the biggest thing I learned was how to unlearn you know how to write the way had been taught I remember it was your very first article what was it called like I was a teacher I loved it I quit and that's actually the intro of my book I've come across a lot of damaged writer which are people that are they have writing trauma they have writing trauma writing is one of the most challenging things in the world yet one of the most
rewarding yeah if you only write what other people tell you to write then you're not going to enjoy writing and if you don't enjoy writing you're not going to be good at it I think the crazy lesson is Anna David how in the world did you get here this is so crazy we met in 2019 and we have been through an absolute Odyssey together for so many years and I want to start off with that question how in the world did we get
here I had to really ask myself this question before coming here because you know if I had asked my 12-year-old self little Anna um you know where do you think you'll be in 20 years the last thing she would have said is sitting here in Austin talking to David the self-proclaimed writing guy talking about my writing process and a book that I published like she would have never believed that because you know growing
up I had sort of um I moved around a lot and I went to different schools and I did different things but one thing that I you know I I really did not like writing um I did not consider myself writing I I I found it really challenging I did not like it I did not enjoy it I then became a teacher and I had to teach writing as one of the subjects and it was the subject that I looked for the least right and it was really challenging and it was very
common to see the same attitude in my students and so I really had to think about well H how did this even happen how am I here and um I realized that I had to go through this journey of on learning a lot of the things that I I've
been learning since I was born all the way you know to college and now in order to be able to be a writer and specifically on learning things about writing I was an educator for for many years and I was very unhappy within the
system right I loved working with kids um I I knew that that was the profession I wanted to be in but I just couldn't do it within the system and there were many things that just did not match what I believed in I had all this experience of having myself attend at 10 different schools and then I had all this years working with kids so I had so many things that I wanted to say and had this like burning questions that I wanted to
answer but no idea how to do that and so when I left the school system I started to sort of like Wonder and say like what do I do with all this where do I take this ideas where do I start and I came across this writing Guy online David and you were talking about this writing course that would teach you how to write for Modern Times And it promised to help you build an audience and sort of help you rethink the way that you thought
about writing and I was like well this sounds interesting it sounds sort of like where I need to go but I'm not a writer like what what no like like how I'm This sounds too challenging and and very intimidating I don't think I can do this and I don't know if you remember but I actually booked the course um and you asked for a refund and then I asked for a refund because I called I was like what am I thinking I'm not a writer I
hate writing like I'm not going to like why why would I invest and and try to commit to something I'm not going to stick through my husband convinced me to stay around well it was a mix of you and my husband and and people going and I'm so glad I did because the biggest thing I learned from this course was how to unlearn you know how to write the way had been taught and then um it sort of when I when I was reflecting about this
I came down to like seven sort of core lessons that I had to unlearn that I think that I really wish more kids would hear this and and would sort of see writing through this new lens that I see now because we would have a lot more writers so let's play game so we're hanging out right now and we're going to go to lunch and you have 20 minutes to go on your computer you can phone a friend and by the end of the lunch you need to have a good idea so
what do you look up on the computer what is that conversation like who do you call and then how do you set up the lunch so that you end up with an idea interesting so so I would probably go to my evernot but I don't know if that's part of it but the first thing that I would do is go back to my evernot because I do have like a bunch of ideas that I'm like oh eventually I want to write about this or oh this is super interesting but I need
to learn more about this or I need to sort of like like so I would go into my Evernote and kind of see and what do you search which um well I have all the I still have my cold notebooks my hot notebooks and so I would go into yes and I would go into one of those and see sort of which one I'm excited because by the way changes by day like it I need to see what I'm excited to write about which is a big one you know in school
you don't get to it's like unless you're excited about the topic your teacher chose like you're kind of screwed here it's like okay what am I like excited today about oh this one okay who do I know that I can connect to this that I can call right now that I can have a conversation about this and sort of like get this fresh perspective because I I know what I know right but if I you know through this phone call I'll collect
some new insights New Perspective probably take a few notes while I have this call I would then probably collect information from others from podcast or from you know books that I'm reading or from people that you know are like experts in the field or that know a little bit more about this and then those little holes that I still have then I'll sort of like fill in with research but I need a time bucketed because otherwise again I'll just go
down the rabbit hill so I I I'll try not to spend that much time in the computer after that hour and a half I usually wouldn't have fled out something that I was really proud of but it's a first draft and so I do think that that kind of pressure is good so yeah hopefully get some structure from our our lunch what's interesting about what you just said is that your content doesn't all need to be original like you don't need
every single thing to be this completely new idea that no one's ever thought of before so tell me about the lesson that you had to unlearn there that was a big one because one of the biggest blockers for me as a writer and one of the biggest blockers for kids when they're trying to write something is that we tell them like oh in order to write something you need to be an expert so pick a topic that you're an expert on
