00:00 What is the secret for writers to have a more authentic writing brand?
04:45 Intro
07:00 Introducing Miguel Eichelberger
09:05 What is Authenticity?
10:33 Strategies to be More Authentic as an Author
14:30 Stephen King - On Writing
19:50 Value-aligned authenticity
30:55 Why does an artist need to have a culture around their brand?
38:30 Networking as an Author
42:05 Social Media Engagement Strategies
55:30 How to be authentic at live events
01:02:00 Live reading of Balance | Speculative Fiction
01:21:08 What obstacles prevent writers from being more authentic?
01:26:00 How can you build a readership before you publish?
01:29:15 Does grassroots publishing still work in 2024?
01:32:40 Does anyone still read blogs and know how to do a poetry prompt?
01:34:40 Audiobooks on Youtube?
​01:39:17 Outtro

[21:44] How communication dictates culture either on purpose or by accident (you don't want to do it by accident)

[23:34] How to communicate bad news in a way that strengthens your culture 

[30:33] Why the top-down leadership model works against effective communication and culture 

[37:49] Why middle-management is the most difficult job in the world right now 

[40:23] What it really means for a leader, a CEO, to listen to their employees (and why we have resiliency wrong) 

[44:00] Shout-out to The New Happy & author Stephanie Harrison. Follow The New Happy, pick up the book, and watch how your world will change for the better, especially at work.

[47:23] Shout-out to Coldwater Communications & Theodora Jean, MComm as one of the most extraordinary leaders and people I've ever had the pleasure to work with.

Every day we underestimate ourselves as individuals and as a culture. One looks at a building like this, shaped to house research, classrooms, students, staff, multiple organizational offices, laboratories beyond imagining, all coming together in this somehow cohesive symphony of art and architecture, and yet still, we have no faith in where we're going as a species. No faith that we're ever going to figure it out.

The anti-thing to the placebo — the make-believe panacea that somehow generates a very real result — is the nocebo — a make-believe negative expectation that likewise makes itself manifest in real ways. Consider that old nutshell about the soldier who, if he believes he'll die tomorrow, will find a way to make it happen. He's believing his own headline.

We're doing no different when we expect the worst of our future. The current social media/media landscape sells us the nocebo. The rarer murders become, the more they are reported on in the news (there's good data on this). That's wholesale negativity, and because of negativity bias, boy are we buying. But take it from the full reality of human history, the ugly and gorgeous, those buildings and stories — we're actually capable of creating wonders together. We figure shit out. 

It takes time. It often comes a little late and at a steep price, one paid in lives and waste, but we get there. 

The lines and angles meet. The decisions are made. The building is built. 

Don't believe it? Ask the sports psychologists and athletes of the world. It's been proven that endurance decreases when we tell ourselves how tired we are during the marathon. Likewise, we see it increase when we tell ourselves, in the midst of brain-erasing muscle fatigue and pain, that we're "feeling good." Those two words make us better athletes.

And it's not by a little bit either. In fact some studies have shown as much as an 18% increase in output as a result. In short: the stories we tell ourselves matter.

Nocebos are poison. They keep your pace low until you drop out. 

Let's instead make some angles. Let's make a building. 

A fundamental moment for any artist is when they let go of expectation finally, completely. Many of us say we have, though filaments still cling where we can't see them. But when we recoil from the snap of what's left, there's a peace that flows over and through the process. You still edit and modify, second-guess choices and mediums, but all of it becomes tension-free. 

At that point, it's not about you anymore. It's about the hope that led you to the page, the microphone, the canvas, the camera in the first place. The hope that, maybe from over there, you can see something only you are equipped to see, you just need to look hard enough. That's hope, absent expectation.

A while back I wrote about good shoes. Great shoes. 

They're falling now, and not just mine. I hope they do.

So few are the trillion dollar conversations these days. Minds that many claim to be "smart" call the world childish, stupid and dangerous because they don't understand it anymore. The actual, relevant science is drowned out, long-misinterpreted in a bawling game of simpering telephone that years ago lost any relevance. 

No one is reacting to reality anymore. They're reacting to reactions to reactions to reactions to reality. There's still substance to be found, but boy is it buried deep. 

I get it. I get the outrage machine. I get fearfully barking at change and thinking the volume makes you brave. I even get those who proclaim it's all harmless. Just characters and entertainment. Yeah, for profit, but... so what? 

So what if a few people believe Liverking is natty or that Musk is a genius! So what if people have literally broken up families, picked up guns, harassed and bullied because the "intelligence" of their idols gave them top cover. 

We're all just reacting to reactions aren't we. Well here's a shout out to the places where the big conversations are still happening. Where they discuss the climate, not the weather. 

And just because he deserves it, here's to Rutger Bregman. Read his books everyone. They're better than nearly every podcast out there.

