How Can a Non-Academic Write for a Technical Audience? | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - All right, Jesse, what do we got next?

00:00:07.480 | - All right, next question we got.

00:00:09.840 | Andrew, he's got some ideas about writing

00:00:12.920 | for a technical audience,

00:00:15.040 | and he wants your thoughts on that.

00:00:17.160 | So let's fire away with Andrew here.

00:00:19.360 | - Hi, Cal, longtime listener, first time caller.

00:00:26.600 | My name is Andrew, and I work as a virtual CFO

00:00:29.400 | who also builds data pipelines for my clients.

00:00:32.280 | I found some interesting topics

00:00:33.540 | when combining those two worlds

00:00:35.080 | that I'd like to write more about.

00:00:36.960 | I'm specifically writing more

00:00:38.520 | about timeless business management principles

00:00:42.040 | and combining those with the new data-rich world

00:00:45.080 | that we're in.

00:00:46.220 | I've written for more of a general audience in the past,

00:00:48.320 | but I'm toying with the idea of writing

00:00:49.720 | for an academic or research journal type audience.

00:00:53.200 | My background is in finance and accounting,

00:00:55.160 | which did not have a lot of writing in school,

00:00:57.040 | so I feel like this is a blind spot for me.

00:00:59.640 | What advice do you have for a non-academic

00:01:02.400 | trying to write for this world,

00:01:04.000 | and are there any resources you'd recommend checking out?

00:01:06.880 | Thanks, Cal.

00:01:07.720 | - There definitely is a gap

00:01:11.520 | between general audience writing and academic writing.

00:01:15.240 | Probably as much as anyone else in the world

00:01:17.160 | I know about this gap,

00:01:18.240 | as I'm someone who has done quite a bit of both.

00:01:21.280 | General audience writing in some sense is harder, right,

00:01:25.660 | because you actually have to deploy more craft

00:01:30.660 | to do general audience writing well.

00:01:33.560 | So the actual writing itself is harder to do,

00:01:36.680 | the clarity of the ideas, the structure of the writing,

00:01:39.920 | the examples you give, the narrative momentum

00:01:42.100 | that brings people from one idea to the other,

00:01:44.400 | the introducing a lay audience to complicated ideas

00:01:47.720 | without overwhelming them,

00:01:48.800 | by giving them enough to latch onto

00:01:50.520 | so they can keep figuring out

00:01:52.280 | what you're trying to talk about.

00:01:53.560 | That's all hard from a craft perspective.

00:01:56.200 | When it comes to technical writing for, let's say, a journal,

00:02:00.640 | an academic journal, you have to be clear,

00:02:04.600 | but no one really cares about the craft.

00:02:06.880 | You don't have to have a lot of narrative momentum

00:02:10.000 | in your journal article.

00:02:11.600 | You don't have to have nice illustrative examples.

00:02:14.280 | You don't have to worry about redundancies.

00:02:16.620 | You don't have to worry about the issue of,

00:02:20.200 | you know, I mentioned this thing earlier

00:02:21.960 | and it needs to pay off here,

00:02:23.760 | and I need the end to call back the beginning.

00:02:26.200 | You don't need a turn or a nut necessarily

00:02:28.560 | in academic writing.

00:02:29.400 | It's more workmanlike.

00:02:30.680 | You wanna write clearly, you're conveying the information,

00:02:34.200 | but the real craft in academic writing

00:02:36.320 | is generating that information in the first place.

00:02:39.200 | Here's the theory, here's the experiment, here's the idea.

00:02:42.600 | So it's two very different worlds.

00:02:44.320 | Now, I will say as an aside,

00:02:46.040 | I sometimes bring the craft that I have worked on

00:02:50.760 | in the world of general purpose writing

00:02:52.720 | to my academic papers.

00:02:54.280 | I will sometimes, for example,

00:02:56.200 | as I'm known among my collaborators to do,

00:02:59.200 | obsess over introductions, wordsmith them

00:03:02.600 | so it flows really well and there's a storyline.

00:03:06.360 | Here's the thing, none of that really helps.

00:03:08.480 | I mean, I think the readers appreciate it.

00:03:09.920 | I have not seen a discernible impact

00:03:12.500 | on whether or not my papers get accepted or not

00:03:15.040 | into academic venues if I write at a,

00:03:17.560 | let's say a New Yorker style introduction

00:03:19.720 | to my academic paper.

