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John Bucher: Learning to Tell a Better Story · The Daily Writer

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Saturday edition of the Daily Rider Podcast.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: Each weekday we bring you a short lesson that helps you live out the four practices of a great writer creativity, consistency, courage, and connection.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: Here on the weekend edition, we take a deeper dive into those topics through conversations with writers and teaching that helps us apply what we're learning.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: For more, you can visit us at dailyriderlife.com.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we've talked about it many times here on the podcast, but it always bears repeating.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: One of the most powerful skills you can learn is storytelling.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: We are wired as humans to tell and to crave powerful stories.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm thrilled today to feature my guest, Mr.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: John Booker.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: John is a mythologist, a writer, and a storyteller based out of Hollywood, California.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: John serves as the creative director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and is also an author, podcaster, and speaker.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: John has worked with companies including HBO, DC Comics, The History Channel, A24 Films, the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation, and has also served as a consultant and writer for numerous film, television, and virtual reality projects.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: John is also the author of seven books, including his latest, which is called The Storytelling Almanac.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I have to tell you, I really, really loved this book.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: This is such a fun book and so helpful.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll talk about this more in the conversation.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: But for now, I just want to let you know you really need to get this book because it's so much fun.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: In this conversation, John shares his journey of making a career out of storytelling and many of the lessons that he's learned along the way.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: He'll also learn about the legacy of Joseph Campbell, Modern Myths and American Culture, How to Overcome Fear as a Writer, and much more.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: This was such a fun conversation, and I know that you're going to love it as well.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: So here is my interview with Mr.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: John Booker.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: John, welcome to the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: I am really, really excited to get to talk about stories today.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: And it's even more exciting when I get to talk to a maestro like yourself.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: So thanks for joining me.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is my pleasure, Ken.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I love to connect with fellow storytellers and those who live their lives in our story tribe together.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: So let's start out with your journey.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: How did you get involved in storytelling as a career?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Because the kind of things that are on your resume are the kinds of things that a lot of people dream about.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, working with media companies, writing books, uh being involved with things related to Joseph Campbell, which is really cool.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: So how did you get into this whole realm of a career?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I really love answering this question because there was no path uh that I saw that someone else had um carved out uh that I could look to and say, ah, I want to make my journey exactly like so-and-so has done.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I I knew there were pieces of other people's journeys that I loved and I wanted to mimic in some way.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But the the more I began pursuing my own path, the more I began to recognize that my life and my work was going to be a work of art that I created and a work of art that I I curated from all these other pieces of others' journeys and lives.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it it all began with story and storytelling.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I I'm a child of the the 1980s uh VCR age.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, me too, for sure.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: You you you know it well.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we went to video stores and we would rent movies uh, you know, incessantly, and and that was such a big part of our training as storytellers, is is just digesting story after story and and film after film and talking about them and watching them and re-watching them.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I I will say that that um that that era offered something that I really miss in our current world.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: We have such an overabundance of stories, films, television, we could never consume them all.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember, you know, this little video store that was near where I lived.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: That video store only had a certain finite number of films available.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm convinced our family worked our way through the entire store and then just started over again when we were done.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the the fact that there was um a uh a lack, the fact that there was a gap there uh really opened up this invitation in my own spirit to to want to be um a storyteller.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when I got to you know college, the storytelling is not a um uh a major at most places.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know, I I majored in communications first, the first degree that I pursued.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm a lifelong student.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I sort of I collect a lot of things, and I collect degrees is one of those things that I've ended up collecting in life.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the more the more I begin to pursue different degrees, the more I begin to specify the types of stories that I really wanted to pursue.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I I've I've also been very fortunate in that um in putting my own um desires out into the world and saying I want to work in these types of arenas and I want to study these types of stories.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've been very fortunate to have people come and give me those opportunities.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but many, many, many of the opportunities were not someone knocking on my door to give them to me, but approaching others.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll never forget the first um really large media company I worked with, they had had seen some of the other things I was doing, and they said, Hey, we're interested in working with you, but we don't know what we would do with you.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to think on the fly and say, you know, I think you should use me like this.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think you should do this.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there's really um a fine balance between creating creating a path for yourself as a writer and a storyteller, and combining that with training, and it probably it all boils down to being someone who says yes to as many opportunities as you possibly can.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Joseph Campbell talked a lot about following your bliss, which does not mean he he never intended for it to mean uh whatever floats your boat, just do it.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: That that's never what he was intending with talking about following your bliss, but it was discovering that thing that brings you life, discovering those those things which which draw out your curiosity and your energy and to stay connected to those things.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in following my bliss and following my curiosity, um magic doors continued to open in my life.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think the balance is between following your bliss but also looking at what are the career opportunities, what are the openings that fit my skill set?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: That that's a that's a place where I see a lot of creative types, creative types are wrestling with that tension of here's what I want to do, here's what I love doing, here's what I feel passionate about.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: But yet what are the career opportunities in a specific field?
