What does it mean to write for a star? Writing for a star means create a role that a star wants to play. Your story may be dynamite, your structure may be sound, your theme profound and involving. But the first question a producer is going to ask is, “Who can I cast in this thing?”

Moviemakers want scripts that attract stars. Because stars make movies happen.  If we’ve got Matt Damon, the bank will write us a check. If Sandra Bullock says she’s in, the studio gives us a green light.

Stars put asses in the seats. If you and I go to a basketball game, we want to see Lebron. We came out for Kobe. I have zero interest in “the field” at the Masters this spring; I’m tuning in for Tiger.

Products too can be stars. Nobody does this better than Apple. The iPod is a star. The iPhone. Steve Jobs is rolling out the iPad now and every move his marketing and ad departments make is designed to make it a star. Steve Jobs himself is a star.

Style can be a star. Hemingway. Or sound. Phil Spector. Look can be a star. Lady Gaga. Even absence can be a star: J.D. Salinger.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that we throw all artistic considerations to the wind and pander to some glam/slam concept of attention-grabbing. What I am suggesting is that, at at least one point during its evolution, we evaluate our material by asking ourselves, “Who’s the star here? Do we have one? Who (or what) supplies the bizazz that we need to make this material stand out?”

If we’re opening a restaurant, who’s our star? The chef? The look? The crowd?

What’s the star of our clothing line? Our non-profit? Our start-up school?

If our script, our opening, our business venture doesn’t have a star, how do we create one? Hollywood’s rules might help us here. Consider these bonuses reserved only for stars:

Stars make entrances.

Stars get star lighting.

Stars get the best lines.

Stars get Moments. Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm, Clint Eastwood’s “Make my day.”

Stars’ roles go somewhere. Stars’ characters change and grow.

Stars power the movie. In the climax, the star’s actions decide his own fate and define the meaning of the movie.

Even the tiniest scenes can be star moments. Did you ever see True Confessions, starring Robert Deniro? It’s a period piece, set in Los Angeles in the forties, in which Deniro plays a high-powered monsignor who is torn between the faith he wishes he could embrace and the wheeling-and-dealing he does all day long on behalf of the diocese. The legend goes that during production Deniro asked the director, Ulu Grosbard, if he could have one scene where the audience sees where his character sleeps. The director gave it to him. It’s a scene you might miss if you’re not paying attention. Deniro simply comes home from a long day among the city’s movers and shakers, mounts the stairs in the priests’ living quarters and enters a spartan room that contains nothing but a bed and an armoire. The actor has no dialogue; all he does is hang up his cardigan sweater (on a wire hanger) and sit down silently on the edge of the bed.

That’s a star scene. Only stars get Moments like that.

If we as writers are true to our calling, we’ll imbue even our most minor characters with stardust. As Francis Ford Coppola did with The Godfather. Clemenza. Johnnie Fontaine. Even Pauly. They all got to do what stars do–answer Stanislavski’s questions: Who am I, why am I here, what do I want?

I was working with a male action star when a rival’s movie came out. The new film had a scene in which the rival star was captured by the bad guys and tortured. Next morning my star demanded a torture scene too. At the time I thought he was crazy. But he was right. A star needs a Torture Scene. It lets the audience know he’s the star.

Writing for a star is a deep topic. Much can be said, including the possibility that we ourselves are the star. But let’s leave our resolution at this for the moment:

At least once during our process (writing our novel, launching our bistro, founding our charter academy) we will ask ourselves, “Who is our star? Do we have one? And if we don’t, how can we create one?”

We’ll imagine living, breathing actors standing before us, each one representing one of our characters (or products or points of interface with our audience). Each will demand from us an answer to the following questions: “Where’s my Moment? Where’s my Torture Scene? Dude, gimme something I can play!“

How do you know how crazy you are? By how genuinely nuts you get when you’re NOT doing (or not being allowed to do) what being crazy makes you want to do in the first place.

But this state of mind isn’t really crazy. It comes from the gods. It’s a species of divine madness. Socrates called the poetic variety of this condition “possession by the Muses” (and rated it superior to technical mastery), though he could have referred with equal accuracy to seizure by any Olympian deity. When this kind of nuttiness grabs us, we are possessed by forces we can’t name and can’t see, can’t measure or quantify, and whose very existence is doubted by much of the conventional world.

But this state of possession is real, as anyone who has experienced it will testify–and so are the forces that inflict it on us. What do these forces demand? First and foremost, they want depth. They require of us passion, authenticity, courage, stubbornness and commitment over time. They want us. They want everything we’ve got.

In return, these forces grant us peace of mind (at least for a few minutes), a modicum of honor; they gift us with self-respect and integrity, and they endow us with gravity. Most important of all, they ground us in a source, which may be mysterious and ineffable but that grants meaning and significance to our lives and work.

None of us asks for this. There’s no chain of intention or rational choice. The thing grabs us. We can run as far as we like, like Jonah did into the belly of the whale, but in the end we either surrender to this force or it kills us. I am not employing hyperbole.

What specifically is depth of work? We know it when we see it, don’t we? Julia Child had it, and so does Meryl Streep. Sam Maloof had it; Steve Jobs does and so does Elmore Leonard. So do thousands of writers and artists and entrepreneurs whom nobody but their own friends and fans have ever heard of.

Tweeting is the opposite of depth of work; so is gossip and reality TV and Facebook and 99.9% of blogging. Mainstream TV news is the definition of shallowness of work; if a journalist at NBC or CBS ever dared to go deep, she’d be fired on the spot. The Daily Show does go deep, and so does the Colbert Report.

Depth of work comes from immersion. A thousand physicists worked on the same problems that Einstein did. There’s something unbalanced about going that deep. It isn’t normal; it isn’t regular. But that’s what we’re looking for. That’s why we have to find within ourselves.

The guts to get to that place.

