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Deep Dive with Ali AbdaalDeep Dive with Ali Abdaal

Originality, Writing and Career Fulfilment with Brandon Sanderson

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Brandon SandersonguestAli Abdaalhost
May 20, 202252mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 4:09

    Intro and Brandon's Unusual Daily Schedule

    1. BS

      The way that human creativity works is recombination. What we remix, that's what we're really good at. Uh, we don't come up with a new wholesale creature. We put a horn on a horse and look at that, that's cool. That's like how we create, just k- on a fundamental level. We don't imagine a color that we've never seen. Our brains aren't equipped for that. Train yourself to look at something you love and break it down to why you love it on a fundamental level, and then rebuild it into something that is your own.

    2. AA

      Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive. If you're new here, my name is Ali, and in each episode I speak to entrepreneurs, authors, creators, and other inspiring people about how they got to where they are, and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them that we can apply on our shared journey of trying to live our best lives. This episode is a special episode, which is appearing during the off-season between season two and three of the podcast, and this is actually an interview I did way back in 2020 during lockdown with my favorite author of all time, Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson writes absolutely incredible, freaking incredible fantasy books, including the Mistborn Series, which is an absolute banger, The Stormlight Archive series, which is even more of a banger, and he had the immense honor and privilege of completing Robert Jordan's incredible series, The Wheel of Time, and wrote the final three books in that series, and those were absolute bangers as well. Brandon's output is just absolutely insane. He writes books almost faster than we the fans can actually read them. But his career trajectory's quite interesting, because he actually wrote 13 books before he got recognized and started to actually make it big. Anyway, in the conversation we discuss a bunch of things, including how he kept his writing thing going while holding a full-time day job to pay the bills, even when his work wasn't being recognized. We talk a little bit about the business of publishing books, and about the idea of originality, and we also talk about how we can make the work that we have to do more fun. So I really hope you enjoy this interview with Brandon Sanderson. Today I am absolutely delighted to be joined by my favorite author of all time, Brandon Sanderson. Brandon, thank you so much for coming on. Welcome to the show.

    3. BS

      Thank you for having me. Sorry to make you, uh, change around how you work.

    4. AA

      [laughs]

    5. BS

      Over here it's, it's quite late, so we found a time that is fine for both of us, but perfect for neither, I suspect.

    6. AA

      It's actually been pretty good for me. This is a, a good reason to get me out of bed in the morning. I always try and schedule calls at like 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning just to force me out of bed, and this is like [laughs] yeah, the, the perfect time for that.

    7. BS

      I've been known to do the same thing, honestly. Different times, as we might talk about, it's not 8:00 or 9:00 that I'm scheduling them, but I do schedule them to give myself a deadline sometimes.

    8. AA

      Yeah, so on that note, you're very much... Like, you've got a very unusual sleep schedule. What does your, what does your day usually look like? [laughs]

    9. BS

      So my day, I will get up a lot of times around 1:00. My, I've found that two sessions of work are better for me than one long one. About a four-hour session of writing is really good for me. It's this odd thing where, I think this is similar actually to a lot of work, but you got this like hour of spin-up time, and near the end you're starting to spin down and run out of steam. And if I try to push that too long, either one of those sides will stretch out, and what I'm really looking for is that time in the middle that's really effective. And, and I've found for me about four hours gives me a good two hours of really efficient writing time in the middle. And so I try to schedule my life around having two of those. And I have always been a bit of a night owl. I find it peaceful to work at night. There are l- fewer distractions. I spent a lot of my early career before I broke in working a graveyard shift at a hotel. And so I will stop my work at 5:00, uh, shower for the day, get ready, this is 5:00 PM, and then hang out with my family and things until around 10:00, go back to work at 10:00, and write from about 10:00 until 2:00. Uh, and then 2:00 until 4:00 tends to be just whatever I want to do, goof-off time, so to speak. Whatever I feel like doing at the time. And that works really well for me. It gives me enough time just by myself doing some sort of hobby or something, but it doesn't overload on it, and it makes sure that each of those writing sessions is pretty effective. Uh, so I've been doing this pretty consistently since I broke in. Uh, and before that I was doing one writing session at night during the graveyard shift, and the day session was, uh, going to school or things like that.

  2. 4:09 – 6:33

    Becoming a Writer Late and Writing 13 Books Before Selling

    1. AA

      Nice. So if we go all the way back, when did you realize that you wanted to be a writer? [laughs]

    2. BS

      Uh, I got to it a little late.

    3. AA

      Mm.

    4. BS

      Um, later than a lot of people. You talk to novelists and they'll say, "Oh, I started, uh, my first concept was in the womb."

    5. AA

      [laughs]

    6. BS

      "And by the time I was two I was working on my first piece of, uh, poetry," or whatever. I discovered books when I was a teenager. I was 14. I had a good teacher who got me into reading, and I found something in books that I'd been missing in my life without some sort of connection, specifically to fantasy and science fiction. There was something about the wonder, the world building, mixed with interesting concepts and philosophy, and just the whole package really grabbed me. And even as young as like 14 I'm like, "Man, I wonder if I could do this." I don't think I really started giving it a shot and considering it, like, professionally until I was 17 or so. And I finished my first novel, the first thing I got done, I was 22. And so I count 22, that, that age, that's when it's like, "All right. I've decided I've moved my major from chemistry to English, and I am just going to throw my hat in the ring and do my best to become a writer."

    7. AA

      Nice. And am I right in saying that, that you wrote 13 books before one of them, one of them was sold?

    8. BS

      Yes, I did. I... Then for the next eight years or so, eight or nine years, uh, I wrote two books a year-ish on average for, yeah, I guess, so more around, uh, little less than two books a year, but you know what I mean. I eventually sold my first, let's see, I sold my first in 2003, and so I would've been 28. Uh, so it's a little less than eight years, more like six years. So it was about two books a year. I wrote 13 novels. I sold my sixth one right when I was just polishing up the 13th. That was 2003, that came out in 2005. So right around when I turned 30 is when my career officially began.

    9. AA

      Okay. And that was Elantris, was it?

