Steven Pressfield Blog
Don’t Be Afraid to Make Sh*t Up
Oops, I lied again. I promised we’d get into the Seven Principles of using your real life in fiction. But again I’m gonna jump forward to a critical corollary: Don’t be afraid to fictionalize. I used to be. I thought if I made stuff up, that would be lying. Being untrue to real life. I would read Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway and think, “See, they’re telling the truth! Everything they’re writing is real! That’s why it works! That’s what I’ve gotta do!” Of course they were fictionalizing. They were exaggerating. They were heightening reality. The trick…
Detach Yourself From “You”
[Continuing our new Mon-Wed-Fri series, “Using Your Real Life in Fiction” … ] I said last week that we would go through the seven principles of using your real life in fiction. But on second thought, we’d better skip to Principle #7 and study it first. It’s by far the most important. Detach yourself from the character that is “you.” The first three novels I wrote (all unpublished and unpublishable) were excruciatingly autobiographical. I was the central character. Everything was about me. But what made them unbearable to read was that the real-life me, the writer, was…
7 Rules for Using Your Real Life in Fiction
Today we start a multi-part series on using your real life in fiction. The example I’m going to use is my own newest novel, The Knowledge. We’ll bounce back and forth from story principles in the abstract to how these concepts were applied in The Knowledge. I’m gonna put up a new post every Mon-Wed-Fri, just for this series. Hopefully we’ll run through Christmas. If you have any questions, please feel free to write them in to the Comments section below. I’ll answer them as best I can. Ready? Let’s start with what was honest-to-God, real-life true in The Knowledge:…
Using Your Real Life in Fiction
Today my newest novel, The Knowledge, goes on sale. (Yeah, that’s me in the photo, taken in the same era in which The Knowledge is set.) You can order The Knowledge right here in a premium “French flap” trade paperback edition not available anywhere else. Also in eBook or an eBook-plus-paperback bundle. There’s a special Holiday Bonus available too. The Knowledge is my (real-life) writer’s coming-of-age story. I’m the protagonist. The internal story is all true. The Knowledge takes place in New York City in 1974, when I was driving a cab and struggling to get my first novel published….
The Muse and Me, Part Three
One of my favorite passages from books about the artist’s life is this one from Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit: I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each…
Six Years in the Life
I was thinking about Marco Rubio. I’m writing this a few days before the election, so I don’t know if he won his Senate race or not, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that he did. I’ll bet Marco and his family are breathing a major sigh of relief. A Senate term runs six years. The Rubios are now set up till 2023. No worries about fading from the public scene. No shiling for work in the private sector. Marco now, and for the next six years, possesses a position of high status and influence, a guaranteed income,…
What Have You Done For Yourself Lately?
(Though this post first ran March 2, 2012, I find I’m still saying the same thing to authors today. What have you done for yourself lately? ~Callie) Dear Author, What have you done for yourself lately? You’ve written a book? Not enough. You’ve had it accepted and printed by a publisher? Not enough. You met with your publisher and came up with a marketing plan. Not enough. What have you done to ensure your book reaches all the people you know will love it? What have you done for yourself lately? You want radio. You want TV. You want print….
The Muse and Me, Part Two
I wouldn’t blame anyone who read last week’s post if they thought, “Man, that’s a bit airy-fairy, ain’t it?” Lemme answer by getting even more airy-fairy. Consider this artist’s body of work: Goodbye, Columbus Portnoy’s Complaint My Life as a Man The Professor of Desire The Ghost Writer Zuckerman Unbound The Counterlife Sabbath’s Theater American Pastoral The Human Stain The Plot Against America Indignation The Humbling Clearly there’s a theme here. Without doubt Philip Roth is dealing with a unified, ongoing issue. He’s examining this theme from every angle, playing games with it, turning it inside-out and…
The Muse and Me
We were talking last week about “what works and what doesn’t,” i.e. what activities produce (for me) peace of mind at the end of the day. I listed a number that didn’t work—money, attention, family life, etc. Let’s talk today about what does work. If you asked me at this time of my life to define my identity—after cycling through many, many over the years—I would say I am a servant of the Muse. That’s what I do. That’s how I live my life. [Remember, this post is Why I Write, Part 6.] Consider this (incomplete and possibly out-of-order)…
Beyond the Words: Pitching Presentation and Sending
We’ve discussed pitch content in previous articles. But what about presentation and sending? How should they look and how should they be sent? Presentation In his free Skillshare class, MailChimp’s Fabio Carneiro reminds viewers that research has shown “people delete ugly e-mails.” He makes a good point using design that speaks to specific types of customers, too. “If you know your audience is mostly developers, you could make your content more technical. You could generally make your design much simpler as well, so that it’s the textual information that stands out. For designers on the other hand, they might appreciate…
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.