I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
Interpretation
Embracing challenges is essential for achieving goals.
Philip Roth emphasizes that facing difficulties is an inherent part of the commitment to any endeavor, particularly writing. This perspective helps transform anxiety into resilience, encouraging individuals to view obstacles as integral to their journey rather than setbacks.
In practice
During a writing workshop, you might share this quote to inspire fellow writers facing blockages.
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.
Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.
It's absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man, and he said to me, I was maybe 9, and he said to me, 'Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off, put a blanket on you, and you're going to sleep better.' Well, as with everything, he was right. ... Then the best part of it is that when you wake up, for the first 15 seconds, you have no idea where you are. You're just alive. That's all you know. And it's bliss, it's absolute bliss.
I can hear sweat trickling down your cheek_x000D_ _x000D_ Your heartbeat sound like Sasquatch feet_x000D_ _x000D_ Thundering, shaking the concrete.
If we really want something done, it is best to do it ourselves.
Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.
If your attention is focused only on the result, then you are no longer in the process. But if you're in the process, then the result is guaranteed.
If you are too nice, you will just get eaten alive. The football world is not always a nice place.
I'm drawn to failure. I feel like I'm contending with it constantly in my own life.
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