Writing Excuses Transcripts

Writing Excuses 20.24: An Interview with Charles Duhigg 

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-24-an-interview-with-charles-duhigg

 

Key Points: Communication is a set of skills. Proposals should give a taste of what the book will be like. A taste of the book and a roadmap. Voice! Deliberate practice. Three kinds of conversations, practical, emotional, and social. Make sure you are matched by asking deep questions and listening. Practice conversational reciprocity, make sure you are contributing to the conversation. Try looping for understanding: ask a deep question, repeat back what they say in your own words, and ask if you understood correctly. Make your compliment sandwiches with good bread. The goal of a conversation is to understand each other. 

 

[Season 20, Episode 24]

 

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

 

[Season 20, Episode 24]

 

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] An Interview with Charles Duhigg.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

 

[Howard] And I get the opportunity to drive this interview. And I'm going to begin by introducing our guest. Or rather, letting our guest introduce himself. Charles. Welcome to Writing Excuses. Who are you?

[Charles] Thank you for having me on. This is such a treat. My name is Charles Duhigg. I am a journalist for the New Yorker magazine. And in addition, I write books. The first book I wrote was named The Power of Habit. And then the most recent book I wrote was named Supercommunicators.

[Howard] I just finished Supercommunicators yesterday and there's a thing that you wrote that I actually highlighted because it resonates so well with something I already believe, and I think it dovetails nicely with our topic today. And that thing is "It's a set of skills. There's nothing magical about it." I love that. And this was in the context of someone who has learned to talk to other people in order to elicit information from them so that, I think, they can become spies.

[Charles] Right.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But what we're going to talk about is how to engage with other people in order to pitch your book to them. In order to get an agent, or a publisher, or a bookseller even to…

[Mary Robinette] Or just a reader.

[Howard] Or just a reader.

[Charles] Exactly. I mean, those are all proxies for readers. Right?

[Howard] I mean, if you're hand selling your stuff…

[Charles] Yeah.

[Howard] You have to be able to have these kinds of conversations where you engage with other people and, for whatever reason, they like you and they want to read what you wrote.

[Charles] Yes. It… And I love that you picked up on that that one idea that communication is a set of skills. Because it's kind of like writing. Right? Like, nobody is born knowing how to be a great writer. It's something that you learn by reading and by writing yourself and getting a good editor. Communication is exactly the same thing. And particularly, when it comes to pitching your book. That, like, that is not something anyone is born knowing how to do. It's something that you learn to do. Because you have literary agents who help you out, and you have editors who say, like, I like this idea, but I don't like that so much. And it's a process of evolution. And so if someone is listening who feels like they're not good at it right now, that does not mean you're not going to be good at it forever. It just means you have to learn the skills and practice them.

[DongWon] I mean, 100 percent. I mean, the good news about it being a skill is that you can practice it and improve it over time. Right? And I think writers have such a dread when this topic comes up. And they want their agent to take care of it for them. They want their editor to take care of it for them. And to some extent, that does happen. Right? We're here to support that process, we're here to help you figure that out, and hone that message. But you kind of have to be compelling to get an agent in the first place. Right? And then you have to continue to be compelling in how you talk about your work when you meet book sellers, when you meet readers at any event that you do. Right? And so, you've got a couple books under your hat at this point. What was that process like for you? I mean, was it difficult to transition from knowing how to pitch in a business context by knowing how to pitch as a journalist to doing it on a book project? Or was it all just kind of the same skill set that you'd already developed?

[Charles] It's kind of the same skill set. So one of the things… I was at the New York Times when I sold The Power of Habit. I was an investigative journalist. So my job was really to get people to tell me secrets. Right? To get them to tell me things that they'd not… Don't necessarily want to tell anyone or want to have their name behind. And a lot of that is about communications, is about building trust. And saying, look, let me explain to you why I'm excited about this, why I'm interested in this. What's going on? And I actually… I wrote a story for the New York Times Magazine about, like, the psychology of credit cards, because there's all these psychological tricks that collectors learn to go after people. And I wrote that piece, and I got an email from someone, from, like, a junior guy who worked at the Wiley agency, saying, "Hey, have you thought about turning this into a book?" And so I emailed him back, I said, "No, but it turns out I've been working on a proposal for a year. I'd love to come in and tell you about it." So I met with him, and Scott Moyers, who is now the publisher at Penguin, but was then a literary agent. And I think the thing that, like, got them interested was I was just so excited about habits. Like, I was so excited to say, like, I'd… I was a reporter in Iraq and I got embedded with this army guy, and he told me all about habits. Then I started looking it up at home, and, like, it turns out it's something you can, like, basically fiddle with the gears and change the habits in your life. And I don't understand why I'm so smart, but I can't lose weight. And I think it was just a… It was my enthusiasm. My clear passion for it, that got me over the first hurdle. Because I think that's what a reader is looking for and the publisher is looking for and it agent is looking for. They are looking for someone who is so passionate about this that they cannot wait to tell you all the amazing things that they've learned.

 

[DongWon] You mentioned that you came in for a meeting with them. Right? You sat down with Scott, you sat down with this younger agent, and sort of pitched your idea, and that it was your energy in the room, that enthusiasm that kind of… You felt like caught their attention in a certain way. It's a little unusual to be pitching in person. Right? I think that, like, maybe your status as a Times writer at that time. For, I think, newer writers who are trying to get that across on the page, do you see differences or advantages to pitching in person versus purely over an email? Like, how do you see that process differing over the course of your career?

