Jason Brick | How Small Steps Lead To Mastery

Jason Brick

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That’s  ghostwritersandco.com and now your host, Joel Mark Harris.

Hello and welcome to the publishing for profit podcast. This is your host, Joel Mark Harris. Today we have a very special guest, Jason brick, who is a freelance writer, author and ghost writer. He’s published over 20. Books as a ghost writer. He has over 3000 articles, numerous books under his own name. He is also a sixth degree black belt, which is pretty cool.

And we talk a little bit about that and his love for traveling. So hopefully you enjoy this episode. Hello, Jason. How’s it going today?

Jason: Fantastic. Thank you so much for having me.

Joel: Welcome. So we’ve got Jason brick, freelance writer, who has a very interesting portfolio. he is also a sixth degree black belt, which I think is super cool.

I like to kind of start with your martial arts. How does that translate? What have you learned through, your martial arts? Two and how does that translate into your writing?

Jason: Oh man, there’s so many, so many things that influenced me about the martial arts. As you can imagine, it’s been a part of my life for a very long time.

I can put forward some of the things that popular culture thinks about with martial arts, about discipline, about focus, things like that, about having other options for dealing with an editor I don’t like. But really the most important thing is that. I’ve been doing this for 30 years as a martial artist and the belief it’s given me in the power of small, incremental steps forward towards a defined goal.

You don’t become a black belt overnight. You don’t become a system. Your black belt overnight. You don’t, the thing you’re doing when you sit down to practice or you sit down to teach a class or you attend a seminar or you go compete. The diff distance between that and a sixth degree black belt or a fourth degree black belt or any kind of mastery is huge.

There’s this long space between finishing that one task and the next and just being taught. How those small incremental steps that may seem like nothing, but you keep doing them every day for weeks, months, years, and what that, what that can accumulate into if you give it the time. That’s the, I think the most important lesson.

Martial arts taught me towards success as a freelance writer. Okay.

Joel: And so have you always been interested in martial arts and, and I guess where did that passion come from? Because like you said, it’s not something that you can just do, you know, once a week or once a month, you have to dedicate your time and put a lot of effort to it.

So what, where does that come from?

Jason: Man, I was dragged kicking and screaming into it. my first martial art was wrestling and I was entering middle school and my dad, who was a championship wrestler in high school, I was his oldest son. I was wrestling whether or not I wanted to, and I really didn’t want to.

I really, really didn’t want to. but I got in there and I got the bug and I wasn’t even a good wrestler. I was junior varsity team all the way through. But then I got into college and I certainly didn’t have what it took to go into college wrestling. Those guys are already insane. but, after a semester I missed it.

And traditional martial arts was. What was next? And I got into some Taekwondo fencing. Kung Fu, got into kickboxing for a while, did that competitively for a bit, and then on to other things into, you know, more traditional martial arts and then the journey that leads to black belts and such. But yeah, it’s, I didn’t know how much I loved it until my dad made me do it.

Joel: Hmm. So, how does that mean? Often you see writers as put into like that nerd category and then you have the jocks where you kind of, did you kind of straddled both sides, growing up or were you, I guess primarily I guess in like the jock for black, a bit of work, the job category. And were they all your friends or did you have some writing friends growing up as well?

I

Jason: was a huge nerd, a huge nerd. and there were some experiences I had on the wrestling team as a nerd that weren’t particularly positive, but martial arts, traditional martial arts, or you know, the, the non-wrestling, the non-athletic martial athletics, the wrong term. But you have competitive martial arts like MMA, Brazilian jujitsu, wrestling, which are much more like the jock category.

But most martial artists are a jock geek crossover. There’s a huge nerd presence in the martial arts. You know that the number of people I know who both all have multiple degrees of black males and still played under the dragons, which includes me. There’s a lot of us in martial arts

in very many ways. Culturally, I felt like I’d found my home when I ended up in this culture. That was jock geek multi-class.

Joel: It’s interesting because I definitely like, I always loved writing, always wanting to know. I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but I also love sports. And so I also, I had definitely had those two groups of friends and they never really.

Meshed going up. So it’s interesting to hear, now that there’s actually a side that, where they can coexist, I suppose. And you can have, you can have both in the same friend circle. Yeah. So did you, so I guess going back to the writing part, you know, obviously super successful writer, you’ve got, you know, we’ve written.

20 ghosts, I guess 20 bucks as a ghost writer. you know, multiple books as like under your own name. Did, was that always something you wanted to pursue as a

kid?

Jason: Absolutely. Although I didn’t know it was something that I could do. One of my very earliest memories is sitting there in my living room.

