📝 Mateo Askaripour’s Writing Routine

"There are no rules to writing. Many people swear that there are, and that if you don’t follow them, you won’t be successful—but I call bullshit."

Author

Famous Writing Routines
March 17, 2024

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Mateo Askaripour is a Brooklyn-based author, best-known for his bestseller, Black Buck, his satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom at a successful startup.

I called myself a writer when I began pursuing writing seriously. Some people who have published books don’t feel comfortable calling themselves writers—imposter’s syndrome is real. But I came from a world where only the bold survived, so I took that energy into my journey as a writer, even though in the beginning, it may have been to my detriment.

The PEN Ten: An Interview with Mateo Askaripour | PEN America

When Mateo Askaripour first started writing in 2016, he was working as the director of sales development at a tech start-up. Inspired by the industry’s fast-moving energy and “fail fast” mentality, Askaripour took that energy and applied it to his passion.

“With this ‘fail fast’ mentality, paired with no formal writing training to speak of, I began to write, and I wrote fast,” he wrote in Lit Hub. Over the next three years, the Brooklyn author pumped out three manuscripts, writing over 300,000 words while living at his parent’s house in his childhood bedroom.

In an interview with The New York Times, Askaripour credits his former sales role — which had him making over 200 cold calls a day — in giving him the grit and stamina to pursue his writing dreams. “You’re calling Charles halfway across the country who doesn’t know you from Adam, and it’s your aim to get him on the phone, keep him on the phone and either get him to buy your product or set more time for a longer conversation later,” he explained.

The first two manuscripts didn’t get anywhere, but the third, Black Buck, which “follows Darren Vender, a Starbucks employee who joins a new tech company and quickly transforms into “Buck,” the company’s best salesman—and only Black salesman,” became a hit, earning rave reviews from publications like Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, Vulture, Elle, Vanity Fair, and plenty others.

Askaripour attributes the project’s success to his fast writing. “I began my third manuscript in January 2018. It took me about five months to complete the first draft, which came out to 160,708 words, eight months to work on a handful of other drafts before getting an agent, and roughly six months after that to get a book deal and some Hollywood movement,” he said.

“If I had hemmed and hawed, worrying myself over every little detail and listening to the prevailing advice that one needs to take time, years even, to produce a work of quality, I would have become stuck and likely have never published a book, or even completed my initial draft.”

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