Kill the dragon Resistance every morning and work on your art

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This morning I didn’t kill the dragon Resistance. Resistance said to me, at 4:00 a.m. when I woke up in my warm bed, “Oh, Hodges, it is so cold downstairs, why don’t you stay in bed. And really now, you don’t have a clue what to write about today, so why even bother. You are a horrible housekeeper. The walls are covered in dirt from Martha rubbing on them, and the kitchen counters are covered in dishes. Again. Your painting’s in the basement are awful. Why don’t you just quit?”

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What is hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

I listened to Resistance and stayed in bed until 6:00 a.m. When I came downstairs I didn’t write. I read Facebook and my e-mail. Two hours later I went downstairs to paint. Now I am writing.

Can you see the dead dragon beside my desk? I can. The weird thing is he will come back to life tonight when I should be going to bed. He will whisper in my ear again, “Hodges, I wonder what weird stories are on the news tonight? Do you think there might be a story about a cat with two heads? And you really do want to know about the man who escaped from the shark? Don’t you.”

And tomorrow morning the dragon Resistance will be there again. He will taunt me and try to get me to continue in my bad habits.

Resistance never goes away and it never diminishes. The dragon must be slain anew every morning.
Steven Pressfield – Waging the War of Art- An interview with Steven Pressfield

The little voices in your head that try to get you to give up, have no real power over you. They only have the power you give them. Ignore them, slay them, step on them, and then continue on with your work. You are the master of your mind. What you think about will be what you do.