Writing Wednesdays
Thinking A Career
By Steven Pressfield | Published: August 15, 2012
Once we turn pro (and even before we do), our Muse has plans for us. Those plans are our career-in-potential. They exist, whether we choose to believe in them or not. And they’re operating upon us, influencing us like the gravitational pull of an enormous invisible star.
"Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere." Neil Young has put out a lot of albums since then.
If you’re a writer, your career-in-potential is a shelf of books. Your books. Books you’ve written. They exist now, even if you haven’t started Book #1. Just as your family exists, even if you haven’t yet met the mother of your children.
It helps, I believe, to think in these terms.
Seventeen years ago, I wrote a book called The Legend of Bagger Vance. I thought it was a one-shot. Today I’ve got twelve books with my name on the spine, and more coming. I wish I had known that at the start. It might have saved me some dark hours.
I’ve got an old vinyl 33 of Neil Young’s album, Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere. It was released in 1969. I just tried to google all of Neil Young’s albums since then. I had to give up. There were too many.
If we’re going to think like professionals, we have to think in career terms.
Album #1 does not exist in a vacuum. It leads to Album #2, which in turn sets the stage for #3.
Which each album, book, film, business enterprise we learn more about who we are. Almost every book I’ve written has arrived out of nowhere. I didn’t see it coming. I had no idea why the subject grabbed me. I started each one knowing nothing about the subject and finished as an uncertified Ph.D.
Then that book went away and another one appeared.
Our Muse has plans for us.
The most difficult part of this journey is, in my opinion, to believe it. To believe in it.
What makes this difficult is Resistance.
Resistance tells us that we have no right to a career in a field we love. One lucky shot maybe. We might be worthy of being a one-hit wonder. But a full career?
If Resistance can’t kill you on Work #1, it will wait patiently and kill you on Work #2. It will never let up. It will be as strong on Work #27 as it was on Work #3.
A career progresses by stair steps. Each achievement elevates us to a new plateau, upon which newer, more difficult challenges present themselves. Resistance follows. It becomes stronger too.
As our Muse calls us forward in our career, teeing up the next album or film or business venture, Resistance stalks alongside like a shadow—the anti-matter version of the bright star of our career-in-potential.
Here are the forms it has taken in my life:
Depression.
Anxiety.
Panic.
Malaise.
Self-doubt.
Anger (at myself and others).
Complacency.
Despair.
If you’re experiencing any of the symptoms above, ask yourself these two questions: “Do I have a work-in-potential ‘out there’?” “Am I doing all I can to bring it into material form?”
In Joseph Campbell’s schematic of the Hero’s Journey, there’s a stage named “the Call.” The Call is the invitation to the journey. It’s the next phase of the fulfillment of our career-in-potential.
In Joseph Campbell’s study of myths, he found a second, darker theme that mirrored “the Call.” He named it “the Refusal of the Call.”
It’s just as possible to freeze as it is to go forward, just as common (maybe more so) to yield to Resistance and play small as it is to rise to the occasion and sally forth.
In my experience, there is always a Call. Sometimes it’s hard to hear. Often it’s obscured or occluded or shrouded in haze and miasma. But it’s there. It’s Neil Young’s next album, it’s my next book, it’s your next movie.
The cure for depression/anxiety/panic/malaise etc. is to, first, believe you have a career-in-potential (I guarantee that you do) and, then, act upon it.
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This is good medicine. Thanks for the uplifting shot to my day, and wishing you continued success.
Perhaps there is particular hope for me. My first novel, soon to be released for Kindle and epub readers (Nook, etc.), also happens to be set in the world of golf. I doubt it cooks up nearly as much fanfare as The Legend of Bagger Vance, but hey, it’s a start. And no, the Muse ain’t done yet.
Congrats, S.J. It takes a brave man to write a book about golf. I have never seen so many eyeballs rolling as when I’ve mentioned that four-letter-word.
I am printing this out to read over often! I spend so much energy just trying to keep my head above the waters of self-doubt – the Resistance. Thank you for a new perspective.
I hear you, Jonnia. Sometimes I feel like the whole path to this career (and a good life) is completely shrouded to me. I write (in part) to outrun that feeling.
I had a funny moment when my father read my latest book. He said, “No offense, but this is better than the last one.”
None taken! I hope each one is better than the previous as I climb those stairs. Thanks Steven.
Fathers are tough!
A few years ago I was feeling scattered and not sure of what my next art work was going to be. I had a destructive person in my life and someone advised me not to tell her about my work. The thought of having a secret is what almost immediately kicked off the ideas for my next three illustrated books/graphic novels. The muse seemed aware of these books that I was keeping secret even from myself! I have now finished the first of these books and am well along in working on the next two. This also reminds me of some of your recent blogs in which a writer writes in an “unacceptable” voice that is new even to her.
Thank you Steven.
This really explains where I have been past couple of weeks, wandering in the desert (fortunately not 40 years)!!
Steven, thank you for your wise advice and the encouragement you give writers like myself. I took your advice immediately after I sent off my novel “Shadow of the Lion” (which is now in the hands of an agent) and have been working on the Celtic novel I had abandoned in favour of Shadow. All of Shadow is cleared away now and I am immersed in Olwen’s world, Celtic Britain 335 BC (yes, with a link to Alexander eventually). And I also have a third novel in mind but it’s on the back-burner stewing while I complete work on this half-finished one.
Oh yes, I know the forms!
But except of the work I have manage to produce (while trying to make the famous “breakthrough”) dealing with Resistance, I somehow have always ideas for future projects.
So, something is taking me to the place of “ideas”. Perhaps I’m just taking me to the place of “ideas”. Anyway, I’m grateful for that. And I have to do my best to honor this trust.
I have sometimes woken up to what I thought was the sound of a telephone ringing, alerting me to — you guessed it — a calling.
Gregg Levoy quotes The Gospel of Thomas in his book, Callings: “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
Perfect timing as I wait for the next novel or screenplay to “arrive.” Thank you. Brahm, I feel like I’m in the desert as well (at least I have a camel!)