When actors work on a scene in rehearsal with a director, the first pass is always the shallowest. Why? Because it’s easy to stay on the surface. It doesn’t hurt. There’s no risk and no exposure. But the fun begins when the actors start digging. They’ve got this cryptic map–the playwright’s words and stage directions. But what does he really mean? What does the writer intend that even he didn’t know? What is this freakin’ piece about anyway? Why is each of us here? How do these character beats advance the story? What is the story anyway?

So the actors start at eight and work till eleven, and they come back the next night and keep digging into the same words and the same stage directions. It’s like therapy. It’s like bench pressing. It’s like training in short-track speed skating.

What’s the difference between being in shape and being out? A trainer once told me it was all in the capillaries. When we train hard, day after day, we force blood deep into our muscles; this “push” compels the circulatory system to create new capillaries, so that oxygen and nutrients can be carried to every tiny mitochondria of muscle and so that waste products can be borne away. When we’re out of shape, our network of capillaries is small and constricted; when we’re in shape, those little creeks and runnels are branching out everywhere. You can tell when someone’s in shape by the aliveness of their skin. Capillaries close to the surface give it that healthy glow.

Depth of work is like that. Pain is involved, and will and effort and motivation. But so is joy and strength and stamina and self-empowerment.

Have you ever seen those software programs that help writers flesh out their stories? The formulaicness sounds robot-like, I know, but in fact the concept has tremendous power. The programs compel you, the writer, to answer the hump-busting questions: What is your story about? What does the protagonist want? What does this mean? These are the privately-experienced, gloryless, bone-crunching, capillary-expanders that, when you confront them successfully, produce depth of work.

How deep can you go? If we’re Francis Ford Coppolla and we’re writing the screenplay of The Godfather from Mario Puzo’s novel, we have to go as deep as Mr. Puzo did and keep drilling even after that. What is this story about? Family? A code of honor? Crime? Evil? An oppressed and despised tribe within a greater and even more corrupt society? How do we get to these answers? Instinct, inspiration, head-banging rationality? All of the above? But if we can drill down deep—to answers that are universal and that address not just the parochial dilemmas of the Corleone family and the society that surrounds it, but that speak to universal human themes … then we’ve got something. Then we have achieved depth of work. And then we really reach the audience, even if they don’t know why or how.

This is killer work and you gotta be nuts to do it. You have to want it for reasons a lot of people are not going to understand. There aren’t many Francis Ford Coppollas and this is why. It’s hard to go deep. It hurts. There’s a price to pay and maybe most people don’t want to pay it or even think about. Are we willing to pay that price? Am I? Are you?

I read Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried right after it was published, and it blew me away. It is powerful-capturing the emotions, internal conflicts, and bravery of not just the Vietnam generation, but today’s soldiers and Marines, too. I’ve recommended it to many people since its release, and the responses I’ve received from those who have read it have always been moved and moving. It is an honor and privilege to do a Q&A with Tim, on the 20^th anniversary of the publishing of The Things They Carried.

The Things They Carried received France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1987, O’Brien received the National Magazine Award for the short story, “The Things They Carried,” and in 1999 it was selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century edited by John Updike.

Tim is also the author of Going After Cacciato, which received the National Book Award in fiction; In the Lake of the Woods, which received the James Fennimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was named best novel of 1994 by Time magazine; If I Die in a Combat Zone; Northern Lights; The Nuclear Age; Tomcat in Love; and July, July. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Playboy, and Ploughshares, and in several editions of The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. O’Brien is the recipient of literary awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been elected to both the Society of American Historians and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. O’Brien currently holds the University Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University. He lives with his wife and children in Austin, Texas.

S.P.: When it comes to generating ideas, what’s your process? Solitary? Collaborative? Is it fun, is it grueling? How, exactly, do you work?

T.O.: Ideas seem to come (and go) as if by their own volition. A tantalizing story possibility will sometimes pop to mind, either out of memory or imagination, and I’ll begin writing as a means of exploring the idea – its mysteries, its meanings, its facets, its moral import. The process of exploring and extending an “idea” through storytelling is for me wholly solitary. The process is collaborative only in the sense that the idea and I seem to work together on some occasions and at utter cross purposes on other occasions. I’m mostly a poor and pitiful supplicant, begging the story to reveal itself more fully. This process is sometimes fun, more often grueling, since I’m at the mercy of a story with its own secret purposes, ambitions, and desires.

Tim O'Brien

S.P.: Do you experience Resistance (meaning self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc.?) In what form does Resistance present itself?

T.O.: I work every day on a very rigorous schedule. I do not procrastinate. Sometimes the work goes well, in which case I might end up with a paragraph or two of decent prose; other times the work goes badly, in which case I end up with a foul temper. But the habits of regularity and discipline are necessary, at least for me. The resistances I encounter come in many forms and sizes – a truculent phrase, a noun that will not disclose itself, a character who refuses to utter anything but cliches, a turn of event that is neither interesting nor surprising, a story that will not take a single faltering stride out of the starting gate. And so on. And so on. A completed novel, in my experience, can be viewed as an unbroken chain of resistances overcome or evaded.

S.P.: How do you overcome Resistance? Do you have a specific technique or metaphor that you employ to fortify, encourage or inspire yourself?

T.O.: As Joseph Conrad wrote, or said, somewhere: “. . . the sitting down is all.” I take that to mean – even if Conrad didn’t – that creative resistance can only be overcome, or artfully evaded, by the repetitive act of making oneself present. A writer must be there – at work – and not at a bowling alley.

S.P.: Once you have an idea, what’s your process for taking it to a finished form? How do you decide whether an idea is worth pursuing? Is there a series of steps that take you from “germ” to “finished product?”

