Three articles landed in front of me this week…
Three different writers, three subjects with nothing to do with each other.
At least that’s what I thought…
The first, in the New York Times, was about what happens to our writing and our creativity as more and more of it gets handed off to AI.
The second, in the Washington Post, was about Ozempic, and a growing suspicion that the drug doesn’t just melt away our desire for food. Frighteningly, it may be melting away desire itself…
The third, in the Atlantic was about why the birth rate is declining abruptly in nearly every country in the world all at once…
Three different stories, from three different writers.
But underneath each of them, I kept seeing the same theme show up.
Flattening.
A flattening of creativity. A flattening of desire. And, downstream of both, a flattening of the human population itself…
I can’t help but wonder whether they’re connected. Whether the same culture that loses its drive to make art… is the one that loses its drive to make life.
In other words, in this age of artificial everything…
Is the fate of humanity hanging in the balance?
(I’m not claiming a clean line of cause and effect here. It’s far messier than that, and I know it.)
But here’s why I’m telling you this:
Those three op-ed pieces got my head spinning with ideas this week and they wouldn’t let go.
And that is exactly what a great op-ed can do.
It’s also precisely why I’ve been pouring myself into writing my own op-ed this week as part of the launch of my upcoming book…
1 | Welcome Back to Operation BBL
If you’re just joining, welcome to the third installment of Behind a Bestseller Book Launch.
(aka Operation BBL)
It’s the mini-series where I’m taking you behind the scenes of everything I’m doing to launch Return to Real in real time, so you can learn from what’s working and from the mistakes I’m making along the way.
Last week, in [Issue #101]: Back to the Drawing Board…, I provided an inside look into the book’s hand-drawn diagrams and the art and science behind their design…
This week, we’re doing a deep dive into the op-ed strategy I’m working on as part of this book launch…
(And that you may be interesting in implementing yourself…)
If you remember, back in [Issue #100] I shared that one of the experimental ideas I’m least sure about (but most intrigued by) is working to get several op-ed pieces published in mainstream media to introduce some of the biggest ideas in the book to a large mainstream audience.
This week, I finally sat down to actually start writing my first piece.
2 | What is an Op-Ed? And Why Should You Consider Writing One?
An op-ed is a short opinion essay published in a newspaper or magazine, built around a single argument for a wide audience.
The name is short for “opposite the editorial page” (the spot where these pieces ran, across from the paper’s own editorials), and what it’s become today is one of the few open doors in media where almost anyone, not just staff writers or journalists, can submit a piece and make their case to the public.
That’s why writing in public, week after week, in an email newsletter is so valuable.
It gives you a steady supply of raw material. Ideas you’ve already road-tested. Most of that work will stay newsletter issues. But every so often, one of them is bigger than that.
And here’s what makes it worth the effort.
You might have a small list right now. You might be reaching a few thousand people each week. Or maybe just a few hundred…
But a strong op-ed in a major publication like the New York Times, Washington Post, or the Atlantic can reach hundreds of thousands.
Sometimes millions. People who have never heard your name, meeting it for the first time through something you wrote.
And reach isn’t even the most useful part.
If you’re writing a book, an op-ed forces you to take your 70,000 word manuscript and boil it down to a thousand.
To find the single idea that matters most and say it so simply that a stranger gets it on the first read. That kind of compression makes the whole book sharper in your own head.
And when it’s done, it becomes a calling card. A one page published article you can hand a podcast host or an editor that says, in about two minutes, here’s who I am and here’s what I’d love to talk about.
This brings me to…
3 | My First Op-Ed Piece...
The headline I’m working with is this:
“I Left Tech to Farm. It Turned Out to Be the Best Preparation for AI.”
That title has one job: get the reader to stop scrolling and click. That’s it.
The real argument lives underneath it, and it’s the thesis of the entire book boiled down to a single line: in an age of artificial everything, from the food we eat to the content we consume, real is the last human advantage left.
Here’s the strange thing about op-eds.
They look effortless when they work, but they can be really hard to write.
There’s a structure to a good one, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
You open inside a specific scene. Something the reader can picture, before you’ve explained anything.
You tell them what you actually believe by the second or third beat, before they’ve decided to trust you.
