Neil Strauss (TW: @NEILSTRAUSS, NEILSTRAUSS.COM) has written eight New York Times bestsellers, including The Game and The Truth. He’s also been an editor at Rolling Stone and a staff writer for the New York Times. On top of that, he’s built highly profitable companies. Even if you never want to write, his thinking can be applied nearly everywhere.
Spirit animal: Blobfish
“I was talking with this billionaire friend of mine, and I was saying, ‘I’d really like to write a book about the way your mind works.’ He was [commenting on] the difference between someone who isn’t a billionaire and a billionaire…. He said, ‘The biggest mistake you can make is to accept the norms of your time.’ Not accepting norms is where you innovate, whether it’s with technology, with books, with anything. So, not accepting the norm is the secret to really big success and changing the world.”
• Related book recommendation for artists
Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera; “I think it’s an analogy for that choice we all have in life: Are you going to fulfill your potential? Or, are you just going to give into the peer pressure of the moment and become nothing?”
• Neil’s best purchase of $100 or less
“Freedom [app]. I have no vested interest in this, but there is this one computer program that’s probably saved my life. It’s my favorite program in the world. It says: ‘How many minutes of freedom do you want?’ You put in whatever it is—‘120 minutes of freedom.’ And then, you are completely locked off of your Internet, no matter what, for that amount of time. So, as soon as I sit down to write, the first thing I do is I put on Freedom, because if you’re writing and you want to research something, you research something, and then you get stuck in the clickbait rabbit hole. What you can do is save all of the things you want to research, and just research them when that time expires. You’ll find it so much more efficient.”
TF: Neil and I, and many other writers, use “TK” as a placeholder for things we need to research later (e.g., “He was TK years old at the time.”). This is common practice, as almost no English words have TK in them (except that pesky Atkins), making it easy to use Control-F when it’s time to batch-research or fact-check.
Neil edits his writing in three phases. Paraphrased:
First, I edit for me. (What do I like?)
Second, I edit for my fans. (What would be most enjoyable and helpful to my fans?)
Third, I edit for my haters. (What would my detractors try and pick apart, discredit, or make fun of?)
Neil elaborates on the last: “I always use Eminem as an example. You can’t really criticize Eminem, because [in his songs] he impersonates the critics and then answers them…. There’s nothing that people have said about him that [isn’t] already answered or accomplished in some self-aware way. So, I really want to answer the critics—their questions, their critiques—in a way that is still fun and entertaining. [That’s] the idea of ‘hater-proofing’ it.”
TF: “Hater-proofing” can take many forms, whether making fun of yourself (“I know this is laughably contradictory, but …”) or bringing up a likely criticism and addressing it head on (e.g., “Some people might understandably say … [criticism].”). Seneca does a fantastic job of the latter in The Moral Letters of Lucilius, and Scott Adams (here) used a similar technique in his novel God’s Debris.
“Writer’s block does not actually exist…. Writer’s block is almost like the equivalent of impotence. It’s performance pressure you put on yourself that keeps you from doing something you naturally should be able to do.”
This is a common refrain from seasoned journalists. Whether it’s ideas (see James Altucher, here) or writing, the key is temporarily dropping your standards.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received for writing was a mantra: “Two crappy pages per day.” A more experienced author related it back to IBM, who was the 800-pound gorilla across several different industries a few decades ago. Their salespeople were known for being incredibly effective and smashing records. How did IBM develop that? In some ways, by doing the opposite of what you’d expect. For instance, IBM made the quotas really low. They wanted the salespeople to not be intimidated to pick up the phone. They wanted the salespeople to build momentum and then overshoot their quotas and goals. This is exactly what happened. Translated to writing, I was told my goal should be “two crappy pages a day.” That’s it. If you hit two crappy pages, even if you never use them, you can feel “successful” for the day. Sometimes you barely eke out two pages, and they are truly terrible. But at least 50% of the time, you’ll produce perhaps 5, 10, or even—on the rare miracle day—20 pages. Draft ugly and edit pretty.
Neil is a seasoned interviewer and taught me a golden key early on: Open up and be vulnerable with the person you’re going to interview before you start. It works incredibly well. Prior to hitting record, I’ll take 5 to 10 minutes for banter, warmup, sound check, etc. At some point, I’ll volunteer personal or vulnerable information (e.g., how I’ve hated being misquoted in the past, and I know the feeling; how I’m struggling with a deadline based on external pressures, etc.). This makes them much more inclined to do the same later. Sometimes, I’ll instead genuinely ask for advice but not interrupt things, along the lines of “You’re so good at X, and I’m really struggling with Y. I want to respect your time and do this interview, of course, but someday I’d love to ask you about that.”
Listeners often ask me, “How do you build rapport so quickly?” The above is part one.
Part two, I preemptively address common concerns during those 5 to 10 minutes. I’ve been fucked by media in the past, and I want my guests to know A) I know how terrible that is; and B) my interview is a safe space in which to be open and experiment. Among other points that I cover:
• Three people or sources you’ve learned from—or followed closely—in the last year?
Rick Rubin, Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reece, and Elmo (Elmo due to watching along with his baby boy).
TF: Neil introduced me to Rick, who then introduced me to Laird and Gabby. Elmo won’t return my calls.
• Do you have any quotes that you live your life by or think of often?
“Be open to whatever comes next.”—John Cage
“No matter what the situation may be, the right course of action is always compassion and love.” (paraphrased from one of his teachers, Barbara McNally)