A Creative Retreat With Steve
I was fifty-two years old when my first book was published. That’s after thirty years of trying, when I supported myself driving taxis and tractor-trailers, working in the oilfields and as a migrant laborer. I get asked now all the time, “How did you keep going all those years? Why didn’t you quit?”
The answer is in a new three-hour video course called the Silent Writing Retreat. The course went on sale this Wednesday, May 28, and will be available till Thursday, June 5 at 6:00 PM EST.
Here’s the link to learn more and to sign up:
https://silentwritingretreat.com/steven-pressfield/
The actual event took place in Malibu, California on September 7, 2024. It lasted all day with breaks for writing in silence. Every second was recorded on video. It was a day like no other. Everyone had to check their phones at the door, nobody could talk except me. It was all business. No chit-chat.
The substance of the event was simply me alone onstage all day, delivering a distillation of my thirty-year battle with my own Resistance—my compulsion to self-sabotage, my susceptibility to procrastination, perfectionism, self-doubt, fear, etc.
I talk about my mentors—my boss Hugh Reaves at the trucking company in North Carolina, my writer friend Paul Rink in California, and a migrant-fruit picker/former-Marine named John whose last name I never knew—who taught me the lessons you only learn in the University of Hard Knocks. I talk about my C-level career in Hollywood, with its many humiliations but also its manifold lessons in storytelling. And I talk about the lone female who has guided me and stood by me through everything. I’m talking about the goddess, the Muse, who may not be flesh and blood but who is realer than real and without whom none of us could get a single decent word down on paper.
I’ve never done an event like this before, and I’ll probably never do it again. I hope you’ll jump on this opportunity to see and hear me share my fifty years in the trenches, in the hope that it will encourage and inspire all of us to DO OUR WORK and become the person and the artist we were born to be.
[P.S. A VIP feature of this course is the option to book a half-hour one-on-one ZOOM coaching with me. Click this link for more details.]
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.
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.
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.
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?"
I was there — it was transformative
So lucky! Can you share the biggest benefits you got from the event? Has it changed the way your approach your creative practice now?
I was desperate to take part in this live event and tried to get there from Australia. But I couldn’t make it work.
I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have the opportunity to experience it virtually and – hopefully – tap into Steven’s wisdom directly, as well.
Steve, I wish you all the luck in the world. But according to the War of Art, taking a writing course is a form of Resistance. It’s the worst thing a prospective writer can do. They will never get any writing done sitting around some retreat. Any kind of retreat is the greatest con in the world. The writer would be answering a circus barker over the Muses!
Congrats, Steve. I fully relate. I was 43 when my first book was published by Random House and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Steve, I’ve learned from you and appreciated you for over 10 years. I’m now on Kidney Dialysis and, at 88, I am wearing out. Has resistance finally caught up? I feel I have no time for seminars, workshops, or much of anything else. I will continue enjoying your posts every Wednesday. Thanks, Ed.I
Steven, this retreat and your story are powerful reminders that the creative path isn’t about instant results but about staying faithful to the work, especially when no one’s watching. Your openness about struggle, Resistance, and the long road to your first published book gives so many of us permission to honor our own timelines—and our doubts.
The idea of creating in silence, with intention and reverence, speaks directly to the soul of any writer who’s been lost in noise—internal or external. What you’ve done here goes beyond writing instruction. It’s spiritual discipline. It’s about building resilience, nurturing the relationship with the Muse, and trusting that our efforts—no matter how long they take—are never wasted.
Thank you for packaging decades of truth into one immersive experience. The fact that we can access this energy through video and even 1:1 coaching is a gift. Grateful for your honesty, and even more for your call to do the work.