Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 6

The Artist’s Journey Is a Lifetime Engagement

The Fourth Rule of the Artist’s Journey is:

It’s for life.

No artist or entrepreneur (or human being) finds her voice at age X and puts it on cruise control from then on. That voice is constantly evolving.

Beneath every level of understanding lies another level, and another after that.

Even the most fully-realized genius declares on her deathbed, “I was just getting started.”

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Whatever You Think Your Limits Are, You’re Wrong

The Third Rule of the Artist’s Journey is:

If you imagine you know your limits, you’re mistaken.

I have a recurring dream. I’m moving through my house and I discover a room I’ve never seen before. Sometimes I’ll find an entire wing. I’ll stumble onto billiard rooms and libraries and great, candlelit ballrooms filled with revelers.

Those rooms are parts of myself that I didn’t know existed.

You have those rooms too.

All of us contain mansions and galleries and gardens that we’ve never encountered, that we had no idea existed.

Those places are where we create from.

If you think you know what you’re good at, think again. Trust me: you can do stuff you’ve never even dreamed of.

There are rooms and more rooms in our house, and more rooms after that.

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Whatever You Think You Know About Yourself, You’re Wrong

The Second Rule of Artist’s Journey is this:

If you think you know who you are, you’re wrong.

Hunter S. Thompson’s ambition was to write like Scott Fitzgerald. He copied the whole of The Great Gatsby, trying to teach himself to compose sentences that flowed with the effortless grace of those penned by his hero. How surprised must the avatar of gonzo journalism have been to find his true voice, not in This Side of Paradise but in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Generation of Swine?

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are almost always wrong. That’s their nature. The purpose of these self-conceived narratives is to keep us comfortably unconscious. We tell ourselves these stories so we can avoid the pain of diving deep, to the real story underneath.

The artist’s journey is the dive through the faux story to the true one.

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The Price of the Artist’s Journey

The First Rule of Artist’s Journey is this:

However hard you think it will be, the reality is ten times harder.

However long you imagine it will take, the term is ten times longer.

However much you think it will cost, the bill is ten times higher.

Charles Bukowski said that he wrote for thirty years before he finally composed a single sentence that was true to his vision. Mathew Syed’s Bounce and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers both posit ten years of full-time work—ten thousand hours—to achieve mastery in any field.

(It goes without saying that in art or entrepreneurship, “mastery” is a guarantee of absolutely nothing.)

Robert McKee has a criterion that he applies to the protagonist in any novel, play or movie. Does this character possess the drive and passion—the madness—to see the story all the way through to the end? Will he or she go to any length, pay any price to achieve his or her goal? If the answer is no, there’s no movie.

Same with us on the artist’s journey. Only we can answer:

How much do we love it?

How much do we want it?

How much are we willing to give to achieve it?

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The Mind-Set of the Artist’s Journey

When we embark on the artist’s journey, we take control of our lives.

Things that we did before, we no longer permit ourselves to do.

We no longer demean ourselves. We cease making excuses. Our amateur life is over. We’re warriors now. We are fathers and mothers, even if only to ourselves and to our work.

When we embark on the artist’s journey, we drop out of the gang. We no longer drive drunk or show up late for class or let ourselves get fat. Those days are behind us.

We’ve got work to do.

We have lost time to make up for.

The mind-set of the artist’s journey is the mind-set of the professional.

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Coming Out

Why are so many gay people artists? Because their sexual orientation (within the context of the fears and prejudices of contemporary mainstream society) has forced them to come to grips with an identity that clashes head-on with the norm.

This is the same condition as you and I on the artist’s journey.

The gay person’s hero’s journey (or that of the Jew or the immigrant or the African-American or any other minority or outsider) carries him to the dead-end where he can no longer “pass” or pretend or assimilate. He has found himself up against this choice: stay in the closet or come out.

In other words: Who am I? What is my authentic self?

In answering this question, the homosexual or the lesbian may find himself or herself saying, “Hey, if I’m gonna come out sexually, I might as well come out every other way too.”

It takes guts to come out. It takes courage to look the world in the eye and say, “I’m not the person you think I am or the person you want me to be. I’m different. I’m not in the club and I’m not gonna be.”

As artists we need that courage too. We need the fortitude to say, even if only to ourselves: “I was not born for this cubicle or this pigeonhole or this conventional concept of who the world thinks I am or ought to be.”

