Stop Waiting to Be Chosen: Adam Skolnick on Writing, Power, and Finding the Edge

Executive overview

Most writers and creators stall while waiting for institutional validation — a publisher, an editor, a title. Adam Skolnick's path from freelance journalist to ghostwriter of David Goggins' memoirs to self-published novelist shows what happens when you stop waiting and claim the work yourself.

You don't need to be anointed — you just need to decide you already are.

• Obscure, under-reported stories are the entry point, not the consolation prize.
• Every rep counts, whether it's a press release, a knife review, or a guidebook.
• The external approval you're chasing is often less valuable than the position you already hold.

The trap of waiting to be chosen

• Skolnick couldn't get staff writer access, so he followed under-reported stories — necessity became his competitive edge.
• His career was organic, not analytical: follow the work, let the through-line emerge later.
• After years of NYT bylines and a Goggins memoir, major publishers still passed on his novel — it didn't fit categories.
• A conversation with Julie Piatt crystallised it: he was waiting to be called a novelist instead of just being one.
• Jane Austen self-published Sense and Sensibility. Dickens paid for A Christmas Carol. The "safe" path is a story we invented.
• Not fitting a category is a disadvantage for packagers, not for readers.

Getting reps and doing the work

• Say yes to everything early on — knife reviews, press releases, store-opening copy, guidebook entries.
• You're not writing for the outcome; you're getting better at the craft.
• The book you're writing now is practice for a book you can't yet conceive.
• Care completely in the moment; hold the long view in the background.
• Handwriting forces re-engagement — retyping a passage is almost always improving it.
• Reading aloud for audio reveals what the page hides; the two formats can and should diverge.

Power and unintended consequences

• Political power, not merit, determines what gets built, preserved, or destroyed — Robert Moses vs. Jane Jacobs illustrates both sides.
• Owens Lake: one man's political will drained a Lake Tahoe-scale body of water into a toxic dust bowl.
• Good intentions produce messes; so do the over-corrections that follow.
• Truman read Plutarch for political solutions — the same personality types keep doing the same things across millennia.
• Eisenhower's hidden-hand approach: never address opponents by name, maneuver behind the scenes, stay clean.
• Weak power condemns from the podium; strong power moves without announcing itself.

The archetype of finding the edge

• Skolnick's subjects — ultra runners, free divers, wing suit jumpers — share one through-line: there is more to this life than you allow yourself to know.
• Breaking through the perceived limit (Goggins' 40% rule) produces euphoria that pulls people back repeatedly.
• Motivations vary: meditative breakthrough for ultra runners, empowerment against sexism for Lakpa Sherpa, life meaning for free diver Olenka Artnek.
• These athletes aren't chasing glory or money — they're chasing the purity of "can I do it?"
• Personal power is not dominance over others; it's the capacity to feel good about your own life.

On American Tiger and what great books do

• The novel is based on a true story Skolnick reported for the LA Weekly: an escaped tiger rumored to be prowling Simi Valley.
• Redacted government files forced a pivot to fiction — the constraint became creative freedom.
• What makes it work, and what all great books do: wrestle with the fundamental question of what it means to be alive.
• Marcus Aurelius didn't intend to write a book; for 500 years it wasn't one — category resistance is not a quality problem.