To Become a Great Writer, Never Stop Writing

Most meaningful was an email from Caroline in London saying she was inspired and still early in my writer's journey, but super excited to do more after that read.

I answered her and said, never stop writing.

Best single piece of advice I could ever give.

Becoming a great writer is evolutionary in every Darwinian sense of the word.

Not only did the finches Darwin studied on the Galapagos Islands survive from generation to generation, they also displayed superior and diversified physical and behavioral traits. In other words, they figured out how to prevail, and they worked at it.

The most commonly referenced example of keep writing or keep doing whatever it is you want to do is malcolm gladwell's book outliers i'm not in the business of selling somebody else's book but this is a great one malcolm gladwell outliers in which he put forward his 10,000 hour rule that states that it takes about that much time to master what you do.

He cites the Beatles playing in a bar in Hamburg, Germany for seven years and Bill Gates having access to a school computer for years from the time he was 13 in 1968.

For perspective, you want to know what hours amount to. If you work full-time from 9 to 5, you'll work 2,000 hours a year. Gladwell was talking about 10,000 hours.

There are some holes in Gladwell's theory, but it holds water.

One of its weaknesses is that the examples gloss over the difference between gifted and talented people. The Beatles were developing their talent In that Hamburg bar Their gifts emerged as they evolved Same thing with the Grateful Dead Vincent van Gogh, Dr. James Salk And, don't I love it, Joan Baez's voice Joanie, as we love to call her Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with his height And Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with his sweet soul were gifts what the Beatles had were talents but we're talking about 10,000 hours applied to both I was always a pretty good writer from fifth grade on and I rode that horse through my liberal arts degree but not until I started writing professionally every week often multiple times a week that I feel I could consider myself any more than just a pretty good writer i've internalized my writing by engaging regularly and often in the following practices but first i want to give you a quick story i entered fairly dickinson university as a freshman in 1964 and the first class i attended was given by professor jack beaton it was the english writing and literature class professor beaton was a an imposing figure six foot seven big muscular guy looked very much like hoss cartwright but when he stood in the doorway and stood over your desk he was imposing so he gave us an assignment i don't even remember what the assignment was but we had to bring it in two days from that it was a monday wednesday friday class and his instructions were when you come into class take your paper put it on the corner of my desk in a pile and I'll take it from there.

He walks in the room, introduces himself for the second time, picks up the papers and begins to return them unread.

And he looked up at us and he said, too long, shorten it.

One of the women in the class said but professor and he cut her off and he said but professor what you didn't read it that's right it's too long you can shorten it i expect that by friday well the fear of god or fear of jack beaton was there and we did it handed in the papers and he walked in and he said yeah they look to be a whole lot shorter that's good they're probably not very good So we understood there were standards involved.

He's one of the formative figures in my life.

And despite the fact that I was a very good writer when I was a kid, Jack Beaton made sure that I loved it.

Jack Beaton gave us enough work to do so that I could say we wrote constantly whether we wanted to or not.

So let me take a quick break from Jack Beaton because that's a lot for you to digest and we'll be back after this break and a word from our sponsors. Here's a word from our founding sponsor Stephen Bozer. I experienced the power of Eli Amdur's intellect in the classroom. I was fortunate enough to be face to face.

Leveraging technology now, how lucky are we all that Eli can share his vast career of knowledge and experiences and observations with all of us on a podcast where even though you're not face-to-face, you feel like you're sitting in a room with him as he expands upon various themes around critical thinking and how they tie into career paths and what is necessary to keep us all human in an age of AI. I look forward, and I hope you look forward to, engaging in this podcast on every episode, as I know it will be well worth your time and will generate a lot of thought in your mind.

Please join us on the Vantage Point podcast and learn how to think critically in an age of AI. Hi, I'm back. Thanks for sticking with us.

Let's get to it.

Like i said last week this is our constitution our start writing is our declaration of independence who we are this is now our constitution how we do what we do how we get good at it practice number one your output doesn't even have to be any good not initially anyway That's what the lead keys are for.

Write short stuff, 200 to 250 words. Write longer stuff. But writing regularly does two things. It develops your writing skills and reduces the frequency of writer's block.

