DEFINING THE ENEMY
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life
within us. Between the two stands Resistance. Have you ever brought
home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever resolved
on a diet, a course of yoga, and then quit on it? Are you a writer
who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur
who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.
Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root
of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and dysfunction.
Resistance is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a
locomotive, harder to kick than crack cocaine. We’re not alone if
we’ve been mown down by Resistance; millions of good men and women
have bitten the dust before us. And here’s the biggest problem: We
don’t even know what hit us. I never did. From age 24 to 32,
Resistance kicked my ass from East Coast to West and back again 13
times, and I never even knew it existed. I looked everywhere for the
enemy and failed to see it right in front of my face.
Look into your own heart. Even though you’ve only read a few
paragraphs into this article, unless I’m crazy, right now a still,
small voice is piping up, telling you as it has 10 thousand times,
the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to
tell you. And unless I’m crazy, you’re no closer to taking action
on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow. You think
Resistance isn’t real? Resistance will bury you!
You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At 18 he took his
inheritance, 700 kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study. He
applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of
Architecture. Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I.
Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement, but I’ll say it anyway:
It was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to
face a blank square of canvas.
Are you with me? Okay. Let’s start by defining the
characteristics of Resistance.
RESISTANCE IS INVISIBLE
Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can
be felt. It is experienced as a force field emanating from a
work-in-potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. Its
intention is to shove the creator away, distract him, sap his energy,
incapacitate him.
If Resistance wins, the venture doesn’t get started.
RESISTANCE IS INTERNAL
Resistance
seems to come from outside ourselves. We
locate it in spouses, jobs, bosses, kids, distractions. “Peripheral
opponents,” as Pat Riley used to say when he coached the Los
Angeles Lakers. Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance
arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated.
Resistance is the enemy within.
RESISTANCE IS IMPLACABLE
Resistance is like the Alien or the Terminator or the shark in
Jaws. It cannot be reasoned with. It is an engine of
destruction, programmed from the factory with one object only: to
prevent us from doing our work. Resistance is implacable,
intractable, indefatigable. Reduce it to a single cell, and that cell
will continue to attack. This is Resistance’s nature. It’s all it
knows.
RESISTANCE PLAYS FOR KEEPS
Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to
kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul,
the unique and priceless gift we were put on this earth to give and
that no other individual has but us. Resistance means business. When
we fight it, we are in a war to the death.
RESISTANCE IS INFALLIBLE
Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance
will unfailingly point to true north — meaning that calling or
action it most wants to stop us from doing.
We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by
Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we
must follow before all others.
Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our
soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward realizing
it.
RESISTANCE NEVER SLEEPS
The actor Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each curtain,
even when he was 75. In other words, fear doesn’t go away. The
warrior and the artist live by the same code of honor, which declares
that the battle must be fought anew every day.
RESISTANCE IS FUELED BY FEAR
Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it
possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it.
Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.
RESISTANCE RECRUITS ALLIES
Resistance by definition is self-sabotage. But there’s a
parallel peril that must also be guarded against — sabotage by
others.
When a writer begins to overcome her Resistance, in other words
when she actually starts to write, she may find that those close to
her begin acting strangely. They may become moody or sullen; they may
get sick; they may accuse the awakening writer of “changing,” of
“not being the person she was.” The closer these people are to
the awakening writer, the more bizarrely they will act and the more
emotion they will put behind their acts.
They are trying to sabotage her.
The reason is that they are struggling, consciously or
unconsciously, against their own Resistance. The awakening writer’s
success becomes a reproach to them. If
she can beat these
demons, why can’t they?
The awakening artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but
with others. Once you make your break, you can’t turn back for your
buddy who catches his trouser leg on the barbed wire. The best and
only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an
example and an inspiration.
RESISTANCE & SELF-DRAMATIZATION
Creating soap opera in our lives is a symptom of Resistance. Why
put out years of hard work designing a new software interface when
you can get just as much attention by bringing home a boyfriend with
a prison record?
Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture
of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grownups arm the
phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode
to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of
drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up.
Dad gets drunk; Mom gets sick; Janie shows up for church with an
Oakland Raiders tattoo. It’s more fun than a movie. And it works:
Nobody gets a darn thing done.
RESISTANCE & PROCRASTINATION
Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance
because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves,
“I’m never going to write my symphony.” Instead we say, “I
am
going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.”
