Do the Work

novel.
     
    What did Norm mean by that?
     
    He meant don’t overthink. Don’t overprepare. Don’t let research become Resistance. Don’t spend six months compiling a thousand-page tome detailing the emotional matrix and family history of every character in your book.
     
    Outline it fast. Now. On instinct.
     
    Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic enterprise to a single page.
     
     
     
    Is this easy? Hell, no.
     
    So the next chapter offers a helpful hint:
     
    Three-Act Structure
     
    Break the sheet of foolscap into three parts: beginning, middle, and end.
     
    This is how screenwriters and playwrights work. Act One, Act Two, Act Three.
     
    How Leonardo Did It
     
    Here’s the Last Supper in three acts on a single sheet of foolscap:
     
     
Supper table stretching across the width of the canvas.
     
Jesus standing in the center, apostles arrayed in various postures left and right.
     
Perspective and background tailing off behind.
     
     
    That’s all Mr. Da V needed to start. The rest is details.
     
    Positively Fourth Street in Three Acts
     
     
“You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend ….
     
“ … when you know as well as me, you’d rather see me paralyzed …
     
“ … you’d know what a drag it is to see you.”
     
     
    The Vietnam Memorial
     
    In three acts, on one sheet of foolscap:
     
     
A wall with the names of the fallen in chronological order of the dates of their deaths.
     
Wall set below the level of the ground in a “V,” extending from a shallow end to a deep end.
     
Visitors descend to view the wall, which has no barrier to prevent them from touching the names of the memorialized or from leaving tokens of love or honor at the base of the wall.
     
     
    At the conception stage, the artist works by instinct. What feels right?
     
    What does she love?
     
    Is this her pure vision? Does it feel so right to her that she can dedicate the next X years of her life to realizing it?
     
    Those were the only questions, at the start, that Maya Lin needed to ask and answer.
     
    Did she analyze her design intellectually? No doubt. Did she reflect on the utility of negative space and the power of what’s-left-out? Of course. Did she assess with her intellect which aspects of the design would produce emotion and why? I’m sure she did.
     
    But all that is beside the point at this stage. Let the art historians worry about that later.
     
    Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?
     
    Facebook in Three Acts
     
     
A digital commons, upon which anyone who wishes may establish, free, his or her own personal “page.”
     
Each page owner determines who is permitted access to his or her page.
     
Thus creating a worldwide community of “friends” who can interact with other “friends” and communicate or share virtually anything they want.
     
     
    That’s Why They Call It Rewriting
     
    The old saw says there’s no such thing as writing, only rewriting. This is true.
     
    Better to have written a lousy ballet than to have composed no ballet at all.
     
    Get your idea down on paper. You can always tweak it later.
     
    Next question: How do you get it down?
     
    Start at the End
     
    Here’s a trick that screenwriters use: work backwards. Begin at the finish.
     
    If you’re writing a movie, solve the climax first. If you’re opening a restaurant, begin with the experience you want the diner to have when she walks in and enjoys a meal. If you’re preparing a seduction, determine the state of mind you want the process of romancing to bring your lover to.
     
    Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there.
     
    Yes, you say. “But how do I know where I want to go?”
     
    Answer the Question “What Is This About?”
     
    Start with the theme. What is this project about?
     
    What is the Eiffel Tower about? What is the space shuttle about? What is Nude Descending a Staircase about?
     
    Your movie, your album, your new startup … what is it about? When you know that, you’ll know the end state. And when you know the end state, you’ll know the steps to take to get there.
     
    Moby Dick on a Single Sheet, Working Back to Front
     
    What is Moby Dick about?
     
    It’s about the clash between human will and the elemental malice of nature, i.e. (in Melville’s dark 19th-century view), the Old Testament God.
     
    So … a monster. A whale. A white whale (because white is