I realize this is a problem that affects only a very small — yet particularly vulnerable — subset of the population.
Nonetheless, it is always irritating, at times even enraging.
This is perhaps doubly true because not only does it occur at the worst possible moment, but the offender’s observation is usually completely sincere and genuinely well-meant.
Beyond this, they are usually, annoyingly, 100% correct.
Sigh…
I’m talking about a unique phenomenon that happens only to writers.
In the middle of your spilling your guts over your current trauma — betrayal, break-up, or bankruptcy — your nearest and dearest will often nod sympathetically, then respond:
“I can’t wait until you write about this.”
I rewatched Everything Is Copy, the terrific documentary about Nora Ephron — who wrote or directed films like When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, and Julie & Julia — made by her son Jacob Bernstein.
This philosophy — that everything that happens to you can be fodder for your creative life — is not unique to Ephron, but she certainly maximized it in her own experience.
It’s a perspective she inherited from her mother.
‘We all grew up with this thing that my mother said to us over and over, and over and over again, which is ‘Everything is copy.’ You’d come home with something that you thought was the tragedy of your life – someone hadn’t asked you to dance, or the hem had fallen out of your dress, or whatever you thought was the worst thing that could ever happen to a human being – and my mother would say ‘Everything is copy.’’
For the creative artist, this notion can be ruthlessly empowering.
It allows you to transform the meaning of any event in your life, particularly your role within it.
Indeed, as Ephron advised in her 1996 commencement address at Wellesley:
‘Above all be the heroine of your life,
not the victim.’
Even so — if we’re being honest — my experience this week with embracing “Everything Is Copy” teetered on the soul-crushing.
Specifically, the TikTok launch.
The platform forces you to test the neutrality of the “Everything Is Copy” philosophy by presenting you with endless streams of micro-data.
For example, it shows you not only how many people viewed your video, but — most significantly, for the almighty algorithm — what percentage watched the entire thing, and at which tenth of a second most people stopped.
For a 10-second video, “success” means that people watched for at least 6 seconds before swiping away.
If you can earn 2 more seconds, 8 is considered excellent.
I suppose, on the one hand, this level of micro-feedback could be considered invaluable.
On the other, it feels like a kind of creative terrorism, forcing you to calculate your offering down to the nanosecond.
Clearly, for the SGR Journal (project HERE) launch to succeed, a major mindset transformation was required.
I realized that my thinking about marketing creative projects is simply old-school.
In my mind, it’s basically unveiling a polished statue — a set piece of meaning — fully formed.
Or it’s taking a standardized test offered only several times a year, the results of which fundamentally shape your entire educational path and career.
It’s about singular statement moments, ones that fully capture your best thoughts.
That, to me, is what fully embodies Integrity — this month’s theme; meditation HERE.
And I now see that I was wrong.
I really like this poem by William Stafford.
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
I’m powerfully drawn to this notion of Integrity as a kind of true north, a navigation system for the soul.
I reached out to Rajil, my former executive assistant, who at the ripe old age of 22 has become a TikTok mogul.
He founded a TikTok Shop growth agency, and according to LinkedIn, over the last two years they’ve “helped launch and scale brands across categories, driving $100M+ in GMV and billions of views.”
(I had to look up GMV, but I’ll save you the time: it’s “Gross Merchandise Value.”)
Seeing Rajil after a year or two was a delightful reunion, and it no doubt softened my resistance.
I was able to at least consider a new model of integrity: rather than the revelation of Truth with a capital T, perhaps it’s about gathering data points and processing micro-feedback while remaining neutral, reflective, and iterative.
It may be a minor miracle, but he allowed me to see that integrity can shift from rigid consistency to presence and honesty within the evolving process.
Or, as Rajil kept saying whenever I began complaining:
It’s just like at the gym:
You’ve Got to Do the Reps
All those well-meaning friends were right, by the way.
Although their remarks weren’t particularly helpful in the moment, almost all of those difficult experiences were eventually alchemized into creative offerings.
In the documentary, Nora Ephron adds:
“I now believe that what my mother meant was this: When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you.
But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.
So you become a hero rather than the victim of the joke.’
That kind of reinvention has always been central to my work.
In fact, inspired by my reconnection with Rajil, I’m making a special offer around my new Rapid Reinvention course.
Reinvention can’t only be a private revelation; it has to be tested in real life, through dialogue, interaction, and practice.
For the next five people who enroll, I’ll include a private session with me — normally $250+ — so we can look together at what the course stirred up, clarified, or helped reframe.
And in the spirit of “everything is copy,” I’ll also use those conversations as real-time data points to refine the material.
Yes, I may be getting a little wiser about Integrity.
There are clearly new ways we can examine the raw material of our lives more neutrally, transforming it into meaning, momentum, and creative offerings.
As the poet says, our integrity can remain — even with all this rapid reinvention — as long as we “don’t ever let go of the thread.”
Tell A New Story. Transform Your Life.