Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 5

Resistance Comes Second

One of the key aspects of Resistance (self-doubt, fear, procrastination, perfectionism, self-sabotage) is that it never arises alone.

That negative voice in our head only comes in response to (and reaction against) a DREAM, i.e. the book we want to write, the film we dream of making, the business we want to start.

Resistance comes second.

The Dream comes first.

Resistance’s aim is to stop our dream, to get us to quit, to keep us from becoming the artist or person we were born to be.

Here’s the visual I use to help me see this:

Imagine a tree in the middle of a sunny meadow.

The instant the tree appears, its shadow appears with it.

The tree is our dream.

The shadow is Resistance.

If there were no tree, there would be no shadow.

How does it help us to understand this? Because when we see that shadow, i.e. when we hear the voice of Resistance in our heads—telling us we’re not good enough, we’ll never be able to succeed in actualizing our dream, etc.—we can be certain that THERE’S A TREE THERE.

In other words, our DREAM.

If we’re experiencing Resistance, that’s a good sign. Painful as it may be … and as formidable an opponent as it is … we can take courage from its appearance.

If there were no tree, there would be no shadow.

If there were no dream, there would be no Resistance.

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Leaving Something on the Table

When Shawn Coyne and I were first brainstorming the business concept behind Black Irish Entertainment, our two-man company that publishes The War of Art and its cousins, we wondered just how ambitious we wanted to be.

We decided, Not all that ambitious.

We agreed it would be okay to leave some money on the table.

California guv Jerry Brown and his Boss Machine, circa 1974

This may not be the smartest way to run a business. It’s certainly not the standard American model. By such a model, an entrepreneur would aim to milk every dollar they possibly could from their enterprise. They would scale it. They would max it out. They would take it to the moon.

Maybe I’m crazy but that concept had very little appeal to me.

As an example, if I wanted to take The War of Art “on the road,” I could do speaking gigs, I could produce courses, hold workshops, blah blah etc.

I have no interest in that whatsoever.

I’m happy with the books as books. I’m happy with the audios as audio.

I don’t want to drive myself crazy in order to vacuum up every possible dime.

Like I say, maybe I’m foolish. I feel the same way about “size of life” (if there is such a term.) It’s the American way, I know, when we hit a jackpot of any kind to immediately buy a fancy car, move to an upgraded neighborhood … in other words, to extend ourselves to the outer limits of our wherewithal.

I don’t believe in that either. I remember when Jerry Brown was governor of California—the first time—people used to make fun of him for driving around Sacramento in a state motor pool ’74 Plymouth Satellite. And his girlfriend at the time was Linda Ronstadt!

That’s the simple life. That’s living within your means. That’s my kind of governor.

P.S. For Holiday gifting, we’ve still got a few signed copies of THE DAILY PRESSFIELD … and even a few Special Gift Editions. And of course you can get the unsigned version at Amazon and other online retailers and the audiobook at Audible and other sites. Great for under the tree!

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Don’t WIP It

I’ll get notes sometimes from young writers, in which they’ll refer to their “WIP,” i.e. their work-in-progress.

My blood runs cold when I see that phrase.

It’s bad juju. It plants in the subconscious the notion that the book or movie we’re working on is “in progress.” In other words, it’s not finished. The implication (which the subconscious reads as reality) is it will ALWAYS be “in progress.”

My own bete noire for years was being unable to finish something. So I’m particularly sensitive to any nuance of self-brainwashing that plants that dastardly idea.

Here’s what I do instead.

I think of the project as already done. Even if I haven’t started yet. If you say to me, “C’mon, Steve, you haven’t even opened a new file!”, my response would be, “Yeah, true … I haven’t completed the formality of putting words on paper. But that’s just a matter of time and effort. The book is done.”

Do you remember the series of episodes on “Seinfeld” when Kramer was moving to Los Angeles?

Kramer, the ultimate New Yorker, was packing his stuff, getting set to make this previously-unthinkable move. I can’t remember if it was George (or possibly Newman) who put it to him, “Come on, Kramer, are you REALLY moving to L.A.?”

Kramer, if you recall, set his forefinger against his temple. “Up here,” he said, “I’m already gone.”

That should be our mindset. “Up here, I’m already done.”

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Whoever Your Parents and Teachers Told You You Were … You Aren’t.

I come from down in the valley,

where, Mister, when you’re young,

they bring you up to do

like your Daddy done.

These opening lines from Bruce Springsteen’s “The River,” describe with brutal accuracy the way most children are socialized—in all cultures, at all economic levels.

That ain’t the way the Artist’s Journey works.

You may have the same red hair and hazel eyes as your Mom or Dad, but who-you-are goes many levels deeper than physical DNA.

On your Artist’s Journey, you will produce the songs, movies, dances, and novels that will tell you who you really are.

Time, courage, and work will reveal the Self hidden within the Stone.

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Get to “I Love You” – Part 4

The “Get to ‘I love you'” principle works for tragic endings too. Even if the lovers are torn apart by fate or necessity, if we as storytellers can leave them with a moment where they declare their love, even if it’s silent or doomed … we’ve got something good.

The classic in this category is the ending of Casablanca, when Bogey puts Ingrid on the plane to Lisbon, giving up his shot at this love-of-his-life for the higher calling of freeing her (and her Resistance leader husband, played by Paul Henreid) to carry on their heroic work.

INGRID
But what about us?

BOGEY
We’ll always have Paris.

In other words, “I love you.”

Another great moment of this type is the final scene of the first Godfather. This one is all visual. No dialogue.

The moment takes place in the Don’s house in New Jersey. In the background, we see the new don, Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino), receiving the obeisance of his capos, who kiss his ring and address him as “Godfather” for the first time. In the foreground is Michael’s wife Kay, played by Diane Keaton, folding household laundry, willfully oblivious of the moment that is playing out behind her. One of the capos slowly closes the door to Michael’s office, shutting out Kay forever.

