[ Silence ]
My name is Pat Rothfuss.
I write fantasy.
And here we are in the work house.
Which sounds much more Victorian and dark than it really is.
It’s an old student rental that I bought really cheap when I realized
I wasn’t getting enough work done in my house-house.
Normally, I work upstairs.
That’s my writing room. That’s where I do my fiction work.
But nobody goes there.
That’s sort of my safe space, and I have privacy there of a very particular kind.
Because you won’t be seeing me on my -- you know,
that writing computer, I figured I would show you
what I do when I travel and I need to get some writing done.
Here is my 30-year-old IBM Model M keyboard.
This is the one I travel with.
I have this because a real keyboard is really important
if you want to really type.
I’ve got all the different pieces of it that I travel with.
You know, it’s not that I’m opposed to technology.
It’s that I think technology has a very specific place.
And a lot of times, some of the novelty of it makes people forget
about the purpose of it, which is to increase your productivity.
And there’s sort of the myth that writing is what happens here.
Like, now I am sitting down. I am in front of my keyboard.
I can look at my words. And this is where writing happens.
But not really. You know?
It’s, like, what is happening as I write and look at the words
is a part of the writing process. But a much bigger part of the process
is how we get here and also, like, where here is.
If you were going to do something really complex on your computer, do you
want a bunch of other things running on that computer at the same time?
No. It’s, like, you don’t want to try to play a real processor-intensive
game while you’re already trying to do, like, video rendering.
Your computer is going to bog down.
It will not be as efficient doing the main thing you’re trying to do.
Similarly, I need quiet. And I need solitude.
And I need peace of mind.
And I think all authors need, effectively, if not peace of mind,
they need to get their heads in the right place.
I need quiet because I’m easily distracted.
I need to know that nobody is going to bug me.
And that is why we’re not upstairs in my real writing room.
Because the way I settle my head there
is everyone knows that I am not to be bothered.
I shut down all external processes, and I go to the madness place, hopefully.
And then I come back with good writing.
Specifically today, you know, rather -- I could work on my
third book here, but you would see things that are really -- you know,
it’s the literary equivalent of the nuclear launch codes.
So instead, this is another type of writing that I do.
I maintain a pretty active blog.
Talk about my kids. I talk about writing.
I talk about conventions that I go to.
One of the big things that I’ve ended up doing kind of accidentally
over the last couple of years is a charity called Worldbuilders.
I started it accidentally on the blog, and it took off.
And at this point, we have, like, a whole facility, and Worldbuilders employs six
people, and we’ve raised, like, almost $4 million for various charitable causes.
And we’re gearing up for our big end-of- the-year event that starts in November.
And so I need to think a little bit about how I’m
going to introduce the charity this year.
How am I going to, you know, write that kind of inaugural blog?
I have to kind of sell the concept of
Heifer International, which is the charity we raise money for.
I need to kind of talk to them about that and explain why it’s an awesome thing
and why they do good work.
Before we actually launch the fundraiser,
we’re probably going to do, like, a teaser blog to say, it’s coming up.
Hey, if you’re an author and you want to send us a book, you know,
that’s signed, we’ll show off your book,
and people have a chance of winning it, and they can donate.
I’m getting ready to write a teaser blog.
This is all kind of -- it’s actually not very dissimilar from a novel.
Because this isn’t "a" blog that I write.
It’s actually part of a much bigger thing,
and all of these things come together to kind of form a narrative.
And we give people who are really into it the opportunity
to do some different things, to be engaged in different ways.
You know, a lot of the money that we raise comes from, maybe,
college students that only have, you know, 10 or 20 or 30 bucks to give.
But it really adds up.
What these people do have is friends.
You know, and they’re on social media.
A lot of them are, like, way smarter and
on way different types of social media that I’m not on.
And so some of them will kind of, like, rally their own troops.
This new website that we’re using for this fundraiser allows people to actually go and
create their own team.
So we’re encouraging people to go and create their own teams.
A young girl did this last year. She was, like, 9 years old.
And she -- like, she knew about my books, and she -- her parents
introduced her to this concept of Worldbuilders and Heifer International.
She got her parents to, like, help her shoot this video.
And everybody found it so charming that they, like,
jumped in, and a lot of people donated again just to help her.
She’s, like, I want to raise enough to buy a family a cow.
And she did very well. Ultimately what I’m doing is
I’m engaging in a piece of persuasive writing here.
I’m trying to say, whatever it is you would like to do,
here are options for you to be involved.
You’re sitting on a big piece of money, lovely. We love money.
