Resistance is a natural reaction to effort. When we sit down to write, we know that it’s going to require something of us to do this work and—for those of us writing outside of a deadline, skipping out on the work can feel inconsequential. Often the resistance feels like a physical force. I sit down in front of my computer and it looms up immediately—I’m pushing toward the work and the resistance is pushing me backward. Sometimes the resistance is so powerful that I can feel its rawness and the fear pulsing under the surface.
We’ve been discussing resistance in the Writing Sprint. We’ve been talking about the myriad triggers for resistance. Sometimes it’s triggers by the simple act of focusing on the work while your mind is swirling with the day’s duties, or while your internal critic is chopping your efforts to bits, or while your internal pessimist is sucking the life force out of your dreams—how dare you believe you can build a story, write a novel, create a world?
Resistance also slips in when we are overwhelmed by our projects, when we don’t know what to do next or when we don’t know how to take ourselves from where we are to where we want to go or when we don’t have the tools or structure to bring us through to completion.
Resistance is nothing to fear (well, in actuality, it is fear. Fear that we won’t measure up. Fear that we don’t have the goods. Fear that we aren’t skilled enough). The danger of resistance is not in its existence, it’s in how we relate to it.
If we take resistance as a diagnosis or as evidence that something is wrong, it can take us out of the game. If we accept and embrace that resistance is a human reaction to effort, to the unknown, to challenge, then we can dismiss it as a passing mental state, rather than proof that we should not be writing. It is not mean that we are wrong about our writing goals. It only proves that you are human and you house doubt.
Resistance is something to be managed, not obeyed. Whenever it arises , you have a choice. Do you navigate around it or do you skip writing to avoid feeling it? Do you acknowledge it as part of the process of writing or do you take it personally as if it’s a judgment on you? Do you create self-talk and strategies to navigate it or do you sink below its weight and allow it to throw you off course?
Sometimes, if I’m really resistant to the work ahead, my resistance slides into procrastination and time just slips by. There are days when I have to chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all. Like, are you seriously frightened of managing, rearranging and engaging with these words on the page? The only strategy that convinces me to plow ahead is to stick a toe in the water and tiptoe my way into progress.
One of the interesting things about resistance is that it is almost always accompanied by a larger goal. At the crossroads, the question is always: Do we want to let resistance win or our larger goals win? For me, the antidote to resistance is reminding myself that my larger goals are more important and that resistance will lead me nowhere (that is the goal of resistance: to stop you from doing). I use all the self-talk and self-management strategies I can muster to wrestle resistance to the ground.
When all the histrionics are over you are still there, standing before a forked path. On one side, there’s resistance; on the other side there’s your desire to write. And there is only one solution—and that solution is for you to decide which one will win.