Lessons Learned: Writing a Book and Creative Endeavors

Lesson one: Under-planning led to chaos and overwhelm, emphasizing the need for careful pre-development in creative projects.

### 6 Lessons Learned from Writing a Book and Their Relevance to Creative Projects
* 📝 "Under-planning and lack of pre-development before starting a project can lead to chaos and overwhelm, **doubling the workload and stress in every department**."
* 🏁 "Having a Finish Line mentality often results in **shortcuts, burnout, and a lack of enjoyment** along the journey. It is essential to **fall in love with solving problems and focus on the craft**."
* 😨 "Fear and ego can lead to overdoing abstractions, writing too much, and failing to get to the root of the message. The lesson is to be **bold, go for the jugular, and say things as simply as possible**."
* 🦁 "Being too soft or timid in creative work ultimately stems from **fear**. The strong, passionate voice is what best invokes the Muse, and it is crucial to **show up fully engaged and ready to attack**."
* 👥 "Writing for people, getting clear on the target audience, and having a conversation with them helps **eliminate perfectionism and intellectualism**. The key is to **be authentic and 'be you'**."
* 💔 "Attachment to your work and taking things too seriously can lead to **chaos, overwhelm, and wasted time**. Realizing that your work is an idea trying to come through you, and being **unattached**, is essential for **effective revision**."
* 🔄 "Revision is the key to moving from good to great in creativity. Great masterpieces undergo **extensive revision, including reworking, rewriting, changing, and deleting**."
* 📚 "If you're interested in Christian's book launch, 'The Psychology of Slaying Dragons', in 2023, you can **join the email list** via the link in the description. Additionally, a **free Discovery call link** is available for those who want to talk to Christian **one-on-one**."

hey, welcome back to the Wisdom Warriors podcast. Today, I want to talk about six lessons I've learned so far from writing this book. Now, these lessons, yes, they're relevant to writing, and I'm going to tell a lot of stories here, but they're also relevant to creating content, you know, starting a YouTube channel, building a business, really creating into any kind of creative project or undertaking. These are very relevant, so let's dive into them. Lesson number one and mistake number one was under-planning and lack of like pre-development before going out and starting the book. You know, I set out to write this book as a collection of essays. I had all these notes and ideas and little blurbs I had written, and I'm just like, oh, I'm just going to compile these into like a collection of isolated essays and like, you know, put that out there. And this created so many problems because when I started to transition that from a collection of essays into a story, into a book, right, I had to rework the structure, the bones of it over and over and over

it created a lot of chaos, a lot of overwhelm, especially this third revolution of redoing the structure with my editor here is like wow man. I wish I put in like a month or even two months or even more thought of like what is the message I want to portray, how do I want to arrive at the message, right, and how do I want to lay this thing out. What kind of story, what kind of arc of ideas do I want to present here. When we set out without a clear plan or careful forethought, right, we just double the workload and double the stress on ourselves in every department, right. Now, this is not to say don't start, okay, no, start today, like start writing, start posting content, start on your business, start today. But when it's time to get serious, my friends, when it's time to like, okay, I actually want to do a big project, I want to take do this undertaking, right, you gotta slow down, take a step back, and really think it through. Think through your plan and strategy, my friends.

now, if I was to write a fiction book, which I'm going to, if I was to write a fiction book today, I would think through like all my characters. What are they like? Who are they? What do they fear? What do they desire? What is their relationship to each other? What is the plot? What are the main ups and downs on the character's journey, right? What's the world like? What are the laws of the world? How does the world function if it's different than this one, like, right? Really like thinking it through and coming into that fiction book before you start writing. It's going to save you so much time because now you already have like, you know, marking points of like where the hero is gonna journey, okay? You have marking points of like what these people are like. You know, I was just reading Harry Potter the other day, and J.K. Rowling said, or she kind of alluded to it, that she spent like eight years just developing the idea of Harry Potter.

the world before publishing the first book. Think about that, right? The more development you put in beforehand, the more carefully strategize and plan your work is, the smoother it's going to be. It's going to save you such a headache. Okay, lesson number two, lesson and mistake number two is the Finish Line mentality. Okay, oftentimes we think a project is much smaller than it's actually going to be. Okay, whether it's like, you know, starting a business, writing a book, and doing anything like this. And because we think it's much smaller, we're just like, Oh, let me just rush towards the Finish Line. The arrival point's like, 'Oh, once I get, you know, these chapters done, I'm basically finished, right?' And then it'll be easier. So let me just like get over this, and then it'll be an easier, you know, flow. Okay, or like, 'Let me, oh, I think I'm almost done with this draft. Let me just rush for the draft, or let me rush to like complete the project, complete the video, complete the book, let