I was probably four, with a pen and a piece of paper, thinking of stories in my mind and scribbling on the page, pretending I was writing the story down. I don’t know where that came from or anything like that. A couple of years later, I had these, I don’t know if you can even get them anymore, but this was in the early seventies and there were pieces of the cardboard that were like a connect the dot puzzle, only a set of dots.

They had holes and then you could take a shoestring and connect the dots with the shoe string and kind of weave in and out. And I had a set of those of dinosaurs, so I would take them and put them on paper. And then. Pencil through the dots and then do a connect the dot. And that way I can make a picture book with the dinosaurs in different positions.

And I remember making, again, this is before I was five, a story where Tyrannosaurus bit the head off of a triceratops and then had a tummy ache because he swallowed the head with the three horns. So this is something I’ve been interested in in my whole life, but one of the huge failings of the American education system is it doesn’t show you how you can make a living from a creative pursuit.

And I got some couple of teachers because I was very interested in it and I, I had a talent that said I should try being a novelist or a poet or something like that, but nobody ever told me about freelance writing and journalism and the ways that you can go be a professional writer without also being Stephen King.

So I kinda drifted away from that and into martial arts is my profession well into my mid thirties and then I had a career change into freelance writing at that point. But it’s always been something I’ve been passionate about. Always something I wanted to do.

Joel: So what shifted when you, you were firmly entrenched in the martial arts and then, so yeah.

W why did you change and, and cause I mean, it seems like it’s probably not to you, but from the outside perspective, it’s probably a pretty big shift from, yeah, martial arts to writing.

Jason: It was, and the shift was up. I had kids, martial arts, professional martial arts, running a karate studio, which I did.

That’s an evenings and weekend jobs. And as soon as my oldest kid got into school and wasn’t around during the day, and I was at work at night and on weekends, I just couldn’t do that. It didn’t, it didn’t connect with my definition of being a good father. Unfortunately for me, I had been writing all of my own ad copy for all the time I was running the crowded school.

I had done a couple of ghost writing projects for people who had, they wanted to write curriculum manuals, for example, and I had a column in my local newspaper and I had a couple of articles of black belt magazine and a couple of the industry rags, things like that. So I already had a portfolio and I was able to turn that into a full time income in a year.

Good.

Joel: Nice. W so if, if somebody is listening to this and, and maybe they connect with, you know, the not being motivated or not being shown how to create a, a, I guess, an income for freelance writing, what would you say to somebody who’s like, yes, you know, no one’s actually showing me how to, to write full time and make a living from it.

Jason: Oh man. So what I’d say is starting out, one of the nice things about freelance writing is that it’s incremental. So you’ve got a full time job, or you’re on unemployment because the world’s ending or whatever is going on, you can take one assignment for pay. And then do that in that spare hour that you have.

And you can do that this week, or probably with the time lag it takes between applying for gigs. You can have one done by the end of the month and then add another and another and another and build that up. Or you can just dive in the deep end like I did and ended up getting there out of pure desperation, either of those work.

But start now if this is something you want, start today.

Joel: And where should they start? Should they start networking? I guess it’s kind of hard to network, now, but, you know, what, what are the specific steps somebody can take to, to find those

Jason: clients? So the first thing I would do is I’d look to your hobbies, and I’ve looked at your job.

Where whatever your hobby is, if it’s knitting, you go to your knitting store, or if it’s beadwork, you’d go to your bead store. Or if you’re a brewer, you go to your brewing supply shop. If you’re in a tabletop role playing games, you go into the local gaming store and you stand at the register and you look to your right or to your left, and there’s a little rack with a dozen magazines.

Every single one of those magazines needs articles by somebody who knows the hobby and who can actually write it. Cause if you read those things, the writing is terrible because they hire people first for their expertise, not for their skill with writing. So that’s when you get in there and you can write and you know the hobby, you become an instant favorite of those editors.

And it will be easier to get your second assignment. They will start recommending you out to other writers, sorry, other magazines. And that is one of the best places to start your career with getting those first professional hits from those magazines. And the same thing applies to your career where if you were in a career and you’ve been in there for a few years, you already know about the industry magazines, the trade magazines, the consumer magazines aiming towards our industry.

And all of those also are typically written by. Experts in the subject, not people who are expert at writing. So when you come as both, that’s an easy place to start getting momentum and start getting those first steps towards freelance writing. And that’s the, that’s the best advice I could give you.

Joel: And so how do you, how would you pitch these, these magazines would, what is something that you would include?

If you’re, if you’re trying to pitch a story

Jason: to them. So that’s a really long topic that people have written entire books about. In fact, I’ve recently written a book called query letters survival guide that does exactly that, and it’s up on Amazon, and I think it’s still 99 cents. I was intending to raise the price when Mae started, but I forgot.

