If You’re Unhappy With Your Writing (or Life) Watch Thi… — Transcript

You won't be able to write anything that moves somebody if your life is sitting so still, if you are so stagnant.

Guys, this is a massive problem I'm seeing in modern writing and in modern life. I'm a clinical mental health counselor as well, and I see this all the time, that people are just sleepwalking through life.

They're living down here when their potential is up here, and it makes me sick, man. That's why I do counseling, that's why I make these videos, I want to see nothing more than my fellow man fired up when he wakes up because he's got passion and purpose and he's moving deliberately towards his goals, towards the success that he deserves.

Man, that's that's what I want to see. That's what we're going to be talking about in this video, this isn't just writing advice, this isn't just going to help you be a better writer, this is going to be advice to make you a better version of yourself.

So please, please listen, like listen in, listen up, take notes, send this to somebody who needs it, because this is very important, not not just for writing.

And we're going to be talking about living life, experiencing life for real, because too many of us are complacent and just scrolling and taking no risks, making no new experiences, meeting no new people.

We're just shrinking our world, every year shrinking it just a little bit more. And that I ask you again, how are you supposed to write something that connects if you're doing that?

I always point to Hemingway as the ultimate example of going out there and living life and being a student of life and getting these rich experiences to put on the page.

Because he knew this, man, he he understood the ability to turn scars into stories, to take his pain, his world and put it to the page. And that that's what we're missing, people don't have a perspective anymore, people don't have a point of view anymore.

If you're supposed to build these things, perspective, points of view, if you want some insight into humanity, then you have to be in the arena, you have to be playing that game of life, you have to be taking risks, moving yourself out of your comfort zone to to understand and look at new new things and new ways and meet new people, because without it, you're just going to have the same recycled garbage in your mind that everyone else has, the same Netflix or Hulu shows that are coming out, the same books that everyone else is reading, and even if you are well read, and I hope you are, it's still just recycling someone else's point of view, someone else's way of putting things, it's all getting siphoned back into your writing.

The only time you truly have something original and and honest, as honest as you can possibly be to say, is when you've gone out and earned that, earned that point of view, earned that insight, earned that perspective. So guys, I talked to my video about the top five things that took me from zero sales to best selling in 2024, and I talked about marketing, networking, not marketing, networking, networking, networking, community, community, community, I nailed that point home.

Well, that's not just for marketing, that's for writing as well. I think it's all about building a rollerdex, not just a word count. It's one of the most important things you can you can do, build a rollerdex, not just a word count.

Because the more people you meet, the more experiences you'll have, the more points of view you'll understand, the more you will understand people, the more you will understand humanity. So your people skills, your ability to connect with others in the real world, shaking hands, looking people in the eye, the more you get comfortable and good at that, then the better things are going to come out on the page. So many writers are like, oh, man, every character sounds the same, how do I differentiate these characters? And why is everyone sounding, they all sound the same because they're all you, and they're all the five people you've known for the past 15 years, and they're and you're going off the same 10 cool experiences you've had in the past 20 years.

You need to be out there living more. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like it's a deeper well to pull from. If not, it's just, okay, I'm going into the same little pond to fish these same guys out. I've already got this fish.

Oh, that fish died last time I pulled him out. I I worked that idea too much, it's gone. Man, you don't have anything left. You got to move out into the sea, you got to get out there into the world, and you have to see more, learn more, experience more.

So be a student of life, not just literature. You know, I I mean that, I mean, have your head up out of your phone, looking around, observing the world, taking it in, because us writers, we're the ones who are supposed to be on the front line, observing and reporting back and giving an entertaining version of what we saw.

That's that's our job, that's what we're supposed to do. So we have to be locked in, man, we have to be paying attention. Further, don't just read your genre, be a student of literature, be a student of all types of literature, be a student of philosophy, of marketing, of science, of action adventure, of horror.

Read everything. Man, read everything, take in all you can, again, not just to be a better writer, but to be a better person. And you connect it all back, now that you all have all this knowledge, I can talk to more people about more things. Guys, I'm telling you, stories that connect, they come from a place that's real, a place that's authentic, and you can't reconstruct that, you can't reconstruct authenticity, you can't manufacture authenticity, you have to earn it.

So for your sake, for your writing's sake, for your future readers' sake, push yourself out of your comfort zone, do something new. It doesn't have to be scary, you don't have to go be Hemingway and go to a war and be the war correspondent or go hunt lions in Africa, that's not what I'm asking you to do.

I'm asking you to go to a different part of the city that you're used to, go to a new restaurant and spark up a conversation, something like that, go to a new bookstore, shake the owner's hand, talk to them for a bit, ask them what their story is. That's what I'm asking you to do. And this is this is advice I'm constantly trying to take for myself, because if you know me, if you've known me in my real life, you know I was the shyest person that could ever exist, and I'm slowly peeling myself out of that lifestyle, and I'm putting myself out there, and I had to do a panel at Bouchercon this year and speak in front of people, and that was a nightmare for me, right? I didn't want to do that, but I'm I'm getting myself comfortable with being uncomfortable. I'm going to do that because I'm not going to live in this small tiny box, I'm not going to have my experiences fit right here. I'm not going to do that, with the time I have, I'm going to push myself to live a bigger, fuller life, a more fulfilling life.

And you know what that's doing? It's helping me write, because every time I sit down, man, I have so many new people, so many new experiences that I can put there on the page.

So, that's all I got, guys, please send this to somebody who needs to hear it. Give me a like, give me a follow if you want to hear more of this. I appreciate every single one of you for giving me the time, and I hope this helps you. Keep writing, keep fighting, my friends, I'll see you next time.