Steven Pressfield Blog
Episode Thirty: How Alexander Led
Alexander was twelve years old when horse dealers brought the great stallion Bucephalus, for sale, to his father Philips’s court in Macedonia.
Ryan Holiday’s “Lives of the Stoics”
I’m going to recommend another book today. You may think, eyeballing the title, that it could have no place within our “writer’s bookshelf.” But it should sit, believe me, front and center.
Episode Twenty-Nine: “With a King Like This to Lead Us…”
With today’s episode we’ll move on from the Spartans, the consummate Warrior Collective, to the paramount individual warrior in history—Alexander the Great.
Episode Twenty-Eight: “I Will Tell His Majesty What a King Is…”
We will talk about the King archetype a lot as this series goes along.
Notes from the Inner War
My girlfriend Diana and I were shooting a video for the “Warrior Archetype” series when we came upon this charming country cottage.
Episode Twenty-Seven: The Virtue Of Selflessness
Certain warrior virtues are obvious. Courage.Fidelity.Mental and emotional toughness.
Episode Twenty-Six: We Are All Spartans
Why have we concentrated so intensely in this series on the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae?
Seth Godin’s “The Practice”
There are certain books that we all should have on our Writer’s Bookshelf. Here’s one that I can’t recommend highly enough:
Episode Twenty-Five: The Western Way Of War
Today’s episode borrows heavily from Victor Davis Hanson’s book, The Western Way of War, whose thesis is that the way Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and all great Western generals down to today chose to wage war was to seek a pitched, decisive infantry battle that, at one blow, would decide everything.
Episode Twenty-Four: Heroes And Villains
If history is written by the (ultimate) winners, it’s no wonder that we in the West view the Persian king Xerxes as a villain and the Spartan king Leonidas as a hero.
The Warrior Archetype
A New Video Series from Steven Pressfield
Subscribe here for the full series.
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.
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.
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.
THE WAR OF ART
Read this one first.
It identifies the enemy—what I call Resistance with a capital “R,” i.e. fear, self-doubt, procrastination, perfectionism, all the forms of self-sabotage—that stop us from doing our work and realizing our dreams.
Start here.
Everything else proceeds from this.
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?"
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.
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.