On Episode 31 of the Deep Questions podcast, Cal Newport spoke with Ryan Holiday.
They discussed the process of writing non-fiction. I was interested by Newport’s description, because it sounds so natural.
Here’s what I mean:
Newport likes interesting ideas. He’s a thinker. He’s naturally engaging in the material that a non-fiction writer engages in. It’s just what he does. He described this as a lifestyle of engaging with interesting ideas.
But how does that intellectually-engaged lifestyle turn into words published on a screen or a page?
There needs to be a practice, something you actually do.
And so Newport and Holiday discussed the importance of collecting. They both collect interesting material: ideas and quotes and stories and observations. They collect those, even if they have no immediate use for them. They collect that material just because they find it interesting.
So if you’re naturally interested in ideas or curious about things, and you want to be a writer, then start collecting what catches your attention, even if you don’t know whether you’ll do something with it.
If it works for Newport and Holiday, there’s something to it.