Steven Pressfield
[“The Book I’ve Been Avoiding Writing” (a.k.a. “Three Years of Writing and 40+ Years of Thinking About The Lion’s Gate“) is a mini-series about the writing of my new book, The Lion’s Gate. Thanks for tuning in as it runs Mondays and Fridays over the next few weeks.] How does the idea for a book come to us? Is there a seed? A trigger event? Do we recognize the inspiration in the moment or does it need to gestate for a period before finally surfacing into consciousness? I had a classmate in high school named Alan Lew. Alan was a…
Read More[“The Book I’ve Been Avoiding Writing” (a.k.a. “Three Years of Writing and 40+ Years of Thinking About The Lion’s Gate“) is a mini-series about the writing of my new book, The Lion’s Gate. Thanks for tuning in as it runs Mondays and Fridays over the next few weeks.] Okay, here I am with the idea to do a book about the Six Day War of 1967. But that’s all I’ve got. What comes next? How does a writer start a project? The first thing I did was phone David Mamet. NOTE TO READERS: Don’t try this at home. I am…
Read More[“The Book I’ve Been Avoiding Writing” (a.k.a. “Three Years of Writing and 40+ Years of Thinking About The Lion’s Gate“) is a mini-series about the writing of my new book, The Lion’s Gate. Thanks for tuning in as it runs Mondays and Fridays over the next few weeks.] I found out I was a Jew when I was thirteen. My Dad told me. I never knew until then. It was kind of a shock. Two thoughts struck me at once: 1. If my parents have been keeping this knowledge a secret from me and my younger brother all this time,…
Read MoreI never talk about a book while I’m working on it. It’s bad luck. The Muse doesn’t like it. That’s why, although I’ve been working for the past three years on a project that’s been all-consuming for me, I haven’t offered a peep on this blog. But now the book is done. It’s in production; the first finished copies are coming off the presses now. The Lion’s Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War will be published by Penguin/Sentinel on May 6. Now that the book is finished, I’m gonna become a blabbermouth. I’m going to write…
Read MoreI’m reading a really interesting book by three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Thomas Friedman called From Beirut to Jerusalem. It’s not a recent book; it’s from 1989 (it won the National Book Award that year). It’s about Mr. Friedman’s early years as a correspondent in the Middle East. Beirut in the 80s was the Hobbesian Wild West. There was a war going on with Israel; artillery shells were raining down at all hours. At the same time a Lebanese civil war was raging; local militias, criminal gangs, extremist-religious armies and kidnapping rings ran rife. Death came out of nowhere and at all…
Read MorePeople sometimes ask me, “Don’t you feel guilty encouraging individuals to pursue their artistic dreams when the odds against success are so overwhelming?”
Read MoreThere are concepts that are so obvious that it’s almost impossible for us to grasp them. This is one of them. What I mean by “so obvious” is, someone says something to us and we think, “Of course. Sure. I know that.” Then the concept blows right past us. It’s out the window and gone, and we’re no better off than we were before we heard it. Here’s the concept (focus hard): Resistance is not us. That voice we hear in our head? That’s not us. Those thoughts we think are our own? They’re not our thoughts. They’re Resistance. “You…
Read MoreThe #1 question that writers ask: “I’ve got a million ideas. How do I know which one to write?” Answer: Write your White Whale. Which idea, of all those swimming inside your brain, are you compelled to pursue the way Ahab was driven to hunt Moby Dick? Here’s how you know: you’re scared to death of it. That’s good. You should be scared. Mediocre ideas never elevate your heart rate. The great ones make you break out in a sweat. The final image of Moby Dick is one of the greatest ever, not just as the climax to a saga,…
Read MoreHerewith, ten idiosyncratic observations on the subject of generating ideas. 1. Ideas seem to come by themselves, unbidden. In certain careers that I’ve spent time in—advertising and the movie business, for example—I’ve labored under conditions where you have to produce on demand. It’s hard. It’s do-able, but it’s never really worked for me. I can’t press. It’s hard for me to grind ’em out. 2. Ideas seem to come in off-moments. They appear when the brain is turned off. For me that’s when I’m half asleep, pre-dawn or tossing in the middle of the night; when I’m in the shower…
Read MoreDid you ever see the movie Adaptation, written by Charlie Kaufman, directed by Spike Jonze, and starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper? If there has ever been a truer or more devastating depiction of the writer’s self-induced hell (including those by Proust or Stephen King), I haven’t seen it. In the film there is a fourth vivid character, that of “Robert McKee,” the screenwriting guru, played with scenery-chewing gusto by the brilliant Brian Cox. Of course there really is a Robert McKee (full disclosure: he’s a dear friend) and he really is the teacher-of-writing-and-story par excellence. Consider this…
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