00:03:20.680 | So I do it because I can't help it,

00:03:22.600 | but it doesn't really matter.

00:03:24.920 | If you're gonna do academic writing, don't wing it.

00:03:29.160 | You have to understand for the venue

00:03:31.800 | that you're writing for, what is required

00:03:35.860 | for a paper to be accepted for publication?

00:03:39.120 | Who needs to be on that?

00:03:41.280 | Like, can you do this as a virtual CFO

00:03:43.760 | who specializes in building data pipelines

00:03:45.700 | for the journal you wanna write for?

00:03:47.560 | Can you just write for them from that perspective

00:03:49.520 | or do you need an academic co-author?

00:03:51.080 | So who needs to be on these paper?

00:03:53.600 | What is the level of original theory or ideas

00:03:57.060 | that needs to be in here?

00:03:57.960 | What sort of backing do you need?

00:03:59.800 | What type of literature reviewer understanding

00:04:02.560 | do you have to convey?

00:04:03.400 | This is a big piece of a lot of academic writing

00:04:05.560 | is showing a sophisticated understanding

00:04:07.320 | of the landscape of existing publications

00:04:11.560 | and showing that you understand

00:04:13.360 | where your work fits into the landscape.

00:04:15.200 | It's one of the big sins in academic writing

00:04:17.060 | that if a reviewer senses you don't know our field well,

00:04:20.080 | they're not gonna publish your piece.

00:04:21.960 | Don't guess at all this.

00:04:23.260 | You really need to know the right answers

00:04:25.840 | because your papers will not get accepted

00:04:27.960 | if you try to wing it.

00:04:29.560 | There's very specific parameters

00:04:32.040 | for each different particular venue

00:04:34.760 | that you might try to publish in.

00:04:36.800 | So that would mean at the easiest,

00:04:39.280 | deconstruct existing papers in the venues

00:04:42.400 | you wanna publish.

00:04:44.060 | Perhaps more effective, though slightly harder

00:04:46.000 | is to talk with people who are publishing

00:04:49.320 | in those venues already,

00:04:50.640 | people who are writing similar articles.

00:04:53.360 | Talk to them about their work

00:04:54.800 | and what's required for these things to get accepted.

00:04:57.560 | Even more effective and even more difficult

00:05:00.280 | would be get a co-author who is experienced,

00:05:02.760 | convince someone who is already publishing

00:05:05.840 | multiple times in a venue,

00:05:07.740 | the co-author a paper with you,

00:05:10.300 | learn on the job what is required,

00:05:12.880 | what do we need, what standard of evidence,

00:05:14.760 | what review, what does it really take?

00:05:17.480 | But all this comes back to the same idea.

00:05:20.400 | You need information.

00:05:22.100 | You need hard, realistic, on-the-ground information

00:05:25.240 | about how this type of publishing works

00:05:27.200 | before you try to do it.

00:05:28.640 | And I'm gonna attempt to generalize this

00:05:31.080 | for lots of different issues

00:05:32.200 | because I think this comes up a lot

00:05:33.640 | when people are thinking about new projects or endeavors.

00:05:35.780 | It is very easy to come up with

00:05:38.580 | what you want to be the reality.

00:05:41.080 | Here's what I'm gonna do,

00:05:42.360 | here's what I want it to be.

00:05:44.000 | I want to be a novelist,

00:05:45.360 | and that means I'll do National Novel Writing Month

00:05:49.240 | with a proper Scrivener configuration,

00:05:52.440 | and that will make me a novelist.

00:05:53.720 | We want the story to be what we want it to be,

00:05:55.680 | but the reality might be,

00:05:56.600 | no, there's a lot more training involved.

00:05:58.080 | There's a lot higher bar that you have to pass.

00:06:00.000 | Here's how you can tell if you're at the right level.

00:06:02.280 | And so in general, I like to push that advice.

00:06:04.560 | When doing something new,

00:06:06.640 | first do the work of figuring out

00:06:08.000 | about what is actually required to succeed.

00:06:11.320 | What is actually required to succeed?

00:06:13.680 | So there's a story I told in a podcast interview recently.

00:06:17.020 | It has not come out yet.

00:06:20.640 | I don't usually reveal interviews I've done

00:06:23.160 | until after they've come out,

00:06:25.200 | but I think Jesse knows who I'm talking about here.

