the reason I I love this example is because I I remember buying the copy of a copy of the constellation philosophy for £1 from a charity shop for £1.
54:41
The wisdom contained in that book, the knowledge that has shaped the history of the world. All right?
54:46
And the book's not even very long.
54:48
It's like 100 pages long.
54:50
For1 pound for for less than the cost of a coffee for the cost of onethird of a coffee you can read the book and access the wisdom that has shaped world history for thousand years and do you do that?
55:03
Do you spend one pound on that or do you you know watch just go on Instagram and then just watch you know interesting or funny videos or did you know videos this kind of thing.
55:17
Are you trying to like improve as a writer?
55:22
Is that something that you think about?
55:23
Well, I want I want to get better.
55:24
There's no doubt about that.
55:24
Leonardo da Vinci in his notebooks, he wrote this treaties.
55:29
Well, in his private notebooks, he wrote a load of advice for young painters.
55:33
And then his heir, Franchesca Meltzy, who collected Da Vinci's notes, takes it and publishes this scattered advice in a treaties called on painting. Wonderful. Everyone should read it. Um, well, not everyone.
55:44
If you would care to, it's certainly worth reading. Certainly worth reading.
55:47
what one of the greatest minds in history has to say.
55:48
Um, and again available for free online.
55:52
Anyway, one thing he says in in his treaties, this is addressed to young painters, but this is true of I think anybody in any field.
56:00
He say he says um the your judgment must always exceed the work.
56:07
What he means by that is um every time you've done something, you must always believe that it's not as good as it could have been.
56:18
So your judgment of what your judgment, your idea of what you want to achieve must always be greater than the thing you've actually done.
56:27
Um he says as soon as you think, oh, I'm happy with myself.
56:29
I've done really well there.
56:31
I've done that so much better than I thought I could have done.
56:34
As soon as you do that, then you become complacent and you're losing.
56:38
I'm certainly never particularly happy with anything I've written.
56:40
The my first thought, so say with threads, I mean threads are strange because it's hard to edit them.
56:46
Like an essay, you could take a week over an essay.
56:48
Let's say you you can write to it, edit it, come back, reddraft.
56:52
When you're writing one for a day, it's very hard to to to edit it, you know, because normally the best way to edit is to write and at least sleep on it.
57:01
But the first thing I think whenever I send out any work is, wow, that could have been so much better.
57:08
Um, I want to improve to the extent that it's conscious. I don't know if it is.
57:13
I I I don't think I sort of I I I never practice if that makes sense. Whoops.
57:19
You know, I I never I don't know if you can practice.
57:22
I mean, I suppose in as much as writing and then writing and writing and then deleting and rewriting and editing, that that is a practicing.
57:29
But, um, no, I I always want to get better.
57:32
I always want to get better. I'm never happy. And I'm always trying.
57:35
I want to make every sentence better than the previous one.
57:37
And and there there are some technical things I focus on.
57:39
Like sometimes I won't be happy with the way I'm using syntax.
57:42
I'll be thinking this this this this is this is just really awkward ugly syntax.
57:47
I will zone in on a particular thing and maybe when I'm writing the next paragraph of something in the newsletter or on Twitter.
57:54
Okay, let's just get some good solid syntax here.
57:58
Like the sentences are getting too long, the sentences are getting too short.
58:02
Let's spruce up the word choice a bit.
58:03
If you were to take all those things, word choice, long sentences, short sentences, syntax, and describe it in one word, one word, what are you trying to go for?
58:10
Part of me wants to say truth, but that perhaps doesn't quite cover it because I suppose one word answer is very difficult.
58:23
And if I had to give one word, it would be truth.
58:26
Um but or or the truth obviously it's kind of like authenticity I suppose as well.
58:34
Um it's kind of like voice but but I don't think you can aim to write with your voice.
58:39
You got to pick something to write about and your voice will emerge hopefully when you're writing about it.
58:44
But I think it's got to be truth. It's got to be truth.
58:46
I I don't know what else I could say to that.
58:50
But of course, you know, I'm not even sure if I aim for character or to write colorfully.
58:57
I'm sort of just pulled in that direction.
58:58
Although some you can tone it down sometimes.
59:02
You're like, "No, I need to be very clear here. Keep it simple.
59:07
Don't add in too many sub clauses."
59:10
Well, we live in a time that is obsessed with originality.
