Jake Tapper on how to embrace rejection and the 15-minute-a-day trick that helped him finish his latest book
- Dan Schawbel is a bestselling author, speaker, and host of "5 Questions with Dan Schawbel."
- In a recent episode, he spoke with journalist and CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
- Tapper discussed his new novel, "The Devil May Dance," and shared his best career advice.
Jake Tapper started his career as a campaign press secretary before transitioning to journalism and is now the host of "Take the Lead with Jake Tapper" on CNN. Aside from hosting a weekly TV show, he's authored several books, including his latest novel "The Devil May Dance." During our conversation, Tapper talked about his experience as a press secretary, his writing routine, his new book, and his best career advice.
What experience did you gain as a press secretary early in your career that helped you transition to become a successful journalist?
I was a press secretary very briefly, for a couple years in my early 20s. I wasn't very good at it and I'm not particularly ideological or partisan. But I will say that seeing how the government actually works from the inside out, and seeing how much it's about alliances and power and compromise, is very informative.
And honestly, I recommend that if you're young and you don't know what to do with your life, go into government just to see what it looks like and how it works. That may inform you for whatever you want to do next, whether it's journalism or being a lawyer or a lobbyist or a politician, or fleeing that world altogether.
How do you manage your time between covering politics on CNN and writing fiction books?
If you want to be a writer, then you need to write. When I have committed to writing - meaning I've done the research and the rumination of what I want to write about - I commit to writing 15 minutes a day. Everybody can find 15 minutes in a day, and if that's all you do, by the end of the week you've got an hour and 45 minutes under your belt. It's really just a commitment to yourself the same way that you would commit to doing sit-ups five days a week.
Also, writing is not necessarily about page numbers. If you're writing fiction, you may have a dilemma or problem to solve and you're trying to figure something out. So setting a goal to write three pages wouldn't work as well for me as committing to do 15 minutes. And hopefully within that period, I'll have figured something out.
You've now written two books. In what ways do "The Hellfire Club" and "The Devil May Dance" reflect our current political system, the media world and the issues we face as a society?
In "The Hellfire Club," which takes place in the 1960s, my hero Charlie Marder is a Congressman who comes to DC with his wife, Margaret. The book is about something that I witnessed a lot as a journalist, which is that people come to Washington to do good, but Washington is a town where you have to make compromises.
And the question is, how many compromises are you willing to make? What are you willing to compromise about? And what happens when the compromises are the focus of your energy, instead of the good that you want to do? In other words, what happens when you end up being so focused on accruing power to achieve the good you want to do, that you no longer are focused on the good?
Similarly, my new book "The Devil May Dance" is about the people that one has to get in bed with (figuratively) to get ahead in life. It's inspired by the friendship between Frank Sinatra and John F. Kennedy. It raises the question, when you are willing to befriend or partner or do deals with somebody who has lower ethical or moral standards than you do, what does that do to you? And where do you draw your line? So those are the two themes and they're both very relevant today when it comes to Washington, DC.
Speaking of your new book, what was the process of turning factual events from the 1960s into setting and plot points for the book?
Because I deal in nonfiction day in and day out as a journalist, it's always a bit of a struggle to write fiction because you want to adhere to the facts, even though you're writing a novel that is a flight of fancy. Charlie Marder and Margaret Marder did not exist, so to have them interacting with Frank Sinatra was invented. But you also want to stay true to the reality of who Frank Sinatra was. I mean, he's not going to all of a sudden rip off his shirt and become Spider-Man.
The point is that as a novelist, I've had to find my own comfort level, and everybody's is different. You want it to feel real, like you're a fly on the wall hanging out with Sinatra and the Rat Pack, but at the same time you want people to have fun. I'm sure if you sat down and had dinner with the Rat Pack, not all of it would be fun. Ultimately, I have to present the most entertaining stuff for the reader and think about what they'll enjoy.
What's your best piece of career advice?
Do not be offended by rejection. So many of us have been rejected so many times on our way to success. It's part of the process. But a lot of young people are safely ensconced in high schools and colleges where they don't experience any rejection. And then all of a sudden, they're out in the real world and it hits them like a garbage truck in the middle of the street.
So remember that it's normal, it happens all the time. It sucks, but we all have been through it. Do not be hurt by it, and do not take it personally, even when it is personal.
And rejection can actually be a blessing in disguise. Before I became a journalist, when I was in my 20s and trying to figure out what to do with my life, I was in public relations because it fell in my lap. But I was horrible at it. For me, personally, I do not belong in PR - I was pursuing a career path that was the wrong one for me. There were jobs that I didn't get in public relations, and I'm glad that I did not succeed because then I would be unhappy and shackled to that work.