Author Susan Orlean Shares Her Secrets to Success
Susan Orlean, a renowned non-fiction writer and New Yorker staffer, has built a wildly original career by following her curiosity and taking big creative risks. Her new memoir, Joy Ride, is a gripping and funny account of her writing journey, filled with actionable tips for anyone embarking on a creative project.
In a recent appearance on the How Success Happens podcast, Orlean shared her insights on how to turn your big ideas into reality. Here are three key takeaways from her conversation:
Details
1. Trust Your Instincts: Orlean believes that the instinct to know whether an idea is worth years of work is a crucial skill to develop. She suggests pushing your ideas away, trying to forget them, and paying close attention to whether they keep resurfacing and “nagging” at you. This process helps you distinguish between ordinary fear and laziness and the deeper realization that an idea may not be as good as you thought.
2. Run Your Creativity Like a Business: Orlean treats her writing like a business, choosing each project carefully and setting clear goals. She spends months researching and interviewing before writing a single word, and she sets a strict daily quota of 1,000 words to demystify the work and keep herself from feeling overwhelmed.
3. Seek Out Tough Feedback: Orlean credits good editors who respect her voice and focus on clarity, repetition, and emphasis. She believes that being open to discussion, debate, and feedback is essential to a mature creative practice, and she likens it to the constant testing entrepreneurs do when they hit walls and have to decide whether to adjust or abandon an idea.
Key Takeaways
* When a new idea excites you, deliberately step back, see if it keeps coming back, and only then commit the time, money, and energy to build it.
* Run your creative work like a business by defining clear tasks, building a repeatable system, and holding yourself to simple, concrete daily goals.
* Seek out tough, thoughtful feedback, and treat it as market insight on your ideas rather than an attack on your talent.
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