It has its own agenda, and it will kill you. It will kill you like cancer. It will kill you to achieve its agenda, which is to prevent you from actualizing your Self, from becoming who you really are. Marine is a mentor and friend to me. When I was working on Turning Pro I invited him to breakfast and turned on the tape recorder. The quote above is one of the things that popped out.
I came upon it again recently and it struck me with even greater power than it did the first time. I experience it as radiating off the blank page or invading my brain from some other, extra-dimensional location. The first thing I say to myself when I think of Resistance this way and I do think Rabbi Finley is right is, Why would our Creator pull such a trick on us? This second self seduces us with distractions and excuses. It terrorizes us with visions of our own defeat and humiliation.
It whispers to us in the night and in broad daylight , convincing us that we are without worth, talent, dignity, resolve, courage. Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points.
This book shows you how to keep going with your work. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded. Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careersβadvertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in pages. Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power.
Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance? Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. Anytime 6-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree which way to go; the Rider is going to lose, he is entirely overmatched.
