Filling the Hat

Here are today’s Wonderful Words:

A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in first.

Education of a Wandering Man, Louis L’Amour, page 86

Background

This line came from Louis L’Amour’s memoir. L’Amour is known as one of the best western writers of all time, and his memoir explains the origins of his stories. L’Amour worked in mines and on ships. He fought bare knuckle boxing matches and worked the docks of seaports around the world. And everywhere he went, he was reading.

What makes it wonderful?

The best writers have a well of knowledge from which they can draw. For some, it’s experience. For others, it’s education. For most, it’s both.

I’ve been enjoying Jack Carr’s novels this year. Carr was a Navy SEAL officer who spent 20 years serving his country. He served in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and probably plenty of other places we’ll never know about.

Then he retired and wrote six novels starring—you guessed it—a Navy SEAL officer.

The stories are thrilling, but they also make you feel like you’re there, ducking for cover as bullets blast the walls around you. Why are the stories so good? If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because Carr is drawing from 20 years of experience. He’s writing about situations he experienced firsthand.

He put something in before getting something out.

Ryan Holiday is another great example.

According to his research assistant, Holiday reads 300 books for every one he writes.

Most of Holiday’s books are collections of stories supporting a specific topic, like discipline, ego, stillness, or courage. He spends a whole book telling dozens of stories from presidents, athletes, generals, and more, each contributing to the overarching theme.

The only way to have dozens of stories to tell is to read hundreds of books. Only after reading millions of words on thousands of pages can you distill the most engaging stories to build the best book.

And that’s exactly what L’Amour meant when he said you have to put something in to get something out. The magician, like the writer, makes it look like magic, but it isn’t magic at all. It’s a simple formula.

To pull out a rabbit, you must first deposit a rabbit. To pull out a story, you must first have an experience, learn a lesson, consume content and distill it to its essence.

Let's get technical

I’m mentioning the technique almost as an afterthought, because the point is much more important than the technique L’Amour used to make it.

But he used a simile—a comparison between two things usually using the words “like” or “as”.

A simile is one of the most basic ways we make comparisons as writers. And L’Amour used one to compare a writer’s brain to a magician’s hat. In using the simile, he shared a timeless lesson every writer needs to learn.

At the end of every day, ask yourself, “what did I put in the hat today?” If the answer is nothing, commit to doing better tomorrow. Do something worth writing about. Learn something worth writing about. Observe something worth writing about. Put something in the hat. Then sit down and dump it out on the page.

Happy writing,

Joe