This week J. Jason Hicks shares insights into battling resistance, the importance of daily writing practice, and the influence of authors like Steven Pressfield. Marcus and Hicks discuss how adversity can shape our paths, the significance of authentic partnerships, and practical advice for aspiring writers. Hicks also highlights his upcoming projects and how he integrates his life experiences into his work.
Episode Highlights:
09:22 The Writing Process
27:31 Overcoming Adversity and Finding Purpose
34:55 Creating Your Universe
36:50 The Power of Daily Writing
46:07 Advice for Aspiring Authors
49:33 The Importance of a Supportive Partner
Jason Hicks studied English Literature, Political Science, and World Religions with a focus on classic literature at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Ruinwaster’s Bane: The Annals of the Last Emissary is his debut novel. He lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife and his dog. A one-eyed Boxer named Drake.
Learn more at: www.jjasonhicks.com
Get Jason’s book at: https://a.co/d/3FKu9m9
Episode Transcript:
00:32
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words. Instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. J. Jason Hicks studied English literature,
01:02
poli sci and world religions with a focus on classic literature at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Rune Waters Bane, The Annals of the Last Emissary is his debut novel. He lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife and his dog, Maya. I highly recommend this book. This is the beginning of an epic series for anyone that enjoys fiction and for anybody that enjoys literature in general. It is so well written. His second book of this will be out in the fall and we’re going to talk about his process, how he does everything.
01:32
his nonfiction, and so much more. Jason, thank you for being here. Thank you for your time, my friend. Well, thank you for having me, Marcus. I’m happy to be here. Yes. And real quick to prime our listeners, you have a Fantasy Friday that they can sign up for, correct? It’s true. On my link tree, people can find me on the link tree at jjbisonhicks.com. People can sign up for my Fantasy Friday email. And they’re curious about Ruin Waster’s Bane. We’ll get chapter one within a week of that book.
02:00
so they can get a taste of what it is. Get in on the ground floor of what’s happening with our main character. Yeah, and we’ll put that in the show notes. And for all of you, getting the first chapter free, I come on. I don’t know what else to tell you. That’s on you. Go get it, go read it, and then enjoy that. So for so many of us, there’s usually an author or a quote or a book that really punches us in the face and says, man, I want to write like
02:29
Can you tell us about who or what that was? Sure. So when I was young, I always wanted to write. was a voracious reader, and I, like many, had found Tolkien early. And when I got done with that book and I touched on the Silmarillion and I read the Silmarillion and other Christopher Tolkien stuff, I wanted another kind of trilogy, epic trilogy experience. And my brother turned me on to Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. And people
02:59
don’t know much about Donaldson anymore, but I read that book and it’s about a leper who gets transported into a place called the land. And it was magical. It was really amazing to me. actually helped set me up for, I wrote down every word I did not know in those books. And that began me expanding my vocabulary. And I love the way he, I just love the way he wrote about.
03:26
Over time, that series became a 10 book series. He wrote three more later and then another four just recently, nearly 2000s. But when I read Lord Fowl’s Bane, you can see the inspiration in Ruin Waster’s Bane, because it’s an homage to him and what I got from him. And how old were you around that time? I think I was early in high school. It must have been like before I could drive, before I could get in trouble driving. So around that time, yeah, 14, 15.
03:54
It’s interesting. I’ve heard that the music and the words that we read around those ages impacts us and we always try to come back to it in some capacity. And I can absolutely hear some of the echoes of his inspiration in your writing. So I think that’s powerful. And so, so often when people are writing books, people say that they want to write a book. They don’t realize how much goes into it and we’ll get into some of those things too. But you discussed that there was a writer that you met in 2019.
04:24
that also had an impact on you. Can you tell us about him? Sure. So I met him in person. I met Steven Pressfield in person at 2019 at our StoryGrid conference in Tennessee. I had been in contact with him before that, which is a long story, which we can talk about. But the thing about the 2019 conference, which was interesting for two reasons, was when I knew he was going to be there. I learned a lot from the StoryGrid. His business partner, Sean Coyne, wrote the book StoryGrid and that book.
04:52
really helped me understand what makes up a story. That book, it’s critical. It’s a linchpin kind of book to understand what makes up a story. And I wanted to meet Sean as well. Tim Grahl was there as well. And he has some great emails that he still does if you follow him or get on his email list talking about how to break down a scene and how to make characters interesting. in dialogue, he writes really, actually really great emails. Anyway.
05:19
Steve was going to be at that conference and so it was great. was happy to look forward to seeing him. And what I did was I have, they’re over my shoulder, they’re up here, a bunch of my Steven Pressfield books. I have all of those books. But I took them all with me. And there was a quiet moment at the conference and I said, would you please sign these for me? goes, oh, who are these for? They’re all for me. These are all my books.
05:48
And he was great. wrote and he told me stories about the tides of war. I have the first edition of the tides of war. He wrote Molan Lab in my Gates of Fire. Nice. Yes. And chatted about that. And then when the Daily Pressfield came out, fast forward to last year, the year before when the Daily Pressfield came out, I saw in there, among all of his other things, because it’s a compendium of all of his non-fictions writing Wednesdays, it’s…
06:17
All of his nonfiction, it’s his jabs. have all of his jabs. He also had tidbits from that conference that I was at. So yeah, so it was just, was nice to meet him there and just nice to kind of live with his words in my head when I read them. He’s so down to earth, so optimistic when he speaks to a writer, regardless of what level you’re at. If you’ve read The War of Art, first of all, if you haven’t and you’ve heard me speaking, go get it. We’ve talked about it million times, but
06:47
Seeing what he’s gone through, seeing what led him there and even what he’s going through right now with the loss of his home, trying to rebuild, trying to reestablish himself. This man has, he’s like a treasure for authors, for writers truly. Like you said, he’s written and forgotten more about writing than what I’ve ever learned about writing because he’s, uh, when he makes the joke about, was an abject failure for the first 30 years until he gets to the point where he.
07:17
literally unlocked his own sort of voice by going to Hollywood and writing screenplays. But that was like a doctoral experience for him to understand you have to have this scene. This scene has to be here. Where is the love interest? Where’s the point of no return? Where’s the torture scene? All this stuff that we know to be true, but yet when it’s done well, when it’s done beautifully, it just flows effortlessly and you don’t feel like it’s a formula, but yet that’s the goal. It has to feel cookie cutter, but then when you have a great author,
07:47
like him or like yourself, it just naturally goes and you feel that natural, just seamless progression into the next place. And that’s what great writing does. We said that’s exactly it. We, I joke with my wife about, cause she knows what I live through to do these, create these stories. And that’s exactly the experience you’ve described. You do all, there’s so much work to go into making it feel seamless, to making it feel like it’s like it was done with ease.
08:15
that the reader experience was one of flow, which was what happens next and they go to the next thing and the next thing, it makes sense for some reason all the time. that that’s the amount of effort that goes into making it look like it wasn’t difficult is it’s kind of a paradox in the experience. Like they said that it’s about the mastery. The master look makes it look easy. It’s like, oh, that looks so simple. He makes it look easy, which shows you how long they’ve had to go through the effort to make it look ever less. Right.