[Charles] So, it's always great to get in person if you can. Like, I try and do everything in person, including interviews with sources. That being said, that's not practical all the time. And I think the other thing that happened is, before I walked into that office, I sent them a copy of my proposal. And this is, I think, unique to nonfiction. Because I think fiction is very different. But in nonfiction, the way that you sell a book is you write a proposal. And then they give you an advance on the proposal, and you essentially use that advance to go write the book. Right? The proposal is like a roadmap of what you want to do. Now, there's a lot of people who will say, like, oh, write a five or 10 page proposal and just don't spend too much time on it. I actually believe the exact opposite. So when I wrote my proposal for The Power of Habit, it ended up being about 76 pages long. It was about 22,000 words. And I spent an entire year working on it. While I was working at the time, so it wasn't full time. But it was a lot of time. And the reason that I thought that that was important was because I wanted to give them a taste of what the book would be like. Right? Like, I wanted to actually give them, like, something. And also you have to do that work yourself. You gotta figure out what the roadmap is. You need to know what you're going into, and what kind of stories you're looking for. And so, I think when it comes to reaching out to agents and publishers, we put a lot of attention on getting together, we put a lot of attention on the cover letter, but, actually, having a great proposal is really essential. Because many people write a proposal as if they're writing a memo on what the book is going to be like. But the best way to show what the book is going to be like is to write in the manner that the book is going to be like. Right? To, like…

[DongWon] 100 percent.

[Charles] Tempt them…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] I think that this is not actually is different from fiction in some ways as it looks on the surface. Because, like, we don't get to write the proposal, we have to just write the book.

[Charles] Right.

[Mary Robinette] But the thing that we do have to do is to hook them on our query letter and our synopsis. And that's, I think, where a lot of people get so frightened, because it's really daunting to take this enormous idea and try to narrow it down, essentially retelling the same idea, but in a extremely condensed form. And I think what you were saying about a taste of the book and a roadmap is very much… Like, when I, not being an agent, but when I'm looking at student query letters, I often read them, like, this feels nothing like the pages…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That you have written.

[Charles] Right.

[Mary Robinette] And so you're telling a false story.

[Charles] Yeah. I think it's really essential. Because I also think that the thing that we're screening for is we're not just screening for topics. Right? We're not just screening for background of the person. Even when I'm reading, I'm screening for voice. Like, I want to know that this person is coming into it with this complete world that's already been imagined and is so rich and it's so vital that it's just… They're going to pick me up and carry me along. And if we write a cover letter that doesn't have that voice, that doesn't sort of like play with us the same way that the book plays with us, then what we're doing is were basically sort of shooting ourselves in the foot. I think.

[Howard] Yeah, and there's… I guess there's a fine line between aping the voice of your book in your proposal as if you're cosplaying the book and using the voice that you use in your proposal… The same voice that you use in the book. That's a distinction that I think is difficult for a lot of people. You… It's easy to misinterpret that. Oh, I'm writing a high fantasy, so you want me to include in my proposal something about the healthy stew I enjoyed this morning? No! That's not actually what we're saying.

[Charles] Right.

[DongWon] One of the things I most commonly say when people are asking me for feedback on a proposal, on a query, or whatever it is, the thing I'm always saying is, like, I don't know… I don't feel you in this book. Right? I'm looking for where your voice is in this book, why is this the only book that you could tell, and you're right, that that comes down to voice. Right? Like communication, I think, is so often about building a personal connection, especially in storytelling. Right? So being able to create that connection, like, I think, the word authenticity has a lot of, like, weight to it that is very complicated. But, like, how do you bring your own authentic voice to a project? Right? How do you make sure that when you're doing that proposal, when you're writing that sample, that it feels like you and your perspective?

[Charles] Right. So, that's a really good question. And I think here's the thing that's true of voice. At least in my experience. Voice is not something that you are born with or that you discover easily. Voice is the product of writing and writing and writing. In fact, there was this wonderful… Adam Moss, who was the former editor of New York Magazine, who wrote this book called The Work of Art. He recently had something in the New York website where he interviewed Jonathan Franzen about writing The Corrections. And it turns out that before Franzen wrote The Corrections, he spent years writing a book called The Corrections that was about an IRS lawyer. And this one little minor chapter featured these folks in Minnesota or someplace like that… Wherever he sets the story. And he realizes eventually after literally years of writing that that's the story. And there's… He gives his journals to Adam Moss and in his journals, he says things like, I've been writing this for three years and I just today wrote the paragraph that I think sounds like what I want this book to sound like. And then you lean into that. And so the thing that is true of voice is that if it's not working, it doesn't mean that it's not authentic.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] It means that… Actually achieving authenticity often takes work after work after work, and like peeling back the layers, and just sticking with it. So authenticity isn't something that comes from, like, a wellspring in ourselves. It's something we discover and it takes work to discover.

[Howard] The metaphor that I've used with students and used with myself… You've heard the you have to write a million words before you write your first true word. Whatever. The way I look at it is you've got a couple million of the wrong words in you and they are in front of the right words. So you gotta get them out of the way by writing them. Sorry.

[Charles] Yep. And it's actually… If you look at basically every, like, kind of… The guy who wrote Nickelback Boys and The Underground Railroad, Colson…

[DongWon] Colson Whitehead.

