Writing Wednesdays
Wrestling an Alligator
By Steven Pressfield | Published: January 20, 2010
A friend asked me the other day how I experienced Resistance. What did the phenomenon feel like to me? I told him it was like wrestling an alligator.
"And I haven't even got a pen knife."
That’s not always bad. Sometimes the beast is a cute little cayman. I can clamp his jaws shut with my left hand, grab him by the tail with my right. It’s no problem to wrap him up and get him into the trunk of the car.
But sometimes that gator gets a little bigger. Right now, in the project I’m working on, he outweighs me by eighty pounds and he’s kicking my ass.
How Bob Dylan does it
Have you read Bob Dylan’s book, Chronicles? A significant section covers his struggles trying to put together one specific album. I don’t know if Mr. Dylan would say he was dueling Resistance or just the challenges of the work, but his style of combat, if memory serves, included impulsive cross-country airline flights, massive music listening, employment of controlled substances, midnight forays into weird parts of town, crazy phone calls, collaboration with strangers and a general instinct-driven voodoo-thrashing that somehow all came together and produced the answer he was looking for.
Resistance: 100 million years B.C.
My own struggles are a lot more reptilian. Maybe it’s because the medium I labor in is an essentially-solitary enterprise that requires hours of focused concentration daily (or nearly daily) over a sustained period of time. It’s not aerial combat, it’s foot-slogging. It’s infantry work. But back to that alligator.
Here’s why the gator-wrestling metaphor rings true to my experience as a writer battling Resistance:
1) The enemy is as big as I am. Bigger sometimes. And he’s all muscle. By no means is it a foregone conclusion that I’m gonna beat him.
2) He’s sneaky-fast. The bastard is cunning; he’ll sneak up on you underwater and strike out of nowhere. And he can cover ground like a racehorse.
3) He’s invulnerable. His hide is two inches thick–and I don’t even have a pen knife.
4) I have to grapple with him belly-to-belly. There’s no other way. This is not a rapier duel or an archery match; it’s up close and personal–two bodies, head-to-head, tail-to-tail, rassling in the mud.
5) The gator can get you from both ends. One blow from that tail will break your leg. And those jaws? If he gets them around you, fuggedaboutit.
6) The bastard is prehistoric. He’s got scales, man! And look at those eyes. He doesn’t even have warm blood. Seth Godin calls Resistance the “lizard brain.” There’s a lot to that. This foe is primordial; he was walking the earth with the dinosaurs. To him, I’m lunch–and he’s got a predator’s pedigree that goes back 100 million years.
7) There’s no negotiating with this sonofabitch. I can’t holler uncle or make a deal. And this sucker doesn’t just want to kill me, he wants to eat me.
The only way to win is outlast him. I can’t shoot him; I can’t drown him; I can’t punch him in the nose and make him quit. The only hope is to stay so close to him that he can’t get those jaws around me, while using my body weight to wear him down. His only weakness is those stubby little arms. If I can keep him off-balance long enough and keep him thrashing trying to get to me, I can tire him out. The fight will go out of him–at least till tomorrow, when he’ll be back.
An invitation to comment
That’s how I experience Resistance. How about you? How does this monster come after you? I’d like to know. Write in below under “Comments.” If we get some good stuff, we’ll run it in this space–and we can all compare notes.
Bob Dylan, we’ll be glad to hear from you too.
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Resistance, at this moment, is reading this blog instead of working on a chapter that’s giving me fits. It’s a force that pulls me from my work with distractions and guilt. Guilt for not paying enough attention to my husband, aged mother, grown children, grandchildren, and friends.
In order to finish the project I am smack in the middle of, I often have to ignore my loved ones and not give in to the oh, so dramatic guilt trips laid before me like a trap. I’ve had to learn to say “no” in order to continue my work, one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one chapter at a time. Diligence and the ability to say “no” are my best weapons against the ubiquitous beast.
I also have a copy of The War of Art next to my computer. Thanks, Steven.
Doesn’t wrestling the aligator prevent everybody from writing down what has to be written down?
Ooh¡ I did it again…
Thank you, Master Pressfield.
I have been battling resistance my whole life, and I come from a good upbringing. I can’t blame anyone but myself. I feel overwhelmed constantly by failure and am afraid of success. I love life and family and cats, dogs, etc… but not myself. I’ve enjoyed The War of Art tremendously and have learned much, but even as I read the words that uplift me, the weight of the unknown pushes me down like a wet, electric blanket. How long does, or should it take to break this boundary of resistance? I know, everyone is different and we all have our own demons, so the question I’m really asking is what does the first light look like, so I know what I’m looking for? Thank you for your writings and shedding new light in your unique way.
Your comment rings true for me. I came from a privileged upbringing, had all the advantages in the world–but I constantly battle guilt that I haven’t done more with my life. And so the answer for me is: do more with my life. It seems easy.
But those dreams, those goals, I make them too big. Then I feel overwhelmed with the immensity of the task of doing them–it’s impossible. Write a book? Impossible. Record an album? Impossible. Write a column? Impossible. Change careers? Impossible. Become a counselor? Impossible. Climb Mt. Garibaldi? It’s too big, and I’m too small.
I’ve actually learned that all of those things only seem impossible because of where I am now. So the way I overcome resistance is I take great joy in anything I do that moves me a little bit towards where I want to be. A journal entry? Awesome. A blog entry? Amazing. Write lyrics for a new song? Incredible. Kung fu 2 nights a week? Now I’m on a roll!
I beat resistance when I don’t care if what I do is ‘good’ and when I know that what I’m doing is ‘good for me’. The only way I’ll become a better writer is to write a lot of bad stuff first. Same with music.
