Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - The Truth About Creativity, Aging, and Discipline: From the World’s Best-Selling Author (James Patterson)

Starting point is 00:00:00 There are a lot of psychologists I could talk to about the whole business of creativity, but I thought, why don't I talk to the most creative person I've ever met? And he wouldn't appear in, so here I am. Wow. Nice. James has published more than 200 books. From last count, I think you've sold more than 425 million copies. Somebody said you're lucky if you find something you like to do, and then it's a miracle of somebody will pay you to do it.

Starting point is 00:00:21 Why did you love writing? It was very little, 7, 8, 9 years old than I would go through the wood to telling my story. And that's how I amused my story. Are you a better writer? Are you a better? Is your craft better? I think so. Yeah, yeah. Just because I just made a conscious decision to pay more attention to the sentence, a sentence by sentence.

Starting point is 00:00:38 Where do these ideas come from? It can be anything. It can be a phrase. It can be just different things. In the background there, I can't really see it. There's this thing with ideas and it's about yo thick. I mean, I have probably 500 things I could write books about in there. Inspiration is that that idea that you start with has to be strong enough to drive the whole thing. Hi, everybody. Welcome to office hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. I'm a behavioral scientist dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. This is a show about how you can do that too. I'm a professor at Harvard University and a columnist at the Atlantic. I'm an author, but most of all, I'm somebody who's dedicated to help other people become happiness teachers. I try to do that from a lot of different angles. And today's an example of doing it from a slightly skewed angle on the science of happiness because my conversation is not with a happiness scientist. I'm going to talk today with a novelist,

Starting point is 00:01:41 an author, somebody who's actually the most successful author in American history by many metrics. I'm going to talk to James Patterson today about how to become a more creative person so you can become happier and how becoming a creative person can give you lessons for a happier life. Most of you know who James Patterson is. He's considered to be the most popular story top teller of our time. He's sold something like 425 million copies of his books. I mean, he's published more than 200 books, and he has the Guinness World's record and the most number one New York Times bestsellers

Starting point is 00:02:18 at last count 67. That's a lot of New York Times number one bestsellers. It's amazing, as a matter of fact, what he's been able to do. And so I wanted to understand, because I'm interested in creativity, not just how you can become more creative by learning from a creative person, what are the life lessons you learn from this level of ongoing creativity? Furthermore, if you're an amateur doing something creatively, does it add to your life

Starting point is 00:02:44 and does it ruin it by becoming a professional? Well, he's an interesting case, as you're going to see. He's somebody whose life is really built around constant creativity, around constant ideas. The cadence of his life is just writing. You know, that's the drumbeat of his life. That's his heartbeat, basically. He gets up, six o'clock. in the morning, it writes, and then has a little coffee and writes, and talks to his wife

Starting point is 00:03:09 and writes, plays a little golf and writes, has some lunch and writes, you get the point that I'm trying to make. And the reason for that is because creativity is for him the vehicular language of happiness. How can you use that? And what are the broader implications of it? Before we get started, I want to talk a little bit about the connection between creativity and happiness. I've talked in the past on this show about hemispheric lateralization. The two halves of the brain do different things to a certain extent. They do a lot of the things the same too. But in a very important way, they divide up the tasks of life in the following way. The right hemisphere of your brain, and this is according to Ian McGilchrist, the great Oxford

Starting point is 00:03:52 neuroscientist. I'll drop a couple of his papers into the show notes. The right side of the brain deals with the why questions of meaning and mystery. The why of life. Why are we doing any of this? love, meaning, happiness. These are all right side phenomena. They're the ineffable parts of life. When you try to describe them, when you try to solve the problems that they raise, like, what's the meaning of my life? The left side of your brain kicks in. It's the what and how to side. That's your tasks. And in point of fact, when this hemispheric lateralization, it's a miracle and does wonderful things when they work together. When they don't work together, it's a problem, which is one of the problems that we have today. where we live in a technical, or I should say technological simulation of life, that's really all on the left side of the brain, the task side, that shuts off the meaning side, the mystery side of our lives, which explains a lot of the trouble that we have with happiness today.

Starting point is 00:04:48 Well, one of the best ways for you to get to the right side of your brain is creativity. Now, you might be saying, I'm not a creative person. I'm like a goat in terms of creativity. It doesn't matter. The truth of the matter is that when you explore, ideas, flights of fancy, beauty, you're going to turn on that right hemisphere of your brain and you're going to start exploring meaning more. And I've got a lot of research that shows that that's exactly the case, not research that I've done, research that great researchers for many years have done,

Starting point is 00:05:19 experiments showing that when people are experiencing anxiety and depression, their symptoms are lowered when they, for example, paint, whether they're good painters or not, give them a piece of paper and watercolors and put them in a room and looking at a landscape and talking to their friends. And it inevitably works to lower symptoms of anxiety and depression. Why? Because you can solve a lot of your problems by going to the ineffable right side, the numinousness of the right hemisphere of your brain. Writing is the same way. Poetry, reading poems, writing poems. It has a very, very strong effect in experiments on lowering anxiety. I've seen lots of research on this. And there is, Even, you know, really good work on brain mapping in the neuroscience literature that shows exactly how this works, how the right side is illuminated and and leads to not just relief, but inspiration, a higher quality of life.

