Six ways writers can profit from THINK AND GROW RICH

If you delve into the crazy world of online entrepreneurship—a place where copywriters seemingly only sell copywriting courses and everyone is raking in six-figure Google AdSense checks—chances are good you’ll come across someone attributing at least some of his or her success to Napoleon Hill’s classic book, THINK AND GROW RICH.

This thin little abridged treasure, all of 233 pages, is packed with gobs of pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and rags-to-riches vignettes designed to teach us all that the road to boundless prosperity is as simple as thinking about how rich we want to become… and then it happens.

Apparently, THE SECRET—the latest hooha that’s taking money from wackadoos around the globe—ain’t telling us anything new.

Of course, it isn’t quite that simple. Hill claims he studied—at the urging of Dale Andrew Carnegie—the paths of thousands of people from all walks of life to determine the common traits of two groups of people: the filthy, stinking rich, and the filthy, stinking poor.

He came up with a set of thirteen things, what he called The 13 Principles of Success. I won’t list them all here because I don’t want to spoil the surprise later.

Okay, there’s not really a surprise later… it’s just that most of them are common sense—believe in yourself, overcome fears, make specific goals, blah, blah, blah. That kind of stuff.

Besides, the specifics are widely available elsewhere. (Question for those who clicked the links just before this: the similarities are striking, no? Good thing Hill never had the Internet… the public would’ve pimp slapped him for stealing Ben Franklin’s work!)

I don’t mean to sound unkind. I’ve read this book several times and there’s lots in there I think is quite good.

And the more I thought about some of the things in the book, the more I realized that the book isn’t just a road map/self-help manual for zany, over-the-top Internet marketers. There’s some honest-to-goodness advice for we fiction writer types, too.

So here they are… Six ways writers can profit from Napoleon Hill’s THINK AND GROW RICH:

The disaster of destructive thinking, p. 221

This is something that I think gets to most everyone at some point or another in their lives. It’s just that I notice it a lot in creatives of all sorts, not just writers.

We’re constantly measuring ourselves, not only against others in our field, but also against the perfection of our mind’s eye.

We compare the work we’ve done with whatever our standard is and we know it just isn’t good enough.

Stop doing that.

Now.

For one, it’s just wrong. And it keeps us from getting better at what we do.

Finally, it’s in this section that Hill reminds us that our thoughts are the only things over which we have complete control… he writes:

“You have the power to feed [your mind] whatever thought impulses you choose.”

So true. So true. It’s the same brain in charge of both productive and destructive thoughts, so why not use it for good instead of evil?

Persistence, p. 131

This one’s pretty much a no-brainer and something I’ve written about before. But Hill’s take goes a lot deeper, deep enough that it’s one of his 13 Principles.

I won’t summarize the entire chapter, but two things stood out for me:

• Do what Hills calls “climbing over your fears.”

By this he means, “don’t let defeat stop you from pressing forward.” It may sound like this is persistence defined. I suppose it is in the technical sense. But Hill clarifies this by noting that it’s the truly successful “who take the punishment of defeat as an urge to greater effort.”

• Persistence is an acquirable skill.

You read that right. As Hill said, “persistence is a state of mind, therefore it can be cultivated.”

We should already understand this. Most, if not all, of the writers I know hone the skills in their writerly toolboxes—and not simply by accident. They set out to tell stories in certain ways and then work the craft until they feel they’re doing it right more often than not. And then they do it some more.

The same way honing your craft is—in its simplest terms—borne from a state of mind, and therefore actionable, so is honing your persistence.

Make dissatisfaction work for you, p. 66

If you’re like me and a lot of other people, you’ve got a day job that you’re not one hundred percent in love with, that—if you had things your way—you’d tell stories full time.

It’s the same as the old “CEO who worked his way up from the mail room” cliché, or the story Stephen King’s told about his days as a young husband and father who, as an English teacher, barely made enough to cover the rent.

King said he felt bad in those days because he thought he should get a part time job. It was his wife who told him he already had one… it was sitting his ass in a chair and pounding away at the typewriter.

While I’m sure the support of a woman who’s also a writer helped things a lot, I’m more certain that King’s dissatisfaction with working at a low-paying job coupled with the struggles of feeding his family on said job’s salary were an enormous driver as well.


Old Man If, p. 228

This one is the killer, Hill says. In fact, it’s the people whose lives are marked with failure who frequently engage in the alibi-making of the “if only” game.

The list of these is long: “If only I had an agent,” “If only I had more time to write,” “If only I had more money,” “If only I knew someone in the industry,” “If only people could see how good I am.”

This isn’t to say, though, you’re a failure if you make these sorts of statements. Sometimes, it’s a statement like one of these that produces the great call to action we need to find success.

Just beware of the trap that Old Man If sets for us. He makes it so easy for us to sabotage ourselves.

Organized planning, p. 81

This is another one of Hill’s 13 Principles. Aside from the obvious here—that planning for success is key to actually achieving it—is the concept of forming a Master Mind group.

It sounds sort of cloak-and-dagger: Master Mind group.

But, really, all it is a way for you to bring together important people you’ll need in your back pocket down the line.

The most evident example of this is a writing group… people who know your work and you… and who have an interest in seeing both grow.

But don’t stop there. These days, lots of novelists have blogs which makes them more accessible than ever before. Reach out and make friends. You’ll be surprised at how willing people are to share advice, friendship, encouragement, and support.

Just remember that this is a two-way street. You must also give freely of your friendship and support.

If nothing else, pin up the quotes

Scattered throughout the book are a few quotes, splashed across the page in big type. Besides, who doesn’t love a good motivational quote?

Two stand out and they speak loudly for themselves:

Success requires no explanations. Failure permits no alibis.

And, finally…

Every adversity, every failure, and every heartache, carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater belief.

(One last thing… from the Dept. of the Truly Bizarre and of Interest Only to Me: members of one of my all-time favorite punk rock bands—Bad Brains—preach of the power in this book. Imagine tons of hardcore punk rockers out there thinking and growing rich!)

Tags: Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Think And Grow Rich, Writing

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Tagged as: Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Think And Grow Rich, Writing