Pause, Sink In, Stand Still, and More
Friday, March 1, 2024
Hey y’all,
Last week, I thought to myself that I should pause this newsletter.
I wasn’t sure what this thing was or where it was going and so I figured I would pause for a month and return to it later. The thing is, I went to work the next day, came home, and found myself immediately diving into the next one.
Carl Jung once wrote, “If the path ahead of you is clear, you’re probably on somebody else’s.” Stop trying to figure out the whole path in front of me, I told myself, and just keep writing and see what happens. See what truths reveal themselves. See what fireworks explode because you’re in the right place at the right time.
Are there times when you really should pause? Yes. Are there times when you need to push through? Yes. This is one of those times to calm down and just keep plotting away. Keep throwing stuff at the wall. See what sticks. See which ideas start to clump together and take form on their own. Stop trying to force it. This cannot be planned. If you planned which ideas would take the shape of their own, then they are not your own. Accept the fact that you don’t know and move forward. Choose the path ahead of you; it becomes the right path precisely because you choose it. It becomes the correct path by your own decision. It’s right because it's yours.
So, here we are again. Happy Friday, everyone. Here are 10 things I found interesting from the last week or so.
1. Teaching is Learning
Two of the most well-known theoretical physicists, Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, said something similar: if you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it.
If you want to learn about something you are interested in or better understand something, the best way is to try to teach it to someone in the most simple terms possible.
As you try to teach something, it will identify where the holes are in your understanding of the topic. So, last week in class, I had an idea. How about instead of focusing so much on the peculiarities of grammar and listening, we try to write a story?
Let’s practice using the language in the form of storytelling and see if we can identify common mistakes and have them use their creativity. So, I decided to put my class into groups and try writing a short story. It’s a bit long to explain, so I moved it to the very bottom of this week's newsletter. Feel free to skip ahead and come back to this point, but in order to keep things moving, I figured at the very bottom is where it is best suited. Onward.
2. The Day You Became a Better Writer
Speaking of learning how to write better, I was listening to a conversation between Tim Ferris and Naval Ravikant about which blogs they like to read and why blogs can be just as powerful, if not more powerful, than reading an entire book. Often, a book really should have been an article. Nevertheless, Ravikant says there's one blog post that is just as valuable as any writing book out there.
Cartoonist Scott Adams writes The Dilbert Blog, and one of his most famous posts is titled "The Day You Became a Better Writer." His advice, he says, covers 80% of the rules of good writing, is to keep things simple. Simple is persuasive. Cut extra words. Write short sentences. One thought per sentence. The first sentence is the most important. Finally, learn how brains organize ideas. He shows an example on his blog. Check it out. Today's the day.
Q: Is there a blog/newsletter that you think is just as valuable as reading any other book?
3. Scrap Bits
David Perell interviewed Morgan Housel, author of Psychology of Money, and uncovered two great ideas about writing. The first speaks to Dilbert's blog above, stating brevity is king. Get right to the point. But, Housel points out that brevity doesn't always mean short. It means each word is there for a reason. Long sentences are still OK if each word matters. Brevity is the main focus, not solely length.
Secondly, Housel shared a concept I had never heard of but really liked. It makes me wonder how many writers do the same thing. He has a Scraps Bits Google Doc book. As he's editing and aiming for brevity in each sentence, page, chapter, etc., he's cutting things out. Those words, sentences, paragraphs, etc., hit the cutting room floor many times and are swept into the trash bin forever. He argues to save those scraps and bits by putting them in a separate Google Doc. His thinking is that those scraps don't work now necessarily, but if something about it speaks to you and you don't want to waste it and don't want to force it right now, save it. In the future, there will be gaps in your work and holes in your understanding, and a sentence or a paragraph that hit the cutting room floor ages ago will be perfect to plug and play somewhere else. I feel this makes the editing process less painful. Nothing becomes lost, only later transformed.
Q: How do you prefer to organize your material so nothing becomes lost? What are the pros and cons for doing it that way? Who taught you that specific method?
4. We’re All Pros Already
One book that almost every writer and or creator often refers to is War of Art by Steven Pressfield. He shares great insights about Resistance with a capital R, personifying the Muses, plus shares stories about his own writer's journey and all of the ups and downs to go with it. Beyond his analysis of Resistance, Pressfield touches on an idea that writers and fellow creators often forget: we're all pros already – in our jobs.
In our jobs, we show up every day. We stay there all day. We're in it for the long haul in many cases. The stakes are real. We're very clear on the fact that money is important. We understand I am me, this is my job, my job is not me, which allows us to not overidentify with our work. We aim to master the technique of the jobs while having a sense of humor about ourselves and the work itself. We receive both praise and blame and keep going to work nonetheless. All of these tenets of a "day job" we get. The thing we forget is that those same principles cannot be overlooked when it comes to writing, painting, or any form of creating. Perhaps the key is applying such principles to your job and then applying a similar approach to your artistic aspirations.