• 8:13
  unknown: Yeah.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have any thoughts about how people can can navigate that line of, you know, we don't want to just be limited to, okay, here's the different things I can do.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: But but at the same time, that is kind of the reality that we face if we want to work, particularly if you're gonna work with this within, you know, a publishing system or studio system or other kinds of things.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: You you used the word that is so important to me uh at the beginning of your question.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: That word is balance and finding a balance between what you are passionate about doing and what you uh need to do in order to be able to eat every day.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that for many artists um and many writers is a really difficult uh path to navigate because we all know, sure, we would love to be doing 24-7, those things which which bring us life and energy.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um that all of us would love to just spend all of our time doing that.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: However, if we spent all of our time doing that, it might also become the equivalent of only eating ice cream for every meal.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great analogy.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I really do feel that way.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: We only enjoy ice cream because we don't eat it for every meal.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in what I was talking about a moment ago, in finding that that lack, in finding that um, that longing to be able to get to your stuff, the stories that you want to tell, um, that is only enriched because you can't spend all your time doing that.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I I found it to be a really important part of the process um that I have these areas of my life uh that are not fun, that that are obligatory, that sometimes I am working on projects that uh are meant to allow me to eat.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been true throughout all of history.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: You look at the great Renaissance painters, you look at the the writers that we're still reading today from hundreds of years ago, and most of them had other jobs that most of them were not able to only rely on their art, you know, to to make a living.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say this, as much as my life now is getting to make a living off of my art, there's so much involved with that that is not the the fun part of just setting down and telling a story.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's there's the the marketing and the handling of taxes and the you know the the little specific things like like for example, um uh my computer uh updated its operating system over the weekend.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I spent half my morning just getting my computer back into a place where I could use it.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's something Da Vinci never had to work with to deal with, but you know, that's part of the maintenance of my computer is part of the the price that I pay for that tool and for the time that computer saves me.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than lament all the time we don't have, I really do believe it can become about a quality over quantity issue when it comes to the time we pour into these things.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: The last thing I'll say about it, Kent, is when I first moved to Hollywood, I went to work on a uh reality television show.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm embarrassed to tell you, I had uh a bit of a career in reality TV working in that arena.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I started at the bottom.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know anyone.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my first jobs was bringing coffee to the crew that was coming off of the night shift.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the people who were coming on for the day shift uh of shooting this reality TV show, uh, I would have coffee there for them.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: This involved me getting to a coffee bean down off Sunset Boulevard um about uh 5 a.m.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I gotta tell you, uh that that was a challenge to be there at 5 a.m., you know, to get that coffee.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: But after a few days, I started noticing when I'd pick up the coffee early morning.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I started noticing that the same people were sitting inside that coffee shop writing on laptops every morning.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you you start to think about why in the world are they in here at 5 a.m., you know, doing this.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then one day it hit me that these people were in there working at 5 a.m.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: on their stories because they had another job to be at at 8 a.m.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this was the only time they they could work on their stuff.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I tell you, Kent, if if the entertainment business, if if the arts business is a long line of people waiting for their shot, those people should be in line ahead of me.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: They they are are sacrificing and giving up something um that I was not.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it really made me think, what sacrifice could I make for my writing that would produce the most good in my life?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, it ended up being sleep.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I determined that if I gave up a little bit of sleep, I could start each day writing, and I could get to my stories first thing in the day.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So no matter whatever else happened that day, I would be able to go to bed that night feeling like I had got to my stuff.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a huge frustration for so many writers, is feeling like we never get to our stories.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: We may be using writing to make a living or doing marketing with it or whatever else we're doing.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: But getting to that place where you feel like I got to my stuff.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: What about starting your day like that?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: It allows me to feel like I'm starting every day by eating dessert and whatever else happens that day, I still feel like I got to my writing.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I got to my stories.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a it's an important question.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like every writer has to address for themselves is what sacrifice could I make that would produce the most good in my work?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: How would you how would you address because you know this is a podcast for writers, obviously.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I can already hear the outcry from some people in my head saying, but John, I'm a night owl.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: I do my best work late in the evening.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, uh somebody told me that literally just a couple of days ago.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: They said, Yeah, I just I I shot them an email and I was up late and they emailed me back and I was like, Why are you working at midnight?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: Wait a minute, why am I working at midnight?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: And but how would you how would you address that objection that people would have that I'm a night owl, I have a hard time getting up early or I can't think early.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we all know that the world's most productive people get up really early.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's pretty well established.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, in the success literature and stuff.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: So how do you what do you say to those people?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I have those people, every time I make that statement and tell that story, I have people that come up to me uh and say that.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know what?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't discount their experience.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: However, I also know I used to be one of those people that would say, I did my best work at night.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I was motivated by saying by to say that because I didn't want to get up early in the morning.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some of there there was a there was a lazy factor that I also would deny about myself that I didn't want to get up early or in the morning.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I can only speak to my experience, but I will say, regardless of whether you work in the morning or the evening or late at night, but wherever, whenever you work, there is something you can sacrifice in order to get to your work um in a more significant way.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you, you know, even if you uh and maybe you're doing that, maybe you're sacrificing sleep at night, you know, to get to your work.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the the key there is really sacrifice.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: I will also put in one more plug for writing in the morning.