So it might still be nine 97 and if not, it’s going to be two 99 but. You want to send a professional level query letter, and if you don’t want to buy the book, come harass me on Facebook and I’ll send you the template I use for free because I love nerding out about this stuff. But before you even did that, the first thing you want to do is read the magazine.

Get a sense for what kind of things are they carrying? What are they looking for? What is an idea that they’ve already published. That the people seem excited about that you can bring a new angle to. My first glossy magazine credit was in black belt magazine and I reached out to them for an article about non-combat benefits of martial arts training, right?

Cause that magazine is full of things about how to do a perfect kick or how to defend yourself against a guy with a knife or an interview with, John Claude van Damme or something like that. But when you talk to people who’ve done martial arts for a long time, almost none of us have been in a fight for 1520 years.

So why do we keep doing it? And one thing I like to joke about, because I’m a middle aged man, lives in the suburbs of defense for me is cardio because not a mugger that’s going to get me. It’s a heart attack. you ask anybody who’s been doing martial arts for more than 20 years, what’s the most important physical self defense skill they ever learned?

They’re going to tell you how to fall down without getting hurt because we don’t. We don’t get in fights, but I’ve fallen down three times this year. And it just gets more. That happens more often as you get older. And so this article was about that and it really resonated with the publishers in the magazine.

And that’s how I got in by taking a slightly unique angle on the general topic that that magazine served. And so if you read the magazine, you will find those ideas. Another thing you can do is. About 80% of magazines out there have a section that’s called front of book where you read the magazine and they’ve got big feature articles in the middle, right?

The ones that have the name on the cover, but in the front there’s these little or pieces that are 150 200 words, 500 words. There’s a little things, and that’s called front of book, and it only, they usually only pay 50 to a hundred dollars for those. But that’s where they give authors their first chance because an editor is not going to take a chance on a 7,000 word article that costs the magazine $2,000 and is core to get in that magazine out on time with somebody they don’t know.

But if you say, Hey, I’d like to write for this magazine. I have an idea for your front of book, and that’s a smaller thing that only cost them a couple of hundred bucks. And if you flake out on them or you turn into something that’s terrible, they can have one of their staff members write it out real quick in an hour.

They’re much more likely to accept your query. So that’s a find out if the magazine that you’re querying has front of book and have your first couple ideas be like that.

Joel: Yeah. Amazing advice. Really. I think that’s really helpful.

Jason: I stole it from a lady who was presenting at Northern Colorado, I think six years ago.

Joel: Well, at least you’re honest about it. I guess.

Jason: I’m not a smart person. I just listen really carefully to people who are smart. That’s my superpower. I learned from other people’s mistakes.

Joel: Yeah. That’s, that’s very important. So what else have you learned from other people’s mistakes.

Jason: Oh, lousy. So many things.

Right? I’ve been in this industry a long time. I’ve been fortunate to be hanging out with some really smart people. some of the big ones, for example, when I was 30. I decided I wanted to run my own karate studio and in the organization that I came up in, this was a system. American Kempo karate Academy is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico that at the time had more than 30 schools in, I think it was 11 States plus two provinces in Mexico, and the owner, bill packer.

If you come to a woman, you tell them, Hey, I think I’m going to, I’d like to run the school. He hires you to be the office manager at the headquarters for six months. And so I got dropped into that job and I was taught so much about business systems, about how marketing works, about why marketing works, about treating this passion, this hobby as a business, if you want it to be successful.

And all of that. It was absolutely vital to making writing work as a full time living. You know, I was in that position when I transit, when I transitioned from, I had a mortgage, I had kids I had, this wasn’t something I could treat as a hobby. And so translating those business systems from point a to point B really helped.

As a freelance writer, you must treat it as a business if you want it to be something that supports you. And on that. On that topic, the importance of investment. If you’re going to go on and be a freelance writer, you aren’t running a business. There’s no two ways about it, and if you have a business, you must invest in that business.

Now that investment can be money or it can be time and preferably you’ll do both. But I think most freelance writers in the beginning, they just invest their time. They put in the hours they put in the work, and then as it starts to create income, you can start putting money into getting professional headshots is a really good first step.

Or getting a consultation with a marketer or a publicity department or hiring somebody to do your website and then on and on to the point where you’re actually spending money on marketing for your writing services, for your books, for whatever it is. But those two things about systematizing the business aspect of your freelance writing and how important it is to invest in your business and in yourself are two of the biggest pieces that I’ve learned over the years from other folks who are way smarter than me.