00:06:27.400 | I did a podcast interview recently

00:06:29.480 | with a relatively large podcaster.

00:06:32.060 | You'll verify it was a pretty large podcaster.

00:06:34.480 | - Yes, for sure.

00:06:35.400 | I'm a fan of his podcast as well.

00:06:37.480 | - All right, that's all we'll say for now.

00:06:38.840 | And that's coming out in the new year at some point.

00:06:40.520 | But one of the things we got into in that interview

00:06:43.400 | was how did I get started in nonfiction book writing?

00:06:47.080 | And I got into detail about the path I took

00:06:50.360 | because I was 20.

00:06:51.400 | I was 20 years old when I got serious about writing books.

00:06:55.080 | I signed my first book deal with Random House

00:06:56.960 | right after I turned 21.

00:06:59.000 | So we're getting into it on this podcast interview.

00:07:02.120 | How did I make that work?

00:07:04.440 | And what I did,

00:07:05.280 | I think this is the biggest differentiating factor

00:07:07.200 | between me and the other sort of weird, nerdish 20-year-olds

00:07:12.240 | who might think about writing books,

00:07:13.360 | is I said, "I wanna get the real answer

00:07:16.040 | about what would be required for someone my age

00:07:19.480 | to get a book deal."

00:07:21.000 | And so I used a family friend who was in journalism

00:07:24.960 | and said, "Can you connect me with a literary agent?

00:07:28.960 | And you can make it clear to this agent

00:07:31.080 | that I'm not gonna try to sell them something.

00:07:32.960 | I'm not gonna get her to sign me.

00:07:34.160 | I just want 30 minutes information."

00:07:37.320 | And so my memory is he hooked me up

00:07:39.440 | with a phone call with an agent.

00:07:41.680 | She was a fiction agent, so this was good.

00:07:43.880 | There was no chance I was gonna try to sell her.

00:07:46.640 | She primarily focused on fiction,

00:07:48.160 | but she was very well-established, knew the industry well.

00:07:51.040 | I said, "Look, I'm a 20-year-old.

00:07:52.760 | I wanna try to sign a book deal.

00:07:54.760 | What would really be required?"

00:07:56.760 | And she gave me the reality.

00:07:58.000 | And honestly, it's probably not what you'd wanna hear.

00:08:00.640 | I think what I wanted to hear was like,

00:08:01.800 | "You're great, your idea is great.

00:08:04.640 | Just start writing every day

00:08:06.240 | and your book will be published."

00:08:08.200 | And it's not what she told me.

00:08:09.160 | She's like, "Look, there's gonna be a huge bar

00:08:10.680 | for you to cross as someone that young

00:08:13.720 | trying to get a book deal.

00:08:14.560 | It's a risk.

00:08:15.400 | So here's the things you're gonna have to do.

00:08:16.640 | I think what you need to do first of all

00:08:18.680 | is get more publication credits.

00:08:20.840 | You have to start writing articles

00:08:23.160 | that are on the topic you wanna sell the book on.

00:08:26.240 | They're gonna wanna see writing samples in this genre

00:08:29.600 | to see that you really know how to write.

00:08:31.240 | So you gotta sell it.

00:08:32.200 | Also, you're gonna wanna do a lot of research in advance.

00:08:35.280 | They're not gonna trust you to come up with the right idea.

00:08:37.840 | So you need to do that all in advance.

00:08:39.360 | I would do as much of the research for the book

00:08:41.000 | as possible in advance

00:08:42.000 | that you can give the agent followed by the publisher

00:08:46.240 | a really detailed table of contents.

00:08:48.160 | Here's what I'm thinking.

00:08:49.320 | So I can write on this topic.

00:08:50.840 | People have paid me to write on this topic.

00:08:53.040 | I've done all the research.

00:08:54.160 | Here's the content.

00:08:55.280 | You can see exactly what's gonna be.

00:08:57.160 | She said, "You're probably gonna have to do

00:08:58.400 | some pretty extensive sample chapter writing."

00:09:00.160 | So I took that all to heart and it took me a while.

00:09:02.240 | I went out there and got commissions.

00:09:04.560 | They were small publications.

00:09:06.360 | My first books were aimed at college students.

00:09:08.040 | So these were student-focused publications.

