Resistance in the Shampoo Aisle

I woke up at three am again yesterday morning. But this time it wasn’t The Muse calling.

It was The Resistance. 

We talk about The Resistance a lot on our podcast. It’s the term Steven Pressfield uses to personify the force that wants to keep us from creating. It shows up in our lives in all kinds of ways: the “to-do” list that supernaturally grows line items that must be done before we can begin creating, the baseless dread we feel before sitting down for a writing session, the sudden and irrational “needs” that surface just as our fingers touch the keyboard. But I think The Resistance’s cruelest form of deterrence is “the voices.”

You know them. We’ve talked about them before. But in case you’re new to this writing journey and maybe still floating along in the honeymoon stage where everything is wide open spaces and eternal sunshine, let me give you a foretaste of what’s a little further down the road. Please don’t see this as a discouragement (though chances are, that at some level, it will be); my intention is to give you fair warning so that you won’t be blind-sided, and henceforth sidelined, by their sudden arrival.

They can start anytime, anywhere. You might be in the grocery store reading the label on a bottle of shampoo. One of those chic new brands that write witty descriptions of their product, leaving you chuckling to yourself right in the middle of the health and beauty aisle. 

And then suddenly, the voices start. 

“You could never write something that clever,” one says. They always start in a whisper. And they use a tone that’s the perfect balance between school principal and sympathetic best friend. They want you to think they’re giving you the facts, just so, you know, you don’t end up looking like a fool. Tough love and all that jazz. 

And they love to play off one another. 

“Yeah, you need an evolved sense of humor to come up with content like that. Nothing personal, but I think you ought to know,” comes the next voice.

“And truthfully, your vocabulary isn’t expansive enough,” another voice chimes in. 

There’s always three of them. It’s the whole “disasters come in threes” theory at work. 

Then the first voice slides in again with the final blow: “And here you were thinking you could write an entire novel when you don’t even have the chops to write filler text on a bottle of volumizing shampoo.” 

You can’t see the eye rolls, but you can feel them.

And suddenly, you’re staring at a bottle of Earth Promise Tress Tripler with tears in your eyes, having experienced the full gamut of emotional reactions in the past ten seconds: from delight to confusion to shame to devastation. There’s no need to speed through your grocery list now because rushing home just to fit in your thirty minutes of writing time is pointless. You haven’t got the talent. You’ve been fooling yourself all along. 

That’s how cunning The Resistance is. It can take any moment and turn it into an opportunity for discouragement. 

This morning, it showed up as I lay sprawled on our bed, hearing the echo of our youngest daughter’s cough coming from the next room at 3:30am. I’d been laying there for 30 minutes trying all my “go back to sleep” tactics (counting sheep, saying the alphabet with names attributed to each letter, even the spiritual approach of intercessory prayer), but nothing was working. Then I glanced over and saw Matt Bell’s book Refuse to Be Done on my bedside table. I’d been reading it before bed, looking for techniques to help me in my newest revision endeavor, drifting off to sleep with writing tactics swirling in my brain. But what had inspired me the night before, The Resistance turned into ammunition as I lay there fruitlessly searching for sleep. 

The voices started in. 

“Maile, why are you wasting your time revising this story?”

It was a fair question. I knew that revising wasn’t going to be an easy task, especially not right now while our family is in the thick of a full athletic, musical performances, graduation, end-of-school-year-activities season. 

The question got my attention, and within seconds they began their full onslaught. 

“It’s dead, Maile. The story isn’t revivable. You’re wasting your time.”

“It’s going to be so much work, and really, who has time for that? Or energy? You’re clocking in 5 to 6 hours of sleep a night. And that’s not even good sleep. You’re working at a deficit. You can’t do this.” 

By this time, I’d slid out of bed and tiptoed down the stairs to The Lauffice. Maybe if I journaled through it all, I’d feel better.

But the voices persisted.

“Check out a list of the top-selling books. You’ll see. The stuff you’re writing, no one is selling. No one cares about stories like this.”

Of course, I took the bait. I pulled out my phone and googled “Best Selling Middle Grade Books.” Tears started to fill my eyes.

“Just hang it up, Maile. This isn’t worth it. All the rejections and criticisms. What’s this writing thing even doing for you?”

And that’s when The Resistance went too far. Because aside from all the rejection letters and stalled efforts with trying to get this book into the hands of an audience, I know in the deepest part of me that writing does me good. Maybe the publishing side of things doesn’t always feel worth it, but the writing does. Again and again, it proves itself worthy of my time. 

And that, friends, is what we always have to hold onto in the presence of The Resistance: our love of the craft. 

I wish I could say that once I saw The Resistance for what it was, that I gave it “the bird” and moved on with my morning, revising huge swaths of my manuscript with unabashed delight. But I didn’t. The voices kept echoing through my head throughout the day, and it wasn’t till Shawn gave me a good talking to that I was able to shake their effects. But you know what? Here I am writing again. A hard-won victory, but a victory nonetheless. 

So fight, my fellow cojourners; fight for what’s yours: the shameless pursuit of the craft you love. 

Down with The Resistance!