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can
become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them
off till our deathbed.
Never forget: This very moment we can change our lives. There
never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power
to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on
Resistance.
This second we can sit down and do our work.
RESISTANCE & SELF-DOUBT
Self-doubt can be an ally. Because it serves as an indicator of
something unseen, something in the soul. It reflects love, love of
the work, and desire, desire to do it. If you find yourself asking
yourself (and your friends), “Can I really be an entrepreneur? Am I
really a writer?,” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator
is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
RESISTANCE & FEAR
Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good.
Like self-doubt, it’s an indicator. Fear tells you what you have to
do.
Rule of thumb: The more scared you are of a work or a calling, the
more sure you can be that you have to do it. Remember, Resistance
feeds off fear; Resistance is experienced as fear. The degree of fear
equates to the strength of Resistance.
Therefore, the more fear you feel about a specific enterprise, the
more important that enterprise is to you and to the growth of your
soul. That’s why there is so much Resistance. If it meant nothing
to you, there’d be no Resistance.
So if you are paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows
you what you have to do.
RESISTANCE & ‘HEALING’
Have you ever spent time in Santa Fe? There’s a subculture of
“healing” there. Artists and aspiring artists are drawn there.
The concept seems to be that one needs to complete his healing before
he is ready to do his work. This way of thinking (are you ahead of
me?) is a form of Resistance.
What are we trying to heal anyway? The athlete knows the day is
never going to come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt.
Remember, the part of us that we imagine needs healing is not the
part we create from; that part is far deeper and stronger. The part
we create from can’t be touched by anything our parents did, or
society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof,
waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact the more troubles we’ve got,
the better and richer that part becomes.
I washed up in New York a couple of decades ago, making 20 bucks a
night driving a cab and running away full-time from doing my work.
One night alone in my $110-a-month sublet, I hit bottom in terms of
having diverted myself into so many phony channels so many times that
I couldn’t rationalize it for one more evening. I dragged out my
ancient Smith-Corona, dreading the experience as pointless,
fruitless, meaningless, not to say the most painful exercise I could
think of. For two hours I made myself sit there, torturing out some
trash that I chucked immediately into the trash can. That was enough.
I put the machine away. I went back to the kitchen. In the sink sat
10 days of dishes. For some reason I had enough excess energy that I
decided to wash them. The warm water felt pretty good. The soap and
sponge were doing their thing. A pile of clean plates began rising in
the drying rack. To my amazement I realized I was whistling.
It hit me that I had turned a corner. I was okay. I would be okay
from here on.
Do you understand? I hadn’t written anything good. It might be
years before I would, if I ever would at all. That didn’t matter.
What counted was that I had, after years of running from it, actually
sat down and
done my work. That night
I had beaten
Resistance
.
RESISTANCE & RATIONALIZATION
Rationalization is Resistance’s right-hand man. Its job is to
keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what
cowards we are for not doing our work. But rationalization has its
own sidekick. It’s that part of our psyche that actually believes
what rationalization tells us.
It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing
to believe it.
Resistance is fear. But Resistance is too cunning to show itself
naked in this form. Why? Because if Resistance lets us see clearly
that our own fear is preventing us from doing our work, we may feel
shame at this. And shame may drive us to act in the face of fear.
Resistance doesn’t want us to do this. So it brings in
rationalization. Rationalization is Resistance’s spin doctor.
Instead of showing us our fear (which might shame us and impel us to
do our work), Resistance presents us with a series of plausible,
rational justifications for why we shouldn’t do our work.
What’s particularly insidious about the rationalizations that
Resistance presents to us is that a lot of them are true. They’re
legitimate. Our wife really is in her eighth month; she really does
need us at home. Our department really is instituting a changeover
that will eat up hours and hours of our time. What Resistance leaves
out, of course, is that they all mean diddly. Tolstoy had 13 kids and
wrote War and Peace. Lance Armstrong had cancer and won the Tour de
France six years and counting.
COMBATING RESISTANCE: TURNING PRO: PROFESSIONALS & AMATEURS
Aspiring achievers defeated by Resistance share one trait. They
all think like amateurs. They have not yet turned pro.
The moment an achiever turns pro is as epochal as the birth of his
first child. With one stroke, everything changes. Nothing is the
same. I can state absolutely that the term of my life can be divided
into two parts: before turning pro and after.
