Marketing For Self-Published Authors

James Taylor interviews Warren Berger and they talk about Marketing For Self-Published Authors

In this episode, we cover:

• Marketing For Self-Published Authors
• The craft of writing
• Identifying the audience for your books
• The power of questions for your writing process

Resources:

• Recommended Book: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Recommended Tools: Notepad and Pen
• Official Website
• A More Beautiful Question website

For More of Creative Life Podcast By James Taylor

Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript

Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.

James Taylor
Hi, I'm James Taylor business creativity and innovation keynote speaker. And this is the Creative Life, a show dedicated to you the creative. If you're looking for motivation, inspiration and advice, while at home at work or on your daily commute, then this show is for you. Each episode brings you a successful creative, whether that's an author, musician, entrepreneur, perform a designer, or a thought leader. They'll share with you their journey, their successes, their failures, their creative process, and much much more. You'll find Show Notes for this episode as well as free training on creativity over at Jamestaylor.me. Enjoy this episode.

Hi, it's James Taylor here. Today's episode was first aired as part of International Authors Summit. This inspiring virtual summit reveals the secrets of making marketing and monetizing a best selling book. If you would like to access the full video version as well as in depth sessions with over 40 Best Selling authors that I've got a very special offer for you just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit. Yeah, that's right. Over 40 New York Times and Amazon best selling authors, book editors, agents and publishers, sharing their insights, strategies and tactics on how to write and market your first or next best sellers. So just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, but not before you listen to today's episode.

Hey, there is James Taylor and I'm delighted today to be interviewing Warren Berger, innovation expert and question ologists Warren Berger has studied hundreds of the world's most foremost innovators, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers to learn how they ask questions, generate original ideas and solve problems. He is the author of 11 books including the book of beautiful questions a bestseller. A more beautiful question and the internationally acclaimed glimmer named one of business week's best innovation and design books of the year. His writings appear regularly and fine company, Harvard Business Review and New York Times. And he lives in the lovely city of New York. And it's my great pleasure to have him with us today. So welcome, Warren. Thank you, James. It's great to be here with you. So what's happening with you? What's going on your world just now?

Warren Berger
Oh, well, I'm just finishing a book, my new book, which is called the book of beautiful questions. So I'm in the stage now of, you know, finalizing it going through final proofs and jacket, copy. And so I'm in that stage of just signing off on lots of things. And that's, that's a nice stage to be in. I'm happy about that. Everything looks good. And then the book will actually come out on shelves, October 30. So it's pretty exciting.

James Taylor
So 11 This will be your 11th book.

Warren Berger
I know. I've lost track.

James Taylor
doesn't get any easier. You know, going from that very first book to this latest one is that things get easier as time goes on.

Warren Berger
I would like to say yes, but I'm not sure it's true. I think that every book seems to bring its own technologists and, you know, I always go into. It's funny, I've got into several books, thinking, and even saying to my wife, and you know, this one's going to be a lot easier because of XYZ because I already have this information or whatever. And I always think it's going to be easier. And it never is. So I don't know, I think I think what happens is if, if you really care about your work and your books, you know, they're complex problems. And those problems are going to emerge as you're doing the book and the challenges and it's always going to be a puzzle that has to be solved. And you know, it's never easy. So

James Taylor
So let's take us back to the beginning your book number one, how did you get into becoming an author? Where did it begin for you?

Warren Berger
Um, it began for me as a journalist, you know, I was I was really through much of my career, I was writing, newspaper and magazine articles and back around 2000 I was specializing in a couple of different areas, but one of the areas I was writing about was advertising. I became kind of a little, you know, follower of advertising. And I would I didn't write so much about the business side of it as the creative side, you know, I would look at the best ads, most ads are not very good. But if you look at the best ones, you know, the top 10%, or whatever, in terms of quality and creativity, those are really good. And so I would look at who's making those, how are they making them? Where do the ideas come from? How did they develop them? how effective are they? That kind of thing. So I was writing a lot about that for in articles. And I just decided, you know, I have all this information on this subject, I should put it together into one thing and that became my first book. So my first book was it was called advertising today, and a big coffee table book. And, and I just sort of poured all my knowledge into one into one place. And that was that was the start for me of doing books.

