"The more Resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you—and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it."
Steve Pressfield, The War of Art
Above quote from "Read Write Believe" blog, courtesy of Sara Lewis Holmes
A couple of years ago I packed my car and drove east, into the mountains of Appalachia, for a week-long writer's workshop.
I was scared and nervous, like the first day of 7th grade, 1973. A week in close proximity with real writers. Could I survive?
A friend supplied me with a veritable cornucopia of treats and surprises to see me through the week, packed in a real metal miner's lunchbox with the Peabody Coal Company sticker still affixed to the lid. Me, afraid, jittery, self-conscious, heading into the Appalachian coal fields with one goal: words. Ill-formed, unplanned, but gut-level necessary.
I drove down Hal Rogers Parkway, past the rolling green hills of my ancestors, deep into the shadowy valleys at the base of coal-scarred mountains, and I thought about the stories I wanted to tell but was afraid to put down, of the stories I had been tip-tapping around for years.
That night, when I got to my musty, square box of a windowless room and opened my lunch pail, I found this card with its terse, to-the-point message. In response to this command, with the typing of these words, I say "I will try."