This is “I love you” in its most heartbreaking and emotionally powerful forms.

No wonder AFI has Casablanca at #2 on its all-time list and The Godfather at #3. (Citizen Kane edged them both out.)

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Get to “I Love You” – Part 3

It doesn’t have to be romantic lovers to make this storytelling principle work. It can be friends. It can be enemies.

After the final bloodbath sequence in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, Deke Thornton (played by Robert Ryan), who had been pursuing the outlaw band throughout the movie, comes upon the shot-to-hell corpse of the Bunch’s leader, Pike (played by William Holden.) Pike, though dead, clings to the trigger mechanism of the .50-caliber machine gun he’d been firing in the preceding blood-and-guts scene.

Deke had once been a friend of Pike’s and still respects and admires him, even though he’s been chasing him, trying to kill him, throughout the whole picture.

Deke spots Pike’s six-shooter, still in its holster on Pike’s hip. He reaches and takes it.

In other words, “I love you.”

Another great moment between non-lovers is the finish of the movie version of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

This is the scene where Randle McMurphy (played by Jack Nicholson) has been returned to the psychiatric ward, having been lobotomized. His friend, Chief Bromden, played by Will Sampson, stands over the bed, heartbroken at what the hospital powers have done to the man who always believed in him and told him he should be free.

Chief places a pillow over McMurphy’s face and releases him from his shattered life, then uses the physical strength he had possessed all along but had never had the courage to put into play—and breaks through the hospital wall and escapes.

“I love you” doesn’t have to be said in words, and it doesn’t have to be between lovers.

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Get to “I Love You” – Part 2

We said in last week’s post that an extremely useful principle of storytelling is “Get to ‘I love you’.” Meaning structure the novel or movie so that two clashing opposite or unlikely people move from indifference to each other (or outright hostility) to that great moment when they can look in each other’s eyes and say, “I love you.”

But it’s even better if the line that means “I love you” says the exact opposite. In other words, the text says one thing but the subtext says another. And the subtext wins.

In Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon (from the novel “Addie Pray” by Joe David Brown), nine-year-old Addie Loggins (played by Tatum O’Neal ) is an orphan in Depression-era Kansas who goes on the road with flim-flam man Moses Pray (played by Ryan O’Neal, her real-life father). Addie’s wish through the whole story is to prove that Moses is her father in the movie—and to stay with him.

In the final sequence of the picture, Moses drops Addie off with her true aunt in Saint Joseph, Missouri, deciding that his flim-flam ways and life on the road are not healthy for a young girl. But Addie immediately bolts from the nice-but-very-dull aunt and chases Moses on foot down a country road. She catches him where he has stopped, feeling unsure about his decision. When Moses sees Addie running toward him, he gets out of his broken-down Model-T truck and confronts her.

MOSES

I told you I don’t want you ridin’ with me no more.

Addie is heartbroken. Then, suddenly, Moses’ truck’s brakes fail … the old clunker starts rolling away down a hill.

ADDIE

Mose! Look!

Moses groans, grabs the few belongings that Addie is carrying (her radio and pint-size suitcase) and dashes to catch the runaway truck. Addie follows. He leaps on board from one side, she springs up from the other. As the truck wheezes away down a road soaring to the horizon, the song “Keep Your Sunny Side Up” plays on the soundtrack.

In other words, “I love you.”

The post Get to “I Love You” – Part 2 first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

Get to “I Love You” – Part 1

One of the principles I (sometimes) use in structuring a story is: Get to “I love you.”

Have you ever seen Billy Wilder’s great 1960 love story, The Apartment? The classic ending line (from Shirley MacLaine to Jack Lemmon) as they sit down to a one-on-one game of gin rummy is, “Shut up and deal.” By which she means, “I love you.”

If you and I as writers can start our story with two people (preferably potential lovers) as far apart as possible and bring them, by story’s end, to the place where they can say, “I love you” … we’ve got something.

It doesn’t have to be literally, “I love you.” In fact, it’s better if the line or lines are as different from that as we can make them … as long as our readers or moviegoers understand that the words mean exactly that.

In the movie Fight Club, the narrator/hero without a name (played by Edward Norton) forces Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) onto a bus leaving New York City. He and she have been clashing, crazy, we-can’t-make-this-work lovers throughout the picture. Now he’s stuffing cash into her hand and compelling her to get out of town to protect her from some bad stuff that’s about to happen.

Marla mounts to the first step of the bus, then turns back to Norton.

MARLA

“Tyler, you’re the worst thing that ever  happened to me.”

Meaning, “I love you.”

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The Crazier the Better

My friend Paul is writing a cop novel. He’s never written anything so ambitious before; he’s in unknown territory, over his head. Even scarier for him, his story is coming out very dark.  “I mean twisted, weird-dark,” he says. “So dark it’s scaring me.”

Paul wants to know if he should throttle back. He’s worried that the book will come out so evil, not even Darth Vader will want to touch it.

Answer: no way.

The darker the better, if that’s how it’s coming to him.

Why? Because for artists and entrepreneurs—particularly those at the beginning of their careers—Job #1 is testing their limits, finding out who they are. The sane and the ordinary are the enemies of all artists, but especially of those just stretching their wings.

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Resistance Doesn’t Go Away on the Artist’s Journey

The Fifth Rule of the Artist’s Journey is:

It never gets easier.

We may recognize Resistance now (which is vastly different from before, when we were blind to its existence and it held us, helpless, in its thrall.) We may understand the enemy now, and we may know how to fight it.

But the dragon never goes away.

We have to slay it anew, every morning.

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