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Hello boys and girls. Ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job each and every episode to interview world-class performers to try to tease out the habits routines Frameworks favorite books and so on favorite cereals maybe who knows that you can apply to your own life. And my guest today is Steven pressfield. I have wanted to have Steven on this podcast for a very long time. You can find him on Twitter at s pressfield Stephen is a
Marine and graduate of Duke University he became an overnight success as a writer after 30 years of abject failure. Those are his words not mine. So we'll dig into that identifying the omnipresence if I'm pronouncing that correctly of resistance the interior force of self-sabotage. He described in the war of art one of the best book titles of all time his saved his own artistic life and helped many others struggling to find their creative calling pressfield's novels of the ancient world including the nonfiction the warrior ethos are required reading at West Point.
Point Annapolis and in the Marine Corps lives in Los Angeles. His newest book is a man-at-arms and epic Saga about a reluctant hero of the Roman Empire and the rise of a new Faith. You can find him online Steven with a V Steven pressfield.com on Twitter at s pressfield and Instagram Stephen underscore pressfield Stephen. Welcome to the show.
It's great to be here Tim. I've been wanting to have a conversation with you as well. So I'm excited about this too. It's great and we are going to
run out of we're going to run out of time. Well before I run out of content, I think in part because I have all these notes in front of me. I have all these questions and then there is I'd say at least 51% of me that just wants to turn this into a selfish opportunity to have therapy from you. So we'll see what what blend of all of those others.
We'll see what my job was. I
was hoping for the same
thing. Oh wonderful. I'll guess it's time
you from me.
Well, you know we can we can turn this into a mutual therapy session and that case. All right. So let's let's go back in time for those who don't have much context on your life and perhaps a good entry point is a prompt that you provided and that is ask me about my house for $15 a month in the back.
Woods cat I made friends with so that's where I'm going to start. Please tell me about this house at $15 a month and the Backwoods
cat.
I went when you talk about 30 years of abject failure. That's really true. I mean from the time that I originally tried to start writing quit a job like you did and actually had a book published was about, you know, about 28 years 30 years something like that. And at one point I was I was driving trucks tractor trailers in North Carolina and and had just come out of living in a halfway house.
Which was you know, when people are released from Mental Hospitals, not me, but everybody else was there and I finally found I found this house out in the country for 15 bucks a month. It had no doors. No electricity. No kitchen no toilets. Nothing. I just basically lived in my van, which I parked on the dirt road there and I used to cook it was no way to cook. So I used to have a little fire and make a little fire out in the back behind us the
All house and it was right up at you know in North Carolina is a lot of Pine Woods and this was right in the middle of the Pine Woods around Raleigh. And there used to be this feral cat. This wild cat that lived in the woods behind me and when I would come out and cook and I'd be sitting on the back stoop and the wood started like maybe only five feet from the house this cap. It's sort of materialized seasonal battle-scarred Tomcat, you know, and he would sit there across from me while I would make, you know, hot dogs or whatever I was doing and I could never feed
You would never take anything from you know, I think it was sort of like he didn't want to be a pet, you know, and he would stick their this is all this is all true to him about making this. I believe you he would sit there across from me. Just kind of eyeballing me and there was no doubt which one of us was the superior being you know, and no doubt which one of us had his shit together the other one didn't and and he would look at me like he was trying to decide
Whether or not to kick my ass or not, you know and but I felt that this cat was a great Omen. I felt that in some way. You know, why does a cat materialize like it? Why does anything happen like that? You know like in the Native American tradition when an animal is kind of a spirit animal or something, right? And so I I took a lot of Courage from that cat appearing I sort of felt like in some way my energy had sort of drawn him out of the woods because he kept coming back. Miss wasn't a one
I'm saying and so anyway, that's that's that's it for a little I don't know if that's contacts too much. Well, it's quite a while ago, but it was that was sort of at the heart of My Darkest
Hours. Well, it provides a bunch of fertile ground for exploration before we leave the cat though. What meaning did you take from that what did what effect did that have on you? And then we're going to come back to the halfway house because you mentioned everyone.
One else was there after being released from a mental hospital or something along those lines. So I want to know how you ended up there. But first what meaning did you imbue this cat with after these repeated visits?
Well, I feel like the cat was a little bit of a role model for me that it was it was a cat that was obviously completely self-sufficient, you know lived in the woods didn't require anybody to feed them wouldn't let anybody feed them was, you know, a totally autonomous individual and I thought to myself
First of all, why did anything come out of the woods but if this is what came out of the woods that it was such a positive kind of person, you know, and so I thought if this cat is come here, maybe he's come here to kind of encourage me and tell me that Steve you can do that to you. You can be like me to you can be autonomous. You can be self-sufficient. You can take care of yourself.
Mmm. It makes me think a bit of the poem wild geese by
Mary Oliver the the first few lines. I'm not familiar with that first. Tell me I'll tell you the first the first few lines are you do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. That's the beginning and I think about that quite a bit and contact with nature and man's tendency and what I what I mean by that is Mankind's tendency men and women both to view themselves.
As a part from nature as opposed to a part of Nature and the halfway house. So let's connect the dots from the beginning to the Tomcat at the end of that first response. How did you end up there? And what was your soul mate at the time that you were
there? I don't know. We're getting into some deep stuff really
earlier think I know it's a first date and everything, but the skip that play a bit if that's
okay. Well, I was in North Carolina at the time I had married a gal.
From North Carolina. We've been you know marriage for like five or six years at that time and we were at the state where we were desperately trying to you know, we were coming apart at the seams and we were desperately trying to hang on together. And we we had come back from North Carolina and we're living with her mother out in the woods and a farmhouse at also rent in for about 20 bucks a month and I had this job delivering industrial food. I drove a little truck.
I would deliver things like Salisbury steaks and frozen crinkle-cut French fries to little restaurants and stuff like that and not going into a long story. I got fired from that job and in a state of great shame. I was just like totally shame in front of my wife in front of her mother and I just sort of I just couldn't stay there anymore. I couldn't you know, I couldn't stand with them. So I kind of I moved into
town trying to find a job desperately and the only place I could find was this sort of boarding house that this is in Durham North Carolina. That was also a halfway house for you know, where the governor the state government would pay for people who had been released from mental institutions, and we're on their way back into the real world. And so I found a room in the basement there and that was how I came to that that halfway house. Well, and I have a theory about halfway house.
About the people who are in their invite you want to hear this gym, I do because I've been in a bunch of other kind of situations like that and you think you would think that people were really struggling mentally, but in fact the people in this halfway house we used to hang out in the kitchen talk all night. Long were among the smartest people that I ever met and the funniest and most interesting and what I concluded from hanging out with them and from others in a similar situation was that they weren't crazy at all that they
They were actually the smart people who had sort of seen through the bullshit and because of that they couldn't function the world. They couldn't hold a job, you know because they just couldn't take the bullshit, you know, and that was how they kind of wound up in institutions because the greater Society thought well, these people are absolute rejects. They can't fit in but in fact to my mind they were actually the people that really saw through everything so in a way I felt kind of bad.