To be clear: When I say professional, I don’t mean doctors and
lawyers, those of “the professions.” I mean the professional as
an ideal. The professional in contrast to the amateur. Consider the
differences.
The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps.
To the amateur, the game is his avocation. To the pro, it’s his
vocation.
The amateur plays part-time; the professional, full-time.
The amateur is a weekend warrior. The professional is there seven
days a week.
The word
amateur comes from the Latin root
amare,
meaning “to love.” The conventional interpretation is that the
amateur pursues his calling out of love, while the pro does it for
money. Not the way I see it. In my view, the amateur does not love
the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline,
distinct from his real vocation.
The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He
commits full-time.
That’s what I mean when I say “turning pro.”
Resistance hates it when we turn pro.
A PROFESSIONAL
Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or
only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration
strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at
nine sharp.”
That’s a pro.
In terms of Resistance, what Maugham was saying was, “I despise
Resistance; I will not let it faze me; I will sit down and do my
work.”
Maugham reckoned another, deeper truth: that by performing the
mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, he set in
motion a mysterious but infallible chain of events that would produce
inspiration, as surely as if the goddess had synchronized her watch
with his.
Now let’s consider: What are the aspects of the professional?
WE’RE ALL PROS ALREADY
All of us are pros in one area: our jobs. We get a paycheck. We
work for money. We are professionals.
Now, are there principles we can take from what we’re already
successfully doing in our workaday life and apply to our artistic
aspirations? What exactly are the qualities that define us as
professionals?
-
We show up every day. We might
do it only because we have to, to keep from getting fired. But we do
it. We show up every day.
-
We show up no matter what. In
sickness and in health, come hell or high water, we stagger in to
the factory. We might do it only so as not to let down our
co-workers, or for other, less noble reasons. But we do it. We show
up no matter what.
-
We stay on the job all day. Our
minds may wander, but our bodies remain at the wheel. We pick up the
phone when it rings; we assist the customer when he seeks our help.
We don’t go home till the whistle blows.
-
We are committed over the long
haul. We may go to another job, another company, another country.
But we’ll still be working. Until we hit the lottery, we are part
of the labor force.
-
The stakes for us are high and
real. This is about survival, feeding our families, educating our
children. It’s about eating.
-
We accept remuneration for our
labor. We’re not here for love. We work for money.
-
We do not overidentify with our
jobs.
We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come
in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job
descriptions.
The amateur, on the other hand, overidentifies
with his avocation, his artistic aspiration. He defines himself by
it. He is an entrepreneur, a musician, a painter, a playwright.
Resistance loves this. Resistance knows that the amateur
composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested
in its success. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him.
-
We master the technique of our
jobs.
-
We have a sense of humor about
our jobs.
-
We receive praise or blame in the real world.
Now consider the amateur: the aspiring painter, the wannabe
playwright. How does he pursue his calling?
One, he does not show up every day. Two, he doesn’t show up no
matter what. Three, he doesn’t stay on the job all day. He is not
committed over the long haul; the stakes for him are illusory and
fake. He does not get money. And he overidentifies with his dream. He
does not have a sense of humor about failure. You don’t hear him
bitching, “This @#$$%& trilogy is killing me!” Instead he
doesn’t write his trilogy at all.
The amateur has not mastered the technique of his art. You can
tell this by how readily he offers instruction. The fool knows
everything.
Nor does he expose himself to judgment in the real world. If you
show your poem to your friend and your friend says, “It’s
wonderful; I love it,” that’s not real-world feedback; that’s
your friend being nice to you. Nothing is as empowering as real-world
validation, even if it’s for failure. That’s how it was for me.
The first professional writing job I ever had, after 17 years of
trying, was on a movie called
King Kong Lives. I and my
partner-at-the-time, Ron Shusett (a brilliant writer and producer who
also did
Alien and
Total Recall), hammered out the
screenplay for Dino De Laurentiis. We loved it; we were sure we had a
hit. Even after we’d seen the finished film, we were certain it was
gonna be a smash. We invited everyone we knew to the premiere, even
rented out the joint next door for a post-triumph blowout. “Get
there early,” we warned our friends. “The place’ll be mobbed.”
Nobody showed. There was only one guy in line besides our guests,
and he was muttering something about spare change. In the theater,
our friends watched the movie in mute stupefaction. When the lights
came up, they fled like cockroaches into the night.
