How to Write a Book Like Ryan Holiday
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Published 2024-06-26
Ryan Holiday is one of the world’s most prolific writers. He’s published sixteen books, written a daily email newsletter every day for the past eight years, has 1.7 million YouTube subscribers, and runs his own creative agency. (Reciting that list is difficult enough to remember, let alone accomplishing all of those things.)
This conversation will get you off your butt as a writer. It’s 78-minutes of learning how to generate creative inertia for yourself — because that’s where Ryan thrives. He’s a no-BS writer. And by “no BS,” I mean: no coddling or making excuses for himself. He’s exceptional at just doing the work. Generating that kind of momentum is exactly what fires me up, and exactly what I teach at Write of Passage. If you’re feeling called to write, you should join one of our programs. I’m telling you: Write of Passage will light a fire inside of you.
I recently heard a story about Ryan that sums him up in a nutshell. His editor called to congratulate him on hitting the #3 spot on the New York Times Bestseller list. His book had only been out for a week. I don’t know about you, but I would be camped out by the phone, biting my nails while I waited for that call. But Ryan? Ryan was heads-down writing, halfway done with his next book. And today, you’ll learn exactly how he generates that level of momentum.
WRITE OF PASSAGE:
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:06:00 Book launches
00:08:55 Quantity vs Quality
00:11:35 Process of writing a book
00:15:00 Ryan's note card system
00:18:20 How Ryan's writing has evolved
00:21:40 How Ryan's writing has improved
00:23:55 Editing
00:26:45 Great introductions
00:30:55 Your next big piece
00:32:40 Breaking down Marcus Aurelius
00:38:40 Writing Examples
00:39:17 How music helps you write
00:41:15 Best advice about reading
00:45:10 Research for your writing
00:47:10 Schedule and productivity
00:50:10 Reading for style vs content
00:51:10 What will be Ryan's next book?
00:51:50 Biographies
00:54:10 Criticism
00:55:20 Feedback (like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm)
01:00:30 When are you ready to start writing a book
01:01:45 Fear of failure
01:05:30 Momentum
01:05:50 Storytelling
01:12:30 Top lessons from Ryan
01:12:50 Getting more practice (reps)
PODCAST LINKS:
Website: writeofpassage.com/how-i-write
Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-write/id170017…
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSboniFAeGA8v9NpoPv
ABOUT THE HOST:
I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible.
All Comments (19)
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Ryan Holiday is one of the world's most productive writers. He's published 16 books, hundreds of articles, grown a 700,000+ person newsletter, a 1.6 million subscriber YouTube channel, and built one heck of a business too. How does he do it all? 1) Don't lose momentum: When you get stuck, don't stop writing. Just move on to something else. 2) Marketing is not somebody else's job. It's yours. 3) When you're new to writing, focus on volume. Ryan published 44 blog posts in 2007 and 2008 when he was first honing his skills. 4) Ruin the ending: When you start a non-fiction history book, go straight to Wikipedia and spoil the ending for yourself. Why? It'll help you understand the book better if you're reading for understanding, not entertainment. 5) Find your next book in the bibliographies of your favorite books. This is how you build a knowledge base. This is how you trace a subject back to its core 6) Read hard books: Treat your brain as a muscle that only grows under tension and weight. 7) Before you start the writing process for a book, distill the core idea into one sentence, one paragraph, and one page. 8) Find your "chorus line," the recurring theme that you want to weave through your writing. For Chuck Palahniuk, when he was writing Fight Club, whenever the plot got off track, he came back to: “I am Jack’s sense of rejection.” 9) Always be reading, always be researching, always be collecting stories: Ryan now has somewhere between 10,000 note cards worth of insightful anecdotes from all the reading he's done. 10) Make your note-taking process laborious. Writing notes down by hand is time-consuming, but it forces Ryan to digest the ideas from every book he reads. 11) Whenever a reader tells you that something is wrong, they're right. Something isn't working for them. But does this mean they know how to fix it? Nope. That's your job.
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I swim every morning and write morning pages, and these two disciplines are pushing me forward to get my stories written. Now I'll be interested learn how Ryan Holiday tackles it...
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I literally just did an episode of the podcast on Ryan Holiday's 'Canvas Strategy' which seemed to be a big part of how he learned how to 'build' an entire book from start to finish - learning of course, from his mentor, Robert Greene. You added a lot of the color I was unaware of around that here David! Thank you for sharing!
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Perennial Seller is one of Ryan's most underrated books!
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That wall/room/background is f*cking sick! Love it!
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You got Ryan Holiday??? Omg love it. Keep up the great work!
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That clip at the beginning. Wow. Mad powerful and motivating. What a beast lol
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The collab I've been waiting for!
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Thanks David! He is a gem. Also, thanks for putting the main points in writing.
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I greatly respect Ryan Holiday. He sounds so levelheaded, wise and genuine.
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Was a great podcast, thx!
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we finally got this
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I try not to listen to the Music in Loop too much 😭It takes over my brain, I dont want to end up writing the song into the story XD
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Honest question: what’s his typing speed or words-per-minute? 😅
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28:00 interesting mentioned
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The goat 🐐
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Thumbnail is missing his 2 best books Conspiracy and Trust Me I’m Lying. Highly recommend
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40 stoic pushups for every like.