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and that plug is this I find when I first get up in the morning, there are two advantages to riding at that time that I don't have in a lot of other ways.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: One advantage is the veil between my psyche, my mind, and my dreams is thinnest when I first get up.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: I like that.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I am in this place with my dreams and my imagination that um the reality of my world and my day has not yet completely dissolved away.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I like being that close.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: I like the veil being that thin between that that dream world, that dream space of my imagination and the page.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I like that to be as minimal as possible.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that works for me.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that I'll say is in writing early in the morning, I have a lot of those, uh living here in Los Angeles, I have a lot of those late night night owl friends that don't think twice about texting me at 2 a.m.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: I have all of zero friends that text me at 6 a.m.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're all asleep, right?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So getting to my writing, you know, at 6 a.m.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: uh allows me to be completely left alone.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh nobody's trying to get a hold of me at that time.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as I make a deal with myself not to open my email or social media, I really do have that time all to myself.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not to say it's the only way to work.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of people who have different ways of working.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I will say this.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you are not getting to your work in the way that you want to, you might consider taking a long, hard look at when you're writing and when you're getting to your work and see what the changes would be to just try it at some different times.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that can be a breakthrough for some writers.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: Boy, that is great advice.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's really, really that's really great advice.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: I've said it myself over the years that I can't get up at five, you know, my son is a night owl.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a teenage son.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, I don't want to go to bed at eight o'clock in the night because a lot of the com a lot of the, I mean, and honestly, a lot of the best conversations we have are late at night.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't want to be sleeping half of his life away because he's a night owl.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: And but but I think part of that is also probably an excuse on my part where there's got to be some compromise in there in some way that I could maybe rethink that.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so yeah, lots of good stuff to think about here.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate you bringing that up.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: Because it brings us back to the reality of you have to write sometime and it has to fit within the confines of our actual life.
• 20:05
  unknown: Yeah.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so many aspiring writers think of this creative life as something that is just going to magically materialize and somehow time's going to slow down.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like every day is going to be time change Sunday or time change weekend.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to have this magical hour every day where it's all just going to get done.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: But it has to fit into the nooks and crannies of our life.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's a hard reality.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I almost wonder if that isn't what really separates the amateurs from the professionals, is the professionals get it done.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Orson Wells once said that the absence of limitations is the enemy of art.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: And one of my favorite quotes, I love Orson.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yeah.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's just such a interesting figure for writers to look at.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, he his story and his life, you know, there's a lot of lessons for us in uh the the work of Orson Wells on a number of levels.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the limitations that Wells faced after having this unbelievable uh start to his career, the the sort of limitations that he faced, um, we can learn a lot from because it does not mean that great art can't be produced through a wide spectrum of different ways and mediums and uh approaches.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: However, the limitations that we face as writers, whatever your particular limitations are, you're always going to have something.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so it it never is about the limitations, it's always going to come back to what muscles have you built as a writer to be able to tackle those limitations.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something I really believe strongly in is building is Palesthenics for writers.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this involves working out that writing muscle in a way that's meant to just work out the writing muscle and practice.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's so interesting to me because as writers, we oftentimes put ourselves in a completely different category of artist than so many other artists do.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever met a musician that wasn't practicing all the time?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Never.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Musicians like they practice just forever, incessantly, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, magici I have I consult with a number of magicians.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: They have been doing sleight of hand for decades, and they are constantly practicing shuffling decks.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: What's interesting about writers is we we don't seem to value that practice.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everything we do as writers, we want to bring out to the public.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make money on it.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: We want to have it read by lots and lots of people.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, musicians, they practice in private so that the one hour a week or whenever they get to perform for an audience is so well crafted and fine-tuned.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: We we don't hear all that that goes into it.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a lot of value for writers in looking at how other artists approach perfecting their craft.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they do it in private.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not stuff they show other people, they're working out their processes.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And granted, there's a lot of value to showing your work to other people, getting feedback from people you trust.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm all for that.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I also know when I spend time with myself as a writer, and when I go back and I read what I've wrote, here's a great exercise for anyone.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I can I'd be interested to to hear your experience in doing something like this because I'm positive you have.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever gone back and read something that you wrote a few years ago?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, of course.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: All the time.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you always look at that and say, I am such a better writer now than I was then?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do you always feel like you've you've improved in some area or gained something?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, of course.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Me too.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, not every single time.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes you go back and read something that you wrote and you go, that was pretty good, but I might say it different now, or I might.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: But but there's always a sense of I've improved over time.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, always.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a lot of value to going back and reading what we have written previously as writers, because we're going to be able to see those improvements or how we would say something uh differently when we go back and read what we've read previously.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I've been reading a lot of my old work lately.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And one thing I am really picking up that I've practiced and learned how to do is to use shorter sentences, shorter words, not make my thoughts so robust and you know massive that people have to read them three times uh to understand what I was saying.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it sort of goes back to you know that one of my favorite quotes from Mark Twain I I wrote you a long letter because I didn't have time to write you a short letter.