12 Week Year for Writers
The 12 Week Year for Writers podcast is hosted by Trevor Thrall, Ph.D., author of The 12 Week Year for Writers. We dive deep on strategies and tools to help writers be their most productive selves.
12 Week Year for Writers
Putting Your Butt in the Chair
The biggest challenge for most writers isn't talent or ideas—it's simply showing up. Ever meant to write but somehow the coffee, inbox, or laundry won instead? You're not alone.
In this deep dive into the psychology of writing consistency, I explore the three major obstacles that keep us from getting our butts in the chair: fear, energy depletion, and what I call the "lizard brain." Rather than beating ourselves up for lacking willpower or discipline, I offer practical, proven strategies to make your writing sessions nearly inevitable.
Fear keeps many writers perpetually stuck in "research mode," avoiding the terrifying blank page. The solution isn't to "man up" but to break projects into baby steps small enough they no longer trigger fear. Finding community—whether through writing groups or mentors—normalizes your experience and provides both emotional support and practical strategies.
For energy struggles, I suggest examining whether your current project truly excites you and scheduling writing sessions as non-negotiable appointments at your peak creative times. As for the lizard brain's constant search for instant gratification over hard work? Develop a personal "showing up ritual" that bridges the gap between intention and action.
My own ritual involved bagels, coffee, and the New York Times before transitioning to writing. Yours might include meditation, journaling, or finding the perfect environment. Whatever works for you becomes your personal strategy for winning that crucial moment of decision when you're on the knife edge between showing up and doing something else.
The magic happens when you combine these strategies into a personalized weekly writing routine. Remember to be kind to yourself—the goal isn't perfection but a sustainable level of happy productivity.
Ready to transform your relationship with writing? Pick one strategy from this episode to test this week. Your future self (and manuscript) will thank you.
We're excited to announce the launch of our new website: 12weekyearforwriters.com
To celebrate, you can join the 12 Week Year Writers membership for 50% off the first three months.
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My team and I help writers get their writing done. If you're stuck, it's not a knowledge problem. It's not a skill issue. And it's not a motivation or willpower thing. You know what you need to do and how to do it. The problem is consistent execution: getting the writing done week in and week out.
With the 12 Week Year for Writers system, you'll create a routine that helps you write more, and more happily, than ever before.
Thanks for listening!
Hi, welcome to the 12-Week Year for Writers podcast. I'm Trevor Thrall. If you enjoyed today's episode, please submit a review wherever you get your podcasts and for updates on the podcast and other writing resources. You can subscribe to the newsletter at 12weekyearforwriterscom. Have you ever had that morning where you meant to write, but somehow the coffee or the inbox or maybe even the laundry won instead.
Speaker 1:Ah, yeah, me too. We all want to write consistently. It's easy to dream about it, but it's actually pretty hard to get your butt in the chair. I think it's a universal struggle for writers. So today I want to dig into why showing up is so hard and offer some practical and proven strategies you can use to make your writing inevitable. And by the end of this episode, I want you to take away at least one tool that you can put to work this week. Alright. So why is it so tough to sit down and write? I mean, it seems pretty simple Sit down, write. Well, there are an infinite number of reasons if you really dig into it. But today I want to focus on three really major players that I talk to writers about all the time, and those are fear, energy and your lizard brain.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about fear first, and we've all been there. Starting a book or some project that you've always meant to write but haven't started yet can be terrifying. Starting a master's thesis or a dissertation is terrifying Heck. I remember being terrified of writing term papers in junior high. When you're scared, one of the most common reactions is just to avoid the thing that's scaring you. Stuff it in the closet. Come up with a reason. You have to do something else first, whatever it is, so that you don't have to feel those feelings of terror.