It's not just me. Plenty of my friends and colleagues, especially those who would self-identify as high-achieving and driven, have only been able to poke their heads above the maelstrom long enough to start (but never long enough to finish) conversations about their overwhelm, their frustration, their stress, and in one case, their inability to stretch a certain muscle because, "that's where all the tension goes I guess."

Doesn't much matter if he's right (Is he? All the physios out there sound off.), what matters is that everyone, EVERYONE, is under it. And the noise all around is deafening. 

It's been easily ten months since I spent significant, actual time working to really hear the signals.

You know the ones I mean. The important ones. The ones that remind you who and what you love; that tell you to chill the hell out, back off, and take stock of all that you've accomplished. The ones that remind you where the future you want actually sits, as well as the things you could be doing to get there. The ones that tell you to use a viewpoint broader than just making it through the next few projects or days or whatever.

That's what being in constant survival mode does. The low-level stress and trauma of two years of spotlighted uncertainty have quite literally re-wired our brains to put out fires instead of working to build systems that would prevent them altogether. Any meaningful conversations feel more like you're shouting to​ loved ones as you speed by onto the next brushfire.

In this space, burnout is inevitable. Trust erodes. Collaboration breaks down. Not because anyone is a bad person, but because the inevitable result of constant short-termism is tunnel vision. Block out the noise, focus on what's in front of you, buckle down (hate that phrase), and power through (that one's worse). 

Everyone's tired of this concert. Sound-check never showed up, only a quarter of the bands even know how to play their instruments, we're all in the nosebleeds, and anyone who had the wherewithal to ask for a refund discovered the ushers went home days ago to beat the traffic.

The people who've come to me for help, for insight, and for time that the noise insists I can't spare, are people who are, by every definition, astounding. They are leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, scientists. The kind of people who now and in the future are making massive dents in the big challenges of our time. One of them (a profoundly wise person) laughed as she recited a to do list larger than paper could record and then summed up what we're all facing pretty succinctly: "How the hell do you heal when you don't even have time to assess the wound."

We talked about solutions and how to meet the moment. But mostly, we talked about how we might leave the festival and make our way back to the parking lot if only to finally hear ourselves think.

I don't care who you are, what you do, and in what field you happen to be doing it. You're injured. You're a person living through a pandemic that also happens to include social upheaval, a lot of ugliness laid bare, war, fixed mindsets, and more besides. So much has happened in the last two years, and most of us haven't had a moment to really consider the impacts.

Some organizations handled it brilliantly, making space for the hard conversations, to plan, strategize, and set new, clear operational courses based on the actual needs of their people. Those organizations thrived. Their people are rested, healthy and smiling their way to work every day (or the zoom screen that now represents work). There are those who handled it poorly, no need to say much more about that.

The vast majority however didn't handle it at all. They simply went to work, fire after fire, doing the best they could. They buckled down (ugh, that phrase), and stayed buckled, never once stopping to assess the wounds.

More than anything else, I think that's the priority of leadership right now. To slow it all down. Be intentional about talking to our people, and helping them hear the signals over the noise. Their own signals. They need to see where they hurt, where they need to heal.

Those who are wildly driven are likely the ones we need to help the most. Because they think this is just another time where intensity will win the day. They don't see the difference between the pressure to perform and the pressure of a pandemic.

I know I didn't.

​Yesterday, one of my mentors, a leader and friend, dragged me out of the venue. I can hear the signals again. They're pointing to damage I didn't know was there, and possibilities I couldn't have picked out of a line-up of dead-ends.

That's what leaders do. It's what we all need to do.

Certainty doesn't survive in the land of nuance and waiting. It's a far more real world than the one we build on wibbly, adamant ideas and occupy most of the time. Yet, that's where all the best stuff resides. It's a place of treasure and wisdom and, for me, abject frustration. A place where understanding and curiosity are rewarded immediately with the possibility that everything or nothing could happen all at once. Or some middle thing on that vast continuum between all and none.

I'm waiting for shoes to drop right now. Good shoes. Great shoes in fact. Shoes that will decide the next terrain I hike or run or trip over. And in the meantime, I do my best to huck a few more up and into the wind. Submissions for poems, plays, screenplays, comics, short stories, children's books. Nominations for awards, applications to new and exciting careers, etc.

I'm doing my level-best to remain patient. To remember that only the work is mine, not the results (the shoes—note to self, only dumb metaphors need parenthetical explanations). 

Anywhen, I've decided to stop in here and talk about the shoes as they are both tossed and landing. What's a writer to do except write.

I can't thank Miranda enough for her work here. She gets me, both who I am and what I do. And that's rare. I had a good friend tell me that my work helped her see something she wouldn't have seen on her own. That's what Miranda does too, only with visual art.  

She's excellent.