WRITING WEDNESDAYS
The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned
By Steven Pressfield | Published: October 21, 2009
[The blog is "on the road" this week. Here's a re-run of readers' #1 favorite Writing Wednesdays piece. See you next Wednesday!]
My first real job was in advertising. I worked as a copywriter for an agency called Benton & Bowles in New York City. An artist or entrepreneur’s first job inevitably bends the twig. It shapes who you’ll become. If your freshman outing is in journalism, your brain gets tattooed (in a good way) with who-what-where-when-why, fact-check-everything, never-bury-the-lead. If you start out as a photographer’s assistant, you learn other stuff. If you plunge into business on your own, the education is about self-discipline, self-motivation, self-validation.
Advertising teaches its own lessons. For starters, everyone hates advertising. Advertising lies. Advertising misleads. It’s evil, phony, it’s trying to sell us crap we don’t need. I can’t argue with any of that, except to observe that for a rookie wordsmith, such obstacles can be a supreme positive. Why? Because you have to sweat blood to overcome them–and in that grueling process, you learn your craft.
Here it is. Here’s the #1 lesson you learn working in advertising (and this has stuck with me, to my advantage, my whole working life):
Nobody wants to read your shit.
Let me repeat that. Nobody–not even your dog or your mother–has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies or Delco batteries or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchopotoulis.
It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.
Nobody wants to read your shit.
There’s a phenomenon in advertising called Client’s Disease. Every client is in love with his own product. The mistake he makes is believing that, because he loves it, everyone else will too.
They won’t. The market doesn’t know what you’re selling and doesn’t care. Your potential customers are so busy dealing with the rest of their lives, they haven’t got a spare second to give to your product/work of art/business, no matter how worthy or how much you love it.
What’s your answer to that?
1) Reduce your message to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form.
2) Make it fun. Or sexy or interesting or informative.
3) Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce.
When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated. You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction. The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer, must give him something worthy of his gift to you.
When you, the student writer, understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire that skill which is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs: the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your imagined reader/gallery-goer/customer. You learn to ask yourself with every sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is this fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored? Is she following where I want to lead her?
When I began to write novels, this mindset proved indispensable. It steered me away from Client’s Disease. It warned me not to fall in love with my own shit just because it was my own shit. Don’t be lazy, Steve. Don’t assume. Look at every word through the eye of the busy, impatient, skeptical (but also generous and curious) reader. Give him something worthy of the time and attention he’s giving you.
The awareness that nobody wants to read/hear/see/buy what we’re writing/singing/filming/selling is the Plymouth Rock upon which all successful artists and entrepreneurs base their public communications. They know that, before all else, they must overcome this natural resistance in their audience. They must find a way to cut through the clutter. As a fledgling cub at B&B, I remember days, weeks, months when our various creative teams did nothing but beat our brains out trying to find some way to make the dull exciting and the unlovely beautiful–and to make the beautiful-but-overlooked gorgeous too.
How, you ask? You’ll know you’re on the right track when beads of blood begin to pop out on your forehead.
Send Me Your Favorite Quotes from The War of Art for Future “Writing Wednesdays”
Future “Writing Wednesdays” articles will be inspired by quotes from The War of Art.
Please post your favorite quotes in the comment section following this post, DM them to my Twitter account (@spressfield) or post them to the Wall of my “Writer” Facebook page.
I will pick one or two quotes the Thursday BEFORE the next “Writing Wednesdays” post. The person whose quote I use in my Wednesday, August 5, post will receive a signed copy of The War of Art.
Reminder: Submit your quotes by midnight tomorrow, Thursday, July 30.
Please limit the quotes you submit to one quote per week.
“Eternity is in love with the creations of time.” – William Blake
Steve – Love the blog. I was always hoping you’d start one. And I really like “writing Wednesdays.” I’m trying to writing a book and advice from a master is invaluable. Now, let me go back and re-read my shit…
I picked up your book today to read for the third time, and decided to look for you here in cyberspace. I just got here so I missed your offer by one day, but I couldn’t resist. My favorite is “The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist.”
Dang! Missed this one. Next time, sir.
Whenever I solve a difficult engineering problem this WOA quote always pops up in my mind: ‘Rest in peace, motherfucker.’
Another great WOA quote (in the ‘A professional does not show of’ chapter): ‘This doesn’t mean that the professional doesn’t throw down a 360 tomahawk jam from time to time, just to let the boys know he’s still in business.’
Oh, and what about this one: ‘In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can’t look is that place he must: within.’
There are a lot more great quotes in WOA, but these specific quotes pop up in my mind regularly.
Favorite quote from The War of Art:
“If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”
My favorite quote was what you write on the title page when you signed it: “For Mike, …who doesn’t need this book at all. I salute you!” Boy were you wrong….I needed your wisdom more than anyone you’ve ever met. So thanks for sharing and caring. And especially for caring about our troops. Mike
Here is one of my favorite quotes from the WOA:
“…she doesn’t wait for inspiration; she acts in the anticipation of its apparition. The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers…”
It reminded me of Pablo Picasso’s response every time people asked what did he do to make his muse or inspiration come:
“Que la inspiración llegue no depende de mi. Lo único que yo puedo hacer es ocuparme de que me encuentre trabajando.” (“It’s not up to me whether inspiration comes. The only thing I can do is to make sure that when it comes it finds me working”)
“Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.” I thought of this quote on Sunday Sept 6th, as I watched a scary documentary on Fiorsceal (Irish for True Story) on TnaG (Irish language TV station). The documentary investigated the very real current rise of fascism in Europe. As I watched I thought of all those people too scared to face themselves, who instead compensate by vehemently and violently projecting their fear and self-blame onto others.
pg # for resend of below quote that I posted on Twitter — p. 12 – Resistance is infallible
Submitted by: @kmayn13
“The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we feel toward pursuing it.”
This was an epiphany for me because of the part of this statement that seems to contradict the notion that we’re writing solely for the love of it. You discuss that too, but you also acknowledge that writing can make you miserable. (or rather, it is the resistance that produces the misery, but that can be the more common feeling during the process)
In our society, we associate doing something we love as something that should be enjoyable, even easy — or else why would we do it? So for years I thought that the degree of resistance I felt toward writing was an indication that perhaps I Wasn’t meant to do it. However I never understand why, of all the things in life that I couldn’t do or didn’t do and couldn’t care less about — so why was did this one thing keep coming back to haunt me. There has never been anything I have resisted more. And in heavy resistance, it is not fun, or enjoyable and I can’t truly say I’m doing it for the love of it. But this quote reminded me that resistance points the way — the true compass you reference. Thank you for that.