Why We Write with Donn King, Author of The Way of The Three-Year-Old Why

Hello again! We’re back for another author chat about Why We Write. Soon–fingers crossed–this will be coming to you in audio format as a podcast! 

Before we get there, please enjoy this excerpt from my conversation with author Donn King about his writing journey and his recent book The Way of the Three-Year-Old Why. I wish I could have fit more of our conversation in! There are some ellipses where I jumped ahead but stay tuned, you may just hear the unabridged version shortly on the podcast!

I was trying to find the genre earlier and saw it was a Business Fable. 

There’s a lot of business fables out there, arguably an old book like The Greatest Salesman in The World, The Richest Man in Babylon.

They use story, they use fiction and all the techniques of it: plot and scene setting and character and all that sort of thing in order to teach principles.

When did you write your first full story or start thinking about writing stories?

I started in straight nonfiction. So, my first book–I’ve had three books before. The first full book was a textbook. Then I wrote a book on parliamentary procedure. Sounds real exciting! And then I have always consciously made use of what the industry called ‘New Journalism.’ 

I started life as a newspaper reporter and people like Ken Kesey who wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test–all of those folks consciously used fiction techniques to make an engaging nonfiction story but that’s different from a business fable because in a nonfiction novel, as they called them, anything that you’re reporting–it’s got to be factual.

Would that be like Narrative Nonfiction today?

Yeah, it’s the stuff that is reported in there about people. The people are real, the situations are real. It’s explicitly nonfiction. Well, a fable is a fable. And The Way of The Three-Year-Old Why, a business fable, was my third book.

…I’ve made all or part of my living as a writer for over 50 years.

That’s an accomplishment! 

…I want to write stories and I tried to use what I knew about it–the new journalism stuff, scene setting, dialogue, characters, and all that but I tried to write fiction and I just couldn’t pull it together.

So, I’m gonna skip ahead. I mentioned I have a severely disabled daughter. Although writing has always been a big part of my identity and who I am–she’s 20 years old now–I was also launching a career as a professional speaker.

This went along with what I was doing from my day job–the professor of the college thing where I teach public speaking. 

Okay. Nice! I mean, you wrote the textbook on it so I think you’re a pretty credible source.

Well, thank you. It’s out of print at this point. But I was putting all my energy into the speaking and then my daughter came along and I couldn’t be dependable as a speaker because she was hospitalized 24 times in her first four years.

I couldn’t I couldn’t in good conscience contract with somebody back then. They would hire a speaker six months to a year ahead of a conference or something like that and I was calling them up three weeks before and saying, “I can’t make it. My daughter’s at the point of maybe death.” 

So, I couldn’t effectively do the speaking thing anymore and when I tried to write I found that I was so tired and exhausted just taking care of her that I quit writing. For about a decade there, I told people that I couldn’t write because I was depressed.

February this year, a friend, Jeff West, who wrote the foreword–he and I were talking about a project and really he was looking for ideas. I said, “Jeff, here’s an idea, if you want it you can have it.” And he said, “You ought to write that.”

I thought my well had dried up but he told me to just give it a shot, just 200 or 500 words a day.

I started writing and not only did I keep going with it, I found that I felt better and better. This phrase shows up in The Way of The Three-Year-Old Why. I put it in Dan Robert’s mouth but it’s coming from me: I thought I wasn’t writing because I was depressed. Turns out I was depressed because I wasn’t writing.

Yes, I very very much have felt similarly in the past. It’s interesting how it’s that symbiotic relationship and it can trick us into thinking it’s a different way.

Why do you write?

Why do you breathe?

That’s a fair question.

I’m not suggesting that everybody needs to write and by the way I’m going to go back a little bit when I said that I thought I was not writing because I was depressed, turns out I was depressed because I wasn’t writing.

I don’t want to imply for the people out there who are depressed that they need to just write but for some of us writers, that can contribute to it.

I think what it is is you need to figure out what is most important to you. On The Alignment Show, we talk about “live your values to value your life.” We hear politicians and academics talk about values and this kind of lofty idea. All the world “value” means is what’s important to you.

I think a lot of people’s depression–not clinically speaking, I have to keep emphasizing that if you’ve got true clinical depression, deal with a professional. I never want to suggest to somebody that it’s simple and easy. But for us everyday-kind-of-depression, I think a lot of it comes from having things that at your core are important to you but you deny them for whatever reason.

You think you can’t achieve it. I think that’s where a lot of our depression can come from denying our central core identity whatever that might be. And for me it’s writing. For somebody else, it might be playing the flute. I’ve got a friend who gets really excited about solving plumbing problems. I love that! I mean that’s where his creativity comes in. 

Almost everyone has something that they feel really excited and passionate about. At least one thing. If I had to boil it down to something simple I would say what makes us human, what makes us alive is creativity. There’s a lot of creative activity that people don’t think of as creative, but if you’re making something that didn’t exist before–you did it.

If you’re solving a problem, you’re being creative.

Yeah, that is a really really good way to put it and I think you’re right. A lot of people don’t view it as creative. If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice when you first began your writing journey, what would it be?

Keep at it. Don’t settle. That doesn’t mean ignore things like making a living. 

It’s a good debate to have about whether you really should be trying to make a living from your creativity. I was a photographer. When I was in the newspaper business, part of my job was as a news photographer. I got into that because it had been a hobby of mine and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll make my living at it then.’ I got a good Canon camera and I learned dark room and all that kind of stuff.

I don’t have pictures of my kids from when they were young because after I’d spent the whole day taking pictures, I didn’t want to come home and take more pictures.

I hardly take any pictures now. It’s like this thing that I loved for itself, once I started making a living at it, I didn’t like it anymore. I was honestly scared about that writing and I’m very glad to find that I can make money at it. I just don’t make that my focal point.

Joanna Penn talks about the three Fs that every writer needs to think about–why are you doing it: are you doing it for freedom, fame, or fortune? Any of those three is perfectly legitimate if your goal is to make a lot of money then write to market, turn out 12 books a year.

Nothing wrong with that. It is a really big difference when you figure out what your reason behind your writing is. So, coming back to the original question: What would I say to myself? Don’t settle. Don’t settle for security.

Awesome! It’s good advice because a lot of us, we do it for a while and then we try to grasp whatever we can find and settle for it. But you got to write your story and you got to embrace your ikigai like we were talking about before.

Tell us about your latest book, where we can find it, and the best place for readers to connect with you?

The book that is out right now, The Way of The Three-Year-Old Why. The best place to keep up with that book is my website and to sign up for  my email list. I’m also on LinkedIn. 

Donn and I had a beautiful conversation that went well beyond my preplanned time limits and I wish I had the wordspace to share more here. Rest assured that once the podcast is up and running, I will air my talk with him on the show so you can listen to the full, unabridged conversation.Stay tuned, I have several authors coming up including a recap I meant to post earlier about a mind-blowing webinar I attended with the Audiobook Wizard, Richard Rieman. For now, catch up on the latest interviews about Why We Write.