That’s great. You know, that lets us do things.
You maybe you’re not that into the charity,
but maybe you want to, you know, win a signed book.
You know, maybe you’re not into hopefully winning a signed book,
but you would like to buy one of these auction items.
You know, where effectively you’re buying something
very tangible you can’t get anywhere else.
And maybe the charity angle just makes it a little easier
for you to splurge on yourself.
I’m good at rhetoric.
I’m good at, you know, making things understandable to people pretty easily.
And, like, kind of -- hopefully, no matter where you are personally,
you can find a way to come into this fundraiser and engage with it.
So I’m going to grab a link.
Because some people have never heard about Heifer International,
you’ve got to explain what the charity is so that somebody who knows
nothing about it, and potentially doesn’t care, can see why it’s a cool thing.
The nice thing about Heifer is I think it really appeals
to what I consider the geek mindset.
I do read fantasy. My people are geeks. I am a geek.
I think the world does kind of break down into geeks and not-geeks.
But you can be a geek for anything.
You can be a geek for building model trains, collecting stamps -- any
activity where you exhibit an irrational amount of interest and pleasure in it.
If you go, like, all the way down the rabbit hole, and you love this thing
beyond all reason and sense, then you’re a geek.
I think Heifer is really appealing to geeks
because we want to see, like, all the details.
And we want to, like, get up to the elbows in how this stuff works.
And Heifer is very tangible.
Heifer is going to take your money, and it’s going to buy somebody a goat.
And then it will train them how to take care of a goat.
And then they will produce -- that goal will produce milk.
And anyone can get how, like, milk going into children is a good thing.
And then I close the deal because I tell you that Heifer International
not only teaches these people how to take care of goats and how to pen them
and how to feed them, but it teaches people to teach their neighbors how to
take care of a goat and build a pen and grow food that the goats will eat.
And then it has passing on the gift.
So your goat has babies, and then you give one to your neighbor.
In some parts of the world, the gifts have passed through,
like, six, seven generations.
Like, in Nepal, the women all get together.
They go to a new village, and they’ve already trained these other women.
They’ve already built the pens.
They’ve already given them everything they need.
And it’s a party for them.
And you see them, and they’re all lit up, and they’re smiling.
And so it’s an easy sell because, again, geeks like the math.
You know, we like to see efficient solutions to problems.
And so now I’m going to dig up some of that information
because they’re always adding new processes.
I want to see -- there. The gift catalog.
I don’t know if this is concrete enough to really appeal
to somebody who doesn’t know anything about Heifer.
A donation of $72 will give people training and tools they need.
That’s nice, but it’s not really concrete.
It boosts the productivity of their small farm.
Conserves soil. Irrigates crops.
And all of this is good, but it’s not tangible.
You know, I got to -- I got to sell this.
Here’s irrigation pumps.
And this is a tangible thing.
So even if you’re, like, boy, I don’t really think --
a lot of people are vegetarians.
You know, they’re, like, eh, you know, and they’re, like,
why would I donate money so that somebody could eat a goat?
That’s not going to be appealing to them.
And even though I don’t lean in that direction,
I got to respect that that’s the place that my audience is coming from.
So I got to give those people a different entry point
into this concept of the charity.
And anybody can understand how important having water is.
It’s, like, here’s 120 bucks. And this will provide an irrigation pump.
Yeah, I’m going to grab this link.
I’m going to tuck that in for future use.
And again, geeks are smart.
They will understand what a long-term solution this is.
One of the things -- I’m just going to make a note to myself here.
[typing sounds] Education, sanitation, conservation.
Working with local ecology.
I can say -- you know, we work with the culture that exists.
So we’re not kind of being imperialistic.
You know, I’m not going to talk about being non-imperialistic
because that’s not going to make any sense to a lot of people
who haven’t studied those elements.
That would be for a different very narrow audience.
I want this to be available to everyone.
It’s a constant war of, like, who your audience is
and who you’re trying to please or at least not frighten away.
Some people are never going to donate to this charity, so I can’t write to them.
It would be stupid to write to them.
In the same way that some people are never going to read a fantasy book.
And so trying to make them happy would be a total waste of my time.
Very counterproductive.
But I will talk about the culture. And geeks appreciate the math.
So I can give the stats about women in -- and money in the family.
Now, to make that stick, I’m going to have to really get some good data.
I’m going to have to, like, prove that those numbers are real.
I’m just going to make a note to myself to get those -- to get those numbers.
[typing sounds]
And prove they’re good.
That’ll be hard. That’ll be a hard sell to some people.
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