Good Writers Read Good Books

Erik Deckers contributed today's post. Eric is the president of Pro Blog Service, a content marketing agency with clients throughout the US. He is also the co-author of Branding Yourself and No Bullshit Social Media.

Whenever I attend a networking event, I like to ask questions usually not asked at one of these things.

What’s your favorite sports team? Who was your idol growing up? What’s the last book you read?

I can always spot the sales alpha dogs in any networking crowd. When I ask about the last book they read, or their favorite book, it’s always the same thing.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, someone will say.

Zig Ziglar’s Born To Win, says another.

The Art of War, says a guy with slicked-back hair and a power tie.How to Crush Your Enemies, See Them Driven Before You, and Hear the Lamentations of the Women, says an unusually-muscled guy with a funny accent.

And I can spot the content marketers too.

Ann Handley’s Everybody Writes! someone will say.

The Rebel’s Guide to Email Marketing, says another.

“I don’t read books, I only read Copyblogger,” says a third.

But the writers—the good writers—will tell me about the books they love. The books they read over and over again, not because it will help them get ahead in life, but because it stirs something within them.

Those are the writers who are more concerned with their craft than with their content. Those are the writers who will produce some of the most interesting work, regardless of their employer. (What’s sad is their employer has no idea how lucky they are to have this wordsmith in their corner, and will wonder why the sales funnel got a little emptier after they left.)

Content marketers: as writers, you should understand and build your craft as much as, if not more than, your understanding of your product, or big data, or SEO, or the right number of items in a listicle, or A/B testing.

Good writers are good content marketers, but the reverse is not true. It doesn’t matter if you’re the leading expert in your particular industry, if you can’t make people want to learn more about it, you’ve failed.

If you can’t make people care about your product, they won’t buy it. If you can’t stir basic human emotions, they won’t care. And if you can’t move people to read your next blog article, or even your next paragraph, it doesn’t matter how much you know.

You will have failed as a marketer and as a writer.

The best thing you can do is focus on improving your writing skills.

That all starts with reading.

Stop Reading Business Books

Content marketers—at least the writers—need to stop reading business books and content marketing blogs. They’re no good for you. At best, you don’t learn anything new. At worst, they teach you bad habits.

As British mystery writer P. D. James said, “Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.”

Read for pleasure instead. Read outside the nonfiction business genre. Read books from your favorite writers. Read mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, or literary fiction. Read history, biographies, creative nonfiction, or collections of old newspaper columns.

But. Don’t. Read. Business Books.

This is input. This is how you become a better writer. You read the writers who are better than you, and you skip the writers who aren’t.

That means business books. As a business book author and reader, I can tell you there are plenty of business books that will never be accused of being “well written.” They’ll teach you plenty about the subject, but they won’t teach you about the craft of writing. Sure, you need to study the science of content marketing, but that should be a small portion of your total reading, not the majority of it.

So you study the best creative writers who are considered masters of the craft, and practice some of their techniques.

This is why professional football players watch game film, not only of their opponents, but of players who came before them.

This is why actors watch old movies by the stars and directors from 50, 60, 70 years ago.

It’s why musicians not only listen to their idols, but their idols’ idols, and even their idols’ idols’ idols.

And this is why good writers constantly read the masters of the craft. This is why several writers have must-read books and authors they recommend to everyone.

My friend, Cathy Day, a creative writing professor at Ball State University, and author of The Circus In Winter told me once, "Reading a lot teaches you what good sentences sound like, feel like, look like. If you don’t know what good sentences are, you will not be successful as a writer of words."

Stephen King, who is not a friend of mine, said something similar: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

What’s on Your Bookshelf?

There are only so many effective headlines you can write, so reading the 87th article on “Five Effective Headlines You Need To Use RIGHT NOW” is a waste of time.

There are only so many ways of creating buyer personas that yet another “How to Build Your Buyer Personas” isn’t going to make a difference.

And when you really get down to it, Jay Baer is channeling Harvey Mackay who’s channeling Zig Ziglar who’s channeling Dale Carnegie. 

There’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to business books and content marketing blogs. (Although I love Jay Baer’s bravery when it comes to wearing those sport coats! And he’s one of the few good business writers I admire.)

But there’s a whole world of books out there that have nothing to do with business, nothing to do with marketing, and will make you a better writer than any business book ever will.

Read Ernest Hemingway’s short stories to learn how to write with punch, using a simple vocabulary.

Read Roger Angell’s Once More Around the Ballpark to learn how to make people passionate about the thing you love.

Read Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None to learn how to hook people at the start of a story, and keep them until the very end.