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it's it's so much more difficult.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: It takes so much more craft to be able to construct something that's tight and short and efficient than to just stream of consciousness all over the page, you know.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_03: Let me piggyback on that thought for a second.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: So, with the various writing projects that you've done, working with clients and studios and and all kinds of different things, how has that helped you become a better writer?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: Working within the confines of, let's say, either uh let me just throw out for whatever reason, Seinfeld comes to comes to mind.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so whatever you think of a sitcom, those writers have to write within the confines of a specific story structure and a specific number of minutes that it has to be.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: I assume that it's a number of pages, probably, or or approximate.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: How has that helped improve your writing skills working within the confines and the constraints that other people have given you for different projects?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've become a big, big fan of structure, charts, graphs, all sorts of things that I use in my own writing that I never show anyone.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but it's ways that I organize my thoughts and put things together.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I go back to other art forms here.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think of this if a studio has hired me to build a house, a narrative house for them, can you imagine a builder trying to construct a house without developing a blueprint first?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like a detailed blueprint, right?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, can you imagine a musician being hired to uh perform a concert and saying, you know, I'm not gonna rely on any of the established chords or notes that have been invented.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna create my own stuff, right?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, never would would you ever do that?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, these other art forms that have been around for such a long time recognize painters don't not try and create new colors, right?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: They they stick with the the established, we might try and bring something uh to a color by juxtaposing it with another, but we you know we're never going to hear a painter say, you know what, I'm not gonna use any of the primary colors or mix them with anything else.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just not gonna do no, we use the tools that we all share.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that we're inventing new tools, we're trying to actually uh do something different with the tools that all of us share.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when um a a studio, you know, for example, says, I need we need this to be uh uh 42 minutes, you know, uh long because that's we we need to be able to stack commercials in here and we need act breaks at this moment and this moment.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: I look at that as a fun challenge, to be quite honest with you.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is um in a sense uh where the real artistry comes in to be able to uh to be able to to perform that writing in a way that looks effortless, where it looks like wow, that just happened to end at this moment when we needed it to, on this great, great scene, this great question that this character has asked.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll be honest with you, it's also caused me to change the way I write sometimes, where I'm often I'm writing backwards.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm starting with the place I need to finish at and working my way backwards.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a big fan of working with bookends.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: How how does a scene start and how does a scene end?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: How does a book start and how does a book end?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: How does a screenplay start and how does a screenplay end?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, granted, there's a lot that's got to happen in the middle there.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but for me, my process often involves looking at the the beginning and the ending and making sure I can make sure that those things shake hands.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: I like for my beginning and my ending to shake hands.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that they mirror each other, but I do believe there's a certain um greeting that they give each other uh that that feels um that makes an audience feel complete psychologically.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a certain poetry about it.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's a poetry, uh well said, Kent.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's a poetry about it that I want the audience to feel.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and like I say, I recognize not every writer is like that.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: There are a stream of consciousness writers that are very powerful, very effective.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: All I can do is speak to what works for me.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I I think a lot of people avoid those limitations of structure because they they um they feel like they're going to somehow be limited creatively when my experience has been those limitations of structure actually uh bring out more creativity in me than they ever have limited.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: And hasn't it always been that way for the greatest artist?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: When you think of Michelangelo walking into the Sistine Chapel, he didn't have I mean, he had specific limitations.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, here's the ceiling.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, here's the columns, here's here's this limited space that's that was not built as a canvas for somebody to paint on, but yet here it is, and here you go.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: And in the process of doing that, created one of the greatest masterpieces ever.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: Or Orson, you know, you mentioned Orson Wells.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Orson Wells certainly had limitations in the 1940s, early in the 1940s, whenever he was making Citizen Kane, but yet within those limitations, found a vast amount of creativity and gave us what I consider to be the greatest movie of all time.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, a lot of my former college students did not agree with that.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm with you.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Citizen Kane is uh it's one of my all-time favorites.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I still uh think we could never say enough about you know Citizen Kane.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I'm with you.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's that is just near perfection in filmmaking.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I would love to to dive into your role with um with Joseph Campbell and find out what the work that you're doing in that realm because I've always admired his work.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, love obviously The Hero with a Thousand Faces is uh a monumental, amazingly influential work.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm super curious how you became connected with all that.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: And um yeah, just just share with us anything that you can.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I'm very privileged to serve as the creative director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: And like so many people, um, I became really enamored with Campbell uh really, you know, in college when we began to to study um the the the way story worked, especially in film and television.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh many professors, you know, uh will will point to Campbell and uh the hero's journey, the monomyth.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, interestingly enough, Campbell never used uh the term the hero's journey in in the book.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's always referred to as the hero's adventure in the book.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it later in his career, he he embraced the hero's journey as something people would would say about his work.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um I remember the very first time I tried to read The Hero with a Thousand Faces in college, and I got a couple of pages in, and I I said, This is just so dense, I I can't get through it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't I don't understand what he's saying here.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I put it aside, and and I learned a valuable lesson that sometimes we are not ready for certain lessons as writers.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're just not there.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have to mature into certain spaces.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it was very rewarding later in life when I was able to pick up the book and read it and understand it and be impacted by it, uh, to say, wow, I'm I'm a different writer than I was back then.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've come a long way.