James Taylor
So in that process, what would you find was the more difficult because you were obviously writing the book editing the book. And then you're also kind of getting into then the publishing and the deal with the distribution and the publicity and all that side. Would I be writing saying the the writing bit was the bit that kind of came easiest to you? And the and the other side was more challenging? Or do you have a pretty good sense because you came from a really understanding, publishing, that you maybe a little bit advanced, and maybe other first time writers,

Warren Berger
I think the hardest thing was, um, was staying with one project for a long time. You know, because I was so used to as a journalist, working on something for a while, and then you're done with it. And you know, you might be working on an article for a month or two months, but then you're done with it, and you get to move on to something else. And a book is much more of a commitment. You know, you really have to stay with it for a long period of time. There's usually periods when you're sick of it, you know, when you really kind of wish, you kind of wish that you could move on to something else, but you can't you have to stay with it. So that was probably the biggest adjustment. And just getting it done getting it out the door, you know, is is a challenge. And then, and then the actual publishing and marketing parts. Um, I would say what happened early on. I was didn't know anything about book publishing. So I would I just kind of sat back and said, okay, I've done my job. I've written a book, now you the publisher, it's your job to take care of this. Well, that was a big mistake. You know, because what you learn as an author over time, or you know, from experience is that the book publishers don't do that much other than actually physically publish your book. Um, it's really up to you as an author to Make it work, you know, and, and so you're gonna have to hustle a bit, you're gonna have to do some of your own marketing. And that means just whatever you can do to get the word out about your book, you know, if you have to write blog posts or make appearances or do podcasts, or whatever it is, you have to be willing to do it, because that's where the word of mouth will get built around your book. And if you, if you sit back and wait for the publisher to do it, chances are it's not going to happen. It may you know, if you're a superstar, okay, you know, if you're a really top writer, then the publisher is going to buy ads for your book, and they'll still invest in your book. But for 99% of the authors, the publisher really just kind of puts you out there. They give you a little bit of help, but not that

James Taylor
much. So it sounds like going from, from being a journalist article writing to doing becoming an author of large and larger nonfiction. It was was like, going from being a sprinter to like a marathon runner. You, you have to change your basic

Warren Berger
yeah and doing and doing the marketing because Don't forget, as a journalist, I never had to market myself. I was if I wrote for Wired Magazine, Wired magazine was marketing at all, you know, they were the ones that made sure everybody saw my article. But in the book world, it's more of the responsibility comes on you to make sure this thing doesn't just die out there in the world. So

James Taylor
yeah, I think if you were never like, I think like someone asked, asked good questions and makes me think about asking better questions. That is kind of what I think of you and I, as you know, you know, we give a lot of keynotes and give a lot of speeches and almost every second keynote, I give, I think I probably reference you, because I think it's so rare that people think about the question. So one thing I have for you, like so many people that are watching listening to this just now are in that position of being their first Time writer. Instead of like, What? What ideas would you give to that? You know, first time writer like that version of you at the start? What questions would you ask of that author, that first time author to help them think through? What writing is? And what writing what the role of writing is for them in their life?

Warren Berger
Well, I think the questions that, as an author you need to be asking yourself, are, you know, what am I really trying to achieve with this piece of writing? You know, who is the audience, very important to always be aware of that and keep asking yourself that question. What are they? What is this going to offer them? Or what are they looking to get out of this book, you know, so you should always have an awareness of that as you're, as you're creating the book. And then of course, once the book is out, then you have a whole other set of questions. You know, how might I, you know, draw attention to this book. And that's it. question you can be thinking about all the time because ideas will come to you. You know, you may not think of them right away. But if you if you've got that question in the back of your head, you know, you know, how might I make this book part of the conversation? Or what's going on in the conversation now that I can tap into and I can connect with,

James Taylor
I can use Jacqueline almost like just insert your booking setting you into the story,

