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I'm Lou Franco and this is Episode 46 of Write While True.
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Write While True is an infinite loop and that's because I think of writing as an infinite
3
00:00:23,780 --> 00:00:29,960
game, a game I'm playing for fun and to get better at it, like a game of catch.
4
00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:34,600
So in each episode I'll tell you something I learned about writing and then I'll throw
5
00:00:34,600 --> 00:00:39,720
you the ball with a writing challenge or prompt.
6
00:00:39,720 --> 00:00:42,680
This is the 7th episode of Season 4.
7
00:00:42,680 --> 00:00:45,500
I started this season in January of 2024.
8
00:00:45,500 --> 00:00:49,600
My intent was to document the process of writing a book.
9
00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:55,160
But even though this season is over a year long, there have only been 7 episodes and
10
00:00:55,160 --> 00:00:57,420
that's because I took a 9 month break.
11
00:00:57,420 --> 00:01:02,320
I want to talk more about what happened during that break and how I was derailed from my
12
00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:05,100
plans and how I recovered.
13
00:01:05,100 --> 00:01:09,060
Here's a brief timeline.
14
00:01:09,060 --> 00:01:14,760
I started thinking about writing a book in late 2023 and so I read all of the posts in
15
00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:19,100
my blog to see if I could find some idea in them.
16
00:01:19,100 --> 00:01:24,900
To write the book I designed a book writing process based on the ideas in the book The
17
00:01:24,900 --> 00:01:27,880
Four Disciplines of Execution.
18
00:01:27,880 --> 00:01:30,780
The fourth discipline is about accountability.
19
00:01:30,780 --> 00:01:34,060
So I had to have some kind of accountability meeting.
20
00:01:34,060 --> 00:01:40,080
But I was working alone, so I thought that doing this podcast would help with that.
21
00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:43,380
So I started Season 4 to share this process.
22
00:01:43,380 --> 00:01:51,440
My plan was to give updates all along the way as a way of holding myself accountable.
23
00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:54,400
But I realized that that wouldn't be enough.
24
00:01:54,400 --> 00:02:00,140
So I joined the Useful Books community, which has a few writing accountability meetings
25
00:02:00,140 --> 00:02:01,940
during the week.
26
00:02:01,940 --> 00:02:07,000
The Useful Books community also includes access to a book sharing platform called Help This
27
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:08,080
Book.
28
00:02:08,080 --> 00:02:12,920
The members encourage you to use it to share your work in progress, which I did.
29
00:02:12,920 --> 00:02:15,280
So things started out great.
30
00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:19,680
I wrote a few thousand words in January and shared them.
31
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Then I wrote a few thousand more and shared that in March.
32
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And then I went on vacation for a few weeks in April.
33
00:02:28,480 --> 00:02:34,480
At that point I had shared the first four episodes of the podcast of the season.
34
00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:38,400
But I was taking a planned break.
35
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About a week before my flight back, I got a message from Gergely Orosz from the Pragmatic
36
00:02:44,560 --> 00:02:47,080
Engineer newsletter.
37
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He'd seen my draft and asked me to propose an article based on it for his newsletter.
38
00:02:53,640 --> 00:02:57,000
So I wrote an outline and a proposal, which he accepted.
39
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And he sent me a writing guide that described his newsletter's audience and the style that
40
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he wanted.
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With that guide and his approval of my draft and outline, I felt very confident that I
42
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understood what Gergely wanted.
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And then I proceeded to write 7,000 words that he hated.
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That sounds strong.
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And it is.
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But he read the first few paragraphs and got so frustrated that he stopped and asked me
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to start over or give up.
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But in a nice way.
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He told me he wanted to hear about my personal experiences and what I had learned from them.
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Not abstract tips and generalizations.
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I skimmed his comments and dashed off an email where I told him that I would submit a new
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draft.
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Then I tried to read the comments in depth.
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Even though his feedback was short to the point, it took me days to read it.
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I kept stopping.
