Writing Wednesdays
Opportunities Are Bullshit
By Steven Pressfield | Published: January 9, 2013
Have you seen this clip from Harlan Ellison, the screenwriter? I rank it up there with Josh Olson’s all-time great rant, “No, I Won’t Read Your F*#king Screenplay.”
Harlan Ellison, my hero.
What Ellison says is that anytime he has done anything for “exposure,” he has totally wasted his time. I couldn’t agree more.
Sometimes “opportunities” are presented to us. A chance to get our work exposed. People will see. It’ll make a difference. We’ll advance the brand.
Bullshit.
Almost every opportunity I’ve been exposed to (not all, be it said) is an opportunity for the promoter, not for me. I’m expendable. I’m interchangeable. It’s like that Jerry Seinfeld joke about bridegrooms always dressing in tuxedos. Why? Because one is the same as another.
But I don’t mean to be uncharitable. The blame in these “opportunities” lies not with the conference organizer or the radio host or the tour promoter. The fault resides with me, for rising to the bait.
Looking back over a long career in a number of fields of writing, if I ask myself, “Steve, when did your work get its most efficient exposure?,” it was when I did absolutely nothing and the work spoke for itself.
Why is that? It seems so unprofessional. So counter-intuitive. Is there some law of Inverse Effort, which states that if you try hard to achieve some effect, you will accomplish either nothing or the precise opposite of what you desire?
Maybe it’s a different law, the Law of Desperation, which declares that the more you need something to happen, the more that need is communicated to others and the more they will recoil from that need.
I know this: I feel bad when I pimp my wares.
My colon contracts. Bile ascends in my gorge. I hate myself and I hate everyone attached to the effort.
Yet that insidious voice keeps whispering. “But this is an opportunity, man! You gotta network. Get out there! Everybody promotes their stuff. Be a pro. Seize the moment, dude!”
One way to look at it is through the prism of money. If someone wants you to do something and the remuneration is “exposure” or “opportunity” … you have answered your own question.
I know, I know. Sometimes you gotta get a seat at the table. I can tell you this: in the movie biz, I’ve given more free options than I can remember. How many have paid off?
I won’t answer except to say that the word has four letters, starts with a “z” and ends with an “o.”
My friend and mentor David Leddick has an axiom: “Don’t chase after someone who should be chasing after you.”
He’s right. Harlan Ellison is right. Josh Olson is right. You can do it if you want to. It’s experience. You meet people. You see things. Maybe there’s a payoff somewhere.
All I can say is I haven’t found it, and I’ve been looking for a long time.
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It seems that this all comes back to three words that were a title of one of your books: “Do The Work.”
It’s about the Work. Not the bullshit.
Another excellent Wednesday offering, Steven.
Thanks.
Truth needs no marketing.
All I see is that the attempt to get Exposure in any way is actually the hidden Resistance…
I understand “Exposure” when it involves something you love doing or to hang out with people that like the same things, but when the “you gotta do that”, “opprotunities” e.t.c. appear at the horizon, I worry…
I think about that matter in every chance I meet to get the work exposed, and every time I end up to this question:
Is this chance to get the work exposed a true chance to get the work exposed?
great article and reminder…My ‘voice’ is always telling me that I’m not doing enough in the exposure dept. but really I just need to do the work…honestly…
Wow, it’s hard to argue about this because it *feels* like Harlan’s take is right, but I’m left considering this:
(1) I’ve turned several people onto your book ‘Killing Rommel’ by first pointing them to your “free” high quality videos on youtube about the same.
(2) Several content creators suggest that they’ve come to accept that people will get pirated copies of their work for “free”. The hope is that these people will at least spread the word about the work so that more legitimate copies are bought.
My take is that writers should be paid for every word. Period. The dynamics have changed though, no?
Largo,
I think the “opportunities” that Steve is talking about are the sorts of cross-promotional offers that abound on the Internet. It’s one thing to post free content to your own blog or website; it’s totally different doing it for someone else.
Steve Lovelace
Steve, that’s it exactly.
This was a Wednesday morning fire starter for me
… take a peek behind the curtains to see where the “real” opportunity lies … I am so guilty of getting sucked into this! Harlan’s vid clip is right on the money! NO pun intended!!
Thanks for the re-BOOT this morning Steven!!
Harlan is a hoot, I smile every time I watch it.
Attention is a form of payment. Just be sure you value it appropriately, and don’t use the lure of the crowd to give you a chance to hide from the difficult work.
I agree with Seth. I think a writer must always keep in mind is her/his “Purpose.” It’s not just WHY you write what you write. It’s determines your marketing as well. If your desire is to give something of value to your reader then the marketing is a natural extension of that and flows joyfully from this Purpose.
It’s all energy. Whether it’s the writing or the marketing it should be infused with the energy of your Purpose for doing it. The WHY. When it is, opportunities are drawn to you that jibe with your purpose. Then every bit of attention you receive, every book you write, every reader’s heart you touch, every marketing strategy you use works and feels right.
“Anytime he has done anything for ‘exposure,’ he has totally wasted his time.” I think I’d tweak this a bit, because I don’t think Ellison, or Steve, means we should all do our creative work as hermits in a cave. Pretty darn near all of us creative types want somebody to look at our work. And if we don’t expose it, who will? I mean, this very website is at least partly about exposure, isn’t it?
So my title for this post would be Expose Yourself. Don’t rely on somebody else to do it for you, don’t let your efforts at exposure interfere with the creative work itself, and for God’s sake don’t fall prey to the lies of the sharks who, for a tidy sum, promise to make your work a blockbuster.
Your thoughts on today’s post are the same as mine, noting that this blog is an opportunity for exposure. I’m certainly happy, however, that Steve mans this blog.
There’s a great (and hilarious) flowchart Jessica Hische did called “Should I Work for Free?” Check out the answer to the question “Did they promise you ‘exposure’ or ‘a good portfolio piece’?”
I try to live by this maxim these days.
http://shouldiworkforfree.com/
This chart from Jessica Hische is hysterical. Thanks, Stacy.
I agree with S.J. Crown. It’s a great rant. And of COURSE you shouldn’t do a DVD interview for MGM and not get paid for it!! But there’s another end to that scale, isn’t there? And for those of us “starting out” as writers, I’m afraid there’s little option except to find our own way through this. We’re like children, incapable of taking lessons from our parents regardless of how painful it might be to keep making our own mistakes. It’s certainly true that I may have wasted a LOT of time over the past couple of years doing “free” promotional stuff. But the fact is that it’s also sometimes given me totally unforeseen leads and sales. And, after all, Steven, aren’t all our blog sites freebie “exposure”? Actually, now I come to think of it, maybe this reply…