[Charles] White… Yeah, thank you. Colson Whitehead. Colson Whitehead, before he wrote his first book, about the elevator inspectors, he wrote another complete book and basically just threw it out. Right? Because he didn't know what he was doing yet. He didn't know what his voice was. And if you look at every single author, it's kind of like this. I've been reading this, like, crazy science-fiction thing recently. And I loved it, and I went back to some of the early books and they're terrible.

[Chuckles]

[Charles] They're just absolutely awful. Because this guy didn't figure out until his like third or fourth book what…

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] How to do this. And that's…

[Mary Robinette] I think it…

[Charles] That's okay.

[DongWon] I was about to ask which one, and now I realize why maybe you weren't…

[Charles] Yeah.

[DongWon] Revealing that right off the bat.

[Charles] [garbled] have to say because I… Every… It's called Carl the Dungeon.

[DongWon] Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Charles] It's a… Or Dungeon Crawler Carl.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Charles] Right? And it's just like… It's super fun and it's a great… And his early books are not.

[DongWon] Yup.

[Mary Robinette] But I will say that it's… Going back to what you talked about at the beginning, that it is… We're talking about our skills. And what we're talking about are practices. It's not just that you have to write a million words, it's that you have to do it intentional, some intentional practice. You have to look at identifying what the mistakes are. You have to read intentionally. You have to do all of these things in order to hone those skills. Otherwise, your… There's the aphorism, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.

[DongWon] Yeah.

 

[Charles] Yeah. That's… And in fact, in the academic literature, there's this thing known as deliberate practice. Eric… Ericsson was this philosopher who spent his whole life looking at why people are exceptional, and he found that deliberate practice was one of the key ingredients. And the thing that's interesting about deliberate practice, whether it's writing or playing tennis or playing golf… It's not supposed to be fun. Like, the practice doesn't feel interesting, and, like, you're letting your soul free. The practice feels like work.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] Because what you're doing is you're saying I'm bad at this. I'm going to do it again and again and again. I'm not going to do the stuff I'm good at, I'm just going to do the stuff I'm bad at again and again and again until it just gets a little bit better.

[Howard] One of the things that I love about Ericsson's work, and I applied it to myself a lot. Cartoonist for 20 years. Daily. Had to go fast. Once you're getting paid to do a thing, what you begin practicing is all of the shortcuts that allow you to keep getting paid rather than learning to do the really difficult things that nobody's ready to pay you for. And… I mean, once I read that, this is, I think back in 08, I remember looking at my artwork and thinking, oh, well, if I ever want to get better, I have to draw stuff that doesn't go into tomorrow's comic. I have to draw stuff for practice. Wow, what a waste of time that's going to be. Now I'm sad.

[DongWon] Yeah, I mean, I think… No, go ahead. Sorry.

[Charles] It's at the core of how we become great. Right?

[Howard] Yeah.

[Charles] I mean, I think in some ways it's actually this enormous… I know that people, though write a book or they'll write a proposal and it won't sell and they'll be so discouraged. But actually, you've been given this enormous gift. Which is you have been given feedback on what's working and what isn't working. And, by the time you publish, by the time you hit the main stage, you want to be at your best. You don't want to be learning… Like, when I got to the New York Times, you don't want to be learning how to do journalism at the New York Times.

[Chuckles]

[Charles] It's much better to learn that at smaller papers so that you're ready for, like, prime time when you get there. And so it's actually… Instead of being a discouragement, I think it should be this gift to think that, like, look, I just did this amazing thing, and now I know how to do it better.

[Howard] Okay. Well, we've talked a lot about writing and getting better at it. After the break, I think we need to talk about talking.

 

[Charles] If anyone listening is interested in learning more about the science of communication, with why some people seem to be able to connect with anyone, and others sometimes we struggle with it, let me recommend my book, Supercommunicators. And what I've tried to do in it is I've tried to tell a series of stories about CIA spies, and how The Big Bang Theory, the TV show, became a hit. But embedded in those stories is a set of skills that make us great communicators. And at the core of this is kind of what we're learning in neuroscience about communication, which is when were having the same kind of conversation is other people, we managed to connect with them. We managed to become what's known as neurally entrained. And so for anyone interested, I would love to encourage you to read Supercommunicators, and then to tell me what you think.

 

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[Howard] As promised, let's talk about talking. Supercommunicators is fundamentally about having conversations with people where it's a conversation that's meaningful. And as I read the book, I loved it because you started naming… You gave names to some things that I kind of instinctually knew or had learned how to do. Which hopefully will make me better at it. As my friends I'm sure will tell you, I'm not very good at it. I'm not… I'm terrible fun at parties. Or anywhere else.

[Mary Robinette] That's not true.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] Deeply not true.

[Howard] I put on my best face for Mary Robinette.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] When you are meeting with someone and you need to have a negotiation, when you are meeting with them… When you are doing what we call a cold conversation, and it's important, I want to know what your toolbox is like. I mean, I've read the book, so the book is its own toolbox. But what's your personal toolbox for that kind of circumstance?

[Charles] Yeah. It's a great question. And I'll… Let me give a little bit of theory and then I'll answer the question with…

[Howard] Sure.

