Gravitational Fields Revisited
“Gravitational Fields” ran November of 2009 for the first time. It’s visiting again for the long Thanksgiving weekend.
How do you get a project started? Sometimes the thoughts in our head are so scattered, we don’t know where to begin. Here’s a trick that my friend Paul Abbott taught me:
Just start.
The prince's planet was small but it had enough gravity to give him a place to stand
Even if you don’t know where you’re going. Begin anyway. If it’s a story, a painting, an idea for a business venture … just dive in.
Open a folder on your laptop. Give it a name.
Open a file in that folder. Give it a name.
Now start.
The universe is self-organizing
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post in this space about the self-organizing nature of the universe. It’s true. It’s a law.
As you start to work (and as the work accrues), an amazing thing starts to happen. The work generates its own gravitational field.
It’s like space dust coming together. A speck forms, which pulls in another speck, which becomes a mote, then a fleck, then a glob, a blob, a brick, a Volkswagen. Pretty soon you’ve got a bona fide orb … a sphere … a miniature planet, like the one the Little Prince lived on. Remember that book by Saint-Exupery? The prince’s planet was so small, he would circumnavigate it at the equator in ten paces.
But it had gravity. Its mass exerted enough centripetal pull to keep the Little Prince from sailing off into space.
Gravity is our friend
That’s what our work does, once it reaches threshold minimum mass. It coheres. It hangs together.
It gives us a place to stand on.
You’re writing a narrative. You’ve got a scene here, a fragment there. But the work is all over the place; you don’t know what the hell it is or where it’s going. But now, at the Little Prince planet stage, you’ve actually got Something. That’s better than Nothing. We can build on Something
Still stuck? Start another speck of dust. Build it up till you’ve got a second planet. What happens then? The planets start attracting each other. You’ve got mass now. You’ve got gravity. Between one fragment of a scene on one planet and an inkling of a character on the other, an electric charge shoots. Suddenly you’ve got an entirely new scene involving that character! Something plus Something is More Something.
Gravity plus intention equals momentum
Gravity, like habit, can be a mighty ally because it leads ineluctably to another Newtonian phenomenon: momentum.
Our Little Prince planet, we discover, possesses not only mass but motion. It’s moving through space. Our energy, our intent, our attention are powering it. Now what?
Keep it moving.
Don’t stop. Don’t second-guess. Don’t look down. Take courage from how far you’ve come already. From a speck to a blob to your own tiny planet. Now keep going.
Don’t worry, you won’t fall off. You’ve got gravity working for you.
DO THE WORK
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.
THE AUTHENTIC SWING
A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.
NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T
Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.
TURNING PRO
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?"
Steve-
I recently discovered your blog after finishing Do the Work and have also read War of Art. Both great reads.
You’ve been one of the most inspiring authors for this want-to-be writer and I’ve recently been Doing the Work. Again. Even as little as it still is, it still feels good.
Thanks.
I use this technique every time I start a new story. Just start. Most of the time I toss out the first pass or two at what I am attempting. This is because I usually don’t get all of the idea for the story in one go. So I’ll start and as I am writing suddenly I’ll understand what the story is “really” about. That’s when I plot out a simple outline, and start over amidst the ruins of the previous attempts. But those early passes always seed the final story, and provide the milieu for the story. They are the fertilizer in which the final story grows.
Just what I need to read today. Thanks.
Nice reminder that Gravity isn’t the enemy…Resistance is.
Thanks Steven. Have a Happy Thanksgiving.
When I read Do The Work, I was finalising a novel five years in the writing and half my mind was on the next project, wondering what it might be. ‘Start before you are ready’! So I did. I still haven’t finished the last, but the new one has indeed got a momentum going and a very lively one it is, too. Brilliant advice – thank you so much.
I think this is in the same vain.
I read an interview with Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues where he recalled how he came to write the song QUESTION. They had scheduled/rented recording studio time and when it was time to use it the Moodies didn’t have enough finished songs written to fill the time they had scheduled. Justin had been working on several songs and it dawned on him to piece two of them together to make one complete song. If you know the tune, you can see this. They were like the two pieces of a two piece puzzle. I guess gravity kicked in and the pieces came together? Thank goodness for endless metaphors!
So true. I think it was Nora Roberts who said, “I can’t fix a blank page.” Such a simple maxim, but so true.
Happy Thanksgiving, Steven.
I think this is the answer for people who “don’t have time” to do their art. If you deliberately take a day or a weekend to start, you can fill in those bits and snippets of time that appear in even the busiest lives.
Steven Pressfield,
sometimes I have to remind myself that you don’t have ESP. You’ve just tangled with the devil so long you can tell us all his tricks.
Thank you. You are a treasure.
KP
Thanks for giving me visual imagery to describe everything I’ve ever done.
I just wrote a song. Started with a very mechanical chord structure I wrote down three days ago, then pieced together three structures in the same key. Finally sat down today and started writing words, and at the end of the 3-piece suite, it flowed, all on its own, into a song I wrote 6 years ago.
Gravity. No moving parts. No assembly required.
So what are you waiting for? The house of hazards game is calling! Will you answer?