Mark Manson's Advice on Writing: From Blog to Three #1 Bestsellers

Mark Manson wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, which has sold over ten million copies. He wrote Everything Is F*cked: A Hope for Hope and ghostwrote Will Smith's memoir Will. Before any of that, he was a blogger. He started with a dating advice site, pivoted to personal development, grew to 2.5 million monthly readers, and turned that audience into one of the bestselling nonfiction careers of the last decade.

His writing advice comes from his conversation with David Perell on How I Write and his writing routines profile.

Write Like You Are in a Bar

"Whenever I write I always try to imagine myself in a bar or a restaurant. What would I say out loud?"

This is Manson's first principle. The voice that made his blog explode was not literary. It was conversational. Profane. Direct. He sounds like a smart friend who has thought hard about something and is telling you about it over drinks. No posturing. No academic register.

The test is simple. Read your sentence out loud. If you would never say it to a friend, rewrite it. If it sounds like a textbook, rewrite it. The gap between how you talk and how you write is where your voice gets lost.

This connects to what Nat Eliason describes as finding a natural register online. The internet rewards writers who sound like people, not institutions.

The David Foster Wallace Revelation

Manson did not want to become a writer until he was 27 or 28. He loved reading - Stephen King's It in sixth grade, Michael Crichton in high school, philosophy by the time he was a teenager. But writing was just a thing he did on forums and for his online businesses.

Then he read David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. The title essay - Wallace sent on a luxury cruise by Harper's specifically because he would hate every second of it - changed everything.

"He would go on about the dining room seating arrangement and compare it to the Cold War geopolitics of the Balkans. And it made sense. And it was funny. I didn't realize that someone could write with that level of descriptiveness, and it blew my head off."

That was the moment Manson decided he wanted to give readers the same feeling Wallace gave him. Not through academic fiction. Through personal development essays written with the same obsessive specificity and humor.

Strong Ideas Write Themselves

"If an idea is very strong, it's easy. The stronger the idea, the easier it is to write. And the weaker the idea, the harder it is to write."

This is the most underrated principle in Manson's process. Writers assume that struggling with a passage means they need better craft. Manson says it usually means the idea is weak. You can polish a mediocre idea into a mediocre passage, but you will never make it great.

The barbell confirms it. His best writing falls into two categories: pieces that flowed effortlessly because the idea was crystal clear, and pieces he slaved over for years because the research was so deep he knew more about the topic than anyone. The middle ground - mildly difficult, not quite flowing - never works.

The practical implication: if you are stuck, the problem might not be your writing. It might be your idea. Go deeper or move on.

Copywriting Made Him Viral

Manson's blog grew from 100,000 readers to 2.5 million between 2012 and 2015. The catalyst was not better writing. It was copywriting.

"I had studied a lot of copywriting, which turns out is extremely useful for any writer."

Facebook launched its News Feed in 2011, and the algorithm heavily prioritized links to published content. Manson watched BuzzFeed and Upworthy take off by applying direct-sales copywriting principles to Facebook headlines. He started doing the same thing. A killer title plus a compelling image could make almost anything go viral.

The shift was profound. Before, he started with an interesting idea and found a title. After, he started with a great title and wrote the content to justify it. This is exactly what YouTubers do now with titles and thumbnails. The principle has not changed in a decade.

The Venn Diagram

Manson operates at the intersection of three circles: what the audience wants to hear, what he is excited to write about, and what is good for the brand. When forced to sacrifice two for one, he always picks writing for himself.

Two or three times a year, he writes about something no one in his audience cares about. Heavy metal music. Video games. It gets crickets. He does it anyway. "I just think as a creative person you need to let that out occasionally. Don't let it build up too much."

This is the pressure valve that keeps the voice honest. Writers who only write what performs become content machines. Their voice flattens. Manson's voice stays sharp because he refuses to let optimization consume every piece.

Scrivener for Structure, Word for Polish

Manson starts every book in Scrivener. The reason is organizational. "If one day you wake up and you realize chapter 6 should actually be chapter 2 but this one story should stay in chapter 6, in Scrivener that becomes extremely easy. In Word or Google Docs, you'll spend three hours cutting and copying and pasting."

Once the structure is locked, he moves everything to Word for revision and polish. The publishing industry still operates on Word documents.

For blog posts, he writes in Google Docs. The tool matches the scope of the project.

Fifty Percent Survives

Roughly half of Manson's first drafts get cut before publication. This is not failure. It is the process. He writes exploratory material to discover what the piece is actually about, then discards everything that does not serve the core idea.

"You have a hundred great ideas but that doesn't mean you have a book. You still have to make those ideas make sense and organize them in a cohesive way that everything flows and it impacts the reader significantly."

The Subtle Art opening - the Bukowski story - was originally buried in the middle of the book. He recognized it was the perfect way to set the tone and moved it to the beginning. Everything is movable. Nothing is sacred.

Delete Your First Paragraph

A reader emailed Manson around 2013 or 2014 with a simple observation: if you deleted the first paragraph of your last four blog posts, all four articles would get better.

"I went and looked. He was right."

Now he checks every article and newsletter for this. The first paragraph is almost always throat-clearing. The real piece starts in paragraph two. This is a specific, testable rule that improves almost any piece of writing immediately.

Ghostwriting Will Smith

Smith wanted to write a memoir. He had tried himself. He could tell a brilliant five-minute story about any specific moment. But ask him to identify the three main themes of a period in his life and he had no idea where to start.

Manson flew out, spent three days with Smith, and stayed up until 2:30 AM putting together an outline based on what he observed: Smith's life naturally organized around emotions. Fear in childhood. Anger in adolescence. Pride that got him in trouble. Guilt later. An arc from fear to love.

He showed Smith the outline at breakfast. "He immediately got up and started pumping and screaming. Oh hell yeah."

The process: Manson did the first draft. Smith revised with his voice as a second draft. Manson did a final polish pass. When writing the church scene from Smith's childhood, Manson flew to West Philadelphia, visited the actual church, took video of the wooden cross-stitched ceiling beams, and found the name of the pastor. He wanted to be able to describe one paragraph of setting with complete accuracy.

Robert Caro's interview technique applies: "If you can make the reader see the scene, that's when it comes alive."

Writer's Block Is Self-Censorship

"Writer's block is usually because you're putting way too many expectations on yourself. Remove the expectations and just start writing for fun. Write as if no one is ever going to read it."

Manson sees a fountain of creativity inside everyone that is always flowing unless you block it. The blocks are self-imposed: fear of judgment, pressure to perform, trying to build an audience. Widen the boundary of what is acceptable to write. The ideas come back.

Key Takeaways

• Write like you are talking to a friend. If you would not say it out loud, rewrite it.
• Strong ideas are easy to write. Weak ideas are hard. If you are stuck, the idea might be the problem.
• Copywriting principles apply to all writing. Start with the title.
• Delete your first paragraph. The real piece starts in paragraph two.
• Half your first draft will get cut. That is not failure. That is the process.
• Writer's block is self-censorship. Remove the expectations and the ideas return.

Manson's career is proof that the blog-to-book pipeline works when the voice is honest and the ideas are tested. AI can help you tighten sentences and polish prose, but it cannot replicate the bar-conversation voice that made Manson's blog worth reading in the first place. The voice has to be yours.

This post draws from Manson's conversation with David Perell on How I Write and Writing Routines. Athens is an AI writing editor for writers who do their own thinking and want AI that refines without replacing.