Page 99 - DTW_Layout_v12_110304.indd

88 Steven Pressfield

Hamlet and Michael Crichton

How hard is it to finish something? The greatest drama in the
English language was written on this very subject. Hamlet knows
he must kill his uncle for murdering his father. But then he starts
to think—and the next thing you know, the poor prince is so
self-befuddled, he’s ready to waste himself with a bare bodkin.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

When Michael Crichton approached the end of a novel (so I’ve
read), he used to start getting up earlier and earlier in the morn-
ing. He was desperate to keep his mojo going. He’d get up at six,
then five, then three-thirty and two-thirty, till he was driving his
wife insane.

Finally he had to move out of the house. He checked into a hotel
(the Kona Village, which ain’t so bad) and worked around the
clock till he’d finished the book.

Michael Crichton was a pro.