Speaker 1:And I've spoken to a ton of people who have told me that fear is a big reason that they don't show up the way they want to. Second big reason I hear a lot about is energy or motivation. You know, we're all crazy busy and for many of us writing comes after a long day of work, family exercise, other obligations, and for as many writers as complain about not having enough time to write, just as many complain that they don't have the energy or the motivation when they finally do have time to sit down and write, and so they are often sort of, you know, deterred from sitting down because they don't feel like they're going to have the energy. And I think that shades into burnout when people just don't have the energy to make themselves sit down at all.
Speaker 1:And finally, let's talk about your lizard brain, and here I'm talking about the evolutionary challenge that our brains present to doing hard things. If you've read the weekly writing routine workbook or listened to the podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about this before. But you is actually two people in the moment you and routine you. You know, in the moment you is the one who wants to scroll snack nap, allergic to hard work, love shiny distractions and short-term rewards. Routine you, on the other hand, is the planner, the strategist, the part of you who knows that writing is important and isn't allergic to hard work and is able to set things up so that in the moment you doesn't have to fight so hard. We're all, both people, but we struggle. We struggle to show up when we don't spend enough time. As routine you thinking about how to make life easier for in the moment you. If we don't do that, then when the time comes to make the decision to pick up your bag and head to the coffee shop or to sit down with the computer, open up your work in progress, in the moment you is going to say hey, wait a minute, that sounds awfully hard. I'd rather scroll through some silly dog videos on Instagram, and that's what you're going to do, right? So just in brief, those are three of the big reasons that, in various flavors, I hear about all the time making it difficult for people to put their butts in the chair and write, and unfortunately, when we're dealing with these challenges, most of us reach for traditional I'll call them traditional strategies that just don't work.
Speaker 1:When people feel fear, they yell at themselves to man up and get over it. It's silly to be afraid of writing. When people feel burnt out or a lack of motivation, they just yell at themselves to get psyched up. Just do it. You know you want this. And when people let their lizard brain talk them out of writing, they yell at themselves and tell themselves not to be so lazy. They make resolutions and promise themselves that they'll do it next time, and the end result of all the yelling is A people just generally feel worse about themselves, but B they become demoralized and even less likely to write. And so the end result is that this doesn't solve any problems. It often makes things worse, and the reason these approaches the yelling.
Speaker 2:Fail is pretty simple.
Speaker 1:It's aimed at the wrong issue. The problem isn't that you're a wimp or unmotivated or lazy or lacking willpower, and the answer is not that you need a personality transplant, right. The key is that you need tools and a routine that make life easier on in the moment you. That's the key to consistent execution, to consistent writing, and the good news is that, no matter what your particular challenge is today, whether it's fear or energy or your lizard brain, there are strategies that can help you rig the game in your favor, right, and you don't need to change who you are. You just need to change your routines.
Speaker 1:So, let's just talk through some strategies that use this principle, build on this principle to help you get your butt in a chair on a regular basis, depending on which of these things you're dealing with.
Speaker 1:All right, dealing with fear when I was early on in my dissertation writing phase of life. When I was early on in my dissertation writing phase of life, the dissertation was such a big and complex project I had never done anything close to as complicated before and I actually had trouble comprehending the full scope of the project in my head, like I couldn't say the point of it and I couldn't summarize it tidily for you like in an elevator speech. For a long time I would wake up every morning and try to write it over again so that I understood the theory I was trying to explain and the argument I was trying to make. It was wiggly, squiggly and I was afraid it was terrifying. And later, when I was working with graduate students of my own, I came to call this the Mount Fuji problem.
Speaker 1:If you look at the whole mountain at once and try to imagine thinking about climbing to the top and you're staring at the whole mountain, you know the whole majestic awesomeness of it. It's terrifying, right? You don't tell yourself. You know, climb a mountain is not a task, it's a project. It's a big, scary project. And if you think about the big, scary project it's hard to start, and so that kind of fear can definitely be paralyzing, and in the writing case in particular, this kind of fear has a very particular symptom which we see all the time, which is people who are scared often stay in research mode for a very long time. Oh, I'm just taking more notes, oh, I'm doing more world-building. Oh, I don't have an interviewed enough people. Oh I haven't got enough data. Whatever it might be, you probably do, but you're afraid, right? So this has happened to me on my dissertation, for sure. I was in research mode a lot longer than I needed to be before I started writing the darn thing. If I could do it over again, man, but anyway.
