Neil Strauss's Blog

It’s a strange process to release a book, or anything, into the world.

Already, the first articles about the new book are turning into a strange narrative that is so far from The Truth.

So in preparation for you to read the book today, I want to tell you what my thoughts are on The Game and The Truth.

Just so whatever you may read, and however things may be presented, you know my direct thoughts.

I see them as bookends.

The Game leads to The Truth.

That’s why one is designed like a black bible and the other like a white bible.

In the media, The Game seems to be portrayed as the douchebag handbook by those who haven’t read it.

In real life, The Game is simply the story of my journey through the seduction community and the characters in it.

It’s what I thought was positive about that world, what I thought was negative, and what I thought was interesting. It’s how I got seduced by it and how I left it.

So it would be impossible for me to ever renounce The Game as a book. It was a part of my life.

However, the world of the pickup artists is another story, especially since a certain element of it has become increasingly hateful over the years.

But, despite all the insane behavior even I witnessed at the time, it has ultimately been the single most important positive influence on my life.

Up until The Truth.

If I had known about the things in The Truth, I wouldn’t have needed The Game.

This is true on a sexual level, because in The Truth I infiltrated sexual subcultures where you don’t need any Game to have a night of decadence and connection that you’ll never forget. Everyone is there solely to hook up.

And this is true on a transformational level, because in The Truth, I went straight into the operating system that is my mind and debugged it. Basically, everything related to Deep Psychology that I’ve been sharing with you over the last two years has The Truth as its source.

This is why when I look back not on The Game itself, but on the person I was during that period, I see a lot of problematic beliefs. Especially when I think about the reason I entered that world, which was based on a fear of rejection and a need for validation and control.

And this is a great shift in thinking to have.

Because if I hadn’t grown and changed, there would be no point in writing a new book.

It’s the next stage of the journey—if you’re ready for it.

On the surface, The Truth may be a journey through modern-day harems, scientists, swingers, sex addicts, sex anorexics, priestesses, leather families, former child actors, relationship gurus, murderers, geneticists, and the terrifying secrets of my past.

But it’s ultimately about getting to a place where the only validation you need is from yourself. And from there, you can then bring forth anything in your life from a place of true inner strength, confidence, and centeredness.

If The Game was about pretending to be non-needy, The Truth is about actually being non-needy.

It’s the best, most important book I’ve written. And it answers some of the biggest questions there are about sex, relationships, monogamy, and CNM (consensual non-monogamy).

So I’m excited to share it with you.

Thanks for continuing on this journey with me.

I have a feeling this new book is going to hit some of you hard.

On October 13, 2015, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships will be hitting your favorite bookstore. And now that I’ve re-emerged, let’s hang out.

Mark your calendar—or type in your calendar or talk to your calendar.

I’m going on tour.

It’s a weird tour, I’ll admit. Basically, as it stands now, it’s only two states in the U.S. and three cities overseas.

I know.

I may have to get a bus and go on a real tour after the official publisher tour is done.

But what it lacks in geographical diversity, the tour makes up for in scope. I’m doing a lot of cool stuff with some great people and organizations.

So here’s where I’ll be—speaking The Truth, signing The Truth, and telling The Truth. (And maybe giving away my old peacocking clothes.)

As my UK publisher Canongate puts it: No more games. It’s time for The Truth.

I hope you're ready for what's in the book. I've been secretly preparing those of you who read my subscriber emails for the last year with some of the foundational concepts.

Looking forward to seeing you on the road (albeit a road too short for my taste).

Will talk to my publisher about adding more dates.

If you're going to travel for any of these dates, come to New York for two very different events: The Bookmark signing is going to be a unique performance and Q & A session. And at the Strand, I'll be discussing The Truth with two fellow best-selling authors who were influential during the process.


The Truth U.S. Tour Dates:

BROOKLYN
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13
THE BOOKMARK SHOPPE
7:00 PM
Cebu Bar & Bistro
8801 3rd Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11209
Phone: 718-833-5115
Tickets available online at:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/meet-nei...


