{"id":306,"date":"2017-08-24T05:24:06","date_gmt":"2017-08-24T04:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/?p=306"},"modified":"2017-08-28T03:28:49","modified_gmt":"2017-08-28T02:28:49","slug":"jeff-goins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/jeff-goins\/","title":{"rendered":"The Breakthrough That Took Bestselling Author Jeff Goins From Amateur to Pro"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Who:<\/strong> <\/span>Jeff Goins<\/span><\/h3>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Claim to fame:<\/strong><\/span> Bestselling author of five books including <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/5toVN\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Real Artists Don\u2019t Starve<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/BdzBx\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Art of Work<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/h3>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Why\u2019d we pick him, in ten words:<\/strong><\/span> Jeff is one of the most prolific writers online today<\/span><\/h3>\n<h3><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Where to find him: <\/strong><\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/goinswriter.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His blog<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/bB2emE\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on Amazon<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>When did he first want to become a writer:<\/strong><\/span> \u201cIt started when I was eight years old or so and my mom read me the dictionary on long car rides. I realized then that I loved words, which was reaffirmed in sixth grade when I won the school spelling bee.\u201d<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><b>Let\u2019s start with the basics: What time of day do you start writing? Is it easier for you to write early in the morning? Late at night?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I used to start writing first thing in the morning. It was easiest to get the writing done before the sun rose and the responsibilities of life and work assailed me. The goal was always to just write about 500 words a day. If I did that, I would always have something to publish, something ready to share with the world. It made book writing attainable, as well. I could break anything into a 500-word chunk.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now that I&#8217;m a dad and my kids sometimes get up before the sunrise, I find it easier to do the writing later in the morning. Most days, I get up, go to the gym, make breakfast for the family, then head off to work and spend the rest of the morning writing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I typically write for 2-3 hours in the mornings, sometimes longer when I&#8217;m working on a book. When I have less time due to running a business, speaking, travel, etc., I&#8217;ll still try to get in at least 30-60 minutes. The goal is still just 500 words. Anything more than that is gravy.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>What\u2019s your preferred tool for writing\u2014a word processor like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, etc.? A pen and paper?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I write books in Scrivener because I find it the easiest to jump around and organize ideas without having to incessantly scroll. That&#8217;s my style. I jump around a lot, from idea to idea, chapter to chapter. Then I go back and edit it to make it cohesive. I need a tool that satisfies that style of working.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I do most of my other writing for <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/goinswriter.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">my blog<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and other outlets in a tool called Byword that I think is only available on Mac.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I do all my ideation in a tool on my phone called Drafts, which exports to Evernote.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Do you listen to music when you write, or do you prefer silence, or something else in the background?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I listen to one of three things: <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/ndvd9i0\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sigur Ros<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/8oPCpl\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Explosions in the Sky<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, or the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/KsMHry\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last of the Mohicans<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> soundtrack, which I usually have on repeat while working on a book. There&#8217;s something about the monotony of listening to the same thing over and over that allows me to focus on the task at hand.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not really. I just try to shut down all apps and distractions so that I can focus. Sometimes, I&#8217;ll clean my desk, because I find it difficult to work around clutter (even though I am excellent at creating it). The only prerequisite is coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>How many words a day do you produce, or try to produce? How much of that ever sees the light of day?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As I mentioned before, I try to write at least 500 words a day. When I&#8217;m on deadline, I may produce 5000 words, but the minimum output is always 500. It&#8217;s a small enough amount that I don&#8217;t have an excuse to avoid it, which is crucial for me. I have to feel motivated to write, which means breaking up a huge task like a book into small, achievable chunks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At least a third of the words I write never see the light of day. With my last book, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/5toVN\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Real Artists Don&#8217;t Starve<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I cut 25,000 words from a 75,000-word manuscript. I&#8217;m too much of a coward to delete them, though. They go into a file called &#8220;darlings.txt&#8221; which I never look at but makes me feel better that I never deleted them. Might use them some day, after all.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>When you first sit down to write, how do you start? What goes through your mind when fingers are first meeting keys (or pen hits paper)?