Speaker 1:So there are happily some solutions to this kind of fear. So I just want to talk about two strategies, and the first is just super, super obvious, and that is taking baby steps. Right, it's not rocket science, it's just brain science. You don't climb a mountain in one step. You don't write a book in one step. You take thousands of little steps. And so when you say I have to write a book, it's scary. But if you just say I have to write a section, it's not so scary. Or if you say I have to create an outline for chapter one, it doesn't sound so scary. Or if you say I have to create an outline for chapter one, it doesn't sound so scary. Right.
Speaker 1:And so my very strong advice if you are feeling scared is to spend more time up front chunking your project down into chunks and tactics, small enough that they just aren't scary anymore. And if you know outlining all of chapter one sounds too scary, make it outlining a section, or just even free writing about what the outline should look like. Keep breaking it down. I remember reading a book at one point about weight loss and exercise and stuff and going to the gym. That's scary for a lot of people, and so just driving by the gym could be a good first step. Go by the gym that's scary for a lot of people, right, and so just driving by the gym could be a good first step. Right, go by the gym, get comfortable being near the gym and then go into the gym. Don't make yourself lift weights if that's too scary at first. Go into the gym, get comfortable being there, right, and baby step your way until it's not scary, right. So baby stepping is useful because what happens when you follow this approach is that you start to get pretty good at understanding what things are easier or harder for you, and you get good then at chunking things up in a way that will help you show up and get things done. So the end result of that it just gets much easier to get your butt in the chair. End result of that it just gets much easier to get your butt in the in the chair.
Speaker 1:The second strategy for dealing with fear that I think is underutilized by many writers because, again, I think many writers operate in isolation is finding community. Um, I think going it alone, doing scary things alone, is the scariest way to do anything. Right? Have you ever watched a horror movie? Being alone in that dark, you know, haunted house is by far more terrifying than being with other people. Right, that's why there's always a group of meddling kids. Right, they don't travel alone, they travel in packs, because it's scarier to be alone.
Speaker 1:When you share the journey with other people, other writers in particular, your fears about writing will recede because everyone's dealing with the same issues, the same fears. You share stories, you share strategies. It seems normal because it is, and your fears can just sort of slowly fade to normal size. Like I have challenges, I don't have, you know, fear anymore. I think, doing most things in a group and I don't mean writing the thing with someone else, although that might work for you too, but doing things with some kind of writing group where you're checking in on a regular basis. Just talking about the journey can be a huge fear breaker. And another great form of community is a mentor or a coach, someone who's been through all the same struggles and had all the same fears, who can just reassure you. Look, you're on the path. It's totally normal in your phase, you know, to have these kinds of fears. I had them too. Here's how I dealt with them yada, yada. And as you do that again, it normalizes.
Speaker 1:It's just something we all go through, and here's some actual practical things you can do to work through it, and I bet they're going to share both my pieces of advice too. Benefit at every step of mentors who could help. When I hit walls and this is especially important for me as a young professor, when I did not know you know what I was doing most of the time when it came to being a productive publishing academic and I, you know, beat a path down to a couple of my senior colleagues' office doors because I had lots of questions for them and they were super, super, super helpful, and I've always felt infinitely better after speaking to them. Okay, all right, let's move on to challenge two lack of energy or motivation that's keeping you from sitting in the chair, and for this, you from sitting in the chair, and for this, two strategies to consider. Right, and the first is to mind your mojo, and what I mean by that is that I think it's sometimes the case that when we find ourselves just uninterested in getting our butt in the chair like you, look over the chair and you're just like nah, i'm'm not feeling it, I don't want to.
