Do the work

Steven Pressfi

eld

Do Th

e Work!

30
Chatter is your mother and father’s well-intentioned expressions of caution, seeking to shield you from hurting yourself. Chatter is your teachers’ equally well-meaning attempts at socialization, training you to follow the rules. Chatter is your friends’ regular-Joe buddy-talk, trying to make you like them and follow the rules of the pack.

Chatter is Resistance.

Its aim is to reconcile you to “the way it is,” to make you exactly like everyone else, to render you amenable to societal order and discipline.

Where do our own real thoughts

come from? How can we access

them? From what source does our

true, authentic self speak?

Answering that is the work you and I will do for the rest of our lives.

Ready to Rock and Roll We’ve got our concept, we’ve got our theme. We know our start. We know where we want to fi

nish. We’ve got our project in

three acts on a single sheet of foolscap.Ready to roll? We need only to remember our three mantras: 1. Stay primitive.^

2. Trust the soup.
   3. Swing for the seats.

And our fi

nal-fi

nal precept:

4. Be ready for Resistance.