[Charles] Specific skills. So, one of the things that we've found… This kind of started when I was falling into these bad conversation patterns with my wife, where I'd like complain about my day and she'd give me advice on how to improve it, and I would get upset that she was giving me advice and not telling me, like, how righteous I was. And so I went to all these researchers, neuroscientists, and I asked them, like, what's going on? I'm a professional communicator, why do I keep making the same mistake again and again. And they said, well, we're actually living through the Golden age of understanding communication. And one of the things that we've learned is we've learned that we tend to think of a discussion as being about one thing. Right? We're talking about my day or the kids grades or where to go on vacation. But actually, every discussion is made up of different kinds of conversations. And those kinds of conversations, they tend to fall into one of three buckets. There are practical conversations, where were making plans or solving problems. But then there's emotional conversations. Right? Tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other and society and the identities that are important to us. And they said what's really critical is to be having the same kind of conversation at the same moment. That if you're not matching each other, then you're like ships passing in the night. You can't really connect with each other. You can't even really fully hear each other. So then the question becomes, okay, so if I walk into a negotiation or I walk into even just an everyday conversation that's a little, like, a little tense or a little meaningful, what do I do to figure out if… What kind of conversation mindset you're in and how do I match you and invite you to match me? And there's actually…

[Howard] Yes. Tell me what you do?

 

[Charles] There's a technique for this that psychologists have studied for a while now, which is asking deep questions. Now a deep question is something that asks you about your values or your beliefs or your experiences. That can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple as, like, if you meet a doctor, instead of saying, "Oh, what hospital do you work at?" saying, "Oh, what made you decide to become a doctor?" Like, what you like about… What did you enjoy most about med school? When we ask a question like that which is not a hard question to ask, what we're really doing is inviting that person to tell us where their head is at and tell us something important about themselves. So the number one thing that I do, when I walk into a tough conversation or a negotiation, is I asked the other person a question, a deep question, and then I just sit back and let them talk. Because they're going to tell me what's going on inside their head.

[Howard] So, instead of, hey, how about that Lakers game? It's, hey, what's your favorite thing about being a journalist? Charles?

[Charles] Yeah. Exactly. Or instead of just walking in and saying, okay, there's three things I want to share with you. I want these deal points and I think that it's really important that we do the jacket this way and… Instead of going in, because we tend to think before hard conversations. We tend to think about what we want to say, and that gets in the front of our mind. And so we bully in… Bull into that conversation and we say it. But if we start by asking them a real question, a deep question, like, exactly the one that you just mentioned. Or, what made you decide to be a publisher? What book has been one of your favorite books to publish? Like, what… When did you… When do you feel like you became the publisher you wanted to be? That person is going to tell me so much about themselves.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Charles] And at that moment, I know how to connect to them.

[DongWon] Those are good questions.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] My first boss in publishing was a literary agent. This is Chris Calhoun at Sterling Lord Literalistic. He was a great mentor to me. And I always remember that he… One day, I walked into his office and he had written out on a card on his desk, and, like, put it on a little, like, platform where he could see it any time he was on the phone. And it just said, let them talk. Right?

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And it was… He had the gift of gab and he loved to tell a story and it was sometimes a reminder and… I think about it all the time when I'm meeting new people in publishing, when I'm in a negotiation, when I'm pitching a book, is, wait, this isn't about what I'm telling them. It's also me listening to what it is that they have to say, and making the space for that. And then what you're saying is also the explicit invitation to tell me what's going on with you, and then we can have that connection. And on the basis of that connection, there's trust that we can have a negotiation.

[Charles] That's exactly right. And it… Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Mary Robinette.

[Mary Robinette] You're just making me think of this thing that my mother, who is an arts administrator and used to have to do fundraising all the time, and I asked her how she did schmoozing, essentially, and she said the other person is always more interesting than you are.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That was her mantra, and then specifically when trying to sell a puppet show… If you think selling a book is hard… Welcome. Welcome to my life… To ask them about what they needed, what they were looking for, and to let them talk. And then you could figure out how you could fill their need, and not to start off by telling them what your product was, what your story was.

 

[Charles] Yeah. That's… And I think that there's something important there. Which is… Asking questions doesn't mean that you just ask questions. Right? And I think particularly for journalism writers, it's really easy to get into this place where you're just asking question after question. And, like… And there never asking questions back of you. And so it feels very one sided. The thing with a deep question is that it's a question that's very easy to answer your own question. So, oh, you became a doctor because you saw your dad get sick when you were a kid. Oh, that's interesting. I became a lawyer because I saw my uncle get arrested when I was a kid. Right now we're sharing something and there is this thing in conversation known as conversational reciprocity or authenticity reciprocity, where a conversation only really feels meaningful when both people are contributing to it. And sometimes some people are not good at asking us questions. But that means that we should see that as an invitation to volunteer things about ourselves in a graceful way. Because it's not that they're not curious about us, it's just that they don't know how to ask questions. They haven't practiced them.

[DongWon] I'm curious…

[Howard] The next question I wanted to ask about the toolbox… How do you learn to listen? Because we talk a lot about, oh, you need to be a better listener. You need to spend time listening. And it took me a good decade to realize that listening was a lot more than just not being the one who is talking right now.

[Charles] Yeah.

[Howard] Mary Robinette is laughing because she's like, oh, yes, I remember you 10 years ago.

[Laughter]

[Howard] It's actually been less than 10 years that you learned that.

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] I mean, I was not saying that out loud.