08:43
When I was at that event in 24 last year and that area is now completely gone. It’s gone. that orchard farms gone? so crazy, right? But I asked him, said, which is easier fiction or nonfiction? He’s like, Right. Each has their own, like, yeah, you have to get to that place. Um, you sit down and you still have to evoke the muse. You still have to be worthy. She still have to find you working, but then there’s still, they each have their own.
09:13
area that you just have to plow through and then be humble enough to step back and look at your stuff and realize this is garbage, this is real. So as I think that’s true, one of the things I talk about, one the things I’ve encountered, whether it’s nonfiction or fiction, is that the ideas don’t come to you in order. They don’t come fully packaged from beginning to end. They don’t come orchestrated in the flow of a story, the natural arc of a hero’s journey or from a first act, second act, third act.
09:43
kind of thing. They don’t. And it’s true of nonfiction as well. I always, one of the axioms I say is that organization and structure come first. Prose and dialogue comes last. The effort, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, is organizing it. And that’s one of the reasons I think some writers will get hobbled by that fact that those ideas are not coming to you in the seamless way that you experience books when you read them.
10:12
You read a book and you think, oh, I just will write a book and I will tell a story like the one I just read. But what they don’t see are all of the effort to take those myriad pieces. Like you might have a really great idea for something, a really important idea in nonfiction. You have to ask yourself, where does this idea fit? Is that the first idea? Is that a midpoint idea? Is that an all is lost idea? Is that a climax idea?
10:39
And you begin to do that structure, you apply structure and you apply organization. And then as you’re drafting, then you can worry about the important things like prose and dialogue. Like I see some folks will talk about not being too precious with your words. I think part of the reason people get precious with their words is they’re focusing on the prose too early in the process. You’re going to rewrite it anyway. You’re going to go over it a bunch of times anyway. So is this the heart of what you want to say?
11:09
Is it in the right place? Have you set it up correctly? Is it paying off what you’ve been setting up? Yeah, OK. It’s in the right spot. I’ve got it in the right spot. Now I can massage it. And what characters do I need to have in the scene or not in the scene? What point do I really want them to say? What do I want them to reveal? That comes later in the process. I think if you do that too early in the process, you get stuck in a manuscript. Trying to keep something or force something that isn’t where you want it to be and is
11:38
is unnecessarily pretty for that point in the process. Yeah. And I think that that’s a great point. You were kind enough to look at my book and read it. And I really didn’t know a whole lot about how to write a book. I was sort of trying to imitate as best I could. luckily I had a pretty powerful premise at the very beginning. The first chapter I tried to hook. And for better or for worse, it sort of wrote itself because that was what was happening and then it just sort of evolved. But like you’re saying,
12:08
Throwing the right cross may not knock somebody out. I have to set it up properly. I have to have the footwork. I have to use the jab. The cross may not come until the fourth round. So as you’re saying, you may have this really powerful, profound statement, but if you put it too early, it loses the impact. You say it too late, you miss the opportunity. It would have made more sense here. And then as you’re saying, that’s one individual thing, let alone what is this other character doing? Is this moving the scene forward? Is it intentionally slowing it down?
12:34
That goes to something else to your points. Well, I want to come back and talk about Blake Snyder because Steve pointed me to Save the Cat and Save the Cat is instrumental for understanding structure. One of the things you learn when you write enough and when you’re good at getting feedback is you need to learn how to diagnose what you just described. You need to understand as the author, is this working? Like you said, is it too soon? Is it too late? Is it too much? Is it too little? Did I not make it feel real enough? Did I not breathe enough life into it?
13:04
You have to develop the muscles to diagnose your writing, which is great. And that’s tough in itself to do when you’re close to it, right? Nearly impossible when you’re doing it, just reach practice, the function of practice. then coming out of that, then you have to know how to fix it. If you can diagnose it and you can recognize it, you can fix it. You can apply, you can apply the tools, you fill your tool kit and then you can grab a tool and you
13:32
You know what, for this one, I think this is the exact right tweak to make this scene work. Maybe it’s a different POV, maybe it’s a different setting, maybe it’s a different time of day. Maybe it’s one thing that I’ve, it’s so strange. If I have a scene that’s not working for some reason, I talk about like the state in my mind, I talk about the stage direction, where are the characters, where are they in relation to the things in the room or the space, whatever it might be. And for whatever reason, if it’s not working, it’s not working. For some odd reason, I don’t know why.
14:01
If I flip the room, if I put everything on the opposite side of the room, if I switch it, somehow the scene comes together. I don’t know why that works for me, but when I get stuck, that’s the tool I reach for. That’s what I apply and I am able to move on. That’s beautiful. And I think there’s a lot to that. My wife is a photographer by profession. She’s done it for 20 years. And when she edits an image, she’ll flip to the reverse.
14:30
and things will stick out at her that she wouldn’t have seen. And back to that idea, when I was in squad designated marksman school, was the idea, right? If we were looking just directly from left to right, I wouldn’t catch anything. I don’t see it, but what would they have us do? Go from right to left slowly. And all of sudden stuff catches up. like you said, there’s something about flipping that even though it’s the same thing, it’s completely different sometimes. And that gives us that.
14:58
literally change of perspective to write something beautiful. It must be something with our brain, right? The routine of our brain or the default setting of how we look at things. It’s like to that similar point that Steven Paskula taught me a trick when I’m rereading my drafts, he goes, start from the end, read backwards, read it backwards. Now that’s more for kind of almost proofing and catching line problems, not as so much as from a structure perspective.
15:28
but you’re gonna see it completely differently. And that’s, mean, what are we literally asking if we asked a mate to read it or an editor or what would you change or what did you like? We’re asking for that. So if we can do a lot of that work on our own, now when somebody looks at it, it’s much more specific and it’s not like, you use there, sort of there or whatever it is. Hopefully we get past that. But also as you were saying too, this idea of once you’re in that place and you’re actually starting to write and allowing the dialogue to sort of unfold.
15:57
We’re not really trying to do line editing, so to speak. We’re trying to do more of this, let it go. We’ll globally edit this thing later. And then hopefully we can get to a point where, you know, we’re just trying to move the sand before we build a sandcastle. Put it all in one place so that we can actually construct something worth building in the first place. I think when people, when writers, when they learn to trust that there’s going to be that piece in the process, they can focus on the structure and trying to get the heart of the scene or the heart of the story or the heart of the part.
16:26
into their baked in. I think early on they’re thinking almost maybe like in the school mindset. I’m writing an essay and it’s gotta be perfect for the grade. I’m like, I don’t worry as much now about my punctuation and a lot of things because I know it’s gonna get caught later. It took me a lot longer to write that first book because I was trying to do that. On the second book, I didn’t do that. And so I got my draft done much more.
16:53
quickly, but what I realized, what I try to challenge myself is I want to give my editor something as polished as I can get it, as I can do it. it mainly so the reading experience flows for them. At the same time, recognizing it’s, still going to go through it again. It’s still going to get done, gone over again. And like this, my second book that will come this fall that I’ve got this, was telling you earlier that I’m doing the revisions that just came back to me.