me rush for that finish line so I'm just done with it. The problem is with this is it creates a lot of shortcuts, creates a lot of burnout, and you lack in enjoyment along the ride, right? The Finish Line mentality is like White Belt Energy, my friends, instead of Black Belt Energy. The Finish Line mentality, we're all excited for the end, for the outcome, okay? And if we're always excited for the outcome and striving for the outcome, we're never falling in love with the craft and really developing the craft and the lesson. The solution to the Finish Line or Arrival mentality is seeing like, Damn, the problems literally are never going to end. I have more problems today finishing this book than I did six months ago, right? They just get bigger really as you get further, and we have to fall in love with solving problems instead of just rushing through them and trying to get them over with, like falling in love with the craft, falling in love with solving problems, and becoming a Craftsman. And when you do this, you start to actually enjoy

the process of writing. I started to really enjoy writing, and as I get deeper into it, like I'm studying books about writing, I'm getting better at it, and like I'm enjoying this skill I'm cultivating. And like you know, the craft of using words right in any art, in any project, there's a craft there, and by you know, focusing more so on The Craft, you're eliminating a lot of this outcome attachment. You're eliminating a lot, a lot of this racing mindset to get to finish lines, and you're getting, and you're actually becoming excellent. So stop Racing for the finish line. There's always going to be another problem, and honestly, every Finish Line I thought I was racing towards was a false Summit. I'm on draft six, and every single time I finished a draft of this book, I'm like, oh, I'm so close to being done, right? It's like, no, no, there's so much more to do, brother, right? It's all false summits. So lesson number three is fear is about fear and ego and the

mistake of giving into fear even the subtle fears and subtle ego. So in writing, I came out writing with like a lot of abstraction, a lot of philosophy, right? And I ended up overdoing so much of the abstracting and failing to like get to the root of things, right? And because I thought that's like, you know, that's more intellectual, or that's like, you know, that's what my ego wanted to attach itself to, is like this style. But my friends, like, you can't say everything, so say something. Like, get to the lesson is to be bold and go for the jugular of what you're trying to say. Like, go right for it and say it as simply as possible instead of getting lost and like overdoing it and like overdoing a language and writing too long of intros is like get right to the point. This is a really hard lesson for me and I'm still working on it, but ultimately fear is at the root of a lot of poor writing and bad creation and bad entrepreneurship. Fear we're

gonna keep going on this note. Okay, so lesson number four, mistake number four, is being too soft, being too timid. And this is ultimately coming from fear. You know, I cannot show up to writing lightly. This is a huge mistake. Like don't show up to writing or create creative work lightly. The strong passionate voice is what best invokes the Muse. Like you'll find the Flow State much easier when you engage all the way. So they come to writing terrified, come with despair, come with, you know, dread, come with excitement, come with anger, come with frustration, come with something. Come to the table ready to attack something, right? Because if we show up lightly, like ultimately you're just gonna kind of not find the Flow State. You're not going to find your authentic voice, right? And that kind of comes into like, you know, to be bold is to be you, is to speak your truth, right? And so this is getting into lesson number five. Lesson number five is write for people and be you, be you, right? I made the mistake early on of like writing

this book was written with philosophers in mind, with academics, with critics, with the old man on his porch. And because of that, it wasn't truly me, and it took a lot of effort to write in that way. You know, when you're writing for everybody, you're ultimately trying to be safe because you're scared of someone being critical, you're scared of someone not understanding, you're fearful. But when you write, when you create for somebody, like here's the thing, here's the lesson, my friends: get clear on who you're writing for. Like, who's your target audience? Is it people like yourself, right? Is it young men? Is it, you know, 40-year-old dads? Like, the more clear we can be on who, then we can eliminate who we're not ready for, who we're not creating for, who we're not speaking to. And stop trying to be all intellectual and all perfect in all ways. Now we can get to the point.

