{"id":768,"date":"2018-06-07T16:52:53","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T15:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/?p=768"},"modified":"2018-06-08T00:06:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-07T23:06:35","slug":"shane-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/shane-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Bestselling Author Shane Snow on The Benefits of Prep Work, Recognizing Patterns, and Blackwing Pencils"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Name: <\/strong>Shane Snow<\/p>\n

Claim to Fame<\/strong>: He\u2019s a journalist, entrepreneur, bestselling author of Smartcuts<\/em><\/a> and\u00a0Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart<\/a><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where to Find Him<\/strong>: On Amazon<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, Medium<\/a>, and his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I find that my best writing days are the ones where I do nothing but wake up and write write. I don’t even shower. I do some quick exercise (and think about what I’m going to write while I do), and go to the coffee shop and type.<\/p>\n

That said, the times when I’ve been in the most “flow” as a writer have tended to be when I’m excited and write late into the night.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your preferred tool for writing\u2014a word processor like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, etc.? A pen and paper? Any other tools you regularly use?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Evernote is hands down my most important tool as a writer. I spend a lot of time taking notes and organizing and outlining everything before I get down to composing. But I prefer to compose final drafts in Medium. It’s just so gorgeous to write in.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

My favorite analog toolkit is a Blackwing 602 pencil and a Moleskine notebook. Because I think I’m living in the ’30s or something? I don’t know. But I love Blackwings so much that I have one tattooed on my inner arm.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits?
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

If I’m really buckling down to compose, I always do it from a coffee shop. I like having a mild amount of background noise (some studies shows it gives your brain subconscious micro-distractions, which helps you be a bit more creative), and I like the ritual of having a coffee right there. My routine is to write until I get antsy or distracted or stuck, and then to move to another coffee shop. That usually resets me into buckle-down writing mode again. During the production of Dream Teams<\/em>, I took photos of the same scene every day wherever I was: my laptop, a coffee, and some sort of different background, three or four different places each day.<\/p>\n

I also have a little lucky coyote that I bring with me when I write.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Finding a great idea for a book can be one of the most challenging aspects of an author\u2019s life. How did you come to the book ideas for Smartcuts <\/em>and Dream Teams<\/em><\/a>?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Each of these books came about because I recognized patterns between other things I was writing about in shorter form. I generally follow the scientific method when I write, which is to say I a) make an observation about something, which leads me to b) ask a question, and c) form a hypothesis which I then just can’t help myself until I d) prove or disprove it, at which point I e) write about what I learned.<\/p>\n

I’m generally doing this with a bunch of different topics that interest me at any given time. (As I type this, I’m working on an exploration of why certain profane words become more tame over time and others don’t; a study of the most-used logical fallacies in political debates on network news; and a story about the “science” of optionality\u2014quite a diverse set of stories.) When a bunch of things I’m exploring start to suddenly connect, then opportunities to say new things at longer lengths open up. Sometimes that turns into a big article; a couple of times it’s turned into a book!<\/p>\n

How do you split the balance of writing and research? Do you collect all the material you need and then set out to turn it into a book? Or are you researching and writing simultaneously?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

One of my favorite editors at Wired once told me that great writing is 33% reporting, 33% thinking, and 33% making sentences. I try to take that literally. Dream Teams <\/em>took about 3 years to produce. It broke down into about 2 years of research and outlining, 2 months of frenzied writing, and 9 months of editing and revising. My strategy is to do exhaustive prep beforehand, review everything until I basically have it memorized, and then to sit down and jam the words out all out at once. I heard that Michael Lewis does something like this. Maybe one day I’ll be as cool as him. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

How do you hold yourself to writing deadlines? Both deadlines from external sources (publishing deadlines) as well as internal (personal blog posts)?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

For the way that my brain works, I work best when I have a rather stable writing schedule each day. For Smartcuts<\/em>, I wrote from 6am to 9am every day. For Dream Teams<\/em><\/a>, I set a schedule of one chapter per week, which meant I HAD to do all the prep beforehand, and I basically had to write from 9 a.m. to midnight every day. I don’t think I could do that kind of marathon for more than 8 weeks without going nuts or keeling over dead. But to be honest, if you’re that prepared with what you have to say, and you love the material you’re working on (and you have uppers like caffeine available; also you should sleep!), you might be surprised how much you can crank out in that amount of time. I actually ended up finishing the first draft of Dream Teams<\/em> a week earlier than I planned.<\/p>\n

That said, people are different. Whatever works for you works for you. But I suspect a lot of people have a hard time writing in long stretches because they don’t know what they want to say, not because they don’t know how to type it out.<\/p>\n

Finally, taking a question you\u2019ve asked many authors before – \u201cWhat\u2019s your favorite thing you\u2019ve ever written in your life?\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n

That’s easy: https:\/\/www.gq.com\/story\/halo-top-ice-cream-review-diet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Name: Shane Snow Claim to Fame: He\u2019s a journalist, entrepreneur, bestselling author of Smartcuts and\u00a0Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart. Where to Find Him: On Amazon, Twitter, Medium, and his website. Let\u2019s start with the basics: What time of day do you start writing? Is it easier for you to write early in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBestselling Author Shane Snow on The Benefits of Prep Work, Recognizing Patterns, and Blackwing Pencils - 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\/shane-snow\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bestselling Author Shane Snow on The Benefits of Prep Work, Recognizing Patterns, and Blackwing Pencils - Writing Routines\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  Name: Shane Snow Claim to Fame: He\u2019s a journalist, entrepreneur, bestselling author of Smartcuts and\u00a0Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart. 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