Watch Your Words

By Brendan O’Meara

I’ve kept a journal for over 20 years. I can’t envision a time without one. I recommend it if you don’t.

But something happens if you’re being honest. Oftentimes, you write down nasty stuff. Nasty self commentary. The kind that reeks and stinks. You don’t want to lie to your journal! If you can’t be honest with your journal, than where can you?

But what if you start believing the bile you’ve habitually spilled into your journals? What you if instead of bloodletting, you imprint a negative story that effectively weighs you down with iron boots?

James Victore in his wonderful book Feck Perfuction writes:

Stop deprecating all over yourself.

We pre-crap on ourselves so others won’t. We joke about how fat we are while trying on new clothes, or pooh-pooh our talents before sharing our talent. … Self-deprecation is healthy when it means being humble or witty, but continually calling yourself a loser becomes self-sabotage. … Words have power. The problem with repeating negative mantras to yourself is that you start to believe them. Then others believe them. Watch your words.

Negative self-talk has ruined the past 20 years of my life and I’m working on that. I’ve noticed that changing my language in my journals has helped. But instead of lamenting over something and dwelling and wallowing, I reframe it as a gift. Nobody listens to my podcast? Great, I can make it better. Got another rejection? That’s an opportunity to improve. Drank too many beers and ate too much cake? Today’s a new day to eat clean and drink water and get back on the path..

Point is every obstacle is an opportunity. And the way we frame it in private will manifest in public.

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Garbage

By Brendan O’Meara

Every successful artist makes garbage. Every single one. No exception.

Every struggling artist, every artist trying to gain traction or has no traction at all makes no garbage.

Wait, what? The best make garbage and the worst make nothing? How does that work? That’s right. Seth Godin asks middling or anonymous writers to “show me your bad writing.” Professionals make garbage because it’s only through working through garbage that you might make something good.

Kevin Hart, the arena-packing comedian, told Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience:

People don’t understand how hard it is to develop an hour of stand-up material. People act like you just turn on a new hour. It’s an hour. To get to an hour, you’re going through four to five hours of bullshit you thought was funny.

Four to five hours of material to get to one hour of greatness.

So the minute you think you’re not making enough good work, maybe the problem is you’re not making enough garbage.

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Paper Habits

By Brendan O’Meara

A great way to step up your re-writing or editing game is to print things out.

Why?

Well, when you print things out you have something in hand, plus when you take out your colored pen and make an edit, it doesn’t disappear. You see the old way beside your note for the new.

In a sense you’re archiving the old draft while tinkering. The best way to learn is by seeing your old work and when you delete or make changes on the computer, it’s gone and all you’re left with is the edit.

Plus, by looking at cold, hard ink over pixels, you give your eyes a rest. The paper doesn’t ping with a Twitter notification or an email.

And an edit without proper context doesn’t teach you anything and it doesn’t show the great progress you’ve made over time.

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When You Don’t Feel Like It

By Brendan O’Meara

It’s raining today.

So you know what I did? I laced up my running shoes and went for a jog.

Lots of people shy away from doing the hard thing when the conditions aren’t optimal.

Make yourself uncomfortable.

Don’t feel like painting? Go paint. Don’t feel like writing? Write a page. Don’t feel like lifting the weight? Get under the bar.

What you do when you don’t feel like it will feed into the times you do feel like it.

Get tough, because while other people don’t feel like getting the work done, you showed grit, bore down, and now you’re stronger.

When you don’t feel like it, do it anyway.

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Delayed Onset Manuscript Soreness

By Brendan O’Meara

I’m sure you’ve heard of this: DOMS. It stands for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.

You work out hard on Monday and you’re a little sore Tuesday, but you’re really sore Wednesday. You went so hard Monday that the next two days are a waste and you lose all that momentum.

Better to take smaller chunks to sustain it over the long haul.

This notion piggybacks off of the post I did about doing creative work for 20 minutes a day. By doing a little work, you keep from burning out, or getting sore.

We’ve all had days where we hammer, maybe write 5,000 words, but I know I’m worthless for a few days after that. For my money, I’d rather do that little bit and come back the next day in the gym and keep progressing toward my goal.

This way I come back energized and unbruised, day after day.

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

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Seeds

Kevin Wilson, the great and wise hitting instructor, has a great daily email. It’s an inspiring quote, sometimes from him, sometimes from somebody else. The one that stuck out to me recently was this:

Never judge a day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you sow. – Buzz Williams

Now, I’m a freelancer, and the basis of freelancing is sending out the dreaded query letter. These are seeds.

A giant maple tree doesn’t make one helicopter seed in the hopes it takes root. It makes thousands and thousands and maybe a fraction germinate.

Sending out seeds, or queries, it’s all a numbers game. You need more plate appearances to get hits. Pick your metaphor, but if you’re in a rut, be honest: how many seeds are you sending out into the air? Can you send out 10% more per week?

I guarantee the work will start. More swings, more seeds, more hits, more trees.

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Hack is a Four-Letter Word

By Brendan O’Meara

I’m gonna come right out and say it: I hate the work “hack.”

Hack is a four-letter word.

To quote Jocko Willink from his book Discipline Equals Freedom

“People look for the shortcut. The hack. The shortcut is a lie. The hack doesn’t get you there. And if you want to take the easy road, it won’t take you to where you want to be.”

We’ve always been consumed with getting things faster without callusing our hands and enduring discomfort.

These days people want the hack before they even encounter hardship, the cliff notes without reading the book. Enough is enough.

Hacks aren’t for us because we’ll gladly take the long road. The one with potholes. The one with dirt. The one the GPS has to constantly recalculate.

Forget the hack and relish the long, hard road. Think … for a minute … the artist you’ll be on the other end when you eschewed the hack and cut no corners.

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

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Stop Fearing the Blank Page

By Brendan O’Meara

Why the fear of the blank page? All the time you hear writers lament that the blank pages gives them all kinds of anxiety.

It’s time to rethink the blank page for what it is: a new beginning.

Don’t be paralyzed by the whiteness of it all. Don’t look at the taunting cursor. Flip the script.

It might sound cool to lament about the struggle, how crippling all those possibilities can be. Because it’s blank, it can be horrible or it can be great or somewhere in between, but you’ll never know unless you start.

It probably will be bad, but pros show up to work.

That blank page is a gift, man, a freakin’ gift.

It can be anything, so let it.

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.




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Episode 145—Investigative Reporter Scott Eden Talks Structure, Sprawl, and Picking Up the Phone

Scott Eden , investigative reporter for ESPN the Magazine.

By Brendan O’Meara

“The structure should grow organically from the material.”

“At what point are you taxing the reader, knowing when the reader has had enough.”

“I hated [calling people] at first, just terrified of calling people., but I’ve gotten over it. It took years.” —Scott Eden

Here we are again. Today I welcome Scott Eden, an investigative reporter for ESPN the Magazine. His piece on maligned former NBA referee Tim Donaghy was a piece two years in the making and came out in February.

As you may or may not know, this is The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass writers about the art and craft of telling true stories. 

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