And I had to leave this house cause I like the people so much but also
speaks it seems to not say it isn't worth it. But some of the possible risks of seeing through the thin veneer that is what we consider civilization. Yeah and just dangerous thing just how slippery it can be to sort of realize how arbitrary so
A of these social constructs are you you have a just an incredible resume. I mean it reads like I don't miss a hero's journey because we'll probably come to that and clarify that a bit later. But you have an Eclectic to put it mildly collection of professions if tractor trailer driver cab driver schoolteacher, you picked fruit as a migrant laborer it in the list goes on.
Of all of those does one stand out as having been especially formative for who you than later became as a writer as a creative
driving tractor trailers was probably the most formative thing for me in that sense in the sense that once you're out on the road delivering a load. You're completely on your own and if anything goes wrong, I mean, obviously you could call for help if you're really desperate but pretty much you
You've got to get it together one way or another and other people are depending on you. Whatever that load is. You've got to deliver it. The shipper wants it to people it's being shipped to one and there's really sort of No Mercy, you know, you're you have to be a professional you have to do it. And at the time that I was doing this job. I was really dealing with my own tendency to sabotage myself. I mean, I was like a self destruction machine, you know where I would just screw up constantly and I had to be constantly
You know monitoring myself that I wouldn't act out in some crazy way and destroy everything that I was trying to do, which was just to survive. So first of all the help from the people that I worked with from the other drivers from the dispatcher who was kind of a mentor to me and I named Hugh Reeves who really saved my life in a lot of ways and also just the need to deliver to really actually deliver the goods and the self-imposed pressure of that that really helped me.
Me and there were a bunch of instances when I found myself really up against it and having to get it together completely on my own and when I thought I never could and each time that I was able to do that and reinforce that it kind of like the cat that came out of the woods. I sort of felt like I was being a little bit of my own role model and that there was hope that I that I could get it together one way or another
at that time in that period you mentioned the self-sabotage.
I'll give you 2 questions and you can take a stab it either both. What was the particular form or most common form of self-sabotage if you could give an example or just described that because there are so many different types and then also puree gives as a mentor. What type of Mentor was he? What did you clean or learn from him?
I'll give you a specific when I was driving a little trucks and delivering institutional food to these little restaurants like toddle houses and stuff like that the way I got fired unless it was a early.
In the morning, I just finished delivering to to a restaurant. I hadn't had breakfast. I was coming back out through the through the sort of the warehouse section at the back of the restaurant and they had a whole bunch of rows of little cans of fruit juice, you know pineapple juice and stuff like that. And so I just reached out and I grabbed one for myself and the boss caught me and you know bumpety bumpety bump. I'm fired and I really feel like me doing that wasn't Act of self-destruction that I
And I absolutely am certain of it. You know, I just sort of knew, you know, why do you do something like that? So that was kind of the sort of thing that I would do kind of over and over and you know and driving trucks. I could tell a bunch of stories but one of them was where I dropped the trailer one time delivering meaning I pulled the tractor out from under the trailer in this Warehouse parking lot right in front of about 500 people and
Just drop this entire trailer nose down to the thing. It was just a complete Fiasco. So that was the kind of thing that I would do or I would just be careless, you know, you you know, you need to like if you're an airline pilot you and you're doing your checklist, you know, you have to before you take off. You got to hit check the flaps in the engine and blah blah blah. Whatever it is. I would there was something in me. That would make me forget to check the one most important thing that I had to do and as soon as it went wrong, I knew
You know, it wasn't like oh what a surprise it was like oh shit. I've done it again, you know and getting back to your Q Reeves who is dispatcher who was my mentor in this thing. He after I got fired. I really hated. I don't know. I guess this is interesting. I don't know.
I find interesting
after I got fired for stealing that can of pineapple juice. I was in a state of utter shame. I didn't even tell my wife or
Her mother, I just and I had already applied for I'd gone to a truck driving school and I'd applied to like 50 different companies throughout North Carolina and couldn't get on anywhere and I was just leaving town in my 65 Chevy van heading for the oil fields in Louisiana where it worked once before and where I knew you I can at least get a job. All you needed was a pulse and then take you out and so on my way out of town.
Not like the dead of winter worst possible. Rainy North Carolina's to I stopped at this one trucking company that I had already applied to a couple times and they rejected me and Hugh Reeves was the dispatcher and he was a former Marine and he knew that I had been marine and I just stopped just for the hell of it. I thought this is where you know things didn't have any hired so that kind of saved my life right there, but throughout the whole my struggles to
The business and stuff like that. There was I'll tell you there was one one moment where he kind of sat me down and it kept screwing up. Like I said and he sat me down alone in his office and he said, you know son and I was like, I don't know what 25 years younger than him. He said I don't know what's going on in your head son. I don't know what Journey you're playing out here. I don't know what your issues are. I don't know what you're trying to solve and your own inner mind.
But this company is a business. We're in business to make money. You are a driver you represent this company when I give you a load to take somewhere you better fucking deliver that
load now,
and and so that was a great thing for me, you know to you know, it's like a slap in the face because I in my mind I definitely was kind of on this Odyssey. I was living on an inner world. I don't know what it was and he was absolutely
Right. This is a business. You know, this is for real. I have a real job. People are depending on me. I have to I have to and that really helped to sort of think of myself as much as I could as a professional and not somebody on some crazy adventure.
I can definitely see how that ties into a lot that came later. That's a great story. Yeah. That's a great story. Let's Flash Forward. We're going to bounce around quite a bit and in doing so I want to maybe first bring up to stay calm.
In a leaf or sentiment that I hear a lot which is like you're going to do your best work in your 20s. It's like a professional sport you do a b and c and you've kind of reached escape velocity or Not by the time you're 30, 35, whatever the number might be but it tends to be around there your first novel you mentioned in some comments few minutes ago. And I mentioned it the Bayou 30 years of abject failure. Okay. So your first novel published after around 30 years of effort The Legend of Bagger Vance.
How old were you when that was
published? I think I was 53. All right, maybe 54.
Okay. So now A lot happened up to that point obviously in your life. You had a lot of experiences where I want to go next is
Is to ask how you developed your facility with words because you are a very good writer the the jobs we've mentioned so far seem to have nothing to do with with wordsmithing you have you have an incredible vocabulary. How did this happen?
I'll accept thank you for saying that semi said had at face value. Let's do it. Who's the whole time that you know?
I wasn't only doing Blue Collar jobs. I worked in advertising like in New York three or four times and I also had about a 10-year career as a screenwriter in Los Angeles where I am now and so through that time you're trying to learn what what a writer is or what being a what writing is and also of course I was I was writing novels through that time, you know, I wrote three of them that never got published.
So in each one took about two years full-time, what drove you to do
that if I could just pause there for a second because most people don't write periods. So what was driving you or compelling you are inspiring you to do that, you
know, I don't know. It's why does anybody write or why does anybody paint or anything? I it's sort of originally started for me. I knew it was not a dream. I had as a kid, you know, I didn't, you know, like Jack car the Thriller writer and former Navy SEAL. He always wanted
Be a thrill of riding from time. He was like six years old, but not not me. It never occurred to me. My first job was in advertising in New York and I had a boss and he made Hannibal who wrote a novel at quit wrote a novel and it was a huge success overnight and I sort of thought well shit. Why don't I do that sounds like it seems like an easy gig. Let's try it. Nothing to write. I mean, he's in that office. I'm in this office. Why can't I do so that's sort of at least started this kind of dream for me.
