Street protests in Athens. Solon would have approved.

And yet artists have always run in schools. Paris in the 20s, Rome in the late 50s and early 60s, New York any time. I wish I had been part of a school. I once went to Paris and did nothing but ride the metro to the places Hemingway had mentioned in his short stories and in A Moveable Feast. I would’ve loved to have hung out with kindred spirits anywhere. It would’ve made me feel less alone.

Here’s what I found out about Hemingway by the way. In the short stories like “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” you felt like he was in some workingman’s café writing fiction with a half-inch stub of a pencil because he couldn’t afford even a crayon. Turns out the Closerie des Lilas and many of the other watering holes he mentioned are high-toned, high-cotton joints. Zinc bars, walnut-paneled walls. I was kinda depressed to discover this. I thought, “Hem was a swell!” I was disappointed.

Bottom line: I never could find a school. I never managed to hang out with anybody. Wherever the school was, I always got there twenty years after it had packed up and split.

But we need schools. We need the tribe. It’s too lonely being a one-man band all the time. Maybe the web is our school today. Maybe it’s Facebook, I don’t know. I’m missing that school too.

But to get a little more serious, the point of this post is that we need both sides of the dime. Each of us as individual writers, artists and entrepreneurs needs to be able to flip the switch and become the Incredible Hulk of self-discipline and self-sustenance. But we gotta be human beings too. The free agent mindset is too hard to sustain. In my own life I’ve probably arced way too far into that end of the pendulum swing. It’s not healthy. It’s not good for you.

But to be too mush-brained and other-directed is bad news too. Even worse news, because then we’re no good to anybody, including ourselves.

I admire the old-school philosophies of guys like Marcus Aurelius and Baltasar Gracian, who were able to be deeply in the real, warm-blooded world but at the same time remained true to their own stars.

The ancient Greeks invented the concept of the citizen. The autonomous individual who was capable of making up his own mind, unswayed by emotion or the mob, but who was also deeply involved in the affairs of his polis, his city. Solon, the great Athenian who saved the democracy when it was teetering on the brink of chaos, enacted the following law:

Any citizen who fails to take sides during a revolution will be fined a thousand drachmas (or some such hefty amount) by whichever side comes out on top, as soon as order is restored.

Solon didn’t want fence-sitters. He believed it was bad for the democracy. Jump in and join the riot. At least you’ll be a citizen. You’ll be making your voice heard.

Before the invention of the citizen, there were tribesmen, there were subjects, there were slaves, there were savages. None of these possessed free will. All were either possessed by others or bound by rigid, unbreakable codes of honor, conquest, or revenge.

You and I are citizens. We’re artist-citizens, who follow our calling, no matter what internal or external forces stand in our way, but at the same time we participate in the life of our times—of our family, our community, our nation, and our world.

We’re free agents but with warm blood.

Always Refreshing!

Now this is a very good strategy to rid you of repetitive paperwork/accounting/office management. But it can be the death knell for creative work. Forcing yourself into making a decision about a particular project just to get it off your desk will bite you in the ass later on. I can’t tell you how often I’m haunted by the consequences of my hurry up and move on decisions. If you see me walking down the street cringing, you’ll know I just remembered one.

And don’t forget business decisions are creative work too.

Whether or not you should make that call and press for better terms with that vendor may seem like a run of the mill decision, but it’s not. You need to creatively think about what it is that decision will do for you. You may win a marginal short term victory, but your vendor may hate you for being such a penny pincher that she does the least amount possible to keep you happy. Your inventory is mishandled so your customers return more goods and are dissatisfied etc.

Making the call and pressing for a reduced fee may be the right choice. But until you sit with the problem for a little while and map out the pros and cons of a decision, you’re running on “first draft-itis.” And no one should see your first draft of anything.

Why do we do this?

We do it to avoid confrontation. It deflates our anxiety, gives us “thank God I got that over with” relief.

It’s important to remember though that life is conflict. It just is. These are why stories, things built on the bedrock of conflict, are so important to us.

That doesn’t mean that it is all about screaming or passive aggressively getting your way. It means that in any human interaction, there is a clash of one kind or another. We communicate in order to figure out where we differ (where should we go to eat?) and then we confront the controversy and make it go away (how about a Mexican restaurant?). If you both love Mexican food, problem solved. If one of you wants Sushi, then there’s stress.

