A friend asked me for some advice on a massive writing project that he’s had on the backburner for a while now. It sounded like something huge that could take years to finish. I suggested that he start with shorter essays. “But how do you scope them?” he asked.
The answer – which seemed obvious to me, but I realize isn’t obvious to lots of people – is to talk to people about it.
“What’s your book about?”
“Well, uh…”
Talking to people forces you to prioritize. You can’t talk your entire essay at someone, because they have limited attention spans. Conversations act as crucibles which challenge you to condense your ideas into something compelling. While your ideas might not be so simple as to be reducible to a single soundbite, you still want to pick the best possible soundbite you can – because if you don’t choose one for yourself, it will be chosen for you. Or worse, it’ll just be forgotten or ignored entirely.
You especially want to pay close attention to how your ideas are being received. When do your friends light up? When do they frown? When do they look confused? When do they laugh? What do they seem to be unconvinced by? If your ideas are important to you, and you believe that they ought to be shared with the world, then you ought to be very interested in how exactly the transmission of your ideas play out.
(Some people will mistake this directive to mean “ramble endlessly about your book at others”. Please don’t do that. The point of talking isn’t to enjoy the sound of your own voice. It’s to really, really listen to what other people think about your ideas.)
If you can’t get people interested in your ideas, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your ideas are bad. It could just be the way that you’re framing it. In my early days as a blogger, I used to write blogposts with grandiose titles like “How To Save Singapore” – and I would get torn to shreds in the comments. But I was determined to figure out a way to contribute, and so I kept iterating. And eventually I think people came around to thinking, “Alright, this guy has some interesting thoughts and it’s maybe worth listening to him.”
Once you have people who are interested, things can get much, much more interesting from there. To me, this the most exciting part of being a writer. Your ideas are no longer just wispy tendrils in your head – now they’re wispy tendrils in multiple people’s heads! You will learn so much more about your own ideas just by hearing how other people talk about them. (You’ll learn a lot about the world, too. When you light a fire, you’ll get to see how the wind treats the smoke. The same is true for idea-fires as well.)
A good essay that people are interested in has a good shot at growing into a good book. A massive book that you’ve written in isolation without ever talking to anybody about? That’s potential heartbreak, if it turns out that nobody cares about it. So until you know better, always be testing your ideas out. Professional standup comics test their jokes in comedy clubs before they film their specials. Writers can do the same on Twitter, or in conversations with friends.
In my personal experience, I’ve found that going on podcasts has challenged me to think much harder and look much more closely at my ideas. I think this has to do with the “cost” of it, or the “stakes”. The podcasts I’ve been on typically range from 30 to 90 minutes – and because I’m a guest on other people’s shows, with audiences who don’t personally know or care about me, I feel particularly compelled to be extra-respectful of their attention. I found myself digging really deep and asking myself, “What’s really interesting here? Why should anybody care about this?”
I’m convinced that this virtuous cycle makes writers better. It helps us relate better to audiences, which in turn earns us larger (and hopefully better!) audiences.This gives us a better class of feedback, criticism and questioning, which in turn further challenges us to seek out whatever we need to properly strengthen our work.
A bit of a side-story here, but I think it’s relevant: I find myself thinking about the story of GoPro vs Contour. In the early days, camera enthusiasts actually considered Contour to be the better camera, from a technical standpoint. So why did GoPro win? GoPro had the better positioning and marketing. When parents wanted to buy their kids a cool camera for Christmas, the GoPro was the more obviously exciting choice. More sales means more revenue, which GoPro then reinvested into further refining their product. In short? The “worse” product that the customers liked more… became the better product.
This story rhymes with a similar idea I’ve described in “the MVP model of personal development“. Suppose you want to become a better chef, or get fit. You don’t want to spend years researching nutrition and physiology before you start. You want to get your hands dirty as soon as you can. Cook some eggs, go for a jog. The feedback you get from actually doing something will give you high-value, highly-actionable information that you cannot get any other way, that’s hyper-specific to you and your circumstances.
So get out there. Talk to people, and pay close attention to how they receive your ideas.
PS: There *are* some potential pitfalls to this – for example, I’m obligated to inform you that there’s some chance that you might accidentally become a highly charismatic, outrage-demon-summoning demagogue who gets really good at inspiring hateful audiences. Please be careful to avoid doing that.