    10. BS

      That was Elantris, yep.

    11. AA

      So during this, like, sort of s- six to eight-year period where you're writing on average two books a year and- You haven't h- you haven't sold any books yet, so you're not making any, any money off, off the writing itself. How did you keep yourself going that this is what I wanna do and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel? Like, what, what was the thought process back then?

  3. 6:33 – 10:08

    Writing as a Hobby You Love, Not Just a Career Bet

    1. BS

      Yeah. I often talk about one of the big moments in my career, happened before I had a career, and this is when I was writing those back novels, the 10 through 13, where I was starting to think everyone told me that this was a really hard job to do and that my chances were r- really slim. Which by the way, they are less slim than people will tell you. My experience has been that people who really dedicate themselves to the craft and things, it's more like 1 out of 20 or 30 who end up going on to have a career, as opposed to 1 out of a million like everyone told me. But if you went to med school and they said, "Yeah, you're gonna go through all of med school and you're gonna have a 1 out of 20 chance of becoming a doctor" I think maybe you would have re-thought, uh, some of what you were doing. It's still a difficult job to get to work 'cause it's in entertainment, but it's not as crazy difficult as people pretend it is. But that's different conversation. During those years, I'm like, "Okay, maybe I'm one of the 19 who really enjoys this but is just not writing things that match the market really well, and maybe I will not ever have a career." And I came to the decision that I had to be okay with that, that writing was something I did because first and foremost I really loved doing it, and I thought think it makes me a better, made me a better person. I use the, the metaphor of, of basketball actually to, to mix metaphors, uh, a little bit between writing and sports, but I have friends who go play basketball. We're in our 40s, none of us are going to the NBA. But I have friends that regularly they'll just go play basketball. Why? They enjoy it. It's good for them. It, it's really a great thing, and my publicist loves to go golfing. He is not going to end up on the PGA Tour, that's just, you know, not a thing that's going to happen in his life, but nobody asks him, "When are you gonna go pro?" But if you start writing a book, people will ask you, "When are you going to publish it? When will you monetize this thing?" And don't get me wrong, I think monetizing the thing that you're working on is totally a great idea, um, and maybe we'll talk more about that and things like that, but understand that if you want a stable career and you want to earn well, writing is not the thing to do. That's not the reason to do it. I, I've made this decision, I said, "You know what? If I hit, let's be aspirational, if I hit age 99 and I have written 100 novels that have not been published, that's okay. You know what? I'm a bigger success than if I give up now because I'm giving up on something that I truly love and maybe have to scale back, get a, get a real job, quote-unquote." I was in grad school at the time. "Get a real job, have a real career, find something that I enjoy, and writing becomes my hobby," and I was okay with that. I didn't want that to happen, but I was okay with it. I was willing to take that and go with it, and that was a big important sort of moment for me, realizing that I legitimately just enjoyed doing this, it was extremely fulfilling, and I was gonna keep going. And for me, I got lucky, right? I'm the 1 out of 20. What I happened to write matches the market really well, I have some natural talent I've been able to expand upon, and I was in the right place at the right time for a number of publishing opportunities, and my career has really worked out. I have friends though who they're also the 1 out of 20. They aren't bestsellers, but they've made a career out of writing and, uh, they enjoy it just as much. And so it's... You don't have to become astronomically successful to have a career, but you do have to be willing to take that risk that maybe you won't have a career and this will be your hobby, and just a dedicated hobby that is a big part of your self-identity most likely for most writers.

  4. 10:08 – 14:41

    Finding Fulfilment Without an All-Consuming Passion

    1. AA

      Yeah, so it's, as part of this equation of, you know, hel- help- helping us figure out what to d- what to do with our lives [laughs] in a way, it, it, it seems like there's broadly like two strands of it. There's one strand which is a find, find something that you enjoy and do it, and then there's another strand which is, like, find enjoyment in the things that you're doing. And it sounds like for you writing, writing was that thing of you found something you were passionate about and you found that you, that you enjoyed it as well. Do you have any thoughts or advice for people who are in that position where they're like, "I'm not really sure what I'm passionate about"? Like, what... How do you think about that?

    2. BS

      Yeah. It is hard in some ways because I've noticed this in some of my friends, uh, some of my roommates in college and things like this, where I had this all-consuming passion and I was going for broke. If I didn't end up selling, my fallback jobs were not the same sort of caliber, right? It's I end up becoming an insurance salesman or something. I, I couldn't really have even become a professor because becoming, at least in the States, uh, an English professor requires certain hoops to jump through for PhDs and things that I just was not doing in grad school. I wasn't working on the, the papers and the journals and all of this stuff. And so I was all in on this, and I had a roommate who, one, at one point told me, "Brandon, not all of us are like that. I, I do not have an all-consuming passion. I want to find a job, I want to enjoy it, and then I wanna come home and play video games." And that is still how he is. He, he's in my writing group. And I basically I was myopic early before in my pre-published years 'cause I had this everyone must have this all-consuming passion sort of thing, which I just don't think is true. I think there are a lot of very fulfilling jobs out there, and in fact, one of the things that I often say to people is, "If you are a writer, if you really like writing, programming and writing feel very similar." In fact, I had to stop taking... I took a programming class in college, and at after it, I'm like, "I can never take another one of these," because that semester was the hardest I ever had writing, 'cause I would do my homework, and then I'd feel like I'd already written for the day when I'd been coding, and it would leave me mentally exhausted, and most of my other classes use a different part of my brain. Um- Coding is basically writing. It's the same sort of thing. When you're writing a novel, you are problem-solving how to achieve these things you want to, these results you want to get out, and so the output is reader investment and emotion rather than the outputs that you might have for the object you're pr- you're coding or something like this. But I think that you can, um, humans are... There are things that drive us. One is creativity, being able to make something, but another is serving people. I actually think the best... I had a lot of fun working a graveyard shift at the hotel, being able to be the person that at night when somebody needed something at the hotel, I just got it for them. I made them happy. I didn't have to sell a single thing, 'cause no one was coming in and buying rooms. I was just there to make their experience better, and I found that wildly fulfilling. It's shockingly fulfilling for me. Now, of course, I was writing at the same time. I'm at the front desk typing away, interrupted to go get somebody something they need, and so it was okay. It was a good match of the two things. But I think that acknowledging what it is that, that human beings generally find fulfilling, finding out what it is you find fulfilling. Is it finding a need and fulfilling it? Is it being able to be creative? Is it problem-solving? You can find these general groupings of things that you happen to find satisfying and fulfilling, and you can then find a whole bunch of different careers and things that, that target in that, that grouping of yours. And just like writing and computer programming are very similar, there's a lot of things like that out there. And I often say try a bunch of different things. I wish that our college and profession building... How can I even phrase this? Uh, the way that we prepare people for the workplace, I wish it involved a lot more variety. I wish there were more opportunities for us to try different things out, t- try different jobs out, try different majors out, and really find what people find fulfilling in them, because if I hadn't had this teacher get me into reading, who knows what, would've happened with me? And I, everyone thought I was a reluctant reader, that I didn't like reading, when the truth was I just had not found the right books yet. It was the world-building in fantasy novels that made the difference, and then I became a huge reader, but before that, my p- teachers were saying to my parents, like, "He just doesn't like reading. He's just not a reader. Find a career for him that doesn't involve a lot of that."

