Some of the most popular posts in this space have been those in the “Artist and Addict” series. One point those posts made was that there’s not that big a difference between an artist and an addict. Many artists are addicts, and vice versa. Many are artists in one breath and addicts in another. They’re in the studio on Monday and in Betty Ford on Friday. What’s the difference? The addict is the amateur; the artist is the professional. Both addict and artist are dealing with the same material, which is the pain of being human and the struggle against…

Thanks to our dear friend Jeff Sexton, who sent in this clip of sci-fi superstar Harlan Ellison cutting loose with one of his tastiest rants. If you haven’t got three-and-a-half minutes, here are a few tidbits from Mr. E’s sulfuric screed: “I don’t take a piss without getting paid for it.” “I’m supposed to give a freebie to Warner Bros.?  What, is Warner Bros. out on the sidewalk with an eyepatch and a tin cup?” “It’s the amateurs who screw things up for the professionals by giving it away for free.” “Pay me! Cross my palm with silver!” “Are they…

A friend of mine said something to me a couple of years ago that, the more I think about it, the more profound it becomes. Let’s call her Jane. She’s a happily married woman with a couple of almost-grown kids and an all-around fine and healthy life; she was talking about the evening before she married her husband. “The night before I married Mark was the worst night of my life. I tossed and turned all night, crying. I was literally sobbing. Because I realized that now I was never going to marry Steve McQueen or Paul Newman. It sounds…

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…

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…

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…

Two weeks from today, The Profession goes on sale. We were thinking about having a contest with prizes to celebrate, but we decided that was much too complicated. So instead we’re giving away stuff without a contest. The two grand prizes—attorneys, take note: they’re not really “prizes”—are a Nook (WiFi) and a Kindle (WiFi), both to be loaded with the Random House Pressfield library: The Profession, Gates of Fire, Tides of War, Last of the Amazons, The Virtues of War, The Afghan Campaign and Killing Rommel. Then we’ll throw in six signed first editions of The Profession to a lucky half dozen plucked from those who…