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My self-doubts about my writing, my imposter syndrome, my worries about failing in public,
57
00:04:02,240 --> 00:04:06,280
they literally made it hard for me to read more than a few words before I would just
58
00:04:06,280 --> 00:04:08,600
command-tab away from the document.
59
00:04:08,600 --> 00:04:10,560
It was like touching a hot stove.
60
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I would instantly pull back.
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I spent the next six weeks wondering if I should even write this book.
62
00:04:19,360 --> 00:04:23,080
Every time I tried to write, I felt like I was going to fail again.
63
00:04:23,080 --> 00:04:26,640
I couldn't figure out how to fix the article, which meant I couldn't fix the book because
64
00:04:26,640 --> 00:04:29,600
they were so similar.
65
00:04:29,600 --> 00:04:33,080
So I started a new article from scratch.
66
00:04:33,080 --> 00:04:37,200
I pulled in some paragraphs from the online draft that had prompted Gergely to message
67
00:04:37,200 --> 00:04:39,040
me in the first place.
68
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And I got to about 2,000 words in mid-July, less than half of what the article needed.
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It was taking a while, so Gergely wrote to ask me if I was going to submit something
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else or if I just wanted to quit.
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After I read that, I almost quit right there.
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Not just the article, but the book too.
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If I couldn't write an article on this topic for this audience, I obviously couldn't write
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a book, but instead, I told him that I was about halfway done, but I was having trouble.
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I said I would spend a week working on it and then send him a new draft.
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I made this deadline before I had a plan, but I needed to do something to get me going.
77
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Having a week meant that it would require about three to five hundred words a day, which
78
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is very doable if I actually sat down and wrote.
79
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I realized that the only way to move forward was to really understand the feedback, so
80
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I forced myself to read it slowly and methodically, taking notes along the way.
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It was direct and kind, but still, like I said, hard for me to read.
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But I read it, and I read it again, and I internalized the central message he was trying
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to tell me.
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He wanted me to tell personal stories where I used the techniques I was writing about
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and show what happened.
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Instead, I had submitted a draft where the advice was not motivated by relating it to
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my personal experience.
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My draft was abstract, and he wanted something specific to me.
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I hadn't done this because I was afraid of admitting my failures, but that's exactly
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what he wanted.
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Around this time, I talked to a software developer friend, and I told her what happened, about
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my first article and about the feedback and all the troubles I'd been having rewriting
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it.
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I told her that I was anxious about writing in a personal style so publicly that I would
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embarrass myself.
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First, she reminded me that I often try to get points across by telling stories from my career,
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and that this was just like that.
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Then she said, quote, "If you don't write the book that only you can write, then why do
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it at all?"
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I had nothing to say.
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It was clear to me that she was right.
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Soon after that, I reread "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser.
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This is a classic book on writing nonfiction.
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Here's an excerpt where Zinsser writes about the same issue and how to solve it.
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"Writers are obviously at their most natural when they write in the first person.
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Writing is an intimate transaction between two people conducted on paper, and it will
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go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
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Therefore, I urge people to write in the first person to use I and me and we and us.
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They put up a fight.
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'Who am I to say what I think.' they ask. 'or what I feel?'
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'Who are you not to say what you think?' I tell them
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'There's only one you.'
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'Nobody else thinks or feels in exactly the same way.'
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'But nobody cares about my opinions,' they say.
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'It would make me feel conspicuous.'
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'They'll care if you tell them something interesting,' I say, 'and tell them in words that come naturally.'"
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It's weird because on my blog, I do write as myself, and this podcast is also my point
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of view on what I'm learning about writing.
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I'm telling you a story right now about my failures.
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I have no trouble being vulnerable about my struggles here, and I frequently wrap it all
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in personal stories that show how I learn the practical tips I include.
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But my blog and podcast are mostly for self-development.
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I am trying to transform myself into someone that writes and who can speak coherently.
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I hope that my audience learns something, but mostly this is practice for bigger things.
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But in the first draft of that article and in the early drafts of my book, I stopped
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writing as myself.
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It made it harder to write, and based on feedback, harder to read.
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The irony is that I had used my blog and podcast to practice writing, and almost all of that
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practice was writing in the first person, with my point of view, and then as soon as
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I tried to do something longer, I abandoned it.