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I start with an idea, always an idea. It could be a quote, a headline, a question. But I need something to provoke me to write. Typically that provocation comes from my own curating of ideas and stories around me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then I take one of those ideas and try to turn it into something, usually an article of some sort.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>What\u2019s your process for editing your work?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have a process that works well for my called the 3-Bucket System, which you can <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/goinswriter.com\/three-buckets\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">read about here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here&#8217;s how it works.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Bucket 1<\/strong> is for ideas. All day long, I capture ideas using the app Drafts. These get dumped into Evernote, where I have a folder full of ideas and prompts for when I\u2019m feeling dry in the creativity department. You can use a notebook for this, as well. The tool doesn\u2019t matter, as long as you aren\u2019t just hanging onto all those ideas in your brain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Bucket 2<\/strong> is for drafts. When it\u2019s time for me to write (usually in the morning), I\u2019ll pull an idea out from the first bucket and start writing, usually around 500 words in one session. This process makes it easier to just start writing because I don\u2019t have to think about what I\u2019m going to write. I already have a prompt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The ideas I collect function as prompts for me, but this is not just a writing exercise. It\u2019s work. I never write something without the intent of publishing it. The best practice is the kind done in public, and the best writing is the stuff you intend to publish.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once I\u2019ve written about 500 words on my idea, I save it as a draft in Scrivener (if I\u2019m working on a book) or in Byword (if it\u2019s a blog post). Again, these are the tools I use. They don\u2019t matter as much as the method.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Bucket 3<\/strong> is for edits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At any given time, I have a whole bunch of half-finished chapters and blog posts on my computer begging to be edited and completed. This is not an overwhelming feeling. It\u2019s an empowering one, because when it\u2019s time to edit, I get to choose what I want to work on. I don\u2019t have to come up with an idea or \u201cjust write.\u201d The point of this system is to think as little as possible and just do the next thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I pull out one of those half-completed drafts and edit it. I\u2019ll polish up the flow and sentence structure and of course, check for grammar and spelling. At this point, the piece isn\u2019t perfect, but it\u2019s at least 90% done. I either schedule it for a blog post or tuck it away in another folder called \u201cEdits\u201d on my computer. This means the piece is done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are pieces of writing that are more or less ready for the world to see. The next step is to share them with an editor or publisher or post to my blog..<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My goal with this system is to just move something from one bucket to the next. Every day, I capture ideas and save them to Evernote. Every day, I take one of those ideas (typically from a previous day) and draft it into a 500-word piece. And every day, I edit my work in hopes of sharing with someone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Again, I don\u2019t write anything just for fun. It all has a purpose. This is what professionals do. They write for an audience, always with the intent of publishing. Anything less than that will result in something that isn\u2019t your best work<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Do you have an author whose voice or style you\u2019re trying to emulate when you\u2019re writing?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think we are all trying to emulate the work of those we admire. Hunter S. Thompson once confessed to copying every single word from F. Scott Fitzgerald&#8217;s <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/Lv7cPjN\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Great Gatsby<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to see what it felt like to write that way. He also admitted to stealing more words and phrases from the Bible than any other work. So, stealing is the name of the game. The trick, I think, is to borrow widely from a variety of sources and re-arrange them into some new order that you call your &#8220;voice.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For me, I borrowed a lot from Hemingway early on. I loved how he made terseness look eloquent. C.S. Lewis was a big influence for me in college, and I&#8217;m sure the way I construct arguments comes from his own style of nonfiction writing. For more contemporary authors, I admire how <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;field-keywords=Steven+Pressfield\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Steven Pressfield<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> writers nonfiction in a similar manner. I am a sucker for how <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/BnAOB\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Seth Godin<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> names things. I love the way <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/kCsJCw\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anne Lamott<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> tells a story with a lesson and wish I could pull off comma splices as well as <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/qNMx81\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Abigail Thomas<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. And of course, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/A07PmEj\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Malcolm Gladwell<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> does an incredible job weaving stories in and out of research in a way that can convince you of just about anything. <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/hATS6\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">James Surowiecki<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> does it maybe even better.