On Becoming More of a Prick

When Gates of Fire was first optioned by Universal Studios in 1998, the director Michael Mann was attached. I sent him hand-written congratulations and a signed first edition. I never heard a peep. I thought, “What a prick!”

The all-time champ, Ming the Merciless

The same thing happened with Robert Redford on The Legend of Bagger Vance. Again I thought, “What a prick!”

But I gotta tell you, the more I’ve thought about it over the years, the more I see both Mann and Redford’s point of view.

They have to protect their time. Their assistants have to keep “asks” and potential “asks” at bay. Surely both directors thought, if in fact they ever got my packages, “Uh-oh, this writer’s going to be a major pain in the ass; the last thing I need on the set is some hyper-possessive literary type peering over my shoulder saying, ‘I would’ve shot that scene differently.’”

(Whether a movie director should meet with the writer of a book he’s adapting is a whole other question. Don’t get me started on that one.)

The bottom line on saying no to “asks” is this: if it’s okay to ask (and it is), then it’s okay to blow off an ask.

We’re not being pricks; we’re protecting our time.

DO THE WORK

Steve shows you the predictable Resistance points that every writer hits in a work-in-progress and then shows you how to deal with each one of these sticking points. This book shows you how to keep going with your work.

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THE AUTHENTIC SWING

A short book about the writing of a first novel: for Steve, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Having failed with three earlier attempts at novels, here's how Steve finally succeeded.

The-Authentic-Swing

NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T

Steve shares his "lessons learned" from the trenches of the five different writing careers—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, nonfiction, and self-help. This is tradecraft. An MFA in Writing in 197 pages.

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TURNING PRO

Amateurs have amateur habits. Pros have pro habits. When we turn pro, we give up the comfortable life but we find our power. Steve answers the question, "How do we overcome Resistance?"

Turning-Pro

55 Comments

  1. Clarence ford on January 22, 2025 at 1:43 am

    Fighting the war against Resistance leaves little time or chance for frivolous compassion and customary niceties. The battle for victory over Resistance is far more important than emotional attachments!

  2. marianfenel on January 22, 2025 at 2:20 am

    It’s remarkable how such events might influence our impressions of people. I understand how easy it is to ignore little gestures while I’m engaged in study or attempting to do my dissertation. Perhaps Michael Mann was simply caught up in his own creative whirlwind.

    • FERNANDO BERDITCHEVSKY on January 22, 2025 at 6:14 am

      Compreensível. É um comportamento pragmático de uma maneira de realizar cinema.

      • FERNANDO BERDI on January 22, 2025 at 8:06 am

        Não conseguiria ter esse comportamento.

  3. Jackie on January 22, 2025 at 3:14 am

    Such a tiny word, NO. So hard to utter when it’s your loved ones who ask. So hard when you are a people pleaser. But a skill to be learned with balance to write the end to a story or lay in a final brush stroke on a painting. Some days you fail. Some days are a success. Keep trying. Keep doing. Wish all a week of productivity.

    • Tolis on January 22, 2025 at 5:02 am

      You too Jackie, another 7 days are yours to grasp.

      Fight with all you ‘ve got and keep faith!

      • Jackie on January 22, 2025 at 7:14 am

        Thank you, Tolis. Shared faith to keep up the fight! So sweet!

    • Joan on January 22, 2025 at 9:10 am

      Perspective we all have a different vantage point. Simple Thank you is one.
      ..

  4. Max on January 22, 2025 at 3:19 am

    IMHO, fighting against Resistance doesn’t mean being rude!
    Those people were not wasting time answering generic requests! They received a signed copy from the author of the book thery were trying to make a film of! A couple lines, or just a written “thank you” wouldn’t have been “wasted time”.

    Benito Mussolini ordered everyone to run to and from his desk in Palazzo Venezia, to save him ten seconds of his precious time.

    Saving ten seconds (even at the cost of being rude) doesn’t imply that those seconds will be productive-

  5. Kate Stanton on January 22, 2025 at 3:27 am

    I raise my coffee mug—cheers to protecting my time! That precious creative time in my music room.

    • Tolis on January 22, 2025 at 4:56 am

      Cheers, Kate! To our time.

  6. Sara on January 22, 2025 at 3:52 am

    I respectfully disagree Steven. This wasn’t an ask. You’re the reason there’s a movie to make.
    Assuming both directors received your thoughtful, kind, and professional gesture, a two word reply of Thank you, or if time is of the essence, Thanks, should be a basic human response.

    • Mia Sherwood landau on January 22, 2025 at 4:47 am

      Right!!! Those guys had staff who could have replied.

