The Grasshopper #79: Self-Help Writing

Drawing the line between self-indulgence, self-interest, and actual help

Photo by Allec Gomes on Unsplash

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new book is called Be Useful. You might hold it up as the perfect example of a celebrity advice book with its shallow aphorisms, like the title advice.

Don’t get me wrong, I am an Arnold fan. His story is fascinating and his personality is unique. Truly an American and global success story. Watch the doc currently on Netflix. I think it is called Arnold, which is interesting because almost anyone on the planet with exposure to media immediately knows who it is about.

That’s true fame. And writing a self-help book was a no-brainer for the governator and his agent. But what about the rest of us? 

Specifically, since this is my newsletter, me. What if I found myself with a personal story I wanted to tell because I thought it might serve as a guide for others experiencing similar things?

Once you finish untangling that awful sentence, I’ll get to my point. I’m a writer, I am going through a life changing event, in a positive way, so why shouldn’t I write a self-help book? 

Why not? Well, first of all there is the 90% crap problem. The Gene Roddenberry quote: “people tell me 90% of TV is crap, I tell them 90% of everything is crap”. I think the Star Trek creator got the numbers wrong, probably closer to 99%, but he was on the right track.

This applies to self-help books and writing in general. There’s a lot of garbage, junk writing filled with platitudes and designed to get lucrative motivational speaking gigs. Writers who leverage their dysfunction in life into a career handing out advice.

In my example, as readers know, my reason is the decision to end an addiction. Is that a qualification for writing advice to others when I barely know myself or if I am even really done (I think I am but…)? Of course not.

But, says my sneaky capitalist writer brain, what if you have an angle? You have to have an angle. It’s easy if you’re Arnold. His angle is, he’s Arnold. And we are not, but some of us might want to be.

But what would be my angle and is it sincere? I have principles after all. But maybe there’s money in it, whispers a little voice in my ear, what if you could monetize your experience, turn not killing yourself with martinis into cold hard cash while helping others?

I don’t believe most writers telling a story of their experiences with the intent of helping others, are really calculating the potential monetary benefits. Arnold certainly isn’t. He needs money like a hole in the head.

But his PR people were probably salivating. Book tour. Podcasts. A documentary on Netflix. Do I think Arnold needs any of that? He is Arnold after all.

I haven’t read his book. I think the title is lame and I don’t want it on my bookshelf. But I have listened to some podcasts with him, seen the Netflix doc, and I know he did this because he wanted to. He had a story to tell, not about his immense fame, but about his drive to become the best bodybuilder in the world and to use that fame to have a bigger life, a huge life.

A story that might change someone, somewhere, for the better.

The Grasshopper is about writing and the writing lifestyle. It’s personal. That’s the nature of newsletters like this. They’re places to share my observations and experiences as a writer and an ordinary human on a big scary planet.

That’s why I write this admittedly eccentric thing every week. It’s my self-help thing and it helps me think about the world, my work, and how it might look to others.

If readers get anything from a book like Arnold’s, it won’t be from the platitudes it contains, his seven or whatever bits of life advice. Some editor insisted on that. But it’s his story that readers will respond to. It’s inspiring.

When I read a self-help book, and I do sometimes, I know it will be at least 90% crap most of the time. But maybe there is something in that other 10% that I can relate to, that strikes a chord. I think that’s the real reason anyone reads this stuff. As a genre, it’s pretty lowbrow.

But, says my whisper, it sells like hotcakes if you get it right. And there are those speaking gigs…

So, before I stop, a note about my self-help quandary. I recently started another newsletter, which you might know about, to put my experiences, unformed as they are, out there in public.

It’s called The Remarkable, and there is a story behind that title but it’s really not that remarkable. I’m certainly not Arnold and I really have no aspirations to fame. I’m just a writer and I have a story I want to tell, so I’m writing.

If there’s a takeaway from this thing, it’s that you should not assume you will never, as a writer or any creative, do a certain thing. Because you just don’t know where things are going and that is a beautiful thing. If I want to tell a few people about my experience, and they want to read it, I’m good with that self-help or any other honest label.

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That was a bit of an unexpected detour. But that is the story of my life right now, so…

I think I need another coffee (no, that is not another Buy Me A Coffee pitch. That’s down at the end of the scroll. I’m getting an actual coffee).

We learn from the news this week that Scholastic Publishing, a huge ($1 billion+) children’s publishing house, is caving to the right wing censorship lobby. They are offering school book buyers the option of choosing to not receive any titles involving gender issues, LGBQT+, diversity, etc.

Just click a link and those books go away. 

As a child we had a program at school where we could pick books from Scholastic for a reasonable price and a few weeks later everyone would get delivered books in class. Those days were easily my favorites and I forever equate the Scholastic brand with encouraging reading among young children, just when we needed it.

And by the way, a pile of shiny new books of my own that didn’t break the bank. We didn’t have a lot of money back then but there was always some for books.