MANHATTAN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15
HOSTED BY CHRISTOPHER RYAN, AUTHOR OF SEX AT DAWN, AND ESTHER PEREL, AUTHOR OF MATING IN CAPTIVITY
7:00 PM
Strand Books
828 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Phone: 212-473-1452 x 330
Tickets available online at:
http://www.strandbooks.com/event/neil...


LOS ANGELES
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16
BOOK SOUP
7:00 PM
8818 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Phone: 310-659-3110
Tickets: free, no ticket required


SAN FRANCISCO
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17
LITQUAKE FESTIVAL
SPECIAL LITERARY LUNCHEON
12:00 PM
Delancey Street Restaurant
600 The Embarcadero
San Francisco, CA 94107
Phone: 415-440-4177
Tickets available online at:
http://www.litquake.org/events/casual...


SAN FRANCISCO/MARIN COUNTY
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17
BOOK PASSAGE
4:00 PM
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA 94925
Phone: 415-927-0906 x 233
Tickets: free, no ticket required


MANHATTAN
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21
SPECIAL GUEST PANEL ON “JEALOUSY”
ALLIANCE FRANCAISE (FRENCH INSITUTE)
“The Truth About Love, Mistrust, & Suspicious Minds”
7:00 PM
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street
New York, NY 10022
Phone: 1-800-982-2787
Tickets: available in theater or online at:
http://www.fiaf.org/events/fall2015/2...


LOS ANGELES
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9
SPECIAL READER FILM SCREENING
7:30 PM
Cinefamily
611 N. Fairfax Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Phone: 323-655-2510
Tickets: available online at:
http://www.cinefamily.org


The Truth U.K. Tour Dates:

DUBLIN
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27
PRESENTED BY BANTER
6:30 PM
MVP
29 Upper Clanbrassil Street
Dublin 8, Ireland
Phone: 353 85 239 8003
Tickets £5 and available online at: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/banter-in...

DUBLIN
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28
THE UNIVERSITY OF LIFE: GUEST LECTURE
7:00 PM
The Stephen's Green Hibernian Club
9 St Stephen's Green
Dublin 2, Ireland
Phone: 353 1 677 4744
Tickets free and available online at: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/the-unive...

LONDON
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29
WATERSTONES
6:30 PM
The Grand Building
Trafalgar Square
London WC2N 5EJ, United Kingdom
Phone: 020 7839 4411
Tickets £3-5 and available online at: https://www.waterstones.com/events/an...

GLASGOW
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30
WATERSTONES
7:00 PM
153-157 Sauchiehall St
Glasgow G2 3EW, United Kingdom
Phone: +44 141 332 9105
Tickets £2 and available online at: https://www.waterstones.com/events/ne...

Note: All events are free, except for the Waterstone’s signings and the Dublin “Banter” (and maybe the Bookmark Shoppe and Cinefamily screening). I have no idea where the money goes. Definitely not to me.

(If you're broke, hit me up at those signings and I'll spot you.)

View the trailer in the Videos section on this page, or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg0sJ...

A confession: I’ve been holding out on you.

For the last few years, I've been deeply immersed in several underground communities and I didn’t share where I was, or everything I learned, with you.

Why?

For one thing, I couldn’t give it away yet to anyone, since it’s all part of the new book.

Two, it was all so wild and intense that . . . I didn't know where to begin.

So what have I been up to?

- Snuck into a free-love cult and got kicked out for the most ridiculous reason you’ve ever heard of.

- Went to an orgy run by a Hollywood celebrity, got slipped drugs, and passed out in the middle of a sex pile.

- Moved in with three girlfriends to form a quad relationship, and learned among other things that “who gets to sit in the front seat of the car” can actually be a serious issue in polyamorous relationships.

- Checked into sex addiction rehab and then escaped against medical advice.