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It took me months to figure out that even though I was writing for myself, I wasn't
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writing as myself.
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So I gave in, and it's gone a lot better.
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I can still say what I want to say in the book.
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The tips and practices that I think will help people.
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But wrapping them in stories makes the book easier to understand.
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By the way, in order to do this podcast, I had to go back and read my first draft and
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all of that feedback that I got.
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I hadn't looked at it since last July, but I decided to refresh my memory by looking
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it over.
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I read through the correspondence and the feedback to make sure I got the details right.
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All of the emotions that I had at that time came rushing back, even though I did eventually
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write a well-received article and currently have a draft of the book done, implementing
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the feedback and having success did not make it easier to reread.
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I don't know if you have this issue, but if you do try to write something in the first
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person.
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Use that as a prompt to be yourself with your spoken voice.
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I find that when I do this, the words flow out better.
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Whenever you start to give an opinion relate it to your personal experience so that the reader
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can understand the context where it might apply. It's hard, but it helps to talk about
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failures too and how you overcame them.
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Thanks for listening.
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This has been Write While True, a podcast where we love infinite loops as long as they're fun.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:19,440
I'm Lou Franco and this is Episode 46 of Write While True.
2
00:00:19,440 --> 00:00:23,780
Write While True is an infinite loop and that's because I think of writing as an infinite
3
00:00:23,780 --> 00:00:29,960
game, a game I'm playing for fun and to get better at it, like a game of catch.
4
00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:34,600
So in each episode I'll tell you something I learned about writing and then I'll throw
5
00:00:34,600 --> 00:00:39,720
you the ball with a writing challenge or prompt.
6
00:00:39,720 --> 00:00:42,680
This is the 7th episode of Season 4.
7
00:00:42,680 --> 00:00:45,500
I started this season in January of 2024.
8
00:00:45,500 --> 00:00:49,600
My intent was to document the process of writing a book.
9
00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:55,160
But even though this season is over a year long, there have only been 7 episodes and
10
00:00:55,160 --> 00:00:57,420
that's because I took a 9 month break.
11
00:00:57,420 --> 00:01:02,320
I want to talk more about what happened during that break and how I was derailed from my
12
00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:05,100
plans and how I recovered.
13
00:01:05,100 --> 00:01:09,060
Here's a brief timeline.
14
00:01:09,060 --> 00:01:14,760
I started thinking about writing a book in late 2023 and so I read all of the posts in
15
00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:19,100
my blog to see if I could find some idea in them.
16
00:01:19,100 --> 00:01:24,900
To write the book I designed a book writing process based on the ideas in the book The
17
00:01:24,900 --> 00:01:27,880
Four Disciplines of Execution.
18
00:01:27,880 --> 00:01:30,780
The fourth discipline is about accountability.
19
00:01:30,780 --> 00:01:34,060
So I had to have some kind of accountability meeting.
20
00:01:34,060 --> 00:01:40,080
But I was working alone, so I thought that doing this podcast would help with that.
21
00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:43,380
So I started Season 4 to share this process.
22
00:01:43,380 --> 00:01:51,440
My plan was to give updates all along the way as a way of holding myself accountable.
23
00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:54,400
But I realized that that wouldn't be enough.
24
00:01:54,400 --> 00:02:00,140
So I joined the Useful Books community, which has a few writing accountability meetings
25
00:02:00,140 --> 00:02:01,940
during the week.
26
00:02:01,940 --> 00:02:07,000
The Useful Books community also includes access to a book sharing platform called Help This
27
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:08,080
Book.
28
00:02:08,080 --> 00:02:12,920
The members encourage you to use it to share your work in progress, which I did.
29
00:02:12,920 --> 00:02:15,280
So things started out great.
30
00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:19,680
I wrote a few thousand words in January and shared them.
31
00:02:19,680 --> 00:02:23,440
Then I wrote a few thousand more and shared that in March.
32
00:02:23,440 --> 00:02:28,480
And then I went on vacation for a few weeks in April.