that's paralyzing especially when you're a kid when you're a kid you're like I mean you either believe that you know about everything in the world and then you're an expert about everything until you sit down and write about it or you're like paralyzed because you're like wait I don't I'm a kid like I don't know what I'm an expert on and so it's it's intimidating right and you actually made I think it was a podcast you did
years ago like five years ago where you said no writing is the way that you become you know that you learn about the thing that you then become an expert on and I was like stop wow like if you approach writing through that light of oh this is the process that will help me learn about that thing that I'll then become really good at or I'll learn a lot about it's completely different it's less intimidating it's less scary and
you're like I can totally do this right and so so that's one thing like just reframing it through that lens was like wow like I I can do this like I'm going to learn I don't need to be an expert yet and then the other thing is writing doesn't always have to be original from the bat like actually a lot of modern writing is grabbing exist in ideas and then building on top of that and then sort of like until you construct your
own perspective right so you need to sort of pull and and get inspired that's how you get inspiration from like great writers and actually this is something that a lot of good Writers Do Right but we don't talk enough about that in
school we're like no no you need to come up with something original and we talk about you know plagiarism and d and of course it's super important to give credit what credit is Du however it's totally okay to like you know I like
said you curate and then you remix until you find something you know a creative way to do to to to say things and I think that a lot of my work is from that people are like oh you came up with this I'm like I'm not coming up with
absolutely anything I'm building upon the ideas of this giant in the alternative education space ideas that have been around for so so many years I'm just sort of bringing them back with my flare adding my experience from you
know being a student in 10 schools and then being a teacher for five to six years you know and then everything I've learned about how kids learn and how we've learn and what motivates us and all this and how we prepare kids for the future and then that is sort of like my creative twist and I say it in a way that's appealing and interesting to people so it's like not necessarily like original from the bat but of course it
has like my touch and when you look at it like that I feel like it opens up the space for more people to want to write because they're like oh I can do that you know it's about finding your voice and it doesn't come from one day to another remember how many times I had to like update my personal Monopoly and those things that made me unique which was such a fun process um and and yeah until eventually you find sort of your
voice as a writer and what makes your writing unique and sort of the lens that you want to take and you become really comfortable at it and then that's that's that's what you do you do need to keep updating it but yeah yeah so I want to talk about two things here the first is pulling from other people other ideas things in the world that are concrete made by other people and then we'll talk about that and then I want to talk about
pulling from your own experiences so start off with other people I think that this is something that we can encourage kids to do which would be it'd be really fun to basically have a weekend project and you go out and you write about something that you did maybe a movie that you watched a TV show that you saw hey I really like this this this TV show so I'm going to just make this up on the Fly there's the show that I really liked
growing up called The Sweet Life of Zack and Cody was on Disney Channel watch it a thousand times and there's a great episode that really stuck with me and Zach and Cody are allowed to do whatever they want and there's no homework there's no school nothing organized they can do nothing but have fun and the mom is goes from being like the strict mom to being the cool Mom and she like starts being like a rock star and stuff
like that and it's an interesting episode because they start off and they're so happy they're getting to do all these things like rollerblading through the hotel lobby and then at the end of the episode they're totally
miserable they've had candy and Mom's not there for them and there's this line where Zach who's normally like the crazy you know mess around boy he goes to turns out that having nothing but fun isn't actually so much fun I was like 12
years old and it really stuck with me so now if I'm 12 years old I'm in what sixth grade seventh grade and I can come in on Monday and I can build on that quote on that idea and I can write about whatever I want and I would love to just give kids an assignment where they can just pull these different things from their life blend them together and say okay now that you have all these things what is the synthesis of these things
that then you can write about yeah well we attempt to do that in school a lot of the writing curriculums and I've used many different ones throughout my life um attempt to do that but but in so it sounds really nice in theory but when you actually put it to practice because of the constraints that we've sort of talked about it's really difficult you know the fact that you know we they're asked to we focus on so many different
subjects writing it's like 45 minutes a day or you know maybe you have a little bit longer block but then this is an assignment that needs to be completed by Friday Friday is not enough time for to again let this idea has marinate and grab from different places and really think about these things when they have so many things going on so like when you actually try like I remember when I was going through the course it was like a
full-time job like it's the only thing that I was doing I was only writing I mean not only writing but I was only going through this process which meant being out being outside capturing ideas letting things marinate talking like writing all this it like completely immersed in the experience for those I think it was like five weeks back then and so I think that that was a big reason why I was able to you know start
everything and then eventually ended up being a book Etc kids don't have that time right and everything's so rushed and interrupted and this and that that that when you put it into practice again kids are filled with ideas but if you talk to 12-year-old and you're like okay tell me about an idea you're excited to write about and we actually tried this in summer camp like they're paralyzed they're like I don't know I don't know