    3. AA

      Hmm.

  5. 14:41 – 17:41

    Night Shifts, Graveyard Jobs and Chronotypes

    1. AA

      Yeah, it's so interesting how just the right person at the right place at the right time can completely change the trajectory of your life, [laughs] and I've definitely had that hap- happen a few times with me. It's interesting, this thing you say about, about the graveyard shifts at, at the hotel you were working at, 'cause, because that was basically exactly what I was doing on my night shifts at the hospital, [laughs] where I, I used to really enjoy night shifts because generally it's quite quiet. You don't usually have new patients coming in the door, and it's normally just a case of a nurse rings you up or bleeps you and wants something prescribed for their patients. And because the hospital I was working at had, like, electronic prescribing, I could sit at the front desk in their plushy kinda chairs with two computer screens in front of me, one that had the electronic health record and the other one that had, like, a document open where I was planning my YouTube videos. And I'd get a call, I'd prescribe the thing, or occasionally go see a patient. I got so much, like, non-doctor stuff done during those shifts, so I used to really enjoy night shifts, and all my friends used to be like, "Oh, my God."

    2. BS

      Yeah, I-

    3. AA

      [laughs] Yeah

    4. BS

      ... went and found one on purpose. I actually had known someone who worked as a s- security guard, and was like, "Wow, I get to read all kinds of books at night. It's great." And I thought, "I'm a night owl. I should find a job like that." And I went and tried to actively to find one, and I was very upfront with the people at the hotel. I said, "I'm doing this because I wanna spend, I wanna have some free time at work to work on my writing." They're like, "Great. The last guy we had fell asleep on the couch." This doesn't work for everyone, by the way. Those who are listening are like, "Ooh, I'm gonna go become a graveyard shift," be aware that larger hotels generally have things they expect the night auditors to do. They don't let you sit at the desk and not do stuff. You're, like, folding towels or things like that. I found a job, luckily they didn't do that, but also a lot of people just aren't productive during those hours. I've had a friend who wanted to become a writer who went and got a job at the same place that I had worked, and it was a disaster. It was several months of him trying to adjust his schedule to do the Brandon shift, and it not working at all. And it just happened that was how I'd worked since high school. I had actually, generally in high school I was staying up late, going to sleep for four hours, going to school, coming home, and sleeping for another four hours and then getting up, which was, uh, an odd schedule for a high school student and I don't recommend it, but I was basically already doing this.

    5. AA

      Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This is something I, I'm starting to look into as well, this idea of everyone has their own, how everyone has a specific chronotype in terms of are you a night owl, are you an early bird and, and, and so on. And so I've got some friends who are really into sports medicine where they analyze athletes to figure out their optimum performance. So I'm gonna try and get one of them on, on my YouTube channel so I can have this analysis done for free. [laughs]

    6. BS

      I find that-

    7. AA

      Yeah

    8. BS

      ... all really interesting, 'cause I don't think we really know yet. Like, it seems all very speculative when I read about it. All I know is that I generally keep falling into the same sleep schedule. I tried to get off of it when I was first married, and my wife was not thrilled by the idea of me going to bed at 4:00 or 5:00 and her getting up at 6:00 for school. For a few months I, I tried my best, and it was just miserable. I did not adjust, and eventually she's like, "Okay, just go back to your schedule. This is miserable for both of us."

    9. AA

      Nice. [laughs]

  6. 17:41 – 21:26

    Originality, Recombination and Thinking Like a Chef

    1. AA

      So one book I have on, on my desk at all times is Austin Kleon's Steal Like An Artist. I don't know if you've come across it. How do you think about, like, other fantasy writers and, like, getting inspiration from them and, and also vice versa? Like, you're such a huge name in fantasy that lots of people are probably now massively inspired by you. So how do you think about that in terms of, like, ideas and collaboration and plagiarism and all, all, all that kind of stuff?

