In The Matrix, Neo is given the choice between two pills. The red will wake him up from the simulated world and bring him to the truth; the blue will allow him to keep dreaming his life away, forever entombed by blissful ignorance. About twenty years ago, by way of his book, The War of Art, Steven Pressfield gave me the red pill, shattering my perception of the artistic world, and ultimately, destroying my life. As always, you can hear yours ramble and riff my way through these newsletters in all of my unfiltered messiness by hitting “LISTEN TO POST” above, or via my Drowning in Words podcast on Apple and Spotify. As a product of the remarkable output of such tormented souls as Kurt Cobain, Tom Petty, Jerry Garcia, Ernest Hemingway, and Jackson Pollock, I came up with the flawed belief system that the truest art could only arrive among brief flashes of genius that surfaced during prolonged bouts of suffering. As a budding writer, I embraced the idea that I wasn’t tortured enough to create anything great—or great enough to create anything great—so I toiled in a state of wanting to write but being unable to do so, at least not on a regular basis. I’d tell people I was writing a book, but in truth, I was piddling. I was only putting pen to page when the muse danced with me, and that wasn’t that often. In my mind, my suffering wasn’t exceptional enough. A lot of us out there are “writing a book.” We might make such a claim at dinner parties. Perhaps we have a sincere intention. Maybe we’ve started the process and are mulling over titles or potential longlines or even begun research. Or we’ve actually attacked the blank page and put words down. Then there are writers who are completing books and moving on to the next. Those in the first camp, listen closely. The latter group knows the secret. In The War of Art, Pressfield lays out what I believe is the most essential piece of advice for becoming a writer and, it turns out, the most dangerous. He writes: “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.” His basic message is: DO THE WORK. I remember closing the book and thinking, Hold on. I don’t have to be hit with inspiration to write? I don’t have to live in this tortured place and wait till my tears are ready to twist into letters? All I have to do is put my butt in the chair and get going? It’s simple advice that absolutely changed my mentality around writing. Forget lightning strikes. They come when they want to, but that’s not an excuse to sit around and wait. Even under blue skies sans any lightning strikes, you must find your way to the chair, raise your fingers over your keyboard, and start tapping. Every day. No exceptions. Do the work. As an aside, I learned that the more I put in the work, the more the muse visited and the more I fell into flow, which is exactly the drug that keeps me going. Follow that recipe and you can join the few who have actually completed a novel. Repeat the cycle, and you’ll build an oeuvre and find your readership and realize your dream of doing this crazy gig for a living. I might as well have tattooed the text of that book onto my body, as it became my bible. From that instant on, it wasn’t about waiting for inspiration. It was about getting my butt in the chair. I felt like I’d cracked the code to the universe. No longer would I judge my success for the day by the quality of what I wrote. It was about whether I had the courage to break through the resistance and actually fill pages with words. Quality could be dealt with during edits. My obsession grew from there, and when I caught wind of people bragging about their daily word count during drafting, I jumped aboard. It wasn’t only about time spent in the chair; it was about hammering the keys as quickly as possible, setting a daily goal that could easily mark my success. 3,000 words a day. Hit that and I could realize my wildest dreams. No matter where I was or what was going on in my world, I worked my way to the keyboard seven days a week. Whatever it took. I’d get my words in on a turbulent plane, or at 4 a.m. on a cruise before my family stirred. I’ve almost never let a vacation stop me from writing. Even when the real world was crashing all around me, crushing me with stress, grief, or pain, I still made time to write, because it was the only truth I knew. Do the work and all will be okay. Those around me couldn’t believe my output, a book or two a year. I would smile to myself, thinking: they don’t know how easy it is. How fortunate I am to hold the secret. If you haven’t read The War of Art, I strongly advise you take the red pill and join us. But perhaps this essay should be placed in the introduction as a warning that you can take the advice too far. Without a strong understanding of when to pull back the reins and take a break, you might end up like me at times, a weary skeleton of a writer