Joel: I’d like to delve a little bit into the system, systemized, teleportation of, of a freelance career, because I think most writers are obviously creative people and they like to do things, kind of Willy nilly, if you will. and they’re not. Good at the, I guess, the business side or the, the systemized system, creating those systems.

so what systems do you think freelance writers need?

Jason: So the biggest systems they need is a way of tracking their time, paying attention to our time, how we’re spending it. paying attention to whether you’re making or losing money on assignments. Being systematic about how you query for work and how you complete work.

What are the biggest mistakes people make in their for less careers? And I certainly made it for many years. I’m still guilty of it to this day really is you’ll work on assignments when you have assignments, and then when you don’t have assignments, you work on getting more assignments. And what that creates is this feast famine situation where when you don’t have an assignment, you’re not making any money.

And when you do have assignments, you’re stress. Cause you’ve got a whole bunch of assignments all at once where if you. Break down your day so that you’re both looking for work and doing work in the same time period. It evens things out and you’ve got a nice steady income flow and you’re doing a little bit of marketing every once in a while.

Then when I say marketing, this case, I do include going out directly to get work, sending query letters and whatnot. That’s one of the things that you can do to just systematize, set up your hours, plan your week, plan your day. That kind of systemization really helps you. Right at the scale that is necessary to make a full time living as a pretend freelance writer.

And then on the back end, systematizing all the, all the little business things, you know, tracking your income so your taxes aren’t a nightmare. Keeping keeping an eye on the various business expenses and whether or not you’re actually making a profit from this business as a freelance writer, handling your communications where.

Where you’re tracking people who, for example, there might be an editor that you want in a magazine that’s a little, a little above your pay grade as it were, and you want to maybe warm that pot up by communicating with them on Twitter a couple of times, finding out what conference they’re going into next, and you know, a little bit of lights, sales, stocking as you were, as it were.

And that works better if you pay attention to it. If you have a little spreadsheet that tells you when was the last time you talked to this person. And if it gets more than two weeks, you have intentionally wander over to their Twitter and find a conversation to start. And little things like that.

Hugely powerful.

Joel: So you, yeah. I guess Excel. Is there any other tools that you use, to track, you know, like track, I guess time, I guess income, there’s like, there’s so much. So, if there’s any tools that you would recommend to, writers to make their lives easier.

Jason: I am the worst person in the world to ask that because, I just use a spreadsheet and I have cast back your mind to, you know, a few minutes ago when I mentioned running a brick and mortar business, right?

A karate studio for 10 years and being trained in that in the nineties and then in the, through the two thousands before we had all these cool apps to track your time. And before there was affordable software that wasn’t enterprise level for systematizing business. So I already know how to use Excel to do these things, and I’m disinclined to learn something new.

However, if you haven’t already become an Excel jockey, there are tools out there. I’ve heard that do all of these things much easier, much faster than Excel. So there are people who know these things. I’m just not one of them. Like those ads that I’ve seen right now with Danny DeVito that have apparently apps that will, you know, you take a picture of your risk business received and it just kind of tracks it and categorizes it automatically for you.

That’s an example that exists, but I haven’t looked into it because I don’t know if I’m just tapping away on my Microsoft spreadsheet like I have for 30 years. anyway, yeah, those tools are out there, but honestly, if you know Excel, because Excel is there, it’s easy. You can use Google the Google sheets for free.

Joel: Now there’s, I mean, yeah, I guess whatever works, right? That’s, that’s the most important thing for sure. So how do you think about marketing and what should freelance writers do to market themselves?

Jason: So you need redefine marketing. That’s the first thing you have to do. And what I mean by that is we all have, when you say marketing, you say sales.

Most of us creative types, we think about that used car salesman guy. We think about those act now. Supplies won’t last as it are on when you stay up too late. Watching movies on TV back when ads were a part of our watch and movies experience, right? That’s what we think of when we think marketing and it’s dead wrong.

Marketing is being such an enthusiastic, passionate nerd about something that you infect everybody else around you with your passion and your enthusiasm, and a few of them decide to become nerds about it too. The best example of sales and marketing think will resonate with this group was when was the last time you recommended a book to a friend?

You sold the shit out of that book. Right? There’s a book I read a year and a half ago called the three body problem by she she knew, which blew my damn mind. I recommended that book to so many people so often. My wife now forbids me from talking about that book because she’s bored of hearing about it. I sold the shit out of that book, and the question I have for you, for your book, for your writing is, are you passionate enough about your book to be that and to sell the shit out of it?

And if you’re not, I strongly recommend going back and writing a better book. Right? Could be at least as passionate about your work as you are about the work of somebody you’ve never met. But that’s, that’s the most important thing that writers can do about marketing and sales. Just. Flip that switch from is this thing that you used car salesman do to, it’s sharing the things you’re passionate about with the other people might be passionate about it.