T.O.: Sad to say, but I have no conscious process by which I advance an idea toward its finished form. From the instant I embark on a story or a novel, I’m in search of some approximation of a “finished form.” It’s a quest, not a process. I may find an aspect here, another aspect there, but there is no method to it beyond trusting in my own story. To trust in story is to trust in something beyond the intellect, beyond “process,” and beyond the sort of planning that an architect or an engineer or a plumber might do. I go to work each day trusting that my characters will utter interesting bits of dialogue, or that they will behave in interesting ways, or that might come up with interesting physical or linguistic replies to the moral paradoxes of being human.

S.P.: What do you do when you hit plateaus? How do you keep advancing? Is there one example of plateauing that you can share-and how you grew through it?

T.O.: When I hit plateaus, I head for the mountains. By that, I mean (or think I mean) that I do all I can to point a story or a novel toward its central human drama, toward its essential human mystery. Often, I’ve found that “plateaus” are the product of ill focus-an individual tree is in sharp relief, but the forest is blurry.

S.P.: Tim, much of what you wrote in The Things They Carried was based pretty closely (I assume) on actual events. Yet, being a fiction writer myself, I know that too intense an attachment to things-as-they-actually-happened or people-as-they-actually-are-or-were can work against the success of a story. How you do you handle the fact/fiction conundrum? Do ethical issues enter the equation, e.g. fidelity to an actual friend, in the sense of being reluctant to fictionalize anything he did … or simple fidelity to the truth of actual events? In your writing philosophy, what is the proper relation of fact to fiction?

T.O.: Since my work is very conspicuously labeled “fiction,” I don’t fret about issues of factuality. I would feel quite free, for instance, to write a story in which Germany wins World War Two, or in which Richard Cheney is an angel of the Lord. My fidelity is to the story. To the story alone. As a fiction writer, I’m interested not only in what “is,” or in what “was,” but also in what might have been or what almost was or what might still be or what should have been.

S.P.: I’ve been recommending The Things They Carries for years. If you have time, go check out Tim when he visits one of the following locations. Read the book.

San Francisco area
Berkeley Arts & Letters, March 16, 7:30 pm
First Congregational Church of Berkeley

Los Angeles
Los Angeles Public Library, March 18, 7:00 pm
Central Library

New York City
Barnes & Noble, March 22, 7:00pm
Union Square

Philadephia
Free Library of Philadelphia, March 23, 7:00pm

Washington, DC
Politics & Prose, March 24, 7:00 pm

Boston
Harvard Bookstore, March 25, 7:00 pm
First Parish Church, Cambridge

Chicago
Oak Park Reading Series, with The Book Table, April 8th, 7:00pm
Unity Temple, Oak Park

Online
“Selected Shorts”
Will rebroadcast the reading of The Things They Carried on public radio stations nationwide between March 18^th – 24^th.

Live Webcast
Wednesday March 24^th, 1-2pm EST: Tim O’Brien in conversation with Nathanial Fick broadcast from Cardozo High School in Washington, D.C.

NEA’s Big Read

American Place Theater’s “Literature to Life” program: http://www.americanplacetheatre.org/stage/

This is a topic I plan to address in a series of posts over the next few weeks. But first I want to thank every correspondent who took the time to write in response to last week’s “Help!” post. As I type this, we’ve had 69 Comments. This is absolutely amazing, and I thank everybody. Particularly for the detail of the responses. It really helps me. I’m traveling this week and the next so I won’t be able to send out signed “War of Arts” yet in gratitude, but I will as soon as I can. Gracias, everybody, for the overwhelming and very helpful response!

Now to Depth of Work—and a confession. I’m not sure if it’s evident from my posts over the last couple of months, but I’ve been going through a crisis in my own work (see “Self-Doubt” and “Wrestling an Alligator,” among others.) Much of it has to do with depth of work, or rather the lack of it.

I’ve been shallow. Resistance has beaten me much too often. The culprit, oddly enough, has been success—and the urge that public recognition engenders to “expand.” If you glance around at this blog page, you’ll see that I have plunged over the last year into a cause that is partly political, partly military, and largely involves the attempt to influence events in the real world through direct personal participation. I love this cause, it’s a passion of mine; it has brought me great new friends (and we, by our efforts together, may even have nudged the pea a few centimeters down the trail.) But this type of enterprise is not healthy for a writer. I didn’t know that six months ago, or even two months ago.

Depth of work. This is where satisfaction comes from for people like me and you. This is the fun of the game; this is what it’s all about. This is why we all got into this business.

What is depth of work? Have you ever had one of those days at the gym where you go around yakking to your buddies, schmoozing and chilling. That is NOT depth of work. Have you ever tweeted, or checked your Facebook page, or succumbed to serial e-mailing? That ain’t depth of work either.

Jon Naber won four gold medals in swimming at the ’76 Olympics, all in world record times. I saw an interview with him right afterward. The reporter asked a very insightful question about a sport where thousandths of a second separate gold from everybody else: “What’s the difference between a good swimmer and a great one?” John Naber answered as follows: “In competition, almost immediately after you hit the water, you enter the Pain Zone. It hurts–and it gets worse every meter you go. The great swimmers,” John Naber said, “are the ones who can go deeper into the Pain Zone and stay there longer.”

That’s depth of work. In my experience, depth of work consists of two components. The first is recklessness; the second is discipline. Dionysian; Apollonian. Passion;reason.

Recklessness means putting out of your mind all thoughts or fears of the opinions of others—and even the opinion of yourself. It means jumping off the cliff. In acting, it means uncorking a fearless performance, where you risk looking like an absolute fool in an effort to get to the deepest, truest levels of the character. In writing, it means letting it rip on the page, trusting the Muse and following your instincts. It means spewing sometimes. Free-associating. Going for it.

Then comes the hard part: appending reason. Discriminatory intelligence. Now we have to ask the really hard questions. What is this stuff all about? What am I trying to do? What is the deepest truth underlying this?