    2. BS

      So I think in general, authors worry a little too much about coming off as derivative and... Now, your early books are gonna feel really derivative. That does happen. Like, my first unpublished book feels very derivative. This is why we don't publish our first books, and it's really okay. I am never going to fear, like, I, I'm not one that's afraid of being plagiarized, right? Like- You- authors develop their own voices and their own ways of doing things, and if you give two authors the same concept, they will come up with wildly different books. And I think that really the way that human creativity works is recombination. We remix. That's what we're really good at. We don't, uh, we don't come up with a new wholesale creature. We put a horn on a horse, and look at that, that's cool. That's like how we create just on a fundamental letter- level. We don't imagine a color that we've never seen. Our brains aren't equipped for that. What we can do is we can imagine something that is usually one color with a different color and kind of play with that, and theme, and things like that. I do think that you do have to be worried about, um, a, a little bit about being derivative, but not terribly much. In my class with my students, I talk about the difference between what I call a chef and a cook. I am a cook when it comes to actual food. This means you give me a recipe, and I can follow it and generally get the thing that I'm supposed to be making. But if I do something wrong or if I haven't accounted for something, I have no idea how to fix it. If the recipe just doesn't turn out, I'll have just no clue. Uh, a chef would be able to say, "Oh, you're at a different elevation. That causes this effect. That's why this bake turned out differently. You need to do this thing and this and, and tweak this," or, "Your butter was melted, and it was too melty, and so you got this result." As a writer, I encourage, um, my students to try to think of themselves like chefs rather than cooks, which is train yourself to look at something you love and break it down to why you love it on a fundamental level and then rebuild it into something that is your own, and I think that's just a, a very useful skill for creators to have. And this is where you start to make these connections where you're like, wow, a buddy cop movie and a co- and a, um, romantic comedy often have the same plot structure. Why is that? Why? What are we loving about these things? How can I use an element from that? What is a heist? I love heist movies. Can I create... And you end up with something really cool like Inception, which is a heist but unlike any you've ever seen. It follows the heist beats really well, but it still feels wholly original because Christopher Nolan and his brother have broken this thing down and looked at what they really love about what makes a heist work, and then they have created their own version of it that does something new and original. If you can learn to do that, if you can learn to, to boil it down to what you love and take that core element and build something new around it, you will be a successful storyteller, I am convinced.

    3. AA

      Yeah, it's, it's exactly the same with, with, for example, YouTube as well. Like, I, I teach a lot of people how to, how to do well on YouTube, and it really is this case of look at other people that you like the videos of, figure it out, figure out what it is about those things that you like, and then think about incorporating those into your thing, into your own videos, and not worrying too much about, like, originality at the start because i- in your quest to be like someone else that you like, you'll end up finding your own voice and kind of doing it your own way.

  7. 21:26 – 22:31

    Bill Wurtz and How One Creator Sparks a Genre

    1. BS

      Yeah. Uh, I actually kind of noticed this in YouTube. I, I like, I like the kind of infotainment YouTube quite a bit, and the video essays and things like that. And years ago, Bill Wurtz, uh, dropped a kind of history of Japan video, and then it was wildly successful. It's this awesome piece of media. It's really innovative and interesting, and then he just basically didn't do anything more like that. Now five, seven years later, wherever we are now, there's like entire channels that are based around these kind of comedic retelling of factual events that kind of owe their DNA to Bill Wurtz doing this thing and it being really successful, and then just he wants to go off and make music, and so he does that instead. And they all feel different, they all feel original, and they're all filling this hole that n- e- nobody knew that they wanted, but they did, and it's been fun to really watch that. And a few of them even acknowledge, "Hey, I watched this Bill Wurtz video. No one was making these things, so now I am, I'm doing it." And a lot of these things have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and are making really interesting original content, all because one person made this thing that had such an effect on the market, so to speak, the industry.

  8. 22:31 – 27:56

    Making Yourself Do the Work: Hacking Your Motivation

    1. AA

      So changing gears a little bit, uh, we talked a bit earlier about the idea of finding something that you're passionate about and, and going for that, and, and you were lucky in a way because you found this thing, writing, that you were super passionate about. I'd love to get your thoughts on the other side of the equation, which is finding joy in the things that we're doing. And there was a quote from one of your, one of... I think from one of your classes-

    2. BS

      Right

    3. AA

      ... where you said, "Success is... Success involves making yourself do the things you want to have done." I wonder if you can just riff on that for a little bit. [laughs]

    4. BS

      Yeah, I totally can. This is kind of a, a hobby horse of mine, so to speak, a personal philosophy, if you will. I truly enjoy writing, but it is also still work, and there are parts of it I like less than other parts, and the part I like the most is writing the end and then letting people read the book.

    5. AA

      Mm.

    6. BS

      The experience of knowing people now get to read this thing that I've created, that's just, that's the top. That's what I want to do. But to get there, I need to spend between 6 and 18 months working on a story in a dedicated, very slow and steady way in order to have this thing that I can show to people. And some of those days I'm really gonna love working on it, and on most of those days I'm going to be, like, once I get into it, I'm really enjoying it, but I have to force myself to start working. As much as I enjoy writing, playing another game of Civilization would probably be more pure dopamine hit than working on my books. I looked at my career and how I made myself do stuff. Early in my career, before I got published, it was, uh, a stick instead of a carrot. I saw, I joked that I saw a phantom cubicle chasing me, and if I didn't write my books, I was going to have to let it capture me, um, and spit me out as a salesman or something like that. But very quickly that stopped being a good motivation for me, and what started working was me realizing I love watching numbers count up on a spreadsheet, and the simple fact of keeping track of my daily word count would make me more likely to write the next day, because I liked seeing myself inch closer and closer to that goal of finishing something. And finishing it was so satisfying that I was able to kind of defer that and be like, each day I have finished something, and the, the percentage counts up, and I'm that much closer to being finished. And that works really well for me. We talk about gamification. That's a bit of a experience bar gamification. At times in my life, a carrot has worked also. It stopped working as soon as I got even a little bit of success. Early, before I... W- when I was newer and younger, I could be like, I... My, my nerd hobby is Magic: The Gathering, and I could be like, "I can open a pack of Magic cards if I finish my work for whatever, this week or whatever. I, I can open up one of these packs and look at my new cards." Once I achieved s- success to the point that a pack of Magic cards was no longer, like, I could buy 100 packs each day and it wouldn't noticeably affect my bank account, the, the carrot stopped being effective for me. And fortunately, I had this whole structure in place by then, once it became a career, 'cause, you know- Earlier in my career, one of the things that, uh, was, is interesting is that my writing time was in many ways more precious because I only had those few hours at night, and during the day I wouldn't be able to write. Too much school going on, homework, all of these things. And so at, when midnight rolled around at, uh, work at the hotel and I had that time to write, that was precious time to me. And before I got that job, I even, it was even more precious 'cause I couldn't write at work, and so I'd have, like, an hour a week or things like this where it's just like, this time is my golden time, and I cherished it. It became harder to write when I got more time in some ways, because suddenly writing time was not a precious commodity in the same way. I talk about learning to hack your brain. Find out what motivates you on a day-to-day basis, and figure out how your brain works and the things you can do kind of to trick yourself into doing what you want to have done, because if you do this the right way, the days become very satisfying. You'll notice, like for me, if I get my word count and then I get to go play a video game for a couple of hours, and I've also spent three hours with my kids playing their games or doing things with them, and a couple hours with my wife doing what, what she wants to do, when I retire for the day, I just feel incredibly fulfilled, right? Like, I've got good family time, I've gotten so much of my work done 'cause I've made myself do it. I even had a few hours just to goof off, and recently it was playing Bowser's Fury on the Switch. And I'm like, "Hey, my kid bought this. Let's play an old school Mario game." And it's just, it's a really li- good balance for me. Other people work in different ways. There are people who that binging is better. There are binge writers who are like, "I need three months to write a book and to do nothing else during that time, and then I spend the other nine months of the year just gearing up for the next book, doing some revisions and, and things like this." That's not me. Slow and steady, make every day satisfying. Don't put off to be like, "I'll be happy in the future." Be happy now by making a good work-life balance and spending time with family, and what, it is just pretty wonderful. I highly recommend getting to a place in your life where you are feeling like that when you go to bed each day.