This action horrifies me as a reader and a writer, a major publisher helping censor their own books. That is just incomprehensible, but it tells me something.

The censorship movement is powerful and will change our children, your children. It has serious financial clout. But shame on Scholastic and their CEO who earns $3.3 million a year, likely America’s highest paid book censor.

If you are a parent, you can speak up. You can tell Scholastic what you think and you can tell your school administrators that censorship is the opposite of what we pay them to do, which is educate students about the real world, not some extremist agenda.

And Scholastic, I feel you have ruined a fantastic brand filled with memories by pandering to book burners. Shame.

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I’m reading a book called Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull. He was co-founder of Pixar and President of Disney Animation. It’s a great book on the challenges of running a hyper-creative business filled with geniuses but it offers a lot to writers.

Pixar is known for their incredible storytelling (Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Up, and a daunting list of great flicks), storytelling that eclipsed the amazing tech they developed. Which is as it should be. No one wants to see the sausage-making, we want to lose ourselves in the story.

Not as easy as it seems when you are the reader/watcher, and he delves into that. Especially when it’s a team effort. A good read too.

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As a writer, how prolific you are is basically your choice, unless you believe you can only make money or attract followers if you publish constantly. Then you might make yourself produce just to make that work. Personally, that feels like a job I don’t want. Not if you think about it that way.

These days I’ve committed myself to writing a lot, every week, with 4-6 Medium articles, The Grasshopper, my new newsletter The Remarkable, which is doing very well, and my digest of some of those Medium things, The Witness Chronicles.

Whew. And it’s not just the writing. I try quite hard to publish clean copy- no grammatical errors, typos, weird syntax, etc. After all, I write a newsletter for writers! So there’s editing too. And answering comments when they call for it, some organizational stuff, etc.

If it was a well-oiled machine I’d try to show exactly how I do it. But it’s a work in progress and things get jumbled up, though I think I have a handle on it. But by intent there is a certain amount of crossover between these different platforms, with subjects spilling over to other places.

The obvious example in my case is me. I am going through a major change in life, which is the focus of The Remarkable, that inevitably changes everything I’m doing. All of my writing is personal. The political and climate stuff is opinion, which is my personal perspective. The voice here is me talking about writing but digressing here and there, just as writing tends to do.

And talking very frankly about my own situation with the hope that simply reading about the experiences of a fellow human might help someone. It would be easy and still helpful to me to keep that stuff in a private journal. But that is not the way I want to do things right now.

I realize this is very meta, me writing to you in a newsletter, about writing this and other newsletters. It twists my head around if I think about it too much. But here’s why I’m sharing this in my writing newsletter.

It’s common in the online publishing world to read about writers who seemingly are superhuman in their output. Heather Cox Richardson, probably the most successful Substack writer, publishes daily, has a new book out that hit #5 on the NYTimes hardcover bestseller list, is a full professor of history, and must have a life too.

I have no idea how she does this. I know she has a staff that undoubtedly provides much of her background research, but she writes with a unique voice and perspective.

So I thought I might share a little about how I do the stuff I’ve chosen to write. It’s tiny potatoes compared to a giant like Heather but I can give my example of how or why I do it.

Although a lot of the how seems to be just the energy I have these days, I have had to rein it in and stick to a schedule. There are really no rules on Substack regarding frequency, sticking to schedules, etc. But setting some personal structure in place is necessary because my mind needs it.

I have to say it is fun. And there are some interesting war stories but it’s too early to know how they will play out.

More fun.

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How

The how is simple. Get up, empty my inbox, look at my stats, coffee, skim the news, then look at my Google Docs file to see what it is in progress and to remind myself what I’ve published and no longer need to think about.

Usually there are three or four in progress docs and I’ll work on one that I’m in the mood to tackle. Or a news item will have sparked something I want to say and I write about it. Nearly all my opinion pieces are written this way, in one shot.

You literally dive in, get absorbed in the flow, then run out of breath and surface. Sometimes I have to reorient myself when I’m back, just for a moment. 

Then, later, I edit, publish if the schedule demands it, and move on.

I have no idea how other writers work and I’m always fascinated to read any interviews where a writer I like reveals something about the way they work. This kind of thing has been very helpful to me as a writer over the years. And, fortunately, writers tend to like to tell how we work.

Wondering? Just search ‘interview with XYX about how they write’ and you’ll almost always find something.

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Someone asked me recently if I liked writing. My immediate answer was along the lines of yes, I love it, it’s what I do. Which is all true but later I thought about my answer.

I’m not sure I could not write right now. I need to express myself in the ways that I am feeling these days. I’m not writing fiction right now because I feel I need a different mindset for that.

But do I like what I do? I’ve written about writing sometimes being a fugue state, where you find yourself emerging from a session a little dazed and confused. I love that feeling. I also love when all the cylinders are firing and you can write snappy prose in a kind of a rhythm. That’s a great feeling.

So, I guess my answer is yes.

Did you write today?

Martin

2256 words

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