Three Questions with Steven Pressfield

I've recommended Steven Pressfield's THE WAR OF ART to so many writers, I ought to be on commission. As I've mentioned on the blog, WOA is one of the best resources at a writer's disposal for helping to fight the evil powers of procrastination, which Pressfield calls resistance. I'm such a believer, I'll draw the name of one commenter on today's post and send you your own copy!

And here's something even more exciting. Recently, I was very delighted when Steven Pressfield was kind enough to answer these three brief questions for the blog.

BtO: How does resistance make every other looming task (including toilet-bowl scrubbing) more attractive than the work we're trying to get started?

SP: I don't know, but it sure does, doesn't it? Somebody should write a book about all the different activities that suddenly become so attractive the instant the thought of actually Doing Our Work enters our mind. Did you read that one in Robert McKee's intro to WOA--where he took out all his clothes from his closet and arranged them into "winter," "summer," etc. That is demented! Me? I've done everything from drive across the country thirteen different times to totally screwing up my life. "Whatever works, baby!"

BtO: As useful as it is, I'm pretty sure the Internet is the handmaiden of resistance, with its myriad distractions and the dangerous temptation to hunt up your own reviews (and believe only the bad ones). How do you cope with the web's dark side?

SP: I get sucked into it too. I'm afraid there's no answer but pure will power. How do you stop yourself from eating chocolate? [Colleen's Response: Have been asking self that question for years.] There's a great book, not easy to find, by Roberto Assagioli called "The Act of Will." Try reading that. I started, but it put up so much Resistance, I stopped.

BtO: What's the most important thing you've learned about writing since the completion of THE WAR OF ART?

SP: If anything, I would say I have even more respect for Resistance now than I did when I wrote WOA. In other words, I believe it's even more powerful and insidious than I thought--and I thought it was unbelievably powerful and insidious back then!

The forms that Resistance can take, particularly in interpersonal relationships, seem to be infinite and incredibly subtle and pernicious. It's a subject for a whole other book, or certainly part of one.

Resistance, in my experience, doesn't diminish with time or skill or the accumulation of past successes. It's just as brutal for the long-time pro as it is for the neophyte. And I haven't found, nor do I expect to, any magic bullet to overcome it. The result is I've come to have even more respect for working writers and artists and entrepreneurs who face it down every day and do their work.

"Turning pro" is still the best answer--at least for me. And it helps to associate with other pros, whom we recognize if we ourselves are doing our work. As someone once said, "A gun recognizes another gun."

Hope that helps, Colleen. Thanks for three terrific questions.

This is terrific, Steven. Thanks so much for stopping by.

I hope every BtO reader will checking Writing Wednesdays over on Steven's blog. I especially loved the post "What the Muse Wants." Also, for those who enjoyed historical fiction, be sure to check out Steven's latest, Killing Rommel. My son, an avid WW II buff, loved it.

I'll leave BtO blogsters with one last question. What's the most ridiculous task you've been driven to (see toilet cleaning and closet sorting, above) in order to resist doing your actual work?

A tweet in the dark, author to agent

Blame it on the Middle Sister, my new favorite cheap red wine, or maybe I had my carpal tunnel brace on too tight, but I just couldn't stand it last night when I saw this tweet pop up from literary agent Janet Reid:

One of my least favorite things as an agent: reading a perfectly lovely book, and having NO idea of where to sell it. Dangnabit to helvetica

I don't know Janet, but her solid rep precedes her. She's smart, industry savvy, one of the brave ones. If she thinks this book is perfectly lovely, the author must be good, and if she has no idea where to sell the book, the author is seriously adrift.

I glanced toward my fireplace where I light a candle every night for my friend -- let's call her Jane A, for obvious reasons. Jane A's a terrific writer, but she's been stranded without an agent for almost three years. She keeps getting close-but-no-cigar responses from agents who are intrigued by her query and request opening chapters. Impressed by her opening chapters, they request the full ms. And they always think it's perfectly lovely. But they decline to rep her. It baffles me. Every night I light that candle begging, "God of Abraham, you gave water to Hagar in the desert, please send this woman a F=@#ing literary agent!"