Now and then one side failed at it really badly. I thought I was even more motivated to do it. Right. I've got to like somehow I've got to you know, write my way out of this thing one way or another so that was how it initially started Tim in terms of just the intention to do it to finally make it
work. I want to allow people to peek behind the scenes here for a second just to see sort of how the sausage is made with this podcast, and I'm looking in front of me at home.
whole raft of papers but one of them contains prompts and exploratory bullets and I always ask guests if they would like to provide any prompts that might lead to interesting or fun stories fertile ground as I like to say for exploration and you learn a lot about guests looking at the bullets, they provide or the lack of bullets, they provide and and your bullets are
Stick and this out. This will be tied into what we're talking about in just a second. But so for instance right ask me about the house for $15 a month in the back would cat I made friends with another one, which we're not going to get into right now, but probably come back to might come back to us ask me about the time when I was driving trucks when they told me quote whatever you do don't in all caps go past that last right turn and quote now to me than speaking. Of course, I
did go past of last thing. Of course, you did not
know no as
as someone who is Red I want to say it was John Caples and all these books on copywriting. I can see very clearly and I say this as complement the influence of your time as a copywriter working at agencies. It's so obvious to me because it's you
can't
not ask. I mean it is is very well-crafted in that sense. Could you speak to your
Our learnings in the world of advertising. What did you gain from working as a copywriter weather at I think Benton and Bowles is that one of
the things that was one of the places? Yeah, and I do think in many ways. I learned a tremendous amount in advertising. I may hate advertising. I hate it when it's on the screen. I hate watching TV commercials. I hate the whole concept of it, but I met a lot of great people there and I learned a lot and one of the things you know, one of the books that I've written about writing, as you know is called. Nobody wants to read
your
ship. Yeah, please for those people who don't know it this is just a spectacular piece if you could and yet it describe it
and the the sort of the dishes to me like the number one lesson that any writer or artist should know before they know anything else and you learn this in advertising because as you're as you're trying to write an ad or a TV commercial one thing you have to always keep in mind is that nobody wants to see it. In fact, they hate it sight unseen. They hate if it's a TV commercial they've got
Remote in their hand. I'm going to click right through it as fast as I can or if it's an ad that's in a newspaper or magazine. They're going to turn the page as fast as I can because they hate it. They don't want you to sell them Preparation H or anything like
that. Right? So
the lesson for that as a writer knowing that you're facing that was so much resistance from them from the reader. Is that whatever you're going to put on that page or on the TV screen. It's got to be so good. And so
Compelling and so interesting that people will have no choice but to watch it and so it makes you work really really hard and also makes you really project yourself into the mind of the of the viewer or the reader in an empathetic way in a really good way and try to say what would be interesting to them what would catch their interest in what would hold their interest and you realize too that writing is a door and reading is a transaction that the reader or the viewer.
Is giving you a very valuable commodity which is their time and their attention and you've got to give them some you can't just put some crap out there and expect that they're obligated to read it or watch it because they won't watch it. You know, so that was that was a great lesson for me that applied and writing novels or movies or anything at all that you're going to do a restaurant is going to open a restaurant, you know, nobody wants to come in there and buy your greasy cheese burgers, you know, you've got if I come up with something
That makes them say I've got to go in there, you know, and that's where the work comes in and that's where the creativity comes in and another side bar to that Tim of what you learn in advertising is a 30-second commercial cannot have more than 60 words in it two words per second cousin announcer or people speaking actors speaking can't deliver to become so fast. You can't hear so there's pressure on you every time you write a piece of copy.
Like I would bring a piece of copy into my boss. Whoever he was or she was and they would say get out of here. This is way too long go back to your cubicle and cut it down and I'd spend like hours cutting it down and bring it back and then they say cut it down again. And so that was a wonderful skill to learn to find that you can say maybe in 25 words what you had said in 250 words before so you're right, Tim you were right on target that
It was a lot of lessons that came out of that experience of writing ads I
mentioned in passing and I'm by no means an expert here but mentioned in passing hero's journey and in reference to your life and the sense, but my understanding is that you consider the hero's journey as press. We know it in the Joseph Campbell sense different from the artists Journey. Could you please elaborate on that
idea?
Liefeld this time that you and I are talking about now and I was driving trucks and doing things like that and being kind of lost and in the wilderness as my quote-unquote hero's journey. I mean, I think we all have many Heroes Journeys, but we probably have one sort of overarching one and to me the hero's journey of Our Lives is takes us from believing that we are what our parents told us. We are or what Society told us. We are or what we embody.
died from the culture shedding that and finally finding out who we really are and that's sort of the moment the hero's journey always ends in Joseph Campbell terms with the hero coming home, right like Odysseus coming back to Ithaca and at that point the we've hopefully we've kind of found who we are and what our calling is and for me, you know, that was it was a long it was a long journey, but at that point
A new stage of our life takes over like I'll say for me it was when I finally got a novel published Legend of Bagger Vance. So that took me like 28 years of quote-unquote hero's journey. And in my view, this is me thinking about this later. I had no concept at the time at that point at that point. I said to myself I'm a writer. I'm a real writer I can do it. I've paid my dues and then the next question became. Okay. Now what am I going to write about? What is my gift?
Gift if I'm here to bring kind of a gift to the people as the hero's journey. Template says my question myself is what is that gift? So for the rest of my life, I feel at that point. I got on my artist Journey and now I'm a writer. I'm going to write one thing. I'm going to write another I'm going to write another and the question I'm asking myself is what it what is book one. What is book to what is book three? What is my gift? What am I here to give and you know,
I'll blather on forbid here Tim. If you
don't lose I love I love your
blathering if you've ever heard of Richard ruler who wrote falling upward, I think it is. He's a he's a Franciscan monk and a very deep thinker and he kind of divides life into two halves first half and second half and the first half of your life. He says is when you are sort of finding your identity and kind of establishing your presence.
On the planet, you know, like maybe you're a mom and you say okay. I'm a mom. I know I'm that or I'm a lawyer. I bought a house. I have a wife I have children. You're sort of in his words Richard Roars words, roh. Are you want to look it up? I highly recommend anything by him. You're creating the vessel that is your life. And then in the second half of your life, you're filling that vessel. Hmm. So you sort of ask yourself. Okay, now I can do it. I've got a house.
Save whatever. I have a profession. What am I going to do with this? Am I just going to be another crappy person? That's that's you know, continuing the societal garbage that we have or am I going to try to find my gift that's unique to me and bring it forth to the world and try to help one way or another so that to me is there's the hero's journey comes first. And when the hero's journey is over our artists Journey Begins
I love that I would Define art as the broadest possible terms anything that is a gift to the to the wider
world.
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Part of the hero's journey as I understand it. And please correct me. If I'm getting this wrong is what is sometimes referred to as refusal of the call. Right? Like when Luke Skywalker is just bitching and whining and doesn't want to go see Yoda Etc. Like he's just being a pain in the ass to Obi-Wan Kenobi. You everyone should re-watch Star Wars. If you don't remember this part are the section was there that element in your
Hero's journey getting to the point of having created The Vessel. Was there a refusal of the call did that did that play any role?