I mean, when your friend who knew you well in New York tastes about books, recommended a book, and then you bought that book and read it. Was that a positive experience for you or not? And it was, and that’s what you want to do for other people. I was reading a book just yesterday and I can’t, I can not remember the guy’s name, which is disappointing because he deserves the credit for this.

He refers to marketing in the 21st century on social media as being resilient. Lesley, helpful, and that’s, that’s marketing for us.

Joel: That sounds like a Seth Godin quote. I don’t know, but yeah, that sounds like he would say.

Jason: Yeah, and he referenced Seth Godin, any anecdote he was telling about it, and off the top of my head, I can’t remember whether he also quoted Seth Goden as that, or just gave Seth Goden as an example of that.

But yeah, being relentlessly helpful.

Joel: So should freelance writers, they should. They do any other marketing other than just being on social media.

Jason: I think so, and it really depends on what kind of marketing you do or what, sorry, what kind of writing you do. If your freelance jam is just getting as many corporate blogging things in as possible, then your marketing should be social media approaches.

It should be a lot of asking for references and referrals should be a lot of just asking for more work from your existing clients. It surprises me because I do a lot of coaching of freelance writers. How many of them finish an assignment with a major corporation or maybe a major publisher. And say, thank you so much.

See around. I guess instead of ending that email with, Hey, what else have you got going on? Do you have any more need of a proven freelancer? But little things like that, you should make sure that your web presence, whether that’s a dedicated author website, whether that’s just a Facebook page for your business, wherever somebody can land, when they’re looking for you, you gotta make sure that that is sharp and tight.

getting out there on podcasts is very strong. Another thing that I really recommend if you’re in that realm, if you’re doing a lot of freelance writing for magazines, for websites, is going to industry conventions, not writing conventions, which you should also go to, but a convention in the industry where you do most of your writing, cause you’re going to be the only writer in that room.

And a lot of those people need some writing done. But that kind of, that kind of stuff for if you do mostly freelance writing, if you’re doing self publishing, trying to market your books, that’s a different ball game and it involves social media. It involves websites that. Like a book funnel, like a BookBub that give free copies for reduced copies out to large audiences.

all is going on podcasts like this one, it involves going to the library and doing readings or my favorite calling local bars and having them host readings. Cause they usually give you your beer for free when you do that, things like that. But yeah, you should, each kind of writing has its own kind of marketing plan and then you can go pursue that marketing plan with vigor and intelligence.

Joel: So for somebody who has traveled both the self published route and the traditional route, what is the difference? And for, I guess, again, a writer who is starting out, which route would you recommend?

Jason: Ooh, that’s a, that’s a tough question and you need to understand that I’ve got a lot of self published work out there and I am married to an agent.

When I get start feeling too big for my britches, I just remind myself that I am married to a literary agent and currently unrepresented.

Joel: I can see some fights over the dinner table already.

Jason: It’s fine. We actually had a. We had a really interesting talk about that early on and decided kind of mutually that she could not represent me. one thing is that I don’t ripe directly in her genre. And another thing is that there were some huge conflicts of interests.

There were even, and this is a bit of an aside, where even if she behaved absolutely correctly. If, for example, she was out of favor by a publisher and the smartest move in the most appropriate move was to spend that favor on me. All of her other clients would have other ideas about why that favor was spent, and so it’s absolutely reasonable.

But you know, she also has agent, other agent friends. So that’s on me. and I have been, I’ve done enough solid favors for people who are literary agents that I’m starting to take a person. I’m not actually, I know why it’s, the stuff I’m working on right now isn’t traditional publish focused and it wouldn’t work.

But I do have traditional deals as well as some small publishers for my wife’s series. And I consider my traditional publishing work. The publicity arm of the writing empire item building. The big question you have to ask yourself when you’re wondering traditional publishing versus self publishing, because actually two big questions.

First one is, is your idea of success, your definition of success as a writer linked with the traditional publishing route? And if that’s so, then you should chase that because only you get to define success for yourself and you should not settle for less than that. Now if the answer to that is ambivalent or it’s not really, then you have to ask yourself if a traditional publishing deal will sell 10 times as many books as you can on your own, because they’re going to give you a 10% right?

Yeah. And so then that’s the question you got asked. And a lot of people find that the answer is no. That’s especially true if you’re doing nonfiction stuff because with nonfiction, they’re going to ask you what size your platform is anyway, and if your platform is large enough to get the attention of a traditional publisher, it is probably large enough that you can make plenty of money, sell them to them directly.

with fiction, it’s, it’s far less cut and dried because fiction, one way I like to think about it as writing nonfiction is a solid blue collar job. You know, you’re going to make, if you really go at it, you can make six figures. You can make in the 70 to $120,000 range. It’ll, it’s not easy, but it’s not harder than any other job.

