Do the Work Read Online Free PDF Page B

get to keep are love for the work, will to finish, and passion to serve the ethical, creative Muse.
     
    This ends our special section, “Belly of the Beast.” We return now to programming already in progress:
     
    You and me, two-thirds through our project and stuck in a hell of Resistance.
     



 
    The Big Crash
     
    We were doing so great. Our project was in high gear, we were almost finished (maybe we actually were finished).
     
    Then inevitably …
     
    Everything crashes.
     
    If our project is a movie, the star checks into rehab. If it’s a business venture, the bank pulls our financing. If it’s a rodeo, our star bull runs away with a heifer.
     
    The Big Crash is so predictable, across all fields of enterprise, that we can practically set our watches by it.
     
    Bank on it. It’s gonna happen.
     
    The worst part of the Big Crash is that nothing can prepare us for it. Why? Because the crash arises organically, spawned by some act of commission or omission that we ourselves took or countenanced back at the project’s inception.
     
    The Big Crash just happened to me. My newest book, a novel called The Profession , was done—after two years of work. I was proud of it, I was psyched, I was sure I had broken through to a level I had never achieved before.
     
    Then I showed it to people I trusted.
     
    They hated it.
     
    Let me rephrase that.
     
    They HATED it.
     
    The worst part is, they were right. The book didn’t work. Its concept was flawed, and the flaw was fatal.
     
    I’d love to report that I rallied at once and whipped that sucker into shape in a matter of days. Unfortunately, what happened was that I crashed just like the book.
     
    I went into an emotional tailspin.
     
    I was lost. I was floundering.
     
    Ringing the Bell
     
    Navy SEAL training puts its candidates through probably the most intense physical ordeal in the U.S. military. The reason is they’re trying to break you. SEAL trainers want to see if the candidate will crack. Better that the aspiring warrior fails here—at Coronado Island in San Diego—than someplace where a real wartime mission and real lives are at stake.
     
    In SEAL training, they have a bell. When a candidate can’t take the agony any longer—the 6-mile ocean swims or the 15-mile full-load runs or the physical and mental ordeals on no sleep and no food … when he’s had enough and he’s ready to quit, he walks up and rings the bell.
     
    That’s it. It’s over.
     
    He has dropped out.
     
    You and I have a bell hanging over us, too, here in the belly of the beast. Will we ring it?
     
    There’s a difference between Navy SEAL training and what you and I are facing now.
     
    Our ordeal is harder.
     
    Because we’re alone.
     
    We’ve got no trainers over us, shouting in our ears or kicking our butts to keep us going. We’ve got no friends, no fellow sufferers, no externally imposed structure. No one’s feeding us, housing us, or clothing us. We have no objective milestones or points of validation. We can’t tell whether we’re doing great or falling on our faces. When we finish, if we do, no one will be waiting to congratulate us. We’ll get no champagne, no beach party, no diploma, no insignia. The battle we’re fighting, we can’t explain to anybody or share with anybody or call in anybody to help.
     
    The only thing we have in common with the SEAL candidates is the bell.
     
    Will we ring it or won’t we?
     
    Crashes Are Good
     
    Crashes are hell, but in the end they’re good for us.
     
    A crash means we have failed. We gave it everything we had and we came up short. A crash does not mean we are losers.
     
    A crash means we have to grow.
     
    A crash means we’re at the threshold of learning something, which means we’re getting better, we’re acquiring the wisdom of our craft. A crash compels us to figure out what works and what doesn’t work—and to understand the difference.
     
    We got ourselves into this mess by mistakes we