Susan Orlean is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of multiple bestselling books, including The Orchid Thief, which was adapted into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. Her new book, Joy Ride, is a gripping and funny memoir that details her incredible writing journey, and also serves as an inspiring guide filled with actionable tips for anyone embarking on a creative project.
Orlean built a wildly original career by following her curiosity, taking big creative risks, and treating her writing like a business she runs herself. We’ve broken down her recent appearance on the How Success Happens podcast to help you apply her advice to launch your own success in three, two, one!
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Three Key Insights
1. How to Know If Your Big Idea Is Worth It
Susan says the instinct to know whether an idea is worth years of work is “probably the single most important” skill you can develop, whether you’re writing a book or building a business. When a new idea hits, she does not jump in immediately; instead she “pushes it away,” tries to forget it, and pays close attention to whether it keeps resurfacing and “nagging” at her as both a writer and a reader. She also normalizes doubt, explaining that losing faith in an idea mid-process is not automatically a sign to quit but a natural part of starting from zero and testing what you’re doing. The real challenge is learning to distinguish ordinary fear and laziness from the deeper realization that “this really isn’t as good an idea as I thought.”
Takeaway: When a new idea excites you, deliberately step back, see if it keeps coming back, and only then commit the time, money, and energy to build it.
2. Treat Your Creativity Like a Business
Even though she’s a New Yorker staff writer, Susan describes herself as “essentially self-directed and self-employed,” choosing each project the way a founder chooses what to build next. She spends months or years purely researching—interviewing, reading, and going deep—before she writes a single word, saying she must be “a student” of a topic before she earns the right to become “the teacher.” To avoid overwhelm, she types up her notes, transfers them to index cards, and then sets a strict daily quota of 1,000 words, comparing it to running exactly three miles instead of an undefined workout. That concrete metric “demystified” the work and kept her from sitting down to vaguely “write my book,” which she says is impossible.
Takeaway: Run your creative work like a business by defining clear tasks, building a repeatable system, and holding yourself to simple, concrete daily goals.
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