Warren Berger
and that's an awareness thing that I feel like one of the great things with questioning is that a question doesn't have to be answered right away. And so if you can train yourself to live with a question, to keep it on your mind, then what will happen is, you'll always be thinking about that question. Even when you're not sitting at your desk, pounding, pounding your head against the desk because you know, you're dead. Really trying to come up with ideas? A lot of times that's when you don't come up with ideas, right? But if you've got a question in the back of your mind, and you're taking walks and you're going about your, your, your daily life, you will think about that question. Even in your subconscious, you'll think about it. And, you know, you will get ideas about Gee, you know, I could do that, you know, the ideas will kind of pop into your head or you'll see something that will, you'll see something in the newspaper, then you'll say, Oh, yeah, I'm thinking about, can I do with my book? Well, this, this triggers an idea. So I think it's important to live with these couple of questions about first while you're working on the book, you know, what are you really trying to say, What's, who is your audience? What are their needs? What's going on in the world right now that I can address in this book? And then after the book is done, you know, you kind of shift the questions to or now it's done. How can I connect what I've already created? What's going on out there? How can I make it relevant?

James Taylor
And I guess by having those questions, something else you probably triggered in your brain I come up with the name is it reticular activating system? I think it is, you know that when you if you go out and buy a certain make of car, something you notice that make a car everywhere. If I see blue elephant to you, you suddenly think of blue elephant everywhere. And by having that question in your back of your head, your mind is constantly scanning the environment all the time looking for things that can help you and pattern recognition as well. So that's great. So as you know, as you're kind of working through it on a book, there come those times where you maybe get stuck somewhere on a chapter you're not quite sure what to do. Are there any questions that you've found quite useful? To help kind of break through some of those times we, maybe you just feel you're getting a little bit lost or you're unsure where to go next, or how to shape a particular chapter on the book.

Warren Berger
Well, yeah, there's a couple things. Um, one of the questions that I talked about in my, in my new book is it's about playing the butterfly. And I adapted this question from something that an author and patchett said, which is, she wrote about how when we are in the early stages of developing an idea, we have a vision in our head. That's a beautiful idea of what the idea should be, you know, we sort of night have a vision for a story. And it's a beautiful story somehow, in our heads. And what happens to a lot of people is when they try to take that, that idea from the beautiful vision in their heads to something solid, something on paper, it suddenly gets very ugly. The whole process starts to get ugly, because it's not perfect anymore. It was only perfect in your imagination. And the reality is that never perfect. So once you try to write it down, you try to write it out. Or I imagine the same thing is true with all types of artists, as you try to give form to this vision, you suddenly there are all these imperfections and things that don't make sense things that don't work a holes in your story, you know, there's all kinds of things. So one of the things that I one of the questions I put in my book was for all artists is they need to be asking themselves, am I willing to kill the butterfly? Because as Ann patchett said, you know, you have to kill that perfect vision in your head that that's not a real thing. And you have to be willing to live with whatever the real thing is, whatever the thing you're capable of creating, and it may not match that butterfly in your head, but that's okay. Because the real thing is what counts not that you know, the butterfly in your head is not real. So, um, so, um, I think that's a really important question because it gives you permission to lower, lower the bar a little bit. And that's another question. By the way, another question you can use is, what if I lower the bar? You know, so a lot of times when we're trying to write a beginning of a chapter, or we're trying to create anything, we want to create something so great right out of the box, you know, we want it to be like, excellent, as soon as we put it down on paper, and one of the things that artists successful artists sometimes do is give themselves permission to create something lousy. Because what will happen is, let's say you write something out, it's not very good. But at least you've written something, right? And then you'll go to work on that. Now you have now you have something to work on, and you will make it better. I mean, you won't settle for that, that bad thing, but that bad thing is a start, you know? So it's like giving yourself permission and Asking yourself, you know, what if I begin anywhere, you know, what if I lower the bar, all of those things are designed to give yourself permission to just create without constantly judge without constantly feeling like it has to be so good. Otherwise, I'm just going to get up and leave, I'm going to just stop. And that's the real enemy of creativity is that, that impulse, you have to just get up, leave the room and just quit. Yeah, and we all have it, you know, everybody has that impulse. So the idea is, how do you overcome? How do you fight against that impulse? How do you work through it? And, you know, and you need to find your own ways of doing that. Another thing could be, it could be about putting yourself in. I have a question about a couple of questions that have to do with how might I put myself in creative jail, you know, in effect, you might figure out that in order for you to create anything You need a couple of hours of being more or less locked up. And you need to be able to put yourself in a position where it's not easy for you to walk away from that. Now how you do that, I don't know that's up to you whether you want to actually lock a door somewhere, whether you want to find a place that once you go there, it's not so convenient to get up and leave. Or whether you want to have your significant other in your life stand guard and force back into whatever it is or some people use a timer, you know, where they say this, I'm setting this timer for an hour and a half. I can't leave this room until that timer goes off. But whatever method you use, there, you know, you may need to find a way to force yourself to just stay with it.