The courage to do nothing is all about remembering that you don’t know everything. You are capable of changing your ideas about things. You can hold two opposing thoughts in your head without jumping off a cliff. Really you can. You can hate taxes and also believe that the government should raise them to help people incapable of taking care of themselves.

When I went away to college, I’d never eaten Japanese food, Chinese food, Indian food, and on and on. I was a Mook who’d only eaten meat, potatoes and canned green beans. Food was fuel where I grew up, not entertainment.

Was I an idiot because I’d never tasted Baked Alaska? Of course not.

But if I’d refused to have the courage back then to do nothing when new friends who’d traveled outside of their area code before insisted we get some Pad Thai, I’d never have eaten anything more exotic than a cheeseburger.

It’s the same thing with your novel or your screenplay or your plumbing supply business. You are going to confront major and minor problems creating these works of art (and if you don’t think running a plumbing supply business requires art, you’ve never tried to manage more than one thing at a time). The perfect answers will not come to you off the top of your head.

Take a minute, an hour, an evening, to let your ideas stew.

It’s a lot harder to do nothing than you may think…

Shaq of Orlando, L.A., Miami, Phoenix, Cleveland, Boston. We're all free agents now.

I think there is, and here’s how I’d define it:

We—meaning anybody now living in the globalized/digital/satellite-linked/worldwide-web world—are faced with the challenge and obligation to make a primal shift in consciousness. This shift is as cosmic, I believe, as the transition from illiteracy to literacy in the Gutenberg era, from farm to factory in the days of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and all the post-Industrial Age changeovers since.

I’m not talking about external changes. Those are obvious. What’s perilous and critical and what we all need to become conscious of is the stuff inside. How have we had to change our minds and our ways of thinking about the world and about ourselves?

Shawn has a concept he calls 3PV. Third Party Validation. What he means is the mind-set in which one’s sense of emotional security and self-worth is dependent upon the opinions of others. In other words, we don’t go forward with any action unless we think other people will approve.

Seth Godin talks about this a lot too. Seth decries the internal paralysis that stops people from acting until they have been “picked,” i.e. taken note of by Higher Authority and given permission to go forward.

“Pick” yourself, Seth urges. Give yourself permission to act. Don’t wait for some Third Party to tell you it’s okay or to provide a structure of incentive, punishment, and reward.

There’s a key insight here into the Macro Change we’re all going through.

We’re all having to adopt the Free-Agent mentality.

The Macro Change is a switch from being part of an organization (I hesitate to say “community,” though that’s probably the effective emotional term)—General Motors, Apple, the army, Harvard or State U.—to being Just Ourselves. But it’s not just being part of, it’s thinking like a part of.

Is it necessary to have an actual “job?” A salary? A boss? I’m speaking emotionally, not financially. Is our mental setup such that we are dependent for our inner well-being upon an externally-imposed structure? Are we capable of acting without external motivation or validation or reinforcement?

I was watching a documentary the other night about the old Brooklyn Dodgers. Talk about a vanished era. The players actually lived in Brooklyn. You would run into Gil Hodges or Carl Furillo in the produce section at Gristedes. A ball player in those days signed with a team and expected to play for them his entire career.

Sandy Koufax played his entire career for the Dodgers, in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

Today you’re a free agent and so am I. Even in long-term jobs, we must think like entrepreneurs. Our 401-Ks are gone with the wind, along with Tower Records, Borders, and the steel industry.

The consciousness expansion and self-empowerment brought about (and required) by the digital revolution and its second- and third-generation follow-ons including globalization of manufacturing and the offshoring of Ozzie-and-Harriet-era jobs has compelled each of us, whether we want to or not, or realize it or not, to become our own one-person General Motors, IBM, U.S. Army, Harvard.

The web these days is chockablock with sites promising to teach “self-empowerment,” “self-motivation,” “self-branding.” Ninety percent of this may be hogwash and Amateur Hour, but the underlying imperative to learn these skills remains drop-dead valid.

In many ways that’s what this blog is all about—and has been from the start, though I myself am only starting to realize it now.

The switch we’re all having to make is from taking our identity and self-worth from being part of a Greater External Identity to being our own Identity.

