SELF HELP 5

How To Collaborate

This newsletter is my process of writing a self help book, tentatively titled How To Make Money: Financial Advice For Poets.

Yesterday I got so many new signups for this newsletter when I posted a link on Facebook. Which is ironic seeing as I had just sent out a letter about micromarketing but hadn’t bothered to promote my own substack. I guess it plays into the theme of these letters, which is basically advice from someone who doesn’t know any more than you do, and probably less. Put another way, I make the mistakes you can learn from.

At any rate, for the new subscribers, consider reading the first letters. Here are links and quick summaries:

Financial Advice For Poets covers how to make $10,000 a month in passive income.

Financial Advice For Poets II explains the basics of being rich and why so few poets own nice houses.

The third letter explains how to be happy. This is also a topic I’m going to be writing on a lot more. You might wonder how can a sad person write an advice book about happiness? To which I respond confidently, watch me.

The fourth letter: Micromarketing, How To Turn Not Very Much Into A Little Bit More. I think the title on this one is self-explanatory.

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One of my favorite quotes that, like most of my favorite quotes, I don’t remember if someone told me or I made up myself, is “every story is a love story or a story about loneliness.” But over the years I’ve become convinced that there are almost no good stories about loneliness. Maybe an early Dostoevsky novel, or Paul Shrader’s Taxi Driver script. Nine out of 10 times when you think you’re reading about loneliness you’re actually reading about a relationship. For example, every Raymond Carver story.

Interaction is the nursery of inspiration, though it often requires time away from the source. Friction requires resistance. Even figuring out what you don’t want to do often requires seeing other people doing it. People are terrible, and we complain about them continually, but without collaboration you can’t lead a meaningful life and you’re less likely to produce meaningful work.

I mean, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were pretty good on their own, but...

There is tons of research on the importance of collaborators. There was also an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine a few years ago about how people who belonged to large integrated communities were less prone to addiction. And one of the three pillars of recovery in 12 step programs is community.

There is an excellent book by Po Bronson called What Should I Do With My Life. He profiles people at turning points where they make dramatic shifts in what they do and where they live. It’s such an honest book because sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. But the shortest chapter is only half a page. A guy was studying botany or something and he was in the forest alone and miserable. So he became a dentist, and now he was surrounded by people and he loved his work. That was it. That was the entire story.

Recently I’ve been worried about people who live alone during Covid. But I’m even more concerned about the people who have been cancelled in the various social mobbing campaigns. A lot of these people lost their community. They lost their collaborators and an entire way of life. And maybe a year ago they were on the right track but still had a ways to go; maybe they were making progress. And then Covid happened and these people were in particularly vulnerable positions. With the promise of the vaccine it seemed we would turn the corner early this year but now it appears we’re probably at least six months out. And so I’ve started thinking more about this very specific problem and this particularly vulnerable group.

Because though hell is other people, as Sartre would say, relationships are our primary source of happiness (as distinct from pleasure), and the driver of business creation and art, and the genesis of meaning. Which is unfortunate but I don’t make the rules.

Anyway, ask yourself if the story you’re writing is a love story or a story about loneliness.

Xox

stephen

@s___elliott