You back it up with evidence, and you save your most personal proof for last. Then you close by circling all the way back to where you began.
In case you’re curious…
I used Claude to map mine out section by section, with a word budget for each one, so you can see what that looks like:
Personally, I think the two hardest parts are sections that you might have the the instinct to skip.
The first is the counterargument (i.e Section 7: “To Be Sure”)
This is where you stop and make the strongest possible case against your own position (i.e. your “Steel Man”). It feels like handing the reader ammunition. It does the opposite. They will trust you more for it.
The second is the ending (i.e. Sections 8 & 9: “The Turn” and “Close”)
There’s a final turn in mine that pays off that headline and connects the whole thing back to AI in a way I don’t think people will see coming. Adding an unexpected TWIST like this is critical.
(I’m not going to spoil mine here. You’ll have to read the piece itself for that.)
This is where things currently stand. I’m not done. I’ve still got a little ways to go on this one, and I have no idea where the final piece going to actually land.
Which brings me back to YOU…
4 | YOU Have Spoken : - )
Insight into the op-ed strategy is one of the things many wrote in to ask about after [Issue #100], when I asked what YOU wanted me to cover in this BBL series.
In fact, your replies blew me away… (Thank you.)
Now, I won’t be able to cover all of what you’ve asked for in one go, but I’m working on getting to most of it over the coming weeks…
For example, several of you asked about the actual economics of a self-published book (that one’s coming, Atul)…
Several of you asked about podcast strategy, and how far ahead to start lining up the bookings (on the list, Angela)…
But there was one thing that, surprisingly (to me at least), came up WAY more than anything else.
More of you asked about motivation than any other single topic.
How do you keep going? How do you not quit? What drives you on a project like this, now more than two years in?
Renee specifically asked how I haven’t given up. David asked what keeps me going. Shai wanted the whole unvarnished story, the parts nobody warns you about.
And Todd sent five questions that all circled the same word: the real emotions, the real sacrifices, what it really costs, what really changed in me.
(He was asking a guy who wrote a book called Return to Real to get real. Fair enough, Todd :-)…)
I’m going to answer all of it. But that one is going to need its own issue.
And while we’re on the subject of everything you sent in last week… Your votes on the diagrams were incredibly helpful, and your feedback is shaping in a major way what’s going into the book.
Here’s the diagram variant you picked for the Double Craving:
There are more lessons buried in those results than I can fit here, so I’m saving the full story for a dedicated piece in the coming weeks, where I’ll take you all the way inside the hand-drawn diagram process…
But the diagrams are just ONE of the things still on my plate to get this book over the finish line…
5 | What’s Around the Corner...
In the next few weeks, I have to:
-
Record the entire audiobook…
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Finish the last of the hand-drawn diagrams…
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Get the final round of cover notes back to my designer…
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Lock the interior layout….
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And go a few more passes with my line editor on the last few commas and semi-colons we’re arguing over…
All of this before it heads to the printer.
It is, to put it mildly, a packed stretch :-)
And the book isn’t the only thing in motion right now.
6 | Farm Update for the Agro-Curious...
It’s been a minute since I’ve provided an update on what’s going on here on the farm…
Out here, things are humming.
It’s a full house.
In addition to our herd of cattle, our two dozen laying hens, and three little pigs (who seem to whisper secrets into each other’s ears every time I stop by to say hello…)
This spring we added five young turkeys, already barreling through that gangly, all-legs teenage stage.
And ten new chicks into the flock…
In a few weeks, another 75 meat birds arrive.
It’s the busiest the place has been in a long while.
This is the IRL farm that the op-ed is actually about. So on the days the audiobook won’t cooperate and a single comma battle eats an entire afternoon, I can walk outside and put my hands in the dirt.
Or at least hold one of these day old chicks.
(Ameraucanas and olive eggers, in case you’re wondering.)
* * *
That’s the view from the farm this week.
Have a great rest of your weekend.
Remember to hug the ones you love.
And until next week,
Ryan :-)
P.S. It’s not all smiles here on the farm… Sadly, last week we lost our beloved barn cat turned house cat, “Boots” aka “Bootsie Bootsie”.
Boots was a very good boy. We miss him very much. ;-(