So write regularly, and whether you want to or are not right.

Stretch your outer limits.

This is a great exercise. Try writing the longest coherent run-on sentence you can.

William Faulkner in his 1936 book, Absalom, on, gave us a 1,288-word sentence, nearly twice the length of the number of words that I'm speaking to you today in one sentence.

He has since been surpassed, but still remains the standard.

Tighten your restrictions. Try writing the shortest paragraph that offers an idea, defends the idea, and offers a conclusion.

Any subject will do. The exercise is the point. debate yourself.

Write a persuasive argument for something you believe in, a product you use, a political candidate an idea an opinion then write a counter argument with equal zeal and commitment in my consulting days especially the sales groups sales departments i always used to challenge them to write a support statement for their competition and to write what they think the competition would say about our product.

So debate yourself. It'll help keep your mind open and flexible and agile.

Next, write about what you don't know about. That sounds dangerous, and it is.

But pick a subject, a product, a thing, a person, a movement.

Research it, write it and then give what you've written over to an expert for critique see how you did i want to warn you about this a lot of people turn out writing that appears to be what they don't know about because the writing is terrible that's not what i'm saying i'm saying write about what you don't know about And get out of your comfort zone. You'll see what I mean.

Next, revise.

Write something, put it away overnight, take it out and revise it.

Think of the Latin origin of the word revise.

The prefix re – means again. the root visus means to see revise literally means to see again which is why when you're writing you want to see it that second time at least never go from writing to submission read it look at it again see it again everything you ever write should be revised at least once next inject synonyms and antonyms this is really good calisthenics there are so many ways to say the same thing and some are better than others if you want to talk about something big It can be big, large, grand, great, huge, humongous.

It could be vast. It could be multiplicity. It could be, especially in the English language, hundreds of different ways said.

It's interesting how a sentence or a phrase takes on a different feeling with the change of one word.

Even if you like what you've written, do it anyway.

You can always come back to what you started with.

But that's why any good writer will tell you the most important thing that he or she does, other than writing the material to begin with, is revising it. Now, we're not talking about editing. Is simple. Editing, correcting spelling, changing syntax, but revising is what turns a good piece into a great piece.

Enough said on that go back in time this is interesting it's a great exercise randomly select an article you wrote a week ago a month year or more ago and redo it have things changed the answer is probably always yes by the way a tremendous benefit you can give yourself is the next suggestion and that is read great writers make no mistake about it great writers are great readers when i read a great book for example i double read what does that mean that means when I read a particularly good passage, page, or more, I'll read it a second time.

The first time is for what was said and what was written. The second time for how it was said and how it was written.

It's like savoring a great Cabernet Sauvignon. You miss so much of it if you just gulp it down i also like to read great writers books newspapers journals blogs of course because i like to follow good examples yeah i think i'm good when i write but there are others who are better, either once during a piece or straight through a piece or whatever but I always look to read great writers and there's no lack of them from the classic authors like Twain and Hemingway and people like that to an unknown guest contributor to a newspaper's op-ed page Okay, here comes the big one.

This becomes bigger every single day, and that is stay away from AI.

Stay away from AI. Although there's no comment necessary on this, I'm going to make a couple anyway. every day it becomes evident to me that we are giving away ground to AI in a great contest between humans and AI. And we're all afraid of it. We're all afraid of AI taking our jobs, doing what we're supposed to do.

But then we go ahead and give AI the advantage it needs.

Part of ai is machine learning the machine learns ai can learn the way i speak it can learn idioms it can learn languages and it can do it in ways that we can't and never will be able to do so if it's gaining that kind of advantage why are we giving over that ground on the practice field and on the playing field to a competitor that already has that advantage over us.

So the big question is, are we using AI or is AI using us?

But when you're writing, if you want to develop your own skills, stay away from AI.

On a more positive note look for inspiration everywhere because that it is great thinkers love to be inspired fascinated and it's everywhere it's not only from the great writers like george bernard shaw or George Will, or Thomas Jefferson. It also comes in from Caroline's email, which she sent me from London.

You see, life is simple. It's never easy, but it's simple.

