The Lost Collaboration

I came across a YouTube video the other day called Survive 100 Days In Circle, Win $500,000 by Mr. Beast. The premise is as simple as the title. As long as the contestant doesn’t leave the circle for one hundred days, they receive $500,000. Mr. Beast sets up the contestant with a house full of food and various objects for the contestant to keep himself entertained with.

Of course, along the way, Mr. Beast brings in all sorts of surprises like a circus and even the contestant’s family for a morale boost (and to keep the video interesting and engaging throughout, I’m sure).

And then Mr. Beast plays tricks on our poor contestant. From destroying parts of the house he is staying in, to trying to scare the contestant with silent clowns that have surrounded the house, to even subjecting the contestant to crimes that seem like they’d be against the Geneva Convention such as playing non-stop alarm clock sounds to irritate him.

Throughout the video, it genuinely seems like this experience is taking a toll on the contestant. He’s going out of his mind in this little house and he misses his family. And who can blame him? I didn’t leave the house for months straight at the beginning of COVID in 2020. I had awful cabin fever. This poor guy doesn’t even get the comfort of his own home or the consistent presence of his family to make things easier on him. (Though, for some people, having family around all the time could make things even harder.)

But the contestant prevails in the end, successfully staying in the circle and claiming the life-changing prize money at the end of the video. This is a pretty typical format for Mr. Beast these days. Contestant must do x objective for x amount of time.

There was another video, $10,000 Every Day You Survive Prison, where the premise is exactly what it sounds like. The Beast Squad puts a guy in a room, gives him a bunch of stuff, and then the idea is to see how long he can last. It has all the typical twists and changes of the rules where they take away items from the room each day. Sort of forcing the guy’s hand into calling it quits once he has nothing left to entertain himself with.

But that’s the key.

In today’s digital age, most people can’t entertain themselves with nothing.

It got me thinking, which is a dangerous thing for me to be doing. In fact, I’m prohibited from thinking in Uzbekistan ever again, which is a story for another time.

If Mr. Beast fought fair, he didn’t stoop to psychological torture or anything like that. If the premise was just $10,000 a day until you give up and decide to leave the room, with Brandon Sanderson as the star of the show…

Who would win?

Mr. Beast? Or Brandon Sanderson?

Would Mr. Beast go bankrupt before Brandon Sanderson got cabin fever?

It’s hard for me to say. Mr. Beast made $54 million last year, so I don’t think he’s actually at risk of going bankrupt, even by paying Sanderson $10,000 a day (which comes out to $3,650,000 per year). I have every confidence in the YouTube star that he could continue to accrue a minimum of $10,000 a day to pay our captive author, indefinitely.

So the question becomes: How many days could Sanderson make it, how much money could he earn from this challenge before calling it quits? (Not counting any book revenue accrued by his writing during captivity.)

Sanderson has an impressive mental stamina and resilience, which I think stems from the thing that’s at the core of his hopes, dreams, and daily life: stories. Sanderson thinks about stories all day long, in basically every moment he can. I don’t have an exact episode with a timestamp as evidence for that, but I’m confident saying so after catching up on his podcast, Intentionally Blank, where listeners sometimes get an insight into the author’s mind and process.

Sanderson hates doing any repetitive task that takes up so much brainpower that he can’t think about stories while he does it. Like singing in a school choir, for instance. Whenever he can write, he writes. Whenever he can’t be writing, like when he gets haircuts, he thinks about stories. When he falls asleep at night, he tells himself stories. When he gets a root canal at the dentist, he’s thinking about story ideas.

And these are ideas he’ll probably never get to. When discussing the 19 minimum Cosmere books he has left to write Sanderson told Esquire, “But I do have to finish all this by the time I’m 70.” So he’s already jam-packed, stuck writing stories he’s outlined and knows exactly where they’re going to go, and doesn’t really have time to write anything new that springs to mind for him.

Which sounds like a nightmare for the typical author who bounces from new idea to new idea, often finding it difficult to pick just one.

That’s one of the things that made Sanderson’s Kickstarter so exciting. He was able to write a handful of new books he never thought he’d get to write, with time created by having to do less travelling and publicity during the COVID-19 pandemic. At least one good thing came out of everyone being stuck at home, I suppose!

(Sanderson’s love for writing is so famous, there’s no shortage of memes for it online.)

((The man is simply built different.))

So what if we could re-create the same scenario? Put Sanderson in a Mr. Beast video where he isn’t pestered by Mr. Beast’s cronies every few hours. Let him work in a room, undistracted, going about his day. They should even let Sanderson’s family come and visit him every day, because, of course, the man loves his family.

