Do the Work (3 page)

Where do our own real thoughts come from? How can we access them? From what source does our true, authentic self speak?

Answering that is the work you and I will do for the rest of our lives.

Ready to Rock and Roll

We’ve got our concept, we’ve got our theme. We know our start. We know where we want to finish. We’ve got our project in three acts on a single sheet of foolscap.

Ready to roll? We need only to remember our three mantras:

1. Stay primitive.
   
 

2. Trust the soup.
   
 

3. Swing for the seats.
   
 

And our final-final precept:

The Universe Is Not Indifferent

I blame Communism. I blame Fascism. I blame psychotherapy. They—and a boatload of other well-intentioned ideologies that evolved during the mass-culture, industrialized, dehumanizing epoch of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—all posited the same fantasy. They all preached that human nature was perfectible and that, thereby, evil could be overcome.

It can’t.

When you and I set out to create anything—art, commerce, science, love—or to advance in the direction of a higher, nobler version of ourselves, we uncork from the universe, ineluctably, an equal and opposite reaction.

That reaction is Resistance. Resistance is an active, intelligent, protean, malign force—tireless, relentless, and inextinguishable—whose sole object is to stop us from becoming our best selves and from achieving our higher goals.

The universe is not indifferent. It is actively hostile.

Every principle espoused so far in this volume is predicated upon that truth. The aim of every axiom set forth thus far is to outwit, outflank, outmaneuver Resistance.

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.

One thing we can never, never permit ourselves to do is to take Resistance lightly, to underestimate it or to fail to take it into account.

We must respect Resistance, like Sigourney Weaver respected the Alien, or St. George respected the dragon.

Fill in the Gaps

On our single sheet of foolscap we’ve got the Big Beats. Now what?

Fill in the gaps.

David Lean famously declared that a feature film should have seven or eight major sequences. That’s a pretty good guideline for our play, our album, our State of the Union address.

A video game should have seven or eight major movements; so should the newest high-tech gadget, or the latest fighter plane. Our new house should have seven or eight major spaces. A football game, a prize fight, a tennis match—if they’re going to be entertaining—should have seven or eight major swings of momentum.

That’s what we need now. We need to fill in the gaps with a series of great entertaining and enlightening scenes, sequences, or spaces.

Do Research Now

Now you can do your 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 in the gaps. Keep working.

How Screenwriters Pitch

When movie writers pitch a project, they keep it brief because studio executives’ attention spans are minimal. But they, the writers, want their presentation to have maximum impact and to deliver, in concise form, the feel and flavor of the film they see in their heads.

One trick they use is to boil down their presentation to the following:

1. A killer opening scene
   
 

2. Two major set pieces in the middle
   
 

3. A killer climax
   
 

4. A concise statement of the theme
   
 

In other words, they’re filling in the gaps. The major beats.

We can do that, too.

If we’re inventing Twitter, we start with What Are You Doing Now?, the 140-character limit, and the Following. We fill in the gaps: the hashtag, the tiny URL, the re-tweet.

If we’re writing
The Hangover
, we kick off with Losing Doug, Searching for Doug, Finding Doug. Fill in the blanks: Stu marries a stripper, Mike Tyson comes after his tiger, Mister Chow brings the muscle.

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.

When we’ve got David Lean’s eight sequences, we’re home except for one thing:

The actual work.

Cover the Canvas

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.

Believe me, he is.

Get the serum to Nome. Get the Conestoga wagon to the Oregon Trail. Get the first version of your project done from A to Z as fast as you can.

Don’t stop. Don’t look down. Don’t think.

Suspend All Self-Judgment

Unless you’re building a sailboat or the Taj Mahal, I give you a free pass to screw up as much as you like.

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.

The Crazier the Better

My friend Paul is writing a cop novel. He’s never written anything so ambitious—and he’s terrified. “The story is coming out dark,” he says. “I mean twisted, weird-dark. 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.

Suspending self-judgment doesn’t just mean blowing off the “You suck” voice in our heads. It also means liberating ourselves from conventional expectations—from what we think our work “ought” to be or “should” look like.

Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional, crazy heart.

If your notion violates every precept I’ve set forth in these pages, tell me to go to hell. Do what that voice says.

Ideas Do Not Come Linearly

Remember when we broke our concept down into beginning, middle, and end? Rational thought would tempt us to do our work in that order.

Wrong.

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.

Do you have a pocket tape recorder? I do. I keep it with me everywhere. (A notepad works, too.) Why do I record ideas the minute they come to me? Because if I don’t, I’ll forget them. You will, too.

Nothing is more fun than turning on the recorder and hearing your own voice telling you a fantastic idea that you had completely forgotten you had.

The Process

Let’s talk about the actual process—the writing/composing/ idea generation process.

It progresses in two stages: action and reflection.

Act, reflect. Act, reflect.

NEVER act and reflect at the same time.

The Definition of Action and Reflection

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.

Spew. Let ’er rip. Launch into the void and soar wherever the wind takes you.

When we say “Trust the soup,” we mean the Muse, the unconscious, the Quantum Soup. The sailor hoists his canvas, trusting that the wind (which is invisible and which he can neither see nor control) will appear and power him upon his voyage.

You and I hoist our canvas to catch ideas.

When we say “Stay Stupid,” we mean don’t self-censor, don’t indulge in self-doubt, don’t permit self-judgment.

Forget rational thought. Play. Play like a child.

Why does this purely instinctive, intuitive method work? Because our idea (our song, our ballet, our new Tex-Mex restaurant) is smarter than we are.

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 song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it. Can we hear it in our head? It exists, like a signal coming from a faraway radio tower.

Our job is to tune to that frequency.

Did you read Bob Dylan’s
Chronicles
? The lengths he goes to to find a song (or an arrangement or a producing partner) are beyond insanity.

He does it all by instinct. Fearless, child-like, primitive instinct.

The Answer Is Always Yes

When an idea pops into our head 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.

The Opposite of Resistance

I said a few chapters ago that the universe is not indifferent; it is actively hostile. This is true.

But behind every law of nature stands an equal and opposite law.

The universe is also actively benevolent. You should be feeling this now. You should be feeling a tailwind.

The opposite of Resistance is Assistance.

A work-in-progress generates its own energy field. You, the artist or entrepreneur, are pouring love into the work; you are suffusing it with passion and intention and hope. This is serious juju. The universe responds to this. It has no choice.

Your work-in-progress produces its own gravitational field, created by your will and your attention. This field attracts like-spirited entities into its orbit.

What entities?

Ideas.

You started with a few scraps of a song; now you’ve got half an opera. You began with the crazy notion to restore a neglected park; now the lot is cleared and you’ve got volunteers tweeting and phoning at all hours. Your will and vision initiated the process, but now the process has acquired a life and momentum of its own.

The un-indifferent universe has stepped in to counter Resistance. It has introduced a positive opposing force.

Assistance is the universal, immutable force of creative manifestation, whose role since the Big Bang has been to translate potential into being, to convert dreams into reality.

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 World War III—don’t let ANYBODY in.

Keep working. Keep working. Keep working.

Keep Working, Part Two

Sometimes on Wednesday I’ll read something that I wrote on Tuesday and I’ll think, “This is crap. I hate it and I hate myself.” Then I’ll re-read the identical passage on Thursday. To my astonishment, it has become brilliant overnight.

Ignore false negatives. Ignore false positives. Both are Resistance.

Keep working.

Keep Working, Part Three

Did I forget to say?

Keep working.

Act/Reflect, Part Two