Identify three of your favorite authors, or at least authors you’ve heard good things about, and read one of their books. Identify passages, sentences, and techniques that move you and make you go “I wish I could do that.” Write them down in a notebook, and then practice replicating them in your everyday writing—emails, blog articles, notes to friends, special reports, everything.

Once you finished those three books, read three more books. And then three more. And then three more.

When you run out of an author’s work, find a new author. When you run out of authors, ask a bookstore employee or librarian for recommendations. Or join Goodreads and ask your friends about the books they love.

Content marketing is facing an avalanche of mediocre content in the coming years, and the only way you’re going to stand out is if you can be better than the avalanche. That means being better at your craft, not producing more and more mediocre content.

It means reading more stuff by great writers and less by average writers. It means realizing you’re better off reading another mystery novel than yet another article that promises “Five Content Marketing Secrets.”

It means focusing on your craft and becoming a master of language and stories. And it all starts by reading the work of the artists who came before you.

Freedom Fighters

Only after reading Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life five years ago did I realize how remarkably ambitious, courageous and forceful a fellow was the Father of Our Country.

No wonder he was admired by his white contemporaries.

His 153 slaves may have held a different opinion of him.

When he was president and living in Philadelphia, his wife Martha's maid Oney ran away in the middle of a fancy dinner party, escaping by boat to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Washington—as he always did with runaways—took Oney's flight as a personal affront.

He placed ads in newspapers offering $10 for the return of “a light Mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy hair.”

And when he learned Oney was in Portsmouth, Washington dispatched a federal customs officer to fetch the her—breaking a fugitive slave law he himself had signed.

When the customs officer located Oney, he got her to agree to return voluntarily to the president's household, provided she be freed on her mistress' death.

Washington called the demand "totally inadmissible."

Fearing riots by Abolitionists, the customs officer refused to return Oney to her master.

Washington next tried to get her back by hiring his nephew to kidnap her. But the runaway was tipped off to the plan and went into hiding until Washington's death.

She lived for another 50 years as a fugitive in Portsmouth, raising three children on the wages of a house servant.

Neither Captious Nor Weasly Be

When it comes to customers, don't be captious. Niggling gets you nowhere.

How many times have you contacted sales or customer service, only to be informed you've called the wrong line? Or told to fill out some online form first? Or made to feel a fool, because you don't know if you have Version 4.2?

When conversing with a customer, be sensible and humble. To show off your knowledge blunts your effectiveness.

And when it comes to customers, don't weasel. Weaseling destroys trust.

If you need to make a point with a customer, make it clearly, concisely, candidly.

How many times have you contacted sales or customer service, only to be informed the price isn't actually available, the product doesn't really work, the warranty is never, ever applicable? "You'd have known that, if you'd seen the fine print."

When conversing with a customer, be sincere and straightforward. To squirm out of every promise makes you a weasel. And the weasel is a threatened species.

Writers on the Big Screen

Hollywood routinely returns to writers for characters because, unlike superheroes, they're observant, witty, flawed and vulnerable—qualities a main character must have to woo an audience.

While it's easier for Hollywood to realize other creatives (artists, musicians and dancers, for example), the absurd and scary nature of the writer's life never loses appeal.

My list of the top movies depicting writers (in chronological order) comprises:

Young and Innocent (1937). A short-story writer is on the run from the cops, who are convinced he's a murderer. An early Hitchcock thriller.

The Lost Weekend (1945). An alcoholic writer's weekend plans are dashed when he decides to drop into Nat's Bar.

In a Lonely Place (1950). Screenwriter "Dix" Steele can't manage his anger. His mean streak make him a murder suspect, when a pretty coat-check girl is found strangled. 

Beloved Infidel (1959). A gossip columnist falls for F. Scott Fitzgerald, who's working in Hollywood so he can afford the asylum where he's put his crazy wife.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). Holly Golightly drags her neighbor, the writer Paul Varjak, into her crazy life.

Black Like Me (1964). A journalist investigates segregation from an unusual angle.

The Front (1976). Blacklisted TV screenwriter Alfred Miller persuades his bookie to sign his name to Miller's scripts in exchange for a percentage.

My Favorite Year (1982). TV scriptwriter Benjy Stone tells of the summer he met his idol, swashbuckling actor Allan Swann.

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). A foreign correspondent assigned to Indonesia gets caught up in a political coup.

Cross Creek (1983). Novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings deals with rejection by buying a Florida orange grove.

The Ghost Writer (1983). An aging literary giant invites a young acolyte to dine at his secluded country home. Not to be confused with the 2010 thriller below.

Out of Africa (1986). Memoirist Karen Blixen discovers what matters, while she learns to run a coffee plantation.

Stand by Me (1986). Author Gordie Lachance recounts a trip with three childhood buddies over a Labor Day weekend.