James Taylor
And then Roald Dahl the great job is writer. He always bought the same pencils, the same type of pencils, and he always every morning he would go into his writing and he was sharpen seven pencils, and then by the end of the seven but Find the seventh pencil was blunt, which is usually about midday. That's when he would stop. So he said he always do they need to get to seven pencils. That was like a very simple way of doing it. And it was just that would be his version of creative jail. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which I think is great. I think he's great. Because you know, that one of the things you hear a lot is people saying, you know, I've kind of written these things, but they're all in the bottom drawer, and I'll put out is absolutely 100% perfect, you know, this perfectionism thing that that we have and I think what you just said there about, you know, killing the butterfly, and you can learn that bar there. It's again, it gives you It gives you permission to be able to Okay, it's never gonna be hundred percent perfect. You know, you just let's get get out.

Warren Berger
And you know, the I I definitely have that that thing that she had and Patrick talked about, which is the ideas when they're in my head. They seem so perfect. I mean, I just, it's like at all I have this vision for an entire movie or whatever in my head. And it all is wonderful and all Makes perfect sense. And you know, the thing is, that's just not true. It's your it's almost a trick your imagination plays on you. I think the idea that telling you that this thing is beautiful and perfect, it's really not. And that's why if you start to dissect it and it's into something, you realize, Oh, it was just kind of a half, half baked idea, you know, but that's okay. Because that's your starting point, that half baked idea is your starting point. But you just have to not be discouraged. When you realize it's half baked, you know, it's okay, that it's half baked. You know, it would be amazing. If an idea came out of your head fully baked. It could happen, but I don't think it happens very often. And so you have to realize that it's probably half baked, if it's in while it's in your head, and the only way it's going to get fully baked, is to take it out of your imagination. Start really working on it,

James Taylor
and it's fine. I mean, we hear this is not just in writing, but a lot of any kind of creative work. You know, this, this theme of comparing your back shop to someone else's front shop, you know, comparing, you know, you see the artists on stage during this great thing and, and then you're looking at yourself just kind of working on like not able to get a song out and you're looking at some author of the, you know, front cover of something and you're struggling to get that first that first chapter in so it's just going to give yourself permission to realize it's not killing the butterfly,

Warren Berger
you don't know what that artists went through to get to that finish stage. I mean, they might have started with something that wasn't very good, you know, and, and just work their way to that point. So it's, it's a very interesting kind of way that we have to battle against our own. Our own imagination

James Taylor
was the as you were kind of this, this latest book the previous day, which is they're kind of they kind of go together really they kind of come to a complementary that these books were there was a stage in the writing of either of those books where you kind of got stuck yourself and you had to kind of use They can have questioning on yourself and really, maybe ask yourself a number of questions to kind of get yourself unstuck.

