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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-08-25
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kjSb7MT3Zs
today I like to to see about FIA the kind of fare that looks like this the kind of fare the grip see slides NCOs right and keeps you awake at night the kind of fare that makes you want to run away and hide this fair isn't actually the monster it's appears to be it looks like a monster and it feels like a monster but to the
writer and have any and every kind of artist this fear is actually a friend this fear is what we need to be feeling in order to create or paint or write anything of what this fear is the measure of our originality a hard drive to reach deep inside ourselves unsure out tonight did that is honest original untrue and I did it doesn't just retract the same
old because an idea that tries to break new ground to fit our understanding of the world around us to shape that we and only we say I know this because I felt that fan and I still feel it pretty much every day pretty much every time I sit down to write it's that peeking out from behind every power grow it's bad luck can behind every sentence
it's that I'm the slayer tentative movements I make towards trying to understand my characters that motivations that states of mind I'm not fat a bubble in the moment in which an idea is born that crazy intoxicating moment when a new series of thoughts or images seems to cover last into some some distillation of a feeling or question that might just become the beginning of a math
what a stupid idea the fair says Ben I have seen much of him with the sort of slid the ring sibilant voice a bit like a snake in the film of the jungle but I'll spare you my acting skills what a loser you are even to think of it I cases in that have been written before but what makes you think that as well writing now
if I were you I'd get this up straight away you're bound to fail I first met the band about four years ago when I read something of a crossroads in my life but the noblest or an aspiring novelist I should say because I hadn't Ashiya published a book I have the last ten years I'd written to hold nobles while working full time as a journalist I
hadn't been easy I'd given up evenings weekends holidays when friends and family were out having fun and I saw the dog breed talking to imagine a people staring at my laptop screen but obviously it was something I needed to do was I was driven to do and I had been for long as I could remember all I'd ever wanted to do was write fiction another way
these two novels I had high hopes for each of them I believe I put in my blood sweat and tears and I believed that each of these books might just be the noble they would know it's me and the world that would connect me with readers that would that would see me a public school for but unfortunately that wasn't what happened he's the neither of those
novels was whacking they looked like real back but they didn't smell like them something was missing some key ingredient they just want lifting off the page they were standing in the shadow of other far greater nobles rather than trying to break new ground of that right as you can probably amounts and the moment I came to that realization was pretty depressing I'd recently times that day
which I presei is no old by any stretch of the imagination but it was old enough to meet already feel like I was failing as a young child loving Beck streaming advising them later this evening pair in Cambridge I never amounts and not having published my bus noble by the time I was that the was all like one to today it was the sum total of
my height ambitions and sire for awhile I let myself be depressed I mixed around I had an awful lot of cake some of it looking suspiciously like but I indulged in self pity I told myself it was pointless I'd never make a right never find anything original to say how could I when everything was saying had already been set I looked at all those nobles lined
up for myself all these amazing published oath is his work because they loved and admired how could I seriously have a dream of joining them how could I ever come up with anything as interesting or necessary or original as they hot and then one morning the failure admitted my life he I will point out of this at this point the I. D. picked to the fair
as a man a fact he looks like a light which he groans in my head at some some imaging which did run the whole roughly showed you and is selling pretty well with fangs and if we don't have time to go into the cycles of indications of the but you can pick whatever you'd like for me it was right to the ground and my head with
fines appearing in my head one morning driving on the coattails of an idea for a novel fragile concept that was so it had that morning and just refuse to leave the idea was this to tell the story of one couple's relationship in three different classrooms C. weaving together into one novel three separate trajectories of how this couple's life together or pop Montana this idea thought exciting
to me immediately and a way that no other right to have a really hot neither face to nobles I finished nor any of the countless other books and stories I'd started and set aside this idea felt different it felt important it was founded on something I was absolutely fascinated about which all these tiny fulcrum points that draw lives on one pa rather than another it didn't
feel like any book I'd read the full it felt like the story I have to tell and that was when the fed slipped and with his slithering sebelum voice he whispered in my head he said Neurath identity what you're thinking now but this is just crazy he really need to get this up now because no one's ever written three fastens everything out to them to one
