Why to Practice Writing, with Joe Bunting

ONE OF THE QUESTIONS I field regularly is how and why to practice writing. As anyone who knows me knows, I eschew all writing prompts and exercises. But that does not mean I do not practice writing. I do, of course. And when the words “practice'” and “writing,” are said or written in the same sentence, the person who always comes to mind for me is my friend Joe Bunting, the creator of an online site called The Write Practice. So, on this, as well as many other topics, he’s the one to contact for some tips. Joe is also the author of a brand new memoir, so come along and listen in how to practice writing, as well as how to publish a memoir right now. Listen in and follow along below as Joe and I talk on this episode of QWERTY.

Read along as you listen to this episode of QWERTY. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher. (The following transcript has been edited from the original recording).

In 2011, Joe founded The Write Practice, a community dedicated to learning the craft of creative writing through deliberate practice. Through that site, he has helped well over 10 million people with their writing.

Joe is a writer who has written and co-written books on topics like leadership, creativity, resiliency, and travel. He’s the author of the number one Amazon bestseller Let’s Write A Story. His writing has been featured in Glimmer Train, Copyblogger, Write to Done and many others. But it’s his new book that got me to call him to come on today. It’s called Crowdsourcing Paris. And it’s a real life adventure story set in Paris, and it’s a total joy.

So, he’s what we refer to when we say multi-platform, since along with The Write Practice and his own published works, he’s also produced and hosted his podcast, Character Test, where he examines good characters of all kinds then draws out the practical tips, lessons, and strategies listeners can use to improve the stories they’re telling with their own lives. So with all that, welcome Joe.

Joe: Oh it’s my pleasure to be here, Marion. And I just want to say, Marion, that you were so encouraging to me as I was writing my memoir. And you gave me hope that one day I would have something with sharing. So, thank you so much for the work you do and continue to do.

Marion: Well, that’s lovely. I have the stretch marks to prove it, Joe, don’t worry. So let’s start with that new book because it’s been an exciting process to read, and listen, and talk. You have a remarkable successful online presence with your site The Write Practice. You’ve helped so many people improve their writing habits. It’s wildly successful. And everyone I know reads it. And yet a few years ago, you proposed to walk out of your life in Atlanta, Georgia, taking your wife and children with you to move to Paris, and you proposed to write about it. I absolutely remember you pitching this idea to me. But how in the world did you pitch this to those people who depend on you for food and shelter? What did you say to your wife?

Joe: Oh my goodness. Yeah. My wife was not excited. And from the beginning of our relationship, I had told her that I wanted to travel the world and write, to live that ideal writer’s lifestyle where you just go around to all the places, and you write books, and then you move on. And that sounded so perfect to me. And when I originally told her that idea, when we were still dating, she was like, “I never want to do that. That sounds horrible to me.

Marion: So was it in the vows or what? I mean how did you ever get there?

Joe: Well, so eventually, I think I wore her down. And I had this idea. My grandmother, she was talking about getting married in Florence. And for her 85th birthday actually, we were all as a family going to go out to Florence and celebrate her and her birthday and maybe her marriage which didn’t end up happening. But we had to go to Florence anyway. I thought this is the time. This is when we begin our nomadic lifestyle of traveling the world and writing.

Marion: Oh, man.

Joe: And I pitched her on the idea. And I knew she loves Paris. And I knew that if I talked about going to, let’s say, Southeast Asia or Japan or Australia or somewhere like that, she would totally hate that idea. She would never want to do it. So I told her, let’s go live in Paris for a while. And she still hated the idea, but she thought about it a little bit. And later that night, and I talk about this a little bit in the book, she started sharing this idea as if it was her idea that we were going to go move to Paris. And that’s kind of where this story came from.

Marion: That’s good. Well that’s good strategy. Make somebody else think it’s their idea. I get it. So moving to Paris and writing has of course been done before, probably most famously by Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. So, how not to write clicked memoir? Here’s the twist. I mean like many writers before you, you thought Paris would be the perfect escape. And like many writers before you, you were a little short of cash to make this dream come true. Unlike anyone I’ve ever known, you ended up crowdsourcing a piece of this. So talk to us about.

Joe: Yeah, so it really came out of panic actually. So we had…

Marion: Writers and panic. Yes, there’s a history there.