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was working in film and television here in Hollywood, uh, as I mentioned in reality TV and in all sorts of different areas.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I became I became obsessed with story and storytelling.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to know what the stories were behind the stories.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: What is this seeming magic that allowed different cultures to tell similar stories throughout history?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I would often get the opportunity to go overseas and speak uh to different cultures.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I I ask every culture that I I went to, tell me about the stories that you tell your children before they go to bed every night.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I I've over the course of my life uh been privileged to visit more than 40 countries, and I have yet to go to a country where they have reported back to me that they did not have some version of the story of Cinderella.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: So they go to bed at night that they tell their kids.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I was really fascinated by that.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why, you know, why does this story seem to resonate?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that made me want to study mythology.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I recognized, you know, mythology was an ancient form of storytelling, and I'd always loved mythology.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when I began to look into taking, as I mentioned before, I collect degrees, I already had a master's degree, but I was interested in further studies, and I found that there was a school in California uh where you could get a PhD in mythology and depth psychology.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this is also a school where the Joseph Campbell Library was housed.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, wow, I've really got to investigate this.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh I went up and visited the school uh that very day.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: I applied and um began my journey to uh get um get a deeper education in mythology and storytelling.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the school, Pacifica Graduate Institute, where I attended, uh they um they had many different intersections uh with Joseph Campbell when he was still living.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the president of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, uh, a man named Bob Walter, was brought in to teach a course there at Pacifica.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was heartbroken because I had already taken the course from someone else when uh Bob came in.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I made a point at lunch to sit down with him and say, I just I want to hear your stories, I want to hear you talk, I want to stay connected with you.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he was very kind and gracious.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we talked a lot, and then we didn't speak for about two years.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I I continued my studies, I didn't really have anything, you know, thing to to report to him.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: But um after about two years, we got reconnected again through uh a mutual friend, and he began to invite me into doing different things with the foundation, and all of that snowballed and eventually led to me doing greater and greater work with the foundation.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: And now I um I get to do all sorts of amazing things that I pinch myself uh uh that that I get to do.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not only uh for me about getting to uh preserve and protect uh Campbell's work and and the the uh ideas that he had and try and perpetuate those those ideas in many ways, but um also looking at how Campbell's ideas and in the greater concepts of myth are still resonating with us today and still affecting culture so much.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this summer, one of the things I was really privileged to do for the foundation, uh Mickey Hart, the drummer for The Grateful Dead, he held a book club this summer uh where they were reading Joseph Campbell, and he was friends with Joseph Campbell.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh he you know invited uh me in to come in and I got to speak to the book club on a number of occasions, and we got to talk about music and mythology and all of these you know things that um people are are still continuing to look at why these ideas that Campbell put forth are so important to us today.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Will Smith just came out with a new biography that he goes into depth about the impact of Joseph Campbell on his life and reading The Hero with the Thousand Faces.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, when you look at pop culture, the spectrum from George Lucas to Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead to Will Smith, all these people are impacted.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it was just Joseph Campbell's personality or who Campbell was.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think Joseph Campbell tapped into ideas that are universal and that we we can't get away from.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: So as much as I admire who Campbell was, um, I really am most excited about the ideas that Campbell pointed to that we're still working with uh today in the myth that comes up through pop culture every week of our lives.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: No, you thank you for all that, by the way.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's fascinating.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: So my mind can go a thousand different directions.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: One thing that I was thinking of when you mentioned musicians is this new Beatles documentary directed by Peter Jackson that I don't know, I don't think it's out yet.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's coming out in a couple of weeks.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: I think Apple or something.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought about that and and how as a culture we keep going back to the Beatles.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, obviously the Beatles music was amazing and everything.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: But it's almost as if in our Western culture, particularly in the US, because relatively we're still a young country.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: We're only you know, maybe 300 years old, right or something.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: More than that, but you know, I'm just ballparking.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: But we don't have the thousands of year old or the hundreds and hundreds of year old mythology that most of the cultures around the world have.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I wonder if if the reason that we become so obsessed with celebrities and musicians and movie stars and so forth, uh sports stars in our culture is because we don't we don't have those myths and legends deeply embedded within us as Americans.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: So because we have such a hunger for for heroes and mythology, uh, do you think that's a reason why we search for that many times at our musicians and our our actors and artists and so forth?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that's a hundred percent why we why we do that.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we are a mythless culture in so many respects.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um we also are a unique culture in the the United States in that um we we have adopted and and often stolen the cultures from others and mixed those all into a big pot.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that uh that we we sometimes will will pull a carrot out of the pot and say, oh yeah, this carrot is in the pot and it, you know, it's part of the soup.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then sometimes we just sip from the broth of the soup that has the combination of all the carrots and onions and potatoes that are in there.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it becomes a complex discussion in many ways because we have things that are directly taken from other cultures, mythologies, and yet we've also begun to create in the last 300, 400 years um a American mythology that is greatly crafted around our our movies, our musicians.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um I co-host a uh a podcast called Skeleton Keys, where Tori Yadzor, my co-host, and I look at um pop culture and mythology.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we did a particular episode on uh professional wrestling, and we looked at professional wrestling as a modern day Olympus, that we have all these gods and goddesses that are in conflict with each other.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we we basically, as Americans, um, we reconstruct mythologies that we could say, you know, maybe that was taken from the Greeks, or we could say, actually, there's this universal archetypal idea of battling gods that predates the Greeks, that predates all of us.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's something in the human psyche because we see it in Hinduism with the various gods that battle each other.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: We see it in um cultures that existed long before the Greeks and the Babylonians, the Arcadians, and these different gods and goddesses that would get into squabbles with each other.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's something uh in our psychology, I think as human beings, that we look to these various um ideas of powerful forces getting into conflict and that affecting our lives.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, personally, I believe that psychologically we we project onto those ideas our own thinking, our own egos, our own desires in a way to try to understand how what it means to solve problems.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: I really think that's what we're getting at with so many of these uh mythologies that are inherently based around conflicts and resolutions, is trying to figure out how do we solve problems in this world.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, when you look at the neuroscience of the the what happens in the brain when we tell stories, it very closely resembles what happens in the brains when we solve problems.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's some connection between problem solving and storytelling.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: I guess that all comes down to to the idea of as humans, we're always seeking meaning in the chaos of the universe.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the universe is a chaotic place, and uh there's a lot of randomness that happens in life, and we're always seeking meaning through different avenues in life, whether that is through stories or uh or whatever whatever it may be, I guess.
