Do the Work (6 page)
Authors: Steven Pressfield
Again, “What’s missing?”
The involvement of the crew! If Ahab is the only crazy person aboard and the crew meekly follows him, that’s no good. The men must become as obsessed as their captain.
A new scene. Ahab assembles the crew and forges new harpoons, made not for other whales but only to kill Moby Dick.
“Advance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let me touch the axis.” [Ahab pours the full voltage of his own electric hate, by the medium of his hand, into the lances of his three harpooneers.] “Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear … Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!”
That’s Why They Call It Rewriting, Part Two
Does the prior Ahab scenario sound far-fetched? Melville was a genius, you say; he could never fail to realize a character to the fullest on his first try.
Maybe. Probably. But if this didn’t happen to HM then, I promise you it happened to him other times. And it happened to a million other guys and gals, over and over and over.
No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash.
That’s why they call it rewriting.
The Point for Us
The point for you and me is that we have passed through hell. We have worked our problem.
We have solved it.
We have escaped from the belly of the beast.
Killer Instinct
Why does Seth Godin place so much emphasis on “shipping”?
Because finishing is the critical part of any project. If we can’t finish, all our work is for nothing.
When we ship, we declare our stuff ready for prime time. We pack it in a FedEx box and send it out into the world. Our movie hits the screens, our smart phone arrives in the stores, our musical opens on Broadway.
It takes balls of steel to ship.
Here’s a true nugget from
The War of Art:
I had a good friend who had labored for years and had produced an excellent and deeply personal novel. It was done. He had it in its mailing box, complete with cover letter to his agent. But he couldn’t make himself send it off. Fear of rejection unmanned him.
Shipping is not for the squeamish or the faint of heart. It requires killer instinct. We’ve got the monster down; now we have to drive a stake through its heart.
Hamlet and Michael Crichton
How hard is it to finish something? The greatest drama in the English language was written on this very subject. Hamlet knows he must kill his uncle for murdering his father. But then he starts to think—and the next thing you know, the poor prince is so self-befuddled, he’s ready to waste himself with a bare bodkin.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
When Michael Crichton approached the end of a novel (so I’ve read), he used to start getting up earlier and earlier in the morning. He was desperate to keep his mojo going. He’d get up at six, then five, then three-thirty and two-thirty, till he was driving his wife insane.
Finally he had to move out of the house. He checked into a hotel (the Kona Village, which ain’t so bad) and worked around the clock till he’d finished the book.
Michael Crichton was a pro.
He knew that Resistance was strongest at the finish. He did what he had to do, no matter how nutty or unorthodox, to finish and be ready to ship.
Fear of Success
I’ve never read anything better on the subject than this from Marianne Williamson:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Heaven and Books About Heaven
Have you seen this great New Yorker cartoon:
A perplexed person stands before two doors. One door says HEAVEN. The other says BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN.
What makes us laugh, I suspect, is that all of us feel the pull to pick BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN.
Are we that timid? Are our
huevos
that
pocito
?
When we’re offered a chance at heaven, what diabolically craven force makes us want to back off—just for now, we promise ourselves—and choose instead heaven’s pale reflection?
Fear of success is the essence of Resistance.
It’s silent, covert, invisible … but it permeates every aspect of our lives and poisons them in ways we’re either blind to or in denial about.
In the belly of the beast, you and I chose HEAVEN. We’ve learned and we’re stronger. Now we face the final test.
Exposure
In mountaineering, there’s a technical term called “exposure.” A climber is exposed when there is nothing but thin air beneath her.
She can be a hundred feet from the summit of Everest and not be exposed, if there’s a ledge or a shelf below. Conversely, she can be in shorts and a tank top down at the beach, practice-climbing on a boulder ten feet tall, and be completely exposed—if there’s a fall beneath her.
When we ship, we’re exposed.
That’s why we’re so afraid of it. When we ship, we’ll be judged. The real world will pronounce upon our work and upon us. When we ship, we can fail. When we ship, we can be humiliated.