back and you just need to get off that stuff never gonna happen well for awhile I listen to the fan I did dismissed the idea as crazy impossible steep it I set it aside I ate some cake I just wondered what I was going to do next but then over the next few days the next few weeks something seemed to change in me the first thing
to shift his site in my mind I started to wonder whether the presence of the fed actually indicated that I was on to something that this idea was worth considering I started to question myself I started to think that perhaps if I wasn't feeling the fair as I hadn't been not really with either of those are the two novels I been doing something wrong perhaps I
simply been standing in the shadow of the giants all those writers I most admired in love and simply trying to re frame that our ideas that ways of seeing as my if I was feeding the fed how close being given the tongs to step out from the shadows buffets doyen's I write something innovative something new I decided that the fair was actually say terrifying of the
rule he was a lucky cuddly face fines not scary rickety boat face riveted Gary for that but he didn't hurt by me as he had before I did I did the idea of the one couple towed in three different ways and I started to write and even the next ten months or so I read the high day into a noble I gave it the title the
passions about a couple years after I finished up US dropped it became my first published novel I'm taking my life in ways I couldn't even at the mountains the most amazing thing about that has been to my house the amazement and delight it seems to have connect with readers all over the world and it's been too late into twenty three languages this is a selection of
the different editions of myself in my study and most importantly of all it's given me they've seen too sick to realize my dream without meaning to sound too polyamorous dies really what happened I get it now spend my time thinking about talking about of course writing fiction but I will emphasize that even without the great success even with my dreams coming to a left right and
sunset the FIA has not gone away if I came straight back as soon as I started working on my second novel greatest hit I have in mind and I did my next pick which the fed deemed absolutely crazy and fat crazier than the one I'd written before this time I wanted to write the whole life story as a musician women sing a song rights are British
here in my head was somewhere between staying in excellent papers what was really mad about this idea and what really got the fifth year yes with I wanted to work with the thing up from right to life real life one no effects no one to create the songs that were reflected in the books they to release an album that would that would come out of sight
of it this way fox sightings met fella come to to to treaty break new ground am because as far as I was wet and never been done before but as I say the fact that out see failed they would lock heed though I'd finally lost the plot he just did that folded his arms he told me forgotten or at this is ridiculous no one's ever going
to agree to do this with you how you gonna go publish it towards her record label it's complete madness just stop now before you embarrass us but this time I was ready for the fed this time I invited him and over offered him a Cup of tea I said Hey good to see you again welcome back because this time I was sure that his presence man
I was on to something but this idea was worth considering I did this era and as you can save a Buck exists and will be coming out this summer and I've been working on an album with an amazing singer songwriter who Kathryn Williams that will release alongside it unholy experiences been sorry much more exciting so much more life changing that I could even have a mountain
and tiny well that's because in the end I do think the idea was what this hearing and that the fed in the end Camby all friend today we are thinking about giant about whether we as often as some writers poets must stand on the shoulders of the giants of days he came before us interest feel way towards creating something indicative something of why the point I'd
like to leave you with is that it didn't and now symbiosis sound on their shoulders taking in the view from up there what we must do instead is do you got lookout for whether Johnson that look through their eyes but then directtalk days Ingrid's that's alright until it's all a experiences it's not about disregarding the world around us or ignoring other writers have to say but
about trusting in the uniqueness of our I is that as amazing series of documentary films by the musician Dave Grohl and his Banfi fighters relating to an album they may crude sonic highways each track on the record is inspired by different American city and in the film we see the band touring the city and then recording a truck in the studio and one of these films
inside one of those studios there's a poster on the wall and you guessed it says that thank follow in the footsteps of the monsters think what they so no I was such that it turns out is a nasty Dave Grohl's a philosophy which I found flight is appointing but I thought of a seventeenth century Japanese pilots named not sue a boss I what I find so
striking about this quiet and its relevance today that it reminds us that we as artists white says all scientists oversight to anyone trying to do anything of worth in any field we com ever hate to repeat the trial if they see a convertible what we must do instead is try to do what they did to look inside themselves and find out what they say and I
really that I really wanted to write copains or risk that when we do that we can be sure that the FIA will come cooling right today grumble the war also whoever hits BA hell come with his clothes out and his teeth bad but if then as we step back at him that we can be certain where and with the tongues of creating something on next original