17:22
I had delivered that actually at right around Thanksgiving and I’d gotten some feedback and I looked at it I realized I was still too removed from the story. was still too much over the shoulder telling. And then what it was was a holdover of my drafting process, which is initially you just tell yourself the story. know you’ve heard it. Don’t worry about.
17:48
Just pretend like you’re talking to yourself, you’re talking to your best friend and you’re just telling them about this really awesome story. that telling stretched into that, whatever version that was, that manuscript. And when I get a feedback came back, I’m like, you’re right. I could see whole sections that were just me narrating. The characters weren’t interacting. They weren’t experiencing the world through their eyes, through their senses. And I’m like, okay, all right, all right, that’s fine because I’m still telling myself the story.
18:17
I’m gonna get to do it again. I diagnosed the problem with help from my team and now I know how to fix it. And then I just, and I fixed it and it was easy to, easy to, ran through and I made those fixes. made the, I didn’t tell the reader what was being seen. I told, I showed through the reader what the characters were experiencing in the world around them. And it makes for a much more, I like a much more immersive experience. So we’ll try.
18:45
What I shoot for. love that. And it’s the truth because one, first of all, as a, as an author or a writer, we have to be humble because we are going to get knocked down a lot. We are going to ask for somebody’s critique. And if it’s somebody that is really honest for us, they’re not going to sugar coat it. They’re going to be like, this is trash. This is garbage. Why is this even in here? What the hell was this all about? Where are you trying to get? What’s the intention? Which is what we need to be asking ourselves. But it also reminds me of.
19:14
kind of Presto’s idea of the amateur and the professional. When people are speaking, they’ll, they’re saying, oh, I want to be a speaker or I want to be a keynoter. And you say, so to me, like I wrote my TEDx. A lot of it came from my book, but then I had to craft something specifically to make sense for that event. Then I had to send the entire thing to them. They had to check it line by line and make sure it was correct. They had to do all this research on me to make sure I was who I said I was. did what I did. What happened happened.
19:43
Cause they don’t want to put you on stage if they’re going to have an egg on their face. Sure. So all that goes through that. didn’t know they went through that. I didn’t know that was part of the process. Then they revised to make sure what I’m saying is what I’m going to say. So they were expecting me to almost regurgitate it exactly the way it’s written. So as a keynote speaker, that’s what I did. So I had to quote unquote, memorize it to the point that I had it down. Then you have to do the blocking that you can’t go out the red dot. They want you to stay right there.
20:11
Do you have a monitor? Did you have a monitor in front of you? You have a monitor, but I didn’t look at it. It had time and I had the clicker, which if you know for this slide, there’s slides, but if you, I don’t know if you noticed, but I was the first speaker. Well, I was honored to be the first speaker of the event, but the clicker was not working. So I’m having to like double, triple, quadruple tap that thing. So you have to have all that down and still maintain focus so that you don’t lose where you’re at.
20:37
And then you have to memorize it to the point, at least to me, I had to memorize to the point to where I no longer thought about it, which allowed me to actually bring emotion into it and speak and pause and gesture and make sense because a lot of people will say, oh, I’m just going to go up and speak. You can, but it’s almost like saying, I’m just going to write this thing and then hit publish. It’s like, right. How many times did you practice in advance of it? How many times did you, did you over 500? Okay. Wow.
21:07
I would do it verbally to myself when I would drive to my 30 minutes, 30 minutes away. And then I would do it again on the way back. And then I would work on the blocking of it every day to make sure that I was, because most speakers do what they speak too quickly. They move around too much and they say, uh, yeah, you know, which is fine. But if I’m trying to present something, I want you to listen. And if I’m saying all these other filler words, it’s just like putting the semi-colon where it doesn’t need to be here or whatever it is. So.
21:37
But when you’ve done that enough times, you’ve learned what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. So just like a speaker, it’s like, if they’re an amateur and they’re like, I’m just going to go there and wing it. It shows me that they’re not taking it seriously enough where they’re afraid to actually do the work. And when they’ve seen a polished speaker, they go, oh, and you say, yeah, it’s worth doing the work. So all these revisions that you’re doing, all this stuff, you’re getting ready for the second book. It’s not just something that needs to be done. It’s absolutely necessary to be the best representation of the story that’s in your mind.
22:06
to give to this person that’s listening to your words in their head. Sure, to honor it, right. I agree. The amount of discipline to go through that that many times. Kudos to you for taking it serious that way. Because as I agree with you, that if it’s important and you want to present well, then you buckle down and you do what it takes to present well. Period. I agree. And to me, they also were saying like, there’s going to be no, at least then they were like, there’s no editing. If you go up there and you fall down,
22:35
I mean, we’ll try to piece it together, but to me it was like, it needs to be perfect. And I want to make sure that I do everything correctly. And then like you were saying, it has to get to the point where I almost feel like I’m standing outside myself watching myself present or speak because when that monitor isn’t go or if there’s somebody calling in the audience or a problem and I go, where was I? Now I don’t look professional, but it allowed me to stay in the park. It maintained the intensity of that. And then the book was released about six months after that. that put me on the map.
23:04
And I knew that if I didn’t nail that, how’s the book going to do? What’s it going to do for my reputation, et cetera. So that’s not any pressure at all. None whatsoever. 3000 people. There you go. All these lights, all these cameras don’t mess up. Okay. You’re the first guy go, but that’s why we do what we do. And I love that. So tell me about what was the, the edifice. What made you write this first book? So
23:32
somewhat of a fun story. So I read the Donaldson like I told you about. So I read Stephen Donaldson and I enjoyed fantasy and I went off to college to learn how to write. I wanted to be a writer. was my initially in service of trying to honor my brothers and my family. I did things that they did. So I started off with political science, which I don’t know why. I do know why that was the reason why, but then I switched to switch to English and
24:01
In the summer, the summer I think between May, freshman and sophomore year, I had a vision of a guy, of a character. He was on a boat in a river. The rudder was broken. It was drifting. There was jungle on all sides. He had no idea where he was. He didn’t belong there, wasn’t from there, but he still looked like a leader. knew he had to either get to shore or get off the boat. And it was very vivid. It was very clear.
24:30
That was Angus, our main character’s Angus. And I just knew that even though he didn’t know where he was, he was still a very determined and curious person. And that then stemmed over the course of the next two years, I still have my notes and I have drawings and I have timelines and stuff that I think normal people, not some people that are into fantasy will do when they’re into that kind of a thing. But while I didn’t really learn to write in
24:59
college. I mean, didn’t learn to write like a long form piece of work. They didn’t teach things like story grid or save the cat. And certainly I didn’t know anything about Stephen Pressfield at that time. But what I did get to do is I got to read a lot of great literature. So I really had the underpinnings of a lot of things that make up things that are referenced even to this day. And when we see movies and stories, stuff that’s referenced all the time from ancient classical literature to Shakespeare to
25:28
I’m a big, I like Milton, all of that stuff. I like poetry, I like epic poetry. I talk, again, I talk with Steve Piscolo about this all the time, that even though he wrote for many years writing screenplays in LA, he wrote spec scripts and he pilots and he’s like my ace in the hole as my critique partner, because he has so much writing wisdom. But for some people who maybe don’t have that underpinning and they come to writing later in life, there’s a lot that
25:58
You can still learn and you can still do it, but when I avoided writing for my career and I finally came to it, I still had this treasure trove of all this classic literature. So when I heard the hero’s journey explained to me, I knew hero stories. I read them. I could put the, could, oh, that’s the structure. Yeah, well, that’s exactly like, I always enjoyed the voyage of Argo. So as we know it is Jason and the Argonauts, but the voyage.
