This is the Write Now podcast with Sarah Werner. Episode 79: Facing Resistance.

[Intro song.]

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers find the time, energy and courage you need to write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And today, we’re going to be facing some hard truths. Namely, the truth that sometimes the biggest thing that gets in my way is me.

Often, as a writer, my greatest enemy isn’t necessarily time, or energy, or a lack of pencils or whatever it is that’s an external factor that we’re used to blaming on our lack of creativity, our lack of momentum, our lack of writing.

Sometimes that biggest factor is me. I’m the problem. And maybe you felt this before too. Maybe there’s been a time or two or three or 10 or more, when you’ve sat down at your writing desk or wherever it is you write, and everything is taken care of. Maybe this is a fantasy scenario, but stick with me. You sit down to write and you’ve got a backup pencil. You’ve got your note pad. You’ve got pens, you’ve got your brain. You’ve got your mug of tea, or coffee, or a glass of water, or whatever it is you use to fuel your writing energy. Maybe you’ve got a dish of snacks. The kids are down for a nap. You have the window open. And there’s a gentle breeze coming in from the outside.

The conditions, for once, are perfect. And you sit down in your chair, and you pick up your pencil, or you open up your laptop, and suddenly, for no explainable reason, you get this urge to do anything else. Literally anything else. You start to go through a list in your mind. “Oh, do I have some dishes I need to wash? Oh, when do I need to flip the laundry over? Oh, shoot. I have a bake sale coming up and it’s in six weeks, but I should really start looking for recipes.” Or “Maybe I’ll check my email just one more time before I start writing.” Or “My desk sure is cluttered now would be a fantastic time to clean.” I don’t know if you felt this before, but this happens to me all the time and it makes me feel like a terrible person.

Here I am with time and space set aside to write, I’m more or less well rested. I’m more or less healthy. And yet when I sit down to write, I get all twitchy and I start looking for excuses. Why I can’t write. So what’s going on here? Well, as you’ve probably guessed from the title of today’s episode, this is an example of resistance. I am, for whatever myriad reasons, resisting writing. Why would I do this? I love writing. I find fulfillment and freedom and joy in writing. And I know that. This is something that my brain knows and understands.

So what’s going on here? Why am I denying myself something that I know I love? Well, there’s a lot going on here. Namely, I feel guilty and rotten about it because here I am with the privilege to sit and write. And it’s like, there’s an obstinate little toddler in my brain. Who’s like, “No, I don’t want to.” I feel like a little child who has toys that are made of gold and they don’t want to play with them. It’s like, “Are you serious? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people out there who would kill to be able to have a moment of time to sit at their desk in quiet and write?”

So that becomes the refrain that I ask myself over and over in my head. What’s wrong with me? Well, the good news is there’s nothing wrong with you. We’re human. And there’s a lot going on in our brains at any given time. I don’t remember if I’ve talked about this book on the show before, but years ago I picked up a copy of Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. And I have the feeling that many of you have probably read this, but I’m going to talk about his book today because it ties in so beautifully with the topic of resistance.

And in fact, I want to say that Steven’s book is where I initially learned about or began to understand the concept of artistic resistance. I’m going to read just a few sentences from this book, because I think Steven Pressfield does a great job of what resistance is. So he says, “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t. And the secret is this. It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is resistance.” He goes on to say, “Resistance cannot be seen, touch heard, or smelled, but it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work in potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. It’s aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within.”

So when I first read that years ago, I was like, “Oh my gosh. A, this is real because I felt it. And B, how do I begin to deal with this?” And what I’ve learned over the years is that you have to want to deal with it. And that’s the tricky part, because resistance is self-sabotage, but it’s self sabotage that feels good. I know that writing feels good. I know that writing will bring me joy and fulfillment and all of those things I said earlier. But it’s hard. If I want immediate gratification, it’s a lot easier to find that in not writing. It’s easier to close my notebook or close my laptop and go do some dishes and mindlessly stare out into the backyard. It’s a lot easier to check my email, mowing through 20, 30, 40 emails. That’s a sense of accomplishment. There’s no struggle other than the struggle of how much I hate email, but there’s no soul wrestling.