 

[Charles] So, an interesting part about this is that when we talk about listening, listening has this image of being a very passive activity. But when researchers look at listening, what they see is it's an incredibly active activity. When it's done well. So the thing that's happening is it's not enough just to listen. You also have to prove that you're listening. And the act of proving your listening actually makes you a better listener. And there's a technique for this known as looping for understanding that they actually teach in all the business schools and law schools. It has these three steps. Step one is you ask a question, preferably a deep question. Step two is when the person starts answering the question, you repeat back in your own words what you heard them say. And this isn't mimicry, this is about showing them that you've been processing what they're saying. Adding a little bit, like, what I hear you saying is this, and that reminds me of this. And if you actually force yourself to listen closely enough that you can repeat back what they've said and add something to it, then you are actually listening. And then, step three, and this is the really important one. This is the one I always forget. It is, ask if you got it right? Because what you're doing when you say hey, did I hear… Did I understand you correctly? What you're really doing is you're inviting them to acknowledge that you were listening. In one of the things that we know about our neurology and how we evolved is when I believe you are listening to me, I become much more likely to listen to you in return. So this technique… You're exactly right. Listening is a skill. It's a skill that we practice. In the way that we can practice it is this looping for understanding. And it feels awkward the first couple of times you do it. And then it becomes really natural, and it becomes a habit.

[Howard] I mean, so does golf.

[Charles] Exactly.

[Laughter]

[DongWon] I don't know that golf ever doesn't feel natural, but…

[Mary Robinette] Actually… I putt. NVR.

 

[DongWon] Because there's a technique that we use in giving feedback. Right? That is very basic and very common, that is the compliment [garbled – sandwich?] Right? You start off by saying a nice thing, you give the feedback, and you say the nice thing at the end. Right? And I think people love to cut out the nice parts of that and just be like, oh, I don't need to deal with that. I want to dive right into the hard part, the criticism. Right? And to me, that always feels like such a mistake, because, to me, the opening part in the final part are the opportunity to do exactly what you're saying, for me to repeat back, here's what I think you were trying to accomplish in this. Here's why I think this is a wonderful project, or what your goals are. And that opportunity for them to make sure that we're in alignment about what our goals actually are in this conversation we're having about how to work on your project, how to improve your writing. Right? And so whenever I see people cut out the compliment parts of the sandwich, I'm always so frustrated because I think, oh, no no no no. That's the part that's really important. That's more important than the feedback in a lot of ways it's is understanding that we're on the same page and moving towards the same goals.

[Charles] And what I love about that is that the compliments you just mentioned… They're not necessarily actually compliments. Like, when the compliment sandwich is done poorly, it's someone saying, like, I love that book that you wrote 20 years ago…

[Chuckles]

[Charles] It was so good. This book is terrible.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] It does not work at all.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Charles] But if you could go back to that thing you did 20 years ago, that'd be great. Right? That's a compliment sandwich, and the person walks away thinking, like, you're a jerk. I'm not going to talk to you anymore.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] That sandwich needs better bread.

[Charles] It needs better bread. It needs better bread. Well, what you said is I'm not actually just going to give you a compliment.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you that I'm aligned with your larger goals.

[DongWon] Yep.

[Charles] Like, there was something about your proposal that excited me so much and you seem so passionate about this, and I am so inspired by that, and I think we're a little bit… We're off-track a little bit on making this work. But you and I are on the same side of the table. And that… Those are what the best compliments are. The best compliments aren't actually compliments. The best compliments are reflections that I see you. And in seeing you, we become aligned.

[DongWon] It's such a useful technique in negotiation as well. Whenever I'm negotiating a contract, a lot of times I will take a breather in the middle of it, if we're up against some particular deal point and just remind everyone that we're trying to do the thing together. Right? We want… We all want to publish this book. We want to publish this book together, and we want to make this work for the writer and for the publisher. So that everyone is winning. Right? And so I think reminding everyone that we all want the same things. And, I think, even when you're thinking about writing a query letter to an agent, starting from a place of I want to find a great project. You want me to find a great project, that project being yours. Right? We're all kind of working towards the same thing, even if it may be doesn't work out on this particular moment, but I think remembering that we all have sort of the same goals and are on the same side of things can be a really useful trick. And… Well, I mean, literally keeping everything from becoming adversarial.

 

[Charles] Yeah. And I think one thing that's really important about that, that you just mentioned, is it gets to what the goal of a conversation is. Right? The goal of a conversation is not for me to impress you that I'm so smart. Or that I'm right and you're wrong. Or that you should like me, or that I'm smart. The goal of a conversation is simply to understand each other.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] To ask you questions that help me understand how you see the world. To speak in such a way that you can understand how I see the world. And if we walk away from a conversation completely disagreeing with each other's thing… I'm not going to vote for your guy, and you're not going to vote for mine, or walk away saying that sounds like a great book, but it's not a book I want to publish… That's not an unsuccessful conversation.

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Charles] If we genuinely understand each other. Because eventually, we will find a person who agrees with us or wants to publish our book. But we'll only be able to connect with them because we're focused on understanding each other, as opposed to just impressing each other.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Howard] I think that might be a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Because at this point, hopefully, our listeners have understood the conversation that we're having and are ready to go have some conversational adventures of their own. But before we go, Charles, do you have some homework that you like to…

[Charles] I would love…

[Howard] [garbled] our poor listeners with?

 

[Charles] I would love to… Can I give two pieces of homework?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Charles] [garbled] and you folks can choose? So…

[Howard] You can give three.

[Charles] The first piece of homework that I would give is to say tomorrow, ask someone a deep question that you might not usually ask a deep question. Right? If it's your kids, instead of asking, "How was your day?" Ask them, "I noticed that you really like Jasper. It seems like you admire him. What do you admire about Jasper?" Or a coworker, or a stranger on the bus. It feels scary in theory to ask a deep question until we actually do it, and then we see how easy it is. And then the homework for writing is, getting back to this voice question, write one paragraph that is terrible. Just pointless, there's nothing going on, but that you feel like indulges some aspect of your voice. Maybe it's funny, maybe it's wry, maybe it's sad. Just do something completely pointless. Set that paragraph aside for a couple of days. Come back to it, and I promise you, you're going to see something in there that surprises you at how good it is. And that is a little bit of a… That's the pebble on the path to finding your voice.