  7. Scott Mitchell on January 22, 2025 at 4:08 am

    On the other hand. . . my brother loved the movie “The Sand Pebbles” starring Steve McQueen and directed by Robert Wise. My brother wrote Mr. Wise expressing how much he enjoyed the movie, especially certain scenes, and that he was studying Radio, Television and Film at the university. No ask, just a “great movie!” declaration, Mr. Wise wrote back, referring to the scenes, and encouraged my brother to continue his studies. Maybe my brother just caught him on a good day. Mr. Wise’s reply did mean a lot to him.

  8. Elon Blackwell on January 22, 2025 at 4:15 am

    Well, that’s liberating. For emphatic creatives, we often feel like we’re throwing daggers when we say NO or GHOST a request from someone. Sometimes, you must allow people to make their own inferences and hopefully assume the positive. Your time is a precious commodity.

  9. Tolis on January 22, 2025 at 4:34 am

    Thank you so much dear Steve.

    Ah, what a film would they had made! They lost an opportunity, but of course they found others. Same with you: you lost the opportunity, but you found others. Remember the batterfly effect? What has happened and whom you have the luck to be around, wouldn’t had happened if even a small flight from a butterfly was for some reason different than it really was back then – let alone if things like these you said were different. Mr. Kahneman uses the phrase WYSIATI: What you see is all there is. All the dynamics, causes, products, effects of what you see, although you may think you know them, actually they are so much different than what you (we) believe they are.

    I tend now to distant myself from many possible results thankfully. Here’s a challenge: to endlessly go after what our dream is, for me the book among others, without clinging to the end result. Or if our mind sees the end result, let it see in the Land of the Dreams and also know that it’s the Never, Never Land.

    And then, like blind monkeys throwing hundreds of darts at a dartboard, we will one day inevitably hit the bull’s eye. Everyone hits the bull’s eye. The question is, what’s the gift…

    P.s.
    I thought this idea yesterday: that it is not structure that writes the book, but rather a specific symbol that has living energy. (Or else it’s a dead book)

  10. Jim Flynn on January 22, 2025 at 4:36 am

    Maybe you learned the wrong lesson.
    Maybe if Redford had taken the time to talk to you he would have made a better movie, instead of that pile of crap, from your great book.

    Besides, if you really want to be a prick, it’s like saying you want to be a writer: stop talking about it and just do it.

    • Jim King on January 22, 2025 at 8:00 am

      Your comment is truth. Good stuff.

  11. Scott McKain on January 22, 2025 at 4:57 am

    I understand that, given the plethora of requests and mail that someone in their position receives, they do not respond to each item from the volumes of contact requested. That’s protecting their time — and it is a habit we all need to develop.

    To fail to respond to the kind gift and gentle support from the originator of the material they’ve optioned and will spend the next year of their lives filming is simply asinine behavior.

    As in many cases, our first gut feeling is spot on — then, we overthink. In other words, I believe your initial assessment was totally accurate.

    • Jody on January 22, 2025 at 5:56 am

      Well said, Scott. I was thinking the same thing. They have the right to ignore actual attempts to meddle, but nothing was being asked of them except basic courtesy in response to a kind note from the author, the person without whom their project would not have existed. It would’ve been far more decent to reply humorously, “Thanks, but don’t try to meddle! The book was your baby, but the film is mine. Hope you’ll like it.”

      • Tessa on January 22, 2025 at 9:33 am

        I’m sorry, but to get one’s assistant to write a brief thank you note would absolutely NOT be an impingement on one’s time. In fact, assistants can be told in advance to handle things like this. I once wrote to President Obama after meeting the Obamas and got a very thoughtful note back AND some kind of certificate. The President of the United States was probably even more pressed for time that those movie directors. Now then, reading the books (which one can only assume your directors did alreador why are they making the movies) would be a whole other animal. But that’s not what you were asking. So I don’t like to say “prick” but it definitely wasn’t very classy of them.

  12. Nancy on January 22, 2025 at 5:15 am

    How does this work out with licensing permission and copyrights? Do only the respective attorneys communicate?

  13. Muriel Palmer-Rhea on January 22, 2025 at 5:41 am

    My husband has sent free copies of his opus: ELECTRONIC PERSPECTIVES to various people he thought should be made aware of it’s existence ( an archival history in photographs and commentary of the development of the synthesizer). For all the time I have known him it’s creation has been central to his activity, and after 45 years, we have the final hard cover, self-published result. Many librarians and others who received copies gratis have not acknowledged receipt, and I can feel his disappointment.

