On Writing

Well, that’s one way to inoculate yourself from the threat of literary critics, eh? (Hah!)

Critics.

The next time you’re up against them, just remember Stephen’s babysitter.

Pow!

And, here are a few more gems to have handy:

Steven Pressfield tells us (see Notes on The War of Art): “The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had the guts.”

John Grisham’s perspective: “Critics should find meaningful work.”

In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown tells us how to deal with the people in the stands. She shares this gem from her friend Scott Stratten (author of UnMarketing): “Don’t try to win over the haters; you’re not the jackass whisperer.”

And, finally, Paulo Coelho shared this anonymous gem: “Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they’re unable to do it themselves.”

Critics: Take that!

Pow!

A nail wasn’t big enough to hold the weight of all the rejection slips young Stephen King received.

So, he got a SPIKE and pounded that into the wall.

And then he went on writing.

I can’t imagine a better image to capture the growth mindset/the importance of embracing our failures and getting back to work. Here’s a quick re-cap of fixed vs. growth mindsets (see Note on Carol Dweck’s Mindset):

Fixed mindset people think there’s no room for improvement—they either have it or they don’t. Therefore, a rejection slip (even just one; or even just the thought that they might get rejected!) is enough to stop them in their tracks. They get a rejection slip and hurriedly throw it away, telling themselves they weren’t that into it anyway. And then they GIVE UP.

Growth mindset writers? They FEAST on feedback (you should read about how Stephen literally craved feedback from publishers). They try to get just a little bit better as they work tenaciously to improve their skills—knowing they CAN get better. For them, failure isn’t getting a rejection slip (or 100). Failure is not trying. So, they get a spike. And they get back to work.

Carol Dweck tells us: “Is it ability or mindset? Was it Mozart’s musical ability or the fact that he worked till his hands were deformed? Was it Darwin’s scientific ability or the fact that he collected specimens non-stop from early childhood?”

Makes me think of Stephen. He’s been reading + writing non-stop since childhood.

P.S. All this reminds me of Paulo Coelho’s wisdom: “I don’t regret the painful times; I bare my scars as if they were medals.”

And, Joseph Campbell’s advice to young writers: “When I taught in a boy’s prep school, I used to talk to the boys who were trying to make up their minds as to what their careers were going to be. A boy would come to me and ask, “Do you think I can do this? Do you think I can do that? Do you think I can be a writer?” “Oh,” I would say, “I don’t know. Can you endure ten years of disappointment with nobody responding to you, or are you thinking that you are going to write a best seller the first crack? If you have the guts to stay with the thing you really want, no matter what happens, well, go ahead.”

George Bernard Shaw echoes the wisdom well: “When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn’t want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.”

Here’s to embracing the inevitable rejection slips on the road to mastery!

#spikes

That makes it pretty clear.

Don’t be timid. Do. Not. Come. Lightly.

BRING IT!!!!

Or go wash your car.

The muse.

Stephen King’s isn’t a cute little lady-fairy. His is a burly, cigar smoking guy who lives in the basement, grunts and pretends to ignore him. (Hah.)

But the guy has a bag of magic.

So, it’s OUR job to make sure we furnish the basement, dust off his bowling trophies and keep him happy by DOING THE WORK day in and day out.

Elizabeth Gilbert has a great TED talk about her relationship to her muse. Check it out here.

Steven Pressfield tells us we need a practice that keeps us connected to something bigger than us that delivers the goods. In Turning Pro (see Notes), he says: “What is a practice anyway? To “have a practice” in yoga, say, or tai chi, or calligraphy, is to follow a rigorous, prescribed regimen with the intention of elevating the mind and the spirit to a higher level.

A practice implies engagement in a ritual. A practice may be defined as the dedicated, daily exercise of commitment, will, and focused intention aimed, on one level, at the achievement of mastery in a field but, on a loftier level, intended to produce a communion with a power greater than ourselves—call it whatever you like: God, mind, soul, Self, the Muse, the superconscious.”

How’s your practice? You properly furnishing the basement to make sure your man-muse is feeling at home, well-fed and generous with the magic dust?

There’s your prime directive if you’re an aspiring writer: read a lot and write a lot.

That passage is also another demonstration of Carol Dweck’s research findings on the power of what she calls a growth mindset (the whole book is one big demonstration as Stephen is the ultimate growth mindset master—advocating tenaciously hard work, love of the craft, learning, and mastery).

The point I want to underscore here: Stephen reads because he LOVES to read. (And he writes because he LOVES to write.) He happens to be sharpening his skills as he reads, but the primary motivation isn’t to study. It’s to do what he loves. Pure intrinsic motivation.

Here’s how Dweck puts it in Mindset (see Notes): “The growth-minded athletes, CEOs, musicians, or scientists all loved what they did, whereas many of the fixed-minded ones did not. Many growth-minded people didn’t even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do. This point is also crucial. In the fixed-mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome.”

Do you love what you do? There’s no (!) way we’ll put in the required effort to attain mastery unless we LOVE what we do—so much that we’d literally pay to have the opportunity to do it.

After college, Stephen got a job teaching. He did that for a couple years.

Two things I want to note here.

First: Later in that section Stephen talks about the importance of the support he received from his wife, Tabitha, during that challenging period. Her encouragement kept him going.

(The book is also part love story. I got tears in my eyes a number of times as he reflected on Tabitha’s love and support over the decades. Made me think of my wife, Alexandra, and her extraordinary belief in and support of me.)

Second: Let’s talk about those jumper cables on his brain.

Stephen is referring to his experience as a teacher and how it left him drained at the end of the week. He had to grunt through that phase when his schedule was out of his hands. Some of us might be in that situation. And, some of us unnecessarily *create* that situation. It’s like we put jumper cables on our brains. That’s what I did.

When I was in full-time CEO-mode, I let my schedule get out of control more often than I’d like— constantly in the thick of things, responding to a ton of emails with a packed schedule, etc. It was almost impossible to even read let alone write. My brain was way too hopped up.

Jumper cables on my brain.

The lesson is simple: If we want to do ANYTHING creative, we MUST remove the jumper cables! Turn off the internet. And the TV. And the talk radio. And the phone. Get out of your email.

Let your brain settle down.

You want your muse-guy to bust out his bag of magic? Well, he doesn’t like all that banging around. Settle down!

Start your day in what Paul Graham calls Maker-mode and spend as much time in there as you can. Create huge blocks of time to do your work—free of distraction and reaction. Ideally, create a rhythm where every day you’re showing up at the same time.

Quit paper cutting yourself with nonsense. Do the work. Jumper cables begone!

Here’s a little more on how to do that:

We need to do the work.

Day in, day out. Week in, week out.

Pressfield puts it this way in The War of Art: “Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.””

Let’s go blue collar, show up, and let the man-muse know we mean business.

Well, there we go.

Back to the whole loving what we do thing. Amazing how one of the most successful writers in history didn’t write a single word (!) for the money. He did it for the joy of it.