Next came the review in
Variety. ” … Ronald Shusett
and Steven Pressfield; we hope these are not their real names, for
their parents’ sake.” When the first week’s grosses came in,
the flick barely registered. Still, I clung to hope. Maybe it’s
only tanking in urban areas; maybe it’s playing better in the
burbs. I motored to an Edge City megaplex. A youth manned the popcorn
booth. “How’s
King Kong Lives?” I asked. He flashed
thumbs-down. “Miss it, man. It sucks.”
I was crushed. Here I was, 42 years old, divorced, childless,
having given up all normal human pursuits to pursue the dream of
being a writer; now I’ve finally got my name on a big-time
Hollywood production starring Linda Hamilton, and what happens? I’m
a loser, a phony, my life is worthless and so am I.
My friend Tony Keppelman snapped me out of it by asking if I was
gonna quit. Hell, no! “Then be happy. You’re where you wanted to
be, aren’t you? So you’re taking a few blows. That’s the price
for being on the field and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and
be grateful.”
That was when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a
success. But I had had a real failure.
A PROFESSIONAL IS PATIENT
Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book:
It uses her own enthusiasm against her.
Resistance gets us to
plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable
for its completion. It knows we can’t sustain that level of
intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.
The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed
gratification. She is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not
the hare. Have you heard the legend of Sylvester Stallone staying up
three nights straight to churn out the first
Rocky? I don’t
know, it may even be true. But it’s the most pernicious species of
myth to set before the awakening success, because it seduces him into
believing he can pull off the big score without pain and without
persistence.
The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the
stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming
out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it’s a
novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and
costs twice as much.
The professional steels himself at the start of a project,
reminding himself it is the Iditarod, not the 60-yard dash. He
prepares his mind for the long haul. He conserves his energy. He
sustains himself with the knowledge that if he can keep those huskies
mushing, sooner or later the sled will pull in to Nome.
A PROFESSIONAL SEEKS ORDER
When I lived in the back of my Chevy van, I had to find my
typewriter beneath layers of tire tools, dirty laundry, and moldering
paperbacks. My truck was a nest, a hive, a hellhole on wheels whose
sleeping surface I had to clear each night just to carve out a
foxhole to snooze in.
The professional cannot live like that. He is on a mission. He
will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in
order to banish it from his mind. He wants the carpet vacuumed and
the threshold swept so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.
A PROFESSIONAL ACTS IN THE FACE OF FEAR
The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can
do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.
He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a fearless
artist.
What Henry Fonda does, after puking into the toilet in his
dressing room, is to clean up and march out onstage. He’s still
terrified, but he forces himself forward in spite of his terror. He
knows that once he gets into the action, his fear will recede and
he’ll be okay.
A PROFESSIONAL ACCEPTS NO EXCUSES
The amateur, underestimating Resistance’s cunning, permits the
flu to keep him from his chapters; he believes the serpent’s voice
in his head that says mailing off that manuscript is more important
than doing the day’s work.
The professional has learned better. He respects Resistance. He
knows if he caves in today, no matter how plausible the pretext,
he’ll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow.
The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if
you so much as say hello, you’re finished. The pro doesn’t even
pick up the phone. He stays at work.
A PROFESSIONAL PLAYS IT AS IT LAYS
My friend the Hawk and I were playing the first hole at Prestwick
in Scotland; the wind was howling out of the left. I started an
eight-iron 30 yards wide, but the gale caught it; I watched in dismay
as the ball sailed hard right, hit the green going sideways, and
bounded off into the cabbage. “@#$$%&!” I turned to our
caddie, “Did you see the wind take that shot!?”
He gave that look that only Scottish caddies can give. “Well,
ye’ve got t’ play th’ wind now, don’t ye?”
The professional conducts his business in the real world.
Adversity, injustice, bad hops, and rotten calls, even good breaks
and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign
must be waged.
The field is level, the professional
understands, only in heaven.
A PROFESSIONAL IS PREPARED
I’m not talking about craft; that goes without saying. The
professional is prepared at a deeper level. He is prepared, each day,
to confront his own self-sabotage.
The professional understands that Resistance is fertile and
ingenious. It will throw stuff at him that he’s never seen before.
The professional prepares mentally to absorb blows and to deliver
them. His aim is to take what the day gives him. His goal is not
victory (success will come by itself when it wants to) but to handle
himself, his insides, as sturdily and steadily as he can.