I read a story once about Barbra Streisand at a recording session. She did take after take of the same song. The reporter telling the story said he couldn’t tell the difference between Take One and Take Two, or even Take One and Take Nine. But, he said, he could tell the difference between Take One and Take Sixteen. Obvious Ms. Streisand could tell. That too is depth of work.

What we’re talking about here is head-banging, non-glamorous, nut-busting labor. It’s lonely. It hurts. It drives everybody else crazy. It requires tremendous professionalism and courage (or, perhaps more accurately, stubbornness and mulishness) and control of our emotions and our fears.

The analogy of the gym is a good one, I think. Because one thing the gym teaches is that “you have to train to be able to train.” Meaning you can’t go in, Day One, and start bench-pressing the same weight Reggie Bush benches. You have to build a base of strength slowly, over time, being careful not to set yourself back by injury, impatience or boredom.

In other words, depth of work requires—in addition to recklessness and reason– commitment over time.

I’m reading a really interesting book right now by Michael Bungay Stanier called Do More Great Work. Mr. Stanier starts by citing Milton Glazer’s axiom that we all do three kinds of work: bad work, good work and great work. One of the “map exercises” in the book (a very interesting graphic technique that helps you understand what you really think or really want) asks you how much great work you’re doing. It’s a pie chart. I thought about myself. I’m doing about 0.01 great work right now. It’s such a tiny sliver of the pie, I can’t even draw it.

Another exercise in the book asks you to recall a time when you were doing great work. Here’s one for me: I had taken a month, by myself, and was renting a cottage on a farm in the highlands of Scotland. I was writing Tides of War then, which was a really difficult book about a ridiculously obscure subject. I loved it. I would work in my freezing little room in the cottage the morning, then play golf in the afternoon. It was great. I got in some really intense, long work sessions (because the days are so long in Scotland, you can play golf in the summertime till nine at night.)

Those mornings were depth of work. I had momentum, I had commitment over time; I was busting my butt and really going deep, into a subject that I loved and that I didn’t care whether anybody else was interested in or not.

Those days seem distant to me now. I’m shallow these days; my focus is scattered. I’m schmoozing at the gym; I don’t have momentum. I hate it. It sucks. I have to change. I have to get a handle on this and dig myself out.

I’m not complaining. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sharing this state of mind here on this page, so that anybody who has read The War of Art and imagines that the guy who wrote the book has conquered Resistance (while he, the reader, is still struggling with it) will be disabused of such a silly notion and will not beat himself up over it. I’m as human as the next guy and I take the gaspipe too sometimes just like everyone else.

Working deep is the answer for me. To be happy, to feel good about myself, to not feel guilty about sucking up my share of oxygen on the planet. I have to get back to it.

Friends of Writing Wednesdays, I’d like to ask for your wisdom and feedback. I’m taking a little survey, and you can be of real assistance to me if you’d answer, in the Comments section below, some of the questions I’d like to pose to you. (It’ll be my pleasure to send a signed copy of The War of Art to the half dozen commentators whose advice is most helpful.)

The original "silver bullet" hardcover from Rugged Land Books

Here’s the issue. I’m thinking about writing a follow-up to The War of Art. Sort of a War of Art 2.0. Some things I’d like to know from your perspective are:

1) Would you be interested in such a book? (Tell the brutal truth; don’t be kind.) Would you consider buying it?

2) In what ways would such a book be most helpful to you? As a motivational aid? A kick in the butt? For further insights on Resistance? On professionalism? Something else?

I have my own ideas on these issues, but it would help me a lot to hear what you think.

3) If War of Art 2.0 could be exactly what you want, what would it be? If it had three main sections, what would they be? If the book could deliver a specific feeling as you closed the final page, what would that feeling be?

Would it be like the original War of Art or would it be different? In what ways?

5) Does it matter to you if the book comes out in hardcover? (It doesn’t to me.) Would paperback be just as good? What if it was released as an eBook that you had to download and print out–is that worthwhile or a pain in the butt?

I’m thinking of constructing the book so that it could be read on an iPad–in other words, including video or links along with the text. If you were reading it on an iPad or other such device, what type of videos would you like to see included?

How about personal stuff? When I write, in Writing Wednesdays, of various personal struggles and challenges that I’m dealing with, is that helpful to you or does it get in the way?

Thanks, you guys. I hate surveys as much as the next man, so I appreciate anyone who takes even a couple of minutes to respond to this.

And anybody under thirty who has some brilliant web-based marketing strategies … I’m all ears!

Back to real Writing Wednesdays next week. Thanks!

There’s a theme to all of these Writing Wednesdays posts, and the theme is Resistance: what it is, how it attacks us, how we can beat it. Here’s an insight that struck me with blamm-o impact last week:

I was in Washington, D.C., with Maj. Jim Gant of the U.S. Army Special Forces and Chief Ajmal Khan Zazai, a tribal chief from Paktia province in Afghanistan. We were speaking on the subject of “tribal engagement”—a new military/cultural strategy for Afghanistan—at the Naval Academy, Marine Corps University and several think tanks. (If you’re at all curious about this, click on “One Tribe At A Time” in the header of this page or scan through the “Interview w/Tribal Chief” posts.)

What “tribal engagement” entails, at least the way our threesome was positioning it, is that a small team of U.S. troopers embeds itself with an Afghan tribe and becomes part of the community, living with the tribe, working with it, supporting it, fighting and dying alongside it. It’s a bottom-up strategy for producing security, justice and good governance. Maj. Gant had achieved success using this strategy with his Special Forces team on a prior tour in Afghanistan. That was what he was speaking about to the Marines and midshipmen last week. Onstage, he was trying to be cool and objective, presenting the concept in an impartial, professional manner. But his passion kept getting the best of him.

Maj. Gant at the girls' school in Mangwel, Konar province, Afghanistan

Midway through each speech, Maj. Gant started recruiting. He started firing up the troops. His eyes got big and the veins popped out on his neck. “You gotta be great! You have to be great every day or you’re dead and so am I. Don’t lie. Don’t ever lie, because they [the Afghan tribesmen] will see right through you. They know you better than you know yourself. If you promise something, deliver—because if you don’t you will lose everything including your life.”