Warren Berger
Yeah, I did. I definitely did. Because what happened was, um, you know, the first book was was very much a more general take on questioning. And it was about, you know, why is questioning so powerful? You know, why does it Why does it allow us to do all these great things? And and why don't we ask more questions? What is it in our culture or our education, that tends to maybe keep us from asking a lot of questions? So that book, I felt like was a very general kind of look at the phenomenon of questioning. And then with the second book, when I wanted to do was dig deeper on certain areas that I thought were really important where we could use questioning. So I went from the very general to the more targeted approach. So in the second book I'm looking at, okay, we know questioning is a great tool. How can we use that tool To help us make better decisions, how can we use that tool to fire our own creativity? How can we use that tool to be better leaders? And how can we use that tool to connect with other people on a on a personal level? So those four areas, connection, leadership, creativity, and decision making? So there were a lot of challenges. Once I went to that format, I thought it'd be easy. Yeah, you know, it's that idea. Oh, well, I've already done a questioning book. So this is just going a little deeper, it'll be easy. Well, actually, in some ways, it was harder, because I was, as I because I was getting more specific. In each of these areas. I had to it was almost like I was writing four books. I was writing one book about decision making another book about creativity, another book about leadership, and another book about human relationships. And so you know, it was it became a real real challenge on that level. As far as the questions I asked myself, I, you know, I always kept asking, you know, what is the what is the essential information and what is essential to be in this book, because the big challenge you have with it with any book and with this book in particular is there's so much you could talk about. So once you decide you're going to talk about creativity, you know, there's so much you can talk about so I always had to be focusing Okay, what what do I really want to focus on with creativity? You know, I there's a lot of directions I could go on, what do I really want to focus on and, and what questions are going to be most important? And so I really focused in on the ones you just talked about, you know, how do you get by how do you get past the blocks, how do you get how do you overcome the things that stop you? And and that that was the focus there, but I had to do that throughout the book, always be asking myself, you know, what's really important, what really matters here? What do I want to What do I want to leave out? You know, that's an important question that a lot of times authors don't ask is, you know, what am I willing to abandon? You know, because what happens when you are doing a lot of research for a book? And And sure, you know, this is it, you come up with so much interesting material from every different direction and, and you want to use it all, you know, because it's all, because it's all interesting. On some level, almost everything you find out is going to be interesting on some level. So you feel like, gosh, this should really be in the book. And so I think one of the things you have to ask yourself as an author is what am I willing to abandon? Just because it's not as critical as the other stuff doesn't mean it's not interesting, but it's not as central to the to the topic and the subject and the needs of the reader.

James Taylor
Yeah, it's not as important but that's something you could also as your Asking yourself the whole time in the back of your head, like how do I get this book out how to market this book, tell people about this book, that might be a story that you could use, actually, oh, that would be a great Fast Company piece. You know, I could use that as a good example to use for that. Or I could use it as part of a keynote. So these things might never go away, go away. It's just the that one thing that you're creating that book, it needs to be, you know, kind of solid and it needs to kind of make sense. And it remains below the kind of what you're doing with that book is there was a book The Omnivore's Dilemma. I'm to remember the name of the author now. He, he wrote a book and he actually wrote through three books, like the book one that was the big like, heavy book all about, about food and how we eat and food and diet. And then that was like, power. That's it. Yeah. And that was a classic. That was a great book. But then he also he found a lot of people said, Oh, I got a book. I would love to use like the like a slightly smaller version of it. So his second book, he did like a Like a more compressed version of it, and then people came up to me. That was that was great book. I would you know, I'd love if you just told us what the rules were. So I think his latest book is just like, do this don't do that. So it is but it's all but I think he spoke about this idea. It's like Japanese poetry, you know, actually, right doing less is so hard is do so is is that I can't do the famous I think was Winston Churchill maybe said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, this is a long letter. I didn't have time to write you a shorter short one. So it was

Warren Berger
something like that. It's true and and the other the other good lesson from from what the story you just told me with Michael Pollan is he listened to his he listened to his audience, he listened to his readers. They were telling him something there, and and he followed up on it. And that was true with this book that I just did, too. I mean, it was definitely came out of something I was hearing from readers, when I would go around and talk about the first book or more Beautiful question. I did a lot of talks, a lot of readings. And then I always talk to people afterwards, you know, have Q and A's and stuff. And I was always getting the same question, which is, you know, people would say, I love the idea of questioning more. And I think of myself as a great question or, but I want to know, you know, I'm in the field of data, what questions would help me when I have to deal with someone or when I have to deal with? So they always wanted questions that were specific to their situation, as opposed to just having this general idea that you should ask more questions. So, so I decided that that's what I would focus on in the next book is like, instead of just generally talking about questioning, if I could say, Hey, here's some specifics. If you're in this situation, why don't you think about asking these kinds of questions, or you know, these are some questions that people have found are very effective. When you're trying to decide, you know, should I take that job. So that ended up being you know, the the main gist of the book. And it really came out of listening to readers and what they had to say