A PROFESSIONAL DEDICATES HIMSELF TO MASTERING TECHNIQUE
The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself
superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have
gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.
The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not
because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but
because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills
when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. He knows that by
toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius
to enter by the back.
A PROFESSIONAL DOES NOT TAKE FAILURE (OR SUCCESS)
PERSONALLY
When people say the professional has a thick skin, what they mean
is not that the person is dense or numb, but that he has seated his
professional consciousness in a place other than his personal ego. It
takes tremendous strength of character to do this, because our
deepest instincts run counter to it. Evolution has programmed us to
feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe enforced obedience,
by wielding the threat of expulsion.
Resistance knows this and uses it against us. It uses fear of
rejection to paralyze us and prevent us, if not from doing our work,
then from exposing it to public evaluation. I had a dear friend who
had labored for years on an excellent and deeply personal novel. It
was done. He had it in its mailing box. But he couldn’t make
himself send it off. Fear of rejection unmanned him.
The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so
reinforces Resistance. Editors are not the enemy; critics are not the
enemy. Resistance is the enemy. The battle is inside our own heads.
We cannot let external criticism, even if it’s true, fortify our
internal foe. That foe is strong enough already.
The professional loves her work. She is invested in it
wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her
artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the
next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one
after that better still.
A PROFESSIONAL ENDURES ADVERSITY
I had been in Tinseltown five years, had finished nine screenplays
on spec, none of which had sold. Finally I got a meeting with a big
producer. He kept taking phone calls, even as I pitched my stuff. He
had one of those headset things, so he didn’t even have to pick up
a receiver; the calls came in and he took them. Finally one came that
was personal. “Would you mind?” he asked, indicating the door, “I
need some privacy on this one.” I exited. The door closed behind
me. Ten minutes passed. I was standing out by the secretaries. Twenty
more minutes passed. Finally the producer’s door opened; he came
out pulling on his jacket. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
He had forgotten all about me.
I’m human. This hurt. I wasn’t a kid either; I was in my 40s,
with a rap sheet of failure as long as your arm.
The professional cannot let himself take humiliation personally.
Humiliation, like rejection and criticism, is the external reflection
of internal Resistance.
The professional endures adversity. He lets the bird crap splash
down on his slicker, remembering that it comes clean with a
heavy-duty hosing. He himself, his creative center, cannot be buried,
even beneath a mountain of guano. His core is bulletproof. Nothing
can touch it unless he lets it.
I saw a fat, happy old guy once in his Cadillac on the freeway. He
had the A/C going, Pointer Sisters on the CD, puffing on a stogy. I
checked his license plate: DUES PD
The professional keeps his eye on the doughnut and not on the
hole. He reminds himself it’s better to be in the arena, getting
stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the
parking lot.
A PROFESSIONAL SELF-VALIDATES
The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his
reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer
will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that
he keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World
War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods.
Remember, Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It
wants us to stake our self-worth, our identity, our reason-for-being,
entirely on the response of others to our work. Resistance knows we
can’t take this. No one can.
The professional blows off the naysayers. He doesn’t even hear
them. Critics, he reminds himself, are the unconscious mouthpieces of
Resistance and as such can be truly clever and diabolical. They can
articulate in their criticisms the same pernicious venom that
Resistance itself concocts inside our heads. That is their real evil.
Not that we believe them, but that we believe the Resistance in our
own minds, for which critics serve as unwitting spokespersons.
The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to
take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most
that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
A PROFESSIONAL RECOGNIZES HER LIMITATIONS
She gets a lawyer, she gets an accountant, a manager, an agent, a
publicist. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing. She
brings in other pros and treats them with respect. She knows there’s
enough glory for everybody.
A PROFESSIONAL IS RECOGNIZED BY OTHER PROFESSIONALS
The professional senses who has served his time and who hasn’t.
Like Alan Ladd and Jack Palance circling each other in
Shane,
a gun recognizes another gun.
A CRITTER THAT KEEPS COMING
Why does Resistance yield to our turning pro? Because Resistance
is a bully. Resistance has no strength of its own; its power derives
entirely from our fear of it. A bully will back down before the
runtiest twerp who stands his ground.