Speaker 1:That is often, in my experience, a sign that you are not very motivated by the project in process, that it's not doing it for you, and there can be a lot of different reasons for that, um, but uh, you know, if it's a work project, for example, it might just suck. If it's a personal project, it might be because it's not going the way you wanted it to. If it's because you're writing to make money and you're aiming to try to write to the market instead of writing the stuff that you really like, it might be because you don't like what you're writing right. And so what I would ask you to do is just to sort of do a quick reflection about your goals, and this is you know again why we start the 12-week year for writers with your goals for life. What is your vision of your life, where are you trying to go and how is the stuff you're working on every day and you're writing getting you there right?
Speaker 1:and if you're writing, is not getting you where you want to be. That's where your energy problems. That's why you don't want to sit down, because you're not excited about it. I think you know. To me, the goal is to be putting things on your desk to write that you are super excited about, because they're either exactly what you want to do right now or because they're exactly the thing you need to do to get to where you want to be, and when you're working on one of those things you're in great shape.
Speaker 1:um, I know I've said this before in many different venues, but I I was a terrible student, in part because it was hard for me to motivate when things weren't interesting to me and you know, it's not that I didn't understand the theory that I had to build skills in a number of different areas to get good things and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:But you know, when you're young you're ornery about such things. I got better at that later, but early on, if it didn't seem obvious to me, that was the thing I needed next to get where I wanted to go.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to do it, and I didn't do it very well. Typically, and as I got you know, further and further in my academic career as a student, I got closer and closer to things that were very clearly helpful to me, and so I got to grad school and I was finally taking courses that were directly aligned with the things I wanted to study as a professional. I was very excited, and when I finally took a stats class later, when I was actually already a professor, because I had a project that I wanted to do the stats for but I didn't know how yet, I took that stats class over a summer and I was like the most motivated I'd ever been. It was very easy to get to class and do that stuff right. So I would say look, do it, do it. Do honest self reflection. Do you really wanna be writing the thing you're writing? And if not, throw it away, start something else if you can, and if you can't, right, then is there a way to find a framing of what you're working on that you can be motivated by and try to find some additional motivation there? And if you can't, then you're going to have to reward yourself more for doing it. That's another discussion. But that's, I think, certainly something to think about. Right is are you actually motivated by the stuff you're asking yourself to do?
Speaker 1:Second way to tackle the energy problem is to schedule like. Writing is the boss. You know I say this all the time, but everything else is louder than writing. Writing is the quietest. You know activity, this all the time, but everything else is louder than writing. Writing is the quietest. You know activity on the planet, and everything else is every other kind of distraction. Interruption is louder, more urgent, and it's very easy to put off writing to, to pick one of those things up.
Speaker 1:And so the problem with that is that many of us end up rescheduling our writing sessions on a dime oh, I'll write tomorrow at 2. Oh, no, tomorrow at 7. Oh well, I'll push it till Thursday. Well, this week I won't, but I'll write twice as much next week. That is terrible. That is terrible for your consistency and it's hard to show up, because the more of a habit you make of making it OK to change your writing schedule, the less likely you are ever to to go sit down at the scheduled time.
Speaker 1:On the other hand, when you have a consistent schedule, when this is like church, I am going to writing and it's Monday, wednesday, friday, from 3 to 5, and it doesn't matter what else is happening, the world could be ending. I will be at my desk writing. When you do that, your, your brain's ready, you're ready. It's easier to go. It becomes a habit.
Speaker 1:If you don't, it's not a habit, it's easy to skip, it's very difficult. So scheduling like you're writing is the boss is key, and I think I'll slip another thought in there as well, which is that you know all of us have different rhythms, different points of the day and the week and the month and the year when we're, you know, feeling sharp and motivated and energized, and we have other times when we're feeling, you know, slower, like summer maybe, maybe just feel like vacationing, right, and you got to respect that. So you don't want to ask yourself, you don't step over yourself on the way to a writing session. So, so, as you're scheduling like writing is the boss, also, remember to don't act like you are a robot. You are a human who has rhythms and you need to respect those as well.