Absolutely and I think it does in everybody's life, you know the Riff in the hero's journey as Joseph Campbell Asia doubt, there's a bunch of stages and the hero's journey. Usually it starts in what Joseph Campbell would call The Ordinary World and it's just, you know, you're living your regular life, but something is wrong like
In the case of Luke Skywalker. He's on Uncle Owen and Aunt beru is evaporator Farm on Tatooine. I guess is the planet right? You got it and he's just right and and it seems his ordinary life, right? He stuck. He's nowhere. In fact, I think there's a somebody asks him at some point. Where are you? And he says if there's a spot that's the farthest point away from the bright center of the universe. That's where I am.
Right and
that's that's going to the origin and then what the next stages is.
Early in hero's journey and in the next stage is a call and it's something happens that tends to pull you out of this Ordinary World like in The Wizard of Oz it's Dorothy gets swept up in the tornado in Star Wars It's that Luke Skywalker car finds R2D2 and he unplugs the little hologram. It says Princess Leia help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope right? So that's the call. Right? Suddenly. He realized. Oh, I've got it.
Do something here and then what follows immediately after that in Joseph Campbell Paradigm is the refusal of the call for Lucio's de I can't leave I've got responsibilities Andrew and Uncle Owen blah blah blah and that seems to be across the board if you remember the first Rocky the movie when Rocky when Apollo Creed or the promoter calls Rocky into his office and says, I'm going to give you a shot to fight the champ and Rocky's first reaction.
No, I can't do it. You're crazy. This is a joke. I can't do it or if we want to go back to another one when Odysseus is being summoned to go fight in the Trojan War is first reaction is no no. No, I don't want to do it. And if you remember the myth he pretends to be crazy and he goes out in these sewing his Fields with salt and the messenger who is sent to summon him takes his baby the Young telemachus
He has his baby and puts them in a Furrow in the path of the of the plow. And when Odysseus comes to the baby. He veers around it, right? He's not going to run over his baby and The Messengers has some I you're faking you're really not crazy. Get on the boat. We're going to the Trojan War. So that's the refusal of the call and for me. It was the first novel that I tried to write which I had no business doing I got like two minutes from the
And and I just blew it up and blew my whole life up. That was that was my refusal. I refused to go into this unknown
world. How did you blow it up? Do you mean that you just stopped you let
lady Tails, but I did something that made my wife hate me and kick me out. Okay, so then so that's why I acted out. What as they would say in psychological terms. In other words another form of self-destruction. You know that that was that was my desire My Demons
Forever
they may be your demons forever. But perhaps you're getting or have become better at dancing with them instead of struggling against them. It seems like at least referring to your mentors and lessons learned that in some respect. And please correct me disabuse me of this. So it's not true that you that you've been able to at least like strike a deal with these demons because yeah, you went you went from being unable to finish a novel to producing many.
What is that deal or how how has that come to be the case?
Well, let me just talk about a novel for a second, please. After the first one that I wrote that I couldn't finish and then I went on these various, you know spiraling down the rat holes type of things. I finally got it together. I save some money I save $2,700 working in advertising in New York and I moved out to a little town in northern California and determined to write a novel and finish.
You and I rented this little house and I was just by myself and through that whole time again. I was aware every second of my tendency to sabotage myself. So I just said to myself. I'm going to finish this son of a bitch. I'm going to kill myself. And when I finally did and I write about this in the war of art when I finally did finish and I've typed those words the end. I felt like my DNA changed, you know, and
I will say that as an encouragement to anybody that's listening that struggling with the same stuff. Once I was able to finish that thing that novel. I've never had any trouble finishing anything ever again, that's interesting, but it was just sheer will power driven on by shame that I just took. No, I think shame is a great thing, but I think but I'm just couldn't stand myself if I failed yet again, so I just had to keep going.
Keep going. Keep going.
It seems like it's possible and to I'm speculating here. But the when you finish that novel and you had the end, right because confidence is just not something you can fake right in this in the respect that you your true self knows whether you've earned your hearts on earned when you typed the end the story of I always self-sabotage now how to counter example that that statement was no longer.
I never thought about it that way Jim but I think you're absolutely right. Yeah, counterexample. Yeah
with the Legend of Bagger Vance. So finishing a novel is one thing getting a novel published is quite another Endeavor in many respects. So 30-year overnight success. What happened did you end up like drawing straws and you have became the bridge partner of a book agent, like what what actually happened that allowed
This this publication publishing your first book.
Well, like I said, I want to writing three novels that never got published right and when I finished the third one that was sort of like another kind of an All Is Lost moment is suicide moment for me because I couldn't get any even my friends wouldn't read it and I knew that I just didn't have the wherewithal to do this again, you know to save up money to work for two years. That's it. I just didn't have the wherewithal and so I
I did or sort of came to me as a flash that I'm go to Hollywood. I let me write a screenplay. Let me write me try Hollywood, but I failed as a novelist Let Me Go fail as a screenwriter. So I did go out to Los Angeles and after about four or five years. I got my a I did have an agent I kept writing screenplays that also didn't sell and finally I got kind of teamed up with an established writer guy named Ron. She said who
did the first alien among other things and who is like a really a real brand name and real, you know, the guy that really could get work. How did you get
teamed up with them? I am sorry to keep interrupting but like like Ali and turned into an iconic film. I'm in the created right franchise. Great real. How did you get teamed up with him?
I had an agent wonderful agent named Mike Warner who tragically died at a young age. But and you know, he had other clients and Ron was one of his other clients and Ron.
Usually worked with a part and at that time because he was more run was more of a producer writer than a writer writer.
What is a producer writer
a writer writer is the guy that actually sits down at the page the typewriter and actually writes the scenes and so on and so forth a producer writer somebody who is great at coming up with the ideas the big ideas and also sort of shepherding a story through from start to finish and also is a
susur in the sense of being able to get financing and right to take the meetings and make a deal. So where's Ron was not the kind of writer that could actually sit down and write the screenplay, you know, but he could say, you know, I would sit there and come up with like 30 ideas. What if we do this? What if we do that what do we got and he would say 29 of them suck do this one? He's
the guy who would say its jaws and space ax 1 2 3. Here's the
Heck he could line up all of the gyro to get the financing.
Yeah, for instance the great scene in Alienware. The thing bursts out of John hurt's chest, right? You know that's being that is Ron speed. You know, what he/she that was his idea
which is behind into every anyone's mind to his ever seen one of the aliens
movies so you can't say just because maybe he didn't actually physically write it at the typewriter that was his you know, so so it's a very creative thing too.
Be a producer
to he usually works with a partner. He's more of a producer writer instead of the writer writer. You have the same agent, please
continue. So the agent said Mike said God shall let me team you guys up and you'll be a you'll be a team so that from my point of view. I now became like an apprentice. I was like the junior partner of this team and when we go to meetings in Hollywood, nobody wanted me they wanted Ron he was the brand and I was just you know, you know, I was the guy that actually sat at the keyboard.
So in any event for maybe 10 years or so, I did have a career as a screenwriter. So that was gaining credibility for me. And also I was learning what a story is, you know, bye-bye, you know the process that you go through and then at one point I just had this idea for The Legend of Bagger Vance and I had it as a book not as a movie. And so when I told that to my agent then at the time he basically
Fired me basically said
unceremonious Lee broke up
with Orion. I fired him but his story is that he fired me. But basically he he was absolutely right because what he said to me was I've spent the last five years trying to get your career going and we're now just about to get going and you're telling me you're going to write some stupid golf novel that nobody's going to buy and nobody's going to read it's going to take you a year to write it and by that time
Nobody will forgot who you are here in the business in Hollywood and I'm back to square one and I've spent a lot of time working with you. So get out of here. So but in any event that was how an actual novel that I wrote actually I've published so it was it was sort of a smooth transition and when you know, the actual the actual passage there didn't just come out of nowhere.