Starting point is 00:06:12 Want to get happier? Do more creative stuff. Now, let's talk to James Patterson a little bit about how he does that stuff and now he's built his life running. Not because I'm asking you to go write 200 books and 67 number one New York Times bestsellers. That's absurd. Well, unless you're James Patterson and you're watching this right now. hi James, but because he's going to give you some very important ideas about what this creative life has told him about the meaning of life, about how to build your life. Specifically, he's going to give seven big lessons that creativity teaches us about how to live a happier life. Now, listen for these lessons along the way. And then I'm going to come back at the end. So don't turn it off before the end because I'm going to come back to.

Starting point is 00:07:00 the end and I'm going to give you the seven actually no I'm going to give you eight lessons that he gives us about how to live a life of greater happiness that he's learned by being creative and you can too so don't go any place listen to the interview you're going to love that and then stay to the end because I'm going to give you the big eight on how you can start being happier today by being a little bit more creative here's the interview James Patterson welcome to office hours thank you thank you I'm so honored to be in your office I'm surprised you would let me in Hey, I'm all about, you know, talking to my best students, although you're certainly not one of my students. I'm more like one of yours at this point.

Starting point is 00:07:38 This is our second conversation. The first was so enriching on your show that we had to continue it on my program. I agree. I'm happy to be here. I love the area, this area of trying to get people to see how they can make those changes that helped. I mean, you've been talking about this a lot lately, and we're going to get to that. But what I really want to talk about today is, is creativity and how it is generative, how actually helps people in their lives.

Starting point is 00:08:04 And, and, you know, there are a lot of psychologists I could talk to about the whole business of creativity. But I thought, why don't I talk to the most creative person I've ever met and see where that expertise lies? And he wouldn't, it wouldn't appear in. So here I am. Wow. Nice.

Starting point is 00:08:19 Nice. Fair enough. For our listeners and viewers who are not aware, James has published more than 200 books. From last count, I think you've sold more than 425 million copies. And you have the Guinness record for the most number one New York Times bestsellers. Were you aware of this, James? Yeah, the publisher does sort of feed me this stuff. And I, you know, it's interesting, though, and I think it has to just with, you know, my own makeup. And I think so much of looking for life is sort of understanding who you are at the core. And my core is not impressed with that.

Starting point is 00:08:54 Yeah. That's how you get 67 number one New York Times. sellers is not care. You know what I care about? I care about the books that they're best I can do. Yeah, no, it's an important point. Let's start at the beginning. You started writing, I think you published your first book in 1976. That was the Thomas Barryman number, right? That was your first published book, right? Yeah. What actually led you to that? Because this is not even your first career. Tell us a little bit about that story about how you wound up becoming a writer in the first place. Somebody said you're lucky if you find something you like to do, which I think there's some truth to that. then it's a miracle of somebody will pay you to do it.

Starting point is 00:09:29 Why did you love writing? What was it about the process of writing that turned you on so much from the very young age? You never know how all of these things work, but as a kid growing up, we were, a lot of the time had a house in the woods, there was no other kids around. And I was very little, seven, eight, nine years old, and I would go through the woods telling myself stories. And that's how I amused myself, you know, cowboy stories or, you know, depending on what you were watching on television those days

Starting point is 00:10:00 and making up stories about different shows and that was the way I entertained myself and diverted myself. I had my sisters who I didn't really want to hang out with that one. Younger and pains in the ass. No, they're cool. And so I think that was a little bit of the sea.

Starting point is 00:10:19 Interestingly, I didn't read that much in high school. And this is a thing about turning kids on and turning them off. went to a Catholic grammar school and high school, and they just gave us things that turned us off. Right. And that's not, if the objective, and once again, I'm really big on objectives, if the objective of the mission is to get kids reading at an early age, you have to give them things where they go, I love that, give me another story. Not, I don't like that. I had an imprint at Little Brown kids imprint, and our mission was when a kid reads a joke, a job, and our mission was when a kid reads a joke, Jimmy book, they would, Jimmy was the name of the imprint, they would say, give me another book,

Starting point is 00:11:01 as opposed to millions of kids who say, I've never read a book that I really like. Once again, if the objective is to get kids reading, do not give them books that turn them off. Yeah. Now, your first book, the Thomas Barryman number, had 31 rejections and then won awards. Give me a nostrum for life on the basis of that. I mean, give me some basic life advice for everybody watching us here. Well, sure. I don't know. I never have advice for people. I have a thing masterclass about my writing. And in there, I say, I don't have any advice for it. I'm just going to tell you what I do, and you might find someone who it useful. However, the only thing I would say about that is, if you're nodding your head at what I'm saying, forget about it because you already know that.

Starting point is 00:11:51 if you're shaking your head a little bit, then think about that because that means you're not doing that. And that might be useful for you. It's interesting because, you know, the big takeaway that I get from that, that, I mean, there are a lot of writers, very famous writers who get rejected a lot. And then, and then they hit it. And it turns out that, you know, they're greatly vindicated by the markets. Well, John Grisham, as an example, he, his first book, it got turned down by everybody. Yeah, yeah. A small imprint in New Jersey published it. It was actually one of his best books.

Starting point is 00:12:21 Everybody turned it down. Yeah. Let me give you the lesson. I think that I'm getting from this. And you'll see if you agree with me, okay, James. Just because something that you do is rejected, it doesn't mean as bad. No, but sometimes it is. And the corollary to this, I mean, this is just because everybody accepts something you do doesn't mean as good.

