How I publish best-selling books.
Read Marcus Aurelius’ journal, these days titled Meditations, and you’ll see how often the ruler of the world didn’t care how his decisions played out in it.
Amor Fati, Aurelius said, which is Latin for, “A love of one’s fate,” which itself means, at least in a modern context, an understanding that the world may not respond favorably to you and to accept that.
The world’s response to your actions is beyond your control. The only thing you can control, Aurelius argued, is how you respond to the world’s response. You can respond with kindness and courage and honesty, and because you can always respond that way, you can learn to accept what the world throws at you, and to love it even, as if it were fate, because you have the strength within yourself to bear it.
So that’s why amor fati: Not just an acceptance of one’s fate but a love of it, because through life’s trials you are forged into a better person.
That’s great, Paul, you’re saying, but what does it have to do with longform writing?
It has everything to do with longform writing.
So often our goals are extrinsic: I want to land on the New York Times best-seller list. I want my byline in The New Yorker.