So if you broke up with this agent or he broke up with you you go off to write this thing. The agent has these these doubts and believes that
you're going to sort of sink into Oblivion and become irrelevant, right? You're just going to be completely forgotten you march off to pursue this this dream and this project from they're not to beat a dead horse about this. But like how does it then find a home with a
publisher? You know, it was like I joke that I was an overnight success after 30 years and I think sometimes you're bad.
Like a builds up to such an extent that it turns into good luck by the law of averages starts to work for you. Right? And what happened was to try to get you have to get a literary agent right now, which I didn't have I had a Hollywood agent. So I went to my lawyer. I had an entertainment lawyer named Larry Rose and he sent me to an agent named Jody hachiya-san New York who worked for Sterling Lord who's a big literary agent who is still my agent and just turned a hundred years old.
Wow, either by the way, and so almost overnight that manuscript just found a buyer bum bum bum a town to buy or found a movie buyer found everything right away. So it was I think it was just the law of averages finally evened out a little bit.
That's just incredible. What a story so I'd like to ask you about momentum in your life and I'm asking this is this is where I might segue at least indirectly into some therapy for myself.
Officer I am I am looking at an interview done and it's discussing the little successes approach and I'm just going to read the first paragraph then you can tell me if things have changed but the first paragraph and this is your response to a question. I think this is a writing routine stuff cam. I'm at the gym at 5:30 every morning, but it takes me until around 11:30 to actually sit down and start work. I used to be able to put in 4 hours with these days 2 and 1/2 is my outer limit.
I closed the office then I never work later or at night and then you talk about your friend Randy. Could you speak to the little successes approach and what this what this schedule
represents Randy is Randall Wallace who wrote Braveheart and has directed a bunch of movies as well. And he's a good friend of mine out here and he has a theory well that he calls little successes and a means that from the moment he gets out of bed and I believe this to exactly he's looking to
Build up. He's looking ahead to the moment when he actually sits down and has to write whatever time that maybe for him nine o'clock ten o'clock whatever and he's trying to produce a series of little successes between now and then to generate momentum and he counts like brushing his teeth as a little success and I do too and one of the one of the reasons I like to go to the gym early or do something physical early is because I'm trying to build up little success.
Tessa's so that by the time I get to sit down at the at the page, I feel like I've got some momentum going, you know, I've done I've done this I've done that. I've got choking out the garbage, you know, I've you know fed the birds and I've got a little momentum going because I think it's very important. I mean, even if you think about let's say basketball player think about Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan or anybody Steph Curry or whatever going to the game tonight, you know, they're at the at the stadium like three and a half hours early.
And even before then they've been at the gym or they've been getting a massage or they are mentally they're preparing themselves and they go through they do there if you watch Steph Curry do his routine if you know, it's like I don't know what it's amazing what he does. No rubber bands between his knees and stretch strengthen his knees and he does know a hundred shots from you know by Beyond The Arc and he's trying to build up little successes so that when the game
Art's he's in a flow immediately and he's at the highest possible level. That's the theory. Anyway, what is your
preferred?
Exercise routine. Do you have any favorite exercises or workouts?
I'm in now in the covid thing where I'm doing it on out on my deck, but for up until the covid thing I trained with a wonderful trainer named TR Goodman at a place called Pro Camp Gold's Gym in Venice and he has a you know, a whole thing that he does with us who trained with him. You should train in a group of two or three guys, and it's basically just just really straight base.
Like weight training no squats and curls and stuff like that, you know legs on one day, you know, this is just very basic stuff.
That's a very iconic location. As far as Jim's go. Yeah. Yeah.
It's now it's all in a tent in the parking lot.
Now it's changed a bit during a pandemic times. So the little successes approach makes sense to me and really appeals to me and there's there's so much variation, of course when you talk to
Writers about process right? So if I recently interviewed Joyce Carol Oates, and I've when I was an undergrad took a just a wonderful seminar with John McPhee and both of them seem to basically sit down chain themselves to a desk and write for eight hours. And their feeling is you can't wait for mood. You can't wait for the Muse to strike. You really just need to start writing and that will produce the conditions for writing I have
Sometimes had the experience of that working but perhaps it's just a weakness of character. I often break. I also just break. I'm just like God this is fucking terrible and I stopped and then you have maybe a contrast and I'm not saying this is All or Nothing one approach to the other but folks like BJ Novak who people might recognize who spends quite a lot of time getting himself into a good mood. So you might take a few hours to
Himself into the proper mood to write and he's prolific and very successful. And then there's this little successes approach. I suppose the question piggyback off. This is how should someone think about developing a routine for their own writing process or creative process? Let's stick with writing just because it's what we're talking about. Even though I think the discussion extends to many other areas. How should somebody think about figuring it out? Because
even for me personally I have what we'll talk about this afterwards, but I've been having quite a lot of challenges writing in the past few years. And so I've tried to reach into the grab bag of different routines and I found it challenging because so many of them are diametrically opposed or seem to
be yeah, how would you
talk someone through finding something that works for them or making sense of conflicting?
Is the one thing I would say is that it seems to me that every writer or artist has a unique way of doing it and I don't think there's any kind of one size fits all type of thing. Like there was an article in the LA Times a few years ago where they interviewed screenwriters and they were asking what was their routine they interviewed like five writers and three of them wrote in their cars and this is true that's amazing one of them wrote in the car when it was
moving. I don't know how they did this but it just goes to show you that whatever works works. You know, like Joyce Carol Oates are John McPhee doing eight hours. That is beyond my comprehension. I just can't
imagine it's just I mean that's yeah that's like Alex Honnold and free solo, but for the writing world, I yeah, I can't can't process
that but I do agree with them that you know, there's a famous quote.
And I quoted in the war of Art and now I'm blanking on who was a famous writer who they asked him. Do you write on a schedule or only when inspiration strikes you of Somerset maugham and he said I write only when inspiration strikes me she says fortunately it strikes me every morning at 9:30 sharp. He was a believer in routine, right? Hmm and another person.
In is a wonderful book by Twyla Tharp. I'm sure you're aware. This Tim called the creative habit and she kind of describes her habits and she's kind of like me. She goes to the gym at the crack of dawn every day. She she catches a cab at exactly the same time goes to the exact same place and she's trying to build up those little successes for when she gets to the studio and actually has to work but I want to go a little deeper than that, you know in my book The War of art I talked about the concept of resistance.
The capital r which is again that force of self-sabotage is a big theme in my life that will try to stop you as a writer or an artist or anybody from achieving your best work from following a call and we'll try to distract you undermine your self-confidence make you procrastinate make you quit make you give in to fear or on the other hand make you such a perfectionist that you spend all day on one paragraph and you accomplished nothing.
And the whole thing of little successes the concept of little successes or of a routine is to help you overcome that resistance to help anybody else. That's the wall that you know, you're going to hit, you know, right this so you're mentally preparing yourself for that moment when you sit down and that negative Force hits you that you've got enough momentum and enough self-confidence or your friend who gets himself in a good mood you're in enough of a good place. You got enough Good Karma and good Juju.
