We recently connected with Bret Kissinger and have shared our conversation below.
Bret, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?
Since a young age, I’ve wanted to be a writer. The blank page has never been a daunting, insurmountable obstacle. It’s always been unlimited possibilities. There is considerable work just writing a first draft of a book. But taking it from a rough draft to a publishable book is a long process. It requires patience and diligence. Each round of edit requires a different tool. At the start, it may be a chainsaw or machete where you hack away at unimportant things. The more edits you do, the more precise the tool required. When writing historical fiction, it is important that facts remain facts. I don’t think you should change history to fit your story. Your story should be woven into the facts. Facts are the bricks—unchanging and unmoving. Fiction is the mortar—something malleable.
Being a writer does not differ from owning your own business. You wear many hats. The entire book, from what’s written on the page, to formatting, to cover design, and promotion, is all on you. It’s a nerve-racking, yet freeing in the sense that its success is dependent entirely on you.
Bret, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I can pinpoint the moment I knew I wanted to be a writer. December 1997. I was in a packed movie theatre watching Titanic. The floor was covered in a sticky lacquer of soda; the smell of buttered popcorn was permanently engrained in the seats and walls. The entire theatre laughed together, cried together, and it felt like when the movie ended, people had experienced something together. That they were no longer strangers. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to write something that moved people in that way. My first love was movies, and it is how my writing journey started. I wrote dozens and dozens of screenplays. I received some nibbles, but no bites on them. In Hollywood, you can’t get an agent unless you have sold a screenplay, and you can’t sell a screenplay until you have an agent. It’s the ultimate Catch-22. Publishing a novel has many of the same seemingly insurmountable obstacles. You send query letters to publishing companies. The people who read these query letters or sample manuscripts are often want-to-be-writers themselves. The success rate is abysmal. J. K. Rowling was famously turned down by publisher after publisher when she submitted Harry Potter. Not too many years ago, for a Master Class lesson, James Patterson submitted one of his manuscripts under a pseudonym. Every publisher turned the book down.
Amazon completely changed the game when they started publishing authors. It gives authors the world’s largest customer base and allows you to sell your books. Now, everybody has the capability to publish a book. It’s a highly competitive market and a fight to be relevant.
There are so many moments from inception to the final product where it threatens to overwhelm you. It takes a considerable amount of time and effort to write and publish a book. I’m proud of the books I’ve written. I love the feedback people give me that reading my books has inspired them to read more about the topics. That my books stay with people longer after they have finished the final page. My books bring history to life. They allow the escape from everyday life that people crave and need.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
Why? It’s a question anybody who wants to do something outside the norm is going to be asked. There will be people who will try to dissuade you, pick apart your idea or plans. Some are well-intentioned, most come from a place of insecurity. Most people have dreams that were abandoned for a myriad of reasons. Some people don’t like that you haven’t abandoned yours. Which is why I think it’s not only important, but vital, to surround yourself with positive influences. People who support you and your vision. You need constructive criticism, but you should only accept it from people you trust and respect. There is something called Locard’s Exchange Principle that is used in forensic science. It basically states that with the contact of two objects, there is an exchange. In crime scenes, this would be bits of hair, blood, fingerprints, dirt, etc. But I think this is relevant to life. Any time you interact with somebody, there is an exchange. If you surround yourself with negative people, you absorb that energy. No matter how strong your shield is , that negative energy will eat away at you like radioactive waste. Conversely, surround yourself with positive people, and you absorb that positive energy. Think about a time when someone explained something they were passionate about. The energy through which they speak. It’s inspirational and motivating.
Surround yourself with positive-minded people! People who inspire you to grow, to create, to persevere. Reduce your exposure to negative people and your mental health will improve.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
In writing, the obstacles are limitless. Some you can see before you get to them, others you only become aware of after you have face planted. Many are self-imposed. The “I don’t feel like it today” moments we all have. Although these are the most avoidable, these obstacles present themselves most often. I love writing—creating characters and plots. I hate rewriting—the search for missing commas, the rereading of a sentence over and over, moving words, changing words. Grammatical edits are soul-sucking. With each of my three books, I experienced issues. My word document showed 450 pages. The PDF version showed 453. Three phantom pages existed I had to find. My book covers were too large or too small for the book size and page length. During my first book, my laptop crashed. =This happened again during my third book. It is a daunting task to read through tutorials and guidelines, and then finding answers to problems that the tutorials and guidelines said you wouldn’t have. Some obstacles are minor annoyances and others threaten to sink your ship. I don’t think you can be a writer/entrepreneur/ small business owner without being resilient. Your spirit animal should be the cockroach. Besides my writing, I work a full-time job. I treat my writing as a second full-time job. It’s spending my evenings writing and editing. Distractions are only a scroll away. The next episode is waiting on your Netflix. Your bed is calling you to sleep. Your passion must be obsessive. It is the thing that will sustain you.
And once you have written your book or opened your restaurant or boutique, you must be resilient in the face of haters. Ignore the bad reviews, the snarky comments, and keep going!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bretkissinger.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bret.kissinger/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.kissinger.7