59:13
And I think you can see this in modern art most visibly.
59:15
How much of modern art is trying to shock people to try to do something that's never been done before?
59:25
And I think I bought into that a lot and I was talking to Oh, really? Yeah. Absolutely. Tool fault.
59:30
And I was talking to a friend and he was saying, "Well, you know, you're not a very original guy.
59:37
You're you're you're just a guy who's really good at curating things and you curate and then you bring them together and you like to take things, synthesize them, mold them, reshape them, and then share it with the world in a fundamentally new way."
59:49
But you're not a very original guy. And I was shook. I was shook.
59:54
How do I, you know, how do I think about this?
59:58
And I think that look, some of what I'm saying here is probably a kind of hope for the person who I wish I was and not the person who I actually am because I do love curating things.
1:00:08
And I started thinking about that.
1:00:10
I love traveling and curating aesthetics and styles and people.
1:00:14
And then one thing I've been thinking about, this goes back to your notion of truth.
1:00:20
One of the things that I've been getting from the Christian writers is that what they're trying to do is actually the very opposite of originality.
1:00:29
They're trying to reveal something about what the nature of the world through God that has always existed.
1:00:36
And they're actually trying to go back to what's always been true rather than to go forward to something.
1:00:44
And I find there I find that there's something very compelling about that.
1:00:49
Writers can't think about what the public want or what their readers want.
1:00:53
But I think as soon as you start writing for your readers, many writers have succeeded doing this. Of course they have.
1:00:59
But you about the great what it means to be great.
1:01:02
If if you want to be the writer, I think you've got to write for yourself.
1:01:07
Like forget what other people want or don't want.
1:01:09
And and with my work on Twitter, this is true I think as well.
1:01:14
I mean, some of what I write is popular, but I'm my number one audience member.
1:01:19
I'm writing this stuff because I want to learn about it, cuz I want to figure it out.
1:01:22
I'm writing about art because I want to understand art, and I want to to apply art to to um to to this context or the other.
1:01:29
You know, I I I wrote a thread about why we wear tie.
1:01:32
Like, I'm sat here wearing a tie.
1:01:32
I was like, why am I wearing a tie? I want to know that.
1:01:35
I wrote a thread about it.
1:01:37
But it's because I wanted to know.
1:01:37
And I think writers have to, you know, it's sort of we're in this strange bit where where maybe maybe we're more narcissistic than ever before in the 21st century, but also self-interest.
1:01:53
I you'll know more than me.
1:01:53
I mean, to tell me with your young writers, your students rather, you know, are they self-interested enough?
1:02:00
When I look at writers who are up and coming, they want it.
1:02:09
They both haven't tapped into the basic stuff around copywriting, around writing a great hook and all that.
1:02:14
And then there's another side of you're trying to write something that you don't actually want to write.
1:02:21
You're trying to do the thing that you think is going to make you successful and not the thing that you're innately drawn toward. Yeah.
1:02:29
You're not writing for yourself.
1:02:29
And it shows in your writing.
1:02:32
The problem with people who only write for themselves is they don't do the work to take an idea from like a seven out of 10 to a 10 out of 10 to really refine to really sharpen.
1:02:45
I found in my life when I talk to those people, they almost get bored of the idea and they move on from it before it gets good.
1:02:52
I mean, there's a reason David Fosteres, who I adore, there's a reason he writes four, five, six versions of Sure.
1:03:00
Byron, he just dashed it off. And that was that.
1:03:03
I mean, I mean, not not completely, but like say compared to So, you got Byron, Shel, and Keats.
1:03:07
They're like the three great romantic poets from Britain.
1:03:11
Like, Keats and Shelly technically in terms of um Prody and Rhythm and meter, they're way better than Byron.
1:03:18
Like Byron is often a bit he's a bit shoddy when it comes slap dash.
1:03:22
Yeah, bit slap dash, right?
1:03:22
But there was so much vigor in Byron's writing that even to this day, he is still the most popular, the most beloved who wields the greatest sort of influence and and and of of them all.
1:03:39
And I think it has something to do with the fact that, you know, it's almost maybe it's like a graph here.
1:03:44
It's like, let's just say passion versus technical quality.