Maj. Gant’s mission wasn’t to enlist anybody. The Tribal Engagement program isn’t even in place yet. But he couldn’t help himself. “I want three years from you. That’s your commitment. Not seven months, not twelve months. I’ll send you home for thirty days a year and then you’re back with me in the shit.”

It won’t surprise you, I’m sure, to hear that, each day, as soon as Maj. Gant finished, he was swamped by Marines and midshipmen. “I’m in, Major.” Sign me up, sir!” At night, when he got home to his quarters, his inbox was overflowing with e-mail addresses. “Take me, sir.” “Here’s where you can reach me.”

Now: what does all this have to do with writing or art or entrepreneurship?

Attitude. Attitude in the face of Resistance.

Each day, when we stateside warriors confront our fears of failure (or success), of exposure, of loss or humiliation, of all the outcomes that terrify us in our art and our lives, why not call on Maj. Gant’s attitude?

“You gotta be great! You can’t settle for mediocre, or almost-good or half-assed. Every day you have to be great or people are gonna die.”

Watching those Marines and midshipmen jump out of their seats and swarm around Maj. Gant, it was clear to me that young men and women’s hearts today (and some of us who are not so young) are starving for challenges worthy of their secret, limitless capacities. They’re ravenous for a call to greatness—even in something as obscure and potentially thankless in terms of public recognition as being part of a team of infantrymen slogging into the back of beyond to help people who may in the end only hate us and even murder us.

Who’s going to be your Maj. Gant? Who’s mine? There’s only one inspirational leader for either of us, and he or she is staring back every morning from the mirror.

One definition of leadership is the capacity to recognize the aspiration for exceptionalness in the souls of our troopers—and then put words and deeds to that imperative. Summon it. Call it forth by action and exhortation. Maj. Gant did that last week for those young Marines and midshipmen—and each of us needs to do it too, for ourselves. Inspire ourselves. Call ourselves out. Self-initiate, self-motivate, self-validate.

“We gotta be great!”

Sign me up, Jim (no, wait … make that Steve). I’m ready to go.

Writers and artists get asked all the time, “How do you decide which book to write, which painting to paint?” The person asking the question usually has a million ideas in her head; she’s struggling to determine which one(s) to pursue. Here’s an answer from my experience.

A few years ago, in Hollywood, I got a new agent. He was a good agent and he did what a good agent should do: he immediately sent me out on a round of meetings. I met with producers and studio execs, actors’ and directors’ development companies. These were the kinds of meetings that screenwriters go on all the time. I told the execs what projects I was working on, they told me what they were looking for, we tried to see if there was a way to work together.

I had thought the meetings would be fun and energizing. Instead they were terribly depressing. By the second week I was feeling down. Week Three, I was clinically bummed. By the fourth week I was suicidal.

I couldn’t figure out why. The people I was meeting with were uniformly smart, motivated, funny. They treated me with respect. They were good peeps. What was wrong? Was it me? This was serious. The emotion was such a downer that I thought, I can’t keep feeling this and stay in this business. What was happening? Finally it hit me.

I realized that floating in the air over every meeting I had been on was an unspoken assumption. The execs and producers and studio people all shared this assumption, and they assumed—because I was in the room with them—that I shared it too.

The assumption was this: We will do anything for a hit.

I don’t fault that position. It’s a good business model. If ultra-violence will get us a smash, let’s go with ultra-violence. If jerk-off teen comedies work, crank ‘em out. Movies based on board games, old TV shows, comic book characters … cue ‘em up, let’s roll.

The problem for me was I didn’t share that assumption. That was why these meetings were depressing me so much. I hated those kinds of movies. That wasn’t why I was here at all! I had decided to take a crack at the movie business because I loved movies; I wanted to write stuff that meant something to me. Movies like the ones I worshipped. Movies I myself wanted to see. I wasn’t a writer for hire. I was a spec writer. That was where my heart was.

I realized that I wasn’t in the same business as the people I was meeting with. I didn’t share their guiding assumption. This was a real problem. I thought to myself, Maybe I’ve picked the wrong business, maybe this isn’t going to work.

Here was the breakthrough. I drew two big circles on a piece of paper. In one I wrote STORIES I LOVE. In the other, STORIES THAT MIGHT SELL. These were two separate circles. But, I thought, let’s move them together. Is there an overlap?

Is there a quadrant, however miniscule, where these two spheres intersect? Yes, there is. That tiny sliver I called MY BUSINESS.

That was the mental model that let me stay in the movie biz. I told myself, “Steve, focus all your effort in that little overlap and don’t ever go outside it. Don’t work on stuff you love that you believe is totally uncommercial. And don’t work on projects that you imagine will sell but that you hate. Stick to the sweet spot.”

Here’s the interesting part: it didn’t work.

Maybe sorta. It kind of stumbled and bumbled in an okay way. But nothing really clicked for me until I gave up completely on hitting the overlap and just did what I loved, even when I thought nobody else in the world would be interested.

I also stopped trying to write movies. I went to books. Why? Not as a deliberate plan. Just because ideas started coming to me as pages in novels, not reels of film. The first two were The Legend of Bagger Vance and Gates of Fire. I was certain, as I was working on each of them, that these were the lamest, most arcane, least commercial subjects possible—a quasi-mystical novel about golf and an epic about an ancient battle that no one had heard of and could neither pronounce nor spell. Who would be interested in this stuff except me?

I did them anyway and to my amazement they worked–not just critically but commercially. So I guess I have to take back everything I just said about “hitting the overlap” or “writing for the sweet spot.” At least for me, no amount of second-guessing the marketplace while simultaneously trying to be true to myself paid off. As much sense as the overlapping circles made in theory, they didn’t work for me in practice.

