Steven Pressfield Blog
Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be, #2
My friend Frank Oz has a term for this. He calls it “going the distance.”
Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be, #1
Let’s start with the most obvious interpretation of this axiom. (We’ll go deeper in succeeding weeks.)
Wisdom from “The Simpsons”
The following gem comes from John Swartzwelder, “the sage of The Simpsons,” courtesy of my friend Charlie Daly who turned me on to the May 2, 2021 New Yorker interview by Mike Sacks from which this comes:
Why “invoke?”
I remember studying about papal indulgences in Comparative Religion in college. These were documents that the wealthy could purchase from the Church that would guarantee them entrance into heaven, even if their worldly sins had banished them to the back of the line.
Do you believe in the gods?
Let’s get back today to our subject from a few weeks ago—the Muse.
The Understory in “Lawrence of Arabia”
What is Lawrence of Arabia REALLY about? And how does this deeper story inform and shape the surface drama of the film?
The Understory
We were talking last week about Steve Jobs’ two questions to his peeps at Apple. First question: “What business are we in?” Second: “What business are we REALLY in?”
What Business Are We In?
I heard a story about Steve Jobs. They say he used to roam the campus at Apple sometimes, poking his head into random offices and cubicles. He’d ask people, “What business are we in?” and listen attentively to whatever answer he got.
Recommended by Mister H.
We spoke last week about the Invocation of the Muse from Homer’s Odyssey [translation by T.E. Lawrence] … and the tattered copy of that prayer that I still have (and still recite each morning) from my dear friend and mentor, Paul Rink.
A Prayer to the Muse
I wrote in The War of Art about my old friend and mentor, Paul Rink. When I lived in Northern California years ago, I used to have coffee every morning with Paul in his camper, “Moby Dick.”
A Man At Arms is now available to order!
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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.
