Brian Koppelman

I do think people are in pain, but it's like asking me if back pain exists or if slipped discs cause back pain.

And I think that John Sarno is mostly right, that 2% of the time, it's a real structural thing.

And almost all the time, what it actually is, I'm not talking about acute, like there is acute back pain.

Like, you know, you throw a rock on your back and walk up a bunch of flights of stairs, you're gonna have a couple days of pain.

But in a prior version of my life, that back pain, I wouldn't have gone to deadlift a day later, and I wouldn't be throwing kettlebells around two days later.

I would have said, oh, my back is hurt, and I would have stayed in bed.

And I would have taken, I would ask the doctor for cortisone, you know, and now I'm in a different mode.

And I think it's the, so, but the thing Sarno says that's really important is the pain is real.

Like the pain is legitimate and real.

So the pain you feel when you're a blocked writer, a blocked artist is a very real pain.

And it does seem as bleak as depression.

But I do think,

that there is a strategy for you if you're listening to this.

And it might not be the strategy that works for Michael Easter or for me or for Seth Godin, but there is a strategy that will work for you and you can find it and get to the other side.

What do you think?

Well, in fiction, you know...

writing TV or movies or stories.

Maybe it has to do with point of view.

And that same information too, it might be instead of having to go outside, maybe it's having to go inside and do more work on like, what is it that I want to say here?

Why do I want to tell this story?