- Opened up a relationship, and soon had an experience I don’t wish on anyone: sitting at home while the woman I loved went to a topless resort in Mexico with two other men.

- Started a commune based on principals of peace, freedom, and non-violent communication—and six days into it, someone in the house tried to kill me.

(So much for non-violent communication.)

- And met with some of the greatest geneticists, psychologists, neurologists, historians, sex gurus, and relationship healers of our time.

Why did I put myself through all this?

Because I wanted to answer a question that’s not only been central in my mind and life since The Game, but that so many of you have been asking me:

What happens if you are in love with someone, but you desire someone else?

Is that wrong?

Does this mean that you don’t actually love your partner?

When is it okay to act on it, whether physically, emotionally, or in your imagination?

Or is this just a normal evolutionary human behavior that we shouldn't be trying to repress?

And, most importantly, in relationships, is there a way to keep the romance, sex, love, and excitement hot over time instead of cooling down, bickering,
and growing apart?

So I set off to build a better type of relationship than the ones in our culture now—which have a statistically high chance of leading to unhappiness,
separation, or infidelity.

Here’s a surprising thing that happened, however:

I thought I was writing a book solely about relationships, but along the way it turned into a book about deep psychology.

Wait, you may be wondering: What do relationships have to do with deep psychology?

The answer: Everything!

It controls who you choose, why you choose them, whether you're happy, whether the sex stays hot, whether you have conflict, whether you end up in a "parallel relationship" (alone together), whether you break up with them, whether they break up with you, how hurt you are about it, whether you avoid relationships altogether . . . and so much more.

In fact, take any single person, and you can actually predict who they're going to fall in love with before they even know.

The process described in the book turned out to be the most transformative experience I’ve ever had.

In a way, The Game was a small shift that set me up for the really massive shift of The Truth—and gave me the key to a bigger happiness I didn’t even know was possible.

I recently tried an experiment.

I decided to see if I was a morning person.

Instead of staying up all night writing, I decided to spend 30 days going to bed at 9:30 p.m. every night and waking up at 5:30 a.m.

Though it was rough to dash out of dinners early, turn down all nighttime plans, and go to sleep with work still unfinished, I discovered that I was much more productive this way. By the time most of my friends were waking up, I’d already finished much of my work for the day.

While it did destroy my social life that month, I learned a lot, in part because in those extra morning hours, I began reading books on time management and productivity.

So I thought I’d share some of the advice:

1. Know what your time is worth. There’s an easy formula to calculate this: take your earnings for the year. Divide that number by 1760. The resulting number is roughly what you make hourly in a work week. However, considering that people work at most for one-third of a work hour, multiply that number by three. Now you know what your time is really worth. Treat it that way.

2. Make lists. For those of you who don’t keep running lists of the things you need to do, it’s time to do so. Get things off your mind and down on paper. Then prioritize them. One way to do so is to mark them as “A” tasks, which must get done right away; “B” tasks, which must get done that week; and less urgent “C” tasks, which simply need to get done sometime.

3. Link what you do in your life to your goals. With the Internet available as a constant distraction, most of us are constantly busy but not constantly productive. So always ask yourself: “Is what I’m doing right now bringing me any closer toward my goals?”

4. Beware of people who suck up your time. Wean them off their dependence on you and teach them to respect your time. If they continue to call, text, or bother you a lot, put them in their place politely. Explain, “I’m really busy, so I’m only dealing with things that are a 9 or a 10 on a 1-10 scale right now. If you’re sure what you need to talk to me about is a 9 or a 10, let’s deal with it. If not, let’s discuss it tomorrow.” Deal with your priorities first, not theirs. If your door is always open, people will always be walking through it.

5. Put the phone away while you’re working, and do not check your email, so that you aren’t constantly distracted. Most things can wait. Unless your work requires being available by phone and email all day, set yourself one or two specific time periods during the day when you deal with emails, phone messages, texts, Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest of the technological innovations keeping you indoors.