James Taylor
because you could almost one of our other guests is very well known in terms of creating book series. Like Miracle Morning working on a record a work with Hal Elrod, and it's now you had the Miracle Morning for parents, the Miracle Morning for teachers, the Miracle Morning for executives. So you could actually with your book, you could do, you know, asking better questions for executive as many questions for you know, parents as well. So you've got like, a whole the next 30 years of your life could be

Warren Berger
wonderful. Yeah. You know, that's, that's, that's both good and bad. Because, um, I don't know, you know, I found when going to a second book, um, it was the first time I'd ever done that. It was the first time I'd ever done a second second book on the same subject. And that is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you're bringing a lot of expertise Now to the second book, because you've already earned it, you've already developed it. And that's wonderful. And you're going deeper on a subject that you care about. And that's really good too. But the downside is, if you're used to being someone who wants variety and wants to move on to something new, you can start to feel like oh gee, why am I still in this? on this subject? Isn't it time for me to to be doing something new by now? And you know, this is again, another great creative question that people need to ask themselves from time to time, which is, this is adapted from something. Do you know the writer Elizabeth Gilbert

James Taylor
did great, big, big magic and Mary love.

Warren Berger
So so she talked about in one of her talks, she talked about the difference between a a jackhammer, a jackhammer and a hummingbird. So, so jackhammer being a jack Cameron digs really deep on something, a hummingbird kind of flies around and lands briefly somewhere and then moves on to the next thing. And where I think this is interesting for creative people is and a question they should ask themselves is at a particular stage in your creative work, you can ask yourself, Is it time now, for me to be back hammer or a hummingbird? To be a jackhammer is to go deeper on something to just you know, you're you're into a subject or you're into an idea you really love. You kind of keep going as deep as you can. But there may come a point when you want to move on, and that's when it's time to be a hummingbird. One of the things I talked about in the book is people like Bob Dylan, or the band you too or lots of creative people have reached a point in their career or various points in their career. Where it's just not, it's just starting to feel stale. And they need to move in a different direction. And that's when it's time to be a hummingbird. You know, they can't just keep digging in that same area where they've had success, they at some point, they need to fly away. And it's very scary to do that. But the really successful artists do that they they evolve and so I find that it's an interesting idea of whether you keep going deep in one area and one is a time to just say okay, I'm moving on now. And I don't know when that will come with questioning for me I mean, it may be at after I've done a second book I may say time to be a hummingbird, you know, time to fly away. But um, but you know, that's that's a question that I think every creative person has to deal with. At some point.

James Taylor
A friend of mine worked with Bob Dylan. He said one of the interesting things about working Bob Dylan said, he never looks back. He's not interested in the slightest of previous things he's done he's always looking at the next thing or and that's that's his. That's his mindset. And I know some author friends of mine who's had that same thing about the first books been very successful. And the publisher would like a series of books around it. And they feel that they don't necessarily want that they want to move on to the next thing that they're that kind of Hummingbird. So the the model that they've found is okay, I'll co author the books in the book series. And so they've actually brought in a different co author for lacing the parents want or whatever the different ones are. And so really, they have that kind of executive control over it, but they're not having to do the heavy lifting, and that releases them took the time to work on the new thing, but I think it's a really, that's it. Yeah, it's a really fascinating question. And it's a good problem to have. Because it means that the first book has been successful enough to

Warren Berger
say, Oh, it's one it's a wonderful app. But But you know, it is true that um, artists really get locked into something or creative people get locked into one area and it can be great for a lot for a while. But they may find at some point that they can, it may be that they can even still make a lot of money. Yeah, doing what they what they're doing, or they can still be successful at it. But if their passion isn't there, if their interest isn't there, they're not going to be happy doing the work. And and I think, you know, if you're there, you're, if you're a creative person, you're there for a reason. And it's that you want to be creative. You want to feel that passion. So as soon as you stop feeling that if access for making money, I think it's gonna, you're not gonna be happy, because you want that feeling of creativity, you want that you want to be energized. You want to feel like you're exploring, and you want to feel like you're trying new things. So

James Taylor
yeah, and I think, you know, we're seeing creatives, and we're and some people think, well, that's just authors and artists, musicians. But actually, Richard Fineman, the great physicist was a perfect example of that. It changed every pretty much 10 years, because he wanted that beginner's mind going into something fresh. And there's the Dr. kh camp. Who writes a lot about creativity and Nobel Prize winners? And she said, one of the things you often see is that they're boundary crosses, they will go and one thing and then they'll go, they'll have maybe their main domain, let's say writing. But then they will go in different domains. And they're able to pull all that from a completely separate thing and into this new thing. And see connections that no one has ever seen before. Because we're able to jump these different boundaries,

Warren Berger
connect ideas from different realms. That's one of the best ways to get new ideas.