Starting point is 00:12:40 Well, there's that. But there also is sometimes, you know, you're just not there yet or you're never going to get there. You may have a dream about something. it's just not going to, you know, if you're a 280-pound ballet dancer, it may work, but it's a tough one. Yeah, yeah. And you don't think I'm going to pitch for the Red Sox? Is that what you're telling me? There's that, yeah, the pitch for the Red Sox thing. Yeah, yeah, it may not, it may not just be in your, you know, it's a small window of people, very small number of people get the opportunity to be professional baseball player. Yeah. And quite frankly, not everybody can be

Starting point is 00:13:16 James Patterson, meaning that you better love to write as opposed to love having written books, is what it comes down to. Well, let's fast forward 49 years since you wrote the Thomas Barryman number. That's 200 books later. And let's talk a little bit about how you write now, because obviously, you still can't not write. Sorry for all the double negatives, but you can't resist it. I mean, you're somebody who adores writing. No, I love it. I love it. I love it. You breathe writing, obviously, or you wouldn't be writing all these books for Pete's sake. Talk to me a little bit about writing and how it occupies your day, how it occupies your thoughts, your dreams, or how you structure your basic writing process. I would love to know that. One of the interesting things

Starting point is 00:13:57 a few years ago, I wrote, it was during COVID, and I had more time on my hands that I really wanted. And I started an autobiography, which I had not planned to do. And I just started writing these stories. And these are pretty good. These are pretty good. And it was just stories. It wasn't the usual kind of autobiography. In fact, I make fun, not make fun of them, but I write about a page on my hometown as though it was one of those kind of autobiographies, all the details. And I said, if you're looking for this, it will not be in this book. And a book, it's just going to be stories. But the interesting thing for me is writing that made me a better writer at my age. I started and trading on the sentences again.

Starting point is 00:14:43 And that has made me a better writer, and I think for the last year or two, because of writing that, I think I'm better. And there are a couple of things that I didn't know early on, even when I wrote the Thomas Barrowman number. After that, I wrote a couple of books that weren't nearly as good. I was trying to do, to get a big commercial blockbuster,

Starting point is 00:15:02 but I didn't know what the hell I was doing. And one of the things I didn't do is if I didn't research, which is a big mistake. You know, John Grisham knows enough to research. should, but I didn't. And the other thing that I didn't do is I didn't pay enough attention to characters. And I wrote a couple of pretty crummy books, but I do think about character all the time now. Yeah, do you write every day? Yes. And so do you get up is the first thing you do? Or do you have a schedule? Do you have a discipliner on it? I have a loose schedule. I don't really need a

Starting point is 00:15:31 schedule because I don't, it's not like a job or I got to force myself to do it. I will get up 5.30 to 6.30, depending on the day, come into this office, maybe make some notes on things that I particularly want. Or maybe I've had a thought at night or the day before or just something I want. It's a great thing about age, isn't it? practically, yeah. Yeah, as I woke up three or four times to go pee. No, no, no, no. That's where your best ideas come when you have to get up to pee. Oh, my God, where's my pen? I have a pen. I have a pen. No, no, no, no. I'm making all this up. And then I will have two or three papers here that I'll kind of glance through. The local paper, the Palm Beach paper, USA Today, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal,

Starting point is 00:16:17 kind of blast through them a bit, come back to them at some point. I have a little bit of coffee when I do that. I'm ridiculous with coffee is I have a cup here somewhere. And what I'll do is I like it really hot and I'll have like two or three steps and I won't finish the cup. And then I'll go and eventually I'll heat up the cup again and heat up the cup again. So basically I'll do one and a half cups during the day. And then frequently my wife and I will go out and play like nine holes of golf,

Starting point is 00:16:48 which takes us an hour or so. So we walk around, get a little exercise, get irritated at the golf game. She was a big all-American swimmer, so she hits a ball farther than I do. I'm okay with that. No, I'm not. I'm kind of okay with that. And then more writing. And then Sue and I have lunch together and more writing. And then, you know, life and whatever. We have a limited, we have a number of close friends. We don't have a lot of sort of friends that are kind of friends, but they're not really, don't really want to spend that much time with them. We don't do any of the big, you know, let's go to the party with the hundred people.

Starting point is 00:17:26 Over the past 200 books or so, as your books have matured as you've gotten older, what's gotten, easier as a writer and what's actually gotten harder as a writer. And the reason I ask this is a lot of my research goes into the cognitive changes that happen to people creatively. That early on, particularly before about the age of 45, your innovation is very high. And then later on, your innovation is lower, but your pattern recognition is exceptionally high at 50 and 60 and 70 and 80. And so I'm curious about if you're seeing particular patterns of strengths that have gotten stronger and weaknesses that have gotten greater as you've been older. Yeah, weakness is definitely going to be concentration.

Starting point is 00:18:09 Ah. Periods. So you're indefatigable focus. You could go for much longer when you were, when you were younger, I. Yeah, but I can do the short thing. Outlines great. I really can concentrate a little piece for me. I have a little hole in my brain anyway.

Starting point is 00:18:27 I don't mean, my sister actually has this as much worse than me for names and things like that. I can't remember anybody's names, the names of movie, stuff like that. It's, I'd be worried about it except I've had it now for a dozen years. Well, that's working memory. And working memories, it's not, it's not neurodegenerative degradation at all. It has everything to do with, with the episodic memory and the hippocampus of your brain. Your brain literally is fuller. It's like you send your librarian into your hippocampus to get something.

