A lot of people want to start a business, and they're like, 'I wanna start a business, give me some money to invest.' Where is your business plan? Are you investing money yourself into your own business? How is this going to work? People think that they can just come to you with an idea and have money.
Even the people who have had success and made money writing these books of fiction seem to feel the need to pretend it's no big deal, or part of a natural progression from poetry to fiction, but often it's really just about the money, the perceived prestige.
When you think of everything in terms of just money, then almost nothing is enough. I mean, how much money is enough? Because it's hard to translate money into goods. And I think people, once, I think there's a lot things can believe, and once they start thinking about wealth in terms of money, they lose the idea of enough-ness.
I don't deny people their fantasy life, but I do think that we desperately need to start realizing just how complicated our reality is in America. Sitcoms just don't show us that.
Most people hoard their money - just keep it in the bank. Bitcoin will really take off when people start spending it, creating a velocity of money.
I never think about the numbers. I've never played tennis for the money, because as long as I enjoy it, and I can achieve anything, then the money will come. I know that things will start coming up, many more people will want to start getting involved. But I just want to keep my head cool, and I want to leave (business) to the people who take care of business. I just go out and I just play tennis.
The idea of a flip book still really appeals to me. That idea of fiction and non-fiction.
I was very resistant to my intellectualism for a while. I do start with an intellectual idea for a character. A lot of the times, it'll be the opposite of what I feel like is on the page, or it'll be just an idea that I read in a psychology textbook or in a philosophy book. I'll apply something to it that I can start to tinker with.
The Bible teaches that we are to love people and use money, but we often get that reversed and you start loving money and using people to get more money. Money is simply a tool to be used for good.
People say that making money in the content-media game is hard, and that is just, like, not my experience. It's super-confusing, 'cause everyone's like, 'Oh, how are you going to monetize?' It's easy: just start talking, and then money rolls in.
People are going to start realizing, why take those antibiotics that are extracts of mushrooms? Why not just have the mushrooms?
I wrote six nonfiction books before getting into narrative fiction with 'Robopocalypse,' including 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising.' My goal all along was to start writing fiction, and I guess one day I'd just had enough.
Many people start a business only to make money. Just to make money is not a strong enough mission.
Telling ourselves that fiction is in a sense true and at the same time not true is essential to the art of fiction. It's been at the heart of fiction from the start. Fiction offers both truth, and we know it's a flat-out lie. Sometimes it drives a novelist mad. Sometimes it energizes us.
You can start a documentary with just a camera, as opposed to a fiction film where you need actors, a crew, a script, a lot more start-up resources. It may be self-perpetuating.
I cannot say how strongly I object to people using other people's writing as research. Research is non-fiction, especially for horror, fantasy, science fiction. Do not take your research from other people's fiction. Just don't.