James Taylor
Yeah. So let's as we start to kind of finish up here, I'd love to know other what tools do you use you find really useful for yourself in your writing? Is there particular apps that you can have used to help you in your writing? I'm

Warren Berger
on notepad and pen. So I'm very, very old school. I'm one of the things I do is I mean, I will I have a radical I'm sort of radically anti technology, particularly in terms of I feel like we've got it Creativity is under siege by technology right now. And there are tools that also help technology, ai tools that help with creativity. I understand there are tools that can, you know, Evernote or something can help you organize your notes. And that's a great thing. But in general, I worry that technology a lot of times is working against our creativity, I think that it's in the most extreme case is, you know, social media. I mean, that's just, that's just a creativity killer. And I, you know, I battle against it all the time. And it's that distraction, that constant distraction that's there with it, that easy access to easy access to information. So that it's it's just always there at your fingertips and you can always just, you know, be a hummingbird Yeah, but but but not in a good way. I mean, you know, the the idea of being a hummingbird and and following your curiosity. It sounds good. And it is good on a certain level. But there's a point at which following your curiosity is not good. And that's the point where you're just kind of bouncing from one website to another for no particular reason. And getting lost in interesting little tidbits all day long. Now that is the enemy of creativity, because that doesn't help you really doesn't help you with making something with producing.

James Taylor
I know Malcolm Gladwell, I was watching thing he speaks about law about this, he said is it's Google is not your friend. Because obviously, Google is based upon what is most popular, and it will raise those things to the top and when you're researching and right. That's like the last thing you want to do. So he said, I actually like going to, if I'm in that state of reason, going to a library and looking through the the references in a book and then going like two or three steps back where did they find that? Where did they find it? And he said, often you that's when you'll uncover Stories, but you're not going to get them through through Google,

Warren Berger
you'll find something and you'll find fresh ground there. The problem with Google or using stuff that everybody else is using is that, you know, you're not going to find anything that everybody doesn't know already. You know, so it kind of works against originality. It works against coming up with something unusual, or novel. So I think Yeah, on that level, on the research level, it's definitely an issue. But more importantly, to me, it's just the distraction issue. I think that's anyone who's creative now has to recognize this is probably one of the greatest enemies to their, of their creativity is the, the ease with which we can distract ourselves now. I mean, it was always a problem. I mean, you could get distracted by just looking out the window, right? So it's not like it's an entirely new problem. But um, It is a, we get distracted in different ways. Now, you know, I have, we might have got gotten up from our desk and gone for a walk, because we couldn't because we couldn't get any work done. We didn't feel right, we couldn't get nothing was coming out. So we might take a walk. Well, that's not necessarily a bad thing, taking a walk, because you might come up with ideas. But instead, what we're more likely to do now is go on social media.

James Taylor
And we're consuming as opposed to creating stuff coming soon.

Warren Berger
And that doesn't allow your brain to do the things it needs to do because it's just in the absorption mode. It's just absorbing. And there was a line from a designer that I knew who said it is, it is easier to react than to create. So that's very important to keep in mind that you will always if you give yourself the choice of reacting versus creating most of the time, you'll choose reacting. And by reacting I mean answering another email taking another phone call doing another meeting. Those things are easier to do, they really are. And, and so we tend to be lazy at heart. And and we want it we look for those easy outs, we look for those things when we can say, Oh, well, I have to do this, I have to do that. Therefore, I got to push aside the work. So I think you know, we need to be very hyper aware of that, that there are things that are constantly undercutting us in our attempts to be creative.

James Taylor
And what about a book if you do recommend not one of your own books, that is another book by by another author that will could help people either with the craft of writing or just just maybe think more creatively? What would that book be?