Starting point is 00:18:56 And I, can I, like, dump some shit out of it because I want a little bit more. Well, your little librarian has got to go. to the back of the stacks and up five flights of stairs. And then he comes back 15 minutes later and said that guy's name is Mike and Mike is long gone is what it comes down to. There's nothing wrong with James's brain. It's just James's brain is full. This is one of the later. Your cloud is full or whatever. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's basically we have a very imperfect episodic memory storage system the human brain does. But so, so that's been a problem. But not, I just live with it and move on. Other strengths and weaknesses, I'd be keen to hear you. So concentration and

Starting point is 00:19:31 focus. Concentration in terms of long periods, long periods of reading, same thing. I'm more likely to sit and read 10 or 15 pages at a time and then keep going back to it then, you know, 60 pages. I used to read more full, you know, books that I used to read in addition to everything I was doing, I'd do two or three books a week. And now it's like one book a week. So that's down. I do think I think the imagination seems to be still pretty sharp we do all these sort of off the wall or I do them I just did a thing go finish your book

Starting point is 00:20:08 we're reached out to a bunch of you know from Authors Guild to University of Iowa writing workshop and just send us 250 page or 250 words on the new project you're doing when you think you're going to be finished and that depending on that, asked for 6,500 words and gave out, I think, 12 or 13, what do you want to recall,

Starting point is 00:20:33 money, anywhere between 50,000 and 15,000. And there's a couple more that we're going to consider now. One of them is for libraries. I've been trying to get people to do this for years. You have banners, a lot of the museums. Vinci here today, come on in, you know, until you look at it and go, oh, yeah, cool, DeVinsey, you know. I would love libraries to put up these big banners, you know, the free store.

Starting point is 00:20:59 So people would walk by and go like, oh, yeah, right. All the shit in there is free. That's cool. I mean, if they had the free store in the mall, it would be a lines around the block. Oh, all the stuff's in there is free. Yeah. It's just a different way to look at the library. So when people would go by like, oh, yeah, right, everything's free, the free store.

Starting point is 00:21:15 So I think I'm going to do a thing with some cash prizes for libraries to put up the damn banners, the free store, and send me photographs of the free store. and we'll throw some money their way. So that's kind of a neat idea. I think we're going to do one. It's a little more kind. I don't know how to execute it yet, which are, I always believe there are a lot of people out there

Starting point is 00:21:35 that have cool ideas that could really make things a lot better. And so I want to get out there and challenge people to send those ideas and might make a book out of them, just these, you know, blockbuster ideas. And all I want you to do is start with 50 words on just, basically what the idea is and go, oh, yeah, that's a great freaking idea. Now, if you want to back it up with 20 pages, great. Stuff like that, which I do all the time in terms of side issues, I think it's kind of a cool thing to do. Love it. So, okay, so we, on the, on the, on the,

Starting point is 00:22:12 negative side of the aging roster, we've got concentration and focus. On the neutral side, we have imagination. No, I think imagination is pretty positive. I think that's staying pretty good. And also, I mean, you know, I have all over the thing here, you know, my next five novel ideas laid out. You do. So what are the things that are actually gotten easier for you as you've gotten older? I don't know that anything's easier. Are you a better writer? Are you a better?

Starting point is 00:22:37 Is your craft better? I think so. Yeah, yeah. Just because I just made a conscious decision to pay more attention to the sentences, sentence by sentence by sentence, rewrite sentence by sentence rather than, you know, a little sloppy. Yeah. And character development, much more attention to character development. Writing out, you know, I'll be doing an outline and I'll have a separate outline in this character. What makes this person tick? Why are they doing that? You know, what are they like physically? What's their past? Who are they? If you're like me, you've got to be drinking when you're in the gym and you have to be drinking something clean without any calories that will actually give your electrolytes and all the good stuff.

Starting point is 00:23:15 For me, that's element. L MNT. Probably knew that already. It's a great product that helps you stay hydrated without sugar and a bunch of dodgy ingredients that are found in a lot of popular electrolyte drinks and sports drinks. No sugar, no junk, just electrolytes that actually work. Give it a try.

Starting point is 00:23:33 I like it. It's science-backed and made for athletes. fasting, keto, or happiness scientists like me, anyone who sweats. So how do I use it? I use it in the morning, 4.45 in the morning. I don't like to drink anything with caffeine or anything. It peps me up because I like to be real clear and I drink my caffeine later. Element is just the ticket that I need.

Starting point is 00:23:54 Give it a try yourself. Right now, you can get a free sample pack with any purchase at Drink Element. That's Drink, just like it sounds, LMNT.com slash Arthur. Try it risk-free. If you don't like it, they'll refund your order. No questions asked, but you're going to like it. What about your ideas? I mean, you say you've got five things going on in your head at the same time.

Starting point is 00:24:15 Where do these ideas come from? Do you get it from something? Does it come to you in a dream? Does it come to you from experiences you had the day before? Where do you get your ideas? Because you've, I mean, book after book after book. Yeah, it'll be something simply says something or I'll read a line or I'll see maybe some little scene in a movie and I'll go that.

Starting point is 00:24:33 There's something there that could be a whole book or some, little character thing that you'll see or you see somebody in a street and I don't know it's just little thing you go I'll give you an example two years back my wife brother died she's very close to her mom and about a week later she said there's so many things I wish I told my mother I said that's a book not about your mother and you but that you could be about your mother and you but it's a great mother-daughter idea for a novel which she wrote or or it could be with guys men's and men and the guys in there. So many things I wish I told my dad.

