Do the Work

introduced a positive opposing force.
     
    Assistance is the universal, immutable force of creative manifestation, whose role since the Big Bang has been to translate potential into being, to convert dreams into reality.
     
    Keep Working
     
    Stephen King has confessed that he works every day. Fourth of July, his birthday, Christmas.
     
    I love that. Particularly at this stage—what Seth Godin calls “thrashing” (a very evocative term)—momentum is everything. Keep it going.
     
    How much time can you spare each day?
     
    For that interval, close the door and—short of a family emergency or the outbreak of World War III—don’t let ANYBODY in.
     
    Keep working. Keep working. Keep working.
     
    Keep Working, Part Two
     
    Sometimes on Wednesday I’ll read something that I wrote on Tuesday and I’ll think, “This is crap. I hate it and I hate myself.” Then I’ll re-read the identical passage on Thursday. To my astonishment, it has become brilliant overnight.
     
    Ignore false negatives. Ignore false positives. Both are Resistance.
     
    Keep working.
     
    Keep Working, Part Three
     
    Did I forget to say?
     
    Keep working.
     
    Act/Reflect, Part Two
     
    Until now, our motto has been “Act, Don’t Reflect.” Now we revisit that notion.
     
    Now that we’re rolling, we can start engaging the left brain as well as the right. Act, then reflect. Act, then reflect.
     
    Here’s how I do it:
     
    At least twice a week, I pause in the rush of work and have a meeting with myself. (If I were part of a team, I’d call a team meeting.)
     
    I ask myself, again, of the project: “What is this damn thing about?”
     
    Keep refining your understanding of the theme; keep narrowing it down.
     
    This is the thorniest nut of any creative endeavor—and the one that evokes the fiercest Resistance.
     
    It is pure hell to answer this question.
     
    More books, movies, new businesses, etc. get screwed up (or rather, screw themselves up) due to failure to confront and solve this issue than for any other reason. It is make-or-break, do-or-die.
     
    Paddy Chayefsky famously said, “As soon as I figure out the theme of my play, I write it down on a thin strip of paper and Scotch-tape it to the front of my typewriter. After that, nothing goes into that play that isn’t on-theme.”
     
    Have that meeting twice a week. Pause and reflect. “What is this project about?” “What is its theme?” “Is every element serving that theme?”
     
    Fill in the Gaps, Part Two
     
    Ask yourself, “What’s missing?”
     
    Then fill that gap.
     
    What’s missing in the menu of your new restaurant? What have we left out in planning our youth center in the slums of São Paulo?
     
    Did you ever see the movie True Confessions , starring Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro? The story is set in 1940s Los Angeles; De Niro is a rising-star monsignor for the L.A. diocese; Duvall plays his brother, a homicide detective investigating a Black Dahlia–type murder.
     
    The script was great, the direction was tremendous. But in mid-shoot, De Niro’s instincts told him something was missing. The audience had seen his character wheeling and dealing on behalf of the Church, hosting big-money fundraisers, getting schools built, playing golf with L.A. heavyweights.
     
    De Niro went to Ulu Grosbard, the director, and asked for a scene where the audience gets to see where his character sleeps. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
     
    The result was a simple sequence, without dialogue, of De Niro’s monsignor returning home in the evening to the dormitory (a former mansion) he shares with other senior priests of the diocese. He mounts the stairs alone, enters a room so bare it contains nothing but a bed, a chair, and an armoire, all looking like they came from the Goodwill store. De Niro’s character takes off the cardigan sweater he is wearing and hangs it on a wire hanger in the armoire, which contains only one other shirt and a single pair of trousers. Then he sits on the bed. That’s it. But in that one moment, we, the audience, see the character’s entire life.
     
    Ask yourself what’s missing. Then fill that void.
     
    Now We’re Rolling
     
    We’re weeks into the project now. Good things are happening. We’ve established habit and rhythm. We’ve achieved momentum.
     
    Ideas are flowing. Our movie, our new business, our passage to freedom from addiction has acquired gravitational mass; it possesses energy; its field produces