• 43:49
  unknown: Yeah.
• 43:50
  unknown: Yeah.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: That that randomness um it's such an interesting topic for storytellers because what what seems random.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: To one person may very well seem like a very orchestrated plot to someone else.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think as storytellers and writers, we sort of live in that space of knowing that there are aspects of life that feel completely random.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: And knowing that we as story creators often orchestrate things that appear to be random, that come together in the end, that are actually very plotted and planned, and that there was no randomness at all.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: So this tension that we feel as storytellers and writers between uh chaos and control, the tension that exists between the two of those, I think is where we spend so much of our time as storytellers exploring that area.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: What is truly random and what's not.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: Lots to think about there.
• 45:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I want to make sure and uh dig into your book here for a few minutes because here in my Hot Little Hands, I have a copy of your amazing brandy book.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: The storytelling almanac, and I love it.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: I had no idea what the book was when I ordered it.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I knew from the Amazon description.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_03: Literally, you know, my friend Jim Woods, who, of course, you were on his story making show a little while back, he emailed and said, Hey, you really need to consider having John on your show uh if he wants to do it, because it was really, really fun.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so all I knew was the title and a few words from the Amazon description.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, I don't know what this is, but I'm gonna get it.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I have to tell you, I really, really love this book.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: It is you thank you.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's just it's fun.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_03: I like short chapters that you can apply.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's spread out over a year, but I don't know how anybody could just read one of these a week.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: I think that would be really, really tough.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm curious if you could give us a little background on how you how you developed this in terms of you didn't create yet another book that just kind of regurgitates a lot of other stuff that's out there.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: You put it into a really interesting format.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: And what what's going on with the weekly format of the Almack?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I really appreciate uh your your analysis of of the book there because you're you're hitting on some things that were really important to me in creating and designing the book.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those things was I I felt like as a writer, I often read these amazing books on story and storytelling and writing.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, for example, Robert McKee.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love Robert McKee's book on stories.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's big though.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's huge, like it's dictionary big, right?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's huge.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like as a writer, I I often can only remember one or two things from a big book that that I read, you know, and not that it's not shaping me unconsciously in a lot of other ways, but as I mentioned to you earlier, I'm a firm believer in practicing my craft.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I really believe that this book, The Storytelling Almanac, can help writers that want to practice their craft.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the exercises and the the ideas that I explore, they're not something you're going to necessarily make an entire book or screenplay out of.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they may be things that you can do to practice.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: They may be things that you can apply to a story you're already working on.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so I wanted to give people practical help in one sense.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is I am not unaffected by the popularity of YouTube videos and TikTok and all the various short form medias that we have.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always been a fan of short films and other ways of dealing with story in short form, whether it be anthologies or or things like that.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Part of it is um I tend to have a short attention span.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to, yeah.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that about myself.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I also wanted to create a book for people like me that said, well, you know, maybe I just want to read two pages today.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and but I still want to get something out of it.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: I still want to feel like I I ate some vegetables, you know, that I I didn't just have some cotton candy.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I really wanted to to craft something uh that that would honor that.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: The the other thing, you know, that it came out of was a very practical experience.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that is I am often privileged to be invited to come to workshops or classes and give a talk and maybe lead people through an exercise or a workshop.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had developed dozens and dozens and dozens of these very short uh little pieces or ideas that I had used in workshops and things like that around the world.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to somehow get all those into a book, but I couldn't figure out a way to do it without losing, you know, way in trying to bring them into a singular through line in a longer book.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: I just felt like I would lose kind of the magic and the power of just having this little tidbit that you get to.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I say at the beginning of the book, there are multiple ways you can use the book.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can uh just do one per week.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you would get through the entire book in uh 52 weeks, and you you'd have a pretty solid story on your hands, I think, uh by the time you did that.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I've heard from a lot of writers that have bought the book already and and worked their way through the entire book straight through.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, they were done in uh uh two months or something.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I I I try and stress at the beginning of the book there's not a wrong way to read the book.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: You may look through the table of contents and say, oh, that one looks really interesting.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I want to do that.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, or I'm gonna focus on that, or I really am struggling with developing characters.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just going to go through and do all the ones that have to do deal with developing your character.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I've I'm fascinated by uh old things and almanacs are something I've always been interested in.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: The farmer's almanac was always interested to me, uh interesting to me.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, almanacs were developed to help farmers be able to uh know the weather and see the change and movement in the stars in order to you know plant crops at the right time to harvest the right time.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are these guides that in many ways were as much alchemy as they were actual science, right?
