My partner Diana has a trainer at the gym. He gave her some advice for when a weight or challenge seems more than she could handle.
“Sometimes you gotta get ugly.”
The instant I heard that, I adopted it for my writing.
Sometimes the work ain’t pretty. Sometimes we’re staring at a scene or sequence that’s gonna kick our ass and we know it.
We gotta get ugly.
Forget Shakespeare. Forget Tolstoy. Get into the trenches and hammer out whatever trash we have to. Whatever it takes—good, bad or ugly.
It’s okay if it’s misbegotten. It’s okay if we wouldn’t show it to our mother.
The great thing about writing is it sits still till tomorrow. We can always revise. We can come back to it and make it pretty next week or the week after.
But for now, we must cast beauty and dignity to the winds. Hold your nose. Close your eyes.
Get in there and get ugly!
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.
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.
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?"
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Keeping it with film/writing, I love the same kind of quote from the movie “The Outlaw Josey Wales” toward the end of the movie: “Now remember, when things look bad, and it looks like you’re not going to make it. then you gotta get mean, I mean plumb mad-dog mean, ’cause if you lose your head and you give up, then you neither win nor live.”
I’ve always felt you could apply the above to any creative endeavor.
Steve that’s a great framing. Like Goethe’s “the perfect is the enemy of the good” restated for 2026. Visceral and punchy, it’s perfect!
Thank you,
Peter
‘God sees the truth, but waits’
Tolstoy
Don’t you wait. Seek the truth now. When I write early morning in the black, dark air , my truth appears every time. It’s a practice. Isn’t it, Steve?
Ben
Thank you very much dear Steve.
I’m on my way. I write every day. Oh yes I do. Not much, only a few dozen of minutes. But I don’t care. Concerning the ugliness we must bring forth, I don’t even have to think about it. Yes, at moments it doesn’t get forward. BUT – writing is not going forward. Writing is going wherever you want or wish in this universe or another. It is limitless. The obstacle is just a chance to go somewhere else, at a wonderful place.
My love to you and Diana and our friends. Thank you Jackie for commenting my last comment! I love you all, let’s…
i’ve heard this comment: when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
or another quote by Prem Rawat: Nowhere was the challenge to conquer the mountain. The challenge has always been to get to the other side. You don’t have to climb the mountain, or go through the mountain. Go around the mountain.
Ugly, here I come.
Yet another bit of wisdom and inspiration that came to me at just the right time. I just got done banging out some ugliness, and I feel much better!
Appreciated as always, Steven!
It’s such a relief to know that even the best writers acknowledge “The first draft of anything is shit.” (Ernest Hemingway)
Good one, Chuck.
Add in there Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. third chapter titled: “Shitty First Drafts.”
I love it, Steve! In music, we call the shit songs fertilizer for the great song seeds to grow in. You never know if a piano line or melody will be recycled later in another fashion. Sometimes you have to write 100 bad (or worse–mediocre bland beige neutral noodles!!) songs to get one great one. Keep fighting.
Kate,
I love this idea of fertilizer and recycling. One good song, one good book, one good idea, rescued and polished from a discard pile, can inspire countless others.
Right on, Kate. In Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, she has a chapter called “Composting.”
“Our senses by themselves are dumb. They take in experience, but they need the richness of sifting for a while through our consciousness and through our whole bodies. I call this ‘composting.’ Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones of our minds come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time.”
Nice, Kate.. I love your musical definition of “Fertilizer”…
This post reminds of Steve’s Black Irish Books “Jab Series,” specifically his short book on writing rough drafts. So valuable..
I got that series on my shelf, too, matie.
“Get down and dirty.” “Take it to the mat.” I love it!
In recent talks with my 85 year old Mom, three stories are often repeated. The stories recount her three acts of bravery. The reason they are often brought up is because they also contain regret. Mom never held her nose or closed her eyes to plunge further into the muck, to get dirty. Mom didn’t push past the hard part.
We can’t let anything keep us from the contentment of a warthog wallowing in the most satisfactory mud pit. Who’s to know when the heavens will open up and shower down upon us to wash away all the grime to reveal what is beneath the mud?
Another good reminder that the mess I keep creating allows me the right to clean up after myself when I’m good and ready, dammit.
No Mom voice required now!
God is in all things. In order for me to have a clue as to what that means, I need to be in all things. One word, breath, and step at a time, including the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I get it. Sometimes you have grunt one out.
That picture up there, though, is beauty with no ugly in it.
Thanks for the Wednesday refresher, SP.
SHOW! RSRSRS 👏
Just don’t forget to put some lipstick on that Pig.
I’m an artist, but what applies to writers also applies to me.
I would even say more so, because I have produced some literally ugly paintings.
One of the truly ugly is unnamed. You can’t go over or around. You must go through, untangle, and name individual uglinesses.
A wonderful and inspiring post. I am pretty good at winning ugly. Thanks
Some of the ugliest work was a pivot point for me.
Thank you, Steven.
Thank uou!
I’ve pretty much only taken an ugly, hammer and nails approach to writing so far, but I’m to a point where I need to add interiority aka “Big Voice”, which is like trimming it out. The finish work.