Another tweet from Janet:

alright, off to break the bad news. I hate this. I'm dawdling.

I couldn't take it. None of my business, but I did what I could in less than 140 characters:

@Janet_Reid No! If it's a lovely book, find a way. Change the world. Reinvent the wheel. Please! Begging for that author. If not you, who?

Janet replied:

@JoniRodgers someone else is a better fit for this. Someone who can see the market. Honest.

I don't doubt that this is true, but who is that elusive someone?

@Janet_Reid ((sigh)) Whoever that writer is...I feel her pain.

@JoniRodgers I do too.

I appreciated her saying that, though I don't believe she actually has an inkling, just as authors have no inkling what it is to be in the agent's proverbial moccasins. We'd love to think they have the power to change the world, reinvent the wheel, but the truth is -- well, like the song says, "It's hard out there for a pimp."

I'm happily agented right now, partnered with an advocate who has great instincts, a sturdy capitalist vision, and no fear when it comes to negotiating. I'm enormously grateful. Because I do feel that author's pain. I know the ping of adrenalin she felt this morning when she pulled up her inbox and saw an email from that smart, savvy agent -- the one she's been holding her breath for.

I also know the bottom-drops-out feeling that followed, probably not much more than 140 characters from the opening pat on the head. "While I found this book perfectly lovely, I have to say..." blah blah blah. In some ways it's worse than a flat form rejection, but hopefully, Ms. Reid will include some clue as to the identity of that elusive "someone" who might see the market. Or maybe she'll be haunted by the people in that book. Maybe she won't be able to resist...

I keep wanting it to be like -- oh, God forgive me, I'm going to trot out a Star Wars metaphor. The query zizzles up out of the computer like a hologram. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope!" Unfortunately, the person receiving it isn't Obi-Wan. It's Luke, and his initial response is, "That's meant for someone else. It's not my cause. There's nothing I can do." But there is something he can do. He just has to believe it. He has to take it on, be the someone who makes it his cause.

I keep lighting that candle, hoping sooner or later a heroic journey will ensue.

Perfectionism as a Crippling Force

Over on Peter Bregman's How We Work blog, there's a fabulous, must-read post called "How to Escape Perfectionism."

I absolutely believe perfectionism cripples many writers, and that it's really just another word for fear.

Here's my favorite quote from Bregman's post:

[T]he world doesn't reward perfection. It rewards productivity. And productivity can only be achieved through imperfection. Make a decision. Follow through. Learn from the outcome. Repeat over and over and over again. It's the scientific method of trial and error. Only by wading through the imperfect can we begin to achieve glimpses of the perfect.

So for now, I plan to put aside my need to write the scene perfectly and instead go for the very best that I can do today. Because tomorrow, I can clean it up. The next day, I can seek outside input. The day after, I can respond to feedback that resonates with me.

Writing isn't live performance art. It isn't improv. We don't have to get it right on the first take.

Isn't that a huge relief?

The Happy Prince (a small Sunday decadence)

From "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde:

One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so attracted by her slender waist that he had stopped to talk to her.

"Shall I love you?" said the Swallow, who liked to come to the point at once, and the Reed made him a low bow. So he flew round and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making silver ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the summer.

To be transported for a lovely half hour of Sunday bliss, click here and listen to Jane Aker's beautiful reading of "The Happy Prince," available for free on LearnOutLoud.com.

Random House lobby is book nerd Mecca

Book nerd that I am, I feel choked up every time I push through the revolving door into the lobby at Random House. I always try to get there early so I can walk the entire perimeter, taking in the grand history of this place -- this institution -- built by generations of editors who cared deeply about their authors and authors who cared deeply about their craft. This place literally towers with an unabashed love of books. Floor-to-ceiling shelves flank the expansive entryway. Every tome at eye level was in some way groundbreaking. The covers and titles are iconic, instantly evoking an era, a watershed, a sea change. As a reader and a writer, I'm starstruck.