Fiction is a lottery ticket. You’re going to make very little, or you might ring the cherries. And there’s very little way to predict it.

Joel: so. From someone who, again, yeah. Who writes across so many different genres, what like what do you personally, what’s your favorite genre to work in?

Jason: So I do a lot. I mentioned earlier that I played Dungeons and dragons to this very day. I’m a man who was pushing 50 you still does that. That’s how much of a nerd I am.

About a third of my income now derives from working within that industry and that is my favorite. It’s my hobby, it’s my passion and I get to, I get to play while I work and that’s what they fund. The pay scale is kind of low. But it’s all right. I do some corporate gigs so that I can afford to keep doing the gaming stuff, so that’s probably my favorites, a work for hire.

In terms of my own work, my favorite thing I’m working on right now are these a maximum Louise stories that I write with the help of my grandmother. They are about stupid people and sex, drugs, violence, often all happening at the same time. And they’re hilarious. And they make my grandmother laugh. they don’t sell much, but they’re really fun.

Is this, is this show intend, tend to be like PG, PG 13, or are whatever

Joel: you want. All right.

Jason: So for example, one of the most recent books in the series, and again, this is my grandmother and I were working on it together. it starts with the line. My buddy cleat has died as he lived. Jacking off with a belt around his neck.

So that’ll give you an idea of what kind of stuff we’re working with here.

Joel: I want to meet your grandmother. She sounds awesome.

Jason: She is. She is absolutely the best. She’s in her late nineties and she says sex when you take a picture of her, because she likes sex more than she likes cheese. It makes her smile bigger.

Joel: That’s awesome.

Jason: Yeah, so you can find those there on Amazon under her name. Elizabeth F Simon’s, the Farkas Fox trot. So they’re just, I really enjoy them because I enjoy my grant and I enjoy being a horrible, horrible person.

Joel: Can you talk a little bit about, so you, do, you write for, for games or like how does that, how does that work.

Jason: So I do a lot of writing for tabletop role playing games, and those, that hobby has a large need for content where they, they have rules that they write, they have descriptions of imaginary worlds that they ride and they have scenarios for play. And the largest market is in those scenarios because that’s what people spend the most money on.

And that’s the easiest place to break into. And most of the work I’ve done has been for those scenarios, followed by world books. And it’s just you get hired, you get shown the, the rules of the game. You get shown the world, the game reportedly exists in, and then you get shown up, piece dismissing and some guidelines as to how to fill

Joel: it and so does that scenario, do they go on the website or, or are they a book or a where does that, where is it? presented.

Jason: All across the board. Some of them are print publications, some of them are ebook publications. Some of them are web content. It’s rare to get web content gigs because the profit margin in that industry is very, very narrow.

So to do that, they have staffers do web content. And then the writers go for the actual stuff they sell for money. Okay,

Joel: cool. And so you also write in something called flash fiction. Can you tell me what that is and why you enjoy that genre as well?

Jason: So flash fiction has is very short stories and you ask a hundred people how short you’ll get a hundred different answers in the anthologies that I publish and edit and the magazine that I run with it, our definition is a thousand words or less.

And so they’re very bite-sized stories. And what I like about them is it’s basically steep speed dating with authors where I can sit down for an hour and read 10 of those stories. And then I’ve got an idea for the voice and the eye and the passion of say, 10 different authors, and then I can go find out what else they’ve written, if I really love them.

That’s my favorite part about it. And then as a publisher, what I love about it is, because I’ve been doing that for about five years now, publishing these anthologies, reading people’s works, communicating with them back and forth, is it’s created this great community of writers that I get to be a part of.

I get to meet more writers and talk writing with more people, which is really fun because I get to nerd out about that stuff with people who know a little bit about it and that’s, that’s great.

Joel: Cool. I want to shift gears a little bit cause you profess to being a, serious traveler and really enjoyed traveling.

Where are some of your favorite places to travel? And w how has that, if at all, has it impacted your writing?

Jason: That’s a really great question. Some of my favorite places in the world, I’ve been, I love Malaysia. It’s this kind of kind of backwater really in a lot of ways, but it’s because of its history.

It’s been invaded a bunch of times and it’s its own place now. But what that, what that has meant is it’s got very diverse, very. intermingled cultures where you’ll have very traditional Muslim culture here, and very hip Chinese culture here. And then the leftover Europeans from the days of colonization over here.