what I like like I don't know what I you know and and it's so interesting because we're always like going back to this idea of like you know originality and this and that how can we expect for kids to be the original and come up with novel ideas and you know find their voice and their Edge as a writer and all these things if they're all reading the same thing that they're probably not interested in but it's like a required
reading and therefore you know learning about the same things and and talking about the same things and therefore they're thinking about the same things so how do you expect for somebody there to come up with something that's completely original like it's really difficult you know what I mean and so you almost have to that's why I love like this idea of being outside of the classroom and being with older people
and being with younger people and doing other things that are not necessarily like writing or and then you start pulling from all those things and it eventually comes together and then they can write about it right so so it's like
a very different experience so that's why I think that the whole way we do writing in school has to be like revamped and rethought from scratch because it's really difficult to come up with anything and be excited and be
creative under those conditions does that make sense yeah totally so tell me about when you're writing your book when you're writing your pieces how you think about pulling from other people's ideas and how being freed from the shackles of needing to be original how now that you've had some Liberty you've been able to yes write I love that question okay so at first when I joined the course I was like okay I want I want to talk
about education I have all this ideas but how is my writing going to be different from you know every time I had an idea I would Google it and somebody some teacher some educator around the world had written an article or a book or a sloppy blog post or something and I was like oh like like okay I understand that not everything has to be original but like what's my flare what's my I was like you know what I need to stop
reading books about education like I I I've learned my my my fair share but I feel like I've already got like and I need to start reflecting and tapping into my experience and reading about things that I am interested in without
an agenda you know so just what what what am I curious about right now and I would start grabbing books that I had like about you know finance and business and poker and you know like learning about mental models and things that I
had never you know and that I would you know probably be intimidated back then but I was like I have no assignment that I have to complete at the End of This Book I can stop reading it halfway through if I if I don't feel like I want to keep reading it and I gave myself all these different sort of permissions to just you know go where my curiosity would take me and so I started to read books and because I'm so obsessed with
this topic about education and I really want to change the way that we teach and learn um it's always in the back of my mind so when I was reading whe you know it's a book about you know Sports I was always looking for connections that would bring it back to education and I was able to always sort of make that that connection like between that and kids and what does this mean for and and I feel like that really brought an an
angle to my writing because it not only made it relatable for a lot of people because you know I was weaving in Concepts from you know gaming and from economics and from psychology and from the sports world but then blending it in a way that connected to either your experience growing up and going through education and your learning experience or your kids going through it or just you know the act of learning itself and
kids and it became interesting right and then um the other thing paired up with that that really helped me was that and it's another lesson that I really had to unlearn in school they incentivize you to write with this like big jargons and fancy words and sat words and you know verbals and this and that and and and say it in 10 pages and I that's what I had in mind and and when I took your course it really helped me like wait no
you want to be simple you want you know you know strive for Simplicity and CL ity and you know conciseness and just accessibility and you don't use big fancy terms that I didn't even understand like English is not my first
language so you can imagine I was like trying to imitate all these people using big fancy I was like no stop doing that try to be simple try to speak like you speak to your students like try to do that and let's see and people started to
really resonate with that because not only could they find something in the content because I was pulling from different things but also because I feel like I started valuing Simplicity and accessibility and therefore I feel like reader would feel more valued as well I don't know that and then that paired up with I I from the very beginning I would always try to put like visuals some visual that made sense to me I wasn't
sure if it made sense to other people but something about pairing up the words with some sort of visual like that I had in my mind that represented that like that helped me engage with the writing and I started to see that people would also engage with that so I feel like that started to sort of bring people's eyeballs and saying okay and also the fact that you know the way that I say things it's sometimes a little
controversial and some people are like yes oh my God she just said what I've been thinking for so long but I had not quite like put it into it and some people are like wait what like they they feel threatened by whatever it is that I'm saying because it's challenging the way they do things either way I'm I'm happy because that's exactly what I try to do with my writing I try for it to sort of cause an impression so that it
forces you to reflect on the way that you've been doing things whether that's for the good or for the bad but just if I'm able to do that then I feel accomplished and so I feel like when I started to do that I got even more
excited because I'm like Oh my writing's very different from other pieces out there education wise and so I think that that's sort of the the path that I decided to follow for those years that I was sending the newsletter and those
articles but then ended up becoming the book one of the places where I think you do a really good job in your book of building on an idea is with naval's specific knowledge so you're saying how do we help kids find their specific knowledge and you build on that idea you use the idea already constructed and then you say okay I know that there's oil here so I'm going to do some digging of my own and then you come across this