So many of these book covers transport me to an exact time and place in my life as a reader. I always loved that these particular editions of Gulliver's Travels and Tom Sawyer are displayed together. I bought them both off the dollar-a-bag table at the LaCrosse Public Library's annual used book sale the summer before sixth grade, and I vividly remember sitting up in a huge mulberry tree, sucking on an orange Popsicle, drinking in these two brain-changing works. When I see that cover art, I remember the smell of these great books with the baking grass below and hot, ripe berries hanging in the air around me. Walking the perimeter of the Random House lobby, I feel a personal history with so many of these stories, and I'm profoundly grateful for what these books were in my life.

For a writer (unless you're Dan Brown), a stroll around the Random House lobby is a humbling experience. The layout of the lobby is an accidental parable. At one end is the reception desk; at the other end is that revolving door. (Need I elaborate?)

In the most frustrating moments of my work life, I sternly remind myself of the blood, sweat and tears that built these walls. Every one of these giants was kicked by critics, rejected by readers, thrashed at times by the daily ranch work and personal drain of the writing life. And tucked between the iconic titles and literary giants are thousands of authors who labored in obscurity. I've often wished they'd install library ladders in the Random House lobby, because I'm dying to see who's up there, out of sight and out of mind, but there, dignified, binding intact. It's a privilege to be with them in this building, in this business.

Well. Enough kvelling for Saturday. I've got a deadline looming.

Research Tool Alert: The Criminal Law Handbook

Ever write a scene involving law enforcement or legal action and fear getting your facts wrong? Then I have a book that should be on your shelves.

As an author of crime fiction, I jumped at the chance to pick up Nolo's The Criminal Law Handbook, by Attorneys Paul Bergman and Sara J. Berman, as an aid to my research. In the past, I've found guides written for the average personal too generic or slanted to be helpful, but this one is helpful, practical, and sensible, with a wealth of plain English examples to help clarify complex issues and enough depth to make it indispensable.

The book is sensibly laid-out with a detailed table of contents and index. The language of the explanations is easy to understand and has no obvious bias. Instead, it counsels restraint while clearly helping the reader understand his/her rights. I also love that www.nolo.com offers free legal updates, along with a variety of other services.

This is a terrific resource for anyone going through or having a loved one go through the legal system as a defendant, witness, or victim, or anyone who wishes to understand his/her rights. The handbook is an invaluable starting place for those writing fiction that touches on police/legal activity (though you shouldn't forget to carefully check the jurisdiction where your story's set.) And even more surprisingly, it's interesting reading with touches of humor that will keep your eyes from glazing over while researching the issues.

For a look at what's included, check out the table of contents here, at Nolo's website.

Highly recommended.

Say hello to my little friends (2 sweet new research wranglers for the writer's toolbox)

Spent last week with my current memoir guru client and her wonderful mother. We talked for hours, poured over photo albums, dug into dusty boxes of old letters, sifted through thousands of press clippings. I came away with a blossoming vision of this important book, completely on fire for the project, but more than a little overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information needing to be assimilated. Fortunately, I came to the project armed with two nifty new tools -- both priced at less than $100 -- every research hound needs in her laptop bag.

Sony ICD-UX71 Digital Voice Recorder
Tiny, super easy to operate, and quick to upload with a built in USB connection that pops right into the side of my laptop. Features include ambient noise reduction and transcription friendly slow-down. Stores up to 287 hours of audio and doubles as an MP3 player. And it's red! (Also available in silver for boring people.)

Canon LiDE200 Color Image Scanner
So glad I didn't buy the portable scanner that requires feed-through! Many of my client's old letters were written on that incredibly thin old-school airmail paper. And one was written on toilet paper. No way would I have risked damaging these. This flatbed scanner is super lightweight and slender. It slides right into my laptop bag alongside my computer, requires no independent power (draws from the computer through USB connection), and quickly renders high resolution images that store neatly on hard drive or upload instantly to online storage.