00:09:10.800 | Some of these were online only.

00:09:13.960 | Some of these were paper magazines

00:09:17.960 | that they would distribute for free on college campuses.

00:09:21.320 | There used to be a publication called Business Today.

00:09:24.160 | I'm sure if that still exists.

00:09:26.080 | Came out of Princeton University, students would run it.

00:09:28.280 | But whatever, there's these publications.

00:09:29.680 | They weren't high bar publications,

00:09:30.960 | but they were publications.

00:09:32.720 | And I began pitching articles

00:09:34.240 | that were student advice oriented.

00:09:37.040 | And as part of that effort,

00:09:38.760 | I did all of the research for my first book.

00:09:41.080 | It was one article commission that required me to talk

00:09:45.280 | to a small number of Rhodes Scholars

00:09:48.080 | for the article commission.

00:09:49.520 | And I took that commission and interviewed 25 people.

00:09:53.600 | Way more than I needed for that article,

00:09:55.720 | but it was all the research I needed

00:09:56.880 | for the first book I was gonna pitch, How To Win A College.

00:09:59.120 | So I did that work and it was a pain

00:10:00.640 | and it's not what I wanted the answer to be.

00:10:02.720 | And it took me a year.

00:10:04.480 | But then when I was done, I could get an agent like that

00:10:08.040 | and she could turn around and sell that book like that.

00:10:09.920 | And we were off to the races.

00:10:11.000 | If I had done what I wanted the right answer to be,

00:10:13.080 | which is just people will recognize your brilliance

00:10:15.480 | when you give them a one page summary of your idea

00:10:18.160 | and they'll just give you a lot of money.

00:10:20.360 | I never would have started writing.

00:10:22.800 | So this is my broader interpretation here.

00:10:26.440 | If you wanna do something new, regardless of what it is,

00:10:29.360 | face the hard truth by talking to experts

00:10:31.640 | about what's really required.

00:10:33.560 | It stinks in the moment

00:10:34.760 | because it's usually more than you wanna do.

00:10:37.160 | But it is a huge competitive advantage in the longterm

00:10:39.960 | because it means you're actually gonna put your energy

00:10:43.040 | on the things that really matter

00:10:44.160 | while all of your potential competitors

00:10:45.720 | trying to get started in the same world

00:10:47.000 | will be doing National Novel Writing Month

00:10:49.960 | and optimizing their Scrivener configurations

00:10:53.720 | and they're never gonna get there.

00:10:55.680 | All right, I think that works.

00:10:59.240 | Jesse, would you be excited to read a book

00:11:01.000 | about virtual CFOs and rich data pipelines?

00:11:04.280 | - Possibly, that was a good answer though.

00:11:07.200 | I mean, you gave Andrew a lot of content there.

00:11:09.800 | Andrew's gonna be happy.

00:11:11.200 | - I hope so, yeah.

00:11:12.040 | It'd be funny if what Andrew was really wanting to write

00:11:14.240 | was like a thriller novel,

00:11:16.640 | but about virtual CFOs who through the construction

00:11:21.000 | of a rich data pipeline,

00:11:22.920 | saves the world from a meteor strike

00:11:24.720 | and gets the girl in the end.

00:11:28.120 | I'd be there for that book.

00:11:29.520 | - And he also throws like a mean fastball

00:11:32.480 | 'cause he plays baseball on the side.

00:11:33.920 | - He plays baseball on the seat.

00:11:35.200 | Richard, we're giving you the secret here.

00:11:37.560 | That's the book you need to write.

00:11:39.360 | Forget what everyone tells you, just start writing, man.

00:11:42.640 | 10 pages a day, follow the muse.

00:11:46.040 | You're gonna be Dan Brown this time next year.

00:11:49.440 | The baseball throwing virtual CFO

00:11:52.000 | who's rich data pipelining.

00:11:54.320 | He's been using just to attract women

00:11:56.440 | but decides to put his skill to use

00:11:58.560 | and takes a break from his pitching responsibility

00:12:01.800 | slash data pipeline responsibilities

00:12:03.240 | to save the earth from a meteor.

00:12:04.920 | I love it, man.

00:12:05.760 | You're set.

00:12:06.920 | (upbeat music)

00:12:09.520 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

How Can a Non-Academic Write for a Technical Audience? | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

Chapters