Writing Wednesdays
An Ask Too Far
By Steven Pressfield | Published: August 10, 2011
In the past year or so I’ve become aware of the verb “ask” used as a noun. I simultaneously like it and am appalled by it. It’s honest. Probably way too honest.
An “ask” is a request for an action or a favor. I was reporting the contents of a long e-mail to a friend; she interrupted: “What’s the ask?” Meaning, “What does the e-mail writer want?”
“Ask” originated, I suspect, in the publicity biz. The difference between advertising and publicity is you pay for advertising but you try to get publicity for free. Hence “ask.” Schmooze schmooze schmooze ask.
Many moons ago I worked at Ted Bates Advertising in New York. One of Bates’ rules of copywriting was, “Always end with a call to action.” That’s the ask. “Buy now.” “Call this number.” “Log in to win.”
There are legitimate asks and not-so-legitimate asks. Have you read Josh Olson’s immortal “I Will Not Read Your F*%king Script!” That’s about an illegitimate ask.
I get a lot of asks. Write a blurb for my book. Write a foreword. Hype my stuff on your blog. Here’s where I come out on asks:
1. If it comes from a real friend or a legitimate colleague, I do it.
2. If it comes from someone who seems like a decent person (or virtually anyone in the serving military), I do it. The good news here is that quite a few real friends have entered my life this way. You can tell a good ask from a bad ask.
3. Everyone else, I pass.
There’s an ethic to the blogging world. It goes something like this. “For every ‘ask,’ you must first produce twenty ‘gives.’” (Some would say a hundred.) A give is the opposite of an ask. I suspect that the heavy give-to-ask ratio is because what I might call a give (say, this post), you might consider a waste of time, a pain in the ass, spam.
I take my own asks very seriously, in the sense that I cringe when I do them and I try to balance them by as many gives as possible. Recently when The Profession was published, I did a bunch of asks. Buy this book. Tell your friends. I hate doing that. The way I justify it to myself is by saying that a person who reads an ask from me on this blog at least had to voluntarily come to the blog in the first place. Still, asks suck.
There are outbound asks and inbound asks. The trick with inbound asks is learning to say no. For most of us, this is not easy. I’ve been trying for years and still don’t say no half as often as I should.
My problem is I like to think of myself as a nice guy. This is not good. I’m working on becoming more of a prick. There are people out there who are what I would call social sociopaths. They’re not actual murderers or criminals; they won’t hurt you. But, for whatever reasons of character or upbringing, they are utterly without empathy. They have no sense of the value of another person’s time or hard-won skill or hard-earned reputation. If you’ve got it and they can use it, they want it. They want it now. They want it free. And they want it again and again.
I mentioned, a couple of posts ago, the guy who sent me an e-mail asking for thirty free copies of The War of Art. There’s another person who (because of a colleague-in-common) I’ve said a courteous no to more than once. He doesn’t stop. Each ask is followed by another ask. The most recent was an ask to read his book. “It won’t be a problem,” he assured me. “It’ll only take two hours.”
Two hours?
When you respond to an ask from one of these social sociopaths, expect no gratitude. Instead the initial ask will be succeeded by a follow-up ask, and if you’re dumb enough to respond to that, a third ask will appear hot on its heels. One guy wrote me out of the blue; I did a long interview for him, wrote a foreword for his book, and even gave him an intro to my agent. Finally he started asking for favors for his friends. This was an ask too far. When I said no, he wrote back: “I always knew you were a Hollywood asshole.”
Dude! I don’t live anywhere near Hollywood.
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Oh man I love this post. My first book is coming out in september and the “blurb” asking thing was horrible. Now I have the “buy my book” and “come to my reading” asks to look forward to. Oy.
I do try to balance with gives though. I share your feeling about finding it necessary to have a very high ” give to ask ” ratio.
Thanks for writing about this kind of stuff. Helps so much to know I’m not alone. War of Art was a big reason I was able to write my book. And btw, I thanked you in the acknowledgements. Since I don’t know you, and have never asked you for anything, I count that as a “give.”
Jamie Rose
“I’m working on becoming more of a prick.” Me too, although probably with too much success.
Love this post Steve. And thanks again for all you give on this blog.
Andrew
Thanks for this post, Steven. Like Andrew, my favorite line was “My problem is I like to think of myself as a nice guy. This is not good. I’m working on becoming more of a prick.”
Your point that asks must be outweighed by gives is a great way to look at the dynamic. I really appreciate that asks are so difficult–I think lots of creatives are culturally trained to NOT ask because of that difficulty (the opposite of your over-asker, actually). It’s a hard step for many creatives to ask, but I love your approach to balance them with gives and to take them seriously.
Thanks, Steven!
Before reading this, I had just got off the phone with a relation who almost always calls to “ask” for something (money!). When I saw the caller ID on my cell phone, a feeling of dread hit me. Sure enough, another catastrophe — not going to starve — that has been used several times before — but a bind that was caused by my relations bad judgment. This time I just said I was not able — and that was the plain truth. How many times have I worried myself sick about my relation’s problems. No matter how much money or any advise, I think once a couple of “asks” were successful, I have cause the flood gates to open! No need to go on, just wanted to say that after reading Mr. Pressfields’ most enjoyable “An Ask to Far” it sure took the edge off what would have been a day of worry and fatigue!
Interesting that you pick up on “ask and give” rather than “give and take.” Properly understood, there’s an element of anavah (Hebrew for humility, but it means more than that) in the ask/give that doesn’t exist in the give/take. Of course, the “ask” can become a “take” – something you refer to. (In that case we say tsk to the ask-er – a nicer pun than the other one I thought of.) Jewish mysticism has much to say on this paradigm, which manifests in many ways. On the “ask-as-noun” phenomenon, there’s a rhetorical term for that. My friend Jay Heinrichs (here’s a give) writes about such things in Thank You For Arguing and Word Hero. In your case, as others have acknowledged, War of Art and Do The Work are massive gives – or we might call them “pre-asks.” Since we’re in football season, and writers love analogies, I’m reminded of what the vets say about rookies who are competing for the vets’ positions: I’ll give him all the help I can, because that’s what others did for me (pre-ask) and that’s what makes us a better team. So thanks for bettering us all.
David Y.B. Kaufmann
“An Ask Too Far” Now clever is that title!!!
I hope this makes the same rounds as Josh Olson’s essay–it could halt a lot of would-be askers and save harried givers. If I’d read this before blasting out requests for ARC blurbs, I wouldn’t have made such an ass of myself. Still an ass, no doubt, but not as much of one.
Another great post. I continually find myself grateful for the insight and commentary I find here. Thanks for the time and effort, Steven.
Only now you’re aware of the word “ask” being used as a noun? Sugar, here in Hollywood we’re big on using verbs as nouns (and nouns as verbs, for that matter). “Give”, “ask”, “tell”…. (OK, so “tell” we stole from Vegas, but we just consider that fair use parody.)
I worked as a Fox legal assistant on a couple of the contracts for BAGGER VANCE. I’m pretty sure there were a fair number of “gives” and “asks” in both of them. I’m surprised you didn’t learn about all this back then.
~A~
Amanda, I’m a little slow on the uptake.
One of the things I like most about the English language is how easy it is to use nouns as verbs and verbs as nouns.
A guy who was a friend of a friend of Elmore Leonard sent a copy of his novel to Leonard to read in his “spare time.” I suspect they’ll find Jimmy Hoffa’s body before anyone can find his manuscript, unless they dredge the Detroit River for it.
That’s a great one. Spare time.