    • Joan on January 22, 2025 at 9:24 am

      Thank you takes one nano moment to write, or say to a person. But it remains with the receiver

  14. Manisha on January 22, 2025 at 6:10 am

    Would you have shot the scene differently? I’m curious. I enjoyed Legend of Bagger Vance but I would appreciate it more since you were the creator, that you saw it appear on film that way.
    I think someone should have reached out to you. A simple “thank you for the inspiration” artist to artist message would have sufficed. Maybe then this post would have been about the joy little things can make in someone’s life. 🙂 I appreciate your posts. “No’s” are good lessons to learn in a world now based on “likes”

  15. Marilyn on January 22, 2025 at 6:27 am

    What others have commented upon here the last few years has been very interesting, filled with insight, but my believing that Steven might read comments, or reply, is fantasy, as indicated in today’s post. So, dear Steven, you won’t see this, but maybe in spirit you would agree that my time is valuable, and I can’t go down a rabbit hole here any more. I am so grateful for – and liberated by – today’s Writing Wednesday post. Best wishes to everyone on your journeys. Climb every mountain

  16. Maggie Hill on January 22, 2025 at 6:38 am

    I usually agree with you. But hell no, this time. The gifted author of the project reaches out to say hello and wish them luck? Common decency and courtesy should take precedence, not some self-important time boundary. They were both dead wrong. End of story.

    • Tessa on January 22, 2025 at 9:29 am

      So agree with you!!

  17. HEATHER ROGERS on January 22, 2025 at 6:38 am

    Time is all we have and love is all that matters.

  18. Anonymous on January 22, 2025 at 6:43 am

    So Steve, let me ask you this !–>

    Just kidding………………

    And hang TOUGH ! as i know you are and will !!!

    sr

  19. TC Wilcox on January 22, 2025 at 6:55 am

    And this is why agents send that form response that says “I enjoyed your work and it has merit; it’s just not for me at this time” to everyone, no matter what. If you engage and give honest feedback, you are opening the door to follow ups, conversations, a relationship, etc. There just isn’t time for that. So if Mann or Redford had responded with a “Thanks – loved the book,” and Pressfield said, “Let’s have coffee,” then what? They’d have to respond, or risk writer-drama.

  20. Jackie on January 22, 2025 at 7:36 am

    I offer another perspective. I sent a short story to an editor. He took five minutes to pen four sentences on my original query letter and sent it back to me. Though the response was a reality check, his kindness in the response made me see where my writing was lacking.
    I wrote another piece with the editors words in my head, sent the piece off to another editor, and this story was the first of many accepted by the other magazine.
    I thanked the editor for his response. End of relationship. His magazine was not the place for my writing. Those five minutes of his time helped me find my way. I was never more appreciative for kindness in the form of a critique.

    • Tessa on January 22, 2025 at 9:26 am

      Exactly!

  21. Rick Surkamer on January 22, 2025 at 7:40 am

    👍👍👍👍

  22. Jackie on January 22, 2025 at 8:00 am

    One last comment and break’s over. Thanks Steve for Aspects of the Villian in The Daily Pressfield. It helped me work through a scene. I think the result is an especially henious villian. Much appreciated.

  23. Maureen Anderson on January 22, 2025 at 8:25 am

    When I was working at a radio station in a small town in rural Minnesota, I hosted a little talk show where most of my guests — like representatives from the Social Security Administration — could field questions my audience cared about. I had big dreams, though. What if I approached the person I most wanted to interview, and worked my way down that imposing list? I wrote to Bobby Knight, then head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers, and to my great surprise he said yes. I was so excited to ask him if what was said about him in the media ever hurt his feelings 😐

    Not only did he agree to chat, but he timed the conversation so it would air the day before his Hoosiers played our Minnesota Gophers. And when I wrote him a thank-you note for the interview he wrote me a thank-you note for that! I got to see, and my listeners got to hear, a side of him they weren’t used to.

    I got the answer to my question, which was classic Knight. He said he was so accustomed to ignorant reporters, however he worded it, that if one of them ever agreed with him he’d wonder if he was wrong!

    Suddenly I internalized what I’d learned in sales training. SWSWSW. Some will, some what, so what. Ask if you feel called to ask, say no if you aren’t interested, the world will keep on spinning.

    But never, ever (as Harvey Mackay would suggest) say no for the other guy.

  24. Tom on January 22, 2025 at 8:54 am

    Well said, Good stuff.

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  26. LT on January 22, 2025 at 10:02 am

    A moment in history….when we were standing in line to go into the Premier of Bagger , and you were standing behind me ,I heard the lady in front of us refer to her husband as Jeremy…I then asked Jeremy if he was by chance the screenwriter. He said he was. I asked if he would like to meet the author. He said he certainly would..I turned around to you and said, Steve I would like to introduce you to Jeremy Levin. who Redford had chosen. .With a very serious face as he put out his hand.. you said ” Well l I hope you didn’t fuck it up”…with a stunned diminished face, he responded. ” I sure hope I didn’t ” The doors to the theatre opened and off we went.

