Writing Wednesdays
Do It Anyway
By Steven Pressfield | Published: May 26, 2010
This is an important post. I say that because this piece addresses (after procrastination, which is the #1 champ), the single greatest excuse/reason/cop-out that prevents aspiring writers, artists and entrepreneurs from taking action to pursue their dreams.
That excuse is, “First I have to _____________.”
“___________” can be anything from “finish my research” to “pay the rent” to “get rid of my slacker boyfriend.” I’m not saying such excuses can’t be real or serious. “Stop drinking,” “get out of rehab,” “recover from suicide attempt.” They can be absolutely valid and true. But they’re still Resistance. They’re still bullshit.
Here’s the counter-mantra: “Do it anyway.”
Am I being overly hard-core to assert this? No. I’m being kind.
The surest antidote to the state of misery and paralysis that we find ourselves in when we’re under the spell of “First I have to _________” is to sit down and do our work anyway.
Tales from the trenches
This past year hasn’t been the worst of my life—but it’s right up there. I’ll skip the personal details because of the pain it might cause to people dear to me, but suffice it to say that my head, my heart and my butt have been swimming for their lives this past year. My artistic self-confidence, which has been bedrock for me for years, took a major hit about six months ago. I’m still not out of the woods. At the same time, outside commitments (most of which, to be honest, are voluntary and positive), family emergencies and other imperatives have whacked the hell out of my working time.
But here’s the weird part: my work has never been better. I’ve got three projects going, and they’re all hitting on eight cylinders. Yeah, it’s slow. Yes, it’s hard. But the stuff is good.
It’s saving my life. Certainly it has preserved my sanity.
In other words . . .
In other words: Do it anyway.
We don’t have to do anything else first. We don’t need to cure our neuroses, conquer our fears, overcome our bad habits. We don’t have to be sane; we don’t have to be solvent. We can be totally screwed up. None of these real-world troubles has anything to do with our creative selves.
The part of our psyches that we write from, or paint from, or conceive new entrepreneurial or philanthropic ventures from . . . that part exists in a wholly different dimension from the part of us that is mucking up our personal lives. There’s no connection. The twain don’t meet. No matter how balled-up we may be in our outer world, our internal fortress of solitude remains waterproof, soundproof, bulletproof.
A bank account in the Caymans
Songs and software concepts, new plays and novels and business ventures . . . they all derive from some mysterious source that isn’t us. And they have their own trajectories and power sources, independent of us. War and Peace and Beethoven’s Sixth, in my view, had their genesis on another sphere and kept germinating under their own power, despite Tolstoy’s troubles with his thirteen kids and Ludwig van’s loss of hearing.
The process, as I see it, is kind of like a womb with the baby growing inside—or like the “cloud” where we save our computer files. It’s safe. It’s in the Cayman’s somewhere.
We’re insulting this mysterious process (and ourselves) when we say we’ll get to work, “but first we have to _________.” And we’re cutting ourselves off from our own deepest sources of creativity.
Stay alert. Any time you catch yourself saying, “First I have to ______________,” know that that statement is 100-proof, Prime Resistance. No matter how real the reason or how plausible the excuse, it’s still bogus.
Save yourself the torture. Turn to the work. Do it anyway.
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What a great reminder, Steven! Especially the part about ‘insulting this mysterious process (and ourselves) when we say we’ll get to work, “but first we have to _________.”’ One of the biggest foibles in humankind is the inability or unwillingness to step aside and allow.
I’m so sorry to hear you’ve had your own doubts this past year. During that time I discovered your book The War of Art. Its message is rock solid, no doubt there. Hang in and keep writing! We cherish your wisdom. Thank you!
Love it! You are so right. Big Smile from me cause the busier I get somehow I am able to sharpen my focus. If I have time on the hands I probably drink more cups of tea and if I have to get on with it I am in “tunnel vision mode”.
Ouch.
Incredible post. Thanks for this. I needed it!
Hello !
I’d like to thank you for your posts and ask you to forgive me for the possible errors the next few lines may contain. I’m French and subject to errors in Shakespeare language (among other things).
I have only discovered your blog a few weeks ago, when you spoke about Robert E. Howard. Your post was linked on thecimmerian.com or maybe in a french forum about this author. I read the post, liked it and added your RSS to my to-read list. And every wednesday, I try to find some time to read your weekly post.
I try, at my very humble level, to write down some little things. I have so many short stories projects I never give the attention I would like them to have from me and many good and bad excuses to delay this work.
I’m not sure that this work is important, not even sure that somebody would find it interesting, but I guess that I’ll never find out if I don’t follow your excellent advices, in this post to put myself to my desk, and in others to have some notion of what I can put into it and how I should do it.
Thank you for spending some of your time every week writing this kind of post, and know that it is appreciated by many people (even on the other side of the Atlantic !).
Thanks for yet another timely post! It reminds me of of something I heard David Simon at the Chopra Center say – that we’re “human doings” rather than “beings”. That people are verbs, processes. Nature wants to act and that the impulse of consciousness is to manifest. The impulse to action is in our DNA and soul. Feels pretty right on to me….
This is bang on. By giving any playtime whatsoever to the ‘first I have to’ demons, we are giving ourselves permission to delay, hedge our bets, stew a little while longer, and generally talk ourselves off of the ledge of doing something that might put us at risk of being laughed at. This is directly at odds with the permission we actually need to give ourselves, which is to get on with it, to try and (possibly) fail – or, just as possibly, ace it.
If we give ourselves permission to delay, we neither fail nor fly. Which, frankly, is kind of boring.
By gumbo, I think I’ll go write a post about this… with your permission, of course – or, in any case, with my own.
As always S.P. you hit the proverbial nail on the head.
The part that I found particularly profound was: “We don’t need to cure our neuroses, conquer our fears, overcome our bad habits….”
I’ve always battled the “I’ll start when things are perfect…” – end up procrastinating for a while until I feel so riddled with guilt – I end up doing it anyway. It’s a constant war with the self.
Thanks for being a virtual mentor.
- Todd
You’re right, this is an important post. Thanks for kicking my ass into gear.
Shun the work and risk offending the Muse,… spurned, She’ll then give those inspirations to someone else. Thanks for the reminder, Steven.