Speaker 1:So, two ways to tackle the lack of energy kind of problem. All right, last, last challenge is the lizard brain, and you know the entire weekly writing routine workbook is really designed to grapple with this problem of in the moment. You so I'm not going to offer a comprehensive list of strategies and tactics here. You know, really I can just say go see the 12 week year for under system. But. But I do want to help today. I want to focus on helping you win the moment of decision as I like to think of it right, that moment when you have to commit to sitting down or you're about to do something else instead, because I think you can often feel yourself on that knife edge of like Am I about to go or am I about to not?
Speaker 1:go. The main strategy I want to talk about here is the showing up ritual. I would just call it a ritual. I don't want to freak anyone out. I don't mean a voodoo ritual or some kind of weird cult thing, I just mean a routine. But ritual sounds cool. So I use the word ritual Because you can have all sorts of plans, but if you don't actually just sit down, you know nothing happens. And that's where this ritual comes in, because I think of that showing up ritual as kind of the bridge between your intention and your action. I'm going to write, I'm writing what happens in between there. How do you go from one state to the other, and I think it's this ritual right, and I've told this story before too.
Speaker 1:But I discovered that for me to show up, it was very useful to use little inducements like food and coffee, and so when I was an adjunct very early on, a little baby at home couldn't work at home, was teaching three courses.
Speaker 1:I was busy teaching but I had to finish my dissertation so I would go in early.
Speaker 1:In fact I would go in a walk to campus in the dark and it was winter and cold and Michigan and and I needed something to help me get there, because that was sleeping in and staying warm was a much, you know, preferable thing, especially to my in the moment me, and so what I did was preferable thing, especially to my in-the-moment me.
Speaker 1:And so what I did was, instead of walking straight to my office, I walked straight to the bagel shop and I got a toasted sesame bagel with peanut butter and honey and a big mug of coffee sometimes half coffee, half coffee, half hot chocolate in the wintertime and I would go to my office, read the New York Times, listen to some classical music. Wouldn't rush, but when I was done with my bagel, that was my sort of my key. Okay, it's time to put the paper down. Time to pull my stuff, my notes, my writing, over from one side of the desk to in front of me and I would finish my coffee while I started in writing and I'd write until it was time to get ready for class and I didn't realize I was doing that at the time I didn't.
Speaker 1:That was not conscious on my part. I didn't do this as a design experiment Like, oh, I wonder if this will help me show up. I just did it because I think my animal brain knew, you know, if I didn't do that I wasn't going to go sit down. But I found a way to go from I'm going to campus I'm going to go write to now I'm writing. I found a bridge and I've talked to lots of different writers and everyone has to develop their own bridge. It's different for everyone. I know some people who do a little meditation before they write, kind of clear the brain, because we got a lot going on in our brains, right, and most of them don't have anything to do with the project you're working on. So you want to not have those in your brain when you're starting your work. So one useful thing to do is to clear your mind. So meditation is one possibility. Another is journaling or free writing. It could be on your topic, things you're thinking about that you know this could be undirected, just like.
Speaker 1:Here's some thoughts and concerns I'm having about my project right now, just to get them out and maybe get you into that world a little bit. Or maybe it's the other way around for you you want to write about something else and get that out of your mind. So it's not you know. Whatever else has been on your mind you want to put that down so that you don't have to think about it. Whatever it is, whatever, whatever the right way to get you into writing mode, and I think sometimes a little. You know white noise. I love coffee shops.
