We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joe West a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joe, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I learned to write by reading. Sounds simple, but it takes about a million written words before you begin to develop what others will call your “voice.” Those million words come at a slow trickle. Most will not make it, but for those who do, the reward of being able to write at will is a sweet fruit indeed.

If I could have started earlier and had known that writing was such a special thing, I would have put my shoulder into it much sooner. Still, there is something to be said about being an artist with some perspective. As a writer, my goal is to put stories before readers that are as unpredictable as they are enjoyable. I also had no one ever telling me that I could do this. No one I knew even worked on a local newspaper, much less wrote for fun in their spare time. All the cool kids I knew were in bands. Rock and Roll was the extent of art in my world. Occasionally, I’d meet another voracious reader, but never anyone who wanted to write.

My love of movies, books, and stories in general has been my best teacher. Now that I’m older, I can appreciate the idea of a story, but more importantly, I can create stories by merely sitting down to write them.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m fond of introducing myself this way; “My name is Joe, and I write stories for men.”

It’s not that I’m willfully ignoring women. On the contrary, women are my best and biggest audience. What I’m talking about is getting men to read books again. Except it is the wives and sisters and mothers and aunts of these men that seem to like me best. I used to be surprised by this until I finally figured out why: women simply enjoy reading about men being portrayed in a novel as they actually are in the real world. Although we might be prone to violence and fear, we are vulnerable and scared, too, filled with the same doubts about life they are, but we would rather use drugs and alcohol to avoid talking to anyone about it. The idea that boys don’t cry is not something I take lightly because as boys become older and grow into being men determined to be unlike their fathers even if they have never met the man.

The one thing I have learned through writing, corny as it sounds, is to appreciate myself. I wrote a story called Father’s Day when I was getting sober. The story is about a guy named Joe who has not seen his father in decades. After the funeral he is given a note that his father wrote for him filled with angst and regret yet with the hopeful refrain of “be good to yourself.” That letter I wrote healed me. After years of neglect and abuse, my battle with an invisible enemy I could not find nor conquer evaporated. My philosophy was that if a story I had written could do that for me, why in the hell could it not help another guy who was hurting and wishing his life could be better?

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

There are two sources that helped me tremendously as I was learning to write.

The first, and as far as I’m concerned, the Bible of storytelling, is Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero With A Thousand Faces.’ Although written in English, it is incredibly hard to digest without a teacher.

However, there is a fantastic book called ‘The Heroes 2 Journeys,” by Michael Hauge and Christopher Vogler, that does, in fact, teach you all the Joe can but in an easier-to-understand format.

There is also a video by the same name that you might be able to pick up from your local library. However, it is so low-res that it might be distracting from the material being taught. However, if upon watching the video and/or reading the book, you feel like Paul seeing Jesus on the road to Damascus, then you are most definitely a writer.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I discovered I was a writer purely by accident.

When I was thirty-three, a friend of mine who had about a thousand ideas for a new story everyday, walked into a gymnasium I was about to teach adult Sunday School with around five wrinkled and stained handwritten pages. It was the story of STABCO, two loser brothers find salvation and redemption through the sale of knives door-to-door. He was beside himself. Turns out having an idea and being able to write it are two very different things.

I spent the next six weeks writing the screenplay for him getting up at 3 a.m. each morning and writing until 4 a.m. without stopping. I had to be at work by 4:30 a.m., which barely gave me the time I needed to shower. But I did it. My friend and the people he was working for did, too. Even now when I think about it, I’m in awe at having done the work but more so that they paid me for it.

Now, as I sit writing, I believe not only in myself but also in my work. I know what I do is good enough. Further, what I do is as good as anything anyone else has published. I may slide into my grave undiscovered, but so did Emily Dickinson, and seeing as she isn’t complaining, neither will I.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093926001968
• Other: tinyurl.com/59xvrvyh