    7. AA

      Yeah. [laughs] This is, it's kinda funny 'cause often if I'm interviewed on a podcast or something and I'm talking about this topic, the line that I just land on is journey before destination, [laughs] and I think that's just such a good, like, mantra for life, and it seems like you've really, you're really living that yourself. [laughs]

  9. 27:56 – 34:32

    Artists' Work Ethic, Dysfunction and Fair Ownership at Work

    1. BS

      Yeah, a lot of, uh, artists and writers I know, they do not have a good balance in life, and people often come to me and they're like, "Why are you so prolific?" And I'm really not. If you look back at the highly profi- prolific writers during the pulp days when it was if they didn't turn in their pages, they got paid by the word, so they turned in their pages, and the pay was not good. These people were doing way more than... But I feel like we, uh, artists just don't tend to have good structures in life built around helping them get to, uh, product, productive, effective long-term productivity that other businesses do. They understand this and there's, like, this entire culture at places like Google centered around, let's make sure that you remain productive, A, for a long time. And writers have to be self-motivated. No one's there, um, telling you, "Do your work." You don't have a lot of external motivation. My, my roommate in college, Tom, he picked his major by looking at which majors earn the most with only a four-year degree. He didn't wanna go to professional, uh, school or to get an advanced degree. What would be the highest earning? And at that time at the school he w- we went to, it was chemical engineering, so he just picked that, and they had a very rigid schedule for four years if you wanted to be a chemical engineer. Like, every class was picked for you, and you were taking these classes, I assume you have maybe had some of this in your life where it's like you try really hard to get a 65% on the test because that's, you know, that's gonna be a B. You're gonna be fine. Where I'm over here in English, where we're dancing through fields and flowers and talking about our feelings and reading Jane Austen, and nobody is saying, "Here's what you do to actually turn into an author." They're all just talking about our feelings, and if you get 65 on a test then you're just, like, mortified. Um, like, that's just not okay, and these two different worlds couldn't be more opposite. And I think a lot of artists are in this kind of thing, particularly writers, because even in the visual arts you end up with people who can counsel more, but s- so few people understand how to make a living as a writer that you end up with all these people just bumbling through it on their own, and it's no wonder that they don't have, you know, good work-life balance and things like this, 'cause, uh, how do you build habits like this when no one talks about it? When everyone says, "What you do is you feel your inner muse, and then when your inner muse speaks to you, you let it out and this color flows onto the page. That's how you write a book." And you sit in these classes and you're like, "Okay, but then what?" Anyway, I, I feel like writing has a lot of dysfunctional people who are, are function... They, they're good, they're trying very hard, but their lives, through no fault of their own, have become very dysfunctional.

    2. AA

      Mm. Yeah, there's a quote that I think, a- again, from one of your, one of your YouTube videos, uh, which was, which was probably from one of your, one of your classes, which is that you, you think of yourself as an artist with the work ethic of an accountant. [laughs] Is, is that fair to say?

    3. BS

      Yeah. Yeah, that, my mom was an accountant before she retired, and she, she taught me good work ethic when I was young. And she doesn't understand fantasy novels. She, she reads my books 'cause they're mine, but she, uh, she trained me in a really solid work ethic. Like, I had a job when I was 14 and, uh, it was paper route, right? Like, a, a little self-employed thing, and there were, she was setting up these kind of ways that I go about it, how I account it. I had to account it myself, kid of an accountant, and I applied a lot of that to becoming a writer because I am more a head in the clouds type person, um, than I am naturally an accountant. But I had that really good training as a kid, and it has served me very well.

    4. AA

      Yeah, I think for a lot of people it's, uh, a bit, like, and like for, for all of us it's really th- this balance of feel like, how can we make, like, how can we make the stuff that we're doing more fun so that we're, we, we actually do it? And it, and it, w- in, in a way it does need us to- ... talk ourselves into doing it. There's a lot of times where I can't be bothered to film a YouTube video, but I do it anyway, and then once I get started I'm like, "Oh, I'm ... This is fun," 'cause I, I like the sound of my own voice. And then when I'm done with it, I'm like, "Oh, this is great, and I've ju- I've just done another video." And I'm so glad I forced myself to do it at that, in that early stage. And I think if you fall off at that early stage, then things don't necessarily work.