What did succeed was being totally stupid and jumping off a cliff.

That’s my business plan and I’m sticking to it.

Sun Tzu wrote:

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be defeated.

How do you know if you have the correct understanding of your opponents and allies, as well as an understanding of how your own world plays into your understanding of others?

We put this question to Major Jim Gant and William “MAC” McCallister.

 Mental Models

MM: Mental models are assumptions about the world. A mental model describes events and gives meaning to cause and effect relationships. It predisposes us to act in certain ways and to expect certain results. Our mental models filter information (called selective perception) that influences our approach to problem solving and the way we use information.

Each soldier and Marine must recognize and appreciate the fact that we see the world based on our own unique culture, attitudes, emotions, values and authority. As a member of an expeditionary force you will encounter people and cultures that differ markedly from our own. The hardest task is to lay our cultural lenses aside and to gain an appreciation of the “others” cultural operating environment.

JG: Our personal mental models are a result of our past experiences and current knowledge, and determine how we will act or respond toward any given situation. Our perception of events or data that we internalize, gives life to our actions. As an example, an academic’s idea of tribal engagement, which has evolved from reading history and experiences of others, will be much different those who have lived, fought, and built relationships as ODA 316 did with Sitting Bull and his people. Being immersed in the cultural, day-to-day living and experiencing the heart and soul of a people is much different than reading about it. More information and experiences will modify and change a person’s mental model about any given topic.

MM: At some point, we’ve all had the great pleasure of being chastised by the enlightened few for “getting it wrong” because our life experiences don’t agree with or reflect some great thinker’s notion of what the world “ought” to be. We become trapped by personal mental models when we focus on how the world “ought” to be. We have to focus on the way it is.

JG: We can’t assume that we know the motivations behind the way people act, but we can assume that motivations exist. In Afghanistan, there are century old tribal conflicts that are hidden only because of greater, outside threats. These will reemerge once one of the contenders [US vs AQ/TB] begins to take a commanding lead. How aware of these alliances are we when we pick our friends? What is the why behind the how different tribes fight? Within ourselves, we also have to consider our own cultural operating codes. For instance, there are tactical, operational, and strategic models.  Now, these models will overlap, and variables at one level can have a major impact on other variables at other levels. How do these, in turn, mesh or clash with the tribes on the ground?

MM: The cultural operating codes (cultural op codes) and coordinating messages (coord messages) mental model is based on the premise that from simple rules emerge complex social dynamics and, over time, distinct patterns of behavior. They are simple assumptions for “how” an area of operation (AO) works and identify the “why” that shapes cause and effect relationships. The two coord messages are “what have you done for me lately and what will you do for me tomorrow?” and “no stability without us.” These communicate intentions to cooperate or compete. Structuring the analysis by applying the four cultural op codes and two coord messages provides for a more fitting appreciation of the human terrain and supports the tailoring of strategic initiatives and operational and tactical tasks.

The following is a story from Captain Thomas Daly, a Marine who was in Ramadi during the Awakening. Watch for the operating codes and the coordinating messages: 

Three months into my deployment in Anbar’s capital, Ramadi, I sat at what I thought was just another battalion-level mission confirmation brief. My first six battalion-sized operations into insurgent-controlled patrol sectors weren’t very successful. They were characterized as clear or sweep missions and they didn’t do much to reduce the 20-to-30 attacks a day against coalition forces, or stop IEDs from being planted at an alarming rate. Even when we detained the military-aged-males at our target houses, less than 5% were prosecuted.

However, this was not just another mission. When 1/9 Infantry’s battalion commander reviewed our list of targeted individuals, he directed us to detain the regional sheikh. Then he instructed us to find and recruit the sheikhs of the regions neutral sub-tribes (none of them were considered friendly at the time). As the company’s intelligence officer, which was a duty obtained by direction, not training; I was surprised to receive these tasks. Previous missions were focused on target buildings, i.e., who may or may not be in them. There was no thought to local atmospherics or who the local power holders were. That was left for somebody at battalion or brigade to figure out. We simply cleared the objective areas, detained suspicious individuals, and transferred them over to military intelligence at the end of the mission. Yes, we found insurgent caches and engaged the enemy when he revealed himself, but in terms of reducing violence we were not having any success.

A couple of days later, we executed the first-large scale operation focused on the populace, not the enemy, in our deployment. We successfully created a power vacuum by detaining the al Qaeda controlled sheikh of the region. Two days later we allied ourselves with a small group of ex-Baathist fighters. Our combat effectiveness immediately increased. With their assistance, 95% of our detainees were being prosecuted. We detained the #2 HVI for Anbar province. And, at the same time, violence sky rocketed. Our casualties began to mount, but so did the local populace’s. Al Qaeda was determined to figure out who the masked Iraqis assisting us were so they brutally interrogated members of the surrounding sub-tribes. It was a colossal error. They lost the support of the people. Two months after our first mission focused on the populace, those same citizens revolted against al Qaeda. A week of brutal Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence encompassed the region. When it was all said and done, al Qaeda was gone. 

Once the Marines of 1/9 Infantry started to think in terms of local atmospherics, they intuitively began to communicate intent within the target audiences’ cultural frame of reference. The operational objective was to reestablish governmental authority. The supporting tactical tasks were to ‘isolate’ the insurgent alliance network, ‘disrupt’ or sever the patronage relationship, and enlist the ‘relevant population’ to assist U.S. and Iraqi government security forces in the area.  The Marines did this by exploiting the tendency of rival groups to segment by aligning themselves with ‘a small group of fighters’ and the community these fighters represented to fight against al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The local fighters sought to reclaim ‘territory’ lost to AQI and its local allies. The Marines strengthened this alliance via a patronage relationship. The shame and honor code served as the framework to exchange credibility, legitimacy and prestige between the Marines and the relevant population.”  