 

[Howard] Thank you so much. Charles Duhigg, Supercommunicators. We've enjoyed the interview and, fair listener… You're out of excuses. Now go write.

 

From https://writingexcuses.com/2019/06/23/14-25-choosing-your-agent/

 

Key points: Your agent works for you. You have a choice, make it a good one. Think about who you want to work with, who is going to be the right business partner in the long run. Someone who can help you run your business. Who do you want as part of your brand? Make sure they can do a good job. Look at online resources, talk to your network. Ask the agent to talk to their other authors. You may need to change agents as your career changes, or their career changes. Keep the lines of communication open, talk about goals, figure out what you both need. To find an agent, look for authors who have a similar communication style, and talk to them about their agents! Think about someone who can fill in your weak spots. Check which genres the agent works in, and what level of editorial involvement you want. What communications style, how frequent do you want contact? Remember, charisma is not a dump stat. Consider the Kowal relationship axes, mind, manners, money, morals… Murder! Or the Marx Brothers.

 

[Mary Robinette] Season 14, Episode 25.

[Howard] This is Writing Excuses, Choosing Your Agent.

[Mary Robinette] 15 minutes long.

[Dan] Because you're in a hurry.

[Dongwon] And we're not that smart.

[Howard] I'm Howard.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Dongwon] I'm Dongwon.

 

[Howard] Dongwon is joining us again. This is his third episode with us. Dongwon, I understand that you have spent some time working as an agent.

[Chuckles]

[Dongwon] I have. I actually started my career as an agent, and then wandered off for many years doing other tasks in the industry, and have come back to being an agent in the past 3 and a 1/2 years now.

[Howard] Well, this morning, we had the opportunity to hear you talk about the publishing business. One of the parts that was most interesting to me was that opening salvo of choosing your agent and what that relationship ends up looking like.

[Dongwon] One thing I like to talk about a lot is making it really clear to writers that your agent works for you. If you're in the query trenches right now, the power dynamic feels very weighted towards the agent's side. You're trying to get their attention, you're trying to get someone to pay attention to you and make an offer of representation. But one of the things I like to really drive home is once that offer of representation has been made, the power dynamic completely inverts. Now, what the agent wants is for you to choose them. One of the reasons that we chose this phrasing for the episode title is the idea that you have a choice in this relationship is a really important one. It's one that I think a lot of writers lose sight of, because they're just so focused on getting an agent, any agent. Instead, what I'd like people to do is start thinking very carefully about who they want to work with. Who's going to be the right business partner to them over the course of their career? Ideally, an author-agent relationship will go on for years, and hopefully decades. Optimally, it's the course of both of your careers. You need to think carefully about who you're going to be working with over that period of time, and who you want to be helping you run your business.

[Mary Robinette] This is… I want to say, something that I stumbled on, you've heard me talk about on previous episodes, where my first… My very first agent was not a good agent. We often people say, "A bad agent is worse than no agent." The concrete thing that I had happened was that my first agent… I was… I had warning flags that went off. But it was an agent, and they were excited about my work. I had heard so much about how difficult it was to get an agent. So, even though I had some warning flags that this person might be flaky, I went ahead and signed. What happened was they sat on my novel for a year without sending it out. That was a year in which it was ready. So this was a… actively holding me back. The other thing that can happen with a bad agent, or with an agent who's… This is… These are people who are just like not good at their job, is that if they try to sell your work incompetently to a publishing house, and then you leave them and you come back, it's going to be very difficult to sell that same title later.

[Howard] That's the… There's a principle here that… It's a broader business principle, harkening back to, Dongwon, what you said earlier about you're choosing a business partner. This business partner is carrying your authorial brand as the flag when they march into the office. If they misbehave, if they do a bad job with the pitch, if they happen to be somebody that's for whatever reason, that editorial team, publishing team, just really doesn't like having in the room…

[Mary Robinette] That one actually is less of an issue, because, as long as they've got good taste…

[Howard] As long as they've got good taste. But you just know that whoever you are picking, a portion of who they are ends up as part of your brand, at least to the editors and publishers.

[Dongwon] A lot of the industry's interaction with you will be filtered through your agent. So if your agent has a certain reputation, has a certain way of operating, that is going to influence how people see you. It's not entire. You will have your own brand, and, I know, many writers have the opposite reputation of their agents. But Howard is absolutely right, that in those initial contacts, those initial meetings, that would definitely color it. So, sort of… The first step in choosing an agent is don't choose someone who's bad at their job. This last year, there were… Have been a couple sort of highly publicized incidents of agents who turned out to be acting against their own writers' interests. That's been a very challenging moment. My heart goes out to all of those writers. It can be hard to spot that person. There's some online resources that you can use to check out, like query tracker or query shark, but really, your best defense is having a good network. Talking to your friends, making friends with other writers, and asking around about somebody's reputation before you make a decision to go forward with them.

[Dan] You're also well within your rights to ask that agent if you can talk to some of their other authors. I get a lot of requests from my agent, "Hey, could you talk to this person? I would like to acquire their book." I'm always happy to recommend my agent. If you get an agent whose authors are not happy to recommend her, maybe stay away.