Warren Berger
Um, well, I'm on writing the craft of writing. I love some of the some of what Stephen King has written about writing is great. He wrote a nonfiction book I believe it was it was something along the lines on writing. That's great. Yeah. I love the classic book by a Bird by Bird by Annie Dillard, which if people haven't read that, I hope I'm getting that. The her last name, right. Yeah, I think I'm Eddie Diller. But the title is Bird by Bird. fantastic book. It is just a great. It's so beautifully written, but it talks about the the what makes writing such a special thing. And it's very inspirational. So if you need that kind of inspirational if you're if you're asking why am I right? Or why am I doing this, and you need some inspiration, you know, I look to those kind of books that remind you why this is a great way to spend your time and a great, great thing to put your efforts into. And then just as far as other books I've on creativity that I've enjoyed, you know, I love the the the workplace The writer, the professor who, whose name I can never pronounce who wrote the book flow.

James Taylor
Haley is from university. Yeah, yeah.

Warren Berger
The book flow is a great book too. If it's not in your library already, I get it because it's very important. The whole idea of getting in the flow is very, very important. And he's analyzed it in a way that nobody else has. And I love I love the work of Adam Grant, the writer Adam Grant, who's written he wrote the book originals, as well as give and take but I think he really Adam Grant has some great ideas about what makes people a creative and what what allows them to think the way they do

James Taylor
wonderful. We'll put all these links here so people can check out all those as well. I've got a final question for you Warren. Let's I want you to imagine you woke up tomorrow morning and you're gonna have to start from scratch start writing from scratch. No one knows you, you know no one you don't have a publisher relationship. Nothing, no platform. What would you do? How would you restart things?

Warren Berger
I would ask myself the question, what can I own? And what do I want to own? So that could be an issue, or a problem, or a subject area? Um, you know, I think I mentioned earlier that, you know, when I, my first book came out of my being, writing a lot about advertising, so I felt like I owned that turf of advertising at that time when I wrote that. I knew as much about Creative Advertising is anybody I mean, I was really, I was really steeped in it. So I think one good thing to ask yourself as a writer starting out, is, you know, where would I be able to create a niche for myself, you know, where would I be able to where might I be able to bring something to to the table that I care about? Maybe I have some stuff talent in that area, and also that maybe there's not that many people talking about it, um, you know, the more you can find an area that's a little bit fresh. It's not being done by everybody, you know, but it's a little more distinctive. That's what I would do. That's, that's one of the questions I would ask my so I really focus on how can I make myself distinctive? And how can I find a place for me to make a statement

James Taylor
while you're selling done that with this whole area of questioning and ask asking better questions, and then great job on that. And I recommend your book to many, many people. And I highly encourage anyone that's watching this just that go and get go and get either the latest one that's just coming out or the other, the previous one as well. If people want to connect with you, Warren, just reach out maybe to find out more about your work, where's the best place for them to go and do that

Warren Berger
I just I have a site that sort of brings everything together and it's amorebeautifulquestion.com. So you just put those four words together a more beautiful question. All one word a.com. And, and what that is, is kind of a clearinghouse of best questioning. It's got both of the books on there so you can see the difference between them and what they're covering. And just even fun stuff, like there's a place on there, which has all songs that have questions for a title. And I always invite I invite people if you know it, if I if there's a song, you know, that has a question for a title, like who wrote the book on love, you know, something like, so if you know of a song that has a question for title, send it into me because we're trying to build a definitive list of questions, songs, but you know, there's all kinds of fun stuff about their quizzes you can take about what kind of question are you and that kind of thing. So, that's kind of the place to go. If you're for all things about me and mainly all things about questioning.

James Taylor
Wonderful. We're gonna put those links here below, or and it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you again, thanks so much for coming. On this and sharing your your brilliance and about your life and writing. Thanks so much for today.

Warren Berger
Thank you, James goodbye.

James Taylor
If you're interested in living a more creative life, then I'd love to invite you to join me as I share some of the most successful strategies and techniques that high performing creatives use. I put them all together in a free downloadable ebook that you can get by going to jamestaylor.me. That's jamestaylor.me. To get your free downloadable ebook on creativity.

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