Starting point is 00:25:09 My father, the first time as an adult, first time in my memory that ever hugged me was on his deathbed. So once again, so many things I wish I told my father or that I wish my father told me, you know, like so many other dads who went through World War II, you never talked at all about that ever. Never talked about it.

Starting point is 00:25:27 A lot of men and women who go through combat won't talk to civilians about it. Yeah, yeah, I know for sure, because it becomes sort of a form of pornography. Yeah, it's just hard or to admit to some of the things you saw or did or whatever and that people wouldn't understand. Yeah. No, no. I have two of my kids are military and they're, you know, it's hard for them in a lot of ways to relate their experiences to people that are not military.

Starting point is 00:25:53 Yeah. Very strong things. But here's an interesting point, I think, that I'm getting from your books and from what you're saying right now. The best ideas actually come, and inspiration. They come from ordinary life, not from extraordinary experiences. Yeah, not, surely for me, not experiences, but just it can be anything. It can be a phrase. It can be just different things to turn me on.

Starting point is 00:26:16 And I don't know that necessarily a lot of people are sort of wired to where I am. It's just an awful lot of things. Somewhere in here in the background there, I can't really say it. There's this thing with ideas and it's about yo thick. And that's every, there's this page after page. page. And it just, I mean, I have probably 500 things I could write books about in there. And so ordinary life for you is pretty extraordinary. And that's the eye for those ideas. Do you ever kill ideas once you're well into a story? Yeah. A lot of one. A lot of the outlines,

Starting point is 00:26:51 I mean, different ideas. I'll have like two or three, four points on. I go like, I don't really know where this is going. I know there's something here, but I do it all the time. After I was with a woman, the first love of my life, this is in, well, from mid-20s to mid-30s or with her for every 70 years. She developed a brain tumor. It was fatal two and a half years later. And after she died, I couldn't write for two or three years. I literally, I tried, I wrote a half of a book. I just shredded it. It was awful. I couldn't concentrate. Couldn't do it. Is that right? Yeah. I don't know what that in terms of, you know, whatever happened in my brain there, but no, what's not happening? Well, thank God it came back. That's all I can say. What would you do

Starting point is 00:27:37 differently if you could look over the past 200 books or the past 49 years of writing? I don't, you know, I'm not a big regrets person. You know, you just move for it. It doesn't really, it's not useful. If we can't do something about whatever the hell is the latest thing that's driving us crazy, we try not to ruin the day with it. You know, something happened. you know, a shooting at a school or whatever heck it is. I try to like, I can't. There's nothing I can do about that, unfortunately. If we can do something, we try to do it,

Starting point is 00:28:07 which I think is useful for a lot of people to be able to do that. A lot of people can't do it. It's logical. You can't do anything about that. Don't ruin your day. Right. You know, and that's really, you know, if you can do a good thing to be able to tell yourself, Mel Robbins has that, you know, let them.

Starting point is 00:28:26 which is another one, it's just a good thought for people to have. You know, don't worry about what people say about you or say about, you know, you let them. One, you can't stop them anyway. Two, you shouldn't be able to stop them. So let them. Move on. But for you, it's let them and then write about them. Yeah, right.

Starting point is 00:28:47 Let them. That's my revenge. Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems to me that instead of trying to, you know, fretting about life, you're documenting it, right? Is there something to that? Sure. Yeah, and it's all over the lot in terms of the fiction and then the nonfiction stuff.

Starting point is 00:28:59 I mentioned, you know, in the whole military side, I do books with Matt Eversman. That was the actual sergeant who was portrayed in that movie Black Hawk Down. And he's becoming a good friend, and he was obviously, you know, a lot of the serious combat. And we put together, it's a really terrific book. And our mission was if you would, if you were in combat, you would say Evertsman and Patterson got it right. And if you're one of these people that likes the bullshit that you really understand, you don't have a clue, you would read it and say, I had no idea what it's all about to be in a military, which I think is really, it's one of those books that you read and you go, I really actually

Starting point is 00:29:35 learned some stuff here a lot. And it's interesting. After we finished the book, I said to Matt, you know, I really understand now. And then a couple weeks later, I apologized. We had dinner. I said, you know, I said that, I don't understand because I have never fired a gun at anybody and I've never been shot at. So I don't really understand. But I do understand better than I did, before, especially in terms of the camaraderie that people in combat have. And a lot of what you write about is actually the human dynamics between people. That's a lot of what you care about, right? Oh, that's all I care.

Starting point is 00:30:08 Yeah, I assume it's all I care about. Yes. I'm really interested in people's stories. And sometimes people don't believe it because I'll sit there and over dinner and, you know, say one of the person really hasn't in their own mind done anything. But I want to hear their story. And I go, why are you interested in me? I find your story interesting.

Starting point is 00:30:28 But I never did anything. Well, yeah, you did. Yeah, but so relationships in ordinary life, in a way, is more amazing than audacious adventures. They're more interesting to me. I know, I might be interested in, you know, how the hell did you do the, what happened? Tell me, why the hell, why would you want to kick out? For starters, I don't, I know people are like that. I just, I'm curious about what the.

