Date read: Nov 2017
How strongly would I recommend? 6/10
Lasting Thoughts
My recommendation of this book suffers only because I read it after its predecessor, the incredible, The Work Of Art. If I hadn’t read that book first, my score for this one would be higher. This book is a continuation of the ideas in The War Of Art. It does deeper into the creative process and the various challenges an artist has to overcome to stay committed to their art form. It’s a welcome reminder to get back to work. Don’t overthink the process. Just show up.
Most Memorable Quote
“A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.”
Steven Pressfield
For reference:
The bold highlights are my own emphasis
The blue highlights are passages I found notable or interesting
The green highlights are passages I found to be well written
The three dumbest guys I can think of: Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill. Why? Because any smart person who understood how impossibly arduous were the tasks they had set themselves would have pulled the plug before he even began.
Ignorance and arrogance are the artist’s and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be — and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.
A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.
Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is stop.
Start Before You’re Ready. Don’t prepare. Begin.
A Research Diet
You’re allowed to read three books on your subject. No More.
— No underlining, no highlighting, no thinking or talking about the documents later.
— Let the ideas percolate. Let the unconscious do its work.
Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.
The most highly cultured mother gives birth sweating and dislocated and cursing like a sailor.
God made a single sheet of yellow foolscap exactly the right length to hold the outline of an entire novel.
— He meant don’t overthink. Don’t over-prepare. Don’t let research become Resistance. Don’t spend six months compiling a 1000 page tome detailing the emotional matrix and family history of every character in your book.
— Outline it fast. Now. On instinct.
Get your idea down on paper. You can always tweak it later.
Start at the End
If you’re writing a movie, solve the climax first. If you’re opening a restaurant, begin with the experience you want the diner to have when she walks in and enjoys a meal. If you’re preparing a seduction, determine the state of mind you want the process of romancing to bring your love to.
— Figure out where you want to go; then work backward from there.
— End first, then beginning and middle. That’s your startup, that’s your plan for competing in a triathlon, that’s your ballet.
We can never eliminate Resistance. It will never go away. But we can outsmart it, and we can enlist allies that are as powerful as it is.
Fill in the Gaps
David Lean famously declared that a feature film should have 7 or 8 major sequences.
- A video game should have 7 or 8 major movements; so should the newest high-tech gadget, or the latest fighter plane. Our new house should have 7 or 8 major spaces. A football game, a prizefight, a tennis match — should have 7 or 8 major swings of momentum.
- We need to fill in the gaps with a series of great entertaining and enlightening scenes, sequences, or spaces.
- Now you can do research. But stay on your diet. Do research early or late. Don’t stop working. Never do research in prime working time.
- Research can be fun. It can be seductive. That’s its danger. We need it, we love it. But we must never forget that research can become Resistance.
Soak up what you need to fill the gaps. Keep working.
A Screenwriters Pitch
- A killer opening scene
- 2 major set pieces in the middle.
- A killer climax
- a concise statement of the theme
— In other words, they’re filling the gaps. The major beats.
Any project or enterprise can be broken down into beginning, middle, and end. Fill in the gaps; then fill in the gaps between the gaps.
One rule for first full working drafts: get them done ASAP.
— Don’t worry about quality. Act, don’t reflect. Momentum is everything.
— Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork.
Suspend All Self-Judgment
The inner critic? His ass is not permitted in the building.
— Set forth without fear and without self-censorship. When you hear that voice in your head, blow it off.
This draft is not being graded. There will be no pop quiz.
— Only one thing matters in this initial draft: get SOMETHING done, however flawed or imperfect.
You are not allowed to judge yourself.
Ideas come according to their own logic. That logic is not rational. It’s not linear. We may get the middle before we get the end. We may get the end before we get the beginning. Be ready for this. Don’t resist it.
The Process
It progresses in two stages: action and reflection. Act, reflect. Act, reflect.
NEVER act and reflect at the same time.
- In writing, “action” means putting words on paper. “Reflection” means evaluating what we have on paper.
- For this first draft, we’ll go light on reflection and heavy on action.
Our job is not to control our idea; our job is to figure out what our idea is (and wants to be) — and then bring it into being.
The Answer Is Always Yes
When an idea pops into our heads and we think, “No, this is too crazy,” … that’s the idea we want.
When we think, “This notion is completely off the wall … should I even take the time to work on this?” … the answer is yes.
Never doubt the soup. Never say no. The answer is always yes.
Keep Working
Stephen King has confessed that he works every day. Fourth of July, his birthday, Christmas.
I love that. Particularly at this stage — what Seth Godin calls “thrashing” (a very evocative term) — momentum is everything. Keep it going.
- How much time can you spare each day?
- For that interval, close the door and — short of a family emergency or the outbreak of WWIII — don’t let ANYBODY in. Keep working. Keep working. Keep working.
The Belly Of The Beast
There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us.
— Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.
The “Real You” Must Duel the “Resistance You”
On the field of Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon.
There is no way to be nice to the dragon or to reason with it or negotiate with it or beam a white light around it and make it your friend. The dragon belches fire and lives on to block you from reaching the gold of wisdom and freedom, which it has been charged to guard to its final breath.
— The only intercourse possible between the night and the dragon is battle.
— The contest is life-and-death, mano a mano. It asks no quarter and gives none.
Resistance Arises Second
What comes first is the idea, the passion, the dream of the work we are so excited to create that it scares the hell out of us.
Resistance is the response of the frightened, petty, small-time ego to the brave, generous, magnificent impulse of the creative self.
— Resistance is the shadow cast by the innovative self’s sun.
What does this mean to us — the artists and entrepreneurs in the trenches?
- It means that before the dragon of Resistance reared its ugly bead and breathed fire into our faces, there existed within us a force so potent and life-affirming that it summoned this beast into being, perversely, to combat it.
- It means that, at the bottom, Resistance is not the towering, all-powerful monster before whom we are compelled to quake in terror. Resistance is more like the pain-in-the-ass schoolteacher who won’t let us climb that tree in the playground
- But the urge to climb came first.
The opposite of fear is love — love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at a dream and see if we can pull it off.
Resistance’s Two Tests
Each question only has one correct answer.
- “How bad do you want it?”
— Dabbling / Interested / Intrigued but Uncertain / Passionate / Totally Committed - “Why do you want it?”
— For the babes 2. The money 3. For fame 4. Because I deserve it 5. For power 6. To prove someone wrong 7. To serve my vision of how life/mankind ought to be 8. For fun or beauty 9. Because I have no choice (If you checked 8 or 9, you get to stay on the island.)
If your answer is not the one on the far right, put this book down and throw it away.
Our greatest fear is fear of success.
When we experience panic, it means that we’re about to cross a threshold. We’re poised on the doorstep of a higher plane.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[on creating something and shipping it] You have done what only mothers and gods do: you have created new life.
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 are ready.
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