The concept of Resistance is central to this alteration of consciousness, because the reason we fail to be self-motivating, self-validating, self-reinforcing is that we’re being defeated by our own Resistance.

This is a deep subject, worthy of far more examination than this space can handle in one day.

One closing thought: I suspect that much of the groupiness that upcoming generations display is a necessary and healthy counterpoise to this imperative of self-definition. People need community. Facebook, social networks, running in packs. I hate to say it but nativism, sectarianism, religious extremism, reversion to tribalism (whether in Baluchistan or the U.S. House of Representatives) are all part of the reaction to this Macro Change that the whole world is going through.

These are the prevailing winds.

This is the sea we’re swimming in.

This is the new stuff we have to teach ourselves.

It’s hard. It’s not natural. It’s scary, it’s uncharted, it’s lonely. And the dark side is never far away. (See the Boston Marathon bombings.)

But this is our brave new world.

We are all free agents now.

Big Guy goes after Little Guy.

Little Guy finds inner strength.

Little Guy taps into inner strength.

Little Guy fights Big Guy.

Big Guy falters.

Little Guy knocks Big Guy’s lights out.

The David and Goliath story is the story of the “win.” Think Luke against Darth Vader, Daniel Larusso against the entire Cobra Kai dojo, and pretty much any Disney classic (insert any princess or talking animal against any evil witch or demented talking animal here.).

The opposite—the story of the lose—plays out in two forms: Little Guy goes after Big Guy and is squashed by Big Guy (think of all the companies Gordon Gekko crushed before being sent to jail) and Little Guy hides from Big Guy, only delaying Big Guy’s deathblow (think George McFly and Biff Tannen before Marty went back to the future).

Then there’s a third option—when David ignores Goliath and Goliath moves on. And it comes with the realization that David and Goliath don’t always have to face off in order for someone to “win”—and that the definitions of “win” and “lose” aren’t so clear cut.

***

There are a million great lines in the movie Bull Durham. One of my favorites:

This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains. Think about that for a while.

Think about it. There’s always a third option.

From time to time someone will write a nasty e-mail or comment on Steve’s site. When it first launched, there was one individual who kept me up at night, made me sick to my stomach. His nastiness knew no end—or so I thought.

As part of the group on the crap end of the stick, I felt like we were David and he was Goliath.  He caused such pain to my thin skin that he became a Goliath in my mind—the bully. I was ready to throw stones, but a friend offered a bit of advice: Ignore him.

Easier said than done. If I didn’t shut this guy down, he’d win, right? And, I didn’t want to see him win.

But . . . We gave the friend’s advice a chance and Goliath went away. Every now and then a Doppelganger shows up and says something equally mean and insensitive, too. Whenever that happens, we insert a rain day and move on.

This third option is always available, but its so easy to look for the polar opposites—one vs the other, good vs evil, David vs Goliath.

From time to time I run into an author who wants to faceoff against Goliath. That’s his strategy for coming out on top as a winner.

The author wants to get into a debate with the talking head du jour and shut that talking head down.

And there’s a bit of danger to that. The danger is that the author, who sees himself as David, actually turns into a nasty Goliath himself.

For that author, a rain day is the best day.

In baseball, a rain day can be the difference between an injured player missing another game or making a comeback, and it plays into the pitching line-up too—one more day of rain equals one more day of rest for that starting pitcher.

For authors, it’s a day of rest, too.  Yes, you should fight, be an advocate for yourself, but there’s a lot that goes into fighting. Step back and take a long-view of the battle. Is this one you really need to win? And what does a “win” mean? Or, can you accomplish your goals by taking a rain day? You won’t be running away. Just recouping, thinking about what’s important, picking your battles, thinking about different strategies.

That guy who had me reaching for Prilosec? From what I’ve heard, he’s a wanna-be author. While I always thought of him as Goliath, I’ve realized that he probably thought of himself as David, and looked at Steve as Goliath—an already published author who he wanted to take down. Ego wanted to fight him, but we said no. Let’s walk away. Let’s take a rain day.

We rested. He left. Our game continued with a refreshed lineup.

So sometime you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you take a rain day (and realize there’s a solid amount of winning to be done within those days, too).

