Finishing
Yesterday I finished a book I’ve been working on for two and a half years—a sequel to A Man at Arms (2021). I sent the manuscript off to my agent and to some friends who have a movie option on the previous book.
At the same time, I’m watching the Masters golf championship on TV (it’s Sunday about noon as I’m writing this.)
Magnolia Lane at the MastersWhen the Masters finishes a few hours from now, there’ll be a hard number on the leaderboard. Someone will have shot the lowest score. That player will have “won.” There’ll be applause and emotion and a big, big check. The victory will change the player’s life.
That’s not how it works for you and me as writers and artists. Our work doesn’t produce a number. It can’t be judged objectively.
Our leaderboard is inside our own head. We and we alone determine how we played the game.
Was the project worthy of us? Was it ours alone, in the sense that we were writing from our own gift … and in the face of our own fears? Did we live up to the goddess’s expectations of us? Did we live up to our own? Did we give it all we had?
There are no spotlights in the writer’s life. There’s no moment of acclamation as we tap in a putt on the 72nd green. Our moment is private. When I wrap a book, a lot of times I won’t even tell anybody.
This is self-evaluation. Self-reinforcement. Self-validation.
Some of the players at Augusta didn’t make the cut. Others performed below their expectations of themselves. They will do, tonight and tomorrow, exactly what you and I do. In the private precincts of their own hearts, they’ll ask themselves the same questions we ask ourselves.
Did I give it my all? Did I play my own game? Was I true to my love of the sport?
They will self-evaluate. They will self-reinforce. They will self-validate.
Then they’ll get ready for next week. They’ll re-set their intentions, knowing that this is the life they have chosen and they would not have it any other way. They’ll reinforce their own gratitude that they get the chance to play the game. “Start the next one today,” my old friend and mentor Paul Rink once told me.
I have. I’m about sixty pages into the next book. I won’t judge this latest one any longer. I release it.
“Start the next one today.”
The post Finishing first appeared on Steven Pressfield.
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As a golf professional, I was happy with the outcome of The Masters. Scottie Scheffler seems to be one of the few true class acts among those playing at the highest level today. As an author, I'm happy with the outcome of my latest novel, and I've started the next one. I'm excited about it too, and I've discovered that I love the creating, the refining, the researching, and even the judging of the fruits of that process when it's all said and done. I don't think this is ego, but I've gotten past the fear of my work being judged for the most part. I know I'm pretty good at this, and I know that no matter how good you are at it some people aren't always going to like what you write for one reason or another. I wrote for GolfWRX.com for a few years and their readership is massive. I used to read all the comments after each article. Try doing that if you really want to thicken your skin. Even the most well-received articles will have trolls making inane comments and telling you you're a hack who needs to crawl back under the rock from whence you came. I even had one well-known author (won't name names) personally reach out to me to tell me how truly offensive what I wrote was. That's hard to accomplish when you're writing about golf. The point is, in the vernacular of kids today, hater's gonna hate. That's okay. It's when they don't care one way or another, don't bother to comment, and become indifferent that it becomes lonely. At least in my humble opinion. Press on Steven, and maybe give us another golf novel of some sort someday. Because while The War of Art might be called your seminal work in some circles, for some of us The Legend of Bagger Vance will always be the nearest and dearest to our hearts.
