Steven Pressfield

“Poof Goes the Middle Class”

By Steven Pressfield |

When I was a kid my dad’s dream for me was that I would become an engineer and work all my life for Lockheed or G.E.  In other words be an employee. That was how the middle-class dream expressed itself in the days of American pre-eminence post-WWII, before the European countries had rebuilt their shattered economies, before the rise of Asia, India, South America, before outsourcing, before globalization, before the satellite and the microchip and the web. Now all we hear is that the American Dream is dead. As I write this, I’m looking at an article in the L.A.…

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Resistance and Self-Loathing

By Steven Pressfield |

Hang on while I make the case that self-loathing is a good thing. I don’t mean only within the comedic-material sphere, within which self-loathing has been mined for years by Woody Allen, Howard Stern, Richard Lewis, and the godfather of them all, Philip Roth in Portnoy’s Complaint. What exactly is self-loathing? It appears almost always as that nasty, brutal voice in our heads. “You’re a loser, you’re a bum, a worthless waste of oxygen. Look at you. Do you imagine that someone like you could produce something original, something of quality, something that anyone else would care about? What ideas…

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Writing and Money, Part 3

By Steven Pressfield |

In last week’s post I made a case for writing out of love. This week lemme dig into that idea a little deeper. The profession of writer (or musician or filmmaker or athlete) is not really a “job” like other jobs. It’s not like working in a coal mine or toiling in a cubicle as a telemarketer. It’s not something we do purely to put food on the table. We write or paint or dance out of love. We would do it even if nobody paid us. In the fields of the arts and entertainment, the principles that apply to…

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Writing and Money, Part 2

By Steven Pressfield |

Today’s post is a follow-up to last week’s Is Money Necessary?, which was inspired by Charles Rosasco’s recent note to me: Jack Lemmon won an Oscar for his performance in “Save the Tiger,” written by Steve Shagan I’m really sick of hearing famous actors/writers/musicians talk about how unimportant money and success are (that it is “just the work” that fulfills them). How do we keep expecting to get paid/make a living? Again, what I have to say here is not intended as “wisdom” or as any definitive statement. It’s just my own take on the subject. To me, the most valuable…

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Is Money Necessary?

By Steven Pressfield |

I’m stealing the title of today’s post from Maureen Dowd’s terrific book, Are Men Necessary? What got me thinking about this subject (money, I mean) is a note I received from a writer named Charles Rosasco. Thanks, Charles, for letting me use your real name: No problem: it’s just brain surgery Could you comment on money and writing? I’m really sick of hearing famous actors/writers/musicians talk about how unimportant money and success are (that it is “just the work” that fulfills them). I know what they are saying but I hardly think famously successful people are in the position to…

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You, as the Muse Sees You

By Steven Pressfield |

What follows is my own personal metaphysical model for how writing (and all art) works. You may think I’m crazy. I may indeed be crazy. Mt. Helikon in Greece, dwelling place of the nine Muses “The Muse,” as I imagine her, is the collective identity of the nine goddesses, sisters, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory), whose charge it is to inspire artists. Other names for this mysterious force might be the Unconscious, the Self, the Quantum Soup. Whatever it is, it represents the unseen dimension of Potentiality that is either within us or beyond us. It’s where ideas come…

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Post-Oprah Shock Waves

By Steven Pressfield |

My hour-long interview on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday aired four days ago. “And so we bid a fond farewell to beautiful Maui … “ I was wondering what the after-effects would be. Would there be a sudden surge in visibility for The War of Art? For this site? If so, would it change how I feel about what we’re trying to do here? The answers are yes, yes, and no (with an asterisk). The War of Art got a big bump. (Thank you, Oprah!) But it didn’t change the way I feel about this blog, except for evolutionary alterations…

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3 Things I Learned from Oprah

By Steven Pressfield |

[Before we get to this actual blog post, lemme say again thanks to everyone who signed up for First Look Access, and received an early look at the Foolscap videos and The Authentic Swing. Thank you for your comments, for taking part in the bundle offer and for your “ask me anything” questions. The Authentic Swing is up on the Black Irish Books store and Shawn and I are at work answering your questions. I’ll get the hour-long audio to your inbox ASAP. We had a great time on this one, despite the odd glitch here and there. Next time…

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Furyk swings Authentic Swing, shoots 59

By Steven Pressfield |

Does anyone beside me know who Jim Furyk is? Jim Furyk swinging his Authentic Swing Jim Furyk is a 16-time winner on the PGA tour, the 2003 U.S. Open champion—and possessor of the single weirdest, loopiest, most homemade swing on the planet. As I write this on Saturday, September 14th, Jim Furyk has just become the sixth golfer in history to shoot a 59 in PGA competition. He did it yesterday in the second round of the BMW Championship. Shooting a 59 in competition on the PGA tour is like Kobe Bryant scoring 81 points in an NBA game (which he…

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The Evolution of This Blog

By Steven Pressfield |

First lemme thank everybody who has signed up for FIRST LOOK ACCESS and is following the Foolscap videos (#1 last week, #2 this week) and the introduction of The Authentic Swing (all only available through FIRST LOOK ACCESS). Wow, what a sentence. Totally incomprehensible to anyone who is not a regular reader of this blog. Thinking about this got me mulling how publishing has changed and how this blog has evolved over just the past four years. Here’s a bird’s-eye view: When I sit down to compose a Writing Wednesdays post, I open a folder in my MacBook titled “AFGHANISTAN.”…

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