26:27
by Apollonius of Rhodes. One of my favorite stories. So much different in the reading than it is in the stop motion stuff we saw in the stories. Anyway, so all of that stuff in my head in the reading of Donaldson, although his story is a portal fantasy. So there’s an author from this world who goes into a fantasy world. I have this idea, but I’m like, can’t make it a portal fantasy. That’s just not how I envisioned it. There’s a guy on a riverboat.
26:56
drifting down a river far from home. I don’t know how he got there. I don’t know where he’s going. Then the story just kind of came to me and then I successfully avoided it for 20 years. then, yeah. And that was a shadow career for 20 years. It’s a shadow career for 20 years. I fell into IT. So I worked in IT and technology very successfully. And then after a particularly difficult termination from a company that I worked at for many years, thought I was going to retire at it.
27:25
All of a sudden, my world was really shook. I lost a year just kind of drifting, wondering what am I gonna do? And at the near the end of that time, I had really said to myself, maybe it’s just not in the cards for me to write a book. I had surrendered completely to resistance. I’m like, I’d been trying half-hearted efforts that whole 20 years and I never made it happen. Maybe it just wasn’t in the cards for me. It’s just not meant to happen.
27:52
And then my wife gave me Tim Ferrissons book, The Tribe of Mentors, the Tribe of Mentors book, is phenomenal. And the very first interview in there is, lo and behold, Steven Pressfield. going inch wide and a foot deep. Yeah. And I was like, I had read Gates of Fire and Tides of War years ago because I love ancient historical fiction. I enjoy that world. It’s much like fantasy as any fantasy book you’ll ever read. It’s wonderful.
28:19
And then I didn’t understand, even though it came before that, didn’t understand Beggar Vance. So it didn’t make sense to me how all this guy who writes this really awesome historical fiction writes a book about golf. And then fast forward, some time goes by. And then my wife gives me this book and I read it like the War of Art, even more confusing than the Legend of Beggar Vance from Gates of Fire and Tides of War. then the Writing Wednesdays, so I signed up for Writing Wednesdays. I ordered the War of Art. I’m sitting at my desk.
28:49
I read the War of Art and I get to the last page and I turn around and I read it again. And then over the next three days, I reread that book seven times. And at the end of the seventh time, I set the book down and I resolved to turn pro. Just like he talks about my answer, my antidote to resistance was to turn pro. And I started writing every day and I didn’t stop. haven’t stopped. And that’s so amazing. It’s, it often takes that adversity, right? That thing that punches in the face.
29:19
that makes our whole world stop. I’m so glad that you were able to come back to that place. Robert Green says in Mastery, says, when you’re not sure where to go, go back to the beginning. Back to that time you were talking about of the music and the things we read. There it is. When we’re younger, that resonated with us for whatever reason. All of sudden, this is, you loved it then, why wouldn’t you love it now? Why wouldn’t you love it more now? Because you appreciate it now, because it’s been able to marinate this whole time. And like you said,
29:48
It’s not as if Prestl hasn’t been doing the work. It’s like, he has all these examples for us. And I know that some of the people here will understand this, but explain to us what a shadow career is. And then also explain to us what resistance is. And I know a lot of people will know it, I think it’s very, very, very, very, very, very,
30:14
What happens when we grow up and it manifests itself, we experience it like in our profession. We go to school, we maybe go to college or you go to a technical college or school of some kind and we do those things typically because someone tells us to do them. Our parents, our well-intended parents, some inspirational characters in my life.
30:38
I have a blessing, have wonderful siblings. My siblings are wonderful. Both my mother and father are gone now, but my mother was wonderful. My father died when I was very young, but my mom looked out for us. But I didn’t know what to do, so I did what my brothers did, and my sister did. And they, from the Midwest, and they, you you work hard and you get a job and you do those things. when I…
31:04
started even though I didn’t pick the wrong thing, but when I chose political science versus anything in English, I went from barely getting by in the first part of college to being on the honor roll once I switched over to English because I loved it. But people do things that are guided by well-intentioned folks in their family or in their friend circle. And I managed warehouses and then that was not as interesting for me. And so I learned technology. went to
31:32
program at the University of Minnesota and I learned how to program computers because that’s what I was taught to do. You know I think now and I don’t think about it with regret but at that time if I had applied myself when I was younger to writing the different place I would be in now I wouldn’t have been able to write Ruinwaster’s Bane. course 20 years ago I didn’t have it I wouldn’t have been able to but you get into the what then and Pressfield talks about is your shadow career.
31:59
You get accomplished in it, working at whatever it is, that job that it is. You for you, had a dream to be in the military, right? I ended up in technology and you work and gosh, I was, you I got promoted all the time. I had all kinds of opportunity. I did massive things. I had a lot of success in that career. was shortly before that time when I got fired, and I was like, I don’t understand how I could be so good at something, have achieved so much at something.
32:29
and really not enjoy it very much at all. That was an indicator. So that’s kind of what I think, at least how I experience a shadow career. No, it’s the truth. It’s like after it happens, we look back on it and say, why the hell was I getting so good at shit that I didn’t even care about? Because it doesn’t, to your point, that it doesn’t when I think back, the things that I did, the ways that I sacrificed to make certain projects come together.
32:56
It doesn’t matter at all. No one cares that I did them. No, it doesn’t matter. No one remembers it. Not a person, but my books, your book, you know, it’s going to, it’s going to continue to matter, right? It’s going to continue to have impact. There’s people years from now who are going to stumble across your book one way or another, a recommendation or however they hear about it. They’re going to be going through a difficult time and they’re going to, it’s, you know, none of the projects I did during my shadow career. Nobody, nobody cares. got code that’s running in buildings right now.
33:25
Nobody knows I did, but cares that I did. And when we don’t have that purpose, what we end up doing is we’re sacrificing for things. And then we try to make those things worth the sacrifice. So we continually feed into it and we were trying to convince ourselves that this is worth it. Right. And it becomes so superficial and it becomes so it’s a, it’s like a house of cards. falls that anytime there’s any real adversity. And then the beauty that you were talking about before we record was
33:54
For me, I wrote my first book and it was about, like I literally had a woman that heard me speak and she was like, I want to read your book. I was like, man, I don’t have a book. And she like wagged her finger at me and just read me the riot act. How dare you? How dare you have a story like this? How dare you have this experience? And so when I think of writing a book, I think of like Pressfield, Steven, like these great people. And I know there’s no way I could do that. There’s no way I could write like that.
34:23
But I also knew that to not try means that I would actually be not disservice exactly. So in that way, that adversity helped me help other people. And so I did the best that I could. But again, if you listen to the people around you, if you listen to the universe, it will direct you in a direction. And sometimes that means being fired, being divorced, being paralyzed. But man, if you listen to that thing, it will put you on that path.