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). The family and romantic entanglements of three sisters, one a budding writer, unfold between two Thanksgivings.

Barton Fink (1991). A playwright's Broadway hit propels him into a $1,000 a week job in Hollywood.

Shakespeare in Love (1998). The Bard struggles with his new comedy, Romeo and Ethel, and falls for a wealthy merchant's daughter.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). A drug-addled journalist is assigned to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race.

Wonder Boys (2000). A drug-addled novelist attends a writer's conference with his agent and two students from the college where he teaches.

Adaptation (2002). A high-minded scriptwriter asks his twin brother to interview the author of the book he's desperate to adapt.

As Good As It Gets (2003). Best-selling novelist Melvin Udall discovers a waitress may be the only person in New York who can stand him. 

The Human Stain (2003). Novelist Nathan Zuckerman receives a visitor one dark night. The stranger, a down-on-his-luck college dean, wants him to write a book about his life.

Sideways (2004). An aspiring writer joins his soon-to-be-married former college roommate on a road trip through California wine country. 

Finding Neverland (2004). Scottish writer J.M. Barrie meets a widow and her four young sons in Kensington Gardens and a friendship begins. 

Capote (2005). A writer's masterpiece also proves his undoing.

The Squid and the Whale (2005). Husband and wife novelists decide to call it quits. Their divorce doesn't go over well with the kids.

Miss Potter (2006). Spinster Beatrix Potter becomes an international celebrity and falls in love with her publisher.

HOWL (2010). Poet Allen Ginsburg's colorful verses land his publisher in court, charged with selling obscene material.

The Ghost Writer (2010). A ghostwriter tries his hand at a politician's memoir after his predecessor—under suspicious circumstances—gives up the ghost.

Midnight in Paris (2011). An unfulfilled screenwriter vacations in Paris, where he discovers that a 1920 Peugeot lets him travel backwards in time. 

The Help (2011). An aspiring journalist decides to write a book about Southern housemaids.  

Hannah Arendt (2012). A high-profile New Yorker assignment teaches a German intellectual "the greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies."

Saving Mr. Banks (2013). P.L. Travers resists the Disneyfication of her creation, Mary Poppins.

Big Sur (2013). Jack Kerouac retreats to the woods in hopes of drying out.   

Wodehouse in Exile (2013). In the leadup to world war, a famous British humorist is tapped by the Germans to appease Americans. 

Papa (2015). A young journalist goes to Havana to meet his idol, Ernest Hemingway, on the eve of the Cuban Revolution. 

Trumbo (2015). Hollywood's top screenwriter finds himself in deep kimchi for his pinko leanings.

The End of the Tour (2015). David Foster Wallace goes on a book tour with a Rolling Stone reporter. 

Genius (2016). Novelist Thomas Wolfe finds he desperately needs an editor; Max Perkins complies.

Paterson (2016). A bus driver records his responses to the beauty that surrounds him in poems he keeps secret.

Their Finest (2017). A scriptwriter adds "a woman's touch" to a teary propaganda film during the Battle of Britain.

Rebel in the Rye (2017). J.D. Salinger loses his mind, but finds his voice.

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2018). Desperate for cash, Charles Dickens tries his hand at a ghost story.

Mank (2020). A tippling screenwriter and a boy genius take on the powers that be.

Loose Lips Think Slips

Even Napoleon had his Watergate.

— Yogi Berra

This just in: PELOSI SENILE. SPICER LIAR.

When politics turn puerile, it's okay to turn a slip of the tongue into news.

But according to psychologists, for every 1,000 words spoken, one or two slips of the tongue occur. Given the average pace of speech, that's at least one every seven minutes.

Hardly newsworthy.

Sigmund Freud called slips of the tongue Fehlleistungen ("faulty actions") and insisted they were meaningful, because they reveal unconscious thoughts.

He was certainly right, to a degree.

I remember greeting two dinner guests, a married couple, at my front door one evening. It was wintry, and heavy topcoats were in order.

The moment the doorbell rang, my wife (now ex) whispered, "Listen, if they act tense, it's because they're both having affairs." I ran to the door, opened it, and announced, "Hi! Come in and take your clothes off!"

Similarly to Freud, psychologist Daniel Wegner contends the unconscious is constantly mulling worst-case scenarios, so we can spot and prevent them. The more the conscious mind resists those thoughts, the more the unconscious revisits them. On occasion, the unconscious sabotages the conscious mind, and a dark thought just rolls off the tongue.

But not every slip of the tongue is Freudian.

According to linguist Gary Dell, thoughts, words and sounds are linked through three networks in the brain—the semantic, lexical and phonological. Speech arises from their interaction. Every so often, one of the networks simply misfires, and a slip of the tongue results.