Latest / The Daily Writer / Most of Your Words Are Coal, Not Diamonds

Transcript

Most of Your Words Are Coal, Not Diamonds · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for creative success.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: In J.R.R.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, we meet the creature Gollum, who is obsessed with the magical one ring.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Back when he was a hobbit known as Smeagol, he had taken it from his cousin, who found the ring in a riverbed after being dragged into the water by a large fish.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And for 500 years, Smeagol allowed the ring to poison his mind and transform him into the unrecognizable Gollum, who refers to the ring as My Precious.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you probably remember how he said that.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to attempt to imitate it here because I don't have Andy Circus's voice, but it was amazing and very, very memorable.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, by the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Gollum loses his life because he is so obsessed with his precious ring.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there might be a tiny bit of resemblance between Gollum's love for the ring and our love for our own words.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: When we're in love with our own writing, it's hard to edit it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to take constructive criticism.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to be objective because we're just so in love with our words.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: When our words emerge on the screen or from the pen, they're not diamonds.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, they're more like coal.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, coal is dirty and it's messy, but it's made from carbon, which is the same element that diamonds are made of.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And with enough time and pressure, carbon can be turned into diamonds.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: The writing process is kind of like carbon that's being turned into another substance.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Most of what you produce will become coal, which is kind of messy and may not be all that useful, but a portion of it will be diamonds.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: The trouble is that you don't always know which is which in the moment.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to keep producing.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: The author John Green said, I just give myself permission to suck.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I delete about 90% of my first drafts, so it doesn't really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there's a 90% chance I'm just gonna delete whatever I write anyway.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I find this hugely liberating.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, those are amazing words from Mr.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Green.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to encourage you, as you sift through your words by editing and rewriting, you're gonna discover the diamonds, but you've got to keep writing and you've got to keep producing those words, and then you can mine for those diamonds.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: But without the writing, the diamonds will never be there.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So keep on trucking.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.