Ryan Holiday’s Top 13 Writing Tips
Some writers are inspiring to a fault. They offer platitudes that temporarily buoy your spirits then leave you unfulfilled.
Other writers see themselves as literary fitness trainers — talking down to readers and tearing them down by sharing the harsh realities of the world.
Ryan Holiday is one of the rare writers who can blend motivation with harsh reality. He’s written several of my favorite books, including Ego Is the Enemy and The Obstacle Is the Way.
He also wrote one of the best writing advice books I’ve found: Perennial Seller. Here are the top 13 things I learned from that book:
1. Your work is the most important thing.
“I can’t say I know too many people whose success was built by spending one fifth of their time creating and four fifths loudly hawking the work they’ve just thrown together.” -Ryan Holiday
The online community places a heavy emphasis on marketing. As writers, we’re told to be active on social media, to build a platform, to find ways to get our work in front of new audiences, and to become comfortable selling ourselves.
I agree that those things are important. So does Holiday, and we’ll discuss a few marketing tips later in this list.
But those things — and everything else — need to take a back seat to what matters most: the work we’re creating. No one will buy a well-marketed piece of shit. The majority of our time should be invested in our writing.
2. The best marketing tool is excellent writing.
“[T]he better your product is, the better your marketing will be. The worse it is, the more time you will have to spend marketing and the less effective every minute of that marketing will be. You can count on that. Promotion is not how things are made great — only how they’re heard about.” -Ryan Holiday
Have you ever stumbled upon a writer whose work was so good that you immediately followed them?
I have. I clicked the “follow” button because it was clear the writer took pride in their craft. They would do anything possible to not let down their readers.
By spending the time to create a great product, you save yourself time on the back end. Your pen is the loudest megaphone.
3. There is a HUGE gap between ideas and action.
“The difference between a great work and an idea for a great work is all the sweat, time, effort, and agony that go into engaging that idea and turning it into something real. That difference is not trivial. If great work were easy to produce, a lot more people would do it.” -Ryan Holiday
Have you ever heard someone say, “I just saw a commercial for _______. I had that idea years ago. I could have been a millionaire!”
It’s easy to conclude that if we dreamt of something, we can lay claim to whatever fruit came from that idea. But there is a massive gap between dreaming and doing. Dreaming is not enough. It will never be enough.
The world rewards those who boldly tackle projects that others only consider. This principle applies to writing as much as it applies to anything else in life. We need to put in the work to bring our ideas to fruition on the blank page.
4. Discern whether you want to WRITE a book or HAVE a book.
“In my work with authors, I’ve met with no shortage of smart, accomplished people who, I’ve realized, don’t actually want to write a book despite what they say. They want to have a book. We find these types in every industry. We should pity them — because they’ll never get what their ego craves so desperately.” -Ryan Holiday
Few phrases stroke the ego like the phrase “published author.” There’s something mystical and powerful about it. It is a badge of honor in many fields, a rite of passage for academics, and a business card for entrepreneurs.
And yet, those who set out to achieve the title for its own sake discover that their work ethic and dedication don’t match their lust for prestige.
Get to know yourself well enough to know your motivations. Be honest. Are you writing for prestige alone? Or are you writing because your spirit yearns to create?
“Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?” -Steven Pressfield
Writing is a visceral, personal, soulful task that demands your heart, spirit, and mind. Are you willing to part with those things?
5. Determine what you are willing to sacrifice.
“In the course of creating your work, you are going to be forced to ask yourself: What am I willing to sacrifice in order to do it?” -Ryan Holiday
There are many things I love to do. I often lament that I cannot read all of the books I want to read, watch all of the Netflix shows I want to watch, and visit all of the places I want to see.
Each of us is given 168 hours per week to spend as we choose. If you want to become a great writer, you will need to cut time from other activities in your schedule.
Choose now what you are willing to sacrifice. Something has to go.
6. Use reader feedback to determine your writing focus.
“A book should be an article before it’s a book, and a dinner conversation before it’s an article. See how things go before going all in.” -Ryan Holiday
I never planned to write about half of the things I’ve posted on my blog. I followed the explicit and implicit feedback I heard from friends to determine what I should write.
For example, I didn’t realize my reading habits were abnormal until I shared them with a friend who immediately began to implement them. That conversation inspired an article called “7 Ways to Remember What You Read.”
I had been mulling over a theory for years about why internal job candidates don’t often get promotions. I didn’t realize it was anything special until I discussed the idea over dinner with two of my best friends. That conversation became “How Unfamiliarity Bias Affects Who Gets Promoted.”
And I didn’t think my writing advice was worth a damn until I shared a few tips with a friend who wanted to start writing. He said the tips helped him a lot, which surprised me. The following week, I published “15 Things I Learned in My First Year of Writing.” It’s become one of my most popular articles.
The best way to gauge what you should write about is to pay attention to the topics that make others’ ears perk up. Let that feedback guide your writing.
7. Invest the time to mine the brilliance inside of yourself.
“You don’t have to be a genius to make genius — you just have to have small moments of brilliance and edit out the boring stuff.” -Ryan Holiday
I had always viewed my favorite writers as untouchables — people who could do things with a pen that I could not. Then I stumbled upon this quote, which helped me realize that I had fallen prey to the genius myth.
Geniuses aren’t born; they’re made.
Hard work is the mechanism that allows us to tap into brilliance. It opens the floodgates of genius in all of us. Anyone who makes a habit of writing will eventually discover brilliance flowing from their pen.