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's there was a lot uh in some of these older almanacs about well, if you um you know bury your corn seeds on the the third day of November, then it's it's a you know, and some of it was uh it was somebody's folklore, basically.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I the almanac approach just felt like the right um, it felt like the right environment to to place a storybook into uh of this nature.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's the way that I tried to do it.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: The last thing I'll say about it is because I myself work in a number of mediums in um in in novels, in um uh nonfiction books, in uh film and television, in plays, um, I wanted to create something that would be applicable to storytellers, regardless of what medium that they were working in, that they could find value in the book uh regardless of the medium that they were uh particularly working with themselves.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there are certain exercises that really lean in towards film or really lean in towards um uh spoken storytelling, to be, to be frank.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think there's enough there for every person who considers themselves a storyteller uh to be able to take something significant and substantial away from as they work their way through the book in whatever way they choose to do that.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's a fantastic resource, and I I love it because I'm a storyteller as well, and kind of my bread and butter is ghostwriting nonfiction for typically for business clients, but also entrepreneurs, um, people like that.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: And but stories are a part of those books as well.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I love the fact I can flip to literally any any week of the year in the storytelling almanac, and it's gonna give me a little spark of something that maybe I could could add in there or a different way I could frame a story or whatever it is.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I I really love it.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I appreciate you taking the time and effort to put this book together because it's great.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Kent.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: That means a lot.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate that so much.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: Well, John, I want to close up with this.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have any tips of advice for someone who would love to get into storytelling, whether it's writing a novel, maybe they want to write a screenplay, maybe they're a songwriter, whatever that they're doing, maybe they're afraid and they don't know where to get started.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: Any advice for someone that is right on the cusp of taking that leap, but they they just haven't pulled the trigger yet?
• 53:28
  unknown: Yeah.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing I would say is I've been there.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know exactly what that feels like.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a little part of me that still feels that with every new project I take on.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's something called imposter syndrome that I think every writer or most writers struggle with in so many ways.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I I've been paid by dozens, if not hundreds, of major, you know, companies to write things and to write books and had book contracts with different publishers and worked with all these media.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: You would think you would get to a point where you could have some confidence, you know, to sit down and say, Well, this is this is good.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: This I'm gonna be and there's always a part of you, there's always a part of me that still says, Today's the day.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: Today is the day they're gonna find me out and figure out that I'm a fraud that doesn't know what he's doing.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: Today's that day.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the key there is to press on and go ahead and do it anyway.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I'll tell you, I I used to really be discouraged by what I would write.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would think, when will this ever really get to a place where I feel like I'm writing what's inside my head in a way that feels like it does when I think it?
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I recognized I also had to get a lot of the bad writing out before the good stuff started to flow.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that it was a hard truth for me to to to swallow that um that it may take some time for me to feel like I'm operating at 100%, but there's such value to operating at 5%, operating at 10%, operating at 40%, at 60%, at 80%.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: Think of it like a car.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: You don't just start out on your journey going 60 miles an hour, right?