6. Speaking of which, try to do something active and physical each day. Though it takes time, it improves focus, so you can use the time you do have more productively and feel better about yourself. In general, the secret to happiness is living a balanced life.

The books that helped out with these tips include Getting Things Done by David Allen; First Things First by Stephen Covey; and No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy. I also like the title of Never Check E-mail In the Morning, though I’ve never actually read it.

Since, as a writer, my priorities are different than that of the businessmen to whom these books are often directed, I’ve developed some additional strategies. The better I manage my time and the less my communication lines are open, the more pages I can complete. So one thing I did during my early-rising experiment was keep a log of how I spent my time. I noticed that more than 15 hours a week were sucked up by responding to email.

I remembered one writer saying that when he was working, he unplugged his DSL cables, but I tried a different tack: I made a list of the two dozen people I absolutely needed to get in touch with, created a new email address for them, and then wrote an auto-responder for my old email account that explained that I was no longer checking that account due to work deadlines. Suddenly, I had 14 extra hours a week free to work and play.

Another good tip for writers is to light a candle when you’re working. Then keep writing, without distraction, until it burns to the bottom. Another advantage to burning a candle is that it lets anyone who happens to be around know that you’re writing and not to be disturbed.

You only live once and you never know when it’s going to end, so by making sure you get the most out of your time, you’ll also be making sure you get the most out of your life.

I want to take a moment to discuss ghostwriting.

I’ve received scores more offers to ghostwrite books than I’ve accepted. Many of these offers have been from artists and celebrities I’ve greatly admired. And my decision to work with someone has usually come down to just one thing:

Are they willing to get in the dirt?

Go to the memoir or biography section of any bookstore. Pick up the latest celebrity text. And within a few pages, you’ll be able to tell which celebrities were telling the whole story and which celebrities just wanted to rehash fawning press releases.

The deal is: If you are going to write your memoir, then you must be willing to tell the truth. And to do so, you must not be afraid to share things that may make you look bad, cause others to judge you, or even harm relationships you have. Secrets you’ve never told your family or your best friend must be divulged — especially if they are part of what makes you tick — otherwise you’re not being fair to the reader. And a reader can almost always tell when a writer is holding something back.

I remember, when writing Jenna Jameson’s book, she told me things she’d never told anyone before — each of which required many cigarette breaks for her. After some of these stories, she’d go to bed shaken, and wake up in the morning full of doubts about whether they should be shared or not.

But they had to be shared: the bricks that create each of us are not all made of gold. Some are shit. And we’re all a combination of both.

But this is not a bad thing, because it’s the shit that makes us unique. To quote one of the most famous first lines in literature: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Joseph Campbell puts it another way, perhaps even more relevant to writing:

“What distinguishes one person from the other is each person’s deviation from a norm. Nobody’s perfect. So, in describing anybody, what you describe are the faults. Perfection is not lovable....What is lovable about a person is precisely that cute little twist of the nose that doesn’t belong to the Greek tradition. What is lovable is his fault. What is lovable is his humanity....

“Sometimes life is horrific. Sometimes terrible things take place. Are you still going to say yay to life? The artist has to say yay...and where he says nay is where he has lost his humanity.”

When I wrote Mötley Crüe’s autobiography, we decided that if we were going to call the book The Dirt, then we were going to have to deliver the dirt. And to ensure the integrity of it, we made a few ground rules. One was that no member of the band could see anything another member wrote prior to the book’s completion. Another rule was that no band member could change something in anyone else’s chapter; if he disagreed, he could instead respond to it in his own chapter.

I didn’t realize just how much bravery it took from these artists until it came time to write my own book. After all, it was easy for me to sit in the green room of Late Night With David Letterman or The Howard Stern Show while Marilyn Manson or Jenna Jameson had to answer for the things I’d coaxed them to confess. Now I’d have to answer for my sins.