    5. BS

      Yeah. Yeah, totally. And this is so important in doing s- any sort of self-motivated, artistic, uh, or creative pursuit, like YouTube. Now, we could talk for hours, I don't wanna go down this path, but I do think there are some dysfunctional things about the way that we treat work in society, and the way that we ... Like, I worry a lot about what we do to doctors to be relevant. There's this, this sense that, I don't know how it is where you live, but over here it's like your first 10 years are gonna be miserable, but then life will be good after that. Uh, you're gonna work these in, in incredible shifts. And we have to make the doctors feel pain to make sure that they deserve then having a higher than standard, uh, living wage later on. I just think that's a terrible idea. I think it's an awful thing to be training people. I think it's awful, uh, to be training people that if they wanna become attorneys, that they're gonna have to go through hell in order to end up being an attorney. And that's the way we gate keep who gets to become our attorneys, is the people that are willing to suffer through hell. I think it's just terrible. And I also c- think that in general business practices, making ... One of the things that makes us wanna work is ownership, and I don't know that people are proportionately rewarded for their work in a lot of businesses. And it's, it's important to me, for instance, that my kind of full-time employees and partners, they have, you know, a percentage of what I make a- as a bonus every year. And even though it's smaller, it's real, and they are part of this. When my art director is working on a book, you know, he's pouring his creative energy into making this book. It is his passion, as much as it is mine, even though I, I've done the bulk of the words. Like, he is lending his true genuine artistic talent to doing the maps and the symbols and the things. Uh, this is Isaac Stewart. He deserves a cut of that, not just a salary in my opinion. And I, I think that w- we disproportionately reward in our society based on where someone falls in a certain ladder and things like that.

    6. AA

      Mm.

    7. BS

      Uh, but that's a different conversation. But it's so hard to feel investment for something you're working on when they say, "You're part of our family", or things like this, which is very common in corporate speak over here, "But you don't get a cut of the profit. You're just part of our family. Aren't it, isn't it great we're a family?" And people need to be allowed ownership over the things that they create, because that is how, one of the reasons we feel fulfilled, is this thing that we have created, that we're part of, is making people's lives better in some way.

  10. 34:32 – 37:50

    How Brandon Shares Profits With His Team

    1. AA

      Yeah, absolutely. Just on that note, one thing I'm, one thing I'm curious about, because I've, I've been thinking about this for my team, who's helping me with the, kind of the YouTube and the business and stuff. Do you do the sort of percentage of profits overall from the business, or is it, like, on a per project basis, or like, how do you work this out for, for you and your team?

    2. BS

      So for my team, it is ... I, I basically have two baskets. The first basket is what I call my officers. These are the people who've been with me for a long time, they work for me full time, and they're involved basically in everything I'm doing to some extent or another. And these people get a percentage off of the net that the company makes. Basically, w- it's what the company's gonna pay taxes on, or what I'm gonna pay taxes on, uh, since it actually just flows through to me the way the cor- company works. So what I pay taxes on, a percentage of that is a yearly bonus that is not counting their salary. I still pay them a salary going at market rate, and then there's this on top of it.

    3. AA

      Nice.

    4. BS

      The other basket is the people who work on my store, and these are the people that are doing the online orders, our Kickstarter, and things like that. And their bonuses are based on store revenue directly, rather than the whole books revenue. And then, so we have those two different baskets for people. And when I hired my very first employee, this is Peter Ahlstrom, he's my editorial director, and he had been for years working with me, um, just for free as a friend, reading my books and offering feedback. And his feedback was just fantastic. He eventually became a professional editor working at Tokyo Pop, bringing manga over to the US and, and things like that. And I hired him and I said, "I wanna give you a percent. Right now the business is not huge. I hope that this someday will be worth lots, but it's important to me that, that your creative energy..." Because I feel that accountants are creative, I feel that, that editors are creative. Like, it's a different kind of creativity. My mom always says, "I'm not creative at all." I'm like, "The way that you have set up your life is super creative." And right from the get-go I said, "I think this is important. I feel like I wouldn't wanna be involved in something unless I was seeing part ownership to me."

    5. AA

      Mm.

    6. BS

      And that percentage is, is actually theirs to pass on to their descendants. Like, it's not just a wage working for me, it is like they have built with me this business, and a piece of it is theirs. And, uh, that's ... Every time I've gone ... Usually it takes a few years of someone working here before I invite them on as an officer and things like that. But it is the way that I approach my business, and you know what? I think it is the moral way. And I'm not saying that there aren't other businesses that do this. They do this with stock in a lot of companies. It, it's totally, it totally happens. I just feel like it doesn't happen on the extent that perhaps it should. It's like you have to fight for these things as an, as a worker, rather than it being offered directly to you. I don't like this sort of community where people don't talk about their salaries, and corporations try to get what, whatever they can out of the people working for them. This is just not a good way to have productive, fulfilled people working at the company. And there's my diatribe, diatribe out.

    7. AA

      [laughs]

    8. BS

      I basically barely know what I'm talking about. I have, like, you know, 20 employees. What do I know about large scale corporate, uh, sort of things? But as a small business owner, these are my philosophies.

    9. AA

      I know we're on the hour, but if, if you've got a few momen- more minutes I've, I've got a few more questions from the chat-

    10. BS

      Yeah

    11. AA

      ... and some stuff I'd, I'd love to ask you. Uh-

  11. 37:50 – 42:18

    Is Hitting the New York Times Bestseller List a Reasonable Goal?

    1. AA

      Okay, so with the book that I'm writing, I'm annoyingly looking at the goal of hitting the New York Times bestseller list. I f- I feel dirty admitting it, because loads of authors I've s- that, that, that I've seen interviews would say th- there's a l- a lot of baggage a- associated with having the goal of, "I want a N- a New York Times bestseller." W- what was that like for you hitting the list, and is it, do you think it's a reasonable-

    2. BS

      Yeah

    3. AA

      ... goal for someone like me to, to, to have in my sights, or should I... Because I feel like it conflicts with the journey before destination, which has become one of my, one of my mantras for life.