example from Dr house and you're like he has a knack for understanding human behavior he has this compulsion to solve puzzles to explain the world and then he's super comfortable taking a risk and just being like yep we're just going to go for it and that is a great example of what we're talking about here where you have an idea it resonates with you you're like hey I like like this and then you start making some cross
references you probably watched it on Fox you know when I was a kid I was like the guy with the cane you know who is this guy sort of reminds me of my uncle and so then you would bring that together and then you would add
something by taking an idea that wasn't about education and kids at all and then banging the ideas together and then it makes it into your book absolutely absolutely um that's that's a great example well also it was a process that
I had to go through myself finding what's my you know specific knowledge and that intersection of things that make me you know excited about doing something but also very unique and good at it and that I can make a living out of it and so I feel like that exercise and again it took years to sort of like bring it and it's still changing and it's still sort of evolving but I feel like that's that's a really important
exercise to do when you are thinking about writing the way that you know that way that we do it right and so um that really helps bring that edge and that you know niche to your writing yeah one of the things that you were talking about earlier was how you got more comfortable telling your story and this is a lot of what when I'm working with people I have to help them elucidate and bring out is they're like well there's nothing
actually that unique about me I got nothing to say there's all these smart people out there and we're like with you we're like hold on stop the train you went to 10 different schools in seven different countries that is crazy then you were a teacher in public schools in America and in Panama you loved kids you loved learning and you also hated the work of actually being a teacher so then you quit and I remember it's your very
first article what was it called like I was a teacher I loved it quit I quit and that's actually yeah that that's the the the first sort of the intro of my book yeah you had to learn to become comfortable telling your story and to develop the muscle of teasing out the insights that you subconsciously learned you know what that made me realize that um good writing is is you know a lot of good storytelling and kids are natural
storytellers you know from the moment they're born they're like trying to imitate you know like different characters from stories that the books books that they read or you know movies that they watch and if you watch them
play they're they're they're constantly sort of like telling you a story through what they're doing and so but when we go into this again this system where suddenly things are enforced in you there's so many different parameters you
no longer get to sort of Follow That Natural Curiosity that you have Etc um you start to lose that ability to tell stories and learn from stories and this and that and that's something that I've had to sort of recapture as an adult um in order to I remember you always telling me like Anna but you have so many stories from your classroom like why aren't you writing about those and I was like you're right I was so inclined
to do what I've alwaysed what's the research and what's this and what what's BL BL what and it's like no no that's people don't remember the facts and the figures they remember the stories I did the same thing I was scared I didn't actually trust my ideas and what would happen is in my early pieces I swear like 20 to 30% of what I was writing was quotes and that's fine that's a good way to start I almost think of quotes as like training wheels
for the writing process they're there to sort of catch you if you fall you're not quite confidence that you can balance on the bike but you know what you're going to have your quotes there you can sort of lean the quotes whenever you need to but then over time you kind of learn how to ride the bike you're like wait I don't really need these training wheels totally totally and and you you also need to sort of experiment with
different things in writing to see sort of which ones you feel more comfortable with um and then those keep evolving over time yeah for sure tell me about John Warner and the book why they can't write loved that book I think that it came um at a right time in my life when I had all you know I was leaving the school system I had all the SE pressing questions about education and he wrote this book where he's criticizing sort of
this like five paragraph essay approach to writing but in the book he's really doing a solid critique of our education system through writing right and and and you know using writing as an example of why kids can't write and hate writing but really he will touch upon a lot of those things that I was feeling and that I had experienced as a student and then witnessed as a teacher he was able to put that into words and to start sort of
um making you think oh wait maybe there's a different way to teach writing and maybe you know but but one thing is to read about it so he would he talks in the book how he would teach his students and how he did things different I was like go but I another thing was for me to experience it my own which is something that again um I I I think is very very hard to do in school like a lot of the things that we do lack
practical application and so you can read about it and learn about it but if you don't do it yourself have you ever heard that chauffeur knowledge thing no okay this is a I don't know if it's true Terell but as the story goes there's a scientist named I think Max Plank and he would travel around the world and he would give these talks at big events and whenever he would go to the talks he had a chauffeur a guy who drove him so the
chauffeur would drive him and he'd always be in the back of the room and he would listen to the talks and they did 10 talks 20 talks 30 40 50 60 70 talks right so all of a sudden the chauffeur is like you know I feel like I
can I can give the talk for you and he goes okay you know we we'll we'll see how it goes and so he tries and they go out to lunch or something and he gives the talk but then he does the the talk well and then he starts being asked
follow-up questions he starts being asked questions about this or that and he has none of the root knowledge that Max plank had the scientist had when he was giving the talk and I think that this gets back into what you're talking about that part of the problem with how we learn things in school is we develop this Chau for knowledge where you have a memorization of what was said without the root structure to really understand