And then new X pass over here with our laptops. And then in Malaysia particularly, there’s a population. That are ethically Chinese, but have been there since before North America was discovered, but they still kind of remained separate. And so it was a very interesting country to be in because you are bumping into multiple distinct cultures at the same time.

Where you know, America is a great melting pot, as they say, but Malaysia is more like a salad where there’s chunks of very different things all put together and it’s, it’s just very, very interesting. SIEM reap, which is the city in Cambodia that has accreted around anchor watt is amazing, is just really interesting and deeply full of culture and beer is 50 cents each.

So those have been some of my favorite places. Beijing was really interesting. Of course, New Zealand is jaw droppingly beautiful. but in terms of how it was in fact affected my writing, you know, it changes you as a person, especially going somewhere in longterm. I lived in Japan for the better part of two years in my late twenties and then in my early forties, I took my sons to Malaysia to live for a year.

Hmm. And living somewhere, spending more than like a two week vacation there. It just fundamentally changes. How you perceive the world for a lot of reasons. Some good, some bad, some depressing, some uplifting, but it fundamentally changes who you are. And that of course, a fundamentally changed. Whatever I do and what I do now is writing.

one thing that I will say about freelance writing, one of the great things about freelance writing is I had already established my career as a freelancer when I went to Malaysia for a year. None of my clients minded and half of them didn’t notice. One of the great things about freelance writing is you have complete location independence.

You can go do it from where ever you want, which is pretty cool.

Joel: Yeah. So what, what was the decision process of moving to Malaysia and yeah, basically, why did you decide that was the right time to do it?

Jason: So that came from my first wife, and we’d been divorced a few years now. she and I met while we were both teaching English in Japan.

Interestingly, we grew up 90 miles apart and we met there, but yeah. All right. And she had actually lived in France for three years before that. She was very international person. And we, even before we had kids, you know, travel was a serious. A value in our relationship and in our lives. And we both upon returning to America, really noticed how that experience of living abroad had changed us for the better had made our lives better and richer, and we wanted our children to have that experience as early as possible.

And then from there it was just a matter of figuring out the year that would work. The two kids from that marriage are 10 years apart. So figuring out when would be early enough that the oldest one would get the solid benefit without screwing up his high school career. But the younger youngest would be old enough to remember.

Right. And so we just found the year when the youngest turned five and the oldest turned 15. That was the year to do it.

Joel: Cool. Is there any book or that you, I mean, I know you, you mentioned one already, but is there any book that you feel as particularly impacted your life? And it could be just, you know, it could be through your career.

It could be through just personal experience. but yeah, I mean, is there anything that, I guess stands out? Any particular book.

Jason: So the book that had the most impact in my writing career, and I’m answering this real quick because you sent me this question ahead of time, very courteously and very inconsiderately so I can think about it, but the book then impacted my writing the most was Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the art of writing.

And the reason that it impacted my life so much was it caught me at just the right time, both in terms of my. My ability to hear what was being written and the conditions of my life that allowed me to put them into to work where it inspired me to write a short story a week for a year. And most of them were terrible.

But that practice of, I would write a draft on Monday and then I would revise the draft each day until I had a finished story on Friday. And that experience of doing that for a year and disciplining myself to do that for a year made my writing so much better. And the book itself is a good book, but honestly, at this point in the, at this point, you can have the Lord 40 years after it got published.

50. there’s nothing in it that you can’t find elsewhere, but for me, it really just caught me at the right moment. one of my favorite quotes from that book that I will always cherish and is still very important to by us to me, is he says to consider your friends. Do your friends support you and believe in you or do they start your growth with ridicule and disbelief?

If the ladder you will don’t have friends, go find some.

Joel: Why did that stand out for

Jason: you? I don’t know exactly, but it really stuck in and then it’s, I observed how people’s friends treat each other and I’ve tried to fill my life with people who will support and originally and who don’t, who don’t mind kicking my ass when I get my ass kicked. But there’s a lot of people in our lives.

I don’t think anybody who hears this is going to say, Nope, nobody I knows like that who feel like tearing somebody down makes them seem smarter than building them up. And when they, when they get in on you and kick your ass, it’s not because you’re asking is kicking butt because it’s easier than kicking their own ass and growing as a human being and keeping those people at arms distance is a really good way to live up.

Certainly more pleasant life and more productive and more successful in my opinion.

Joel: So I want to talk a little bit about discipline. You’ve mentioned that a couple of times. I know it’s one of those things that are traditionally thought of as like a martial arts practice, but is there anything that writers, I feel like writers.

they w this is something they always struggle with. So is there something that they can do to, help with that discipline, and practice, basically to become better at it.