34:52
It’ll give you the direction of your true north. And if you can just stay on that and keep moving forward, when it’s difficult, especially when it’s difficult, when you’re facing resistance, there’s nothing that you can’t do. It’s one of the things I wanted to make sure that I mentioned and you just talked about it is you absolutely create your universe. You create the world around you. You are not a passive observer. Things are not coming to you like you’re watching a television. You are an active participant slash creator in your world. And to your point,
35:22
We had success in shadow careers to whatever degree that was, but it was hollow to its degree. When it’s something you’re passionate about and you start setting your focus, your North Star, and you start driving towards it. I mean, what a gift for that woman to come into your life. That’s you creating your world. That’s an example of it. The world shifts underneath your feet and it becomes what you are envisioning for it. You are the projector. You are not the passive observer.
35:51
You project your movie out onto the world. And then once you start doing it, you feel it, you just keep doing it. You just keep going and you keep doing it. And to your point, I wrote things down and then all of a sudden when it forced me to really digest them and process them and get closure, it’s as if when I finished the book that finally gave me that ability to exhale and breathe because I was trying to just kind of push it away and…
36:20
making this thing that I might talk about occasionally to a few people that may know. And like you said, it’s a disservice. It’s a waste. All that adversity would have been something that could have helped other people. And yet, as you say, by doing the work, it teaches us humility. It teaches us work ethic. It teaches us to push beyond resistance. It teaches us to see what’s really true, to prioritize a real priority and not try to make something else, something that’s not worth that effort. And that’s when we find true fulfillment.
36:50
I think your daily writing practice is a great testament to this. Lots of times the end result, the book, that’s fantastic. Getting great reviews, being at best seller, those things are fantastic. But the fulfillment that you get from the daily practice, looking back over the year and saying, wow, I got 365 days in, some days were garbage, some days were better than others. But just seeing that, that fulfillment is often better than the end result. So you were talking about
37:20
The Legend of Agra Vance, which we both know now is Bhagavad Gita’s influence basically on Pressfield. And then he wrote it into a narrative that we could all understand as people in the United States. But it was that idea that, you know, we’re entitled to the labor, but not the fruits of the labor. An important idea, I think. Right. Absolutely. The process, the process is the goal. The doing is the goal. The discipline is the goal. Embrace the discipline. That’s what it that’s.
37:50
That is its own reward. The discipline is its own reward. And Dave Roy, just like you said, but whatever comes out of it, can’t, I can’t, if I could control that, I would make all these crazy wishes. I don’t, I can’t control those things. I set up the universe, or I set up my world as best I can, but it’s about figuring out the problem in the scene that I’m working on today. That’s all I can do. That’s all I can do is work.
38:18
work on the edits that I got back from my editor and get as far as I can today. That’s it. And you do it and whatever comes out of that, whatever happens, once I send it, once it’s out of my hands, if I could control it, I’d say, everyone on earth buy my book. That would be what I would wish and say. It would be that simple and it would be done. But that’s not where the joy is. That’s not where the fulfillment is like you talk about. The fulfillment is about applied, disciplined effort.
38:47
on something that you are passionate about to bring it from your mind, from your soul, from your heart into existence so that you can share it. You can help other people. At the end of the day, for me, I’m writing, and part of it is entertainment. I’m exploring things thematically in my story about death and how do we behave with the presence of grief, of deep grief in our lives. But even in the nonfiction, like your nonfiction,
39:17
At the bottom line, we’re trying to help people. We learned something along our journey, and now we’ve processed it. We’ve got it down on paper now. You know what? We’re casting those messages in a bottle out to the world to help those folks coming behind us, to give them that nugget that might be the difference for them, that might help them when they face a similar kind of adversity, a similar kind of difficulty, a similar… You know, what you went through was… Honestly, it was… like, I can’t…
39:47
It’s hard for me to comprehend the shock and the surprise and just the depth of despair, honestly, that you must have experienced. can’t even, the fact that you were able to turn that and make your life what it is now. I how different does your life seem to you now than it did before that, before that happened? It’s night and day. I think, I don’t know if you know this, the wife that I have now,
40:16
I was divorced before I joined the military. My wife now, I took her to her junior prom in 1994. Oh really? And then when I went away to college, we grew apart, broke up. 28 years later, I’m injured. I’m retired. And they’re like, if you’re going to do a book or if you’re going to be a speaker, you better get the best photograph she can. And I’m in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I start looking up best photographer in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
40:47
And her face pops up and I’m like, no way. And she’s gorgeous. She’s even more beautiful than when I dated her back then. She was divorced. I’m divorced. And I’m like, and I reached out to her on Facebook. I’m like, are you really this hot or is this like Photoshop magic? Cause you’re a photographer. Cause we always had that playful banner and she like comes right back at me spicy too. She’s all like, I don’t know. Why don’t you take me to dinner and find out. And I was all like, she’s like, I’ll introduce you to my daughter. I was like, absolutely.
41:16
And we just came back and it was, it just made so much sense. It’s like, we’ve just been at each other’s like attached to the hips since then, you know, her daughter, she’s my daughter now, as far as I’m concerned, like just been in that. And she’s been an entrepreneur for 20 years. So she was the one that was able to kind of say, Hey, I always joke out. She was, I was like, she says she can’t wear a black t-shirt to the rest of your life and be a professional.
41:43
which I kind of can now, but it’s because I built those things. But she was the one that was like, have to look professional and you have to do that. She’s the one that did the cover. She’s the one that does the professional stuff. She had the vision. Yeah. Like she’s, she’s amazing. And she was able to capture who I was. If I had just gone to some person that I found locally, they took a couple of like just snapshots. It would not have been the same. She would have known who I am. She wouldn’t have understood my story. that depth and breadth alone, just in the visual component.
42:13
that makes it stand out. And so again, that adds to the rest of it. And now having somebody that understands if she’s working late, I’m not mad. If I’m gone for four days teaching or speaking, she understands that if it’s on the weekend, she’s not upset if I’m not home at five, I’m not upset if she’s not home by five, you know, making dinner. It’s like, this is what you have to have that person that has your back, that you’re right or die, that wants to push you, that wants you to be better. And then
42:41
As I elevate, so does she, and vice versa. So it’s that tide that rises all boats. And again, if I hadn’t have joined the military, been through that despair, I wouldn’t have appreciated it. Then just you were a different person. mean, thinking that whole block of time that had to elapse, know, it was, you were, as a shadow life, you know, on top of it too. But it was, it had to, it was meant to be, it had to come back. It, that you had to meet again, right?
43:10
I agree. I don’t think there’s any coincidences when it comes to things like that or anything, frankly. It’s just that we may not recognize the significance of that coincidence in the moment. Sure. Sometimes we do. And it’s nice when it punches us in the face. It’s like, hey, we got pay attention to this. Well, you’re fortunate and you recognize that you’re fortunate. you’re that’s there’s a difference, right? Some people are fortunate and they don’t recognize that they are. They just think it’s right. We have to lose it to appreciate it. And right. Right. Like you said,
43:41
There’s so many things with that. again, now that informs your fiction, that informs the way you approach these structures, that informs the importance of an all is lost moment. It is the hero’s journey. And no matter how you shake it out, it gets to that point. Now you do it in a way that’s, you have a lot of twists and turns and you come to these beautiful conclusions, but it doesn’t seem formulaic, which is again, like I was saying, that’s a sign of great writing in my opinion.