There’s no hard questions when you’re doing simple mundane tasks, because while I find fulfillment and joy in writing, I think the reason that I find fulfillment and joy in writing is A, because I’m living out my purpose, which always feels good. But B, because I know that in writing, I am wrestling with ideas. And there’s a struggle there, and there’s an overcoming. And that’s what results in the joy and fulfillment for me, wrestling with ideas, birthing new ideas, figuring out how characters relate to each other, building worlds, it’s fulfilling, but it’s hard. And the prospect of diving into something that you know is going to be a struggle, can be really scary and really off-putting.

And like Steven Pressfield says, it comes from within. So it’s not an external distraction. It’s not something we can really blame on anything else. And it’s something that it’s not easy for other people to call us on. So if you’re driving around town and you have a filthy car, people can stop and be like, “Dude, your car is filthy, go wash your car.” Or someone might write “Wash me” in the dirty, grimy back window. But who’s going to call you out when you’re in resistance? It’s something that’s inside of you and only you know that you’re dealing with it. Which means that you’re the only person who can identify that it’s a problem, and you’re the only person who can take responsibility for fixing it.

And you want to talk about hard? Realizing and processing hard truths about yourself as a creator and writer, that’s some deep stuff. And it takes a lot of bravery to confront that. It takes bravery to even admit that you’re facing resistance, because it calls so many other things into question like, “Am I afraid of hard work? Am I afraid of deep thoughts? Am I lazy?” And it’s really easy for us to get into a place of negativity and judgment when we do that. And it’s really easy to say, “Well, I guess I’m not a real writer,” or “I guess I’m not meant to do this,” but what happens if we give in? What’s the result or the consequence when we let resistance win?

Well, we don’t write. We don’t create. We don’t break through those blocks. We don’t overcome the challenge. We stay stagnant. We lose ourselves in easier distractions. We get really clean dishes. We begin to get resentful of other creators, especially if it seems easy for them to create, especially if they are maybe a step ahead of us in overcoming resistance, we get angry. We feel unfulfilled. Our dreams become deferred and dry up like a raisin in the sun. I don’t want that for you. And I don’t think you want that for yourself. Steven Pressfield’s book is called The War of Art for a reason.

Within the book, he uses very warlike and violent terms to talk about facing off with our resistance. He talks about the enemy. He talks about going to war. He talks about words like that. And they’re very hard words. And maybe you’re the kind of writer who relishes that kind of challenge like, “Oh man, something to fight, that’s for me.” Or maybe you’re not that kind of writer. And you are kind of looking for something more spiritual or softer. Either one of those is okay, and we’re going to talk about resistance today in a way that I hope everyone relates to. At its core, resistance is fear plain and simple, or plain and complicated because fear is really, really complicated.

And maybe it even sounds a little silly, like “Why would I be afraid to write? There’s nothing to be scared of.” Or is there? I’ve talked about it on this show before, but fear is a survival mechanism. There’s a reason that we, as human beings, feel fear. It’s to protect us it’s to keep us safe. The reason I don’t wander out into the middle of a busy street is because of the fear that I will get hit and very, very hurt by oncoming traffic. A lot of people are afraid of heights because being up high represents the chance that you could fall a very far distance and really hurt yourself. Our brains want to keep us safe and comfortable. And that’s great. Well, what does it mean to be safe and comfortable? What does it mean to face a challenge or a risk?

I can tell you firsthand from experience that change is not comfortable. Growth is not comfortable. Publishing your work and having other people read it and criticize it is not comfortable. Dealing with and wrestling with our own thoughts, with our characters, with inconsistencies in our plots and in our world building, that’s not comfortable. Venturing out into the unknown, whether literally or figuratively, also not comfortable. Adventures are not comfortable. Think about all the hobbits who don’t want to go out and have adventures. They just want to stay in their Hobbit holes and eat carrots and smoke pipe weed and whatever it is that hobbits like to do, read a book in a cozy chair.