I don't know about you, but for me, the magic of reading books doesn't hit me in the initial reading. It's always something like this: Read the book. More or less, I get the gist of what the author was getting at. Carry on with my life with the lessons not fully sunk in yet. Then one day, I'm going about my day, and something happens, and then it hits me, "Ohhhh, that's what that writer was talking about!" Then I go on a mission to find that chapter or quote or passage and reread it – now equipped with the memory of a real-life moment – and NOW the lesson begins to stick.
This helps me understand again and again the importance of reading. It's not the reading itself per se that you learn a lot. It's not whether you read a lot or a little, either. It's the reading plus your unique experience that you can't plan for, plus the returning and rereading of specific material that directly relates to you. You can learn a lot through reading, but without real-world experience to accompany it, you're not actually getting the goods. You're not getting the context that allows the lessons to stick for you. Perhaps this is why Nassim Nicholas Taleb — a voracious reader who claims to spend 30-40 hours a week reading — says, "Never read a book you would not reread." Pressfield's War of Art is worth reading precisely because it is worth rereading.
It wasn't until I learned the value of applying things I learned from teaching to writing this newsletter in my free time that I understood what he meant: we're all pros already.
Q: What's your favorite book to reread?
5. Create Like You Are About To Be Buried
Artist Raro de Oliveira builds on this idea. My dad actually sent me a quote from one of the online classes he was taking with the artist. He says in his class:
So practice is a little like a job, of course not everything is magical. To reach a certain level of satisfaction with your craft and for it to reach people, you have to produce a lot. Don't underestimate your early work. It is always a truth that is clear. With experience, you will begin to select techniques and materials that you feel most comfortable with. There is a world of different possibilities. The important thing is to persist and experiment. The material itself will give you some answers. Sometimes there will be surprises along the way. These demand the release and exploitation of our errors. Sometimes, we don't realize how our style communicates with people. It takes time to test some solutions. Ultimately, your audience will want it the way you do. Slowly, we are opening ourselves up to a universe of possibilities that will bring new results. The exploration is endless, and we will always be learning. Experiment and enjoy the results. Gradually, you will notice the evolution and take advantage of those techniques… Create like you are about to be buried.
6. Ram Dass Wisdom
“This is the pathless path. Where the journey leads is to the deepest truth in you. It is really just returning to where you were initially before you got lost.”
7. Rick Rubin & How You Know If What You're Doing Is Worth It
Here's some great advice from Rick Rubin's interview on Alex Huberman's podcast. Here's the link to the whole video, but skip to 48:51 where Rubin answers Huberman's question: how does one convince themselves that what they're doing or working on is worth it?
In other words, how do you know you're on the right path?
8. Rest
One of the best pieces of advice I have for writers — which is more so what I have to remind myself repeatedly while writing — is that most writing won't take place at your desk. That's actually a small part of it. Most writing takes place while I go for walks or drive my motorbike. These are thirty to sixty-minute blocks of undisturbed thinking time actually to work through things. This week, I read a passage as to why that works. In Dan Koe's book, The Art of Focus, he talks about filling your mind, emptying your mind, and using your mind.
For example, filling your mind could consist of reading, and using your mind could consist of writing. However, emptying your mind is just as important.
Koe brings up the concept in psychology called the Default Mode Network (DMN) and references Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, the author of Rest. Pang explains that the DMN is "a series of interconnected sections that activate as soon as people stop concentrating on external tasks and shift from outward-focused to inward-focused cognition."
This is why rest is key. One of my favorite writers/creators, Vizi Andrei, says knowing how to rest and relax is one of the most underrated skills of the 21st century. Rest creates stillness. Rest allows your subconscious to do the heavy lifting while not working. Taking a break from your work to rest can be in the form of a nap (how wonderful is an afternoon cat nap?), a walk to break up the day ("active rest"), or a drive around town or however you prefer.
Rest is not an escape from your work. Rest recharges the battery and helps you formulate your ideas so they don't escape you and you can actually get your work done.
Go fish, tend to your garden, take a walk, slow down, let go, relax, be unreachable and allow yourself to get lost. Before you know it the stillness will speak to you, you'll hear the inner music, the madness will call you back.
Besides, all work and no rest makes you dull. Get some rest. The work will still be there when you return.
9. Sink In
Duncan Trussels's thoughts on sinking into what you are brings me back to the idea of escape — as many things do.
How do you escape?
