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The Parable of the Perfect Pot

2018-09-21 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:58 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing (also: Projects, Everyday life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion

Retelling the allegory of the perfect pot (the class that makes many pots beats the group polishing one), Hank says he has made videos for 11 years as a 'brute force creator', but a book cannot be made that way: writing his novel meant half a decade reshaping one lump of clay, which felt wrong yet was necessary.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The allegory of the perfect pot, from Ashley Perez's VidCon Australia talk

  • ★★ At VidCon Australia, Ashly Perez gave a talk about an allegory she read online, written by a man told it by a teacher; it resonated with Hank. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ In the allegory, a pottery teacher splits her class for a semester: one group must make one perfect pot for a competition, the other as many unique pots as possible. (fiction) — 00:00:00

00:00:58 — First pots suck, thousandth pots are good; 11 years of iterative video-making; the brute force creator who can't brute-force a book

  • ★★ At the end, the group that just made lots of pots made better pots than the group that worked hard on one perfect pot. (fiction) — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ Hank says however good you are, your first pot will suck, and however much you suck, your thousandth pot will be pretty good. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ This is more or less Hank's philosophy for the last 11 years, and it worked well: make a pot, present it for judgment, use the feedback to make another. (hedged) — 00:00:58 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ Hank explains that in information security, brute force hacking hits a system with so many password iterations that one eventually works: not elegant or planned. — 00:01:40
  • ★★★ Hank calls himself a brute force creator, the only way he knows, but says a book can't be made that way: you can't write a hundred books and discard 99. — 00:01:40

00:02:09 — Videos as a writing apprenticeship; half a decade with one lump of clay; agent, editor and readers; it felt wrong but was needed

  • ★★ Hank says his hundreds of Vlogbrothers videos were a good writing apprenticeship, much of it creative nonfiction. — 00:02:09 · Vlogbrothers
  • ★★ Hank says his book is in a way a nonfiction book written by a fictional character. (hedged) — 00:02:09 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
  • ★★★ Nothing prepared Hank for half a decade with the same lump of clay: making it a pot, hating it, punching it back into clay, and again. — 00:02:09 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
  • ★★ When Hank thought it done, his agent, editor, sensitivity readers, friends and family told him to punch it a few more times. — 00:02:38
  • ★★ In the end Hank had what he, and mostly other people too, think is a pretty good pot. (hedged) — 00:03:00 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
  • ★★★ The process felt wrong to Hank: without having heard the allegory he believed in it, so doing what it says not to do seemed wrong. — 00:03:00
  • ★★★ Hank felt he had to work that way, as the only way to tell the story and say what he wanted; he did it and is happy. (hedged) — 00:03:00

00:03:39 — Tour prep on Monday; the book comes out Tuesday

  • ★★ Hank will see John on Monday (24 September 2018) to prepare their very weird stage show and book tour, and viewers on Tuesday, the day his book comes out. — 00:03:39 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description asks viewers to come see John and Hank on tour at hankgreen.com; every ticket comes with a free book. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Allegory of the perfect pot · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Also: Brute-force attack · perfectionism · VidCon Australia

Only in the description or credits: Ashly Perez · literary agent

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