And there’s nothing inherently wrong with being safe and comfortable. It’s that we have a tendency to want to stay there at the detriment of our own personal growth, at the expense of developing and finishing our work, at arriving at surprising new conclusions and having new ideas. So our brains want often to polar opposite things. We want to become great writers, and we want to have important ideas and tell meaningful stories, but we’re also drawn to stay in comfortable and cozy and safe and secure. Staying rooted where you are is not challenging.

And often, if we’ve committed to changing in the past, we haven’t experienced the gratification or the win or the triumph that we can get from something that provides immediate gratification. Anyone who’s ever been on a weight loss journey understands this so well. Losing weight and exercising and eating healthy is really challenging and often uncomfortable. But if we’re not willing to make ourselves a little bit uncomfortable in that way, we won’t see the change in the results that we want. So if you continue on reading the war of art, you’ll see that the solution to the resistance we face is facing it.

Again, there’s a little bit of harsh language in the book, and some people appreciate that because it’s kind of a wake up call, but it’s pretty much just, are you feeling resistance? Sit at your desk and do your work anyway. That’s it. Show up, acknowledge that the fear exists, say “Thank you for being here fear, but I really don’t need you peeking over my shoulder right now.” Transfer your fear to the seat next to you, not in the driver’s seat of your brain, but in the seat next to you. Take a deep breath and start writing.

I think the secret to being a writer is knowing that the fear never goes away. Knowing that you won’t ever get to a place where you’ve made it and it’s suddenly easy to just churn out bestseller after bestseller. We’re humans. And we have fear installed into our brains as a survival mechanism. And the fear won’t go away. You’re going to have to sit down and put the fear in the passenger seat every single day when you sit down to write. And that sounds really hard and really scary. And it is. And I don’t win every day. Some days I sit at my desk and I answer emails all day and on the surface, it looks like I’ve got a lot accomplished and I’ve got a good work day, but have I done any actual meaningful work?

No. The really, really, really hard thing for me, at least, about resistance is that you have to want to overcome it. And your desire to overcome resistance has to be a greater drive than your desire to give up and go back to bed and to be comfortable. It took me a while, but I had to learn to recognize this urge in myself as a writer, which was not easy because you don’t want to admit a lot of the time that you’re “weak.” That you’re experiencing fear. So what I want to do is normalize the fact that yes, we all experience fear. I feel terrified when I sit down to write a lot of the time, because I know I’m going to have to do some internal wrestling. I know it’s going to be hard. I know it’s going to be frustrating. I know that I don’t know how to fix this plot hole right now.

Somebody told me once that bravery isn’t the absence of fear. Bravery is feeling the fear and moving forward anyway. So I’m not calling on you to be fearless. I’m calling on you to be brave. There’s been evenings when after a full day of running my business, and getting work done, and talking to clients and all of that stuff, where I sit down at my desk in the evening to write and to work on Girl in Space or to work on whatever creative project I’m currently working on. And I will get overwhelmed with a sense of exhaustion. And I have to be brave at that point and ask myself a question. Am I really tired? Because if I’m really tired, then I should go to bed and get rest. Or am I afraid? And is the fear disguising itself as exhaustion? Because going to bed is a really good excuse for not writing.

Now, if you have kids, if you have a very busy lifestyle, if you’re in a season right now where you have a lot going on and you legitimately don’t have the energy or the time to write, if it’s not the right season for you, that’s fine. You need to give yourself some grace and say, “Okay, this is not the time for writing.” But if you’re honest with yourself and you’re like, “Well, I could probably stay up a couple more hours, but I just kind of don’t want to,” or “I don’t feel like it.” Then you have to ask yourself, “Where is that response really coming from?” And I’ll bet it’s resistance, and I’ll bet it’s coming from fear. Again, I want to really, really hammer this home. Fear is normal. And every writer experiences it.

