Craft Advice with Martha Beck
On Post-it notes and poster board, the glory of research, storytelling beasts, early drafts, and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting,
Intimate conversations with our greatest heart-centered minds.
We all know that Martha Beck is brilliant and wise and kind and visionary. But what’s talked about less is how beautifully she writes. She manages to take complex and often mind-blowing subject matter and transform it into magnificent storytelling. Anyone who’s ever written school reports on difficult topics (which is pretty much all of us!) knows how tricky this is to pull off. Yet, Martha makes it seem effortless. I wanted to know how she accomplishes this.
Martha has written eleven books — the most recent of which is Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life's Purpose. It picks up where her international bestseller and Oprah’s Book Club pick The Way of Integrity leaves off. She holds three Harvard degrees in social science, has two podcasts (Bewildered and The Gathering Room), is a much revered life coach, has written countless magazine articles, including two decades worth for O, The Oprah Magazine, is an inspiring public speaker, and runs self-transformation retreats in South Africa and Costa Rica.
If you missed Part One of our interview, you can read it here.
As always, I love to hear what you think in the comments.
Enjoy!
xJane
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Where do you write?
I was sick my entire twenties and most of my thirties. I had really, really bad musculoskeletal problems. So I write lying down on my bed.
Are you writing on a computer? Or by hand?
I start out with a big piece of poster board and pen. Because I write nonfiction and have always sold books on proposal, I have to think through the whole outline.
So the first part has to be with my hand because it’s the big arc of the book and the big topics. Then I put it on Post-it notes. There'll be a chapter here, here, here [Martha indicates side-by-side columns with her hands] and then a list of Post-it notes down each chapter topic. Once it makes logical sense, I start putting it into a computer.
Do you move the Post-it notes around as you shape the book?
Yes. For example, if I'm writing about how to avoid letting social media mess with your brain, which is one of the things that we need to look at, I'll take a lot of notes from books I’ve read and I'll put them on Post-its, and then I see how they line up in a chapter format. If somebody's in this place, say anxious, how do I logically take them from anxious and get them to understanding it to the point where they can maybe make the switch into not anxious. And then how can I help them go deeper into not anxious. So each topic has a list of Post-it notes where I put facts and data and ideas.
Do you start with one poster board that is the whole book, and then do a poster board for each chapter?
No, just one poster board that's the whole book, but it's huge.
And you’re lying down in bed?
Oh, that I do on the floor! The vast majority of the work is done lying on my back in the bed –not in bed, but on the bed. I make my bed every morning, but then lie right down on it again and write.
Ah, so when you're working with the Post-it notes, you're on the floor with this huge poster board.
Yes, running around the room, waving my arms, grabbing books, looking at it all. I have to be in motion, and I have to be free. I could never just sit down and think through. I have to be moving.
Yesterday I went for a five-mile walk, and the whole time I was sending myself texts on my phone of ideas for my next book. The whole hour and a half I was walking, it was just constant ideas. I print them out, put them on Post-it notes, and stick them on a poster board.
Amazing! How long does that Post-it notes phase usually take?
It can go for a year.
Does a lot change? Do some Post-it notes go away and new ones arrive?