Research is truly (for me) one of the great pleasures of the writing life, and I'm always looking for ways to improve my skills and resources. Any suggestions?

You Know You're Married to a Writer When...

1. You begin to associate deadlines with pizza.

2. Your children learn to forage and do laundry before the age of five.

3. You're greeted with the Atomic Death Glare when asking spouse to predict the year's income.

4. You've been brainwashed into thinking of long walks, bookstore runs, vacant stares, and long intervals of computer solitaire as "work."

5. You're not at all freaked to find spouse using flashlight to take notes by bedside after a round of you-know-what.

6. You aren't sure if you own an ironing board.

7. "Vacations" are suspiciously timed to coincide with writers' conferences.

8. You don't find it unusual when spouse shakes you awake to ask if you'd find it plausible if dead body's fingers popped off after being slammed by the trunk lid of a '94 Buick.

9. The only royalty you bow and scrape to comes in an envelope.

10. You've learned you can get your spouse to agree to most anything while she's in a writing trance... but don't expect her to remember later.


Okay, writers. For the sake of our long-suffering spouses out there, what would you add to the list?

Inertia

I just handed off a proposal to my agent, so it's time for me to move on to one of several writing items on my to-do list.

Except that I don't wanna. It's a gloomy, rainy day in Houston, and chores need doing, the dogs want petting, the soup requires cooking and...

Oh, crud, it's just inertia, creeping over me like kudzu. And as with kudzu, there's not a darned thing you can do except to whip out your machete (or pen or keyboard in my case) and hack straight through the crud. Because the more you put it off, the thicker inertia's vines grow all about you, and before you know it, you've wasted not a day but a week, a month, or a career to what Steven Pressfield, in his fabulous War of Art, calls the forces of resistance.

By the way, if you're having problems with procrastination, try Pressfield's little book. It's a quick read but one ever writer should own.

Or you can try my time-honored technique and whine about it on the blog 'til you feel too guilty to avoid the real work.

Anyone have other tips to get themselves started? I'd love to hear your ideas.

What Kristin Chenoweth knows (and Kanye West and Joe Wilson don't) that writers need to learn

Last year on Emmy night, Kristin Chenoweth showed up dressed to the requisite long and flowy nines, nominated for her role in "Pushing Daisies," a quirky but critically acclaimed show that was on the rise and destined to become a cult hit.

"It wasn't my moment," she shrugged the next time I saw her. "And losing to someone as fabulous as Jean Smart doesn't sting too much."

Last night was her moment. My girl Cheno showed up in an adorable dress that was neither long nor flowy. Hers were the only legs I saw on the red carpet, and if she hadn't been fighting off a migraine headache, she'd have been suffering less than anyone else there because the poorly planned gauntlet stretched out stifling hot in the direct sun.

She was nominated for the same role in "Pushing Daisies," but the show was canceled last spring and sank quickly and quietly beneath the waves. Turns out destiny isn't always what we think it is. As delightful as she was in the show, the show was dead, and frankly, I don't think anyone was betting the farm on anything other than "30 Rock to sweep." Kristin was surprised to have been nominated and looked stunned when she won.

Alone in a hotel room in Florida (I'm off working with another ghost client), I leaped off the couch, spilled my wine, whooped out loud. This victory is so much more delicious because I've seen this woman lose so graciously.

Kristin is a serious artist with an Masters in Opera Performance and a long history of mule-tough theatre work. Despite the cutesy stuff you see on E!, her career is about dedication to craft, not the collection of accolades. Losing well is something she talks a lot about in her NYT bestselling memoir, A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love and Faith in Stages. There's a long, hilarious chapter about her perennial "second runner-upness" and various "nomin-not-tions."

"Awards are on the outside. Rewards are on the inside," she says in a sidebar of advice for young actors. "That means rewards don't have to be dusted."