Now, this doesn’t sound like the most entertaining content. In fact, Sanderson writing for most of the day and only stopping to eat here and there is probably how most days for him go already. (Best believe I’d be abusing services like Doordash if I had the money and it would save me valuable writing time!) I respect Sanderson that his first hire was an assistant and editor. Mine would probably be a personal chef. Is there anything worse than trying to decide what to eat for three meals a day? Exhausting.

(Don’t come for me, I’m joking. I’m very lucky to be able to eat my three meals a day and to choose what they will be.)

So if putting Brandon in a Beast bubble (the alliteration was right there, I had to do it), is his normal day… Then it seems like the twists and Beast cronies are necessary for a video like this. That’s why Mr. Beast changes the rules and throws in twists during his other challenges, after all, to keep things interesting. To get that yung watch time up for the YouTube algorithm. But I don’t necessarily think the video has to have those twists. I think Sanderson’s fans would love to watch him in an environment like this, where we could see his routine each and every day.

Is there anything more inspiring than watching someone dedicated to their craft be dedicated to their craft?

I don’t think so.

Nothing gets me more hyped up to go write than listening to Sanderson talk about writing. Seriously.

I also recognize the content wouldn’t be good for Beast’s channel, but it could go up on Sanderson’s channel and still garner plenty of views and interest. Which wouldn’t contribute to Mr. Beast’s monetization efforts, but details, details, I’m sure they could work something out. Brand awareness this, brand awareness that. Not to mention, it wouldn’t be particularly hard for Mr. Beast to edit or film either without all the ridiculous twists and turns.

And, of course, Sanderson likely doesn’t need the $10,000 a day from Mr. Beast. They should donate the money to Sanderson’s own charity, the Lightweaver Foundation.

So, Mr. Beast. I know you’re reading this. You read all my blog posts and hang on my every word. Please lock up my favorite author in a room? Just for like… thirty days?

It makes everyone happy. Sanderson gets to write more. You get a new spin on your content with a new audience that is a famously rabid fanbase. You get to give money to charity, I know you can’t resist giving money away.

I’m even willing to compromise. We can have some ridiculous twists and punishments in the video. Here’s some free ideas of ways we can make my favorite author’s life harder:

The Anti-Writing Puppy Force (pictured left)

Unleash thirty Golden Retriever puppies into Sanderson’s enclosure and shut the door. All that adorable goodness vying for attention as Sanderson tries to maintain his productivity would be hilarious.

• Make him write suspended a hundred feet in the air.

• Set up a contraption that pies Sanderson in the face when he types a specific word.

  • I suggest “monumentous”. No, it’s not a real word. Sanderson’s editor has griped at him before for trying to combine monumental and momentous into one word in Sanderson’s manuscripts. At what point is he allowed to start creating words, though? It seems like someone with such an unbelievably high word count should be considered an expert in the English language at this point. I vote we let him make new words. But I’m getting off-topic.

• Give Sanderson a stockpile of food at the beginning of every week to last him the week (full of salty snacks, his favorite). Then, get his podcast co-host, Dan Wells, to coordinate and launch food heists for Sanderson to anticipate and attempt to thwart throughout the challenge.

• Have Sanderson outline a story, then get him and a stenographer to race to see who can write it first. (Stenographers are those people in court rooms with the fancy machines that let them type really fast. I don’t pretend to understand how they work at all.)

• Have a day where Sanderson is only allowed to continue writing after doing a kickflip with one of those Tech Deck finger skateboards. You’d think he’d have a pre-disposed talent to something like that given how much he uses his fingers every day, but there’s only one way to find out…

• Make an aggressive drill sergeant-like editor stand behind him and shout at him while he writes.

“You call that a semi-colon, Sanderson?! Tighten up that grammar! You misspelled a word in the third paragraph! You just typed a plot hole, what are you thinking?!”

Okay, maybe not that last idea.

This would also be amazing for Mr. Beast’s brand amongst the fantasy nerds and bookish folk. Not sure that he’d care, but giving Sanderson the time and space to get another extra book written? We’d be indebted to Mr. Beast for life. Best believe we’d be commenting, liking, and subscribing on every video he posted. Maybe even dinging that bell.

Do I sound greedy?

Last year we found out we were getting four extra novels from Sanderson, and now I want more extra novels?

Yeah, it’s pretty greedy.

But when you’re as good a storyteller as Sanderson is, you’re bound to curate a ravenous audience. And now that Sanderson has opened the Pandora’s Box of surprise novels, there’s no shutting it again… We won’t rest until we have more… We wants more, preciousssss…

As always, here’s your reward for reading. A picture of my pug, Gill-Mo.

One time he licked my Way of Kings leatherbound’s slipcase, and I can still see where he did it. I’ll never forgive him for that.

Little heathen.

I guess for anyone who doesn’t like dogs (what is wrong with you?), this picture also has my feet in it. So enjoy that too, ya weirdos.