1:03:47
passion versus technical quality. And like you know I suppose take Shakespeare he you know maybe he's up here he he's the one who matches who's got all the passion all the technical quality and you know I don't know where you want to
1:04:00
fall on that graph but I just you know this reddrafting reddrafting editing editing editing I'm also not the biggest I'm not as may maybe this is to my detriment but I can only tell you how I write and I'm not much of a I'm not the biggest editor or reddrafter. Let me
1:04:13
Let me just ask you straight up, Sheen.
1:04:18
You have five years to write the best thing you could possibly write. What's your approach?
1:04:23
That's that's a tricky question.
1:04:23
I mean, it's here are two potential approaches.
1:04:30
One is I wait four years and 51 weeks and then I give myself a week and I write it in a week. That's one option. That's option A.
1:04:37
Option B is is get started right now and and o over over the course of five years create something extraordinary.
1:04:45
I mean I do kind of love the idea of of of spending five years on a single project.
1:04:49
And my some reason I can imagine it going either one of two ways.
1:04:53
Either it's going to end up as this sort of one and a half million word long, you know, sort of in search of lost time leisur leviathan of a book or it's just one line.
1:05:07
You spend five years working on one line.
1:05:09
How good does that sound? Well, it's funny.
1:05:11
I think that if you look at rappers, you can kind of see that both work. You hear about Jay-Z.
1:05:17
Jay-Z just walks into the room, play the beat, listens, mumbles, struts around, fills it out, and then all of a sudden just comes out with a crazy verse.
1:05:33
And then you have people on the other side. You have Eminem.
1:05:37
Eminem works from 9:00 to 5:00.
1:05:40
And he writes and he writes and he writes and he writes and he writes. 5:00 p. m.
1:05:44
No matter what he's doing, closes a book. Done with my work. But he's always writing. He's always writing.
1:05:48
He But he treats it like a day job.
1:05:50
And then you have people like Kendrick Lamar.
1:05:55
Kendrick is writing and writing, trying to make it better and better, working on different drafts.
1:05:59
But what he does is he steps away from the craft for a while.
1:06:05
You have Kanye, three beats a day for five years.
1:06:07
So there you're getting volume, just constantly working on his beats.
1:06:11
Constantly working on his beats.
1:06:14
And so maybe the theme of this conversation is it all can work.
1:06:15
I I I think that is certainly the theme of this.
1:06:22
Yeah, we seem to be approaching and there something I do which is why I'm so I'm not skeptical of writing advice.
1:06:27
But the point is imagine you have a set of writing rules.
1:06:29
You know there are hundreds of them.
1:06:30
If everyone follow the same writing rules and all right in the same way and what will be the bloody point in that the point is we don't want to you got to write.
1:06:37
So so if part A of the theme is everything works. Okay. What does that mean?
1:06:42
How do you apply that to an individual? What's the conclusion?
1:06:46
And again, I think it comes down to the fact that you can't hide from the page.
1:06:50
You can't hide from the pen, the paper, and you in a room locked in there.
1:06:55
And that's the only way you're going to find out what works for you.
1:06:59
The only way you get to know what kind of rider you are, whether you're the 9 to5 guy, whether you're, you know, the wake up at 4 in the morning guy, you're the stay up night guy, whether you're the Byron or the Keats or the Shelly, um, is by doing it is and and and I wish you was more exciting or interesting, but but there's no there's no other way to put it than just sit down and and try and write and do it every day.
1:07:22
And then you're going to learn all these other things.
1:07:26
You're worried about all these other details, all these other, oh, I don't know. Um, you got to make it.
1:07:28
And this is why I also advocate writing in solitude.
1:07:33
Um, I'm not a fan of writing in cafes or libraries.
1:07:36
I think you've got to be on your own.
1:07:39
Um, that's certainly my view of it.
1:07:41
Other people may disagree, but for me, it's got to be you in that room, locked in there with no choice, with no no option.
1:07:50
I mean, this is the funny thing.
1:07:52
So, so when I'm writing a thread, um, I actually sort of try and avoid writing the thread for as long as I can.
1:08:00
What do you think your median time of writing is?
1:08:02
There's no there's no there's no there's none.
1:08:04
No, but like I feel like if you were to average out your writing, I feel like the time What time in the day have you o over the last year and a half been most likely to be writing?
1:08:12
I would guess it's probably like 2:45 a. m. Yeah, definitely.
1:08:16
It's definitely early hours of the morning.
1:08:18
Um, I I always end up going nocturnal. I can't help it.
1:08:20
I think it's it's cuz it's dark and it's quiet and no one can bother you.