[Howard] Are you still with the agent you were with a year ago?

[Dan] Yes. Sarah Crowe. She's amazing.

 

[Mary Robinette] So I just… I actually just changed agents in the last year. The reason I did that was not because I had a bad agent. My agent was very good. But my career trajectory was such that I needed a different type of agent than I did at the beginning of my career. So the thing that was happening with my career trajectory was… The reason that I felt like I needed someone who was a little more aggressive, was that I was in the downward spiral. This happens to a number of writers in the course of their career, that there's what they call the death… The series' death spiral. So I'd had that happen. Then I had a novel that came out, and my book tour began on election day in 2016, which was a fraud year regardless of where you were. Book sales generally were declining. But when people are looking at your numbers, they don't look at the current events that are going on around it. They just look at the numbers. So I needed someone who was more aggressive. It was a difficult choice, because it would have been easier if my agent was doing things that were actively wrong. That wasn't the case. It was just I needed a different style. This is one of the things that I think you have to… While it's ideal to have an agent that stays with you over the course of your career, it's also important to know kind of what you need going into it.

[Howard] That is… And again, coming back to the general principle of business partners, there is this point of diminishing returns between what I need out of a new agent, what I lose if I don't switch, and the cost of switching. It's easy for us… in crossing that chasm, it's easy for us to overestimate the size of the peril, and just, out of fear of changing, stay in the same place.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] It's difficult.

[Dongwon] Many, many writers will have multiple agents over the course of their careers. There's nothing… There's no inherent problem to that. Like any long-term relationship, what you need out of it will change over time. It's also important to remember that your agent is also not a fixed point. They're evolving in their career as well, and how they operate, what circumstances they're in, what agency they're at, all those things can shift and change over time. Those changes will impact, and impact how the business operates. So it's very important to keep that line of communication open, and be talking about your goals, and are they being met in this relationship or not, and then figure out what you need out of that.

[Mary Robinette] That was very much the case with my agent, my previous agent, was that they had had a promotion at work, and were suddenly handling more things than they had been. So the attention that they were able to give to individual authors was shifting. Like, none of us were being neglected, it was just the communication style had changed. The aggression, I think, had shifted, or at least my perception of it. So that was one thing that was also going on there, was that a change in my agent's life as well.

 

[Howard] Let's take a quick break and talk about a book. Dongwon?

[Dongwon] Yeah. This week, I want to talk about Sarah Gailey's Magic for Liars. This is Sarah Gailey's debut novel, coming out from Tor Books. It should have just come out on June Fourth. It is a murderer-mystery set at a magical school for teenagers. It is not a young adult novel. It is a very adult novel about a woman who is called in to investigate a murder of a faculty member at this school. The protagonist's twin sister also is a teacher at this school. As you would have it, that sister is magic and she is not. She needs to figure out what happened and unpack this really gruesome murder and figure out why teenagers are so goddamned terrifying.

[Laughter]

[Dongwon] Especially when they have magic powers.

[Howard] Okay. As the father of two current teenagers, I would love to know the answer to that question.

[Laughter]

[Howard] Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey. I'm a big fan of Sarah's. Their cowboy hippopotamus books.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] Loved those so much.

 

[Howard] Okay. I want to talk about your toolbox as an author. I'm big on the toolbox metaphor. What are the tools that authors have at their disposal to start searching for agents who meet their criteria?

[Mary Robinette] We've talked about a couple of them on previous podcasts. The advice that I'm often given… Had been given and often give is to pay attention to what authors are happy with their agents. Specifically, looking for authors… There's… We always are told to look at the authors whose work is similar. But I actually think you should also try to look at the author… Authors whose process is similar. Because that's going to be people with whom you have a similar communication style. I'm going to continue using myself as a useful representative example. When I left my previous agent and moved on, because of where I am in my career and I am… I do have multiple Hugos. I am marketable. I had the good fortune of having a couple of choices. I was doing due diligence, and I went into it expecting that at the end of having done due diligence that I would be signing with Dongwon. I was just like, "But I'm going to check with some other people just in case."

[Howard] Oh, she went there.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I cleared it… I cleared this with him before, before we got into it. It was a really hard choice. Because, like the authors that he represents are people that I like, there people that I have a lot in common with. I think he's wicked smart, and there were all these different things. When it finally came down to, Dongwon and Seth Fishman, who is my agent now, was I realized that what I needed was someone who filled my weaknesses. The difference between their agenting styles, in a lot of ways, they're both very good with developmental stuff and things like that, but Dongwon is about building relationships, and Seth is a shark.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And…

[Dongwon] I'm a nice shar… No.

[Mary Robinette] I know. Well, that's the thing. It's like you're the nursemaid shark. He's… There is nothing…

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] But it was basically, I was, like I'm good at relationships. That's not the spot that I need bolstering. So both of them would have been a good choice, but it was really about learning what I needed. It's quite possible that that is what I needed early in my career as well, but I didn't know myself as well, as an author and what my process and how I was going to fit into the industry was. So when you're looking at the toolbox, it's important, yes, to be able to find the agent, but just knowing a list of agent's names is not as useful as knowing what it is you need out of the agents. So, Absolute Write is a good source for checking to make sure that the agent isn't shady. I also find that if you type in the agent's name and scam afterwards…

[Dan] And hope there's no hits.

[Mary Robinette] Hope there's no hits, yes. Harassment after that. These are… Scandal. These are good words to just kind of…

[Howard] Good things to not be attached to.

