Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

At the beginning of this MasterClass,

I made a promise to you.

I told you that I would admit something

to you that I had never admitted to anyone,

and that I would show you an artifact that only I had seen.

And of course, we know how important keeping promises

is to the storytelling process.

So I want to do that now.

After I wrote "The Da Vinci Code" and it became so popular,

I sat down to write my next novel.

And I very quickly discovered that it

was much harder than I thought to write when

you know that a lot of people are going

to read what you've written.

It turned out to be a six-year process.

And about three years into it, I was really questioning

whether or not I could do it.

And I decided to try to trick myself

into believing that I had already written the book.

And I thought this book was going to be

called "The Secret of Secrets."

And so what I did is I actually created the book.

I created an artifact right here, "The Secret of Secrets."

What this book is, I'm not even sure what book it is.

I just stuck a fake cover on the front of this.

I made this on my computer.

And every morning, I would sit down

and I would hold this book, and I would say,

well, I can feel the weight of the book.

I can see the book.

It actually already exists.

All I have to do is write it.

And as a little bit of extra impetus, a little bit

of extra enthusiasm, I printed a copy of the New York Times

bestseller list.

And I photoshopped "The Secret of Secrets"

into the number one spot trying to convince myself

that the book had already been written,

had already been published, and was already successful.

This was just a trick to get me through that really tough time

in writing a novel.

And the reason I'm telling you this is that writing a novel

is an enormous undertaking, and self-doubt

will be part of that process.

There will be days you just don't know if you can do it.

And on those dates, what is going to save

you is your process, your ritual.

So if you're just starting to write a novel,

go create that process.

Go create that ritual.

And if you are in the middle of a novel right now,

recommit to that ritual.

And I wish you the very best of luck.

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