Joe: Yeah. Right. So we had made this plan to go to Paris. We had actually found this amazing apartment in Montmartre. We had bought our plane tickets. And then a month before we were planning to go, this apartment that we had rented fell through. And we had to find a new apartment. And so we were kind of frantically looking around. We found this great one in St. Germain. And we got it, but it was $1,000 more than what we originally planned on spending. And I had to figure out how we were going to raise. I think we were going to be like $600 short as I did the math. And I’m like, “How am I going to make $600?”

At the time, this was 2014 I was still a young up-and-coming writer. I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I wasn’t making a lot of money. My wife had just quit her job and I had no idea how I was going to get $600. And I had this idea to write a book just about my experience in Paris, being a writer in Paris, writing where Hemingway wrote, all of that. And I sent it out to a few people, and they hated the idea. They thought it was really boring. They were like, “Why would anyone read a book about you sitting in cafes and writing? That sounds so dumb.”

Marion: That’s feedback you need to hear.

Joe: And they kept saying it needs more adventure. And for me, I’ve been on some adventures, but I wouldn’t say I’m an adventure seeker. So I had this idea to share this with my audience, and involve my audience, and ask them what adventures I should do in Paris. And I ended up getting-

Marion: I love that.

Joe: Over a hundred ideas.

Marion: Or you got more than 12 ideas, but you did 12? Is that it?

Joe: Yeah, I had over 100 ideas. I picked the top 12.

Marion: That’s it.

Joe: And then I did them.

Marion:  Oh, man. So you get to Paris. You get the apartment. You live on the streets where Hemingway and Fitzgerald have lived. You’re in the city of some of the greatest bookstores in the world. And how do you keep it all from becoming cliche? How do you keep it from that feedback that you originally got from those friends who said, “You know,” because I remember talking to you during that phase. And several of them said, “It’s kind of been done, hasn’t it?” So it’s because you had the people choose and you chose from that hundred adventures list, you got the 12. How to not write cliched memoir? Is it through the adventures or is it through the writing?

Joe: Yeah, I mean it was a challenge. This book took me five years to write. And I had to really learn how I think to become a writer. Before I started working on this book, I had already finished five books. So I knew the process of writing, but I was still learning the craft I think. And I learned so much more through this book and how to tell a really good story. I’ve always felt like anything I write needs to have three things. One, it needs to tell a good story. And by good story, I mean it just has to be fun enough that you want to keep reading, right? Two, it needs to be beautifully written. And three, it has to evoke emotion because I love the experience of reading something, and it’s just like you’re overcome with emotion. That’s so exciting for me.

So I wanted to do all those three things. And I feel like even after I wrote the first draft and even the second draft, I had accomplished number two and number three pretty well. It was well written. There were some passages that were just really beautiful. It evoked some emotion. But how do you tell a good story? And I think that’s always a challenge when you’re writing memoir-

Marion: Absolutely.

Joe: Taking your whole life and trying to find the story in the middle of that. And yeah, it took me five years to figure out how to do it. And I think I finally did it-

Marion:  Good.

Joe:  But it was definitely hard work.

Marion: Well, it’s five years well spent. Yes, it was definitely hard work. We communicated during that process. And it’s hard work that’s absolutely worth it. It’s risky too because here you are, this person who runs this large practice that’s giving advice to writers, and here you are writing. And so one of the things we debate all the time in the writing world and the online world is are we scooping ourselves? Are we telling our readers too much online?

A few weeks ago on Qwerty, I interviewed Jane Friedman whose expertise on the business of writing is absolutely legendary. And we discussed this whole debate of whether a person can write online and not scoop themselves. So where do you stand on this idea? Do we run the risk of our readers not buying the book if they feel they already know the story because of our online lives?

Joe: Yeah, I mean I think that’s always such a challenge. And often I mean as I was thinking about this book and wanting to get it out into the world, I think I struggled with that question so much and really probably took a year too long to finally publish it because I was worried, what does this say about me and my career and my trajectory? And I don’t really have all the answers and whether this was the right move or the wrong move. Even writing this book, was it the perfect project?

But I did know two things. One, I needed to write it, and I needed to share it. I think as writers we have a duty to share our story and to share writing with the world. And two, I mean I think we can get too much in our heads about what’s the right thing to do and what’s the wrong thing to do and whether this is going to help me in my career or not. I was looking at a children’s book writer. I have three small kids. They’re six, four, and two years old right now. So we read a lot of children’s books. And there was-

Marion: Yes, you do.

Joe: And there was this one author who I had read, and she was an award winning author. I’m totally blanking on her name right now. But she won all these great awards, I think the Newberry Medal, some others. And I was looking through the list of books that she wrote. And I thought that she just had written all these award-winning books, and that’s it. But then I found as I was looking at her whole list of books that she had actually written over a hundred children’s books.