Speaker 1:For me, going to a coffee shop shop was another ritual that I built, like during summers, when I was actually teaching. I had the summers off. I was going to get lots of writing done, but you know, writing all day. That's a tough ask. So I would actually have a multi-show up ritual where I start the day at a coffee shop. I love the coffee it was great. Maybe a muffin, the white noise of the coffee shop, for whatever reason. I spent enough time in my life in the coffee shop. It was very soothing, so that was super helpful. So when I hear coffee shop noise I start to get in writing mode. It's just like an autonomic response for me. And then, eventually, though, my butt would get sore from sitting at that one wooden chair for three hours. So then I would get up, go get lunch and I would move to a second location, typically the graduate library. I had a carol in the graduate library and I would go there and I would work for a few more hours, and I love the grad library, it's one of my other favorite places in the world. So I would treat myself as a showing up ritual. I would show up to a place, kind of get a fresh start in a place that I loved, that made me feel like writing. So that was for me, but whatever it would be for you, the ritual is the cue that tells your brain okay, it's time to write, and I cannot stress enough how important having that sort of that last mile strategy is, because you can put lots of writing blocks on your schedule, but making sure that, if you've found that you frequently don't show up for your writing sessions, it may be that what you need is to help figure out that final, that final mile, that show up ritual.
Speaker 1:How do I get myself to this place? How do I get myself settled in my writing? So, how do I get myself in writing mode? Because, because the failure to get you know, quote, get your butt in the chair can happen if you don't go. It can happen if you don't sit down at the plate, and it can happen if you don't go. It can happen if you don't sit down at the plate, and it can happen if you don't start writing. You start doing something instead. Because I've seen, boy, oh boy. I have to tell you, when I was at that coffee shop all those years, I would look around when I was on my way to the bathroom looking at everyone's laptops and this is mostly grad students, and they're all on eBay or some other thing and they were not working. I was like, what are they doing? Well, their butts were in the chair, but their butts were not in the chair, if you know what I mean. So you need a little series of showing up strategies to help you move from not writing to sitting down to writing.
Speaker 2:All right, let's put it all together.
Speaker 1:We've talked about a number of strategies, but, more importantly, we've identified what I think is the general theory of victory, that is, using routine use, strategic thinking capability to make your writing easier and more enjoyable and more rewarding, so that, in the moment, you can get the writing done right, so that you can show up and get your butt in the chair and actually do the writing. So now you've got a toolbox, but the real magic comes when you combine all these different tools into a weekly writing routine that fits you and the way you work. The tools of the 12-week year are the same, but the way we stitch them together and the specific rituals we use to show up and get the writing done are personal, and so that's where the real progress is going to come is when you combine them into a writing routine that works for you. And as you gain experience about thinking strategically you know, as you gain experience about thinking strategically, you know, as you gain experience thinking strategically about how to get your butt in the chair and how this routine works you know your goal is to build this routine that maximizes your likelihood of getting your butt in the chair and maximizes how well you write once you get there.
Speaker 1:But I want to add, before we end, a final caveat, and that is to remember, with all of this stuff, to be kind to yourself no yelling. There is no yelling in my system. The end state, the goal here is not perfection. We are not robots. We are not looking for superhuman discipline. We are looking for a human level of happy productivity. Okay, let's land the plane. Here's my challenge for you. I would like you to turn off this podcast right now and do a mini audit. Think for a little bit about what helps you show up and what things are derailing you sometimes from showing up.
Speaker 1:But things are derailing you sometimes from showing up and then go back through your notes here and pick one strategy from today's discussion and test it this week. Do it and if the strategy works after a week, keep it rolling. If not, tweak, find another one. Do what you need. But your goal now is to, step by step, build a routine that helps you show up, because, at the end of the day, getting your butt in the chair is not about willpower, it's not about yelling at yourself. It's about building routines that make your writing easier, more enjoyable, more rewarding and eventually, inevitable. And, of course, if you want more help building your own weekly writing routine, come join us inside the 12-week year for writers and we'll be happy to design the system with you All right until next time, happy writing.