Are you investing the time to discover the brilliance inside of yourself?
8. Identify your target audience.
“An audience isn’t a target that you happen to bump into; instead, it must be explicitly scoped and sighted in. It must be chosen…For any project, you must know what you are doing — and what you are not doing. You must also know who you are doing it for — and who you are not doing it for — to be able to say: THIS and for THESE PEOPLE.” -Ryan Holiday
Holiday talks about how a small publisher uses the slogan “Find your niche and scratch it.” That publisher recognizes that every story has a target audience.
As writers, we must have our audience in mind when we sit down to write.
One of my co-workers recently taught me I have a lot to learn about this topic. While discussing an article I had just published, he said he didn’t know who my target audience was. Then he looked at me and asked, “Who were you writing this story to?”
I was dumbstruck. I didn’t have an answer to his question. I just felt like writing the story, so I wrote it. The article had performed poorly, and now I understood why. Because I failed to visualize the audience and the intended takeaway, my readers left feeling confused and unsatisfied.
Identify your target market for every article you write. Visualize your ideal reader and write the story for them. Consider what you want them to learn or do as a result of your story.
“Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death, and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader.” -John Steinbeck
9. Don’t compare yourself to the wrong people.
“If your goal is to create a perennial seller, you can’t measure yourself against people who aren’t aiming for the same thing — you can’t be endlessly checking industry charts or lists, and you can’t be distracted by the trends and fancies of other creators who are hopelessly lost…Only crazy people would compare themselves to people on totally different tracks. With a perennial seller as your goal, the track is clear: lasting impact and relevance.” -Ryan Holiday
My brother is a musician, and I’ve been with him multiple times when people have come up to him and said, “Why don’t you try to write a song like [a recent Top 40 hit]?” But that’s not the music he’s trying to create. He wants to create something that influences the music industry for years — not something that will make a teenybopper gush at a concert.
It’s easy to forget that there’s a difference between creating something that trends for weeks and creating something that has a delightful slow burn of lasting for years.
We’ve all heard the stories of writers like Franz Kafka, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft who became popular only after death. They created masterpieces that pushed the craft forward but took a while for people to appreciate.
Instant success and lasting legacy aren’t mutually exclusive. However, it’s useful for us to define our goal and not get distracted by one-hit wonders, short-term stats, and fads.
10. You need to market your work.
“Audiences can’t magically know what is inside something they haven’t seen. They have no clue that it will change their lives. You can’t be the self-conscious wallflower in the corner, hoping that people will see through the act and just know how great you are. Someone is going to have to tell them…And the best person in the world to accomplish this difficult task? You.” -Ryan Holiday
As I shared in tip #1, your work is the most important thing. But it is not the only thing. Once you’ve created something of substance, you need to find a way to show others what they’re missing, which means that you need to become comfortable marketing yourself.
If you spend 100 hours writing the best story of your life, then only spend five minutes choosing a title and subtitle to market that story, you have done yourself a disservice. You’ve also done a disservice to your potential audience because they will never see your story.
“Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen and it’s harder than it looks.” -Peter Thiel
Rather than viewing marketing as a necessary evil, view it as a way to find those people who can benefit from your writing.
11. Find your addicts.
“A smart business friend once described the art of marketing to me as a matter of ‘finding your addicts’…We have to get them hooked somehow, and free is often the best way to do it.” -Ryan Holiday
There are X number of people out there who LOVE your writing. Your job is to find them.
That number varies for every author depending upon ability. As you refine your craft, the number increases.
You can find those potential addicts by giving away samples of your work for free. For example, if you’re working on a book, publish a few free chapters online or give away the first batch of copies to key influencers in your genre.
Once you’ve identified your addicts, you want to be able to reach them whenever you want. This is why many authors create an email newsletter. For example, in my email newsletter, I send readers four book recommendations, three inspiring quotes, two articles, and one additional idea that’s on my mind that month. These emails help me connect with my audience and offer them something free every month.
12. You CAN judge a book by its cover.
“Of course you can judge a book by its cover — that’s why books have covers. They’re designed to catch people’s attention and draw them toward the work — and away from all the other works that stand equal on the shelf.” -Ryan Holiday
The way you package your work signals to your readers what they can expect from your writing.
If you’re writing a book, work with a graphic designer to create a book cover that will capture attention. Conduct surveys to see which book titles click best with readers in your target audience.
If you’re writing an article, invest time in finding the right featured image and title for your story. Consider utilizing a headline analyzer tool like Sharethrough or CoSchedule.
13. Start your next project.
“The best marketing you can do for your book is to start writing the next one.” -Ryan Holiday
In 2015, I read the Wayward Pines series by Blake Crouch. I loved the books, so I immediately started buying Crouch’s older books. If Crouch had never written Wayward Pines, I never would have purchased his books Run and Snowbound. Crouch marketed his earlier books by writing his next ones.
The same thing happens all the time in writing: someone finds a book or article you’ve written, they enjoy it, and they want to find out more about you. So they follow you, read your old stuff online, sign up for your email newsletter, visit your blog, etc. In short, they stumble upon your back catalog.
If you recently published something that didn’t perform as well as you’d hoped, don’t be dismayed. Write your next story. Remember that your next story could be a gateway drug for readers to find your old stuff.
What’s your next project? What can you do today to get started?
I’ve read Perennial Seller twice and plan to re-read it again soon. It is an excellent resource for anyone trying to create work that lasts.
Until you read the full book, I hope you’ve enjoyed this digestible summary.
Happy writing!
