Jane Friedman

I've worked in publishing since 1996. I use Tumblr to keep track of ideas about life, creativity, and digital media. I wrote The Business of Being a Writer to help writers make smarter publishing-and-money decisions.

[janefriedman]

A writer gains mastery over the form and function of television in the same way that chess players master their game: by studying old games, internalizing the patterns, and practicing, practicing, practicing. Lay-people mistake both chess and writing as explosions of genius-level creativity: but where does the black powder for that explosion come from? Pattern recognition. That's why the twenty-five year veteran is usually so good at the job of breaking story, even if the younger writers demonstrate a greater flair for dialogue, or can render the rhythms of the current popular culture with greater fidelity. Veterans don't have to reinvent the wheel every time out. The veteran looks at the board and recognizes the ten different ways the game can go from that point to a win, or a draw, or a defeat.

Javier Grillo-Marxuach 

[janefriedman]

In Dalí’s view, creativity is a compost pile. Your experiences—coffee-grounds commute, apple-core argument, watermelon-rind walk—feed the pile. But rich, fertile soil doesn't form overnight. The itch to paint, sculpt, compose, or write something is a fragile spark. According to Dalí, you’ll only put it out by throwing the logs on right away. Instead, let kindling accumulate. Wait until the spark has caught and you have a nice, steady creative fire going. Now you're ready. Go to bed early: 'In undertaking an important pictorial work which you are anxious to bring to a successful completion and on which your heart is particularly set, you must before anything else begin it by sleeping as deeply, as soundly as it is possible for you to do.'

David Moldawer

[janefriedman]

[Prolific writers] are simply not precious about their work, from how they get it done to how it’s eventually packaged, marketed, and sold. The attitude is: whatever works. I can’t think of a single exception among the authors of dozens and even hundreds of books that I’ve heard from over the years. In On Writing, for example, Stephen King dismisses even the need for quiet and privacy. As the father of young children, he’d work on books with the kids playing in the room, watching TV, whatever. Sure, it was distracting and probably annoying, but that’s life. Do you stop cooking dinner or doing your taxes because someone’s in the room with you? No. You just do your best and get the job done. And it is a job, whether or not you’re getting paid. Just like sweeping the floor. Just like doing the laundry. Chop wood, carry water, write chapter.

David Moldawer

[janefriedman]

[Tennis champion] Novak Djokovic said in an interview with the Financial Times that "I can carry on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball." The interviewer replied in surprise: "Are there really players who don't like hitting the ball?" Djokovic answered, "Oh yes. There are people out there who don't have the right motivation. You don't need to talk to them. I can see it." If you can find the thing you do for its own sake, the compulsive piece of your process, and dial that up and up, beyond the imaginary ceiling for that activity you may be creating, my experience is the world comes to you for that thing and you massively outperform the others who don't actually like hitting that particular ball. I think the rest of career advice is commentary on this essential truth.

Letter to a Friend Who May Start a New Investment Platform​

[janefriedman]

Everyone’s dealing with problems they don’t advertise, at least until you get to know them well. Keep that in mind and you become more forgiving – to yourself and others.

Morgan Housel

[janefriedman]

It’s not uncommon in writing classes to study great works of fiction, to take them apart and see how they’re made, even to transcribe them verbatim as a way of absorbing the essence of a master’s style. I’m not disposed to label all of that as valueless, but I’m convinced you can learn far more, and far more easily, from bad work than from good. The very best writing is seamless; you can see that it’s good, but you can’t tell why, or what the author did to make it work so well. It’s easier by far to see what’s wrong with bad writing, and how it got that way.

Lawrence Block

[janefriedman]

When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.

Joseph Campbell

[janefriedman]

I used to be embarrassed because I was just a comic-book writer while other people were building bridges or going on to medical careers. And then I began to realize: entertainment is one of the most important things in people's lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you're able to entertain people, you're doing a good thing.

Stan Lee

[janefriedman]

Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler Ross on how beautiful people are made

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." Source: Death: The Final Stage of Growth

[janefriedman]

[janefriedman]

Poet David Whyte on friendship

"The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life: a diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be there when our armored personalities run into the inevitable natural disasters and vulnerabilities found in even the most average existence.

...

The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness ... to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone."

Source: Consolations​

[janefriedman]

Let’s face it … people and events are going to continue to both hurt and  disappoint you. Among the people will be those you most love, as well as  those you least know. Seldom is it their intent to purposely hurt you,  but rather, a variety of situations mostly beyond your control will  cause them to act, speak, or think in ways which can have an adverse  effect upon you, your present feelings and emotions, and the way your  life upholds. It has been this way through six thousand years of  recorded history, and your hurt or grief is not the first time a human  has been deeply hurt by the inappropriate actions of another. The  only way to avoid being touched by life–the good as well as the  bad–is to withdraw from society, and even then you will disappoint  yourself, and your imagining about what is going on out there will haunt  you and hurt you. Knowing this, there is but one solution that will  support you when people and events hurt you, and that is to learn to  work harder on your personal growth than anything else. Since you cannot  control the weather, or the traffic, or the one you love, or your  neighbors, or your boss, then you must learn to control you … the one  whose response to the difficulties of life really counts.

The Seasons of Life by Jim Rohn

[janefriedman]

You're never going to achieve mastery buying the brand of notepad or pencil used by a master. And if you haven't already created an abundance of new work, I wouldn't dial up R. Ryder & Co. for custom stationery of any kind. But be mindful about your work. Notice the things that work well about your setup and the areas that introduce friction. Simply putting your reference materials a little closer to your desk or adjusting the tilt of your monitor can make a difference, even if that difference amounts to an absence of neck pain at the end of a session. When it comes to the creative work that sustains you, getting it right is worth at least a little fuss.

David Moldawer

[janefriedman]

Another thing about being a writer. I once read a letter where Cheryl Strayed kindly pointed out  to a young writer the distinction between writing and publishing. Her implication was that we focus too much on the latter and not enough on the former. It’s true for most things. Amateurs focus on outcomes more than process. The more professional you get, the less you care about results. It seems paradoxical but it’s true. You still get results, but that’s because you know that the systems and process are reliable. You trust them with your life.

Ryan Holiday

[janefriedman]

When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response. You tend to just know whether, say, leaving or remaining in a relationship or a job, though it might bring short-term comfort, would mean cheating yourself of growth. (Relatedly, don’t worry about burning bridges: irreversible decisions tend to be more satisfying, because now there’s only one direction to travel – forward into whatever choice you made.)

Oliver Burkeman

[janefriedman]

Please let’s stop perpetuating the myth that legacy journalism failed because tech “took all the money” or whatever. Legacy journalism “broke” because of private equity, ridiculous expectations for profit margins, shitty business models that prioritized advertisers, wealth hoarding, unnecessary consolidation, unchecked sexism and racism, near-ritual abuse of employees, and ignoring the general public for 30+ years. Tech has problems, but killing journalism isn’t one of them.

Deborah Carver

[janefriedman]

Maybe you’ve had this experience: You throw a bay leaf into a broth, and it doesn’t do anything. Then you throw the rest of the bay leaves you bought into the broth, too, because you only bought them for this, and you’ll be damned if you don’t taste a bay leaf, and they don’t do anything, either. What could be the cause of this? I’ll tell you. Bay leaves are bullshit.

The Vast Bay Leaf Conspiracy