I've always considered myself fortunate that I came to agenting after working in other fields, including film/television and sales. Yet few elements of my experience have equipped me to help my clients as much as one I've pursued since I was a child: writing. As an author, I run into a lot of the same challenges that my clients do, and that's when I turn to one of my true writing heroes, Steven Pressfield. His e-book DO THE WORK has helped bring me back to basics, and reignited me creatively.

Pressfield coaches writers to stand against creative blocks, which he collectively terms "Resistance"—those forces that try to get between you and the achievement of your goal. Resistance takes many forms: too much planning or outlining, for instance, or fears of various kinds. And let's face it, Resistance often shows up smiling and looking a lot like your mother or friend who offers a million different reasons why you shouldn't write because it will take time away from your kids/job/significant other, or simply because she "just doesn’t want to see you get disappointed." Here are a few key points of Pressfield's that have helped me address my own slamming case of Resistance:

Forget outlining a work to death, but do ensure you have your three key acts on paper before you start
You start with a setup in which you introduce your protagonist, antagonist, and other main characters; then a key event happens that spins the action into the main body of the story (Act Two.) This second act culminates in a climactic scene where it seems like all is lost for our protagonist, paving the way for the third act and the resolution of that conflict.

To summarize your work in three acts, think like a screenwriter. Here’s how Pretty Woman boils down. In the setup, Vivian is on the streets and Edward is lost until she climbs into his car and provides direction. Act One ends when he contracts her services for the week. Act Two is about them falling in love, and the climactic moment occurs when they part ways because their "real world" lives are irreconcilable. This spins us into Act Three, in which Edward, convinced that he cannot live without Vivian now that he’s found her, must set about winning her once and for all.

Sound like an oversimplified process, this plan to work off a barebones outline? Just ask anyone who has had the experience of over-outlining a book only to find the actual writing of it lifeless and sapped of energy. (Raises hand—remember what I said about having to learn things for the greater wisdom of my clients!)

Do not slavishly write your story in chronological order
Instead, if a scene is speaking to you powerfully, write it down immediately. This should not be misinterpreted as a license to put a draft on paper that lacks substance or order. But a bestselling client of mine once confided that if she did not write a scene when it was really speaking to her, then when she finally did get to it, all its power would be sapped because she had already lived it in her head. Since that conversation, I have always tried to at least put bare bones on paper when a scene speaks that strongly to me.

Don't spend a lot of time on research at the beginning
If a writer bogs down in learning too much, analyzing too thoroughly, or outlining in too much detail, they're simply strengthening their greatest enemy: Resistance.

Write like the wind until you have your first draft on paper—messy, ugly, or otherwise
Only when you're finished with that should you go back and edit, layer, redraft, and question.

Become "stupid" again
Dropkick your rational mind off the field, and instead allow yourself to be stupid enough to write like a kid and rediscover the magic without questioning.

Confession time: when I delivered my final Gods of Midnight book to NAL in December 2010, I vowed I was done. No interest in writing again, ever—that’s how burnt out I was. Yes, all you writers out there, proceed directly to the mocking queue because we all know that for any real writer, pledges of creative abstinence are always broken. So, big surprise—wait for it—this summer a new idea, something fresh and just for me, started downloading into my brain. I pulled up DO THE WORK and shoved aside all the disciplined, smart work habits I’d maintained as a contracted writer. Nothing had to be pretty or polished, nor did it need to make sense in terms of the basic idea. And you know what? Writing on my iPhone and laptop, editing on my Kindle app in bed at night, I basically blinked and discovered I had committed some 70K words to paper without losing time from TKA, my family, my workout regimen, or anything else.

As is often the case with some of the deepest revelations we experience, great wisdom is found in incredibly simple principles: do this, don’t do that—and most important of all, DO THE WORK!

* First published in The Knight Agency Newsletter, August 2013