Speaker 2:The spirit of trying to make it a better book.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I rail against this lone wolf mentality all the time. It's not good for your writing, more or less at any stage. I don't think it's not good when you're ideating. It's not good when you're writing. It's not good when you're editing. It's not good when you're promoting. It's never good. Don't do things alone. It sounds cool on paper, but it's a terrible idea.
Speaker 2:To bring this back to the subject at hand when you go to write a pitch letter. This back to the subject at hand. When you go to write a pitch letter, you should think of it as you're trying to join a team and you will be the most important person on that team. Like I said, without the author, the team has nothing to do. But you're trying to join a team. You're not trying to be their leader, you're not trying to accumulate servants or something. You're trying to be their leader. You're not trying to, uh, you know, accumulate, you know, servants or something. You're trying to join a team and so you explain yourself and what you have to offer. And, uh, you know that includes everything from the argument of the book to the marketing of the book. And uh, if you can do that in a couple of pages, you've written a letter that will presumably get you a book deal.
Speaker 1:All right, we've convinced them. They want to write a pitch letter. Talk a little bit about, before we go through, sort of a process that you might recommend. This is useful for people, obviously, when they're trying to land a book deal, but we've talked about this before. It can be useful for you even if you plan on self-publishing and marketing it yourself. So you maybe just talk a little bit about the benefits of writing this letter.
Speaker 2:The benefits of writing this letter.
Speaker 2:When I wrote my book Technology and the End of Authority, I went through a bunch of different sort of conceptualizations about how it would be organized and what types of arguments I would make.
Speaker 2:It was a historical survey, so it covers a bunch of different eras and writers and talks about their work, and one of the very first things that I did in the entire project was to write, essentially a pitch letter, and I was working with a, an editor who was very interested in my work to begin with, someone I already knew, but that still, that didn't stop me from writing a pitch letter.
Speaker 2:In a way, it made it made it very important in a different direction, because I wanted to make the argument as clear as possible in my own mind before I started doing the work. Before I go back to the library and read about Rousseau or Machiavelli, I want to know that I've got a reason for doing that. I want to know what I'm looking for in these texts. I want to know the argument as clearly as possible, and one of the things that I very deeply believe about writing is that writing is a tool for thinking. Writing makes your thinking clearer, and so the work that I did at the outset of that book trying to put together a essentially a pitch letter about the book Was very, very, very useful to me in writing the book Mm, hmm, mm, hmm.
Speaker 1:Yep, so you just said two things and I added a third that you said before and I came up with three C's. It's helps you with clarity, yes, helps you clarify your thinking. Once you have written it down, it then provides a compass that helps direct your work and when you're done, it's copy, it's sales copy and marketing copy.
Speaker 2:It is the three C's.
Speaker 1:Look at that. We just came up with a cool framework. That's awesome. And you know, what is funny is that in the fiction world this is not true in the nonfiction world, of course, because we're all plotters in the nonfiction world. We all make plans before we try writing anything.
Speaker 1:So writing this kind of document it's like writing a dissertation proposal. You don't get to write the dissertation until you prove to your committee that you can write basically a fancy version of a pitch letter that we approve. That is the compass and shows that you have clarity about the project and all that sort of stuff. But but even fiction writers who call themselves pantsers, people who don't like to make the big plot right, even for those folks what they will tell you is they can't write a story if they don't know the general arc. They know character a starts in this situation and ends up here, or if, if it's two people falling in love, they end up not knowing each other and then they end up together. They know they have a version of that pitch letter. In a sense it might be very small, but it's a kernel.
Speaker 1:But I think that vision that you have to set out for yourself for every project is crucial, regardless if you're going to let yourself meander sort of a little bit or whether you're going to try to really plan it out. So a pitch letter can be. It's like a multi-tool, you know. It has so many fantastic purposes and I like your phrase. It's a tool for thinking. It really makes you better, right, writing makes you better at thinking, just no question about it. I don't think it matters what you're writing about, all right. So I want to write a pitch letter, jason what's my best general approach to doing it?