and be you. So, like, the lesson is to write for human beings, you know, not for AI, not for some algorithm, not for, you know, some critic, not for some academic, but like, write for people, create for people, and ultimately, like, have a conversation with them. The thing is, when we start having a conversation on paper, when we start having a conversation on camera, right, you stop like trying to be all intellectual, all perfect, a philosopher, all these different things, and just like, Yo, I'm just a human being, you're a human being, like, let's have this conversation. I'm trying to transmit an idea to you, right? So, it's like, be you and write for people. Be you and write for people is lesson number five. Um, lesson number six, here we are, lesson number six is, and the mistake, the mistake is attachment to your work and taking things too seriously, right? And man, this, this mistake caused me a lot of problems because as I got deeper into my writing, I wanted to like keep all these sections that like I spent so much time

on like you know crafting that story you're crafting that idea you know, and I think it's beautiful, but it doesn't actually work here. It doesn't really belong in this book, right? And being too attached to it, I tried to like make it work and I kept all these sections and try to like, you know, bring them all together and somehow when I should have just deleted them or just removed them to somewhere else, you know? And when we're too attached to our work, it's because, again, we have too much ego about it, like ego and fear. My friends are at the foundation of so much poor creativity, ego and fear. Like I had too much ego about it, right? So I'm too attached to my work and I'm taking it too seriously. I'm trying to make it perfect, and this has adds so much chaos, so much overwhelm, and so much time to the project, right? The lesson is to realize is that your work is probably okay. It's probably, and like, stop being so attached to it. You almost got to.

disidentify. You gotta take a step back and just be like, I just put in like a year of work into this book, and now I'm running through it with my editor, and I'm removing whole sections that maybe took me weeks to write. Like, think about that. Like, weeks to write. And I'm like, I just gotten to this point where I'm like, I just don't care anymore. I just want to finish this thing, right? And whatever it takes to finish it. So, the less attached you are, the more capable you are of completing, right? So, like, realizing, like, your work is, it's not yours. It's an idea trying to come through you, right? And you got to be able to kill your babies. You got to be able to literally throw away your gold, right? Because here's the thing, is like, my editor told me, is I got all these veins of gold, but a bunch of cobbled rock around them. And like, yeah, I could chisel out the gold and rework it, and that's going to take me forever, or I

could just like throw away that piece that's mostly rock and like keep all of this gold and treasure of already you know amounted in in this creative process so this taking a step back and disidentifying from your work is critical to revision and revision my friends revision revision revision is the key to moving from good to great all like great masterpieces you've seen you know artworks or businesses or you know YouTube videos or books you've read is like you have no idea how much revision that went through like so much of it was reworked rewritten changed and deleted revision is what takes creativity from good to great and in order to revise well you need to be unattached from what you created thanks for being here my friends I'm Christian if you guys want to you know get notified about my book launch coming up here in 2023 the psychology of slaying dragons there's a link in the description where you can you know join the email list to get notified about that furthermore if you want to talk to

me one-on-one. If you're a Creator or Warrior, someone looking to live into their strongest Life. Link in the description for a free Discovery call with me. Thanks for being here, my friends. If you're new, Smash that subscribe button. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I'll see you at the next video. Peace.

6 Lessons I learned writing a book

Wisdom Warriors

Under-planning and lack of pre-development can create chaos and overwhelm when trying to transition from a collection of essays to a cohesive book.

It is important to have a clear plan and strategy when undertaking a big project, to avoid doubling the workload and stress.

Taking the time to think through characters, plot, and the world of a fiction book before starting to write can save a significant amount of time in the long run.

The Pitfalls to Avoid in Your Project Journey

Careful planning and strategy are crucial in the pre-publishing phase of any project to avoid unnecessary challenges.

Having a "Finish Line mentality" can lead to shortcuts, burnout, and a lack of enjoyment in the process, emphasizing the need to fall in love with solving problems and embracing the craft.

Fear and ego can be detrimental to the project journey, causing a distraction from the process and development of skills.

Overthinking and abstract writing can stem from the fear of being too simple or not intellectual enough, leading to poor writing.

Being too timid and soft in writing is a common mistake driven by fear, preventing the writer from finding their authentic voice and the state of flow.

The key lesson is to write boldly, with passion and authenticity, avoiding the trap of overthinking and instead aiming to speak the truth for the audience.

Writing for People: A Lesson in Authenticity

Writing for a specific audience, rather than trying to please everyone, allows for a more genuine and impactful message.

The focus should be on having a conversation and transmitting ideas to the reader, rather than striving for perfection or intellectualism.

It's important to avoid becoming too attached to one's work and to remember not to take things too seriously in the creative process.

Being too attached to your work due to ego and fear can lead to chaos and overwhelm in the creative process, often causing unnecessary delays.

Learning to take a step back and realize that your work is just an idea trying to come through you can help in letting go of attachment.

It's important to be willing to remove or delete sections that are not serving the project, allowing for a more efficient and timely completion.

The Power of Revision in the Creative Process

Disidentifying from your work is crucial for effective revision and is key to improving creativity.

Many great masterpieces have gone through extensive revision, including artworks, businesses, YouTube videos, and books.

Revision is the path from good to great creativity, and being unattached to your creations is essential for successful revision.