Hello friends,
Officially, Brian helps writers improve their work at his firm Think Deeply Write Clearly. Practically, he is a person I love talking to — a unique sounding board for ideas, a guide who knows the creative trenches, a scribe at home in the labyrinth of language. Also, someone to have a good laugh with.
Every conversation with him left me with quotes and ideas I revisit and I realized it was time to invite him for a chat. I planned to talk about the writing process, but I also wanted to better understand his journey. When and why did he realize he wanted to help other writers?
This led us down a deep rabbit hole that began with acting, Shakespeare, and the power of using a period rather than a comma. It surfaced Brian’s passion:
Through a process of writing books, I learned to become addicted to sensemaking. Through sensemaking I learned to become very fascinated with how people produce their language and communicate their sensemaking into the world — with a heavy bias toward people who produce thoughtful material.
As a writer, Brian was in a co-evolutionary loop with his book about artist Amedeo Modigliani and the latter’s lover Jeanne Hébuterne (who committed suicide two days after Modigliani’s death). The deeper Brian went in his investigation, the more the more complexity he found in the story — and the more it affected him. It’s an intimate example of letting yourself be shaped by the process of writing.
“The most intimate thing we can do [as writers] is share our own reflection,” Brian once told me. That captures a theme in the conversation and his work: the importance of sharing not just what we think but why and how we came to our conclusion. The room of our work becomes inviting when we share our engagement with perception and ideas, rather than try to impose our conclusions.
I don’t care what you think. I care why and how you think it and the quality of whether or not I’m invited into your worldview, whether or not I see that as an accurate or inaccurate representation of the world. I need to understand your perception of something, not your conclusions of something.
I don’t know whether to think of Brian as a writing or thinking coach. Forget the labels: he helps us lead the dance with our readers.
I am very happy to share our conversation full of laughter and insights. I’m sure we’ll do a round two because I barely got to ask him a handful of the questions on my mind.
How does the writer go deeper and perfect her ideas?
How does she establish trust rather than being just another voice?
How do we make sense of the world, find truths, and communicate them well? That’s a lifelong journey.
In the meantime, in case you are interested, Brian coaches people one-on-one at Think Deeply Write Clearly. He also offers an ongoing “intellectual home” for anyone into writing with the Credible Conversations program (first three months are free for my readers).
Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend!
Frederik
You can look at writing as the investigative process of our instincts. If we go through an investigative process well enough, we might learn something deeply true about ourselves and about the universe that we live in. And then writing is delivering the clarity of that thought in a way that people can understand it and it can benefit their lives.
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