Jason: So the most important thing about that is that discipline is not a talent. Discipline is not a character trait. Discipline is a habit.

That discipline is as my sensei, mr packer used to say, discipline is doing the right thing when nobody’s watching, you know, discipline is writing that thousand words that you promised yourself you’d do that day. Whether or not you want to. Whether or not it’s hard, whether or not you have writer’s block, which isn’t a thing, by the way.

yeah. one of my favorite saying is about writer’s block is I don’t have a muse. I have a mortgage and you get that shit written and you develop discipline by doing stuff you don’t want to do. And then you just, you fall into the habit and you do it. You, you’re writing and it gets hard and you give up or you want to give up and you just tell yourself, okay, one more paragraph.

And then the next time you said two more paragraphs and you build that muscle, if you will, of discipline. Just like we kind of talked about the beginning one day at a time, one step at a time, one small increment at a time, and over the course of weeks, months and years, you become very disciplined and very focused.

And it’s. One thing that a lot of, you know, quote unquote creative types kind of recoil at in some ways. Although I think that’s a stereotype. Most of the people I know who come to writers conferences and we talk, they, they buy into that, you know, they, they exercise discipline in their own lives. Just.

Under different names. Right? And then if it’s really challenging to you, there are specific skills, specific programs, specific ways, you know, a simple meditation is a very easy one to start doing. There are some hacks that I use. For example, if there’s an article that’s given me a lot of trouble, I resist the temptation to finish the sentence when I’m done writing for the day.

And the reason for that is when you, when you’re having trouble writing something, when it’s not coming, the worst thing you can do is sit down in front of a screen and not know what to write next. And we’ve all had an experience where we spent a half an hour just staring at the screen and nothing happens.

But once we get that, those first three words, we’re off and running and we’re fine, right? If you quit Mondays writing mid-sentence by Tuesday morning. You can’t stand not to finish the sentence has been driving you crazy all night, and then you’re off and running. Little tricks like that that are, you know, some people would say that makes you one very disciplined, but all it really does is get cheat a little bit and you get discipline comes later and that’s fine.

The other thing that I’ve, I don’t know if realizes the right thing, but it’s a, it’s an angle that I’ve been taking on this with some of my clients, so the people that I coach through this journey is. Thinking about your goals as a promise you’ve made to yourself and then to treat that promise the way you would treat a promise to your spouse or your child because you’re married.

Joel, what would stop you from keeping a solemn promise you made your wife. Or

Joel: nothing,

Jason: right? Like we’re talking Nicola’s homeless illness, death, you know, four horseman, men with guns, and then maybe they would stop your most, most likely, you would simply postpone it. That’s the level that you, that week.

Treat. That’s the level of respect that we treat. The word we give the people we love, and I would encourage everybody listening to when thinking about those goals that will give them the writing life they want. Treat those goals as a promise you made yourself and hold them as sacred as the promises that you make to other people you love.

Love yourself enough to keep your word to yourself.

Joel: All right. I think that’s a great place to end it. where, where can people find you?

Jason: You know, the easiest way is to track me down on Facebook. facebook.com/jason w brick, or just look for adjacent brick. the one that’s a martial artist and a writer.

I think I’m the only one on Facebook. That’s both of those. so find me that way. My website is right, like hell.com. And you can track me down like that. Look for me on Amazon and you know, toss a coin to your writer if you like, or hit me up on Facebook. I give my books away for free all the time. So just hit me up and we’ll find something that suits your fancy.

I’m relentlessly nerdy about these things, so I’ll talk to you about whatever you want to talk about for as long as you can stand me.

Joel: And, one more plug for your, for your new book as well.

Jason: the, survival guide, the query letter survival guide came out last month. It’s 40 answers to 20 questions about query letters, which is, I wrote a completely out of sloths because it, the question comes up a lot and I got tired of typing the question over and over and over again.

So I went and wrote a book about it. that deals with definitions like what is a query letter where you ask people what a query letter is. You get a lot of very technical definitions about how it’s. No, it’s an elevator pitch for your book, the ascend or whatever. But really the core definition of it is it’s the cover letter for your application to a job as a professional writer and to treat each query as being a professional writer.

Is the theme of the book and it goes into the nuts and bolts and includes a four paragraph template that I’ve been using very successfully for about eight years now and detailing how to, how to customize that for your own work and your own style. But I’m reasonably proud of it and folks have been giving us some pretty good, pretty good feedback.

Awesome.

Joel: Well, thank you so much for being here.

Jason: Thank you, Joel.

Joel: Take care

Jason:Thank you. You’re listening to publishing for

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Jason: or wherever you get

Joel: your podcasts.