what's going on and we underestimate how deep these root structures are even in our own writing where we'll have like an idea here an idea there and what's so helpful to go back to your point about writing is social to have other people say hey tell me more about that hey that doesn't quite make sense hey I'm a little bit confused about this can you help me and it's through that process of questioning and answering that you begin
to see how contoured and multifaceted your root structure is which then yields even more ideas absolutely which yeah I mean it it speaks to how much writing is like thinking right and and and actually John Jen warrn from from the book um why they can't write he says you know writing is thinking and I have yet to meet a writer who thinks in sentences which is what we teach in school he's like you know this idea that you need to
master a sentence before you start writing is not true it's simply a lie right and it's true it's like the hardest thing is getting those ideas across right you have those ideas like the hardest thing is putting them into
that paper and sort of like what are you trying to say right and and that process really gets lost with all this external factors that we're like trying to make people concentrate on that you know again like like you need to be focusing
on what you're trying to say and getting it out and then you'll be able to cover the rest so what you're saying is that the core PR is that we focus on sentences instead of ideas well sentences is one example but like yeah like the sentence structure and the you know on the adverb and this and that and like the the capital and the punct like all this like okay oh you have to do it you know a five paragraph essay and you
have to have your main idea and then your supporting points and and then for some people this works for other people it's completely paralyzing and it blocks that idea that they had they can't just put it across because they're thinking about the the structure so I thought of an idea it'd be fun to have a software that grades how accurate your grammar is and normally you'd be like okay we're going to use the software to get to 100
but what if you said you have to be at 23 23% and then you said you're going to write with 23% grammar and you still have to put something out there so what does that force you to do it forces you to come up with an amazing idea and you basically you work with the kids and you're like for this time you there's no rules for grammar you can do whatever you want like have you ever seen Kanye West's Instagram captions no they don't
make any sense they make there's no grammar there's no grammar he just Wings it there's no periods he's just like trying whatever but what I like about that is it forces you to have a good idea because you have nothing else to lean on actually in fact everything else is hurting you and it forces you to say something worthy despite the grar I love that it becomes a constraint yeah and then you oh that's really and then the
kids can like mess around with like oh my goodness that's so funny because that to me if you're hanging out with kids and whatnot like the thing that gets them their ideas going their brain spinning is oh my goodness that's so funny and they're giggling and they're laughing and they're playing it was sort of like when you had a substitute teacher and come in substitute wo you can do that and I wonder what it would
look like to take that energy and apply it to writing that that that that sounds like a cool experiment to try um it make me think of um one of the students that I had so so I would see how frustrated most of my students would get with the spelling test that we would do which is so dumb like I mean they will pick up on how to spell the words from Reading from writing the words over and again we will correct them but we don't need to do
spelling tests we have to memorize all these words in isolation that they you have five days and on Friday they take the spelling test and then they you know you have them write an essay and they'll misspell the word in the essay because they don't know the words in context so anyway I'm against spelling tests but and I would see how some of my kids were so creative and to come to mind Emma and Maya but they were this was third grade
they were just so paralyzed by the whole spelling thing I need to spell the word correctly and I'm not good at spelling and I always get like this lower grades in the spelling this and this and that but they had great ideas I was like you know what don't like don't worry about the spelling like just write what you want to write they would come up with this phenomenal stories and I had a sort of a hard time reading them because yes
some words were inverted some but when I figured it out the ideas and the story line was cheap genus what's so creative and their parents though had a hard time seeing that because they were so ingrained in the fact that the spelling was a mess they were like how are you applauding this and you know what I realized that those parents are probably damaged writers and it's not their fault but I've come across a lot of damaged
writer which are people that are so stuck in the spelling and this and that and that they can't see what's underneath that they have writing trauma they have writing trauma and there's so many adults like that so many adults so many people that say that they hate writing and they can't write I'm pretty sure they have similar stories to mine which is like they just they're damaged writers that for so many years they were
focusing on the wrong thing and so it just really made me realize what would happen if you remove those things and and then and then they will come later on I'm not saying that they're not important at all but you can course correct that along the way but the idea is the most important that's what we're lacking that's what's not going to get replaced by Ai and by technology right so that's what we should be fostering
and cultivating and doing everything to deserve that you know there's so many things from your book that are just your book is just beautiful and I can see you in the design of the book you know in the yellow on the cover in these big yellow pages in a lot of the drawings and I want to hear about how did you go about working on these drawings thinking through the design some of the fight that you had to do with book publishers tell me about that
that yeah yeah yeah so I think it comes like I've always been drawn to colors and the Aesthetics of things and sort of um visuals that help me and I think it's because growing up I I would often move around and I had to oftentimes I didn't speak the language and so I had to rely on different things that would help me until I I you know learned the language and one of those was visuals like I've always loved you know a visual so for