I never talk about a project I’m working on. It’s bad luck. But something happened a few nights ago that made me think I should make an exception, both for the sake of my own thinking and for sharing an insight or two. So I’ll keep depiction of the project vague but the wisdom as clear as I can make it.

Never listen to what they tell you in rooms like this

I was at a professional event with a friend who, each time he introduced me to a new acquaintance, described and made a pitch for the project I’m working on. (Don’t ask why.) He did this a number of times despite my excruciating embarrassment.

Bottom line: everyone he told the idea to went catatonic with boredom. Their eyes glazed over. They began edging toward the exit. Though they were too polite to say anything overtly negative, it was clear that they regarded me and my enterprise the way one might a Comic-Con trekkie describing his plans for solar self-levitation or, perhaps, Newt Gingrich flogging tickets for his colony on the moon.

I went home pretty depressed.

The people at the event were by no means imagination-challenged “suits.” They were bold, savvy artists and entrepreneurs. Almost every one had multiple success stories across all spectrums of art, tech, and business.

And their reaction to my project was universal snooze-o-rama.

I thought about it and thought about it and I came to a conclusion:

They’re wrong.

They can’t see what I see.

They have a superficial conception of what I’m planning to do, but they have no idea of how I’m going to do it.

Then I asked myself a second question: Does negative response make you consider giving up?

Answer: not for a nanosecond. I don’t care what anybody thinks. I’m seized by this project and that’s it.

I thought about books of mine from the past. From Bagger Vance to Gates of Fire to The War of Art, practically no one has believed in them at the concept stage. (With the exception of Shawn—which is why he and I are partners today). Most people thought I was crazy. “That idea? It’s been done a hundred times, nobody cares about that any more, what can you possibly say that hasn’t been said already?”

There’s an axiom among artists and entrepreneurs: to succeed, you have to be arrogant or ignorant or both. What that means is you have to blow off every response that says it’ll-never-work. Be arrogant. The nay-sayers are idiots. Or ignorant. Stay stupid and plunge ahead.

So I had a little talk with myself. Literally. I dictated my thoughts into a tape recorder and played them back. I reminded myself that what makes a good idea good is the fact that it hasn’t been done before—and that most people can’t imagine what hasn’t been done before. What they imagine instead is a crappy version of what has been done before. Then they reject that.

I kinda like the idea of a colony on the moon. And I’m not so sure there’s no future in solar self-levitation.

In other words: self-reinforcement.

One of the hallmarks of the true professional is her ability to be her own best friend. Sometimes when I’m driving, I’ll phone home and leave a message for myself.

Steve, we’re behind you, brother. Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do it. Keep the faith, partner. You are on course and on target!

I always laugh when I get home (because invariably I forget that I’ve left myself the message). But the point is serious.

Almost no one recognizes a good idea. And the bolder the idea, the more people will be blind to it. If you’re seeking reinforcement from outside yourself, you’re in for a long, lonely haul. The answer to self-doubt is self-reinforcement.

Lindbergh made it to Paris, and you and I can too.

Snidely Whiplash working on laptop

Someone reaches out to one of us and we like the Chutzpah and ideas presented so we pull the other one into the hare-brained scheme. Now one of the principles that Black Irish Books was founded on, I think the only one, is that we will dissolve the whole kit and caboodle the second one of us isn’t having any fun. I don’t me “whoohoo” fun. I mean “you know this is pretty cool coming up with an idea, having the other guy tweak it, creating something inspired by it, and then sharing it at a reasonable price with others” kind of fun. Once it becomes a chore or we find ourselves trying to maximize our return on investment by doing a deep dive into our online analytics, we’re going to run for the hills.

So because we’re susceptible to enthusiasms (we started this whole thing out of enthusiasm), sometimes we embrace an “opportunity” that comes in over the transom. Something happens, our partner/s fail to live up to their promises, we ask them to explain, they give us a reasonably good excuse, we give them another chance, the same thing happens, and then before you know it we’re out some money.

Now we’re not patsies. As Stanley Kowalski would say, we both have lawyer acquaintances who know how to intervene and work out settlements. But it still stings when you feel like you’ve been used.

I used to really get bummed out about this, especially when it was my idea to get into business with the disappointing party in the first place. And then the last time I was in LA bitching about getting screwed by those so and sos to Steve, he said something simple.