We'll be back after this break. And now, a word from our sponsor, Bergen Volunteers. Vantage Point is brought to you by Bergen Volunteers. Since 1966, they have been quietly at work in Bergen County. Neighbors helping neighbors across 70 towns. They mentor kids who need someone in their core, and they help seniors stay independent at home. Through their Bergen Leads program, they have trained hundreds of people to lead in their own communities. They call what they do critical thinking with its sleeves rolled up, and that is exactly right.

To everyone at Bergen Volunteers thank you for supporting this show and thank you for the work you do you can learn more about them at BergenVolunteers.org welcome back thanks for sticking with us I want to jump to the section that I normally include a little bit later on right now great thoughts from great minds and I want to talk to you about two people one of whom I'm sure you know and one of whom maybe some of you know.

The sure one is Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein was once, perhaps more than once, asked, why did he figure out so many of the things he did and nobody else did? Is it because he's so much smarter than anybody else? And Einstein, who was never modest, but never a braggart either, He said, it's not because I'm smarter than anybody else. I'm not sure that I am. Well, that was a ridiculous statement.

But then he explained, I'm infinitely more curious.

For instance, when some people find a needle in a haystack, they stop looking. On the other hand, I look for more needles.

He's curious. He asked himself questions, and he moved forward.

In that vein, Akio Morita said, curiosity is the key to success.

Now, that sounds pretty logical, and I don't know anybody who would say, no, that's wrong. But who was Akio Morita?

Well, he was in the 1940s, and moving forward for many years, the co-founder of a little company called Sony.

He was a very curious man, and he rewarded curiosity. Now, without going into a whole history of Sony, you do know that they gave the world from the 50s to the 90s, disruptive technology one after another. And the first one, many of you are not old enough to remember this, and you don't have to, was the transistor radio, which was a little plastic radio about the size of two packs of cigarettes together.

You remember cigarettes, right?

And we were now, for the first time, able to walk around with a transistor radio in our pocket, and music wherever we wanted, or news wherever we wanted. It was incredible. For those of us who were in school at the time, and I think I was in fourth grade or something like that, maybe fifth, it enabled me to put the radio in my pocket, run the little tiny cord up inside my shirt, and the little tiny earbud in my ear, and listen to the World Series game in social studies class.

Not a bad deal, but a completely disruptive technology, and the world was looking at their heels.

After the tremendous success of the transistor radio, Sony in 1968 gave us Trinitron, a television so much better than anyone else's TV that buyers were willing to pay twice for a Trinitron what they paid for any other television.

It just wasn't even close. So Sony, by garnering all by themselves in the first year of Trinitron's existence, 10 % of the unit market in televisions, they garnered 20 % of the revenue.

That's how much more people were willing to pay because Sony got curious about putting out a better television.

Then in 1979, Sony gave us their third disruptive technology of the second half of the century, the Walkman, which was an evolution from the transistor radio, and it allowed you to customize what you were listening to as you walked around and drove around, etc.

It was such an instant hit, and it was not an inexpensive product, that it was successful because after the transistor radio and Trinitron, the public was just waiting for Sony's next product and didn't care what it was. they just wanted a Sony.

Sony maintained their hegemony through the middle of the 90s when they started losing it because Akio Morita was gone and the leadership of Sony stopped being furious.

And when they did, they stopped asking, what does the world need? Or what does the world want? Or what will they want that nobody knows they want?

They lost it.

This further amplifies Marita's thought that curiosity is the key to creativity.

I think this is a good time for me to get to my aphorisms because I have a few that I'd like to share with you.

And then I'm going to give you a what if.

Aphorism number one today, don't mistake motion for action.

Number two, management manages within paradigms, leadership leads across paradigms.

Number three listen up because this one goes by fast you can't whistle a symphony think about that when you have some mental spare time you can't whistle a symphony and number four and the last one for today day, if you let your customer talk long enough, he'll tell you what's wrong.

If you listen longer, he'll tell you how to fix it.

And now, let me tell you a story.

This fits under the what-if category in 1919 the united states army transcontinental motor convoy took place it was a convoy of 81 army vehicles 24 officers and more than 250 enlisted men who were charged with driving across country from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco.