example the the cover of the book was really important to me because I wanted to be able to showcase the essence of my book through one image you know so somebody that doesn't know who I am that you know hasn't read the title but they look at the image and they're like wait that oh that's Tic Tac Toe but but that's not the way you win oh is this about cheating no or is this about doing things differently or maybe there's a
different way so for me I I spend a lot of time thinking about these things and I remember like when I would learn in school and all the things like when I try to I I I always draw and do my doodles and sort of like pair words with images and so I thought you know this has to be part of the book and I was very lucky to work with somebody that I really his name is yanis zolin who I had seen on Twitter he would grab ideas from
you know all these thinkers and he was able to portray them through a very good visual and he was like I would love to work with you and and bring some of your ideas to life and I was like oh my gosh yes so I gave him room to get inspired and so I told him read the book and then tell me what are the things that you're excited to sort of like bring to life and and I think that that was key to letting him do his thing like I really
respect the creative process of of like different people I'm that's your talent so I want to see what and then he came up with like all this you know things that he was so excited because he really resonated with the book and the story and he has four kids and so he was like you know this is something really deep in my heart that I want to be part of this and so I think that inspired him also to just he did such a phenomenal
job illustrating this Concepts to the point where you you open a page and sometimes you don't get it from the mean like you don't get the meaning from what I wrote you actually get it from the visual so it's so powerful every visual was very carefully selected and then I was like okay now there are these other Concepts that you didn't touch upon that I would love for you to try to you know and and there were different drafts like
he'll come up with something and I'm like um you know oh actually no I don't see it that way let's do it this way and so I think we we spend a lot of time doing that and I think that that's one of the things that people really like
about the book that they can really get you know a lot from from those visuals and from you know sort of like the essence of the book and and they like to gift the book because it's like a beautiful um kind of like thing to give
to somebody else and so yeah when I was writing the book I remember thinking I don't want to have one extra word and that was really hard and I remember you know I had like multiple editors including you including my husband who was probably the best editor and he was like sometimes I was like no like this paragraph and he's like Anna it's really not adding anything and I was like okay so it has to go um so I I really made it
a point to try to be as succinct and simple and straightforward yet you know captivating and um I wanted to make it simp like I didn't want to do a long book I feel like a lot of um books could have been articles which is why you sort of like Dro them halfway through I like I don't want that I really don't want that and because I started I didn't write this book like like a normal book where you like oh I'm going to write a
book so I'm starting from scratch no I totally started from abundance right I went back to like all this newsletter that I had already written about and I was like which ones are like the core of my message what am I trying to
communicate which ones really resonated with people and they want it more and they were like tell me more can I can expand on those or which ones can I combine because they're common theme and it was a really fun process to do that
to sort of like put all my writing out there and then see like how can I put this into a table of contents that has a story line that covers the things I want to cover and then I'll write those extra chapters or combine like it was really fun and so um when I was doing that paired up with the visuals and and you know just having people's and but I thought I I don't know I thought it was like a a very me way of of bringing all
these ideas to life so I want afid to be practical so that's why you see that every chapter ends with something like sweet like some nothing El nothing too hard because I want it for it to be something that parents can do right away um and then try and see what works for them right and and yeah just sort of start planting that little seed um and and and this idea so they can then come back to and refer to in your entire time
writing this thing what was the moment that you were the most miserable and hated writing the most oh my God that's a great question okay so remember that I was pregnant when I was doing this so I mean there was a lot going on emotionally hormonal like I was already sort of like all over the place right so at that little layer of complexity um but the hardest thing was when I opened it up for feedback because I had a lot
of fun sort of selecting which were the pieces and putting together that table of content and seeing it I was like oh my God yes I have this story line and then I I was very selective about the people that I invited to sort of like look at that Master document and start giving me and I and I said I would love for you to go in and I selected like six people read it which is a short read which that was good and then just give
me your feedback and then I realized oh my God I start to get this feedback left and right about things and then I felt like I had to change the whole thing because everybody would tell me something different and I was like hold
on no this is not productive I need to change my strategy and so I heard somewhere I don't know if it was Seth Goden or um that said no you need to give you need to think about the people you want editing your book and then you
need to give them a specific kind of feedback that you want for them to give me for for you it was like highlevel sort of you know tell me if I need more stories here tell me what's interesting what's sort of like uh like that's you know for Fernando my husband I was like no no I want you to go needy greedy like caught words and and and and sentences and like the grammar and like like I want you to go there yeah you're like I
know where you live yes I know where you live I know find exactly exactly um and so for Sylvia who's this friend that I really look up to and she's been helping me a lot with like since the very beginnings of Miss Fab she lives in London she's a childhood friend from from when I lived in Brazil she was giving me more like she was Playing devil's advocate I was like I want you to read this and you know it's very easy