[Mary Robinette] Then, looking at Publisher's Weekly, Locus. Looking at who made sales, and…

 

[Howard] In 2006, I, we played with the idea of having Schlock Mercenary represented, agented, shipped out to a publisher, because self-pubbing actual paper books that weigh actual tons of actual mass is hard work. My friend Rodney had written a technical manual a few years earlier, and had an agent… His experience with the agent was funny. He said, "Yeah, I've already sold the book. I can't mess with… There's nothing you can do." She said, "I tell you what. Let me represent you. I know the contract's been signed, but let me represent you." She went in. She got him a 50% raise on the book. Her 15% came out of that, and Rodney was like, "Oh. Oh, I do need an agent." Rodney introduced me to that agency, which was the Barbara Bova agency, which does a lot of science fiction. So I came into this from outside the industry, through a contact to was just somebody I knew in the tech world. Part of the toolbox is talking to people and listening to their experiences. That experience of Rodney's… Like, I want that to happen to me. That agency… The results were the best possible results. Which were… Everybody we talked to said, "We love this, but it's not what we do." Or, "I mean, we already read it, but it's not what we do." And, "Wow, this sounds awesome, but it's not what we do." The agent went out and determined that the market I wanted at the time didn't exist. The relationship's over now, because the agent's not going to make any money. But that is… I consider that a success story.

[Dongwon] It really is.

[Howard] Because I found an agent who, in the space of six months, told me that the business plan that I already had was the right one.

 

[Dan] So, let's expand this toolbox a little bit more. When you're talking to people, when you're talking to other authors, what are some of the questions you can ask them to find out how they work with their agent? Two of the big ones for me. First of all, is what genres does your agent work in? Because I got the… I started with Sarah because I had written a horror novel, but I knew that I wanted to write more than that. One of the reasons that she and I work so well together is that she covers horror, but also science-fiction and also YA and middle grade, which kind of covers all of the playgrounds that I wanted to play in. Not every agent does. So finding someone who's willing to go with you when you start hopping genres is valuable, if that's what you want to do. One of the other ones is what level of editorial involvement do you want your agent to have. Because different agents do it differently, different authors want different things. So if you want an agent who will be very hands-on or very hands-off, ask their authors what that relationship is like.

[Dongwon] That's one that you should also ask the agent directly. Going back to Mary's example, we had a series of very long conversations. I mean, we probably spent upwards of seven or eight hours on the phone over the course of a few weeks talking a lot of this through. When… I get nervous when I'm signing a new client if they're not asking me questions, then I start to have a little bit of a hesitation in my mind, actually. Just because I'm worried that they're not putting the work in to make sure that this relationship is going to work out, and that I'm going to be right for them. Really, at the core of this, is communication style is really one of the most important things. Do you want someone who's very formal in their communications? Do you want a letter that's laid out? Do you want something that's very casual? Do you want to be… Talk to your agent once a week, once a month, once every six months? I have certain clients I talk to almost daily, and there certain clients I talk to about every three or four months. It depends on what it is. I am very informal in how I relate to a lot of my clients. I think, for certain people, that would drive them nuts, right? There's certain people who really appreciate that, and sort of need that ability to check in periodically and be like, "Hey, is everything okay? Am I on the right track? Is this going well? What's happening with this?"

[Howard] At risk of going over-general again, this is the… Your reminder that charisma is not a dump stat.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] The ability to have a conversation with someone in which the two of you connect and determine what you expect out of this kind of relationship… You can build that skill set without talking to agents. Learning that skill set when your feet are in the fire is frightening.

 

[Mary Robinette] So you remember in a previous episode, I talked about the Kowal relationship axes, which my mother-in-law came up with as a way to describe someone that you're dating. That you want to be roughly aligned on intelligence, you want to be roughly aligned on where you feel money is important, morals… Actually, you want your… You want a moral agent. Towards you!

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] But manners, similar communications style. These apply to your agent as well as to a character. There's a really good agent that is someone that I could have gotten because they are… They're the agent of a friend, they're very successful. I would have run a fire poker through them within two minutes of conversation. Because our communication styles are wildly out of alignment. At the same time, you're not looking for a best friend. Right? It is a business partner. It's good if you can be friends. But that's not… You need someone who is good at their job first, and then someone you can communicate with second.

[Howard] Mind, manners, money, morals, murder…

[Laughter]

[Mary Robinette] Marx Brothers. We try to be more positive about it.

[Howard] All right…

[Dongwon] I will say, I often try to avoid the romantic relationship analogy when talking about finding your agent, but it is inevitable that it comes up at some point, because I think there are a lot of similarities and parallels.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

 

[Howard] There definitely are. On those notes, Dongwon, do you have homework you can assign to our listeners?

[Dongwon] Yeah. So, your homework assignment is going to be a little bit of self-examination. I want you to think about your career and what's important to you and how you like to operate. Think about times you've been in a business setting, at a job, in a meeting, and think about the things that you found very frustrating, and what you would find your dating to work with over a long period of time with somebody who is working with some of the most important work to you. Make a list of those attributes. What are you looking for in an agent? What kind of communication style? Do you want someone who edits you, do you want someone who doesn't? How would you like them to pursue a deal? Do you want them to go all out all the time, or do you want them to build relationships and be very targeted? Those are questions you should ask yourself, and start making that list of the attributes that are important to you.

[Howard] Make the list. You gotta write this down, because this is Writing Excuses, and you're out of excuses. Now, go write.