Going for you that you could get through that Wall of Resistance and then just get into a rhythm and get into the flow and then just keep it going. That's the whole sort of concept behind little successes or a routine or habits and I'm a big believer in
habits. Me too. When I have been suppose what we might call successful and writing just getting anything consistently on pages. It's been with some form of Scaffolding in the form of routine and one that actually
we worked for me. I hadn't thought about this to finish at least one book. Maybe two was copying what I believe it was Maya Angelou, maybe who would rent a hotel room to work out to put herself in a different environment that was dedicated to writing and when I was living in San Francisco, I remember Hotel Vitaly was this this hotel right on the Embarcadero, and I would I would rent.
Boom when I got really stuck to put myself in a different environment and for whatever reason, I mean, let's I'm sure it's placebo effect because how could it not be right? It's got to be. Yeah Harnett harnessing the mind and kind of pulling a key to move on your own psyche at really really helped you've mentioned a number of books is that the war of art? I think everyone should read certainly then Twyla tharp's creative habit. I've also read you mentioned.
Stephen King's on writing Ernest Hemingway on writing. Yeah, Larry Phillips and Henry Miller on writing Henry Miller's just incredible one that I'm not familiar with I would love to hear you just expand on for a second and the line here that I'm reading is for integrating the editors mindset into the writing process. The best book is the story grid by Shawn coin. I think it is co why any what does that mean the editors mindset into the writing
process before I say to that I want to say that your idea of checking into
Tell room I think is a great idea and it is and that's something that might be unique to you Tim. That might be a trick that works for
you safer than driving a car and writing
because yeah, but sure it is kind of an Aikido. It's a way of tricking yourself to somehow, you know, uh, like I can't work there but I can work here if it works it works, you know, right right total, but but the story grid Shawn coin is actually was my first editor. He was to enter who bought.
Gates of Fire. Oh, no kidding and we are amazing. We're Beth. We're really good friends. And we're Partners in a little publishing company that we have called Black Irish books. So I know John very well and Sean is he's a Harvard guy and he has evolved this concept of editing that he calls the story grid and it's increase its incredibly deep if you and I were looking at this it was like, it's like Einstein, you know, I
Even Grant begin to grasp what it is, but he really has a whole concept from A to Z of what a story is what a scene is and so on and so forth and he calls the story grid and he actually I highly recommend his website www.engvid.com. If you want to be an editor if you want to be a writer he teaches this whole concept and it's great but getting back to integrating the editors mindset to the writers mindset.
A lot of times I found me as a writer. I will just sort of spew stuff out in a novel. Let's say I'll just be consumed with a story and I'll just take it from A to Z without even thinking about it. And then I have to bring it to Sean and he kind of tells me what the story's about which I never had any clue what the theme is and also will help to shape it into an actual story that really works and
A lot of the editors mindset has to do with the hero's journey. And that whole concept of act 1 act 2 act 3 refusal of the call that we were talking about earlier and John has a another company of his own that he calls genre management and he's a big believer in genre. Then the sense that like a thriller as certain obligatory scenes and conventions and I love story has certain obligatory seen some conventions a western has certain and you have to know that
Oh them and that's what an editor does, you know, for instance. If you're going to have a love story there always has to be a rival. That's a big thing think of any story love story in the world. And there's also almost always has to be the lovers part in the middle or towards the end and then they come back together at the end or they fail to come back together at the end and that's kind of what an editor brings to to a writer's and huge.
papers that you bring and dumped on the editor's desk is he or she is kind of aware of the various structures that actually work and the kind of the principles of Storytelling and when you violated them an editor can bring you back from that, you know, or when you have left certain things out that need to be in there and editor will say, you know, you need to do this and so if you can educate yourself as a writer in that end
ders way of thinking you can sort of become your own editor in a sense and it really helps you. I mean, I do maybe 15 drafts of a book and you know, seventh eighth ninth. I'm really thinking like an editor. I'm looking at this and saying what's missing what have I done wrong what you know what conventions have I violated and if I if I have violated them do I have a good reason for it? So I'm not sure that's an answer to him, but that's it. Isn't it sir? I absolutely recommend.
Anything to do with Sean coin and story grid
I'm going to ask you about a man-at-arms first. I want to take this opportunity to paint a picture of the last week in my life. If I may be self-indulgent for a second, please do we all do so I have this newsletter called five bullet Friday. It's five short bullets of things that I found interesting or helpful or novel throughout each week, and I had the experience
Cyber, by the way, how wonderful I appreciate that. So I know all about it. I love doing it and it serves as a diary of sorts for me. And I had the experience in the last week of one of those bullets expanding dramatically and ultimately becoming close to a 10-page blog post, which if people want to check out it's related to to conservation and ethical choices in the world of psychedelic compounds. They can find it at MDOT blog, but the point that I want to make or the
Contrast maybe is I wrote this piece. I was very happy to have finally written this piece even though I'm catching heat from certain factions within the Psychedelic communities for it because it's been a very long time since I've written a blog post a long-form blog post and that having been said I was I was interviewed Yesterday by a friend of mine Harley of Shopify Fame and
he read a passage from the 4-Hour Work Week in the course of that interview because he was he's read the book is very kind. He wanted to use it as a as a launching pad for discussion and he read a few paragraphs for the 4-Hour workweek. And here's what a you can probably guess. Here's what I thought to myself God. Damn.
I have done nothing but become worse it writing since I was
29
what in you know for fuck's sake what am I doing with my life? And I and I became it hyper self-critical. I was like man, like look at how many em - as I have in this this long-form blog post. I just put up like what kind of crutch is this? I'm using em - is like they're going out of style and so on and so forth. So this just like Litany of abuse just kind of
I kind of rolled off the brain while it attacked itself. And this has been a large part of my own resistance the feeling that my best work is behind me and I can't replicate it or not replicate it because I don't want to become an imitation of myself but that for whatever reason like the pixie dust has been lost or that I've atrophied I've so let the muscles atrophy that there's just, you know, I'm past the point of no return Have you ever
Headed with this if you haven't liked what advice or even if you have what advice would you give for people who are bumping up against this because it's been a real hindrance. I recognized self-imposed but it's been a real hindrance to me actually putting pen to paper. So to
speak. Here's my thoughts on that Jim resistance with a capital R. Then force of self-sabotage is tremendously diabolical and nuanced and progeny.
Then it will and subtle incredibly subtle and it will attack us at our weakest point and it'll usually will attack Us in in an area where there's some truth to what we're what we might fear about ourselves, you know, so I would say for sure Tim that thought that you have is bullshit. It's resistance if it's totally resistance. There's nothing wrong with you. You haven't lost any pixie dust. That is pure resistance you
Finding a weak spot in you, you know, it's it just knows, you know, it's like the alien knows how to get after you write. And so, you know the form it takes for me might be different, you know the weak spot. It might find in they might be different but I think it's just finding that in you and I think the only way to deal with it is to just dismiss it take my word for it. It's bullshit. There's no grounding in it at all. Just keep doing what you're doing, you know and
I'm sure that I remember I had a friend when I first came out into to Los Angeles a fellow screenwriter and he got on the phone with me when I'd he was in test area because he was sure that he was over the hill and I asked him I said Tom, you know, how old are you said 22
and
so this is true. So resistance will find that weak spot at chink in our armor, but you know, don't pay any attention to attend.