Starting point is 00:30:53 thought processes. And then, you know, okay, now, then what happens? Yeah. I'd love you to react to a couple of, you know, philosophical points at other writers. I probably won't understand them, but sure. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, you will because you're more sophisticated than some of these folks. So, you know, one of the things, I'm always really interested, given the fact that a lot of what I do for a living is writing at this point, too, I asked you about, you know, the process. And you get up at six o'clock in the morning and you write a little bit and then read the paper, have a little coffee, you write some more, you know, talk to your wife, write some more, go golf, write some more. And I can see the through line here, which is basically your day is organized around writing words,

Starting point is 00:31:31 is what it comes down to. And everything else is kind of punctuating the writing process. And that's a pretty interesting point. Writing words and thinking about stories, which they do a lot of. So what's more important, thinking or writing, James? Thinking. Really? Do you think that's true for anything? Do you think that's true in any business that you should think more and, you know, think more, do less? I don't want to say do less, but think a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:59 Anything in life, any business, I have this book disrupt everything and win, and part of it has to do with, all right, here's my publisher, Hachette. So I sell them this book, and these are two new people who took over Hichette. They have a new mission. And this is true of any corporation, any team, any university, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For your mission to work, their mission to work, you must get all of your editors to disrupt the way they've been buying books and the way they edit. To some extent they must disrupt, and people do not like disruption. And not just change slowly, but disrupt very quickly. You must disrupt the way your sales department sells.

Starting point is 00:32:49 You must disrupt the way they are presenting themselves. You must disrupt maybe the way the receptionist greets people. You must disrupt the way your website is put together. And insofar as you get people to buy in, your mission works. Insofar as you don't get people, maybe if it's a good mission. But if you don't get people to buy in, your mission is not. not as effective. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, this is really interesting because your process of thinking and writing is the cadence of your life. It's just your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, for sure.

Starting point is 00:33:31 That is the cadence for sure, yes. Yeah. And Hemingway was different because Hemingway, well, to begin with, you're not like a heavy drinker, I know. Hemingway was an incredibly heavy drinker. And the result was he would wake up, hungover every morning. And to get to be able to write, he would open, he had a, his typewriter, He's working on a typewriter with it looking at the back of a closet. So it was in a closet, open the closet, look at the back of the closet, and write for two hours in the morning, which was probably the only time he had sufficient dopamine given the fact that he was spending it all on boozing it up and, you know, carousing. And he wanted to do these extraordinary things. He wanted to do these big adventurous things, which he, and I can't say that he was wrong.

Starting point is 00:34:13 He considered doing these things to be meaningful. that's a meaningful life. You know, I've been involved in that war. I've been involved. I'm, you know, I'm less that way. Well, I mean, your writing is how you live and writing wasn't how he lived. Writing was incidental to the adventures that he was having. He's a very, very different kind of writer in this way.

Starting point is 00:34:36 A couple of things that he said that were interesting. I'd love to hear your action to. If I would write one true sentence, then I could go on from there. I'm aware of that from him. and I think that's really true and really useful. True sentence, good sentence. If you start out in that day and you're just writing mediocre sentence after sentence, it's probably not going to be a good day.

Starting point is 00:35:01 You want to start out with that. One of the reasons I like outlines is you get up and there you have sort of written out, and maybe a good sentence will be in the outline, but you've got to start. You're not starting nowhere. you're not starting with the blank page, you're starting with something. And I think that's useful. And it may have taken you, you know, for, you know, rewriting to that outline to get to that chapter that's in the outline. So you may have worked pretty hard on that outline. I'm a big fan. David Baldacci, for example, he doesn't outline. But I do. And so when I, when I, when I'm sitting there, I'm not staring at a blank page. And I, and I, I, I'm,

Starting point is 00:35:45 I have to some extent crafted that half page or three paragraphs that or at least the start of that chapter. And that day, I may sit down and I may, I may scrap it and do something else in terms of that. I may say, you know what I can do. But I absolutely agree with that good sentence or good thought or something to that effect is really, really, really useful. Do you also agree with his famous quote that the first draft of anything is crap? Yeah. Yeah. So for you, excellence is not writing, it's rewriting. Is that fair? Rewriding, yes, 100%. Yes. That's a, I mean, man, that is a, that is a, it's funny because I just turned in a

Starting point is 00:36:25 manuscript. And I've never worked hard on a book in my life. And I turned in the first manuscript, I don't know, nine months ago to my editor. It's a completely different book, five iterations later. And, and that's, that's you too, right? Yes. You know, the rewriting is you. I mentioned it's disrupt everything. And that was different because it was with a professor from Vanderbilt. Yeah. So it's interesting because even somebody after 200 books, excellence is not in the inspiration. It's in the hard work. Inspiration is that that idea that you start with has to be strong enough to drive the whole thing. And the mission has to be a good one. If you start out and the idea for the book,

Starting point is 00:37:05 as I did early on with, oh, I'm going to blow up Wall Street. Well, you know, I don't know. Theoretically, there probably is something there, but you don't have a clear. what the hell it is. So that's a bad mission. And a lot of people start with bad missions. Right. In terms of writing books. There were three great 20th century novelists that were utterly obsessed with Spain. Hemingway was one. Missioner was another who wrote Iberia, of course. And the last most famously, of course, is Orwell. And Orwell was always good for a bunch of quotes about writing. So here's one. He said there's four, only four motives for writing. And here later, no, you doubt you've heard this. Egotism.

