By: The Motley Fool
David Gardner
There are some absolute gemstones of wisdom in this interview that marketing and business philosopher Seth Godin does with Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner:
David Gardner
There are some absolute gemstones of wisdom in this interview that marketing and business philosopher Seth Godin does with Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner:
Seth Godin: Stephen King, one of the great novelists of our life, goes to writer's conferences all the time.
Regularly, someone raises their hand and says to him, "What kind of pencil do you use?"
He's very patient.
But the thing is, it doesn't matter what kind of pencil you use. That's not the issue. For me, there are several parts about this.
Now, I need to make it really clear, I only took one English class in college. My high school English teacher wrote in my yearbook that I was the bane of her existence and I would never amount to anything. When I got in the book business, I got 800 rejection letters in a row over the course of 11.5 months. I have no gift. I'm not even ready to call it a talent.
I do think that several things are true, though. No. 1, perhaps the greatest achievement in any culture on the face of this Earth that's filled with humans is when we shift to be able to read and write. Reading and writing are asynchronous and permanent, and they enable us to be rational in how we describe things. We all have the same 26 letters to use, and we can leave behind, even if it's just one day, this message to somebody else that they can read when they want to read it, about where we are and what we know. I think that's magnificent.
What I brought to writing is this: write poorly. Write poorly, write more. Write more, write more. Sooner or later, if you write poorly long enough, you will write well.
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