And it's bullshit.
Thank you for that and I have to follow up by asking what purpose does resistance serve right? Like why does it exist? Like I try to think of things in evolutionary terms. Maybe this is just some sort of vestigial mutation that is just persisted but doesn't actually have a utility but I'd love to hear your thoughts on why it exists.
I'm not your like I like Seth Godin think should see the lizard brain the what is it?
I make Dillo, whatever it is that guy never have quite understood but to me and I'm going to get a little airy-fairy here a little metaphysical. I think that we if we think of our identity we can say that there's there's at least two parts of one I would call the ego.
Any other I'm called a self with a capital s in the jungian sense of self and the ego is our rational mind. It's the part of our of us that pays taxes and goes down and gets a driver's license and becomes a lawyer or whatever whatever right and that ego is RI the letter I and we obviously have to have an ego, right we have to have that I that we know how to you know, stop at a stop light on.
that sort of stuff and then there's the other thing that young would call the self with a capital S and that self includes the deep deep unconscious the collective unconscious the hero's journey, the archetypes all of these things that we're not aware of until Freud, you know, finally discovered this but that are driving us, you know in a good way many times in a really good way and also according to Jung the cell
The capital S butt up against what they call the Divine ground and I love that. It's what I would say is where inspiration comes from. It really is Divinity. It's beyond mortality. It's the Muse it's inspiration. It's anytime you get into the Zone. That's where you are right as an athlete as an artist or whatever. So I'm getting back to resistance. Trust me. I believe you what I think
Is when we as artists or is athletes are as anything begin to shift our identity from our ego to ourself when we start trusting in intuition, when we start trusting in our deep dreams in our deep inspiration from sources that we don't know what it is like for me writing the novels that I wrote that I never thought that just came out of nowhere right had no made no sense but are coming from a deeper Source anyway.
When we start to identify with the self and turn over our Nexus of control to that the ego becomes threatened because the ego realizes that it's going to lose the ego strikes back and creates resistance and its goal is to try to hectic to convince us that this other world of inspiration and intuition of the Muse or whatever. The self is a phony world. It's bullshit.
It don't pay attention to it. Stay here with me this mr. Ego and the ego and that's what it is to me. And I you know, I just wish I just had an email. I've got into a female correspondent with a monk from self-realization fellowship brother. Akivasha, Ananda. Are you familiar with self-realization Fellowship? I'm not anyway. It's a wonderful thing. It's yoga paramahansa Yogananda this thing that he started and he was telling me about the
On the bhagavad-gita and the story of Arjuna and Krishna. There's the the in this great battle in the bhagavad-gita is the ego is a character named bhishma and Arjuna of finally slays the ego shooting him with a hundred and eight arrows and he shot so full of arrows that he's on his back supported by the arrows and eat and he takes him a month to die and even as he's dying bhishma he
Constantly spouting his bullshit about how he still in charge. He's still in charge. He still in charge and I think that we as artists are athletes, I think are trying to get beyond the ego or Buddhist meditators or people doing Ayahuasca or whatever. We're trying to get beyond the ego into whatever is next. But the ego doesn't want us to get Beyond it and the ego will hang on and take a month to die. That's what I think resistance is its the egos
Way of trying to hang on to control of us.
I really like that and it rings true to me in so many respects the ego if we are not what our ego believes us to be a lawyer a this to we're not right someone who does X someone who always or never does why then what are we in that uncertainty is very threatening. So that makes a lot of sense that there.
Be there would be a violent opposition by the ego who I mean I may
be completely wrong. But this is my theory.
Yeah, I it's certainly helpful to think of it's a useful lens to look at this through and this may be very related. I would love to hear you define or describe. What it what a shadow career is. I read a short.
Short blog post of yours that discuss this and I think it's I think it's it could be very helpful to explore.
I'll give you kind of an example from the movie business as you know, in the movie business there. Are you need a lawyer. There are law firms entertainment law firms. In fact, Rich Roll wonderful podcaster and athlete used to be an entertainment lawyer. He did and entertainment lawyers directors if you are a director and actor writer, you have to have a lawyer.
Because when deals come up, you know, they make the deals for you, right they get the contracts. Right and I have found that when you talk to not all entertainment lawyers, but some entertainment lawyers secretly they want to be writers where they want to be directors. Well, they've are and what they have done in becoming lawyers to some extent is their little their law career is like a shadow career. It's like adjacent to what they really
To do they really want to direct but they really want to write but they for whatever reasons they were afraid to do it. So they thought well, let me I can go to law school and that will give me a trade that I can occupation or profession I can count and so the law becomes kind of a shadow career for them or another instant instance of that is a lot of times people will work as other people's assistance.
Right, they'll pick up their dry cleaning. They'll do all of that sort of stuff which can be and that's a shadow career which can be of course. It's also a legitimate thing. It can be an apprenticeship where you working for a photographer or whatever whatever in your learning but it also can be because a lot of times those people who are people's assistance really want to do what their boss is doing but be a musician be a rock star but whatever it is, but for whatever reason there
Ritu and so they're just have it pick a profession is kind of adjacent to where they want to be but it's not actually doesn't have the same risk. I
want to underscore this for folks because I think it is it is exceptionally common. I see the Temptation in myself and around me in in certain capacities. So it's really worth having on the radar. I think I'm going to read just a little bit of this blog post.
In 2012, which is on your website student pressfield.com. I think this is more from turning pro. At least that's the URL. So here we go. Sometimes when were terrified of embracing our true calling will pursue a shadow calling instead the shadow career as a metaphor for our real career its shape is similar its Contours feel tantalisingly the same but a shadow career entails no real risk, if we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us. Are you pursuing a shadow career? Are you getting your PhD in Elizabethton?
You say that studies because you're afraid to write the tragedies and comedies, you know, you have inside you are you living the drug and booze half of the musician's life without actually writing the music. Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you're afraid to risk being an innovator yourself. These are really good questions. I think the really important questions and the the drug and booze half example, I think is also very important because it's possible to
grab the romanticized risky portions of a possible real passion and emulate them in Shadow career in a way that actually has quite a lot of downside risk with none of the upside potential.
Yeah to I mean, I think you know not to overstate it. But sometimes addiction is a shadow career, you know that you're acting out there.
Of wild and crazy lifestyle rather than actually doing the work to do to be a musician or to be or whatever.
And what do you say to people who would answer? Yes in this in the sense that they are able to be honest with themselves and say you're totally right. I am actually doing that but like you said this is low risk and the pursuit of what I really want to do doesn't tell risk and I'm afraid.
Well, there's sort of there's kind of no way around it except to actually do it. It's it would be if I were advising anybody or advising myself. If I were in that condition, I would I would say, you know get into some kind of therapy get into something that will help you elevate your Consciousness about this let you explore it introspection and at some point it will become pretty clear what your real dream is, you know, maybe if you're a photographer's assistant.