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Do you struggle at all with that dreaded enemy of writing: writer\u2019s block? Do you think such a thing exists?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think writer&#8217;s block is a bad name for a number of real problems facing writers, most notably of which is fear. Typically when I feel blocked, I&#8217;m really afraid. And almost always, that&#8217;s because my next step feels like a leap instead of just doing the next thing. If I feel stuck, I have to ask myself what am I really afraid of and is that really my next step? For example, if I&#8217;m working on a book and start to feel stuck, it&#8217;s usually because I&#8217;m doubting myself, wondering what right I have to talk about this topic. Who am I? But that fear is misplaced. It&#8217;s not the right time to worry about that. My job right now is to write the next 500 words, not worry what the critics will be saying a year from now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So do I think writers get stuck sometimes? Sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is it some mystical force preventing you from creating your life&#8217;s work? I don&#8217;t think so. It&#8217;s you, the enemy inside that wants to sabotage you because you&#8217;re stepping into a better version of yourself and that kind of change always creates cognitive dissonance. You want to create this thing, but you are afraid of the change it might cause. That&#8217;s normal, natural even.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The way out of this mess is through.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A friend of mine who used to do long-distance running gave me some advice on dealing with pain as a writer. &#8220;What do you do about the cramps?&#8221; I asked. I was noticing they hit my in the gut usually at the three or four mile mark. I thought he&#8217;d have some great advice on how to avoid them altogether. In fact, I assumed this was the case. His answer surprised me, though. &#8220;Cramps? What do I do? I keep running, and eventually they go away. I run <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">through<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the cramps.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What do I do when I feel blocked? I write through the block. That may sound ridiculous, but even when you&#8217;re blocked you can still write. Maybe it&#8217;s not the thing you wanted to write or what you you&#8217;re capable of writing. But you can type. So that&#8217;s what I do. Anything and everything. Sometimes, it makes sense. Sometimes, it&#8217;s total nonsense. But I push through the discomfort, so that I can keep going. Momentum is a writer&#8217;s friend.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Do you have any favorite books <\/b><b><i>about <\/i><\/b><b>writing and the creative process?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/fJzJv\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The War of Art<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by Steven Pressfield. <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/ZB2B\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bird by Bird<\/span><\/i> <\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by Anne Lamott. <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/geni.us\/nssneqg\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Writing Well<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by William Zinsser. And every book ever written by Dr. Seuss.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>When did your aspirations to become a writer begin?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They started when I was eight years old or so and my mom read me the dictionary on long car rides. I realized then that I loved words, which was reaffirmed in sixth grade when I won the school spelling bee. Then again, just before graduating high school, my English teacher wrote on my final paper: &#8220;You should seriously consider a career in journalism or as a professional writer.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course, I forgot all these things once I entered the work force and wondered why after five years of working as a marketing director for a nonprofit I felt frustrated. Parker Palmer wrote that &#8220;before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I first must listen to my life telling me who I am.&#8221; When I took the time to listen to my life, it was telling me that I was a writer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Around that time I was having these thoughts, a friend asked me what my dream was and I reluctantly said I&#8217;d like to be a writer some day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Jeff,&#8221; he said, &#8220;you don&#8217;t have to want to be a writer. You are a writer. You just need to write.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The next day, I started a blog and published a new article on it every single day for a year, because that&#8217;s what I assumed writers did. They got up every morning and write a little bit every day. So I decided to be that kind of person, which meant believing I already was a writer and then behaving like it. To this day, I believe that activity follows identity. You really have to become this thing, and then you have to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Do you have a different approach for your blogs and books, or does it all follow roughly the same process?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s all the same process. From idea to draft to edit. You can&#8217;t circumvent any steps or speed the process up. The process is what it is. You either honor it or pay the price. For books, I go through a few more editing passes, but it&#8217;s essentially the same. Start with an idea, hone the idea, and then share it with the world. The more you do it, the better you get. And the best way to do it is every day.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who: Jeff Goins Claim to fame: Bestselling author of five books including Real Artists Don\u2019t Starve and The Art of Work Why\u2019d we pick him, in ten words: Jeff is one of the most prolific writers online today Where to find him: His blog and on Amazon When did he first want to become a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Breakthrough That Took Bestselling Author Jeff Goins From Amateur to Pro - Writing Routines<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/jeff-goins\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Breakthrough That Took Bestselling Author Jeff Goins From Amateur to Pro - 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