1:08:24
That's it must be why cuz I I hate I just you know bees calls.
1:08:30
I hate emails as you as as you know.
1:08:32
I don't I don't like I don't I don't like emails or or WhatsApp messages.
1:08:38
Well, you're a big conversation cafe guy, right?
1:08:40
You just go talk to people. Yeah, I just talk.
1:08:43
Why do you like doing that?
1:08:43
Um maybe just to do with how I was raised and there's a certain simple delight in um talking talking to people. I'll wander around.
1:08:54
I'll I'll go to a bookshop um do anything avoid writing. Avoid it. Avoid I don't know.
1:09:00
It's like it's almost like every day I'm hoping the day will come where I manage to not write and I I can be finally freed from this thing and I can just go and not be a writer.
1:09:09
Then every day I end up sat there, you know, it's time and and I I can't help it.
1:09:19
Well, David Senra asked, "What would you keep doing if somebody paid you a billion dollars to not do it?
1:09:29
What would you still do?"
1:09:29
And you just gave your answer.
1:09:30
I'm praying for someday I'll find the day where I don't write.
1:09:35
And I still can't find it. Yes. Precisely.
1:09:38
Tell me about what you learned from Harry about writing hooks.
1:09:44
It was quite a hard skill to learn.
1:09:44
I'm I'm not a sound by guy. I'm not a hook guy.
1:09:48
When I'm talking or writing, I'm not someone who tends to give you one sort of snappy little sentence that sums it all up.
1:09:55
Um, but I've said this before, but one thing I noticed on Twitter, Twitter is this incredible platform.
1:10:02
It it's a it's one of the most remarkable inventions of the last century.
1:10:07
Um, maybe we won't go into that now, but the point is I noticed something.
1:10:12
There were a lot of brilliant people on Twitter writing this fascinating stuff about history, art, architecture, whatever.
1:10:18
But they were such they were so into their circle and they were such, let's say, dull writers, and I loved I love dry, dull writing. I love it.
1:10:29
Um, that the only people reading these tweets were people already interested in that topic.
1:10:35
you know, it's like, hey, um, today we're going to do a a deep dive on how architecture changed in the 16th century in Italy after the founding of the Jesuits and based on what you know, Ignatius St.
1:10:48
Ignatius Lola said about ex, you know, it's like to me that sounds thrilling, but but to your average Twitter user, the question like when you're scrolling, why would I read that?
1:10:58
You don't even notice it.
1:10:58
But then I noticed on Twitter as well, you've got these people who who are just just shilling. They're just shill.
1:11:03
They're saying like here are 15 tips to make you richer, whatever.
1:11:08
And you know, and it's it's just just just this this just just complete crap about about waking waking up at particular times and routines and mindsets and methods.
1:11:17
And look, I'm sure a lot of this self-optimization stuff is is is good, but I think a lot of it is is is patent try.
1:11:23
Uh but they were getting engagement off a scale.
1:11:27
They were getting 50, 60, 70, 80, 100,000 likes and millions of readers.
1:11:31
And I'm like, what's going on here?
1:11:33
like the really valuable, interesting, meaningful stuff.
1:11:37
No one's reading, but everyone's reading.
1:11:39
They said that and I was like, it's just it's nothing to do with the content itself.
1:11:42
It's just the way these guys, they figured out how to write hooks that everyone wants to read.
1:11:45
They figured out how to write a head. Is that a newspaper?
1:11:48
How do you write a headline?
1:11:49
Is that the title of a book?
1:11:49
A lot of books have sold millions of copies just because they had a great title, I suspect. I suspect.
1:11:54
So what I did was I I I tried to learn the lessons from these self-optimization people and apply it to history and art.
1:12:05
And and Harry, our good friend who who's um as one anonymous Twitter user described in the best copywriter in the world.
1:12:13
Um he helped me in this regard cuz he he's really good at you know who's told me tighten it up too much. I don't want to read it.
1:12:19
He he he he you know for example one of Harry's best lines and it's so it's so simple. That's why it's so good.
1:12:26
It's just make it falsifiable and it's just a known fact that that this is much more interesting to people and appeals to them much more strongly.
1:12:34
So, so, so when I you know I I tried to apply this that's one example of something I would apply to um to the threads about history and art.
1:12:44
So, rather than this is um you know you the famous um picture the great wave of of Kanagawa. It's by Hawk. Yeah, of course.