In the end, it’s more painful to stay in than it is to come out.

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The Amnesiac’s Story

The individual on the threshold of the artist’s journey is like the protagonist in an amnesiac story. I love these. Total Recall, The Bourne Identity and its sequels, and my fave of a couple of years ago, The Hangover.

In the Amnesiac Story, the protagonist awakens from unconsciousness in a world he doesn’t recognize. He has no idea who he is or how he got here.

The Amnesiac’s Story is the blueprint for the artist’s journey.

The protagonist in an Amnesiac Story might not know who he is, but it quickly becomes clear to him that he is somebody. He’s not generic, he’s specific. He possesses a distinct set of skills, a gift, a calling. 

Stanislavsky taught his acting students to ask three questions of their characters in any scene: “Who am I? How did I get here? What do I want?”

On the artist’s journey, these are our questions too.  

The amnesiac’s quest is to retrace his path to the point where it diverged from the authentic. His aim is to peel back the layers of the onion until he gets to the core.

The Amnesiac’s Story conceals (at least) two truths that we must keep foremost in our minds as we pursue the quest for our own authenticity.

First, the amnesiac is somebody. He possesses a true self. He just can’t remember it.

Second, the amnesiac must not and cannot stop until he answers this question. He must call upon all his grit and resourcefulness to uncover, in action and by action, the truth of who he is.

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Be Brave or Be Stupid

Here’s Philip Roth on the subject of beginning a novel:

I don’t know very much [when I start.] I write my way into my knowledge. Then, if I’m lucky, I get a break. That’s why it’s so important to get started. Because however awful starting is—and it is absolutely awful—when you get into it, when you’ve got ten pages, which may take two weeks, then you can build.

Philip Roth

Before I wrote Bagger Vance, I had no idea I was obsessed with issues of identity and self-realization.  

Before Gates of Fire, I had no idea I saw life in terms of a battle. These are huge themes in my life, and I never knew either of them till I saw them materialize out of the keyboard.

This is why the artist and entrepreneur have to be brave or stupid. Each has to jump off the cliff of what-he-thinks-he-thinks in order to land with a glorious splat in what-he-really-thinks.

Or, put another way, he has to forget what he thinks is his voice, in order to speak with what really is his voice.

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Authenticity and Power

Power comes from authenticity. When we hear an artist or a politician, a warrior or an advocate speak from her true center, we feel her power. Even Lady Gaga, whose public persona is as artificially contrived as it is possible to be, is authentic in her artificiality.  

Her Gaga-ness gives her her power.

Lady Gaga, Stefani Germanotta

“Lady Gaga” is the creative power that was trapped inside Stefani Germanotta. Stefani Germanotta became herself when she uncorked “Lady Gaga,” just as Madonna Ciccone unleashed her charisma when she invented “Madonna.” 

I live in Los Angeles. One of the things I love about the place is it’s a city where a person can go to re-invent themselves.

The artist’s journey is the passage by which we re-invent ourselves as ourselves. We discover the self that was slumbering inside us or in chains, waiting to be awakened and emancipated. In re-inventing ourselves as ourselves, we find ourselves for the first time.

Power comes from authenticity.

The more ourselves we are, the more charisma we will project and the greater will be the impact of our words and our actions.

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A Writing Retreat With Me

Finally, the details have been settled.

The one-day Writing Retreat will take place on September 7, a Saturday, at the Zuma Orchid Ranch in Malibu, California.

Here’s the link for details and to sign up for the Wait List: www.silentwritingretreat.com

Roda Ahmed and I will be hosting the event on September 7

The subject matter will NOT be the craft of writing. I won’t be talking about structure or characterization or anything like that.

The day will be about the mindset that the writer/artist/entrepreneur needs to start and finish a project like a novel, a long-form nonfiction piece, a memoir, a biography, or any kind of album/game/startup that may take a year or two years … and that will have to be accomplished essentially ALONE, i.e. without an external supporting structure like a school, a corporation, or a community.

In other words: How do you go into a room all by yourself, with just a laptop, and face down your demons day after day after day until you have brought the project to its successful completion?

This will be a serious, hard-core, tough-love day. Don’t sign up if you’re just sightseeing. You’ll be wasting your money.

Come for real.

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