Steven Pressfield Blog
Write For A Star
Today’s post will be the last in our series featuring lessons learned from a 20-year look-back at The Legend of Bagger Vance. Today is also the final day of our Black Irish Christmas Special. I will stop blabbing about it forever! Write for a star. That had been a mantra of mine for at least ten years before Bagger. It’s a screenwriter’s axiom. But I never realized how true it was till my agent took the manuscript of Bagger “out to the town.” The rights were snatched up within days. Almost immediately Robert Redford came aboard. He wanted to direct…
My Overnight Success
There’s a story about the Oscar-winning actor Walter Matthau. A younger thespian is bemoaning his own struggle in show biz. “Mr. Matthau, I’m just looking for that one big break!” In the story Matthau laughs. “Kid,” he says. “It’s not the one big break. It’s the fifty big breaks.” Here’s what I wrote a few weeks ago, in the first post in this series about the writing of The Legend of Bagger Vance. I attempted to write my first novel when I was twenty-four. Bagger Vance [my first published book] came out when I was fifty-one. Twenty-seven years is a…
The Authentic Swing, Part Two
Continuing our examination of the idea that certain stories have conceptual premises. What is a conceptual premise? And how does it work in a dramatic narrative? [P.S. Don’t forget this year’s Black Irish Christmas Special, featuring the brand-new, leather-bound, signed and numbered (only 2500 available) 20th Anniversary edition of The Legend of Bagger Vance.] One fascinating aspect of premises is that they imply order. Start with any premise (say, in The Lord of the Rings, the idea that a certain ring commands the power of the universe) and when you dig to the next level, you get this: The universe…
The Authentic Swing
[Continuing our look back at The Legend of Bagger Vance, seeking writers’ lessons and insights on the book’s 20th anniversary. P.S. Don’t forget this year’s Black Irish Christmas Special, featuring the brand-new, leather-bound, signed and numbered (only 2500 available) anniversary edition of Bagger Vance.] Sometimes a story—particularly fantasy, historical or sci-fi—needs a conceptual Premise. By that I mean a hypothetical truth that informs the drama the way, say, the airfoil-shaped wing informs the idea of an airplane. The conceptual premise of The Legend of Bagger Vance is “the Authentic Swing.” Premise is different from theme. It’s different from concept. It’s…
Steal Without Shame, Part Two
[Don’t forget to check out the Great Black Irish Christmas Sale, featuring the brand-new, leather-bound, signed and numbered edition of The Legend of Bagger Vance.] Continuing our 20th-anniversary look-back at the writing of The Legend of Bagger Vance: We were talking last week about stealing the structure of works we admire. I was confessing that, for Bagger, I had shamelessly ripped off the premise and spine of the Bhagavad-Gita. Now let me admit a further theft and an additional bonus: When you steal a great story’s structure you also get its characters. See Romeo and Juliet, Jesus of Nazareth, etc….
Steal Without Shame
Today marks (more or less) the 20th anniversary of The Legend of Bagger Vance, the first book I ever got published (after almost thirty years of trying)—and, in its brand-new, leather-bound incarnation, the centerpiece of this year’s Christmas Special at Black Irish Books. The video below is me telling all about this one-time-only Holiday Gift Special. Take a look. The video’s short. And trust me, we went all out for this Christmas. This Special is a good one!
How High is High?
Back again to the subject of Personal Culture. What are the aspects of this beast? First is Level of Aspiration. “How high are we aiming?” Last year’s NBA champs were the San Antonio Spurs. Two up-and-coming teams from that season are the L.A. Clippers and the Golden State Warriors. Both squads are young and loaded with stars. The Spurs, on the other hand, are old and creaking. A few days ago the Spurs played the Clippers and the Warriors in back-to-back games. The Spurs thrashed them both. For San Antonio entering this season, only one outcome is acceptable: they must…
The Jack Lord Rule
Remember Jack Lord? He played Steve McGarrett on the original Hawaii Five-O. Jack Lord had a rule for himself as a character. The rule was: “I don’t ask questions. I answer them.” I learned this from my friend Ernie Pintoff, who directed a gaggle of Hawaii Five-Os back in the day. According to Ernie, every time a script called for Jack Lord’s character to ask a question, Jack would stop the scene and refuse to read the line. “I don’t ask questions,” he would say. “I answer them.” When I first heard this, I thought, “What an insufferable egomaniac! People…
Click and Clack, the Crossover Brothers
I knew little about cars—yet I tuned into NPR’s “Car Talk” and then stuck around for years, clinging to “Click and Clack’s” words. Tom and Ray Magliozzi (a.k.a. Click and Clack the Tappet brothers) were a mainstay in my life, introduced by my father, who was a fan of their humor, accents, alma mater, and car knowledge. I tuned in the first time to listen to what Dad was raving about. I stayed for every reason other than for the talk of cars. Theirs was the ultimate crossover show—a program that attracted the mechanically inclined, as well as the mechanically…
The Most Important Minutes of the Day
Continuing on our theme from two weeks ago, personal culture: What is the most important part of the artist’s or entrepreneur’s working day? To me it’s the minutes right after the day is over. Why? Because that’s the time when it’s absolutely essential that you and I acknowledge our day’s efforts and give ourselves some props. Self-validation. Self-reinforcement. Nobody else is gonna do it for us. We have no boss; he’s not gonna come in and give us a high five. Our spouses have got their own problems. Our kids couldn’t care less. We have no coach, no teacher, no…
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.