One of my all time favorite quotes about writing comes from Steven Pressfield, author of what has become my bible for writing, The War of Art*. In it, he says:
“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”
As a writing habit and motivation coach, I work with writers all over the world who face and tackle this resistance every single day as they struggle to sit down to write. Very often that resistance takes the form of the word “But”.
- But I don’t have enough time.
- But I don’t have enough training.
- But I don’t know what to write.
- But I’m not inspired.
- But I’m not a good enough writer.
- But I’m not in the right mood.
- But I need to take care of all these other tasks first.
- But I’m not making enough money yet to justify taking time to write.
- But I don’t have a laptop.
- But I’m tired, I didn’t get enough sleep last night.
- But I’m too busy.
- But my day job takes up too much of my time.
- But I don’t have a private space.
- But my kids will interrupt me.
- But my mom might call and need me.
- But I’m bored with this project.
- But I can’t decide which project to start with.
- But I’m stuck.
- But I have writer’s block.
- But if I was a real writer, it would come easily to me.
- But I have to deal with this crisis/emergency/major life issue first.
Guess what?
All these Buts are just stories. They are coming up for a deeper reason.
The deeper reason is fear.
Fear is what truly stops us from writing. The Buts are just the surface level rationalizations for fear. They are convenient excuses to keep your butt out of your chair and doing other things so you don’t have to face the discomfort of taking on your dream.
Pressfield also says:
“Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.”
It turns out that actually DOING the writing is fairly easy. Most of the writers I work with find that once they are actually putting words on the page, they forget about the inner struggle and just do the work. In the Writer’s Circle we run five weekly group writing sprints to help our writers overcome the resistance to sitting down to write (and to curtail the sense of isolation). My other favorite trick is to write first thing in the morning with a timer running. Pushing the start button gives me a “GO” that gets me into gear even when the Buts are loud and pernicious.
The thing to notice here is that fear is a beacon. It guides you exactly where you need to and even want to go, though you may not be aware of that wanting yet. The thing is, if it wasn’t a big, big dream, you wouldn’t be afraid of it.
No, I’m not talking here about naturally protective fear that keeps you safe from lions, tigers, and bears — that’s GOOD fear — I’m talking about the kind of fear that’s a holdover from when you were a kid, the kind that’s trying to keep you safe from any kind of personal humiliation or risk. This is also the kind of fear that’s keeping you “safe” from achieving your dreams.
I didn’t quite mean for this to become an ode to Steven Pressfield, but he has so much genius on this subject I can’t help sharing a few more of my favorite quotes from him about fear:
“Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
And:
“Figure out what scares you the most and do that first.”
So it’s time.
It’s time to stop listening to the Buts, the fears, the doubts, and the rationalizations. It’s time to site down and do the work, to coax yourself through the fear with lots of support and promises of rewards, to feed your own well of creative inspiration so you feel consistently nourished and ready to write, and to learn whatever you need to learn so you feel equipped to do the writing. But above all else, it’s time to write.
Build the habit to overcome your own resistance
If you’re a writer struggling to overcome your writing resistance, join the next session of our Writer’s Circle. We’ll help you build a regular, consistent habit of writing so the battle to overcome resistance each day gets easier. Plus, you’ll have a great community of support, working alongside other writers committed to showing up and doing the work. Find out more and register here: http://JustDoTheWriting.com
Thanks for reading!
As always, we love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Warmly,
You may also be interested in:
- Why we procrastinate, especially about the stuff that really matters
- Writer’s block: Does it exist?
- Fighting writing resistance
- Failure, zombies, and Steven Pressfield
I had the pleasure of meeting Aaron Cooley earlier this year in Los Angeles and I was instantly intrigued by his story of not only how he came to write his first novel, 
Well, I didn’t intend to write a book at all. I’ve been working in Hollywood in film development and doing some screenwriting on the side for over ten years now. In 2007, while researching a movie I had been hired to rewrite, I came across a little blurb about a World War II-era Yugoslavian spy named Dusko Popov who Ian Fleming had met and upon whom he had probably based aspects of James Bond. (I now know there are dozens of people who have claimed to be his inspiration.) I thought this would make a fantastic buddy spy action film, so I started pitching it around town. What I found was that although no one had explored my particular Popov take on the story, there were already at least 3 or 4 “Young Ian Fleming” projects in development — one of which finally got made for television starring Dominic Cooper and comes out next year. So I put it on the shelf. Two years later, I still couldn’t get the idea out of my head and as I started to notice how popular and successful e-books had suddenly become — I think Wool had just sold to Ridley Scott — I decided to take a crack at it. I always dreamed of being a fantasy novelist when I was a kid and this was my chance to see if I could actually write a book start to finish.
I have a full-time job — but I actually think that’s a good thing for writers. I can only devote two hours a day to writing, but if that’s the only time you have, you really have to be focused in those two hours and it makes you more productive. I think if I had 8 hours I’d still only get 2 or 3 productive hours in each day. I actually set an alarm and turn off email and social media until that alarm goes off. The hardest time to motivate is when you don’t know what your next project is, and you have to spend that 2 hours brainstorming and going through old idea docs and banging your head against your walls. I’ve spent weeks outlining an idea and reading thousands of pages of research on it only to realize, “This isn’t the one.” When you’re supposed to be writing something, you know it. But make sure you pitch it to a couple people early on. To this day, my 3 or 4 best-received scripts (and the novel) are things that I pitched to people early on and kept getting, “Wow, that’s awesome, you’ve got to write that,” as a response.
A former child actor, Aaron Cooley has been living on film sets since the age of three. Upon graduating from Yale, Aaron migrated to Los Angeles, where he has apprenticed under director Joel Schumacher, most recently serving as his head of development and Associate Producer. As a screenwriter, Aaron has developed projects for the companies behind PULP FICTION, TRANSFORMERS, ROCKY, SAW, and THE BREAK-UP, as well as helped create advertising for various MTV Awards Shows and public service campaigns. SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED is Aaron’s first novel.
Today’s article is a guest post by story and Enneagram expert Jeff Lyons of StoryGeeks.com. His article touches on a often overlooked aspect of story development that many writers miss and their story structure suffers as a result: their main character’s “moral problem”.