to fall like I'm I'm full of biases which I'm constantly trying to battle against but of course I'm so passionate about this thing that sometimes I have a hard time seeing the other side of it and there's some really good arguments to be made on the other side and so I was like you play you already know what my stance is you already know what I advocate for because you've been with me I want you to play The Devil's Advocate
I want you to make me hate you because you're criticizing you know the thing that's great I want you to make hate you I actually really like things that are like that where you create the conditions for somebody to be mean and Discerning and be like no that's not good enough and by saying that explicitly they feel the freedom to to do it and there's not animosity whereas if you don't do that explicitly either you haven't said it so she's going to
come back at you with something super harsh and be like ah Sylvia I or on the other side she's be like but I love Anna so I either need to prioritize my friendship or the work and that put somebody in a really difficult position which is why I chose Sylvia because she knows me since we were 10 she I she's really smart I really admire I've always admired her for many reasons she's been with me through the Miss fap Journey since the
pandemic when when it all started and she knows all the things I'm doing well and I know she knows and I know she really a huge supporter so I was like you are the perfect person to I'm not going to you know to to like help me find those holes and make me feel uncomfortable and make me and see if I can debate this ideas that you're telling me because that's that's a big thing right like I don't want for this
to be one-sided or you know so so that was great feedback from her well I got to I got to write the forward I got to write the forward and that was yeah that and one of the things that's been really fun has been thinking through your personal Monopoly and what it was that you were going to focus on so in your first edition of Fab Fridays you wrote among other things I'll be sharing what I'm learning and building my take on the
latest research on education and powerful ideas from experts in ways that are easy to digest and I think that there's a few things there the first thing is it feels very stultified and it feels like very much in your head you know you're talking about latest research powerful ideas and ways that are easy to digest but also that very much is what you ended up being inside of so it's both right on the nose and also like sort of like I wouldn't have
expected Anna to write that doesn't sound like you and I was looking back at the forward and I wrote so much of what I read about education is dry and over intellectualized but Anna's writing is unique it's bubbly imaginative and informed by Decades of experience and I think that that speaks to a lot of how I feel that you've grown is you have such a colorful vibrant personality and there's 's a line from Miles Davis the
jazz musician where he says sometimes it takes a long time to be able to play like yourself and I think it's the same thing with writing sometimes it takes a long time to be able to write like yourself we're talking about school you you learn how to write in this way that's rigid and sort of sclerotic and you're trying really hard you're sort of in your head and to just let the energy flow through you and to just release and
surrender to your actual personality get that on the page that is so much of the work of writing and it's interesting to see the change from fab Fridays to what I was able to write in your book and can I just say that um that's probably why you you know when people ask me and I'm not just saying this because we're here you know you're a dear friend to me but when people ask me like who's been your favorite teacher your most impactful
teacher and I'm like ironically it's somebody that's younger than me somebody that I did not meet in this 10 schools that I went to Growing Up or college it's somebody that I met you know when I quit my job when I was an adult you know in an online course and you know that's one of the reasons you were able to well not only I think that a great teacher like H you know believes in you and your capability challenges you and makes the
right conditions to like push you and bring the best out of you and I think that you were able to truly help me find like that Anna in that I have inside and that playfulness and what makes me me in a way that no other teacher has done in my life and so I you know I'm really really grateful and you know that I admire you as a professional as a friend I adore you but but you really have been the teacher that has impacted me the
most and I mean that when I say that thank you of course but it's I know but this is truly like a very special podcast for me because because you've been such an instrumental part of my journey so so yes yeah I think one of the things that I'm really really really passionate about when it comes to writing is when I see something in somebody that doesn't make it onto the page and I love trying to figure out
what is the thing that's blocking that person and it happens all the time I was talking to somebody who thinks going to be a multi-billionaire and he's just like well I'm just not a good writer like let me see if I have any ideas that I can write about I'm like dude you're you're so fearful and scared to just share what is naturally inside of you and I want to I want to free you from these chains that you're locked in
right now I have other people I mean this was you right like you were so bubbly and so energetic and struggling to get that on the page like for you also so many ideas in your head that then you couldn't put into words and then structure and like trying to figure that out and it happens with all these sorts of people something about writing puts people in a timid fearful place and it doesn't need to be like that and I think that so much of my
career and what we're trying to do at R of Passage is what are the strategies that we can use to actually get people to just be like the kids who are just playing around and laughing and goofing off again you know totally and you know what I think that the reason why the work that you're doing is so important of helping people you know realize that they are writers and and get this ideas out and everything is because maybe this
doesn't mean that you're going to be an author and publish a book and be a writer no but what I realized about writing is that it really is the center of of if not all most creative ende deers like it all starts with
writing right like right now I've been for the past year exploring not writing as much but exploring sort of other mediums and exploring video like a lot more and doing podcast and this and that and the reason why I'm able to do it the