Starting point is 00:37:45 aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. True? I don't know. Let's go through them one at a time. Egotism. Shear egotism. Probably. I mean, I think you have to have some of that to think that you're smart enough, good enough, whatever enough. So, yeah, ego for sure. Egotism. I don't know. What's the second one? Aesthetic enthusiasm. Yeah, I'm not sure what aesthetic means. That's going to be all over the lot. It just means creativity. No, I know, but I mean, the aesthetics can be. My aesthetics are going to be very different than, you know, whatever. What's the third one? The third one is historical impulse.

Starting point is 00:38:27 Something needs to be said. Yeah, it's not something that I am dealing with for the most parts. Every once in a while, yes. Yeah, and then there's political purpose. That doesn't sound like you at all. It doesn't sound, you're not a propagandist. I'm always trying to, I'm chasing. this old-fashioned dream of that we could just get together and be logical,

Starting point is 00:38:48 sane people, and work it out? Yeah. I mean, is it fair to say that your main impulse for writing is because you can't not? My impulse is, it's like, I think, a lot of artists who will sit and go, I want to do this painting, I have an idea, and I think it could be a really terrific painting. I really want to do the painting, or I have this idea for a song, and I really want to do this song, because I think it's a beautiful. good idea. They have a little of the sets for, you know what I mean, that kind of thing. Like a painting,

Starting point is 00:39:20 I think that's a good way in terms of me. I have this idea for this painting. I'm really excited about doing it. Weirdly, you know, the romanticists have become a big thing. And I just kind of kind of challenged me. And I read a couple of them and I said, you know, there's certain kinds of books I can't do. I can't, I can't, I cannot do a romance. The romance, you know, those romance. I can do. I can't do a book about a general. I don't understand how they think and how they talk. I just, I couldn't write one of those. But I read these romanticies and said, you know, I think I can really do a great,

Starting point is 00:39:56 because you're fantasy, you know, I think I could do a great, freaking romanticcy. So I like to challenge, I'm doing it. I love it. But so I, you know, there's a painting. I'm interested in doing that. I think I can, I think it'll be really stimulating and a good challenge. Challenge is useful. If I think, as long as I feel,

Starting point is 00:40:12 I can, you know, it's interesting. Somebody put up somewhere along the way about, you know, you must have all these risks. I don't, I'm not, I don't do risks. I don't, if I don't, you know, I don't know, I don't, that's really risky. I don't think, I didn't think it's risky. I have one more, uh, or well for you. And I, I don't know how you're going to respond to this one, James. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle like a long bout of some painful illness.

Starting point is 00:40:39 Some people are that way, Frederick Forsyth, who did a day that you've who was the journalist, he apparently hated the right. He hated the idea that he had to really pumped himself up to do it. And then he would try to do it as quickly as he could. No, I love it. So that's wrong. As far as you're concerned, that doesn't describe anything about writing for you. No, I don't think it's wrong. No, I think it's right for some writers. Apparently, that must be the way he felt about it. Should he therefore have not been a writer in your view? I don't know. No, you know. Obviously, he wanted to do it on some level and he did it. He felt compelled to do it. He felt, I guess he had things he thought would change the world or whatever

Starting point is 00:41:13 the hell it is. He just didn't want to write the books. He wanted to have written them. Yeah, he should have co-write. You get some co-writer into writers. I don't know, yeah. But no, that has not been my experience, but I do know writers that find it painful. Yeah. And, you know, the other thing is, I don't have to sit there and worry about whether it's going to get published or worry about my editor is going to sit here and destroy it because my situation is. I know it's going to get published. And I like my editor, but I can say it's biscuits. What is that?

Starting point is 00:41:46 It's done. It's biscuits. Biscuits. I like that expression. Yeah. It's biscuits. That means that, you know, just define its biscuits. That must be a northeastern expression.

Starting point is 00:41:56 I cover the Pacific. I don't know where it comes from. It just means that it's basically it's done now and we should go eat the biscuits. The book is done. I know you have some other things you want me to do. Not doing them. It's done. let's put some butter on the biscuits and enjoy them.

Starting point is 00:42:13 It's a good advice for life. James Patterson, what a delight to be with you today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and experiences and for spending just some time with me. It's been a lot of fun. It's great. It's very stimulating. I enjoyed both of our little chats together, and I hope you'd give me a decent grade. A plus, James, A plus.

Starting point is 00:42:33 Thanks. So I hope you enjoyed that interview. I mean, James is a real character, obviously. I mean, he's talking about what he wants to talk about, to be sure. But I want to give you what I consider to be the eight big points that he covered that are not just advice for how to write books. They're advice on how to write the book that is your life. Because, you know, it really is when you think about it. You're a novelist of the book that is your life.

Starting point is 00:43:00 Page one is today. Do you know the ending? Have you thought about the character development? Have you thought about the plot line? Well, here are some principles as you write the novel that is your own life, which is an exciting thing to do that come directly from what James told me about how he does his work. Number one, pay attention to the writing, not from having a successful novel at the end of the day. And what that means for your life is pay attention to your daily life and how you're living your life, not thinking about when it's all over what you're going to be looking back on. that James thinks about the writing of the book and enjoying the writing of the book,

Starting point is 00:43:38 not saying at some point I'm going to have a successful book. I sure hope it's successful. After 200 books, he would have driven himself mad. And that's how you'll drive yourself mad in your life as well. Live now. Don't live for the future looking back on your life. That's principle number one. Principle number two.