    4. BS

      I don't think it is a bad goal for you to have, and I'll tell you why. Journey before destination doesn't mean don't think about the destination. Goals of where we want to get, yes, you need to enjoy the process of writing the book or, or you'll never get to that destination, but the goal is to have a finished book. There is a goal there. And for a lot of new authors, I would say, don't have hitting the list as a goal on your first book, because you can't control that. But you can. You have an audience, you're already established, you're doing a nonfiction book tied into what you act- you do on your YouTube channel. Uh, this is a very reasonable goal. In fact, I think it is well within, um, the means, and it is something that can help you to make the decisions during the journey toward what you want to accomplish. And understanding the list and how it happens and things like that is handy i- in this regard. Yeah, hitting the list the first time was very, it was a very gratifying moment, because once you hit the list once, you are a bestseller for life. You have been a best seller, and that's really cool. The kind of companion to that, though, is that hitting the list is a different thing than a lot of people think it is. Books don't generally sell as many copies, particularly during the what we call the midlist or the, the high, uh, the low bestsellers or the high midlist, than people think. So in fiction hardcover, to get the very bottom of the list in the years where I was, uh, breaking in, you needed about 2,000 copies in a week-

    5. AA

      Oh

    6. BS

      ... to get onto the list. That was your threshold. Because a very successful midlister would sell 20,000 copies total in its life in hardcover. That was considered really successful. Elantris sold 10,000. For a break- brand-new author, that was really good. In fact, uh, that's one of the, at least during that era, was one of the thresholds. If you were selling 10,000 copies in hardcover, you would never be dropped by your publisher, you would always have a career. That was a- considered a successful midlist book. You would probably even start hitting the bestseller lists. As your name g- g- grows, more people frontload, and the list is all about frontloading, right? You can have books that do very well, you know, they're selling 1,900 copies a week, and therefore never hitting the list, but they do it for 50 weeks and out- end up outselling the books that hit the list. List is a measure of momentum, not a measure of total sales. Having momentum, this is why it's totally valid that you would want to hit the list. I don't know what it is in nonfiction, by the way, and I don't know... It has changed over the years. The list is always undergoing these revolutions and things.

    7. AA

      Mm.

    8. BS

      When I broke in, there were 25 places on the New York Times bestseller list in fiction. I don't know if there are still 25 pl- places, and I hit, like, number 25 with 2,200 copies or something like that. It can vary. To get the top spot in fiction during a competitive month on the New York Times, you need probably 120,000 copies in a week, but this is weirdly m- changed by e-book plus hardcover. It used to just be hardcovers. Now they have a separate list that's e-books and hardcovers, but it doesn't count audiobooks, but this other list does count audiobooks and things like that. The New York Times list was really opaque for many years, and no one kind of knew how they were picking their books. And then the Nielsen ratings for books started happening and, at least in fiction, The New York Times list pretty much follows the actual sales numbers as recorded in the Nielsen ratings these days. It may be different in nonfiction. More shenanigans happen in nonfiction.

    9. AA

      Mm.

    10. BS

      There are more people who have platforms and know how to use them and also have means behind them to perhaps game the list a little bit. It's all ca- this is what your readers or your, your viewers should keep in mind and everyone should keep in mind. It is a marketing term. Bestseller is a marketing term, and it is used like a ma- marketing term. It is not a stamp of quality, but it is, when it's working right, a stamp of momentum that a book has.

    11. AA

      Okay. It's a reasonable goal to have, but enjoy the journey along the way.

    12. BS

      Enjoy the journey.

  12. 42:18 – 45:52

    Writing Tools and Handling Fan Theories

    1. AA

      We've got a lot of questions from the chat, and this is something I'm, I'm very curious about as well, changing gears. What is, uh, what's your, like, technology stack when it comes to writing? What are the tools that you use for this? [laughs]

    2. BS

      So I am fairly low-tech. Microsoft Word is my writing platform of choice. The only tool that I use that a lot of, uh, people don't use is I do have a wiki. It's a personal wiki. It's an open source software, uh, program called Wicked Pad, and it's for me and my team to keep track of continuity in the Cosmere books, and that's only inward facing. That's not outward facing. Fans can't go to that. But it is there. Uh, it's not even on the internet. It's hosted locally just for us, and that is, is really handy. I find the wiki way of thinking just, it's easy to look things up. It's easier than encyclopedia entries and whatnot, so.

    3. AA

      Hmm.

    4. BS

      Uh, I do recommend that, but I write the books in Microsoft Word. Pretty old school. I start on, start with word one and write to the end of the chapter, uh, sort of stuff, and then I usually have a notes file that's a separate file, and then a, an outline file that's a separate file, and then a c- what I call a floating outline. It's the short-term outline of the stuff I'm doing immediately next as a separate file.

    5. AA

      Okay. Again, shifting gears, p- purely out of my own curiosity, to, to what extent do you look at, like- 17th Shard people fa- fan theories about what's gonna happen in future books, and to what extent does that guide your decision-making about what's gonna happen in future books?

    6. BS

      Well, I don't spend a lot of time with that. I understand it. I was part of that for the Wheel of Time fandom. I went to those sites and things like that before I was i- in, long before I was involved, and I totally get it. I am happy those people are there. I like that they're making lots of interesting theories. But I have learned from... Let's just say I've, I've seen what other authors have done, and it's generally, I recommend against changing what you're going to do because people are theorizing in the right or wrong direction either way. And I have this thing that if you do your job well as a writer, that means that upcoming twists and turns are foreshadowed and nothing's completely out of nowhere, except for, you know, there's the occasional sort of thing that's supposed to be a surprise to the characters. An unexpected illness or death can happen in any book.

    7. AA

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    8. BS

      You don't have to necessarily foreshadow that. But m- plot twists and turns, in general, I am going to lay foundation for. Big world building surprises that might be surprises to the casual reader just will not be surprises to the, uh, to the entrenched reader. This kind of plays into my philosophy on world building. I, I have this thing I, I call fractal world building. I like world building where big picture, someone who is a casual fan who reads the book is able to see the big picture and understand it, and someone who wants to dig in deep, the, the closer they zoom... You know, a fractal gets more detailed the more you look at it. That's kind of one of the, the features. The more deta- detail you look at the world building, the more interesting things you find-

    9. AA

      Mm-hmm

    10. BS

      ... to explore and to talk about. So it's kind of this two-prong thing. Don't make it so obtuse that the casual fan is lost, but don't make it so, uh, simple and surface level that there's nowhere to dig. I mean, try to do both at once if you can. Very easy to understand on the large scale, very complex under the hood, so to speak. And because of this, I'm just not gonna surprise those people because I want them to figure it out. I want it to be there for them, and I've learned that it's madness to try to, to trick them just for the fact of, "Ha ha, you didn't expect that."

