What we’re really talking about is learning how to say no. (Thanks to Fabian Pallares who suggested this topic in a Comment two weeks ago after our post, An Ask Too Far.) When Gates of Fire was first optioned by Universal Studios in 1998, the director Michael Mann was attached. I sent him hand-written congratulations and a signed first edition. I never heard a peep. I thought, “What a prick!” The same thing happened with Robert Redford on The Legend of Bagger Vance. Again I thought, “What a prick!” But I gotta tell you, the more I’ve thought about it…

[The blog is on vacation this week. Here’s an encore of one of our most popular posts.] “Write for a star” is one of the primal axioms of screenwriting, but it has applications across many other fields as well. What does it mean to write for a star? Writing for a star means create a role that a star wants to play. Your story may be dynamite, your structure may be sound, your theme profound and involving. But the first question a producer is going to ask is, “Who can I cast in this thing?” Moviemakers want scripts that attract…

In the past year or so I’ve become aware of the verb “ask” used as a noun. I simultaneously like it and am appalled by it. It’s honest. Probably way too honest. An “ask” is a request for an action or a favor. I was reporting the contents of a long e-mail to a friend; she interrupted: “What’s the ask?” Meaning, “What does the e-mail writer want?” “Ask” originated, I suspect, in the publicity biz. The difference between advertising and publicity is you pay for advertising but you try to get publicity for free. Hence “ask.” Schmooze schmooze schmooze ask.…

I’m usually reluctant (not to say, mortified) to run an interview of myself, particularly in this space. I don’t want anything to go here that smacks of ego—and an interview, no matter how well-intentioned, always bears some elements of that stuff. But this particular sitdown came out pretty good, I think. It passes the “Will it be of use to someone who gives up the time to watch it?’ test. So, friends, if you’ll bear with me … this’ll be today’s post. I did the interview at the Marine Corps Association in Quantico, when I was there last month on…

I’ve been on the road for the past three weeks. That’s never good for me. Though I’ve seen a bunch of friends I wanted to see and done a lot of stuff that needed to be done, I find myself (right now in the United lounge at JFK) flagging and faltering. I can’t work when I’m traveling. The toll it takes is on my spirit. Unworthy thoughts pile up, unalleviated by worthy ones. I don’t know about you but when I wake up in the morning, all kinds of incendiary crap is rolling around in my head. Grievances, complaints, bitching…

Again with thanks to Jonathan Fields, here’s the continuation of George Plimpton’s famous interview of Ernest Hemingway from the Paris Review, Summer 1958. (To read Part One, click here. And here for the full interview). INTERVIEWER Would you admit to there being symbolism in your novels? HEMINGWAY I suppose there are symbols since critics keep finding them. If you do not mind I dislike talking about them and being questioned about them. It is hard enough to write books and stories without being asked to explain them as well. Also it deprives the explainers of work. If five or six…

Many thanks to Jonathan Fields for forwarding this interview from the Paris Review, Spring 1958 issue, between Ernest Hemingway and (referring to himself only as “Interviewer”) George Plimpton, the magazine’s founder and editor. This is quite a famous conversation; I’ve read it myself a number of times over the years. If you haven’t been exposed to it, it’s definitely worth your time. Here’s the link to the full interview. If I don’t get any cease-and-desist notes from the Paris Review (it’s still alive and well—click the link in the first sentence), we’ll post the continuation in this space next week. INTERVIEWER…

Todd Henry is a friend. He started in the creative/entrepreneurial field in 1995 with a tour of duty in the music biz, working as a marketer, writer and creative director. By 2005 he had launched his own company, Accidental Creative, working independently with creative people and teams. By then he had evolved his own unique philosophy (several of whose precepts I borrowed and use myself), which he pulled together last year into his first book, The Accidental Creative: How To Be Brilliant At a Moment’s Notice, which is terrific and which will be published tomorrow.  Todd and I sat down a…

Posted from the road, Jacksonville NC: I’m reading Shawn’s Friday posts about book proposals in our “What It Takes” series. I love ‘em. They’re educational for me too. Until I read Shawn’s first post, I didn’t know what a book proposal was. Until he showed me one a couple of months ago, I had never seen one. Reading this, you may think, “How can that be? How can Pressfield have a 15-year book career and not know what a book proposal looks like?” The answer is simple: You don’t need a book proposal for fiction. That’s good news and bad…

I got an e-mail a few weeks ago from Jeff Wills, who is writing an historical novel and was curious about how I did research. I promised I would answer in this space as soon as the launch of The Profession was over. So … here goes: JW: My question is about your method of research and writing. I know your position is do “as little research as possible” and jump in, but I guess I’m interested in some of the details of how YOU jump in. SP: First, Jeff, though I do advocate plunging in on the work even…