TED Talks and Writing and Bowels

One of the issues with writing is that people always compare themselves to the rest of the world. It’s understandable to read a short story by Hemingway; to admire the master-class in compression and repression; and think to yourself: “I could never write like that.” That’s an easy way to score points against yourself. Because most of us couldn’t imitate the craft of Hemingway. And there are a lot of writers’ for whom that’s true; writers whose craft seems inimitable. But just because something is true doesn’t make it a particularly good point. Because who ever said that writing well meant finding a writer whose craft you admire and imitating them to the letter?

One of my tenets as a teacher of writing is: “Write the piece only you could write; in the way only you could write it.” By which I mean: everyone has a story in them. You can’t write like Hemingway; but you can write like you. You can find the voice inside yourself. To put it bluntly: if all you do is practice regularly, you can build and build and grow and grow… to the point where someone whose self-esteem is as embattled as yours would read what you write and say: “I could never write like that.” 

TED Talks and Looking Over your Shoulder

A really good illustrative example of why it’s unproductive to compare yourself to others is the TED Talk. 

What is a TED Talk? You listen to somebody with a degree, or a string of successes in business, or someone who invented a new kind of toothbrush-bristle, giving a speech to a packed house, with high production values, and, of course, a slick Powerpoint. Oh, and that microphone that hangs off of one ear. And you think to yourself: “I can’t imagine standing up in front of a big crowd and crisply delivering a speech that that many people would want to hear, let alone the subsequent audience who would listen to it on the internet.” 

What Does a High-Production-Value Performance Actually Achieve?

As an outsider, this is the way you think about TED talks. But the people who produce TED talks very specifically designed the shortest of them to last the typical length of a human bowel movement. And the longest of them to last as long as it takes rice to cook, or food to be delivered. So they, at least, know what a TED talk really is. It’s a sound that’s more interesting to listen to than the sound of your own peristalsis.

Let’s enjoy the asymmetry for a moment: while you as the audience are thinking of a TED talk as the culmination of someone’s life achievements (achievements, needless to say, which you with your embattled self-esteem will not be able to match) the people who are producing that very same TED Talk are thinking of it as a job. Something that they have to keep producing so that you can keep consuming them. Not unlike the food you were having delivered (or the food you were delivering yourself of) while you consumed that episode.

I’m Sure there are Amazing TED Talks… I Just Can’t Think of One

You might be thinking: No way he can come for my TED talks like that. And maybe some of you are thinking back to TED talks that changed your life. I, too, in the course of planning and writing this essay, am thinking back to TED talks that changed my life. And I gotta say. I’m coming up short. Listening to a TED talk has never revolutionized my life. A few times it’s revolutionized the half hour in which I was waiting for a burrito to get delivered. Maybe if I’d had more burritos delivered…

Even if you have some experience with public speaking; even if you have something that other people would consider interesting to deliver a talk about; the thing that is likely to disarm you about an event like a TED Talk is the crispness of it all. The production values. But those don’t happen in a vacuum. You’re probably working and writing and telling your stories–by yourself, and often to yourself. Whereas a TED Talk has an entire team pitching in to assemble it. So comparing yourself to a TED talk is like comparing yourself, as an individual, to an entire government institution. You don’t have their numbers and you don’t have their budget. But what you do have is the ability to tell stories. And the right story can change someone’s life. Production values be damned, good storytelling remains the oldest, cheapest and best special effect.

So. Anyway. That’s a TED talk. And if you go through different types of writing with this in mind, you’ll see that this pattern bears out with a lot of other genres. And then you’ll realize you’re a lot closer to being a writer than you might have realized. 

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. 

Anti-Climactic Postscript!

Yeah. I wanted to leave matters there. It’s a good punchline; especially in context. And don’t get me wrong. I love committing to a bit. But obviously there are good TED talks just like there are good anything else. The real point in all of this is that third rule of writing: people. There are 2 Rules in the name of the website (and in that elegant yet endearing logo designed for us by Blossom Akpojisheri). Because you only need 2 rules to get started. But to have any longevity in writing, you need that third rule. Which is to say: you need people–fellow writers–around you. One of the things fellow writers will do is: when you start to spiral and name writers/books/entire institutions you’ll never measure up to, your friends can remind you that you wrote that amazing essay or were paid that amazing compliment by a writer whose work you yourself are in love with.

And these writers/books/institutions you can never measure up to? We can talk about why not. Why they’re doing something different from you. Or why they’ve got a bigger staff than you. Or why a lot of what makes them impressive is just superficial gloss.