So, while writing The Game, I found myself constantly reminding myself of the words about avoiding self-censorship and not fearing judgment I’d told Mötley Crüe and Jenna Jameson. And in the end, I discovered two interesting things: The first was that it was actually much easier to confess on paper things I’d never told anyone than it was to do so in person. (This may have been due to convincing myself that no one’s actually going to read it when I’m done.)

The second is that the things you think will upset people usually never do. It’s usually a small detail that you may not even think is significant that ends up causing controversy. This has been true in every single book I’ve written. So never try to second-guess how people will react to your secrets. Because, more often that not, it’ll be the things that you find the most ordinary that will shock them the most.

There is a public misconception that needs to be corrected.

I realized this when my agent told me he represented a book that had been nominated for the National Book Award. Despite its critical acclaim, it had sold, he said, only two thousand copies.

Afterward, I was talking to my publicist at HarperCollins. And she was discussing how it was nearly impossible for a first-time novelist to get significant press.

In the meantime, most of the people I know who had one day dreamed of writing the great American novel are not writing it anymore. Instead, they’re working on the great American memoir.

Most of us know that literary fiction, these days, is a third-class citizen.

However, what many don’t realize is that the genre seems to be overlooked by book buyers for the wrong reason.

Here’s what seems to be happening:

People often tell me that they only read nonfiction. And, even though all my books are nonfiction, this pains me to hear. This is because I wouldn’t be writing nonfiction if it weren’t for reading fiction.

When I ask them why they favor nonfiction, they explain that it’s because they like getting information and learning things. At first glance, this makes a lot of sense. We have moved beyond the information age, and are now in an age of information neediness.

Whatever your area of interest may be, whether it’s Washington politics or celebrity gossip, the news changes in a matter of minutes. Subscribing to a magazine no longer serves the purpose of keeping up; only an RSS feed can keep a person current.

We’ve also become needy in our personal development: we are constantly blitzed with images of people who are prettier, wealthier, healthier, happier, and more spiritually evolved than us. And we are then sold on the possibility that a book or a course is the path to this ideal. Consequently, some people believe that it’s wasteful to spend their time reading anything that doesn’t appear on the surface to make them better at something.

Thus, most people have the notion that if they are going to set aside part of the day to read — and it’s getting harder for most to find time to read with the Internet competing for their attention — it should be something useful.

And nonfiction has somehow become synonymous with usefulness.

This, then, is the misconception that needs to be corrected in the popular imagination.

The truth is that a long list of numbered points is a lot more difficult to learn from and internalize than a story. The human mind learns best through metaphor. Everyone from Aristotle to today’s child psychologists have noted that, outside of actual experience, metaphors best facilitate learning.

“Without metaphors, ideas are dry and slip through your ears without a second thought,” Jonathan Frye puts it nicely (and metaphorically) in a blog I stumbled across while researching the topic. That’s why many of the mainstream self-help books that become national phenomena, whether fiction like The Celestine Prophecy or nonfiction like Tuesdays With Morrie, weave simple advice that could be summed up in a page into the form of a book-long story.

Personally, I’ve learned a lot of small lessons from nonfiction, and certainly accumulated a wealth of facts. But it is ideas that fuel one’s life, not facts. And the ideas that have sunk into my consciousness over the course of a few hundred pages of fiction are the ones that have come to define my principles and influence the life decisions I’ve made.

So while nonfiction may have a greater quantity of information, literary fiction has provided me with not just better quality information but also more useful information — all of which I’ve been able to absorb at a much deeper level.

Finally, for those utilitarians who still insist on the practical superiority of nonfiction, the truth is that fiction is much more efficient. It takes most people at least five times longer to finish a 350-page book of facts than it does to finish an equally long story that pulls readers through each page and excites them enough to dedicate every free second to reading more.

So, at the very least, to those reading this who only consume nonfiction, consider at least alternating between truth and fiction. The richer and more diverse your literary intake, the richer and more diverse you’ll become as a person. After all, as anyone who’s bought into the latest advice glut of books and documentaries about the power of positive thinking knows, the road to self-improvement and self-discovery begins in the imagination.