The following is excerpted from Mr. McCallister’s “COIN and Irregular Warfare in a Tribal Society” primer:

a. A mental model is an explanation of someone’s thought process for how something works in the real world and based on culture, attitudes, emotions, values, authority, persuasion and or coercion.

b. Each soldier and Marine must recognize and appreciate the fact that we see the world based on our own unique culture, attitudes, emotions, values and authority. As a member of an expeditionary force you will encounter people and cultures that differ markedly from our own. The hardest task is to lay our cultural lenses aside and to gain an appreciation of the “others” cultural operating environment.

c. Define to what extent you understand your own mental process. How good are your insights in how you weight evidence in making judgments.

• Studies show that individuals assume an implicit “mental model” consisting of fundamental beliefs and assumptions. These fundamental beliefs and assumptions for sake of mental model development are called variables.

It follows that:

• An individual should be able to identify and describe the mental variables they consider most important in making judgments. 
•  Cognitive studies show that individuals tend to overestimate the importance of variables that have only a minor impact on their judgment and underestimate the extent to which their decisions are based on a few major variables.
• In short, people’s mental models are simpler than they think.
• As a matter of fact it is seldom more than one or two mental variables that are considered at any given time when assessing a given situation 
•  This revelation helps explain why additional information does not normally improve predictive accuracy. We tend to confirm or deny information in accordance with our existing mental model.  
• Accuracy of judgment depends almost exclusively upon precision of the mental model for there is little other basis for judgment.

 d. Describe your own mental model. An example of a very simple mental model is Boyd’s Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (OODA) Loop.

e. What are your mental variables when you contemplate events in Iraq or Afghanistan; provinces or tribal society?

f. Which variables influence your mental model for how you see, perceive and experience the culture of the operating area?

Mental Model Development

The social contract defines the limits of power and social responsibilities between individuals, groups and governance. It is the logical start point to gain an appreciation for the distribution of power in a given society and the critical first step in determining how best to shape behavior.

Social Contract

• The social contract is an implied agreement by which people form nations and maintain social order.

• It is an agreement by which individuals and groups give up rights to a form of government so as to secure social order.

• Tensions exist between governmental sovereignty, communal autonomy and individual liberty.

• The social contract does not provide for rights that are “natural” or permanent. Rights are only legitimate to the extent that they serve the general interest

• Arguments can be made for a natural right of rebellion in case the social contract leads to tyranny.

• Fighting is a form of negotiation.

Political Formula

• The political formula is the logical beginning and foundation of a political order. The entire legal and social structure of the state is built upon a specific political order.
• No political formula can be scientifically proven to be correct. Every political formula is fiction. Only the force which the political formula exerts and expresses as political faith is real. The political formula is taken to be correct, true and necessary by those who believe in it and uphold it.
• A political formula which does not correspond to the desires and efforts of the people is useless. Those who rely on the political formula’s legitimacy and associated force lose their power i.e. that influence which allows them to impose their will.
• A political formula without legitimacy is mere legality. Yet, the political formula seeks to survive by virtue that it exists. 
• Legitimacy is derived from differing political formulas which the various actors seek to realize. Every revolution bequeaths legitimacy once its political formula is believed.

 U.S. political formula  

• The American political formula is based on the idea that authority is derived from “the people” and that everyone who belongs to this order is called upon to participate. This participation is expressed in elections and votes in which the decisions of the majority are delegated to the appropriate authority, according to directives from below.

 It follows that:

• The government represents the will of the people and is held accountable for its actions.

It further follows that this mental model might assume that COIN and irregular warfare is primarily a struggle between:

• The government fighting against the insurgency for the hearts and minds of the people.

 Political Formula in a tribal society

a. The primary building block is the group, not the individual.

b. Competition for access to limited resources and influence is between a multiplicity of compact groups – ethnic, sectarian, economic-and tribal all striving separately and suspicious of each other.

c. The state as an institution and the territory it encompasses represents a “political field” or arena in which groups compete for influence and resources. It is a power-sharing system that includes urban and rural, sectarian, political and tribal groupings.

d. The focus of each group is to survive and prosper and they can do so only if they preserve and reinforce the corporate pattern.

e. The focus is on the tribe or the community of interest. The tribe or the community of interest succeeds or fail as a group.

f. Community of interest is defined as any temporary or long-term alliance to achieve a common goal.

Key Points

a. Does the current mental model of “the” government fighting against “the” insurgency for the hearts and minds of “the” people express the stylized way of fighting and peacemaking in Iraq or Afghanistan?

b. Does the current COIN and irregular warfare mental model support the development of appropriate tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) to accomplish your operational and tactical objectives within the cultural frame of reference of the target audience?

Our mental model provides the foundation for appropriate action. If the mental model clashes with the cultural operating environment then you should change the mental model to better reflect the cultural frame of reference of the target audience.

Full disclosure: Bob McKee and I are good friends (and his video interview with me is part of the package I’m about to tell you about.) So be aware please, the following does NOT pretend to be impartial or objective.

StoryLogue's Robert McKee

Who is McKee? Robert McKee is the preeminent teacher of screenwriting and story structure in the world. His four-day intensive seminars have played to packed auditoriums around the planet for twenty-five years. His book Story is gospel for thousands of writers, directors and producers. Did you see the movie Adaptation? Charlie Kaufman half-spoofed/half-lionized McKee by name and Brian Cox (who played McKee in the film) nailed his style and manner spectacularly. Myself, I’ve stolen concepts from Bob over and over and they’ve always worked. And he’s a pretty good golfer too.

So what is StoryLogue?

StoryLogue is a serious, full-participation, web-based Writers’ Program that McKee is launching tomorrow, January 30th. Click here–www.storylogue.com–for the full monty on features, interviews, details, sign-up info.

Can Robert McKee help this writer?