tapping his bony fingers as he crumbles into dust. In other words, there will come a time when you need to check in on yourself, maybe leave your drilled-in habit at the door so can you recharge your battery to healthy levels. I must relearn the lesson every time I turn my WIP in for dev edits. Suddenly, after giving everything I have each day for nearly a year, I’m faced with a terrifying month of… Downtime. I can barely type that toxic word without the saliva congealing in my throat. I recently submitted my sixteenth novel to my dev editor. Never before have I had more fun writing a story, and I uncorked a bottle of wine that night and toasted how I’d been able to get out of my own way and create from a truly special place with this one. I also told myself that I’d earned a break. Time to plug back into family and friends and life. The next morning, I woke with a great sense of pride. I put a slow jazz album on the record player, sat down in a comfy chair with a cup of coffee, and cracked the spine on a new book. It was high time I caught up on reading. When my family woke, I’d take them to breakfast. I’d actually not write for once in my darn life! How sweet that sounded. As I worked my way through the first few pages of the book, and as the coffee kicked in, a voice whispered that I could (should?) sneak a few words in before my son came rushing down the stairs. He and my wife wouldn’t even know that I’d written. I sighed, then returned to reading. The voice again. Boo, you could put the finishing touches on your writing craft book. Why not wrap it up too? A few days and you’re done. Two books in a year. And it’s nonfiction, requiring a totally different part of the brain. You know how this turns out. In minutes, I was upstairs pounding away. Two hours later, my son was pulling me from my chair, saying I’d promised breakfast. Seven days went on like that, me sneaking in early-bird words, till I did indeed finish a draft of my craft book too. I sent it to my agent and pumped my fist into the air. Talk about a celebration. I’d certainly earned a proper break this time. I woke up the next morning, repeated my desired routine, telling myself that I wasn’t going to write for a while, not till my dev edits came back. Wait, what about my piece for Writer Unboxed? Might as well get that out of the way. I do have the time—and it’s good to get some words in and, you know, keep the habit alive. Pressfield would pat me on the back, maybe buy me a drink. Coffee in hand, I raced upstairs and satisfied the urge. It finally hit me. Oh my God, I can’t stop. This is not healthy. How am I going to recharge if I keep sucking every last creative drop from my body? High output requires an equal or greater amount of input. I have to step away and own my restful time with the same pride with which I meet my daily word count. Easier said than done. Last week, determined not to write, I ended up rearranging and cleaning closets. Then I brainstormed a new project. Deciding a new story was off limits, I started cleaning up my Mac, and while I was at it, realized I should devote a day to making sure all my work was backed up with multiple redundancies. I went on a tangent to research trips to the Caribbean. It got uglier from there, all this pent-up momentum racing to nowhere. I dug into the lowest priorities on my to-do list app, chasing worthless tasks that I’d created months ago. The doomed climax was when we got out to our writer’s cottage on Peaks Island a few days ago. I woke determined to spend the day in absolute presence. All was well until I realized the trees and vines on one side of our cottage had started creeping over our deck. Since my busy body and brain were still craving motion, I was suddenly researching the best chainsaws and pole saws. An hour later, I borrowed a friend’s chainsaw and turned into a crazed animal. You should have seen this tortured soul hacking away at the invaders—as if each cut with the saw added to my word count. My wife called me Boo Bunyan that afternoon when she found me standing amidst multiple piles of tree trunks and brush, dripping sweat with bloody scratches across my arms and legs. Pressfield should have been there, ready to pin a badge on me. In that moment, as my wife had pulled up in the golf cart, I had realized the madness of my ways. Why couldn’t I simply sit still? Maybe swing on the hammock? Kick back on the couch on the porch, listen to the birds? Pressfield had destroyed my life. I couldn’t stop. Finally, I was able to shake loose from the trance. The next day, I made coffee for my wife and me, and we lay in bed till ten or so reading. I never do that. We eventually rose and walked around the island. I engaged with my dogs, meeting them on the floor and fully plugging in. A day later, I biked with my son, then we began binge-watching the Twilight series. I sat on th
