thirty books isn't a book
why firsthand observation beats secondhand knowledge
While writing is always useful for self-discovery, good writing should also involve discovery-discovery, i.e., finding something worthwhile to write about. If you’re a blocked author, charge ahead on your first draft: no Wikipedia rabbit holes, no hunting down citations, just go go go! But that doesn’t absolve you of the core requirement of research. Or, even more important, of search, i.e., getting out there and discovering the truth through direct observation. Listen up before you write anything down.
Every idea should start with a search. Instead of cherry-picking an academic paper or magazine quote to justify the point you’re already planning to make, run an experiment. Try your technique yourself and see what happens. Flip your idea on its head and try the opposite—see if you can prove yourself wrong. Conduct an informal poll of your friends or colleagues. If you’re writing fiction in the milieu of working-class Boston, don’t watch The Departed. Go spend time in a bar in Southie.
Everyone’s so worried about the AI Overlords, but there’s still one thing we can do that they can’t (yet): Take our ideas out into the real world and see if they hold up.
A young guy reached out to me for help with his book. He wanted to write something in the how-to-succeed vein. Sure, I said. What have you learned about success? As it turned out, plenty. He rattled off one maxim after another. Where did he learn all that at such a young age? By reading books by other successful people, of course.
“That’s the book?” I asked. “Success by way of twenty other books about success?”
As it turned out, more like thirty. That’s a lot of books!
No matter how elegant and inspiring that secondhand wisdom, I would much rather pore over the napkin scribblings of someone who performed at a high level for a long time. What use is an untested synthesis of other people’s best thinking? As the poet Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
Observe, hypothesize, test, teach. Search and research. And always, always, try to prove yourself wrong before trying to convince the rest of us you’re right.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write until you have something to report. But write to record what you’ve observed, figure out what you think about it, and posit some hypotheses worth testing. Forget the manuscript until you’ve filled the lab notebook.