James Altucher and Glenn Fisher. (Original design by @rhinett)
I read a book called Choose Yourself.
It made me think, which I guess is the best thing a book can do.
The author is a chap called James Altucher.
As well as being a successful author, he’s also a well-known blogger, a super-intelligent entrepreneur and a well-respected investor to boot.
When I got in touch with him about an interview for AllGoodCopy.com, he kindly agreed.
During a thoroughly enjoyable discussion we spoke about writing, editing and the art of selling. We also spoke about living a more positive life and dealing with failure. And due to my own strange obsessions, we also discussed which Sesame Street character James would rather spend his life with.
I hope you find the interview as insightful and useful as I did and if you do, it would be excellent if you choose to share it with your friends and colleagues too.
Here’s our discussion. Enjoy:
James Altucher Interview Notes
Obviously, I highly recommend you read James’ book Choose Yourself.
I’m generally a pretty grumpy and cynical person, but I found this incredibly insightful and surprisingly inspirational.
You can buy Choose Yourself from Amazon here.
I would also recommend you visit James’ blog and pop your name down to receive his often daily emails. You can find out more about this by visiting jamesaltucher.com
We spoke about the importance of writing concise copy and this is something I’ve written about before. You can read about one of my own techniques to keep your copy concise here.
Raymond Carver cropped up too. His excellent collection of concise short stories is called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
And if you’d like to see the difference good editing makes, you can read the original versions in Beginners.
More than anything, though, I hope our talk offers you some inspiration, just as James’ book did for me.
Best,
Glenn