We’re Still Cave Men and Women

We started this series of posts with the thought that …

ARTIST = ENTREPRENEUR

By which we meant: If you’re a writer, a dancer, an actor, a photographer … you are a solo venturer. You’re in business for yourself and you must develop a tough-as-nails attitude to sustain you in the solitary pursuit of your dream. 

Let’s look at that position from the long perspective. Start with our deep past as savages, as members of the tribe and the primitive hunting band. Our concerns within this tight, blood-ordered universe were: 

1) Who’s the Alpha Dog? 

2) How can we remain in his or her good graces? 

3) How must we conduct ourselves to keep from being expelled from the tribe?

For without the tribe, we’re dead.

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.

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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.

The-Authentic-Swing

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.

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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?"

Turning-Pro

8 Comments

  1. Jackie on December 17, 2025 at 3:47 am

    This post gives much to ponder over.



  2. John Raisor on December 17, 2025 at 4:12 am

    Yes, we need community, even in solitary pursuits. Sebastian Junger wrote Tribe a few years ago, all about our need for community, and that book changed my life. Got in touch with Sebastian, and he encouraged me to write, but it took several years and a worldwid lockdown before that happened.

    But keep in mind that the internet is democratizing everything more and more. The gatekeepers of old institutions are less and less relevant. If you can sell 10,000 books independently, the gatekeepers will come to you.



  3. Brad Graft on December 17, 2025 at 6:51 am

    In the context of the artist, would the Alpha Dog be the muse, our innate creative “genius”?…

    If so, I suppose we’ve learned the only way to stay in her good graces is to keep “at the wheel.” Keep working to improve our game; continue grinding away to produce our destined “body of work.”

    Yet that does not answer then who the tribe is? For a writer is the tribe is tribe our collection of teammates– our editors, graphic designers, publisher, marketer? For at some point the creative venture is no longer a solo pursuit…

    Or is Steve’s point that the reason he compares art to war is that we must go against our very human nature and perhaps loosen the binds of our current tribe(s) and innate tribal nature (the unending needs of jobs, families, etc) in order to serve the muse and meet our creative destinies?



    • Joe Jansen on December 17, 2025 at 12:44 pm

      I guess the “big dog“ could be the muse. Or it could be that expression of our higher self, our fully realized self. Maybe just different expressions of the same energetic life force.



  4. Kate Stanton on December 17, 2025 at 8:21 am

    Some artists get excommunicated from the tribe if they are too forward thinking. Years down the pike, authors such as Melville or artists such as Van Gogh are celebrated for their genius. Many musicians are ignored by the masses until one of their songs hits a nerve in society years later. Today’s post makes this feats all the more incredible to me. We do need a team. Not everyone is lucky enough to be understood during their lifetime!



    • Joe Jansen on December 17, 2025 at 12:47 pm

      Cate… I’m thinking back to the line that Steve has pointed out from the Bhagavad Gita: entitled to our labors, but not to the fruits of our labors.



      • Joe Jansen on December 17, 2025 at 12:49 pm

        And KATE… and a corollary: we’re entitled to AutoCorrect, but not to the fruits of our AutoCorrect.



  5. Joe Jansen on December 17, 2025 at 10:51 am

    I recall Liz Gilbert making the observation that cave art dates back 65,000 years, where agriculture is about 11,000 or 10,000 years old. I paraphrase: “Apparently it was more important to humans to create art than it was to feed themselves consistently.“



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