44:07
Sometimes you’re watching something on TV, you’re like, oh, this is about to happen. Oh, this is about to happen. Those are the people that are kind of doing it by the numbers. But when you can do it in a creative way where it’s like, oh, I didn’t expect that, it still came to this conclusion, but it was an interesting way that they got there. The avenue of approach was very unique and that’s what people want. know, to that point, was something actually Sean Coyne had said at that 2019 conference that really stuck with me. think sometimes writers will try and make
44:35
everything brand new and unique and you realize that that isn’t that’s not really what’s going on. There’s things. Hero’s journey is a hero’s journey for a reason. Structure is structure for a reason. But what he had said, one of the things he had said was that when you’re writing something and you have like a particular scene, just write the trope, whatever the trope, like writing a murder mystery, just write the murder, just write the most silly trope to have that as a placeholder. And you can write your story that way. But then when you go back,
45:04
Now put your spin on it. Now rework it and rework it to make it your own, to give it a twist, to make it unique. And I think what you see, think especially in television or television that isn’t like high quality, they have to write under such a gun. They do that same exercise, but they don’t have the time to go back and spin it. Or the budget is in such a way that they can’t write the neat thing that would make it really, really different and interesting. Like to your point, you recognize the trope.
45:34
but it’s so different and it’s new and it’s interesting. It has to be expected and a surprise simultaneously. Right. And you do that. Yeah, the beauty of the unexpected surprise that, yeah, that’s incredible. I think also that once people, as you say, you recognize it, it’s impossible not to see the significance in other parts of the life. But again, as I was writing my first book, was the idea, again, I started in different places, but.
46:02
It just sort of unpacked and unfolded in a way that seemed natural to me. But I think that a lot of authors, if you were to talk to a young author, whether they were fiction or nonfiction, what would be your advice for them to get started? Because all of the stuff that we’re talking about can seem overwhelming, but I think you had a really great key point there, which is, listen, just write the trope, just write the first, whatever that thing is. As sort of a placeholder, would there be other advice for them? We live in a really…
46:29
in a great time right now for authors. When I think about authors that I read, know, early authors, they don’t have nearly the amount of resources that we have at our fingertips today. So there isn’t really, if you really want to do it, I watched a lot of YouTube videos in all honesty. That’s how I found, I’ve just seen a bunch of videos from all kinds of different creators out there that talk about writing, that talk about scenes, that talk about structure.
46:58
I think it’s Savannah Gilbo, Jenna Moreci, Diane Callahan. There’s just a bunch and they would tell you story concepts and story tips and tricks. So that’s one thing. If you really want to learn, it’s out there to be found. So that was one thing and I just built a list of that stuff. There are a lot of books on writing. They’re helpful. Again, it depends where you’re at in the process.
47:24
I would say read as many as you want, find authors that resonate with you. We know which authors resonate for us on the non-fiction front. So find those. But then the next thing I would say is one of the hardest things to do is to write that first draft of the story because it is so crappy. to, I would say, take the pressure off yourself. You’re not writing a masterpiece with your first draft. Just tell yourself the story. Sit down across from your buddy or your wife or your whomever.
47:53
and just tell yourself the story that you want to tell. Well, there’s this guy or this gal and they have this and then this. Just tell it. Just tell it. Don’t worry about if your chapters are too long or too short or if it’s out of order or not in order. Just do it. Some people have talked about if you have a story, write, give yourself a few pages, 5,000 words, nothing crazy. Just try and tell it from beginning to end. You’re sitting around a campfire and just do it.
48:23
If you can do that and you’re willing to do it again, you can keep stretching it out and expanding it. And as you read more and watch more videos, then you can start, oh, I can apply this to it then. Or, oh, I have this really, this idea that happens. That’s a trope. I need to learn about genre conventions. I’m writing a sci-fi or I’m writing a thriller. Oh my gosh, they have genre conventions? Oh. Then you stretch your idea out more and you went, I’ll write a trope for this genre convention.
48:52
for this murder mystery. Well, I need a detective. Well, what kind of detective? You you could have a detective like the Big Lebowski, right? The Gohan Brothers that decided to use, you know, a stoner instead of a Philip K. Dick kind of, you know, how you just tell yourself the story. Just tell yourself the story. I love that. And like you said, when you get into this genre, you find out there are all those sub genres, all those variations. And then if you want to combine genres, now you’re like, oh, I’ve got a space traveling.
49:22
hard-boiled detective from the 1800s that’s somehow in the current. And now you’ve got this, yeah, it’s crazy. It’s limitless if you so desire. I would be remiss, too, I wanted to say at the end when you were telling the story about your wife and how you met your wife, I’ve been fortunate as well. My wife has been an enormous supporter of mine from the beginning. She lived with me through a big chunk of my shadow career, but always wondered why I didn’t write, why I didn’t write.
49:51
And so she, like I dedicate the first book to her and the last sentence of the book and the acknowledgments is her, because frankly, this book and my writing career wouldn’t exist if she didn’t support and encourage me to do it. So having a partner like that, your point that understands working late or being gone to travel or doing whatever. mean, she helped me prepare for my talk with you. She does all of my social media. When I go and do book signings, she’s there getting media releases for people when we take photographs when they want to take.
50:20
when they want to take pictures. I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned her because she’s she’s been integral to this journey. Well, it’s the same thing with Steve, right? Diana, if it’s not for her, a lot of stuff doesn’t happen. She helps him through lot of these things. He helps her. This is what a partnership is about. And I think also there’s so much to this process, like you say, that the day architecture of an author is maybe different than what other people’s are. Being able to prime ourselves, set ourselves up.
50:50
create the best, because all we can do is create the best environment that we can to allow us to cultivate as much as we can in a way that’s like reproducible. So in the war of art, Steve kind of talks about what his is. Can you explain to us what your ideal day would look like to create the best creativity that you can? Sure, sure. So I got into, I’m a morning person. Okay. So, and I’m in
51:17
I used to live in Minnesota for many years, and it’s a central time, but now I’m on mountain standard time, which sometimes goes to West Coast time. But I get up at 4 a.m. every morning. I’m a 4 a.m. wake-up kind of a guy. I get up and I take care of our dog, Maya, so she expects that from me. So I go out and I feed her her breakfast, and she’s very happy. And then I sit down and I just write. The night before, before I go to bed, and Jennifer understands this about me,
51:44
She’s like, you’ll see the meme of women looking at men wondering what they’re thinking about. What’s he thinking about? Is he worried this? It’s always like, I’m thinking about story. I’m thinking about where I left off from the day before. What was working in the scene? What wasn’t working in the scene? Where do I wanna pick up? What am I gonna be doing first thing in the morning so that my mind is nothing but really story. I’m not thinking about a myriad of different things. I’m very, very focused.