When she collected her soon-to-be-well-dusted Emmy last night, Kristin gave credit to Amy Poehler for rallying her fellow noms in the Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy category ("C'mon! We're the funny girls!") to steal the show with a great little bit. I loved the spirit of that bit: We're all in this together. Only one of us is going to win this time, but we're here because we love what we do.

We've seen some examples of galactically poor losers lately, and in a field as fiercely competitive as publishing, we see the same bitterness play out on smaller stages every day. I just want to take a moment to celebrate these women who know the essential truth of making a life in the arts: You win some, you lose some. But if you hang in there long enough, work hard enough, care about craft deeply enough, and rise above the disappointments, your moment will come.

Watch and learn...

Benefit Critique Auction

I've donated a 50-page critique to benefit former RWA National president Janis
Reams Hudson, who has just received a lung transplant in an effort to overcome
end-stage emphysema. Check out my auction on Ebay, please click here. Or check out other fabulous items here.

To read more about Janis and the auction, follow this link.

I hope some of you will consider helping.

If You Build It... They Won't Look Under the Bed

This past week, I've written some reminders (mainly to myself) that jumping the gun with a submission can be a bad thing, then sending out your "baby" before it's polished can be fatal. But today, let's talk about the opposite problem, the fear-based reluctance to send your project out the door.

Today I finished one last read-through and then sent my much-sweated-over new proposal off to meet its fate. Before doing so, I have to admit, I felt a moment's trepidation, the fear that it may fall short, and the instinctive desire to wrap this "child" in cotton and stuff it somewhere nice and safe.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work any better with manuscripts than it does for our real children. Besides that, manuscripts aren't kids, and it's dangerous for us to think about them that way. Manuscripts are products, and we'd do well to remember that as we edit in response to suggestion, cope with criticism, or face flat-out rejection.

You can't sell a product you keep tucked beneath your bed. As far as I can think of, the only writer that worked out well for was Emily Dickinson, and she had to go and die before anybody noticed and sent those suckers out.

Assuming you don't want to be a posthumous success (or risk relatives like mine, who, having no real interest in reading, would shove your life's work into Hefty bags without bothering to read it) you're going to have to get submissions out the door. Scary, sure. They absolutely can end up rejected, but you can be positive they never will be published if you tinker with them 'til the world's end or hold back "just in case" you learn some new technique that might help you improve your craft.

So learn to find the sweet spot, that middle place that enables you to be productive (in this lifetime) without having you go off half-cocked and send out junk. And if you are one of the procrastinators among us, answer this question honestly. Are you holding off because of perfectionism, or are you enabling fear?

Whether it's fear of failure or fear of success (and yes, this happens!) it's equally crippling, and you're going to have to find some way to defeat it if you'll even stand a chance.

Respect for the Work

This week, I listened to the universe. I got myself unstuck, with a little help from my friend. (Thanks, Joni!) And by golly, I finished the proposal I've been dying to write for quite some time now.

My natural inclination was to throw together an e-mail to my agent, attach the file, and hit send so I could get it to her before the weekend.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, blared the warning claxons in my brain. Because I'm well aware that what looks great to me one minute will soon reveal itself to me to be riddled with typos, awkward sentences, and wordy passages. The trouble is, in the heated glow of my initial enthusiasm, I'll be unable to see any of it.

So out of respect for the work, myself, and my agent's time (everybody deserves a weekend) I held off and read, then reread some more. Afterwards, I called and begged two of my critique partners if they could manage to read as well, and both were kind enough to agree to look it over.

Both are also whip-smart writers with the editorial savvy to help me take these chapters to a higher level. I'd be an idiot if I didn't take advantage of their expertise before sending anything important to me out the door.

And the writing is always important, as it should be. If I ever get to the point where I'm phoning it in, where I'm thinking "well, I've worked more than hard enough for what I'm getting paid," or where I'm counting on an editor or agent to make the work presentable for me, I'll know it's time to hang up my keyboard.

Because the quality of the work is the one part of this business I control.

So what about the rest of you? Do you have any tips that help you with quality control?