Reading Beautiful Prose as Inspiration for Writing | 2min snip from The Tim Ferriss Show

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#726: Hugh Howey, Author of Silo and Wool — A Masterclass on Writing, Unorthodox Self-Publishing, and Living in The AI Age

The Tim Ferriss Show

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Reading Beautiful Prose as Inspiration for Writing

Reading beautiful prose can be like striking a tuning fork before a writing session, helping to set the tonal quality of good music in words. By consuming books with excellent translation and prose with elements like iambic pentameter and run-on sentences, one can absorb and mimic the flow of well-written words. Books like 'This is How You Lose the Time War' and 'Cersei' are examples that can up one's writing game and serve as a reminder of the sound of good writing.

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Hugh Howey is the New York Times bestselling author of Wool, Beacon 23, Sand, Machine Learning, Half Way Home, and more than a dozen other novels. His Silo trilogy was recently adapted by Apple TV, becoming their #1 drama of all time. Please enjoy!

Timestamps for this episode are available below. Resources from this episode: https://tim.blog/2024/03/13/hugh-howey/

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Timestamps:

[00:00] Start

[06:48] Breaking the formula with a literary sleight of hand.

[11:00] A commitment to 10 years of obscurity.

[15:02] Buying back rights and self-publishing.

[22:04] Why authors should strive for a reader-first vs. publisher-first mindset.

[24:22] Hitting the NYT Best Sellers List with a self-pub book.

[27:44] Pricing logic.

[31:00] The undersold value of worldwide rights.

[33:57] How authors can find deal leverage early on.

[37:07] Establishing a daily writing habit.

[41:34] Fiction that inspires better writing.