You sink into what you are. Sinking is facing what it is. It's paradoxical, like many truths are. You have to accept things before you can move past them. It's like the Chinese finger trap. The harder you try to pull, the stronger its grip becomes. It's only by pushing your fingers in that creates enough space to escape.
Pushing in, sinking in, making the shift to look within – it's all the same: a means of escaping to life.
10. Stand Still
The question is, as you sink into what you are, as you climb higher to new levels, it becomes harder and harder to breathe, and along your journey, you notice there are days you're becoming better and there are days where you produce nothing but scraps and bits, there are days you learn and others you teach, days you read, days you're forced to go back to reread and relearn before moving forward and yet the same question hangs over you: how do you know you're on the right path? How do you know what happens in the next act? How do you keep showing up to create? How do you know you're on your path?
Last weekend, when I came from work, a video popped up on my feed on the same day I decided to go back to writing this thing. It was by the Irish poet David Whyte, referencing the beginning of Dante's Divine Comedy. He said,
"How do you know you're on your path? Because it disappears. That's how you know. How do you know you're really doing something radical? Because you can't see where you're going. That's how you know."
You know, because you lose track of time and forget you're working at all. You forget that you still have a day job to go back to. You forget to rest. You're on your path because what you're doing doesn't feel like work, where you're going isn't clear, and how the outcome plays out doesn't matter anymore. You're in the flow of things with no predetermined place to go. You can't see because the path disappears, and you enter what Whyte called the "black contemplative splendors self-doubt." Perhaps when being true to yourself and allowing yourself to wander along your new path you are bound to find yourself in Dante's Dark Wood. But by choosing the path true to you, the Dark Wood reveals its divine truths to you. The path before you will begin to appear and unfold just as it should.
In a longer clip on Youtube, Whyte speakers further on this and recites the poem "Lost" by David Wagoner:
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
A small side note to end because there was a strange moment when writing this week's newsletter, and I want to make sure I write it down. Initially, I discovered David Whyte's words by scrolling through Instagram. It was only later that I found the longer interview on YouTube and realized he was referencing Dante's Inferno and not his own words. I thought to myself — wait a minute, I remember buying that book years ago at the Fahasa bookstore on Nguyen Hue Street. If my memory serves me right, this would be sometime in 2019.
Anyway, I remember buying the book but being too intimidated even to open the book to the first page. Now, years later, as I'm writing this newsletter, I look up from my computer screen at the rows of books at my eye level, and there it is: Dante's Inferno.
I say to myself, you gotta be kidding me. John Circardi's translation opens the book with "Midway in our life's journey I went astray / from the straight road and found myself / alone in the dark wood."
Here I am writing about following your path, seeing a video clip from last weekend, later finding out it was actually referencing a different writer of a book that just so happens to be watching me write this week's newsletter – mere weeks after moving my desk and rearranging the books and a week after considering pausing because as I said at the beginning this week's newsletter I didn't know what it was or where it was going. If there was ever a sign to keep wandering forward, it's gotta be this. Life is strange, very strange. And it's only getting stranger. There is no escaping from it. There is only your path of escaping to it.
Thank you for reading. Enjoy your weekend, and I'll see you next week.
–Garrett
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P.P.S. Here’s the writing exercise I tried in class. If you’re interested, give it a read and let me know what you think.
First, split the class into three groups: Group #1, Group #2, and Group #3.
Next, each group needs to decide the overall feel of what their story will be about, either categorized by genre or mood, i.e., comedy, sci-fi, adventure OR sad, funny, scary, etc.
Examples from my class:
Group #1 (Romantic)
Group #2 (Sad)
Group #3 (Funny)
Then, Group #1 needs to pick the setting of Group #2's (sad) story. Group #2 picks the setting of Group #3's (funny) story. Group #3 picks the setting of Group #1's (romantic) story.
Examples from my class:
Group #1: (Romantic) (Hotel)
Group #2: (Sad) (Comedy Show)
Group #3 (Funny)(Funeral)
After that, Group #1 needs to pick the main character for Group #3's (funny) story at (a funeral). Group #2 picks the main character for Group #1's (romantic) story at (a hotel). Group #3 picks the main character for Group #2's (sad) story at (a comedy show). I suggested giving the main character a job plus a name, but feel free to go off-script if the students feel strongly about their idea for a character.
Examples from my class:
Group #1 (Romantic) (Hotel) (Plumber named Mario)
Group #2 (Sad) (Comedy Show) (Doctor named John)
Group #3 Funny (Funeral) ("The Neighbor" named Bob)
Now, we have the bare bones of the story. What's the genre, where it takes place, and who the main character is. Give each group the same opening sentence to remove the blank page staring at them and get the ball rolling, i.e., "Once upon a time, a plumber named Mario was at a hotel." Now, each group has a sentence to start with.