you know well and communicate the way it's because it came from things that I've written about right or you know I've been exploring with like Instagram which is a platform that I didn't really like I love Twitter because it was about the ideas and I could write and Instagram I thought no it's like pictures and that but I was like no I've been exploring with videos on Instagram where I'm able to talk about and and my
whole point with the things that I do is I want to spread this ideas as far as I can around the world whether it is writing or video or everything but that that's what I want to do I want for as many people to listen to these things
and reflect on them and then make whatever it is that works for them based on this ideas and Reflections and so because that's you know it starts from that that's how you start asking questions and doing things differently
and so um I think that because like it it all comes from the writing and I and and you know some people are like well but I don't want to learn how to write because I don't want to be a writer I'm not interested in that and I'm like no but but that's not you don't you don't have to be a writer like you're going to become a better thinker you're going to become a better speaker you're going to become you know more in touch with your
emotions and be able to work through your emotions which is huge for kids you you know it just there's so much that comes from being able to to to Really Embrace this practice and so I think that it's wonderful that you have this podcast hopefully it's going to inspire more people to to you know tap into that damaged writer and and see what comes out and learn from you know people that are doing I'm not saying me I'm saying
like the other people you've interviewed like wonderful wonderful things yeah it is interesting I was as you were saying I was just playing around with different definitions for what is writing so one to think about writing is writing is about transferring ideas from your head into somebody else's head I was thinking about another definition of writing is a way to put words to the emotions and the feelings and the intuitions that you
have that are inside your body put them into words and make them concrete another definition of writing is exploring where you have a little hunch and you're beginning to explore what is that hunch and beginning to sort of make sense of whatever intuition is going on and I don't know it's just an interesting thing to ask like what is writing because in school writing is certainly not hey let's go explore the thing you're most passionate about
writing is certainly not hey let's have as much fun as we can learning how to communicate with other people writing is much more about something serious that I can't exactly find the words for right now and you know what writing is also very therapeutic I I just thought of one thing that I in my classroom that I had not quite talked about but we had this or maybe I've talked to you about it but we had like a problem notebook in the
classroom because it I something that was very frustrated was like we would come back from Reeses and there were a few fights or a few things and then all the kids needed Miss Fab to talk about an issue that they were sad or angry about and I couldn't like sit with all of them at the same time so what I started to do was there's a problem notebook you get to get you know spend five minutes there was a timer open the
notebook in a blank page and it had like a Clipper so you can't go back to previous Pages let it all out and then don't write your name if you want for me read it you put it on my desk and if you don't you just pass the page put the Clipper and that's it what I started to find out is that for many kids this urgent thing that they needed to talk to me about would go away after they wrote about it and they were fine like this
tantrum and this thing they once they like put it down in words and paper they would not and then nobody would see that again because I wouldn't checked them unless they gave it to me they and then they they could continue with their date and sometimes they did require like okay there's a followup Miss I want to talk to you about this so I started to be like wow like just putting the words into paper there's something so powerful
about that in like therapeutic about that and then there's this other example um of you know I'm all like I said I go really fast I tend to interrupt because I'm excited or because I'm you know that's my personality and that's something that that I've been trying to work with since I was a kid and so sometimes for somebody like my husband that like you said it's the opposite he can't get his ideas across or we're
having like a you know discussion and I say everything I need to say and he would often stay quiet and I thought oh he doesn't have anything to say and he was like no no you just make it really hard for me to put my point across cuz
you're interruped so he started writing me letters and at the beginning I was like oh my gosh this is so serious like is this is and and it wasn't anything that it was just and it was so good for a relationship that we
started communicating that way and he was like I incentivize you sometimes to think through these things and and you know write about it and then talk to me about it so he would send me letters and I would really get to know his point of view just by like sitting down and reading that and then I tried to do that as well and and sometimes I was like no this is not what I'm arguing about like this is not what's bothering me but if
we were just talking it would have come across us completely different and we would have so anyway writing is also in addition to the things you said a way to work through your emotions and and sometimes very therapeutic yeah one of the things yesterday we were talking about what does the boot camp that we run what are the core things that we should focus on delivering and this is something I always come back to is how can I make my
communication as simple as possible and the bigger the group The simpler it needs to be Napoleon has a nice line about this when he's talking about war he's like military directives need to be super simple think about being on the battlefield run go fight it's not like well if we if we move our legs at approximately 17 point7 like yo there's whatever come in your way people are out to murder you the directives need to be
clear and simple yep yep yep it's how writing improves how to impr communication absolutely absolutely it makes you a better Communicator which by the way is one of the top top things that is required in the world that we live now and and people are always like yeah we need good communicators we need people writing is the best way to become a good communicator thanks for doing this Anna thank you so much for inviting me David this was so fun