StoryLogue is not free. It’s not for everybody. Its aim is to be an ongoing interactive seminar, a sort of “story university” for writers who want to take their craft to the next level. StoryLogue aims to tackle every aspect of writing–character, dialogue, structure, subtext, genre, you name it–and to provide its members with personal access to McKee, just like you’d get if you were attending a weekend intensive in person.

That’s my pitch. By no means am I impartial on this. I’m a believer and I’ll be using StoryLogue as a resource myself. Take a look. Click on the link. See if it might be right for you and your goals as a writer.

This post will launch a new series we’re calling “The Creative Process.” Don’t worry, Writing Wednesday fans, it will not replace WW. We’re going to run “Creative Process” in a different space on the new site as soon as we get it up. The plan is to ask all kinds of interesting people “how they work.” What is their process? How do they get ideas–and what do they do with them once they’ve got ‘em? We’ll be grilling writers and artists, military people, entrepreneurs, maybe even an Afghan tribal chief or two.

Seth Godin's Linchpin ("indispensable") comes out today.

#1 out of the box is Seth Godin. We’re even jumping a day early to coincide with the launch of Seth’s terrific new book, Linchpin. (Full disclosure: I’m doing a joint book signing with Seth Feb. 8 at the Borders on Columbus Circle in New York City.) Linchpin comes out today. It will kick you in the butt–in the best way. It certainly kicked me.

Who is Seth Godin? He’s an author and marketing whiz (the guru of “permission marketing”) and cutting-edge thinker. If you haven’t read Tribes or The Dip or Purple Cow, please do. I’m reading All Marketers Are Liars right now and finding something I can use on almost every page. As writers and artists, we may make the decision NOT to brand ourselves or market ourselves or get into any of that razzmatazz (I wrestle with these choices myself), but we owe it to ourselves and our work, I think, to at least know what this stuff is all about.

Marketing, Seth says, is the most powerful force in the world for making change. He doesn’t mean just products; his insights are critical for understanding politics (see Sarah Palin), warfare (see al-Qaeda) and where all your money went (see Goldman Sachs.) I hope someday to do a really long, in-depth interview with Seth because I think he’s onto something that the rest of us better educate ourselves in, not just as competitors in the marketplace but as citizens of the U.S. and the world. For now though, here’s our mini-interview with Seth Godin on the Creative Process:

SP: When it comes to generating ideas, what’s your process? Solitary? Collaborative?  Is it fun, is it grueling? How, exactly, do you work?

SG: I’ve come to realize that I’m unusual. For me, it happens all the time. It spills out of me. Most of the ideas are horrible, useless and distracting. When I have a specific problem to solve, I use a more focused process. I’ll often buy a new notebook, different from the ones I’ve used before. Special pens. Then I’ll try to be somewhere with distractions (yes, with distractions) so that out of the corner of my ‘eye’ I can invent.

Seth defeating Resistance with new notepad and special pen

I’ve found that the next level up is the focused meeting. I’ll bring together energetic, smart people and outline the problem. The act of talking about it, showing off, demonstrating the options… it generates even more energy, which I return and they return and there’s a whiteboard and what-ifs and excited voices and the next thing you know, the problem retreats, head held in shame, defeated.

SP: Do you experience Resistance (meaning self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc.?) In what form does Resistance present itself?

SG: Until you wrote about it in The War of Art, I didn’t know what to call it. For me, the resistance disguises itself as important, even urgent work that could and should be put aside. The resistance most often looks like checking my email. Email is the perfect distraction for me, because it’s fresh, new and bite-sized. When I turn off email, even for an hour, my productivity triples.

Oh, sorry, I’m back. I just stopped writing this to… check my email.

SP: How do you overcome Resistance? Do you have a specific technique or metaphor that you employ to fortify, encourage or inspire yourself?

SG: People who know me talk about my self-discipline. I haven’t had dairy in ten years, no particular reason, I just stopped. The same thing kicked in for me once I figured out what the resistance was doing to me. If the work is important enough, I stare down the resistance and destroy it. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m only skilled at that in short bursts. The longer haul stuff, the multi-month efforts, the idea of building a company with 100 or 1000 people… those things fall aside and the resistance triumphs.

SP: Once you have an idea, what’s your process for taking it to a finished form? How do you decide whether an idea is worth pursuing? Is there a series of steps that take you from “germ” to “finished product?”

SG: There are a lot of germs in my world. Too many, certainly. I usually have thirty to fifty projects in the very early stages.

When I was a book packager, there was a database of 500.

As someone who has had ADD his whole life, I saw my business struggle for years. The problem with flitting around too much is that you never get through the Dip, you start a lot and don’t finish much. I realized that if I intended to make a living at this, I needed the discipline to ship, to push it out the door, to close sales, make things happen and be professional about it.

So the deal is that I can noodle with stuff all I want… until it hits a certain level of construction or commitment. And then I have to choose–kill it or ship it. And once I choose, it is an irrevocable choice. So those meetings are dramatic, even when I’m the only one in them.

SP: What do you do when you hit plateaus? How do you keep advancing? Is there one example of plateauing that you can share–and how you grew through it?

A marketing guru with his own action figure

SG: I hit plateaus all the time. I’ve been really fortunate, had things work out and there’s a real temptation to protect your gains, cut your potential losses and coast.

Fortunately for me, the voice of the resistance is almost always drowned out by the voice of the other guy… not sure he has a name yet. That’s the guy in search of intellectual thrills, ego rides and most of all, the joy of watching people grow. I’ve been hooked on that for forty (!) years and I don’t see it going away any time soon.

SP: Bonus question: Seth, a lot of your work is inspiring people to lead, to follow their emotional hearts, to be heretics and to make their unique presence felt as artists and innovators. In your view, where does the artist/innovator/entrepreneur fit into society? What is her role in the greater scheme of things?

SG: We’re the heretics, the agents of change and the court jesters. Without us, it turns into 1984 or Windows 7. Not good.

As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.