# Neal Stephenson does his best writing in the first two hours

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/neal-stephenson-does-his-best-writing-in-the-first-two-hours/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Neal Stephenson](https://realalpha.app/people/neal-stephenson/) · Author & co-founder, Lamina1 · Author of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age who coined 'metaverse' and co-founded Lamina1, an open-metaverse blockchain.
- Host: [Aditya Agarwal](https://realalpha.app/people/aditya-agarwal/) · General partner, South Park Commons · One of Facebook's first engineers, he helped build its first search engine; later CTO of Dropbox.
- Show: Minus One
- Episode: [AGI, Sci-Fi, & Storytelling | Neal Stephenson, Ken Liu, Cyan Banister, & Joscha Bach](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/), May 21, 2025
- Moment: 40:14 to 44:18 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/neal-stephenson-does-his-best-writing-in-the-first-two-hours/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=2414

## Quote

> “whatever I wrote in the **first hour or maybe two** hours was pretty good and everything else was shit.”
> — [Neal Stephenson](https://realalpha.app/people/neal-stephenson/) at [41:10](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=2470) · Minus One

## Takeaways

1. He found forced eight-hour writing mostly unproductive.
2. He switched to unrelated practical tasks so ideas could develop in the background.
3. Ken Liu and Cyan Banister rely on play, conversations, and exploration.

## About this segment

Neal Stephenson says his best writing came in the first hour or two, then he switched to practical work. Ken Liu and Cyan Banister also describe play and exploration as part of their creative process.

From “AGI, Sci-Fi, & Storytelling | Neal Stephenson, Ken Liu, Cyan Banister, & Joscha Bach”, May 21, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[40:17](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=2417) us. And we're clearly interested in this boundary between sci-fi and reality and the interplay between the two. And everyone on this panel has experience writing or thinking in public or and in industry. You know, Ken, you've spent time as a software engineer, as a lawyer. Neil, you went from writing to Blue Origin. Now you co-founded your own startup. What are some of the parallels and perpendiculars between the life of an author, you know, prototypically secluded and, you know, channeling the forces of the universe versus being a founder and doing stuff with other people?

[40:56](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=2456) Neil, why don't you get us started? I mean, for me, I can only speak for myself, right? So I figured out very early in my career that if I sort of applied the Protestant work ethic and forced myself to write eight hours a day that whatever I wrote in the first hour or maybe two hours was pretty good and everything else was shit. And it was shit that was organically connected to the good stuff I'd written in the beginning of the day so there's no way to disentangle it.

[41:31](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=2491) And so I realized that I had to stop at a certain point every morning and then go do something completely unrelated to allow some kind of mysterious background process to work in my head such that the next morning when I got up, I would somehow mysteriously be able to write effectively for an hour or two. So I started working on various kinds of practical things. I did construction work. I did a bunch of stuff but coming from a kind of geek science engineering background it tended more and more towards programming and space stuff and and so that has just been my my pattern ever since then it's kind of a marriage of convenience between two things that that I like to do and it It kind of doesn't make any sense outside of that framework, but it continues to work for me.

[42:38](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=2558) Yeah, that resonates with me a lot. I mean, I agree, Neil. I think this whole idea of when you start out as an author, I think there's a lot of advice given to you about how the most important thing you should do is to just sit in a chair and type, which is nonsense, actually. It's terrible advice. It's terrible advice. I sort of enjoy my job because it's extremely playful. I mean, a lot of my time is spent on going to scientific conferences, listening to scientists, or talking to people who make video games, interviewing people randomly, just having conversations, or just walking around and not really thinking very hard about anything.

[43:21](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=2601) All that stuff ends up being incredibly useful and relevant in terms of coming up with interesting stories. But, you know, if I could see the eight-year-old me and explain that one day my job will be to play as much as I could, I would just die of joy. I mean, that is my job. I don't know how many other jobs there are that don't like that. It's great. Yeah, I mean, I think about that all the time because my job is pure play.

[43:50](https://realalpha.app/v/J7FN53FqB1U/?t=2630) And my partners will tell you that my schedule doesn't look like anyone else's, especially other GPs at other firms, because I do love to immerse myself in worlds. around and talk to people and go on road trips and go to conferences that have nothing to do with anything, you know, that I have to do specifically to try to figure out where people are going. You know, what is the next frontier? And I'm just incredibly grateful to be able to do