Steven Pressfield

More From “Turning Pro”

By Steven Pressfield |

Last Wednesday I posted in this space the first two chapters from Turning Pro. This week I want to include the following four. Mainly because I think they work nicely as a unit—and because together they give a real flavor for what the book is and what it’s about. Next week: back to our regular Writing Wednesdays. Now, chapters three through six from Turning Pro: 3.  MY LIFE AS AN AMATEUR When I was in my twenties, I lived for a winter in a boarding house in Durham, North Carolina that served as a halfway station for patients emerging from state mental…

Read More

Announcing “Turning Pro”

By Steven Pressfield |

Finally, after more than a month of technical tweaking and re-jiggering, it is my great pleasure to announce that my follow-up to The War of Art—titled Turning Pro—is now available. Major thanks to our webmaster, Jeff Simon, for flying back from a movie set in London to pull all the loose ends together. And thanks to the friends of this site for their patience. Shawn and I are publishing Turning Pro ourselves, under our new banner, Black Irish Books. The first press run is modest but until we run out, you can get a top-quality “first print” paperback from our new store by…

Read More

The Hero’s Journey as Boot Camp

By Steven Pressfield |

With apologies to readers who are getting tired of these “hero’s journey” posts (this is the fourth in as many weeks), I can say only, “Hang in there, baby!” The last one is coming next week. Today’s is about using the hero’s journey intentionally, as a way to achieve a species of self-transformation. Navy SEAL training is a hero’s journey. So is Marine Corps boot camp or spring football camp at ‘Bama or a season dancing with the Joffrey Ballet. A Jenny Craig diet is a hero’s journey. For that matter, so is being a contestant on Dancing With The…

Read More

The Hero’s Journey as Screenplay

By Steven Pressfield |

Last week we were talking about the “hero’s journey” in myth. This week let’s talk about movies. The neophyte writer, when he arrives in Tinseltown, very soon gets wised up to the lingo—“inciting incident,” “Act Two curtain,” “All Is Lost moment” and so forth. It’s not so much that there’s a “formula.” But there’s definitely a “vocabulary.” The reason there’s a vocabulary is that certain structural concepts work in stories, and others don’t. How do moviemakers know this (forgetting for a moment William Goldman’s famous axiom, “Nobody knows anything”)? They know by the box office. The Monday morning ticket figures.…

Read More

The Hero’s Journey in Myth

By Steven Pressfield |

“The hero’s journey” sounds a bit melodramatic, I admit. But hey, it’s real. If the phrase rings mythic, it’s because its origins (at least in expression) lie in myth. What are myths? They’re the ancient, collective legends of the human race. The Odyssey, the epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf; the sagas of the Buddha or Prometheus or Quetzalcoatl. The hero’s journey, as Joseph Campbell famously observed, appears again and again in these myths. The specifics vary, but the overall contours remain remarkably consistent. 1. The hero starts as “stuck” and unconscious. Like Luke Skywalker toiling on Uncle Owen and Aunt Varoo’s…

Read More

The Hero’s Journey, Part One

By Steven Pressfield |

I netflixed The Power of Myth last week and watched it over a couple of nights. Have you ever seen it? It’s the PBS series that Bill Moyers did in 1988, interviewing Joseph Campbell. The program was great then and it’s great now. What I realized, re-watching Joseph Campbell (tragically he died a couple of years after the series aired) was what a powerful influence his books and thought have had on me. The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Follow Your Bliss, The Power of Myth. I decided I would dedicate the next few Writing Wednesdays to exploring those subjects.…

Read More

Henry Miller’s Eleven Commandments

By Steven Pressfield |

With gratitude to Maria Popova, from whose February 22 article on Brain Pickings I pilfered the following (and to George Spencer, who turned me on to the wonderful Brain Pickings), here is some priceless wisdom from one of my literary heroes, Henry Miller. (What I love about these notes is that they’re aimed by Miller only for himself—without a glimmer of self-consciousness, nor even for a moment intended for public dissemination. Here is a writer lashing himself to the mast, though not too tightly, as he bears down on what would become his first published novel, Tropic of Cancer.) COMMANDMENTS…

Read More

High Concept

By Steven Pressfield |

Flash back with me to the late 80s/early 90s, the screenwriting heyday of Shane Black, Joe Esterhazs and the spec script. At that time, studios were looking for a very specific type of material. That material was called High Concept. The High Concept era was the exact time I started finding work in Tinseltown. High Concept was what I cut my teeth on. I used to beat my brains out, trying to come up with high concepts. What exactly is High Concept? Let’s start with its opposite, low concept. Low concept stories are personal, idiosyncratic, ambiguous, often European.  “Well, it’s…

Read More

My Head in the Morning

By Steven Pressfield |

When I get up in the morning, I’m almost always in a foul mood. I’m irritable, I’m short-tempered, I’m irascible. Coffee doesn’t help. I can’t watch Matt Lauer. If I have to drive anywhere I’m always pissed off at the other cars and muttering under my breath. I’m not happy with myself, I’m not happy with the world, I’m not happy with anything. It’s all Resistance. Why Resistance takes this form, I don’t know. Maybe you’re not like me. Maybe you wake up peppy and cheerful. Maybe I’m demented. But this is what my day feels like out of the box.…

Read More

The Professional Mindset

By Steven Pressfield |

Have you ever wondered why so many CEOs and high-achievers (including sports superstars like Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky) are so taken with the game of golf? It’s not just because they get to wear white belts and plaid pants. (With apologies to everyone who lives along the banks of the Cuyahoga, here is Tom Wolfe’s definition of a white belt and white shoes worn as part of the same outfit. Mr. Wolfe calls it a “full Cleveland.”) But back to golf. The reason high-performance professionals are often smitten with golf is that golf, more than almost any other sport,…

Read More

FREE MINI COURSE

Start with this War of Art [27-minute] mini-course. It's free. The course's five audio lessons will ground you in the principles and characteristics of the artist's inner battle.

Something went wrong. Please check your entries and try again.
Patronu aradığında sürekli hasta olduğunu söyleyerek iş yerine yalan söylüyor porno hikaye Patronu artık bu kadarının gerçek olamayacağını ve rapor görmek istediğini dile getirip telefonu kapatıyor türbanlı Olgun kadın hemen bilgisayarının başına geçip özel bir doktor buluyor ve onu arayarak evine davet ediyor porno Muayene için eve gelen doktor olgun kadını muayene ediyor ve hiç bir sıkıntı olmadığını söylüyor brazzers porno Sarışın ablamız ise iş yerine rapor götürmesi gerektiğini bu yüzden rapor yazmasını istiyor brazzers porno fakat doktor bunun pek mümkün olmadığını dile getiriyor sex hikayeleri Daha sonra evli olan bu kahpe doktora iş atarak ona yavşıyor ve istediğini alana kadar durmuyor Porno İzle Karılarını takas etmek isteyen elemanlar hep birlikte evde buluşuyor türkçe porno Güzel vakit geçirdikten sonra kızlara isteklerini iletiyorlar ve hatunlarda kocalarının bu isteklerini kabul ediyorlar seks hikayeleri Hemen ellerine telefonları alan elemanlar karılarına video eşliğinde sakso çektiriyorlar porno izle Hiç beklemeden sikişe geçen elemanlar hatunları değiştire değiştire sikmeye başlıyorlar.