Speaker 2:Your best general approach is to imagine you're writing to a real person, because actually you are, and do not get caught up with academic jargon. Don't get caught up with technicalities. Don't try to impress them with your smarts, impress them with your ability to communicate. Introduce yourself, maybe say a few words about your qualifications Mention, if you're including a CV, like I've suggested and then very clearly, so no one can miss it, say something like the argument of the book will be as follows, and write about a paragraph about the argument of the book, and make this a very simple and very clear statement, much more so than in your conclusion or even in your introduction. You want this to be something that anyone can pick up and read. It is not necessarily the case that your editor is a specialist in your field. Your editor will be a specialist in some field, but not necessarily yours, and so you need to introduce your work here to someone who is, in effect, a part of an educated general audience.
Speaker 1:That's what you're aiming at for a nonfiction pitch letter, and in fiction it's more or less do everything you just said, but it's tell them the story, right. Yes, tell them the story, the story and why it fits, the genre that you want it, that you tell them the genre, that is you know, and the sub genre. Because for most of the fiction writers out there, unless you're writing sort of general, you know adult fiction. Even there there are so many layers and slices and niches. But you know, if you're a fantasy writer, a science fiction writer, a romance writer, you know what sub niche you're in, because you write it and you read it and so does your agent, so does the publisher, so does the editor, and so you want to be very clear about where you fit, why your book fits. Tell them the story in a quick synopsis so that they get that it's the right fit and so on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and one thing one thing that pitch letters will often do and I I do recommend this is to mention some comparable titles. Absolutely, this is often done in the context of marketing, but uh, also it can help an editor to understand in a general sense what kind of a book it is. If you're going to write the next Freakonomics, if you think you've done that, that's ambitious, but if you really think you've done it, then say so. And if you are not sure what the comparable titles are in the field that are out there, then perhaps you ought to do some research and some reading and come back when you are sure, because not knowing the literature in the field is, from my point of view as an editor, a big red flag. You should definitely be able to name right off the bat several comparable titles.
Speaker 2:So I mentioned in my pitch letter that I was imitating a lot of 20th century intellectual survey books. So I mentioned Karl Popper, the open society and its enemies, as a book that I was very consciously trying to imitate in my book. Now I can't say necessarily that I'm as great a writer as as, uh, carl popper, one of the greatest philosophers of the last century, but uh, you know, I, I know what I'm aiming at. I know the kind of uh book and the territory of carl parper will enjoy my book, right?
Speaker 1:it's something like that, right? So it's like king kong meets star wars. You know, if you like three authors, you're gonna love this, right? I mean, this is you see this all over the mall or barnes and noble. You know, this is how we make sense of what category you're in, and you want to help people get you to the right category quickly, exactly. Yeah, so write for a specific person. Is it your mom? What do you? What do you? What do you choose? Your mom, your dad?
Speaker 2:I tell people, I tell people the high school English teacher. There you go, you remember your high school English teacher and you know that they like writing. They wouldn't be a high school English teacher otherwise and you want to get them interested in this new thing that you're doing. I've written a romance novel that I think you'll really enjoy. This is what it's about. Or I've written a mystery, or I've written an examination of the last 20 years of US trade policy, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, fantastic, all right. Well, that's, I think, a great start to this topic, jason, and for people who want to learn more there's going to be a workshop coming up.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, on the 21st, Absolutely 21st of August.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this in the year 2026, it's too late. It already happened last year. But if you are listening to this before August 21st 2025, then you are very welcome to head over to 12weekyearforwriterscom. Register for this workshop, or if you are a member of the community, the workshop is free. So make sure to RSVP and we hope to see you guys next week. All right, jason. Thanks so much, man Good talking to you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, good talking with you.