“Hey, we should be thrilled that we’re getting enough traction to get screwed. If nobody cared or supported what we were doing, we’d never make a bad business decision. Because we wouldn’t have a business. If we’re not open to new ideas from people who probably have the best of intentions if not all the skills to make them happen, then we might as well sell Black Irish to Acme Incorporated. No question it sucks when things go south, but look at all the other things that have gone north! Forget about it!”

I haven’t forgotten, but I have forgiven myself for going out on a limb. Sometimes you fall out of the tree, but like my four year old does, you cry, dust yourself off and climb back up again. The view’s better up there.

It ain't so easy, navigating in the boonies

One, my friend was completely confident of our whereabouts at all times.

Two, we were lost at least half the time.

A phrase kept re-appearing in my friend’s conversation: “In the end, we’ll succeed.”

At first I didn’t pick up on this theme, but after the twentieth time or so, I started saying it myself. It was a great mantra, and I think it applies equally well to such diverse enterprises as writing a novel or starting a business or undertaking any long-term, high-aspiration project.

What is a “Recon commander” anyway? As my friend explained it, recon teams or platoons (among many other assignments) guide larger formations across unfamiliar territory. Their job is to go into the unknown and make it known to those who follow. My friend’s vintage is the era before the invention of the GPS or other satellite-based navigational technology. He’s old school. A map. A compass. The sun.

I know from unimpeachable history that my friend is a superb land navigator. But, trust me, when you’re out in the deep boonies with no highways or man-made landmarks within miles, everything starts looking like everything else. My friend taught me about “blind maps”—a map with no place names on it, just topographical features. It’s amazing how hard it is to scan the horizon and say, “Ah, that peak over there is this peak on the map.”

One evening as the sun was setting we couldn’t find our way out of a box canyon. I was starting to freak. My friend was calmly collecting firewood. “In the end we’ll succeed.”

Another day we hiked all morning toward a road that had ceased to exist since the map’s publication. No problem. “In the end we’ll succeed.”

And we did.

There seemed to be two components to my friend’s principle:

1. Commitment to the ultimate object.

“In the end” meant to him the final goal. What happened along the way was purely anecdotal. There was a goal. That was where we were headed. Nothing would stop us from getting there.

2. Indifference to setbacks along the way.

My friend claimed to know exactly where he was at all times but, as I observed more than once, “If you know where we are, why do you keep checking the map?” “I’m checking the map,” he said, “so I know where we are.”

He was advancing, I began to understand, from being “slightly lost” to being “slightly lost” to being ultimately found.

“In the end we’ll succeed” is the ideal attitude for a long-term project because it helps you take incremental setbacks in stride. We progress not from success to success but from defeat to defeat. We screw up. We miscalculate. The unexpected confounds us. The trick is to remember that the sun will rise in the morning, we’ll be able to see the rocks and the handholds; we’ll climb out of the canyon. We’ll get back on track.

The amateur often fails because he mistakes an incremental setback for ultimate defeat. He gives up halfway to the finish. Trekking through a maze of canyons behind my friend, I could feel panic bubbling up in my brain at certain points. But always my friend’s footsteps continued confidently forward.

I was telling him, over the campfire one night, about John Keats’ concept of “negative capability.” What Keats meant by that phrase was the ability to keep functioning with confidence, even when you don’t know where you are or what you’re doing. Keats of course was talking about writing poetry. How do you progress through the composition of a monumental work like, say, Endymion when at point after point you find yourself lost and dazed and confused?

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways

Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits.

In a way Keats was talking about Recon, only he identified his fixed and guiding principle (as a poet should) as Beauty.

Over the campfire, my friend agreed. “In the end, we’ll succeed.”

Louis C.K. replied with a question: “So why do I have the platform and the recognition?”

Itzkoff answered, “At this point you’ve put in the time.”

Pause after you read Louis C.K.’s follow-up:

There you go. There’s no way around that. There’s people that say: “It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.” I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by “new at it,” I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.

Put in the Time

Almost every author I’ve met has mentioned a desire to be interviewed by Oprah, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and/or Charlie Rose.

I get it. Being interviewed by any of those individuals will garner the authors attention and book sales.