    I realized I was among the Pros.and never let it be said that a Marine wont mince words and not tell you exactly what is on his mind. LT

  27. Kathy on January 22, 2025 at 10:57 am

    Now, I’m asking myself, when did I ask? I truly try not to. I’m sure I have but it’s something that smacks bad to me. Ohh wait! There was that time when… bad memories on that one. Ouch!
    How does one get seen or read or listened to by the big guys? I’ve never been a good player so maybe it doesn’t matter.
    There’s that dilemma of, WHY? Why do I create? What difference does it make to anyone? I dunno. Maybe I’ll have to ask someone sometime.
    🍃🌸🍃

  28. Kalalea Gordon on January 22, 2025 at 11:33 am

    Woot! Amen! Aho!

  29. Renita Wellman on January 22, 2025 at 12:35 pm

    Good to know: if I’m ever in the big time!
    My plan:
    Stay centered. Don’t overreach my substance or depend on anyone to make me feel good. Ever.
    If it is right to send a book to someone, do it.
    By the way. I don’t know if this is exactly relevant, but here goes.

    I have a really great book on spiritual wisdom. But my friend follows another teacher completely.

    . So, I sent her the books by the teacher she loves. And she loved it. So my lesson in this was don’t send anybody something they may not want.

  30. Linda Logan Andrews on January 22, 2025 at 12:39 pm

    I learn as much from y’all’s comments as from Pressfield, even though he is the catalyst! GREAT stuff!

    I submitted a query to Pat Walsh who then was at McAdam Cage. He (or his assistant) requested the novel. He (or his assistant) read it and although they passed, Walsh (or his assistant) wrote me a LETTER of rejection!! I’ve never been so encouraged. It’s been years, but I’m now on the final draft. Whether Walsh (or his assistant) penned the rejection makes no difference. It contained advice on how to improve the novel and praise for portions that are amazing. The courtesy of TIME has wings!

  31. Nenad on January 22, 2025 at 2:34 pm

    Your obsession with time conservation lately, Mr. Pressfield, is surely a consequence of Your years. There’s no way around it. The older we are, awareness of the finite nature of our lives gets blunter. I can’t blow off minutes anymore. Seconds become precious. And other people – their lives, demands, behavior in general – unfortunately become more a weight then ever.

  32. Ronen on January 22, 2025 at 2:59 pm

    Time is precious, yet it is not scarce. It is all a matter of priority. The people mentioned in the post likely have assistants who could have sent a brief thank you note. Small acts of kindness go a long way.

  33. Francis McGuire on January 22, 2025 at 3:26 pm

    C’mon, if you write to the White House, you’ll get a response — from those capable of writing. If these folks fly at an altitude immune to responding, they also have a stable of underlings who can differentiate between banal mail and constructive content. Have them send a missive to say thank you, and we’ll get back if interested. My sense is that you’ll read these comments, how long did that take? The truth is, we’ve all developed armor and skin that will no longer soften, in the name of resistance or position or time or whatever ethos justifies one’s priorities; and they’re all valid in some universe. But I’m not sure it’s a value or practice to advocate for or justify, once you reach a certain altitude. And like folks say here, many writers and filmmakers and politicians and actors and public personalities have written back in the past. But instant communication and even more instant gratification or self-serving priorities have little time for such pollyanna trivialities these days. When was the last time you received a letter in the post, for example – or written one?

  34. Raul on January 22, 2025 at 7:18 pm

    Thank you! It is instructive that you sent this a few days after your house burned down. Thank you so much for all you have done for me, and I hope you settle into a better place soon.
    Thank you.

  35. Laine on January 22, 2025 at 9:25 pm

    It’s a little off-topic, but wanted you to know when I got an evacuation notice on my phone today, out of the thousands of books I own, I made sure I grabbed my highlighted, dog-eared, coffee-stained copy of “War of Art” before turning over my shoulder with a sigh & a silent prayer that the goddamned Santa Ana’s would shift or die down & the Hughes Fire would be snuffed by our stalwart California firefighters … More topically speaking, the artist must savagely protect their time from all “time-vampires” (as author Dan Kennedy refers to them).., Still, for my money, Mann & Redford should’ve had the class to @ least have one of “their people” send a “Thank You” card… Pricks!

  36. That's Not My Neighbor on January 23, 2025 at 7:46 pm

    I agree with Pressfield. Time management is key in the modern workplace. People in high positions cannot always respond to every request, otherwise they will easily become overwhelmed and unable to work effectively. Saying no tactfully can help them maintain focus and productivity.

  37. Martina on January 24, 2025 at 10:21 am

    Thanks, Steven, for showing us that even successful people get ignored by famous people. Though, I do think that an assistant could have sent you a thank you note. It would have been more professional rather than less to have done so. You sent them gifts and a hearty ‘congratulations’. You did not ask for their time. There’s a huge difference between asking someone to read your book or screenplay and congratulating them on getting the project green lighted. Overall, your point is taken. Everyone should be careful with their time.

  38. CMello on January 24, 2025 at 5:07 pm

    Love it!

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