Do the Work (4 page)

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 attraction. The law of self-ordering has kicked in. Despite all our self-doubt, the project is rounding into shape. It’s becoming itself.

People are responding to us differently. We’re making new friends. Our feet are under us; we’re starting to feel professional. We’re beginning to feel as if we know a secret that nobody else does. Or rather, that we’ve somehow become part of a select society. Other members recognize us and encourage us; unsolicited, they proffer assistance—and their aid, unfailingly, is exactly what we’ve needed.

Best of all, we’re having fun. The dread that had hamstrung us for years seems miraculously to have fallen away. The fog has lifted. It’s almost too good to be true.

And then …

The Wall

And then we hit the wall.

Out of nowhere, terror strikes. Our fragile confidence collapses. Nighttime: we wake in a sweat.

That “You suck” voice is back, howling in our head.

Did we stand up to someone in authority over us? Now we crawl back and grovel to him. Did we face up to someone who was treating us with disrespect? Now we beg him without shame to take us back.

We’re poised at the brink of a creative breakthrough and we can’t stand it. The prospect of success looms. We freak. Why did we start this project? We must have been insane. Who encouraged us? We want to wring their necks. Where are they now? Why can’t they help us?

We’re halfway, two-thirds through. Far enough to have invested serious time and money, not to mention our hopes, our dreams, our identity even—but not far enough to have passed the crisis point, not far enough to glimpse the end.

We have turned round Cape Horn and the gales are shrieking; ice encases the masts; sails and sheets are frozen. The storm howls dead in our faces. There’s no way back and no way forward.

We know we’re panicking but we can’t stop; we can’t get a hold of ourselves. We have entered …