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Saying No

By Steven Pressfield
Published: February 1, 2012

Ask me what I envy most about people who have lots of money. My answer: “I’m jealous that they have secretaries to say no for them.”

Norman Mailer. The author of "The Naked and the Dead" and "The Executioner's Song" had a few more in him.

Saying no is hard for me. Always has been. It’s hard for a lot of people. Maybe we want to be thought of as nice guys. Maybe we remember people turning us down when we asked them for help, and we don’t want to be that kind of person when other people ask us. Maybe we truly have empathy for the plight of whoever is asking us for something. Maybe we really do want to help. We don’t want to turn a deserving individual away.

But you can’t be a pro if you can’t say no.

(I’ve addressed this issue before in a post, “On Becoming More of a Pr@#k,” and another called “An Ask Too Far.”)

Bottom line for me: we can do it nicely, but we have to learn to say no.

As artists and entrepreneurs, what capital do we possess? Time. That’s all we’ve got.

We have to protect that time.

I’ll tell you the truth. When some people call me and ask me to lunch, in my heart I’d like to murder them. To drag me out from noon to two is to steal my day. I know the person asking doesn’t realize this. I know there’s no way I can explain it without sounding like a total sonofabitch. But that’s the truth. I’m working! I’ve got stuff to do. I can’t sit around shooting the shit over margaritas. Forget about it.

You and I live in a different universe from most people. We’re like pregnant women. Our interior planets rotate around a singular sun, and that sun is our work—the project or projects that we are giving birth to. That work takes precedence over everything except kids’ soccer games and all-out emergencies.

Sometimes even our spouses don’t understand this.

Are we crazy? You’ve read the same articles I have in the Sunday supplements that say on your deathbed you never regret the days you didn’t go in to the office. Bullshit. That’s not my world. I do regret those days. Norman Mailer toward the end of his life was asked if he had any regrets. The interviewer expected, I imagine, an answer like, “I wish I’d spent more time with my kids.” Instead Mailer said, “I have three or four more books in my head; I wish I had written them.”

Was he crazy? No. He’s just like you and me. He had babies inside him and he wanted to give birth.

So I’ll make you a deal. If you ask me to lunch and I respectfully decline, please don’t take it personally. I won’t be offended if you do the same to me. I understand. You’re working. You’re crazy. You’re just like me.
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Posted in Writing Wednesdays
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What It Takes

The Difference Between Pain and Injury

By Shawn Coyne | Published: February 3, 2012

So I’m at the health club the other day. And like most health clubs, there is a ceaseless barrage of aural and visual input.

Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots. Is it "pain" or injury?

Grunts reminiscent of a maternity ward come from a beer bellied guy who wants everyone to know that he’s just bench pressed 112.5 pounds. A personal trainer checking his cell phone, halfheartedly beseeches for “just one more” Russian tea kettle swing from an elderly lady wearing a leotard circa 1973. The screams and strained cheerfulness all awash in the pulse pounding club music pouring out of the gym’s suspended speaker pods.

But what really catch my attention—despite the fact that I have my own pre-programmed playlist streaming into my cerebral cortex from my own personal listening device—are two 42 inch plasma televisions above my head. One is ten feet to the right of me and the other about three feet to the left. The one directly in front of me is running a new daytime show called The Daily Chew, which from what I can tell is an hour long of carefully orchestrated food pornography. Lots of sizzling meats and sugar coated confections, followed by ecstatic expressions from the show’s five hosts as they sample the in studio prepared fare.

I’m not a foodie, so it is ESPN2 to the left and CNN to the right that distracts me from the horrors of maintaining an elevated aerobic heart rate for forty five minutes. ESPN2 is running a story about the condition of the New England Patriots star tight end, Rob Gronkowski. “Gronk” is the perfectly sculpted protoplasmic beast who broke a number of NFL receiving records this season. But in the AFC Championship game against the Baltimore Ravens, he “sprained” his ankle and had to be helped off the field.

While I pant, the network keeps running the slow motion injury footage. It’s gruesome. Not on the level of Lawrence Taylor’s tackle of Joe Theismann on Monday Night football in January 2008, but at least on a par with Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s experience in Cleveland this season, which effectively knocked the black and gold out of the Super Bowl hunt. Calling the collapse of Gronk’s lower tibia and at least a rubber band stretch of his posterior tibial tendon an “ankle sprain” is like saying Donald Trump has a slightly receding hairline. After three replays and three winces—one view never seems to be enough, two is too voyeuristic and three somewhat shameful—I shift my eyes to the CNN portal.
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What It Takes

What Editors Do

By Shawn Coyne | Published: January 27, 2012

A month ago, just before the Christmas break, I ran into a friend and former colleague. Obviously late for an appointment, she had that thousand yard stare of the warrior just back from the front.

Tom Cruise as Jerry Maquire. "It's an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about ... "

We gave each other a hug and asked about each other’s spouses and kids. Neither one of us threw out publishing’s “we have to get together for lunch or a drink” fake intimacy shtick.

We had a great time working together but we both knew that we’d probably never do so again. I don’t represent her kind of books and she has no interest in the kind I do represent. As strange as this may seem, there’s not a better basis for a book publishing friendship as that. Because you aren’t in the same editorial arena, there’s no chance of Schadenfreude and there’s no need to steel yourself for one of publishing’s undermining conversational digs….

“Oh, you bought that? I think I rejected that three months ago…I guess I just didn’t see what you did in there.”

When you’re with someone who publishes women’s stuff while you publish guy stuff, you can actually be yourself with each other and let your guard down.

In the elevator up to my office, I remembered something she used to mumble to me in the thrice a year succession of pre-launch/launch/pre-sales/sales meetings that convene for each of the three selling seasons at the big publishing houses. It is in these meetings that editors do whatever’s necessary to position their authors’ books for the company’s publicity, marketing and sales departments. The meeting presentation is a crucial performance skill for an editor to master. If an editor can’t get the hostile audience (BS meters are on high) to buy in to what he’s selling…the book is sunk. The only thing that can save it is luck. [Keep in mind that I am describing the traditional book publishing model here. It’s much different when you bypass the gatekeepers].

My friend is one of the best and most charismatic presenters I’ve ever seen. Her stable of bestselling authors is testament to that. But like all pros, when it was her turn in the spotlight…she felt the angst and nerves just as much as a first timer. So to let some steam off, just before she’d rise to walk to the dais, she’d turn to me and quote from a favorite movie of ours…

“It’s an up-at-dawn, pride swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about…”

We used to trade quotes from Jerry Maquire. Cameron Crowe’s screenplay and Tom Cruise’s characterization of what a sports agent contends with is a spot on description of what an editor endures too. Editors are authors’ voices inside the houses and the things they have to do to make sure their books get an opportunity to perform are not necessarily what the creators of a book need to know. There’s a lot of horse trading. And there are many additional gates inside a house that an editor must unlock before a book has a real shot at reaching its largest possible market.
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