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: You you you you slowly accelerate to get to that speed that you know is going to get you to where you want to go.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: And as riders, some of us take a little longer to get to that speed, some of us don't take as much time.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll say this, Kent.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_00: The world needs our stories more than ever.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: Every single person that's listening to this podcast right now has a unique story to tell.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you and I can't tell the same story, nobody's ever heard Kent tell it, nobody's ever heard John tell it.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we cannot get stuck in our writing by looking at others, by comparing ourselves to others, by comparing ourselves to what we watch in film and television or what we go to Barnes and Noble and read.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: We we can't compare ourselves to any of that because the world has never had our story that we're going to share.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely unique, no matter how much we think it may be derivative of someone else or or mirror someone else's work.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: We are the only ones that can tell our story and the world needs it more than ever.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: I talked to a writer not long ago, Kent, who told me that they had one person last year come to them and say, you know, that thing you wrote, that felt like you were looking into my mind, into my heart.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that made me really feel seen in this world.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that writer recognized that all the work she had put in to what she had crafted, it was worth it for that one person.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot write uh based on how many people we think will will read our work or how many people will be impacted by our stories.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: We that cannot be part of our thinking.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten to a place, Kent, I'm gonna keep telling my stories no matter who listens, who reads them, because I cannot stop telling them.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot stop, I have to do it.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it is something every writer will go through seasons of you know, more writing, less writing.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing don't get discouraged, don't give up.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: Keep telling your stories.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: We need them more than ever.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, that's beautiful.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_03: I needed to hear that too, and I do this for a living.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_03: You do this for a living, and those of us who, you know, we do this full time.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we still need to hear this.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: We do, we really do.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we sit alone in in our rooms so often crafting these stories.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: Writing is a lonely business, but uh those those words can go beyond our our our homes, our offices.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: They can be read by others and do amazing things.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: Those words have such incredible power to them.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the words that we write may be meant for one person out there.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when they find it, it means so much.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: It means so much.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: I reached out to a writer on Twitter not long ago.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: I read something they wrote, and I said, Look, I I don't know if anybody else has told you this, but this really mattered to me.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: This really was significant to me.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she responded to me right away, you know, on social media, and she said, You won't never know how much I appreciated that note.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never know.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I sometimes think about giving up writing because I feel like nobody's even reading what I'm spending all this time to do.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never know how much I appreciate that note uh from a stranger.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you never know when that note from a stranger is gonna come.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: And can I say this?
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that note from the stranger doesn't come, but it doesn't mean there's not somebody out there who's reading your words and being impacted.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to keep doing it.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have to keep writing.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe part of this whole journey is not just focusing on the notes that we hope we get, but focusing on giving those notes to other writers because we're part of a larger community.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just about us as individuals.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_03: We I feel that we have an obligation, not just to our readers, but also to other writers.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_00: Can't wouldn't that be incredible if every writer that heard this over the next week or two just sent a note to some writer that had written something that meant something to them?
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: Oh man.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just a short note.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, oh talk about life giving, man.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_00: That that would be so incredible.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: If we believe our words have power, which in order to to write them down, we do believe that.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: If we believe our words have power, could we not use those same words to encourage other writers?
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, moving this forward.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, John, this has been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, this actually went way longer than I anticipated, but I'm glad because this is has been so good.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: I just love talking about all this stuff.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, as we wrap this up, can you let our letter listeners know where they can find out all about you and about your work, find your books and so forth?
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh first, thanks for having me on.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I love being with my people, I love being with my my tribe of fellow storytellers, and I so appreciate what you're trying to do with this podcast because um, man, the these uh voices and these um uh explorations that you're engaging in with this podcast are important and we need them.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can find more about me uh at my website.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's telling a betterstory.com.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can connect to me, you know, through all the social media channels there.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: I would love it if you signed up for my newsletter uh on my website.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you go, there's an easy place to sign up uh every other week.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: I send out uh all sorts of tips and tidbits and news and information of interest to storytellers.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: So check out my website at telling a betterstory.com and say hello on social media or something.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear from you.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: John, thank you so much.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_03: This has been an absolute blast, and I appreciate you taking time to share today.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: My pleasure.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_03: So good to be with you.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_03: Wasn't that a fun conversation?
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_03: I really loved chatting with John, and he has inspired me to become a better storyteller.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm sure that it's done the same thing for you as well.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_03: My main takeaway from this conversation is this idea of getting up early and getting your own writing done before you work on things for other people.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, whenever we get up in the morning, that's our best and our most fresh energy for the day, typically, unless you're completely a night owl, which I don't think, I don't think most people are wired truly as a night owl.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I want to challenge you and I want to challenge myself to begin putting this more and more into practice, this idea of working on your own stuff before you work on stuff for other people.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I want to give John a huge thanks for being a guest on this episode and taking the time to chat with me, as well as giving a shout-out to my good buddy, Mr.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_03: Jim Woods, who is a wonderful author and editor and storytelling coach.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_03: Jim is the one who connected me with John.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_03: So, Jim, thanks for your friendship and thanks for the connection with John.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_03: I want to encourage everybody listening to check out John's book, The Storytelling Almanac, and I will have a link in the show notes for that.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_03: Again, I want to encourage you to grab this book.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_03: It is really, really a lot of fun, and I think you're going to love it.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_03: Also make sure and check out John's newsletter at his website, and there will be a link for that in the show notes as well.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, thanks so much for listening, and I will see you in the next episode.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_03: I want to take a moment to let you know about our Daily Writer membership community.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, one of the very best ways to develop better habits and impact more people's lives with your writing is to spend time around other successful writers.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're tired of feeling isolated and chasting success on your own, then I know you're gonna love the Daily Writer community.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_03: For years, I searched for the kind of writing community that I would want to join, but I can never find what I wanted, so I created my own.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_03: Some of the features include weekly writing sprints, monthly community calls, book discussions, calls with guest experts, and much more.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_03: For more info, you can visit dailywriterlife.comslash community.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.