    11. AA

      [laughs]

    12. BS

      That's just not how I work. I don't think ultimately that's gonna create a satisfying series. It's like trading off the long-term satisfaction of your series for the short-term being able to punch someone in the face, um, and not have them see it coming.

  13. 45:52 – 52:20

    Productivity Tips: Outlining, Thursdays and Saying No

    1. AA

      So I wanna take soundbites from this chat and make it into, like, a, something s- suitably clickbaity, like in- interviewing the world's most productive writer or something like that. I wonder if you can just toss out a few other random productivity tips you have, because it would be useful to chop into the video [laughs] further.

    2. BS

      Okay.

    3. AA

      How, how are you so productive as a writer?

    4. BS

      Interesting productivity tips. Let's see what I got. I feel that writing-wise, knowing my destination is really important. I outline backward and I write forward, and I think this is very strong for me because I know where I'm going. I always have momentum 'cause I'm pushing towards something that I think is going to be really exciting. You have to make sure that each chapter can be somebody's favorite. This is one of the mantras of my editorial director. He says, "Don't write a chapter that can't p- conceivably be someone's favorite." Doesn't have to be everyone's favorite, but there should be something in every chapter that some reader's gonna be like, "I love this." Don't make any chapter the boring filler. Make sure that the boring filler is exciting and interesting in its own right, maybe just a different type of exciting. And I think that works in life as well. Make everything you're doing exciting and, uh, interesting to you in some way, even if it's not your favorite part of the process. I do not like revision very much. Revision is my least favorite part of the writing process. But one of the things I've been able to do to make myself excited about it is I create an outline for my revision. I really like the outlining process of books. It's one of my favorite parts, is this ex- exploration, this world building. So the fun of creating an outline for this is what my revision is going to accomplish, and this is what it's go- gonna look like when I'm done, gives me that same feel for the parts of it that I really love that makes the revisions more interesting to me because it's goal-based rather than just, oh man, I have this broken book I've gotta fix. Instead I've got, oh, I get to implement this new thing that's gonna make the book so much more interesting. Let's go and do this. That's gonna be more exciting. So I really enjoy doing that. One productivity tip I have for creative professionals that's worked very well for me is I try to make sure that all of my non-writing things are segregated into a single day. I have one day's work that I can spend on interviews, that I can spend on meetings, that I can spend on working on my class, for instance. All the things that are s- beside my career, doing YouTube videos, all of this, those all lie, fall on Thursdays for me, and I have a limited number of hours in a Thursday, and my whole team knows that those hours, that's all they're gonna get. We can't let that overflow, because it's very easy to let the non-productive things that are still important overshadow actually creating new content as a creative professional. You could spend forever on publicity. You could spend forever creating all of these things, doing all these interviews, and then stop writing books. And so for me, my life got better when I said, "I'm just gonna, like ripping off a Band-Aid, I'm gonna do all these things on the same day and I'm gonna limit it to these hours." And then now when something comes up that we need to do that we're like, "Oh, we totally need to do this. Well, the Thursday's full, so we'll schedule that for next Thursday," and we just have to tell the people, "Brandon's next hole in his schedule is that Thursday," and they deal with it. People are used to this in the business world. Another important thing to practice and learn as a creative professional is learning to say no. Very hard to say no. You want to do every publicity opportunity that arises. You want to say yes, um, when people write you emails that say, "Hey, can I take you out to dinner and pick your brain?" You just totally wanna say yes, because you know what? You had opportunities like that when you were breaking in, and you wanna pay this back to the community. Um, and that's a good instinct, but it's so easy to say yes To the point that you are unable to continue your... You can't say yes to everyone, and coming up with certain rules and criteria that allow you to say no is a, just a really good plan, that when something falls outside of that, you just say, "You know what? I'm gonna say no. They can't do it on a Thursday. I maybe just have to pass on this opportunity, as good as it would be, because I have too many things already to do on the Thursdays. I can't let it take my- my- my time on the other things." Um, I have to say, I have a blanket, I just say no to going out to dinner with fans now. I just can't do it anymore. I used to do it and try to help out, but I could be at a meal every hour of every day of the week. I could be signing books every hour of the day for years and not get through everyone's books. And so coming up with these rules and saying, "This is what we do." Uh, back before COVID, we had a, "Brandon can do one event a month. That's it." And if an event is already scheduled that month and someone comes to us and says, "We really want Brandon, can we do this?" And that month is scheduled, we just say, "I'm sorry, we can't do this, Brandon is booked that month." And we just go ahead and- and let that be our rule because there are times in my career, the Words of Radiance era that I've mentioned earlier, when I was starting to explode in popularity, this is where I first hit number one on the Times list, these rules have helped me quite a bit in keeping the focus on what I want to do most, which is write the books.

    5. AA

      Fantastic.

    6. BS

      There you go. Some sound bites.

    7. AA

      Amazing stuff. [laughs]

    8. BS

      Maybe. That's how I, the lens through which I see everything.

    9. AA

      Yeah, no, I've been finding that, like, basically all of your writing-specific YouTube videos are also very good just, like, general life advice, creator advice. It's- it's- it's always interesting. And thank you so much, this has been an absolute joy. Any final message you'd like to- to say to the people watching? [laughs]

    10. BS

      No. Enjoy it. Find a way to enjoy it. I think the way your philosophy of let's figure out how to make the things that you need to do more enjoyable is a really good philosophy to, in life to have.

    11. AA

      Amazing, and I will use that as the, uh, the- the- the quote, uh, [laughs] for the book. [laughs] All right. Thank you so much, Brandon. Thanks everyone for wa- for watching, and we'll see you, we'll see you next time. All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store, it really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode, that would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Episode duration: 52:20

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Transcript of episode 3U4QCamdLas

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