he turned down $360,000

You may have noticed I didn't send you an email yesterday.

That's not because I didn't want to. I sat at my screen for three hours trying to come up with something.

Nothing was coming to me. Everything I wrote felt forced. I couldn't send it to you… it was slop. Writing for the sake of writing. I had nothing to say.

Then, I started browsing YouTube in my frustration… to look for inspiration, but really just feeding my procrastination. Then I stumbled upon a movie trailer for “I Play Rocky”. Have you seen it?

It follows a young Sylvester Stallone trying to get the original Rocky movie made. He was nobody. He couldn't get cast in anything. And a friend told him… "write your own movie and put yourself in it."

So he did. He banged out the first draft in three days, because he wasn't trying to write a screenplay. He was trying to get himself in a movie.

He was offered $360,000 for the script on the condition that a real actor would play Rocky. He said no.

He was broke! And those are 1975 dollars. Everyone thought he was nuts.

In his own words

"If I sold the script and it did well, and I wasn't in it, I would have jumped off a building."

He wasn’t joking. He refused to sell it to them, unless they put him in it. There was no price he would accept. And so they had no choice, but to cast him.

When I read that quote, I realized something.

Rocky wasn’t a character. Rocky was him. Stallone. A nobody that nobody would bet on. Who just wants to be still standing in the end. That’s the spirit of the movie. That also happened to be his life.

He put himself on the page. The writing was straight from his heart. From the pit of his soul.

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to write an email.

I’ve been trying to find something to tell you about, or come up with some profound point to make…

I was putting pressure on myself... "I have to say something meaningful." "I have to give my readers value." I wasn't writing from the heart and just letting it pour out. That’s where the good stuff lives.

Stallone didn't sit down to write something good. He put himself on the page, and it turned into one of the greatest movies ever made.

I’m not sure this is the greatest email I’ve ever written… actually, I’m sure it’s not. But it’s a window into my process. I am writing myself out of a rut…

I think it worked…

stay close,

~ Clay

p.s. September 10th is coming. 1 year since we lost Charlie. If you're new to the list, this is the one you should read. This is the one I'm most proud to stand behind. stopbeingprey.com/desecration

p.p.s. Everybody reads... some people help me keep the lights on: stopbeingprey.com/patronage