But the reality is that most authors don’t land those interviews right out of the gate. And, while those interviews can spike initial sales, they don’t keep things going on their own. They’re a short-term fix.

In an interview with The Paris Review William Faulkner spoke about what writers need to write. The same applies to doing outreach for your projects, sharing/marketing them:

The writer doesn’t need economic freedom. All he needs is a pencil and some paper. I’ve never known anything good in writing to come from having accepted any free gift of money. The good writer never applies to a foundation. He’s too busy writing something. If he isn’t first rate he fools himself by saying he hasn’t got time or economic freedom. Good art can come out of thieves, bootleggers, or horse swipes. People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand.

Outreach is Hard Work

Doing outreach/marketing our art is hard work. It’s painful. Reviewers can be nasty and comments left by today’s online community are about as pleasant as a rabid Pit Bull.

It’s hard to look for the good and keep pushing through the crap, piling up faster than ants at a Fourth of July picnic.

But you do it. You don’t say you’re “too busy” that you haven’t “got time or economic freedom.” You figure it out and keep pushing, even if it takes you 50 years.

I Don’t Do Outreach. I Create for Myself.

Last month, the New York Times ran a few articles about artist Arthur Pinajian, “a reclusive artist whom the art world had not known much about. Now, 14 years after his death, he has fans who mention him in the same sentence as Gauguin and Cézanne.”

When Pinajian died, his sister, in whose home “Pinajian had an 8-foot-by-8-foot studio” and who “supported him for much of his life” told a cousin, Peter Najarian, “Oh, just put it all in the garbage. . . . He said himself to just leave it all for the garbagemen.”

Najarian kept the paintings instead.

Read the article for the full story. Bottom line: Though Pinajian had networked earlier in his life, he became a “hermit.” After a point, it seems neither he nor his art left his studio.

If this was his goal, fine.

But the selfish side of me asks, But what about us? We would have loved to have known about your work earlier.

While you didn’t create for money, money it seems is being made off you work—by those who didn’t create it. Do you care?

Perhaps he’d answer that he didn’t care. That money wasn’t the point—and that he doesn’t care if others profit.

Money aside, what about the art? Isn’t the creation itself something that is meant to be shared?

In the same Paris Review interview, Faulkner said:

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us. Proof of that is that there are about three candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. But what is important is Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, not who wrote them, but that somebody did. The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived one thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn’t have needed anyone since.

The art came for a reason.

And perhaps something inspired Pinajian’s cousin to keep it for the same reason: It wasn’t meant for the trash, but for a wider audience.

The same might be said of John Kennedy Toole’s mother, who held her son’s manuscript tight after he committed suicide, and then pushed until she found a publisher for his book, A Confederacy of Dunces.

At the end of a second New York Times article about Pinajian appears,:

“He thought he was going to be the next Picasso,” Mr. Aramian said. “They believed he would become famous and this would all pay off for them one day, but it just never happened. So he became frustrated and withdrew from everything and just painted.”

I wonder about what he was or wasn’t doing to share his work earlier. And I wonder why the art community of that time didn’t recognize his talent. And whether the best came after he closed himself off.

One thing I know: His work was meant to be shared. I wish it had happened while he was alive. And, I wish I knew why it is easier for some and harder for others—why the one-hit wonders break out and the long-term artists are recognized after they’ve died—if at all.

For writers, the Internet has opened opportunities that don’t translate into other mediums. Viewing a wall-sized Monet isn’t the same on a laptop as it is in person. I’m not living in that world, but I imagine it a harder place to build a following, to break into. But, the benefits of an established platform remain the same.

Back to the Platform and Louis C.K.

What about those artists who do make it big, yet stay out of the spotlight? They don’t do interviews. They don’t muck around with press tours. They write. That’s it.

How did they do it?

Good writing and at some point either they—or someone else—built a platform. And now? That platform is on auto-pilot; it hit a point of self-sustainability.

And that brings us back to Louis C.K.

You have to put in the time. In addition to creating/building, you have to build the platform.

Some people win the lottery, but most of us hammer away for decades. That’s not a bad thing. It takes patience. It takes commitment.

As Faulkner said, “People really are afraid to find out just how much hardship and poverty they can stand.”

Follow Louis C.K.’s advice and “Give it a minute.”