Marion: There you go with that wonderful moment, isn’t it? When you realize, “Oh wait a minute, she practiced. She got here that way.”

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

Marion: I see.

Joe: And so some of those books were award-winning. And some of them were more genre and commercial. And it’s the books that she won these amazing awards for that were more kind of literary children’s books that she is known for now. But probably during her career, she was more known for her other books.

Joe: And I think about Mark Twain too and during his lifetime. And he was a huge inspiration for me as I was working on this book. During his lifetime, he was most known as a travel writer and someone who gave speeches. And it was only later in his life that he wrote these novels. And they weren’t very famous. No one read his novels really during his lifetime. It was after his life that those kind of became what we think of him as now. And I just think that sense of legacy, I mean I think legacy is complicated. And how much we share online, and offline, and in print is complicated. And sometimes you just have to put your work out into the world.

Marion: Absolutely. And you can overthink this constantly. And I think of earlier in that answer you referred to this book as something you had to write. And I think having been raised in a fairly traditional, Judeo-Christian ethic, I think of those books, those stories sometimes as the roll-away-the-stone books. In other words, we have to roll this one through our lives to get to the ones that are behind it. And it just says to you, “You have to write this.” Sometimes you sit down to write one story and another one pops up. I speak to writers all day long. And I always say to them, “Respond to that. There is something there that will give you access to the next.” And I think it’s an important thing to respond to.

So what you did with this one, I mean there were all manners of publishing available to writers and you covered this on your website. And we have huge decisions when we go to publish. So, let’s talk about what writers can expect these days. We used to think of self publishing, it used to be referred to as vanity publishing. And now it’s become this great adventure. It’s really something that is available to everybody. In fact, I read in an industry magazine today that the increase is 156% since 2012 in self publishing, literally more than a million titles currently on the self-published market. And you chose to self publish this book. So walk us through what you’ll do to push that book out into the market with everything that you know. How will you get us to see it and know about it? What’s your plan for the promotion of your book?

Joe: Yeah, so I’ve been writing online for, oh goodness, since 2008. So I’ve built this audience of fans over the last 10 or so years especially through The Write Practice. And that’s kind of where I’ve been working the longest. So right now, we have over 100,000 people who get our emails almost daily. And most of these are writers, so they’re not like the perfect target market for a book like this which is a memoir and it’s about my own story and life.

But one of the things we have done is share that with them. And the people who have read it have really loved it. And the book kind of has a little bit about my writing process in it. So it does appeal to writers I think.

Marion:  Good. Well, that makes perfect sense.

Joe: Yeah, so that was the first step. And now I’m kind of going to other influencers and friends and other writers that I know and respect and have been either following for a long time or am actually friends with, and sharing the book with them, and kind of trying to get them to see what it’s about, and maybe they’ll share it with their audience.

Marion:  Well, that word influencers is something we all laughed at the first time we heard it. And now if you want to understand how to create a series of stepping stones through the world of promotion, influencers are absolutely something you need to take seriously. And they do exist. And they’re online. And this is how you and I met is we met online. I don’t remember who first approached whom. But you and I and Jeff Goins have met each other online in one order or the other for instance. And it works this way that we say, “What’s your new book? Let’s promote your new book, and we’ll do a webinar together. And we’ll share an email together and introduce our audiences to the same thing.”

Joe: Yes.

Marion:  I love this. It’s about gathering a bunch of people who are likeminded and sharing expertise. And I just can’t see a single thing wrong with it. So I use the word influencers too. And I like people to get more comfortable with it because I think the sooner you do, the more you can understand the ability. It’s just community. It’s just absolutely utilizing a community that you’ve already created that you know is interested in your stuff.

Joe: Yeah, I think it’s so important-

Marion: So let’s talk about that.

Joe: To realize that this isn’t really a new idea. Writers have always had these circles and communities of friends. We were talking about Hemingway in Paris, and he had all of these friends including Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. And he actually said about them that they were people who could help a writer up the rungs of a career, which I love. And there’s this sense that throughout history in the writing and arts profession, there have been these groups of likeminded people who are generously helping each other. And I think we all need that.

Marion: It’s the truth.

Joe: We have a myth that the writer is this kind of lone genius working out in their upstate New York cabin or their Paris attic apartment or whatever. And the reality is it’s all about relationship.