Fear is not something to be overcome or punched in the face. It’s not a defeat at once and you’ll never have to face it again, kind of enemy. And in fact, again, it’s not even an enemy, it’s a survival instinct. And it’s something that if we’re going to create our greatest work, we have to wrestle with. There’s a saying in one of my favorite books, Dune by Frank Herbert, that says “Fear is the mind killer.” And it really is. When we let ourselves fall into the claws of fear and panic, and we get stuck in a downward spiral and give ourselves over to fear completely, that’s when our creativity dries up. That’s when we find writer’s block.

So what we need to do is form a healthy relationship with our fear, by acknowledging that it exists, thanking it for trying to keep us safe, and just moving it over a little bit so that it’s no longer in the driver’s seat, which sounds easier than it actually is. Like I said, even now that I understand resistance and I understand my fears, there’s still evenings when I sit down to write and I just frivol away the time. I tell myself it’s really important that I check Twitter. I tell myself that it’s really important to check my email just in case. I tell myself that it’s a worthwhile use of my time to go check out Pinterest or Facebook, or I’ll just watch one more cooking video.

And that’s normal too. I feel like there’s this, I don’t know, like patron saint of writing who exists in our minds. And it’s like, maybe it’s Stephen King, or maybe it’s somebody else whose book you’ve read, or whose quote you’ve read, that talks about, “I sit down in my chair from nine to five every day and I write with no excuses.” And sometimes I have to ask myself “Really? Really?” Yeah, I know that that’s the ideal. And that’s what a lot of us want, but really, is that realistic?

What I’m not doing right now is giving you permission to sit down and check your emails or goof off on Facebook or whatever instead of writing. That’s not my intention here. My intention here is to say, maybe it’s a little bit more complex than putting your butt in your seat, overcoming the fear, and writing. I just want you to know that it’s hard to do that. I want to acknowledge that it takes energy and commitment and work to do that. And it’s maybe not as easy as a lot of creators make it seem. We all face resistance. My question to you is what are you going to do the next time it strikes?

So the reason I’m recording this episode today is like most episodes, it’s the episode that I myself needed to hear and talk about and sort of dissect. This is where most of my Write Now episodes come from. It’s just, what am I thinking about lately? What am I struggling with? I’ve had a lot of fear and resistance lately because right now I’m working on writing season two of Girl in Space. And I have so much resistance because I have so much fear. What if season two is as they call it a sophomore slump? What if season two isn’t as good as season one? What if I’ve already peaked? What if season one of Girl In Space is the best thing I’ll ever write? What if I can’t make my audience happy with season two?

And that’s before we even get into, “Oh, what’s the plot going to be for season two? What are these characters going to struggle with? What motivates them? How do I find these things out? How do I brainstorm these things? Is my brain in a good condition to brainstorm these things? Am I smart enough to write this story? Am I brave enough to sit down and just do it, knowing that a lot of people are expecting this work and expecting it to be good?” Because right now I’m safe. Right now, nothing can hurt me. In a manner of speaking. I say that because season one is out, season one is finished. And yeah, I can still get one star reviews, but I’m relatively okay with how it turned out. I enjoyed the popularity that it saw. I enjoyed getting the good reviews for it.

And the prospect of how my brain is interpreting it, which is starting over or starting from scratch and having to repeat that entire process is mildly terrifying. And that’s what’s feeding my resistance. Sometimes when I’m feeling a lot of resistance, it’s helpful for me to do a couple things. First of all, if I have a model to follow, I find that it’s easier for me to dive into the work. Because often for a lot of us, when we are able to dive into the work, we’re fine. Once I start writing, I’m kind of okay. It’s the starting writing and diving in where I get stuck. So if I have something to follow, if I’ve set myself up the previous day with maybe a little rubric to fill out like, “Oh, character name.” Character and I’ll put the character name in there. Like, “Oh, what’s their motive for season two?” Oh, okay. I’ll start filling out their motive. Okay. “What is their biggest conflicts for season two?” And okay, I’ll fill that out.