33
00:02:28,480 --> 00:02:34,480
At that point I had shared the first four episodes of the podcast of the season.
34
00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:38,400
But I was taking a planned break.
35
00:02:38,400 --> 00:02:44,560
About a week before my flight back, I got a message from Gergely Orosz from the Pragmatic
36
00:02:44,560 --> 00:02:47,080
Engineer newsletter.
37
00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:53,640
He'd seen my draft and asked me to propose an article based on it for his newsletter.
38
00:02:53,640 --> 00:02:57,000
So I wrote an outline and a proposal, which he accepted.
39
00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:02,000
And he sent me a writing guide that described his newsletter's audience and the style that
40
00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:03,000
he wanted.
41
00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:08,240
With that guide and his approval of my draft and outline, I felt very confident that I
42
00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:10,800
understood what Gergely wanted.
43
00:03:10,800 --> 00:03:15,920
And then I proceeded to write 7,000 words that he hated.
44
00:03:15,920 --> 00:03:16,920
That sounds strong.
45
00:03:16,920 --> 00:03:18,200
And it is.
46
00:03:18,200 --> 00:03:23,400
But he read the first few paragraphs and got so frustrated that he stopped and asked me
47
00:03:23,400 --> 00:03:26,040
to start over or give up.
48
00:03:26,040 --> 00:03:28,560
But in a nice way.
49
00:03:28,560 --> 00:03:34,840
He told me he wanted to hear about my personal experiences and what I had learned from them.
50
00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:39,120
Not abstract tips and generalizations.
51
00:03:39,120 --> 00:03:43,320
I skimmed his comments and dashed off an email where I told him that I would submit a new
52
00:03:43,320 --> 00:03:45,160
draft.
53
00:03:45,160 --> 00:03:50,320
Then I tried to read the comments in depth.
54
00:03:50,320 --> 00:03:54,680
Even though his feedback was short to the point, it took me days to read it.
55
00:03:54,680 --> 00:03:56,720
I kept stopping.
56
00:03:56,720 --> 00:04:02,240
My self-doubts about my writing, my imposter syndrome, my worries about failing in public,
57
00:04:02,240 --> 00:04:06,280
they literally made it hard for me to read more than a few words before I would just
58
00:04:06,280 --> 00:04:08,600
command-tab away from the document.
59
00:04:08,600 --> 00:04:10,560
It was like touching a hot stove.
60
00:04:10,560 --> 00:04:14,160
I would instantly pull back.
61
00:04:14,160 --> 00:04:19,360
I spent the next six weeks wondering if I should even write this book.
62
00:04:19,360 --> 00:04:23,080
Every time I tried to write, I felt like I was going to fail again.
63
00:04:23,080 --> 00:04:26,640
I couldn't figure out how to fix the article, which meant I couldn't fix the book because
64
00:04:26,640 --> 00:04:29,600
they were so similar.
65
00:04:29,600 --> 00:04:33,080
So I started a new article from scratch.
66
00:04:33,080 --> 00:04:37,200
I pulled in some paragraphs from the online draft that had prompted Gergely to message
67
00:04:37,200 --> 00:04:39,040
me in the first place.
68
00:04:39,040 --> 00:04:46,080
And I got to about 2,000 words in mid-July, less than half of what the article needed.
69
00:04:46,080 --> 00:04:50,120
It was taking a while, so Gergely wrote to ask me if I was going to submit something
70
00:04:50,120 --> 00:04:55,800
else or if I just wanted to quit.
71
00:04:55,800 --> 00:04:58,360
After I read that, I almost quit right there.
72
00:04:58,360 --> 00:05:01,480
Not just the article, but the book too.
73
00:05:01,480 --> 00:05:05,640
If I couldn't write an article on this topic for this audience, I obviously couldn't write
74
00:05:05,640 --> 00:05:15,080
a book, but instead, I told him that I was about halfway done, but I was having trouble.
75
00:05:15,080 --> 00:05:19,360
I said I would spend a week working on it and then send him a new draft.
76
00:05:19,360 --> 00:05:27,080
I made this deadline before I had a plan, but I needed to do something to get me going.