Starting point is 00:43:54 James's first book was rejected by 31 publishers and then finally got published by a small publisher and won a bunch of awards. And the principle there is, look, if you're getting rejected, it doesn't mean you're bad. It doesn't. But also, you'll remember from our conversation that if you're accepted by everybody, it doesn't mean you're good. Good and bad really depend or context dependent. Do the work that you want to do. Live the life that you want to live. Think for yourself. That's number two. Number three, as you go through this novel over the course of your life, you're getting older and your strengths are changing. James talks about the things that he's better at and the things

Starting point is 00:44:33 that he's worse at. He says he's better at concentration and focus. He's better at the craft of his writing, character development and sentence structure, right? He's maintained lots of imagination all along the way. Now, that's an interesting thing because he's been writing books for 49 years. And that's a really important thing as you develop your creativity, but that's a really important thing as you develop your life as well. Your strengths are going to change. I've written whole books about that. I'll put into the show notes from Strength to Strength, my 2022 book that talks about the fact that your brain's going to change. It just is. James's brain has changed and so has mine and so. will yours. Get out in front of that so that you're riding that wave of change. You're not chasing

Starting point is 00:45:10 that wave of change. Don't worry about what you used to be good at. Enjoy what you're getting better at because there is something. That's number three. Number four, where does James get his ideas from ordinary life? You know, I mean, he talks about some extraordinary things like, why did you climb Mount Everest? But fundamentally, he's interested in the person and how they think. And he gets his ideas from little exchanges and things that he sees, he has a whole book of these actually these ideas that they spark for him. The truth is that the life and life is the little things. Pay attention to life itself. Don't miss ordinary life because you're looking for extraordinary punctuation to that life. You're just going to miss your life. And when you miss your life,

Starting point is 00:45:52 you're going to miss your inspiration is what that comes about. The novel that you're trying to write of your life is written in the little tiny things that happen each day. The little, the breakfast that you ate with your beloved, the conversation that you had with somebody on the bus, these are the extraordinary parts of what the book of your life is supposed to be. That's number four. Number five is that it's a good idea to be an observer. James is an observer of life. He's a pretty happy guy because he looks at life non-judgmentally. Why does he look at life non-judgmentally? Because he's a novelist and he wants to be able to write about life. And he's a novelist. And he wants to be able to write about life. If he's intervening in everything and getting outraged about everything and freaking out about

Starting point is 00:46:34 everything, which so many people are today, he wouldn't actually be able to write about life with a keen eye. He'd be too invested intrinsically as opposed to observing extrinsically. That's an important idea for the novel that is your life. Good. Be involved. Yeah. But not in everything. Spend more time watching as opposed to yelling. And life will get a lot better and a lot more interesting to you too. Number six, think more before you produce. It's one of the things that James corrected me on. I said, so you just get up and write. And he said, no, no, no, I get up and I think, right? Think more before you produce. That's a really important thing for my work and your work and everybody's work, but because the real creative work

Starting point is 00:47:22 comes in the thinking, not actually in the production. The production is sort of the end of the process, as James talks about it. And that's an important thing for happiness, too. isn't it? Think more about what you're doing as opposed to trying to be productive at the expense of doing what you should be doing, what you want to be doing, what you're doing thoughtfully, prayerfully in a considered way. Think more. And number seven is this. Excellence isn't about inspiration. This is, you know, when we talked about what Hemingway had said, which is one good sentence, man. And the first draft is always garbage. And most writers say this, by the way, and it's absolutely manifestly true in my books.

Starting point is 00:48:02 But James has written 200, and orders of magnitude more than me. And still, after 49 years, as writing bestseller after bestseller and loving every minute of it, James writes because James can't not write. He still says that, you know, the excellence is not in the inspiration.

Starting point is 00:48:18 It's about the hard work that comes after the inspiration. And this is true for the novel of your life as well. A bunch of ideas are great, but what you do with them and how you live your life, the excellence that you have in your relationships, It's not that happiness doesn't come from your wedding day. It comes from every day after your wedding day. It doesn't come from the day that your child is born.

Starting point is 00:48:37 It's every day that you raise your child. It's not the day you take your job. It's every day that you perform your job. That's really the hard work. And that can be a tough slog to be sure. But that's where real excellence comes in. And a happy life comes from an excellent life. How do we wrap it up?

Starting point is 00:48:55 And this is eight, number eight. It's biscuits. I didn't know what that meant. I mean, James just said it's biscuits. And what does that mean? That means it's done. Let it be. You do something.

Starting point is 00:49:08 Let it be. Move on. Which is a sort of a beautiful approach to life. Isn't it? To live a happy life and to write a good book and to create the existence that you want to have? I guess you're supposed to butter the biscuits and eat them and, you know, once the biscuits are made. But the whole point of it is this. Don't freak out about things that have happened in the past.

Starting point is 00:49:27 the book is being created linearly, chapter after chapter after chapter. You wrote a chapter. You worked on it. You're moving on. You know, at the end of the day, it's just biscuits, man. Just biscuits. That's a good way to live. And these eight points are a good way to live, I have to say.

Starting point is 00:49:43 I hope that James Patterson's approach to writing, which is his approach to creativity, which is his approach to life, or a good way for you to guide your own life in this way. James Patterson's eight lessons. for a happy life, which I'm taking to heart. I hope you will too. See you next week.

Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - The Truth About Creativity, Aging, and Discipline: From the World’s Best-Selling Author (James Patterson)

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