Do the Work

novel (so I’ve read), he used to start getting up earlier and earlier in the morning. He was desperate to keep his mojo going. He’d get up at six, then five, then three-thirty and two-thirty, till he was driving his wife insane.
     
    Finally he had to move out of the house. He checked into a hotel (the Kona Village, which ain’t so bad) and worked around the clock till he’d finished the book.
     
    Michael Crichton was a pro.
     
    He knew that Resistance was strongest at the finish. He did what he had to do, no matter how nutty or unorthodox, to finish and be ready to ship.
     
    Fear of Success
     
    I’ve never read anything better on the subject than this from Marianne Williamson:
     
    Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
     
     
    Heaven and Books About Heaven
     
    Have you seen this great New Yorker cartoon:
     
    A perplexed person stands before two doors. One door says HEAVEN. The other says BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN.
     
    What makes us laugh, I suspect, is that all of us feel the pull to pick BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN.
     
    Are we that timid? Are our huevos that pocito ?
     
    When we’re offered a chance at heaven, what diabolically craven force makes us want to back off—just for now, we promise ourselves—and choose instead heaven’s pale reflection?
     
    Fear of success is the essence of Resistance.
     
    It’s silent, covert, invisible … but it permeates every aspect of our lives and poisons them in ways we’re either blind to or in denial about.
     
    In the belly of the beast, you and I chose HEAVEN. We’ve learned and we’re stronger. Now we face the final test.
     
    Exposure
     
    In mountaineering, there’s a technical term called “exposure.” A climber is exposed when there is nothing but thin air beneath her.
     
    She can be a hundred feet from the summit of Everest and not be exposed, if there’s a ledge or a shelf below. Conversely, she can be in shorts and a tank top down at the beach, practice-climbing on a boulder ten feet tall, and be completely exposed—if there’s a fall beneath her.
     
    When we ship, we’re exposed.
     
    That’s why we’re so afraid of it. When we ship, we’ll be judged. The real world will pronounce upon our work and upon us. When we ship, we can fail. When we ship, we can be humiliated.
     
    Here’s another true story:
     
    The first professional writing job I ever had, after seventeen years of trying, was on a movie called King Kong Lives . I and my partner-at-the-time, Ron Shusett (a brilliant writer and producer who also did Alien and Total Recall ), hammered out the screenplay for Dino De Laurentiis. We were certain it was going to be a blockbuster. We invited everyone we knew to the premiere; we even rented out the joint next door for a post-triumph blowout.
     
    Nobody showed. There was only one guy in line beside our guests, and he was muttering something about spare change. In the theater, our friends endured the movie in mute stupefaction. When the lights came up, they fled like cockroaches into the night.
     
    Next day came the review in Variety :
     
    “ … Ronald Shusett and Steven Pressfield, we hope these are not their real names, for their parents’ sake.”
     
    When the first week’s grosses came in, the flick barely registered. Still I clung to hope. Maybe it’s only tanking in urban areas; maybe it’s playing better in the ’burbs. I motored to an Edge City multiplex. A youth manned the popcorn booth. “How’s King Kong Lives ?” I asked. He flashed thumbs-down. “Miss it, man. It sucks.”
     
    I was crushed.
     
    I was forty-two years old, having given up everything normal in life to pursue the dream of being a writer; now I’ve finally got my name on a big-time Hollywood production starring Linda