Bill Burnett

Oh, yeah.

I'm thinking about being a ski bum.

I'm thinking about going back to medical school.

Actually talked to a 54-year-old about that.

And I'm thinking about being a novelist.

Okay, fine.

Now, maybe I should, oh, I'm going to go back and get a master's degree in creative writing and spend three years and $30,000 and then write one blog and I didn't like it that much.

Terrible idea.

That's jumping way off the cliff.

So the prototype I do would say, talk to people, try stuff.

So go out and have a bunch of narrative conversations now with, oh, you're a novelist and how much do you make and what...

Did you—school did you go to?

Those are transactional conversations, not narrative conversations.

Like, what's it like to be you?

And what do you enjoy and what do you not enjoy?

And tell me all about that.

And I have these narrative conversations with people in the world I'm thinking about being in, which is what Dan Gilbert at Harvard, not a bad school, would say is surrogation, not simulation.

Quit reading about it.

Go talk to people about it because you're a person—

And when you encounter a person who tells that story, that story becomes real.