Writing Wednesdays
Have you read War and Peace? The Brothers Karamazov? Anna Karenina?
Read MoreI was in a production meeting at Warner Bros. for the second Steven Seagal movie, Hard to Kill. It was called Seven Year Storm at that time. The director was Bruce Malmuth, a good guy who sadly died way too soon.
Read MoreElizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat Pray Love and other bestsellers. She’s also a deep and honorable thinker on the subject of the artist and the artist’s soul. When Ms. Gilbert was starting out, she famously declared, she made a deal with her writing.
Read MoreThis is going to sound like a joke but it’s absolutely true. I once joined Fear of Success Anonymous, aka FOSA. This was in Los Angeles; almost all the group members were actors or screenwriters. The group got so popular it had to disband.
Read MoreMy first agent was a gentleman named Barthold Fles. He was seventy-six; I was twenty-nine. One day over coffee Bart asked me, “How much is 427 minus one?”
Read MoreIt took me seven years to finish my first book. (I wrote about this in The War of Art.) I couldn’t sell it. Couldn’t find a buyer. In fact it would be twenty-one more years before a novel of mine actually saw the light of publication.
Read MoreWe left General Slim last week contemplating the string of catastrophic defeats his Allied forces had suffered at the hands of their enemy in Burma and India.
Read MoreI’m reading a book I love but that I would not recommend to anyone unless they’re as crazy as I am. The book is dense. Reading it is like hacking a trail through elephant grass. But every page has some powerful insight for us writers and artists if we’ve got the patience to stick with it.
Read MoreYou would think that I as a writer should know this and use it. But it took two friends—Joe Byerly and Ryan Holiday—to open my mind to this practice.
Read MoreI know I promised last week to continue our examination of Michael Shaara’s Killer Angels, but instead I must interrupt this message with a word from our sponsor …
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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.