From then on, the group worked together using a single piece of paper, and the person writing rotated every 5 minutes. The group can talk and work together about what to do next in the story, but each person must practice writing. If 5 minutes is too daunting, try 3 minutes OR rotate after every single sentence.
Depending on the group size, each person should get a chance to add to the story before we pause. For example, after 15 minutes, a group of 3 students all have had a chance to add to the story. It is at this point that we call for a time-out. That is the end of Act 1.
Now, we need a specific reason for the story to move forward. We need to create a plot point, an inciting incident, a moment where the hero leaves the ordinary world to a new, unique world. A simple way to do that is to change settings. Group #1 will pick Group #2's new setting. Group #2 will pick Group #3's new setting. Group #3 will pick Group #1's new setting. This is where Act 2 begins.
Examples from my class:
Group #1 Mario leaves the hotel and goes to a motel.
Why? What happened to Mario? What happens next?
Group #2 John leaves the comedy show and goes to the circus.
Why? What happened to John? What happens next?
Group #3 Bob leaves the funeral and goes to the zoo.
Why? What happened to Bob? What happens next?
Now that each student has already participated in helping form the story, it's up to the teacher to decide what to do with the time you has left. You can stick with 5 minutes each or reduce the time for each student or reduce it further so only one student is responsible for writing Act 2 — it's up to you. I like to give each student another chance to write a few minutes and add something different to the story. So, using the example of a 3-person group, that's another 15 minutes of writing. After 15 more minutes of writing, we are approaching the end of Act 2.
Now, we need another reason for the story to move forward, but more specifically, we need a reason for Act 2 to become Act 3 and the story to end eventually. The story must have a beginning, middle, and end. For my class, I suggested that the main character return to the previous setting. The element of the return is big in crossing the final threshold of a hero's journey. So, for this exercise's sake, we kept it simple. The main character returns. Final task: Wrap it up and decide how the story ends.
Examples from my class:
Group #1 Mario leaves the hotel, goes to a motel, and then goes back to the hotel.
Why? What happened to Mario? What happens next? How does the story end?
Group #2 John leaves the comedy show and goes to the circus.
Why? What happened to John? What happens next? How does the story end?
Group #3 Bob leaves the funeral and goes to the zoo.
Why? What happened to Bob? What happens next? How does the story end?
For this final Act 3, I give them 5-10 minutes to write the final act as a group. Someone can volunteer to write (if someone feels now connected to the student), or the group can vote for someone to write. Now that everyone has contributed to both Act 1 and Act 2, they can work together to decide how their story ends. How does a romantic story end? How does a sad story end? How does a funny story end? These are questions the group must consider.
After 5-10 minutes, the story is complete. Optional: Give the group another 1-2 minutes to read through their story before sharing it with the other groups. However, before they share, the group must write 1 or 2 comprehension questions with possible answers to see if the other groups understood their story clearly or didn't make sense.
Afterward, each group reads their stories, asks questions to other groups, and enjoys the oddities discovered in their fellow classmates' imaginations. You would be surprised what students can imagine in a short period.
Through writing the story, the students (and I) learn that with each sentence or at least every few minutes, the story must be moving forward. Either the character reveals more themself, or they change, or the setting changes. The students (and I) also learned when thinking about a story in terms of separate acts, structure aids the story so it doesn't fall off the rails into randomness. Finally, the final return of the character shows students (and I) that a main character's motives and desires are always subject to change and that students should be careful when considering closing certain doors or leaving open loops. A plot twist or an element of surprise keeps the audience (the other groups) interested to see what happens to the main character.
If I tell a student to write a short story in 30 minutes by themselves, they'll often freeze and say I don't have any ideas to write about. But if you give them ideas, have each group give each other ideas, and provide a Three-Act Structure to build off, it appears, in this example, the students are surprised how good they are at writing and coming up with novel ideas. They also get to practice reading in their groups and listening to improve their comprehension in the form of understanding a story instead of basic listening exercises in a book. The writing exercise challenged them to think differently and not be afraid to just write and see what happens.
I'll admit I'm not the best teacher. I barely understand a lot of the nuance within English grammar. However, I do know that stories have a powerful ability to capture our attention and ignite our imaginations, so I was proud to experiment with creating a writing lesson like the one I explained. It's simple, but I think it's effective. I hope to experiment with more writing activities in the future and maybe even become a writing teacher or create a writing course in some capacity, but for now that's what I got. Give it a try. Let me know how it goes. And in the meantime, I'll try to put together another activity!
Excellent!