At least a minute…

When you write, are you coming from your gut/heart, or from a merchandising view? Both?

When you're the Boss, love is money

It got me thinking about the old Hollywood axiom, “One for love, one for money.” This is the wisdom proffered in good faith to writers, actors and directors by their agents. It means, “Alternate the projects you work on. Do one that’s commercial, then do the next ‘for art.’”

The counselor offering that advice is trying to steer her client’s career between Scylla and Charybdis. Don’t be too precious and work only on artsy-fartsy stuff. But at the same time, don’t be so mercenary that you stick only to surefire commercial trash. Glide back and forth. Keep your hand in both worlds. The “one for money” will pay the rent, the “one for love” will feed your soul.

Of course most of us aren’t lucky enough to even get this choice. We don’t have the luxury of turning down paying gigs. But let’s set that hardball reality aside for the moment. The question on the table is: “Do you work from your gut/heart or from a merchandising point of view?”

Here’s how this issue has played out in my career:

I’ve been trying to sell out for years. My problem is I can’t find anyone to sell out to. I’ve tried to go commercial. I’ve tried to pick surefire winners. Every time I do, I crash and burn.

Now I may be an exception. My case may not apply to others. I’m a spec writer, not a writer-for-hire. Meaning what I like to do is invent my own stuff, then roll the dice on whether or not I can sell it. Someone in that boat doesn’t have the luxury of fielding offers. I might have a different opinion if I did.

The question remains: what criteria do I apply to a spec project of my own? Do I choose the one that feels commercial? Or do I go with the one I love?

Answer #1: I try to do both. I try to pick a subject that I have passion for—but one that I also think will be of interest to people in the real world. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. As William Goldman famously said, “No one knows anything.” If I could pick winners, I’d be pointing to one hit after another. So Answer #1 is dicey from the get-go.

Answer #2: I pick the one I love.

I can only say, this has worked for me. When I’ve gone for a “sure thing,” I’ve bombed. But when I’ve picked projects that seemed like commercial lunacy–i.e., a mystical golf novel (The Legend of Bagger Vance) or a war story set 2500 years in the past in a place that no one can spell or pronounce (Gates of Fire)–those projects have found an audience. They’ve been hits. Even this blog, which started out as utter insanity—a site consisting of nothing but videos of me ranting about tribalism in Afghanistan (!)—has worked out fine (as long as you don’t ask it to produce any income.)

What the issue comes down to for me is this:

I believe that life happens on two levels. The body-level tells us to go commercial. The soul-level tells us to follow our hearts.

If you’re lucky, you’re like Bruce Springsteen. You live on the heart level and you never have to leave it. You ignore every concept of “what will sell.” Instead you dive deep into your own world and your own passions. You go from Born to Run to Darkness on the Edge of Town to The River to Born in the USA and you keep going.

If you’re the Boss, you don’t have to sell out. You don’t have to pander to your audience. Instead you lead them. They want you to. You tell your story, follow your obsessions–and, holy Asbury Park, your secret, inner, crazy life turns out to be their secret inner crazy life too.

A project that for you is “one for love” turns out to be “one for money” as well.

I love filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, I love songwriters like Jackson Browne and Neil Young. I love actors like Ryan Gosling and George Clooney and Edie Falco because they seem to always pick projects based on love. I will even give a shout-out to Tom Cruise. He has rolled the dice more than once.

Sometimes readers will write in to this blog (or to me personally) and take me to task for this point of view. “How dare you suggest to people that they follow their hearts? Life is tough! I’ve got a family to feed!”

I can only answer for myself. Chasing a payday has never worked for me. When I go for a sure thing, I wind up with nothing.

So I vote for the heart side.

One for love and one for money?

Why not do ‘em all for love?

Welcome to Publishing!

Even though I stupidly claimed that Beowulf was my favorite book at my interview, I’d been hired as editorial assistant to the editor in chief of a big mass market paperback publisher. As luck would have it, my first Monday was also “editorial meeting day” at this house. If you want to know what a publishing company is like, go to the editorial meeting. Everything you need to know will happen there. No matter what is discussed, you’ll be able to tell whether the company is doing well or not, who is riding high, who is in trouble, who is a toady, who has the chip on the shoulder, and every other important dynamic. It’s like a mandatory weekly Thanksgiving dinner with a multi-generational dysfunctional family.