52:11
And then so I write from anywhere from two to three hours in the morning. And then I do my day job. Because I have to work to make sure that we can continue to live and exist. And I do my day job. And then at the end of that, I kind of break that spell of doing whatever I’m doing. And then it could be walking the dog. It could be taking a shower. It’s beautiful here. So going outside.
52:39
kind of breaking that, and then when I go back and I try and do another two hours. And usually it’s something different. And it depends what part of the process that I’m in. But like in the morning, I’ll be writing ahead. So I’ll be writing into the future, writing forward. And then if I come back in the afternoon, I might be doing some revision in a different part of the story altogether.
53:04
What I like to do, the thing I would recommend for writers too, if they don’t currently do it, and then this is from Steven Pescula too, was I use read aloud on Word. So I let the computer read back to me what I wrote. So I’ll start either that session, either session, I’ll start, I’ll go back, because when you’re writing very, very close over time, but very tight, you can’t think about the continuity of the story over like a scene sequence or chapter sequence.
53:32
So I’ll go back and I’ll start a couple chapters back and I’ll listen up to the point where I’m at. And then I can write in the flow. I correct things as they go. But listening to your stuff as you’re doing it, it can be a little time consuming, but I haven’t found a way to avoid the work. I didn’t pack my magic wand for this adventure. So I have to actually do the work. So yeah. And then when I, in the evening, I just read as much as I can. Reading all the time. I try and read outside. I have to be careful.
54:01
what I read at certain times when I’m writing. I enjoy reading John Grisham. My wife maintains a little library outside her house. Whenever a John Grisham book comes through there, I take it and I read that thing. I enjoy his books. He makes it look so effortless. But I write in a third-person limited point of view for my characters. We experience the world through the characters’ eyes. But he sometimes, in some of his stories, like I was reading one called The Rogue Lawyer, and it’s kind of first-person.
54:30
It’s from the character, but it talks to the first person and I was reading it cuz I was enjoying it I was doing some writing over three days and then I was going back and listening like I was just telling you about and I all of my tenses were wrong all of my verb tenses were wrong It was all this present tense stuff Because I was reading present tense Grisham in the moment So I have to manage when I’m reading when I was when I’m not when I’m when I’m working on the prose near the end I
54:57
off of it, but when I’m just telling myself the story and drafting, I read as much stuff as I possibly can. I will start four books at a time to see what kind of hooks for me, I can see the, read the beginning. I read the first chapters across four or five different books. It helps me kind of get through my TBR, my to be read list more quickly than I have, because I like to exercise. For me, it’s about exercising my brain. And I like to see what other writers are doing. George Saunders wrote a book, I think, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain.
55:27
It’s a book on writing, and he just analyzes Russian short stories, Russian authors’ short stories. But the really interesting thing is I don’t write short stories, or I haven’t written, I did when I was younger, and they’re terrible, but I didn’t understand it. But he talks about how many choices the author makes. Everything’s a choice, everything’s a choice. So when I do my reading, I’m like, why did that author, why did she choose that? Why did she pick that thing to happen? Why did she choose this?
55:55
thing or that thing or whatever it might be. And then it makes me think, wow, I have to be deliberate about everything I write, every sentence, every word, every place where it is, everything has to be deliberate. There is no throw away. Everything has to be in line with your story and on theme with what you’re trying to do in the story. Everything, everything. Exactly. It has to be intentional. There can’t be anything that’s perfluous. We have to cut the fat. Is this moving the story forward? Is this making the point? And I’m glad that you point out the idea of the
56:26
I think it’s like, allegedly, what, two thirds of what we do is writing, the other one third is just sort of self editing without being too deprecating in the process. And the reading component, like you say, reading these other things to keep us stimulated. And then sometimes we’re doing something that is almost completely 180 to that to give us that additional perspective, to flip the negatives, so to speak, to take the scene and turn it from a different perspective, as you say, because if you’re reading the same thing and it’s an echo chamber, that’s okay.
56:55
That’s going to give us a certain flavor. But we’re reading these other things and now all of sudden we can take that either very punchy dialogue and turn it something more eloquent or vice versa. Sure. necessary. And then that gives us more complexity and depth to that character. That informs their decisions, et cetera. And that’s a beautiful way to give that. I got this advice, I can’t remember where, but it’s read outside your genre. Read outside your genre. I enjoy nonfiction. I do. So I like reading it. I don’t know that it…
57:25
But it all helps. even reading, like at the Tucson Festival of Books, we were at the Tucson Festival of I think it was two weeks ago, there was a, Pena County Library had a booth and I got a bunch of Robert Cray books. And I learned about Robert Cray from Sean Coyne, who had edited one of his books called LA Requiem. And I got it cause Sean had edited it. And I’m like, gosh, I really enjoyed this. So I’m in my booth, which I couldn’t leave, cause there were just, there were people constantly, but I could see those Robert Cray books.
57:53
And I went and I got a stack of them. I got a bunch of them. But do I normally go and read thrillers? No, that’s not my… I like fantasy just like anybody in my world. But reading outside your genre to your point is going to show you how different authors do different things. Because it’s one… Like you said it for your book. Writing a book is one long perpetual problem-solving exercise. Period. That’s what it is.
58:22
And if you’re thinking somehow it’s gonna be easier, it’s gonna flow, or all the ideas are gonna magically sprout from your head, it’s gonna be harder, it’s gonna take longer. You see how other people are doing the same thing. They’re solving problems. How do you start it? What does a second chapter look like? What is your global inciting incident? How do they do it? Oh, that’s interesting. They’re constantly solving problems. And the way, you read how others solve problems, you can apply, because when you start doing it, you can see,
58:52
You can almost see through their words to how they thought about how they were trying to solve that problem in their story. it’s not you taking from what they’re doing, because it could be a totally different genre. You can see, they had to think about this in this way in order to get this result to do this component of the story. I’m like, oh, that’s a great way to think about that. And now you’ve got another tool in the toolbox. It’s almost like watching different martial arts.
59:21
A punch is a punch no matter where you throw it. It’s boxing, yet Shaolin, Cambodian boxing, Gong Fu, karate, whatever it is, the end result’s the same, but how they get there is the interesting component. And some of it’s flowery, some of it’s dramatic, some of it’s very no-nonsense. But at the end of the day, like you say, can I land that punch when I need to? Can I set it up properly? And all these things give us the capacity to say, okay, in this case, this tool may be better. But at the end of the day, it’s about…
59:51
being able to sit down, get through that resistance, which I love that you talk about how you had that discipline because when you know that you’re going to sit down for three or four hours initially, there’s no chance to self-sabotage. Well, there is, but not as much of a chance to not be able to sit down and procrastinate and not actually do the work. Right. I’ve gotten past the point. I always, I have a post-it. It’s right behind me. It just says mind resistance so that I don’t ever think for a minute that I’ve
01:00:21
I’ve overcome it. But I’ve gotten past that point where I wasn’t early in my life where sitting down to write was, you know, it was easier to avoid than it was to do. Oh yeah. But like when I had that little point I was telling you about, where I didn’t think I just gave up on writing altogether. was never going to happen for me. It wasn’t in the cards for me. I learned that axiom that not writing actually became, was actually harder than writing.
