Beneath the Thank You, was a logbook and a magnet of a cat. In all of his nonfiction is a desire to help others. To show them a way, encourage them and bring them along as they navigate their own wilderness. I knew the cat instantly from his books. I remembered his constant companion during those years. Mo was the cat’s name.
I had taken to journal writing already years ago. I remembered the lines I wrote at the beginning of the years tracking the things I wanted to achieve. At the bottom of that list, for years, was ‘Draft Ruinwaster’s Bane. Each year I would count off the things I did accomplish. Everything but draft Ruinwaster’s Bane. I managed to skirt it year after year after year until I read Pressfield’s, The War of Art. I didn’t know about Resistance.
Just before I read it I had a soul-searching moment where I admitted and accepted to myself that maybe I just wasn’t cut out the write a book. That maybe just wasn’t meant to happen for me. My shadow career was in shambles but it was the only thing I knew how to do.
Still, I had my journal and my dreams. And I learned from Pressfield that it was actually harder to avoid doing the work of writing than actually writing itself. When I first heard that I didn’t understand. When I put down The War of Art, after reading it cover to cover seven times in a row, I committed myself to drafting out Ruinwaster’s Bane I began to understand what he meant. And in the process, I began to feel like a writer for the first time.