As the assistants were en route to the big conference room overlooking Central Park, I made a very big mistake.

I walked into the room first.

As the fresh faced Newbie, I had no understanding of the professional culture or social faux pas. I barely knew where the bathrooms were. But I was playing it cool. Even with damp hands, an arrhythmic heartbeat and a stomach three quarters full of acid contending with an egg and cheese on a roll I’d eaten off the Halal cart on 52^nd Street, I acted like Fonzie.

Rule number one for a person entering an alien environment? Don’t call attention to yourself!

The assistant to a senior editor (two steps down from an editor in chief) was tasked with showing the new guy the ropes. She was very nice.  After I found a seat, she excused herself to get a cup of water down the hall.

Then the other assistants came in.  They casually sidled up to the three quarter length windows above the waist high heating/air-conditioning built-ins along the north wall. It really was a spectacular view. I felt like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl.

A 9:29:30 a.m., all four of the double doors were breached and an army of tweeded big shots marched through. They dumped dog-eared manuscripts and personalized coffee cups and pulled up pleather knock off Eames chairs to the twenty foot table. It was very exciting.

My assistant friend appeared across the room, empty handed but still had a very sweet smile on her face.

“Hey Kid!”

I swiveled around and looked up at someone who would have been called “a brassy broad” in the 1960s, but in the 1990s she was simply referred to as “The Publisher.”

“Get out of my chair!”

I was once terrified to play in a football game against a man named Bill Fralic, a monster lineman who became a four time NFL All Pro Offensive tackle for the Atlanta Falcons and outweighed me by a hundred pounds. Fralic would have crumbled facing this powerhouse.

Now I’m a guy who enjoys a good laugh. But even as I write this, I’m having difficulty not hyperventilating. Twenty two years after the experience, I still remember standing up amidst a din of duped Charlie Brown like laughter. I then saw fifteen editorial assistants sitting on the raised built-in heating/AC units having the time of their lives. Not one of them told me that the conference table and chairs were only for editors…that assistants were supposed to sit on the side and keep their mouths shut until they brought money into the house instead of sucking it out of it.

So what was the timeless dilemma?

The insiders had hazed the outsider. Happens all the time.

But after being the butt of a joke, the outsider can do one of two things. He can define himself right then and there as a rogue, swallow the humiliation and use it to fuel an “I’ll show them!” ambition. He’ll take everything personally.

Or he can retreat into himself, learn the “rules” of rising in that world, and then do what’s necessary politically to become a member of the tribe. He’ll not make waves, he’ll ride them.

I wish I could tell you that I saw clearly enough back then to know that those two choices and that way of looking at the world are complete bullshit.

The truth is that the whole insider/outsider myopic view is just another form of Resistance. The fact that the assistants set me up back then didn’t mean they didn’t like me. In fact, they probably did. I must have given them the impression that I could handle a little ribbing. I wasn’t some fragile wackadoo…and there are plenty of those in book publishing who spend years without uttering a word.

I didn’t freak out on anyone after the joke either. I laughed right along with the publisher and the rest of the company. And guess what, she always said “hello” to me after that. Even though she always called me “Kid,” she learned my name. She asked me questions. One I never did answer well was “Whaddya know?” But she listened to my opinions about projects when we rode the same elevator and when a job opened and I sought it out even though I’d only been there a year, she promoted me. Take that, suckers!

I used to debate in my mind whether she gave me the job because I wasn’t afraid to stand out or because she’d brought me into her inner circle. It took me two decades to understand that she didn’t give me anything. I earned that job.

She didn’t give me a chance because I was an “insider” or because I had the fire of an “outsider.” She gave me a chance because I did the work. When she was in on the weekends, she saw me there too. When she asked me to read something, she got a report on her desk the next day. If she took the time to solicit ideas from the window seats, I spoke up. I made an ass out of myself more times than I’d like to admit but I watched, read, and learned.

While I thought I was doing it back then to “show them!” I really wasn’t. “Showing them!” doesn’t put your ass in a midtown office chair on a Sunday morning reading slush and writing flap copy. I didn’t do that out of spite. I did that because I love book publishing.