Here’s another true story:
The first professional writing job I ever had, after seventeen 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 were certain it was going to be a blockbuster. We invited everyone we knew to the premiere; we even rented out the joint next door for a post-triumph blowout.
Nobody showed. There was only one guy in line beside our guests, and he was muttering something about spare change. In the theater, our friends endured the movie in mute stupefaction. When the lights came up, they fled like cockroaches into the night.
Next day 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 multiplex. 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.
I was forty-two years old, having given up everything normal in life 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 going to quit. Hell, no! “Then be happy,” he said. “You’re where you wanted to be, aren’t you? So you’re taking a few blows. That’s the price for being in the arena 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.
When we ship, we open ourselves to judgment in the real world. Nothing is more empowering, because it plants us solidly on Planet Earth and gets us out of our self-devouring, navel-centered fantasies and self-delusions.
Ship it.
One Thing I Can Promise You
My personal
bête noire
of Resistance was shipping. When I was twenty-five, I had finished a novel 99.9 percent of the way. But I couldn’t pull the trigger. I lost my nerve.
At that time, I had no idea there was such a thing as Resistance. I believed the voices in my head. I acted out. I blew up my marriage and blew up my life, rather than plunge a sword into the heart of that book and ship it.
It took me seven more years before I found the courage to face that dragon again—and another ten years after that before I had finally learned how to lay him out.
Here’s one thing I can tell you—and you can take this to the bank:
Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again.
Yeah, he’ll still be there. Yeah, you’ll still have to duel him every morning. And yeah, he’ll still fight just as hard and use just as many nasty tricks as he ever did.
But you will have beaten him once, and you’ll know you can beat him again. That’s a game-changer. That will transform your life.
From the day I finally finished something, I’ve never had trouble finishing anything again.
I always deliver. I always ship.
Be Careful
Just because you’ve shipped doesn’t mean Resistance is finished. Like the Terminator, it’s morphing into an even crueler and more diabolical form. It’ll be back.
This is a topic for another book: the level of maturity, professionalism, and personal involvement demanded by the tectonic overthrows happening today in positioning, branding, marketing—not to mention pure art and soul-authenticity. But that’s for the future.
For now: congratulations!
You have done it!
Kudos to You
You’ve wrapped. You’ve shipped. You’ve licked this sonofabitch.
Kudos to you!
I salute anybody who took this vessel to sea and brought her safely again into port.
I stand in awe of anyone who hatches a dream and who shows the guts to hang tough, all alone, and see it through to reality.
I tip my hat to you for what you’ve done—for losing forty pounds, for kicking crack cocaine, for surviving the loss of someone you love, for facing any kind of adversity—internal or external—and slogging through. I come to attention when you walk past. I stand up for you like the spectators in the gallery stood up for Atticus Finch in
To Kill A Mockingbird
.
If no one has congratulated you, I do that now.
You have joined an elite fraternity, whether you realize it or not.
By dint of your efforts and your perseverance, you have initiated yourself into an invisible freemasonry whose members are awarded no badges or insignia, share no secret handshake, and wear no funny-looking hats.
But the fellows of this society recognize one another. I recognize you. I salute you.
You can be proud of yourself. You’ve done something that millions talk about but only a handful actually perform. And if you can do it once, you can do it again.
I don’t care if you fail with this project. I don’t care if you fail a thousand times.
You have done what only mothers and gods do: you have created new life.
Start (Again) Before You’re Ready
I was living in a little town in northern California when I finally, after seventeen years of trying, finished my first novel. I drove over to my friend and mentor Paul Rink’s house and told him what I had done. “Good for you,” he said. “Now start the next one.”
That’s what I say now to you.
Take the rest of the day off. Take your wife or husband out to dinner. Pop some champagne. Give yourself a standing ovation.
Then get back to work. Begin the next one tomorrow.
Stay stupid.
Trust the soup.
Start before you’re ready.