Marion: Yup, it is. I always tell people to care for and feed the first editor that ever says yes to them because that person is going to end up someplace else and go with them. Wherever they go, go with them. And with that in mind, some of my best friends had ended up in various places in publishing and online publishing and bestselling authors. And while it’s just been a joy to go watch their careers, we also have taken each other along. So I agree with you. It’s all about community.

So let’s talk a little bit more about The Write Practice. People love it. And one of my favorite aspects of it are your tutorials. You have online tutorials on the short story, characterization, grammar, interviewing. It’s very practical. And in that, your core message seems to be to practice. So how does writing practice work? And what does it look like the way you teach it?

Joe:  Yeah, I’ve always felt that you can get too much in your head with learning the process of writing. There’s so much theory about writing. And it can end up where you don’t actually write. You’re just learning all this stuff and not actually using it.

And one thing we’ve always tried to do is guide people through the process of putting what they’re learning to use immediately. I think we need to not just be learning new things, but actually doing it. And whether that’s in a writing prompt, and I know you’re not the biggest fan of writing prompts, but I think from a practice standpoint it can work. But also in your own books, and in your editing, and in all of your work, just putting these things to use as soon as you can so that you can kind of cement that lesson.

So we’ve been teaching creative writing online. I have since 2011. I think we’ve helped over 10 million people, probably way more than that. But the best part of what we get to do is really help people practice. And we’ve probably had over 50,000 writing practices over the last 10 years which is amazing.

Marion:  Mm-hmm (affirmative). It is. It is. And I think that this is where you and I intersect. No, I don’t use writing prompts. But you talk about putting to use what you know as soon as possible. And that’s what I call writing with intent. So I’ve always loved where we intersect there.

So you have a lot going on. And I get this question every day from the people I work with. How do we compartmentalize? You get… You’ve been writing this memoir. You write fiction. You like to write short stories. You run this large online writing site. Obviously, you have three children, a wife, family, etc. So the compartmentalization is there.

I think what I really want to talk about is when we help others with their craft, does that in any way, steal from our own writing time? And how do we manage those feelings? I have my own theory on that. And I’ve got my own sort of guru of person years ago who gave me some great advice about that. But how about you? I mean you want to get to your own work and yet your business is to help others. How do you compartmentalize? How do you make that distinction and feel good?

Joe: Goodness. That is a tough question. I’d love to know how you do it. Maybe you could give me your advice first.

Marion:  I’ll tell you what this person said to me years ago that has changed my life. And yes, it sounds like a bumper sticker, and I just don’t care. She said, “It’s not your energy to keep.” And honestly I remember when she said it, and something happened inside my body and it’s like my shoulders dropped. And I must have been frantic at the moment saying, “I don’t know how I’m supposed to manage this. I mean I haven’t written a word of my own story,” You know, one of those tirades. And she said, “But you help thousands of people a year. And you give them what you know. And it’s not after all your energy to keep.”

And since then, it’s changed everything. In other words, I think, and I keep meaning to write about this, I kind of think that the world of people in writing is divided into some the same thing that the world of cooking is divided into: those people who share recipes but leave out one ingredient, and those people who share recipes and put everything in there that’s needed. The people who don’t want you to succeed, they leave out that one ingredient. That’s because they’re afraid that you might succeed. And you seem to be not afraid of anyone else succeeding, that you move that energy as my friend said to me right out into the world.

And I feel that way after her telling me that, that there’s no threat here. Just leave it all on the field, right? Or as the people at ConvertKit used to say, “Teach everything you know.” Just put it all out there.

Joe: No, that’s good.

Marion:  So if that helps you, that’s what I was told. What do you think?

Joe: Yeah, I went through a phase of a couple of years not focusing on my own writing and just focusing on teaching. And I felt so I don’t know kind of like a fraud for a long time. And I didn’t want to feel like that anymore. And so I made that a bigger part of my time and life and was intentional about spending several months working on a book. I had a novel later.

And I think that was really important for me, both for my own learning and also for my teaching. I think we who are teachers need to be practicing. And we who are practicing need to be teaching too. I mean I think that’s how you learn. You learn through teaching, best of all. So there is this give and take process-

Marion: That’s a good one.

Joe: Of both taking in and using that knowledge to write great books, and then also passing along to the next generation of writers, whoever that might be, so that they can grow and get better too.

