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23 Great Rules for Being a Productive Creative
Or how I’ve been able to write 12 books in a decade
This week, I announced on Instagram that my newest book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave, is available for preorder. It will be my 12th book in 10 years, and so there were a bunch of comments from people who wondered how I was able to get another one done so quickly.
How do you write books faster than I read them?
What’s your secret to writing so many books?
The answer is that I have a system, a process that helps me be productive. It’s not mysystem exactly, as I’ve taken many strategies from the greatest writers to ever do it. Although I talk about the creative process at length in my book Perennial Seller, I thought I would detail some of my rules that I follow as a writer. I think they can help anyone be more productive.
Read. Read. Read.
A book is made of books. “The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading; a man will turn over half a library to make one book,” Samuel Johnson said. As I was putting together the bibliography for Courage, I counted something like 300 books I was directly sourcing from.