And it was put together and designed to test whether the United States Army could move motorized forces across the country in an emergency.

The trip was grueling.

Roads were often dirt or mud bridges collapsed under the weight of the trucks vehicles broke down constantly and the convoy averaged only about six miles per hour while moving they left washington dc on july 7th and didn't arrive in san francisco until September 9th after traveling 3,251 miles in 62 days.

In that convoy was a 28-year-old lieutenant colonel serving as an observer.

And facilitating the movement of troops and equipment, Eisenhower became President of the United States in 1953.

And it took him a while of deliberate thought, which he was known for.

He championed the idea of the creation of the interstate highway system.

And signed in 1956, the Federal Aid Highway Act, launching what became the largest public works project in U.S. history. Now, if you think about the gigantic scope of public works under FDR for 14 years before he died, and to say that the interstate highway system was larger even than that, you can imagine. Today, we have close to 70,000 miles of interstate, brilliantly laid out, odd numbers going north and south, even numbers going east and west, and three-digit numbers going around the cities.

Why did Eisenhower do this?

Because he felt indebted to the United States automobile industry for helping him win the war.

Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, American Motors, transformed their factories, their plants, from making cars and buses to facilities making jeeps and tanks and guns and ammunition. and there was no question about the fact that were it not for them we may have been still fighting that war he felt indebted eisenhower was a loyal man and he called his advisors in and said how can we how can we give americans something to drive in and some place to go the American automobile industry exploded it just went crazy in parallel with the development of the suburbs planned cities so Americans now could buy a home buy a car drive to work or drive from Washington to San Francisco for that matter If you want to see the effect of that, Europe, after the war, built mass transit systems, high-speed train, which was in the planning, by the way, in the 1950s.

High-speed trains, trams, buses, and Americans were building cars. We look at our situation today, we are far more dependent on cars than the Europeans.

I can go from one bus stop in The Hague to Delft, a 15-minute ride, and get a bus or a tram 20 i'm sorry 107 times during the day on a regular schedule go try to do that here now i'm not criticizing either one but americans built the car business and became dependent on cars europeans although they're all driving their own cars much more reliant on good public transportation.

And it's a great lesson to learn for development from here on in. Good story. And now a word from our sponsor, Cardin Consulting. Before we go on, let me thank another sponsor of Vantage Point, someone I've known for more than 20 years who spent a career developing people by putting them to work, not in a classroom.

I'll let him introduce himself. Thank you, Elliot, for having me. It's good to be with you. My name is George Sfokos, the founder of Cardam Consulting, and I've spent more than three decades in global pharmaceuticals. What you said today about writing is exactly what I watch play out in leadership.

You don't get better by sitting in a classroom. You get better by doing the work again and again and by being willing to be judged on it. I never saw a manager grow just by reading about it. They grew when they had to make a real call, put it in writing, defend it, and own the outcome. That is the very same thing you are telling writers.

To start and never stop and to get your work in front of people who will tell you the truth.

Standing next to people while they do that work is most of what I do now, and we call that teaching by another name. It's a privilege to support Vantage Point and the work you are doing here. so the what if for today is what if eisenhower didn't ask for the conception and development of an interstate highway system what if europe did i'll let you think that one over for yourselves great lesson and that just about does it for me for today coming up in the next few weeks what made sandy koufax great and how can that work for you too we never think in terms of ourselves and sandy koufax that's how much greater he was than anybody else who did his job but i'll take it apart for you and we'll talk about what made sandy koufax great and how that can easily be part of your life i have an open letter from a liberal arts graduate And I'm going to be talking about critical traits for the 21st century.

But just before I sign off with that thought, I'm going to give you a little thought.

I've been getting really interesting feedback from listeners around the world.

And one of these weeks in the next month i'll come at you with some observations what they're thinking what they're seeing and give it to you in consideration of all of that so we'll talk about kofax talk about liberal arts talk about critical traits for the 21st century and i'll try to put together as well as i can for you what is going on out there. Thanks very much for listening. I'm Eli Amder. See you next time.

Until then, keep questioning, keep learning, and keep thinking critically.