The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its
demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else. The
ancient Spartans schooled themselves to regard the enemy, any enemy,
as nameless and faceless. In other words they believed that if they
did their work, no force on earth could stand against them. In
The
Searchers, (written by Frank S. Nugent), John Wayne and Jeffrey
Hunter pursue the war chief, Scar, who has kidnapped their young
kinswoman, played by Natalie Wood. Winter stops them, but Wayne’s
character, Ethan Edwards, does not slacken his resolve. He’ll
return to the trail in spring because he knows that, sooner or later,
the fugitive will relax his vigilance.
As Ethan says, “Seems he never learns there’s such a thing
as a critter that might just keep comin’ on. So we’ll find ‘em
in the end, I promise you that. Just as sure as the turning of the
earth.”
The pro keeps coming on. He beats Resistance at its own game by
being even more resolute and even more implacable than it is.
NO MYSTERY
There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought
about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as
pros and we do it. Simple as that.
WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO CONQUER RESISTANCE?
In my late 20s I rented a little house in Northern California; I
had come there to finish a novel or kill myself trying. By that time
I had blown up a marriage to a girl I loved with all my heart,
screwed up two careers, blah blah etc. all because (though I had no
understanding of this at the time) I could not handle Resistance. I
had one novel nine-tenths of the way through and another
ninety-ninehundredths before I threw them in the trash. I couldn’t
finish ‘em. I didn’t have the guts. In yielding thusly to
Resistance, I fell prey to every vice, evil, distraction, youname- it
mentioned heretofore, all leading nowhere, and finally washed up in a
sleepy little town, with my Chevy van, my cat Mo, and my manual
Remington (typewriter, not shotgun).
In my little house I had no TV. I never read a newspaper or went
to a movie. I just worked. One afternoon I was working away in the
little bedroom I had converted to an office, when I heard my
neighbor’s radio playing outside. Someone in a loud voice was
declaiming ” … to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution
of the United States.” I came out. What’s going on? “Didn’t
you hear? Nixon’s out; they got a new guy in there.”
I had missed Watergate completely.
I was determined to keep working. I had failed so many times, and
caused myself and people I loved so much pain thereby, that I felt if
I crapped out this time I would have to hang myself. I didn’t know
what Resistance was then. No one had schooled me in the concept. I
felt it though, big time. I experienced it as a compulsion to
self-destruct. I could not finish what I started. The closer I got,
the more different ways I’d find to screw it up.
I worked for 26 months straight, taking only two out for a stint
of migrant labor in Washington State, and finally one day I got to
the last page and typed out:
THE END
I never did find a buyer for the book. Or the next one either. It
was 10 years before I got the first check for something I had written
and 10 more before a novel,
The Legend of Bagger Vance, was
actually published, and later made into a major movie. But that
moment when I first hit the keys to spell out THE END was epochal. I
remember rolling the last page out and adding it to the stack that
was the finished manuscript. Nobody knew I was done. Nobody cared.
But I knew. I felt like a dragon I’d been fighting all my life had
just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath.
Rest in peace, you @#$$%&!
Next morning I went over to my friend’s for coffee and told him
I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up.
“Start the next one today.”
And that’s the way of Resistance … You can never truly conquer
Resistance … but you can win the day!
THE AUTHOR’S ‘WAR OF ART’
Steven recounts his own war with Resistance: In 1966, as a
$150-a-week copywriter for Benton & Bowles, one day while
rewriting the justadd- water text for the back label of Gravy Train
dog food, Mr. Pressfield asked himself, “Shouldn’t I be doing
something a little more worthwhile?” He decided to quit and write a
novel.
Big mistake. Within three years Mr. Pressfield was divorced,
broke, and living in a van down by the river. He drove cabs and
tended bar in New York, taught school in New Orleans, drove
tractortrailers in North Carolina and California, worked on oil rigs
in Louisiana, picked fruit in Washington State, and in general worked
all the jobs that writers work when they’re running away from
writing.
Somewhere in there he completed three novels, none of which saw
the light of publication. When the last one crashed and burned, in
New York in 1980, Mr. Pressfield was faced with a choice between
hanging himself and bolting for Tinseltown. The coin came up heads.
Over the next 15 years, Mr. Pressfield wrote or co-wrote 34
screenplays, several of which got made into extremely forgettable
movies. (Mr. Pressfield refuses to name them.) He did, however,
finally succeed in turning pro and becoming a worldrenowned author,
with such classics as
The Legend of Bagger Vance and Gates of
Fire, for which the city of Sparta made Mr. Pressfield an
honorary citizen.
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