Thanks to everyone who comments and thank you, Steven. Now I gotta go… the muse, she’s here.
You sound like my twin! Thank you for your comments. I appreciate the comparison and take it to heart. Things have been going that way for me too. I’ve been writing more now than ever and not caring where I’m going with it. Lots of poems lately, although dark, but therapeutic. I even wrote a song as well for the first time. I don’t know what to do with it, but I did it.
Mr Resistance visits less and less the harder I work. It’s a funny thing about writing; my most stringent deadlines, and my harshest critic – is me. And every time I pass THAT test, Mr. Resistance fades further into the background.
I’m trying to grasp this thing called resistance which so many identify as a severe psychological handicap and which I’m trying to locate in my own life in some respect.
I’ve never really had a problem in not finishing what I’ve started, or finding the going too rough and having to wrestle myself toward completion.
My problem, what stops me before I get started, is the sad fact that no matter how good the end product of my labor, it shall not reward me with a single, thin dime.
I used to create art simply for the joy and sake of doing it; and usually there was a challenge in it that propelled me; that satisfied my hunger for learning more about creating art and myself through the process.
But that no longer suffices. I want an audience. I want some recompense for the labor. I want to be worth something in the world and to the world to some small extent.
That’s what stops me now. The lack of payment after a lifetime of perfecting my skills. The novels, screenplays, essays, and criticism have piled up into a prodigious heap not to mention the hundreds of pieces of music I can’t afford to take into a studio to get them properly performed (and then go unheard, unsold even then).
But Steven gets well paid for his work so I’m a little curious about his resistance. I’m tempted to wonder if it’s because he lacks something compelling to say; that he’s said all he has to say in other books or places and has nothing burning in him to tell other people.
If that’s the case, he needs a long vacation from storytelling, a fallow period to expand his thoughts and feelings into richer depths.
I’ve often abandoned playing music and composing it for years. The same with literature. The people who crank out story after story year after year are generally hacks in genre writing. Some are pretty good hacks in that they may have more telling details and commentary here and there, but generally, they’re still hacks.
Write when you have something important to say and no one else can tell it the way you will. I write stories and make the kind of music I do because it’s the only way I’m going to get to read or hear the kind of things I really would like to find out in the world for me to enjoy that speaks to me (and thus, will speak to others if they care to take it in).
Well, you know mine because I wrote about meeting him (under hypnosis!) and left a lovely comment.
I’ve been thinking a lot about him—I call him The Resistor, and he looks a lot like Darth Vader—because I just finished Seth’s excellent new book and there’s that great chapter about the phenomenon in there. (Which made me think of you, too, which makes me glad to be commenting on it here and neatly closing the circle.)
The thing that struck me about The Resistor when I met him is that he exists solely to push back and thwart me, but that it is nothing personal. It’s just his job, like gravity. So he comes at me every which way, because that’s what gravity or air or whatever will do, just fill an available space.
He wins most often when I am tired, so I try to get enough sleep, or when I am otherwise weak, so I try to keep myself strong. He dangles shiny things in my field of vision, so I have learned not to get so mad, but just to say, “Oh! The shiny things! Now, where was I?” and put the puppy back on the mat, as Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield advocates so eloquently.
I suppose that’s the secret for me, if there is one. Not to expend energy pushing back, but to use his force and energy in my work, in the martial arts fashion.
Some days he wins, some days I do. Keeps life interesting, that’s for sure.
Since so many seem to have “resistance”, I’m also wondering how many people have or are maintaining an active prayer schedule and life?
It sounds corny to some, but prayer makes life better for people. Prayer makes people whole (if they let it).
Not here to proselytize. Just a suggestion.
I’ve only found one way of beating Lady Resistance consistently: looking her in the eye. That’s always the hardest part, isn’t it? It’s easy to feel resistance… it’s much harder to acknowledge it and figure out why its there. And solutions always sleep with causes.
Whenever my pen is impotent, it’s usually because there’s facts I haven’t uncovered yet.. or holes in my knowledge and/or experience that I don’t want to acknowledge.
P.S. – It’s true what they say. Alligator does taste like chicken… It’s been a staple in my diet for the past year now.
Excellent. I feel the exact same way.
Resistance is a hot chick with a sucker punch. Don’t blink at her beauty – brace for the blow. You look her in the eye, tighten your core, and give it right back.
She sees the darkness inside you. The narrow corners where you hide your fears and your guilt. Make sure you know them too – drag them into the light. Don’t let her feel special. For that she’ll sulk away, hating you.
Good. You hate her too.
Like any bad broad, she’ll look over her shoulder. She’ll bat her innocent eyes and you’ll want to welcome her back. Resist. Be strong until she turns the corner – be strong a moment longer.
Now get back to work.
For me resistance is a voice saying “What’s the point? Life is meaningless, so why are you even trying? And, by the way, your ideas aren’t going to work. You’re going to ruin everything.” This voice imbues me with a feeling of hopelessness, weariness. I start saying to myself, “yeah, it’s all meaningless anyway.”
The good news is that I stop myself now. I hear that mean voice and, after listening for a while, I can say “This is that nasty voice. It may not be right.”
I overcome resistance by thinking how much I will regret later not doing what I resist doing this very moment. Missed opportunities, unrealized potential, buried talents (OK, I will be humble here–not talents but my personal strengths, perhaps
, and low self-esteem as a result. Also, I believe there are so many interesting people out there and I may not meet them if I stay in my own shell and not reach out. These thoughts keep me moving and stretching my own limits. And sometimes I get modest rewards for my bravery that encourage me to keep trying.