Love of the work

Blazing Reader,

My latest blog post — about how Herman Melville spent four to six hours a day writing novels only to die a relatively unknown writer — reminded me of this quote from Steven Pressfield's must-read handbook, Do The Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way:

“The opposite of fear is love — love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.”

I can speak from personal experience: Writing, publishing and marketing novels is one of the scariest adventures I've ever been on. Running for president of the United States would be less intimidating. Of course, being a fiction writer is probably safer. You don't hear of many assassination attempts on novelists (Salman Rushdie excepting).

Oddly enough, what scares me most when it comes to writing novels, is what attracts me most: I love the sheer complexity and greatness of the task.

In other words, I love the work more than the achievement.

Herman Melville advised, "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme." But he also said, "I try all things, I achieve what I can."

John C.A. Manley

P.S. If you missed my post about the daily routine that allowed Herman Melville to produce the "mighty book" Moby-Dick click here to read it now: https://blazingpinecone.com/blog/most-strange/

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/