1:12:55
Um, everyone of course assumes it's a painting. It's not a painting. It's a print.
1:13:01
Um, it's it's a wood block print and there's there's loads of copies of it around the world.
1:13:05
So rather than being like, oh, you've all seen the gray wave of kind of before.
1:13:09
It's one of the world's greatest paintings.
1:13:10
Here's a deep dive into it. That's just okay.
1:13:14
It's one of the world's greatest paintings.
1:13:15
So, but I wrote this thread where I was like, um, it's not it's not actually a painting.
1:13:19
Uh, dot dot dot or something.
1:13:22
I can't remember the words exactly.
1:13:24
The point is I I'm making this claim which is either true or false.
1:13:25
I'm making a specific claim um about the great wave of of Kanagawa.
1:13:29
Um and and I that's one example and I think that's maybe what helped to drive some of the engagement is that that I rather ruthlessly applied some some simple copyrightiting um and learn from from you and learn from these self- optimization gurus as well who were tricking people into reading nonsense.
1:13:52
I have hopefully tricked them into reading slightly less speirious nonsense.
1:13:59
Like another way to think about it is I think that it's really easy to be a consumer of somebody who's doing something at a very high level and to say, "Hey, they just got up there and it just poured out of them."
1:14:13
And I'll give you an example.
1:14:18
It's a comedy show and the comedian did a good job with the with the bit and I said, "Hey, how many times did you rehearse the average joke?"
1:14:32
And he said, "About a thousand."
1:14:36
So I'm sitting there and I'm saying, "This stuff is just pouring out of him. Is that what happens?" I asked him. He says, "No, no.
1:14:41
The art of comedy is you're working on your timing.
1:14:44
You're working on delivery.
1:14:46
you are working on making it seem like you're not working.
1:14:53
And I think there's something beautiful about the unnaturalness of naturalness. I like that.
1:14:59
And it's reassuring in a way I think because you look at these great and you think I I can't do that.
1:15:06
You like you look at there's no way I could ever speaking about writing write anything anywhere near as good as that.
1:15:13
But obviously the point is you're seeing the end point of decades of of practice.
1:15:19
You think a Tarantino movie doesn't require any editing? Precisely.
1:15:22
I like that point about editing. Yeah.
1:15:24
Every film requires editing.
1:15:26
Robert Caro just came out with a documentary about his relationship with his editor, Gotautly. They never hung out.
1:15:33
They got in roaring fights and they didn't particularly like each other. Mhm.
1:15:40
And I think one of the big lessons of the documentary is that that's a good thing. Yeah.
1:15:44
No, that that that that's that's very edifying indeed.
1:15:46
And this is the art of editing.
1:15:48
There's two things going on.
1:15:50
So Rick Rubin, music producer.
1:15:54
Kanye was talking about him and he said, "Rick's not a producer. He's a reducer." Yeah. Nice.
1:16:02
Taking away the stuff that doesn't need to be there.
1:16:04
But the problem is if you only do that as an editor, then you strip somebody of their personality, of their essence.
1:16:12
Sort of like what we were talking about with the typewriter.
1:16:17
So the other mark of a good editor is an enhancer where you look at something, whether it's the voice of the writing or a point that there's an embryo of that point, a seed of something special in there. Well, I I struggle.
1:16:33
I mean, that sounds good to me, but I I struggle to work with editors.
1:16:38
I sort of, you know, I, as I said, I tend to write a lot, and then as soon as someone starts meddling with something I've written, I get extremely defensive.
1:16:46
Um, even when I must begrudgingly admit that I write, um, I find it very hard to hand it over to other people.
1:16:53
I really struggle with the solitude of writing. And so, I've Yes.
1:17:01
And so I've made it social.
1:17:01
And so there's a few things that I do.
1:17:04
The first is most of my ideas, 90% of them just come from something I say in conversation and then I write them down.
1:17:16
So even as we've been having this conversation, I've written down a few things that I said that are new ideas to me that I'm like, "Okay, now I want to go write about that."
1:17:24
The second thing is once I find an idea, if I'm struggling with it, I'm trying to work through it, I spend a lot of time just talking through the ideas.
1:17:34
And it's interesting if you talk to entrepreneurs of how they're going to describe their company, their core vision, a story that they're trying to tell.