77
00:05:27,080 --> 00:05:32,040
Having a week meant that it would require about three to five hundred words a day, which
78
00:05:32,040 --> 00:05:38,080
is very doable if I actually sat down and wrote.
79
00:05:38,080 --> 00:05:44,400
I realized that the only way to move forward was to really understand the feedback, so
80
00:05:44,400 --> 00:05:51,320
I forced myself to read it slowly and methodically, taking notes along the way.
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It was direct and kind, but still, like I said, hard for me to read.
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But I read it, and I read it again, and I internalized the central message he was trying
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to tell me.
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He wanted me to tell personal stories where I used the techniques I was writing about
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and show what happened.
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Instead, I had submitted a draft where the advice was not motivated by relating it to
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my personal experience.
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My draft was abstract, and he wanted something specific to me.
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I hadn't done this because I was afraid of admitting my failures, but that's exactly
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what he wanted.
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Around this time, I talked to a software developer friend, and I told her what happened, about
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my first article and about the feedback and all the troubles I'd been having rewriting
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it.
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I told her that I was anxious about writing in a personal style so publicly that I would
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embarrass myself.
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First, she reminded me that I often try to get points across by telling stories from my career,
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and that this was just like that.
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Then she said, quote, "If you don't write the book that only you can write, then why do
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it at all?"
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I had nothing to say.
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It was clear to me that she was right.
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Soon after that, I reread "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser.
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This is a classic book on writing nonfiction.
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Here's an excerpt where Zinsser writes about the same issue and how to solve it.
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"Writers are obviously at their most natural when they write in the first person.
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Writing is an intimate transaction between two people conducted on paper, and it will
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go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
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Therefore, I urge people to write in the first person to use I and me and we and us.
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They put up a fight.
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'Who am I to say what I think.' they ask. 'or what I feel?'
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'Who are you not to say what you think?' I tell them
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'There's only one you.'
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'Nobody else thinks or feels in exactly the same way.'
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'But nobody cares about my opinions,' they say.
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'It would make me feel conspicuous.'
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'They'll care if you tell them something interesting,' I say, 'and tell them in words that come naturally.'"
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It's weird because on my blog, I do write as myself, and this podcast is also my point
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of view on what I'm learning about writing.
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I'm telling you a story right now about my failures.
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I have no trouble being vulnerable about my struggles here, and I frequently wrap it all
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in personal stories that show how I learn the practical tips I include.
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But my blog and podcast are mostly for self-development.
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I am trying to transform myself into someone that writes and who can speak coherently.
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I hope that my audience learns something, but mostly this is practice for bigger things.
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But in the first draft of that article and in the early drafts of my book, I stopped
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writing as myself.
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It made it harder to write, and based on feedback, harder to read.
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The irony is that I had used my blog and podcast to practice writing, and almost all of that
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practice was writing in the first person, with my point of view, and then as soon as
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I tried to do something longer, I abandoned it.
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It took me months to figure out that even though I was writing for myself, I wasn't
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writing as myself.
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So I gave in, and it's gone a lot better.
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I can still say what I want to say in the book.
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The tips and practices that I think will help people.
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But wrapping them in stories makes the book easier to understand.
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By the way, in order to do this podcast, I had to go back and read my first draft and
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all of that feedback that I got.
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I hadn't looked at it since last July, but I decided to refresh my memory by looking
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it over.
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I read through the correspondence and the feedback to make sure I got the details right.
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All of the emotions that I had at that time came rushing back, even though I did eventually
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write a well-received article and currently have a draft of the book done, implementing
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the feedback and having success did not make it easier to reread.
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I don't know if you have this issue, but if you do try to write something in the first
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person.
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Use that as a prompt to be yourself with your spoken voice.
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I find that when I do this, the words flow out better.
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Whenever you start to give an opinion relate it to your personal experience so that the reader
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can understand the context where it might apply. It's hard, but it helps to talk about
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failures too and how you overcame them.
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Thanks for listening.
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This has been Write While True, a podcast where we love infinite loops as long as they're fun.