01:00:49
And it seems counterintuitive, it seems, but you reach a point where avoiding it, doing all the things that you do to avoid it, is actually harder than if you just sat down and did the work. And then after the period of time before when I started, I found ways to procrastinate, I found ways not to do it, I organized my closets, I did all those things, but now it’s just habit. It’s just, Jennifer knows, I mean, that’s my time.
01:01:17
I don’t even really think about it. And if I don’t do it, and it learns from Henry Miller, Steve had talked about from a RRW Wednesday post, Henry Miller talks about how if you don’t do it, once you get into that rhythm and you’re doing it and you don’t, you start getting a little irritable. You’re not your best version of yourself and Jennifer sees it. And if for some reason, there’s maybe family things or whatever, there’s sometimes there’s things where you can’t for one reason or another. But if I go and be,
01:01:46
couple of two, three days, lose my purpose. I get very despondent. I’m short with her. don’t, and I’m like, she says, you gotta get back in front of the computer. I know, I understand. I know, there’s just, we had some stuff going on. said, yeah, next, tomorrow. I’m back at the computer tomorrow. So it’s just habit for me now to do it. And the goal, to see that output, is, you know.
01:02:13
There’s these different successes along the way of when you finish a manuscript and when that book gets formatted and you see that formatted version of it. And then when you see a physical copy, I mean, how does it feel for you when that book, when that box showed up in your book, you’re pulling out copies of your book out of a box. I how’d that feel? You’re beside yourself. It feels unreal. It’s amazing at the same time. It’s all the things, right? It’s like almost like having a child. So it’s incredible. All the feels, all the feels, all the feels. And then
01:02:43
then you say, when do you start the next one? You want to do it again. You want to experience it again. And when you do it, when you’ve done the one, you can visualize doing more. It was different than before you do the first one. You’re like, everything’s new. Everything’s the first time. You don’t really know if you’re going to finish. You don’t really. You think you may. Hey, you hope you may. But you’ve never done it before. Then when you do it, it’s kind of like, that’s the.
01:03:12
That’s the drug, if you will, that I’m addicted to. I want to do, I have these stories. I want to get them done. I want to have that box show up in my doorstep with my books in it. I want to pull them out. I want Jennifer. Jennifer does all of my social media. It’s just, and it’s wonderful. You should check it out. Jennifer does all my social media, but pulling that and we’ll take it and you pull it on like, did it. I did it. This is, you get all the feels, you’re all the things and you promote it and you do all that stuff. And then you sit down and.
01:03:41
I’m ready for the next one. I’m ready to start working on the next one. It’s absolutely worth it once we’re at that place. And for those that are saying that writing a book is too much, I would have them do what you’re saying, which is just write out a scene, just write out a piece, just write out a conversation. Hell, if you’re in your vehicle and you can grab your phone and just dictate into it, just get the thing down. Just get that idea. Get that hook, whatever it is. Again, like you’re saying, we’re going to wordsmith it anyway. We’re going to go back over it many times.
01:04:10
Just make peace with the idea that I just need whatever this main area is. then curtail that. And then what, what was the thing that created this? Where does this go after this? If it’s nonfiction, kind of get your thoughts aligned, make it make sense. If it’s fiction, obviously there’s more to that. But at the same time, again, you’ve created characters in this book that have desires, fears, expectations, needs.
01:04:40
for vengeance, all these things. And that’s what creates a compelling book. So once you create these characters that have this compelling component in their life, and then you put them in these situations, in some ways it sort of writes itself. Right. We have a saying in our house, just a little bit every day. If you don’t think you can write a book or you don’t think you can tackle any project, my answer to you is just do a little bit every day. If you do just a little bit every day, you’ll achieve it.
01:05:09
If you can stay disciplined and focused on it, and it’s important to you to do it, you’re not going to write a whole book in one sitting. No one on earth has ever done that. You’re not going to write a whole book in 90 days. I hate to break it to you. Anyone who’s selling you that. There’s a course that I can buy that will do it. People get sidetracked on buying courses to do. Just do a little bit every day. Just do a little bit every day. Like you said, dictate into your car. If I didn’t type, I’d handwrite it down. I’ve done dictation.
01:05:36
use the microphone on Word and I would tell myself the story and all this. Just do a little bit every day. If you do that, you will realize that that creative thing in you that you need to get out. I love that. even now, know, Steven was talking about how with his everything he’s doing now, sometimes an hour is the most he gets. Now he’s he’s got 60 years of creating that instrument, so he gets more out of an hour than probably I get in a week. But having said that,
01:06:06
Again, he’s still very intentional. He’s still going through it. Like you said, there’s still going to be resistance and he’s still trying to tackle that thing every day. So, um, as a matter of fact, the day of that, uh, the day before that event in California and Malibu, the day before he had a flat tire, there’s no way he could get like a way to get it fixed. So again, that was an additional thing. And in his mind, he’s like, this is, is this a sign that I shouldn’t be doing this or is this just resistance? And he says something beautiful. says,
01:06:34
until proven otherwise, I just assume it’s resistance. Which again is kind of that. It’s a good axiom to live by, Yeah, right. Absolutely. How important is what you need to do? How important is it to you? Is it important enough to fight through whatever, whatever that adversity, whatever that resistance is? If it is, then you’ll find a way. You’ll just, you’ll find a way. If you, even if it’s just a little bit.
01:07:00
I remember that in that podcast, know, with him, he’s like, I love how honest he is about it, because he did the math, right? So if you do it hourly, and there’s this many hours of making, all of a sudden you have 350 pages. I think if people kind of did that math, they would be like, oh, I guess I could do that. Because I think they feel like they have to digest and produce an entire book or an entire half of a book in a week or something like that. Whatever time you can get, take it and use it.
01:07:30
Yeah, I agree. Jason, I’ve loved our conversation. Where can we go to learn more about you? Where can we buy your book? Where can we subscribe to your your fantasy Fridays? Where can we do all the things? I’ll tell you that. I want to thank you because it’s been really wonderful talking with you. I really enjoyed it. just think you can see I get excited. We get excited about it. So I really enjoyed it. So I love super awesome. So thank you. People can find me. Thanks to Jennifer on my link tree.
01:07:58
People don’t know what Linktree is, I sometimes spell it out, L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E slash J. Jason Hicks. On there you can find my website. You can find all of my socials on there. And there you can also sign up for my Fantasy Fridays post. And if you do sign up for it, you’ll get the first chapter of Ruin Waster’s Bane in about a week. And this summer when book two comes out, before book two comes out, and you’re on that list, you’ll get chapter one of book two.
01:08:27
So all the events coming up, have a signing in Tucson coming up in the end of April at Barnes and Noble here in Tucson, but also in that link tree. If you read that first chapter and you like it or you finished an epic series and you want to dive into something else that’s really immersive and really gets you into a world that’s I think really engaging and immersive and it gets you to ask what happens next, what happens next really well. My book is widely available. It’s bookshop.org for the independent bookstores out there.
01:08:57
Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Target. If you Google Ruin Waster’s Bane, you will find a place to get the book. I love it. Jason, thank you for your time, for your work, and I look forward to our next conversation. Me too. Thank you, Marcus. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