1:17:45
What they're doing is they're constantly working on it at dinners, in conversations with people.
1:17:51
And you spend enough time with them.
1:17:53
I have a friend in Austin very wealthy entrepreneur and I've heard him tell the same stories 20 30 times.
1:17:57
I can complete his sentences and I could say I know exactly what this is going to be.
1:18:04
And all this to say that for me the process of refinement is very verbal whereas for other people it's just write the sentence, rewrite the sentence, rewrite the sentence.
1:18:15
Something about editing needs to be a social experience.
1:18:19
No, no, I I don't disagree with that.
1:18:19
In fact, one of it's not it's not the only way.
1:18:24
There's no and far from me to try and attempt to say that there's a single way to do anything, but one way is and one timehonored and tested way to get better is to talk to people. I I say it all the time.
1:18:36
It's no coincidence that whenever you pick a great writer from the past or a great artist or whatever it is, that happened more often than not, they're part of a circle of writers and artists.
1:18:47
Is it a coincidence that, you know, in in Florence in the 15th century, all the artists all knew each other?
1:18:54
You know, the when Michelangelo would finish David uh statue, it was too heavy to lift up to the top of Florence Cathedral where it was supposed to go, the the city council, they convened a meeting to decide where it should go.
1:19:07
And you know, Leonardo's on the on this on this special committee and so is Sandro Bichelli.
1:19:12
You know, all these guys knew each other.
1:19:14
That's not a coincidence.
1:19:15
Byron, Keats and Shelley, they all knew each other.
1:19:18
You know, we've got many famous circles, the Bloomsbury group in Paris in the 1920s, all these writers who knew each other because when you have these conversations, especially with other people who are who know more than you, who are better than you, let's say, it raises the bar.
1:19:31
um and you learn and and for that reason I suppose one thing any writer might wish to pursue is a circle of people someone you can talk to someone who when you've spoken to them you come away immediately wanting to open your laptop open your notepad and and start writing I always think of the story of Tolken and CS Lewis yeah yeah yeah and I think you're saying half half of the puzzle of why These people, it seems so often they work in community.
1:20:06
The greats and you're talking about raising the bar.
1:20:08
And I think the other one is just encouragement.
1:20:11
You get down on yourself. Oh yeah.
1:20:15
And Tolken was a bit of a weird guy.
1:20:18
Most people don't write imaginary languages from scratch.
1:20:23
And he's good friends with CS Lewis.
1:20:27
And CS Lewis is sort of poking fun at him. Come on, clot.
1:20:30
let me see what you're writing.
1:20:31
Let me see what you're writing.
1:20:32
And he's working on this fantasy story and Tolken's like, "No, no, no.
1:20:36
I'm not going to show you."
1:20:36
CS Lewis sort of insists that he can read what Tolken's Tolken's written.
1:20:43
And CS Lewis goes home for the night, comes back the next day, and basically says to Tolken, "That was the best night of writing I've had in years.
1:20:51
You got to get this published."
1:20:55
And it was because of that word of encouragement that Tolken decides to get this strange little hobby pet project published.
1:21:04
And in the intro to arguably the best fantasy novel of the 20th century, Lord of the Rings, he thanks CS Lewis for giving him the encouragement to write that.
1:21:17
Well, there's nothing more I can add to that. It's it's all there. So, something I hate.
1:21:21
There are many things I hate when people describe writing as a hobby.
1:21:32
Like it can be a hobby if you want it to be.
1:21:34
And for many people it is a hobby.
1:21:37
But I think if you take writing seriously, if you really are a writer, then it's not a hobby.
1:21:44
Well, you said something really interesting.
1:21:46
We were we're sitting down.
1:21:49
and we're at dinner and we're talking about strategy and you just sort of had this moment where you said, "I just care about the work and I just try to do great writing and everything else just kind of feels superfluous to me.
1:22:06
I'm just going to focus on writing really good stuff."
1:22:08
And it was such a moment of clarity hearing that from you.
1:22:15
For you it was just write great threads. Mr.
1:22:18
beast, biggest YouTuber in the world, says, "Make great videos." Yeah. Yeah.
1:22:24
And there's something pure and very right about that.
1:22:30
Well, I I I I certainly hope so.
1:22:30
And I suppose if there is some advice I I would give to a writer beyond this take it seriously stuff is um is is the one I would most confidently give is only think about the writing and don't think about anything else. That was fun.