Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Tools for Titans #40 : Reject the norms of your time.

This segment is about Neil Strauss. He is the author of the pick-up book The Game. If I were to read The Game in my 20s, Neil might have turned out to be my favourite author. Unfortunately, I learnt of his works through mutual friends who experimented with "negging" women with low self-esteem at pickup bars.

( I don't neg women with low self-esteem. My wife, however, is very good at negging men with an abnormally high self-esteem. )

I was actually rather turned off my some of the antics used in The Game. I will not say that it does not work, a lot of single men who "neg" women with a low self esteem end up getting a good time. The question is whether they can build a lasting bond.

This write-up on Neil Strauss, however, turned out to be very useful and shows him to be more than just a beta-male pick-up artist.

a) Reject the norms of your time

A billionaire claims that the reason why they are rich is because they reject the norms of their time. This is probably true.

But you can also reject norms by committing sexual assault. Consequently, you can find a lot of 'iconoclasts' in prison.

b) Three ways of editing your works 

This is actually a good tip to improve fiction writing. First, edit the work to please yourself. Second, edit your work to please your fans. Finally, edit your work to please your critics.

I really like this piece of advice as I may still have a book waiting for publication in a few years or so.

c) Defeat writer's block by lowballing targets

Neil's writing advice should to not be ignored as he is a perpetual best-seller.

His advice against writer's block is simply create two crappy pages of work every day. If George R R Martin followed Neil's advice, Winds of Winter would have been out years ago.

This blog is my way of writing 2 crappy pages a day. I've been churning out pages every day thanks to Tools for Titans.




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