Marion: That’s great. So in my intro I spoke of you being the author of the number one Amazon bestseller Let’s Write A Short Story. And I think that’s cool and fun and wonderful. And I love the platform that you have and that you try a lot of things. But the world changes really fast online. And so when you give writers advice specifically about online, should they write first on their own blogs? How can they practice writing? Does anyone still read other people’s blogs? Do you advise people to test their material on large online writing sites before they attempt a book? What are you… My listeners are all writers, and they want your advice. So where are they testing these ideas in the public best these days in this exact moment in time.

Joe: That’s such a good question. Yeah, I think especially for creative writers where if you’re writing memoir or if you’re writing a novel, the best place is to start is with shorter works of what you’re trying to do, so writing essays and writing short stories. I think those are the best practices because you have to practice writing finished pieces. You have to practice sharing those pieces. You have to practice getting feedback and making those pieces better or abandoning them because maybe it just needs to be done. And publishing, I think publishing is something we all need to practice. It’s not just the end result; it’s something we have to be doing again and again. So I think short fiction and short memoir essays can be an amazing way to practice writing. And I think writing books can be practice, and that’s kind of an obvious next step and certainly where the market is in terms of books, especially for novels.

I do think people read blogs. I don’t think if you’re a novelist you need to be writing blogs. I think if you’re a memoir writer, they could work and you might be better served by working at a newspaper or submitting to other journals. You would know more about that than me. But I think especially for fiction writers, you don’t have to have a blog. You should be writing books and hopefully a lot of books, and that’s the way to grow and certainly where the market is.

Marion:  That reminds me. Years ago, I had the great good fortune to have dinner with one of my favorite novelists. His name is Pete Dexter and people know him from Paris Trout. But they also know him from The Paperboy and a bunch of other wonderful, wonderful novels. And I was just absolutely thrilled to be invited to introduce him on a stage and to get to go to dinner with him. But I didn’t expect writing advice from him.

And he had just written a book. It had come out. He’d gotten some bad reviews. And I asked him at dinner, I said, “How are you doing with those reviews?” And he looked up from his steak, and he said, “You know, there are a lot worse things a man could do in this lifetime than write a few bad books.”

Joe: I love that.

Marion:  And I just have loved him even more from that moment on.

But as we start to wrap this up, let’s just talk a little bit about the different kind of feedback. You talked about feedback, and you have to get used to it. And even after all the years I’ve been writing and the books I’ve written and remaking myself online, I still get pushback from some members of my family. I mean I have people that still say things like, “Are you ever going to get a real job?” And so does your generation provide the support you need to do what you do? Is it so different for you because you all grew up as digital natives? Or do you still have some relatives that ask you if you’re ever going to get a real job, Joe?

Joe: That’s a great question. I wish that I had more drama in my family so we could kind of unpack it.

Marion:  Come to Thanksgiving at my house then. I’ll give you a couple of relatives who will quiz you till you just can’t eat any more cranberry sauce. Trust me.

Joe:  No, actually, my family is so supportive and at the same time my biggest critic I think. When I was working on this novel, I gave some members of my family this book to read. And I had the most painful and hilarious responses. My dad said, “So what kind of feedback do you want from me?” because he’s like, “I don’t know if I really get it.” I’m like, “Well you know the book is coming out in a week, so no feedback right now unless it’s awesome.”

Marion:  I love it. That’s a great response. So ask for what you really need. I always say to people when you give somebody something to read, tell them what you’re looking for. If you don’t want content feedback, if you just want grammar and punctuation, if you only want content, just tell them because otherwise you confuse them, first of all.

Joe: So true.

Marion:  And your dad asked the right question, “How much input do you want?”

Joe: Yeah. And he came back later. When the book was finished, I made some changes, not based on his feedback, but just because they needed to be done. And he read the book. And now he’s the biggest fan and sharing it with all his friends, and my mom too. And my sisters actually both read the book and sent me these amazing text messages.

There’s one chapter in the book that you’re in Paris, and I’m there with my wife, and it’s a very romantic city. And the book is not an explicit in any way, but there are some parts that talk about sexuality. And my sisters both read those and were like, “Chapter nine, I couldn’t handle it. That was my least favorite chapter.” And they’re scarred about it. And my mom, who’s a therapist, sent me a message recently. And she’s like, “Chapter nine, I thought it was hilarious.” So you can’t please everyone.

Marion:  No, you can’t. Well, just keep doing what you’re doing. Keep writing those chapter nines and the chapters one through nine too please because this is a joy.

I wish you the very best with your work, and I promise to follow along online. Everybody should, taking tips from you and from your terrific staff that works at The Write Practice.

Marion: The book is Crowdsourcing Paris. It’s available on Amazon. Joe can always be found online at The Write Practice.