So sometimes it helps me to have a little rubric or a model or a form to fill out. And that’ll just get my ideas going. Sometimes I’ll do a little bit of journaling, which can also serve as sort of dipping your toe into the potentially icy cold and uncomfortable water of creation. The other thing that helps me is accountability. And I hope that you have someone who is also creative, who maybe understands what it’s like to feel frustrated and resistant as a creator through podcasting and through friends from school and such.

I’ve built up a little support network of fellow writers and creators who, if I’m willing to acknowledge the fact that I am in resistance, I can text them and be like, “Hey, I’m supposed to be writing right now. And I’m just feeling a lot of panic,” or “I’m supposed to be writing right now and I just realized I’ve been checking my email for the last three hours. Can you give me a little nudge in the right direction? Or can you hold me accountable and make sure that I have 300 words written at the top of the hour?” Things like that. So a lot of the time, if you ask for help, if you reach out to a fellow creative, they can sort of help you navigate resistance and come out on the other side of it.

So those are two techniques that I’ve been using recently. As a person who’s not great at asking for help, it’s been a little weird because… Well, we’ll go into that in a different episode about, well yeah, there’s just a lot there. But these have been helpful in jumpstarting me and overcoming resistance and getting started every day on my writing. So I hope this is helpful to you. I hope that this brings either a new understanding or just a refreshed viewpoint on what it means to be in resistance to the thing that you’re creating, and how we deal with fear, and how we deal with ourselves when we’re going through the fear.

If you have questions or comments related to this episode, I would love to hear your thoughts. There’s a couple of different ways that you can get in touch with me. First is the show notes for this episode on my website, sarahwerner.com, that’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. You can scroll down on the homepage and I have my newest podcast episodes there, or you can navigate over to where it says podcasts and go to right now, et cetera, et cetera, and leave your thoughts there in the comments for the show notes. Otherwise, probably the best way to get in touch with me these days is on either Twitter or Instagram. My handle is the same for both of these social media properties. You can find me at the little @ symbol and then Sarah Rhea Werner.

So that’s S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R. And it’s all one word. And again, reach out to me on Twitter or Instagram. I also have a Write Now podcast Twitter. Oh, and Instagram. Why do I have all these social media accounts? So that I can frivol away more time and not write and be in resistance, maybe. But yeah, if you want to get in touch with me, the best way to do that right now is on social media just because it’s been hard for me to keep up with all of my emails.

As you know, I don’t make this show alone. I have a wonderful, wonderful group of people who give me money to make this show. They do this through Patreon, which is a secure third party donation platform where you, yes you, can give a dollar per episode or $2 per episode or $600 per episode or whatever you feel is good and appropriate for the value that you get from the show. If you want to do that, you can go to patreon.com. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash sarahrheawerner. So the same thing that you would use for my Twitter and Instagram. So how easy is that?

Special thanks for this episode. Go out to Patreon patrons Amanda King, Tiffany Joyner, Regina Calabris, The Ostium Network. Susan Geiger, Sean Locke, Leslie Madsen, Amanda Dixon, Julian Vincent Thornburgh, Michael Beckwith, Sarah Lauzon, Selena Zhang, Maria Alejandro, Leslie Duncan, Rebecca Werner, and Gary Medina. Thank you all so much for your continued patronage of this show. You help me cover hosting costs, you help me get the word out there to other listeners, and you help me inspire writers every day, and I am extremely grateful for you. Thank you.

All right, my stomach will not stop growling. So I’m going to go eat some lunch. But before I do that, I’m going to sign off and say that this has been episode 79 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps all writers to find the time, energy and courage they need to pursue their passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner. And I am really pumped to overcome my resistance later on today and write.

[Closing song.]