You really say oh, I want to be a cinematographer. I'd love to be vilmos zsigmond. You know, I want to shoot scorsese's next movie. Whatever. That's I'd love to do that. Then it's sort of a matter of kind of hate to talk about the ego. We getting back into rationality and saying okay, how do I pursue that? Should I go to school? Should I Apprentice myself on a track that will actually take me there or should I you know know whatever figure out
What to actual track is that will get you to that dream and then the other thing I'd say is talking to myself again is be very aware of your own tendency to self-sabotage of resistance and watch out for any of those mental self conversations that will try to talk you out of doing it, you know build up your professional habits and just go for it, you know, just go for it. I'll
add one thing to that which has been very helpful to me.
So I'm saying this to myself also because it's probably time for me to do this again with respect to to writing and that is take a look at an exercise. You can find it online called fear setting that I've written quite a bit about and I also did a TED Talk related to the subject because it's saved my life in some ways and it's really just a rephrasing and presenting of an exercise from the stoics called premeditated.
Vo malorum. So meditating on the worst case. This is just a practice of actually putting to paper what the worst things are that could happen how you might mitigate against them how you could minimize the damage or reverse the damage and as Seneca the younger has said, of course not in English, but I'm paraphrasing here, but we see you soon. We suffer more in imagination than in reality and
It's easy
to believe or to overestimate the threats that exist from action while under estimating the risks of inaction when they're trapped in your head, but when you put them on paper, it actually loses oftentimes a lot of its Force so I would just recommend people take take a look at fear setting with a hyphen in the middle. Let's talk about a man in arms. You have your creative how-to books The War of art turning pro do the
Work and so on then you have your historical fiction, which is just outstanding Gates of Fire tides of War the Afghan campaign. And now a man Arms Why did you write this new book? How did it come to be? What was the Genesis story
before we've gone away. Let me talk Doug. Come back. You talk about fear shouting. I want to say something after that when we're done. I have there's only been like one recurring character in am I in my historical fiction and he is this sort of Gunslinger of the
The world tell them on of Arcadia a one-man killing machine of the ancient world and he's been in three books of mine and as a minor character, but I've always been fascinated by this guy. And in fact, a lot of readers have been fascinated by him too. And I've always wanted to write a book only about him and this is another kind of weird thing to him about the creative process a lot of times.
I will block out a story and I know exactly what each character represents and who they are and what they're going to do. But this one character tell them on that one man killing machine of the ancient world came on the page to me fully formed. I didn't plan him. I had no idea where he came from and he Not only was he fully formed but he had a deep philosophy and a very dark philosophy a real Warrior Samurai philosophy. And so I
Write this book about him because I've only about him because I wanted to follow his journey. It's really he was really sort of in the other stories at the end of his hero's journey, and I was wondering where was he going to go from there and for like 13 years. I tried to come up with a story that would work and I just did outline after outline. I never could find it and finally I just had a flash about adding to his world a young vulnerable girl.
Girl, a nine-year-old girl a mute girl and somehow that sort of cracked the story for me. And so this book came very fast. It's set in first century ad right after the crucifixion in Jerusalem and in the Sinai desert and I just really I just wanted this guy character of telamon is sort of an alter ego for me. I know on some crazy unconscious level I'm bound to this.
Character in some way and his story is my story in some way all I don't know what it is. So I wanted you know writing as you know particularly fiction is like a dream in that in that you you enter another dimension of reality when you're sitting down to write and you don't know what's going to come a lot of times they'll work takes on a life of its own and it'll pull you along. So that was this book for me. I wanted to see where telamon
I'd go and what his ark would be and I know I'm going to write another one because I haven't got to the end of it yet. But that's where that was the Genesis of a man-at-arms
and when you write a book like this since I have no experience with fiction, although endlessly fascinated by it. I think I'm afraid of it honestly because I read good fiction and I think to myself there's a good reason to be afraid of good Lord. I can just cannot have I just don't know. How humans do this. Do you write a book like this?
Simply because you are a writer and fiction as a way of exploring this alternate reality. Is it because you hope it to impart certain messages or lessons that people will learn from what are the reasons behind an undertaking. I'm
absolutely a Believer as you know elves in the Muse, you know, I believe in another dimension of reality. I believe that there is that books or
songs or businesses exist in the in the realm of potential before they exist in the real world and I believe that as a you know, as a writer. I am a servant of the Muse and I believe this book a man-at-arms existed it existed in that other dimension, and I was called on to bring it forth in this in this Dimension. So I'm really not. I really don't have a message. I really don't have I do want to
Or certain aspects of the character but mainly this story just Cora seized me and I felt like I've got to tell the story. I've got to get it. I've got to make it work in a hero's journey terms and I've got to tell it in the right way and solve all those problems. But mainly I just I just wanted to tell this story like a like a singer would want to sing a certain song or a dance or would want to dance a certain dance. So that that was the reason it's
Just the story just seized me and came very fast and very easy. What would you
say if you have an answer for this distinguishes the books that come fast and easy from those that are more difficult those that are maybe a just a hard slog.
It seems the hard ones don't work in the evenings. Do you know it's almost like if it's hard maybe it's a reason
why it's alright. Why are you pushing the boulder uphill?
Right, which is not to say even the easy ones are hard in the sense that there are a lot of technical problems to solve. Like I just was doing a just did a video on Instagram. I was talking about the original manuscript of Gates of Fire was 802 pages long and I in the book was finally 384. So I had to cut basically cut it in half. So that was like a technical problem that was hard but the book itself.
Is easy right the book, you know came with a lot of energy just like I'm in and arms just kind of came, you know, in fact, I don't even have a really a memory of writing it. No, I know I wrote it last year, but it just came in a real rush.
I would love to experience more of that in my writing sounds like I just have to get on the playing field a bit more
often, you know sight unseen Tim. We don't know each other's she first time. We really talked for a long time and if you'll forgive me for being here.
Psychotherapist here for a second. Yes, please. I think maybe you should think about writing fiction at some
point. I agree with you. I agree with you. I do I do I think I am psyching myself out and I think it would be so freeing for me to do it because my non-fiction books are so carefully meticulously architected. There are no surprises. I mean, there there everything is intended to be as clear which is fine and prescriptive and
represent such a logical sequence and building right? I know what you mean
that for the writer for
me there. There's very little element of surprise that that harnessing of the muses minimal in a sense, right it exists with turns of phrase and certain with thoughts about composition, but I appreciate you saying that and and I agree I would like to try some fiction and you can just write it may be for a handful of friends. Although let me make one comment actually come.
Way back to something you said at the very early beginnings of this conversation when you said you wrote a novel and even your friends wouldn't read it. I wanted to just say that if you write for those people out there who haven't written much don't be overly offended or demoralized if your friends don't read it because my friends and especially my family. I'm not going to name out names are the last people who will ever read my stuff.
Including now and I think it's just kind of like
sometimes absolutely true. I couldn't agree more Tim and there's a reason for that too. They are the last people who I couldn't get my mother to read anything, you know, it's because they are the people who are close to you since when you write something or you take a chance, they sense you changing your becoming a different person and their their fears are going to lose.
You and so they want to make you stay the way you are and and that's it's in a crazy way. It's love it's out of love, but it's a dark side of Love. Let me say a couple of things to you Tim for whatever this is worth. Forgive me for be pleased presumptuous. But if you do decide to write fiction, here's what I would suggest. First of all don't start small don't say. Oh I'll let me write a short story because that's kind of a pussy way or do I do?
SLI and amuse doesn't like that. She wants you to go big, you know, so go for something big I would suggest and also the way you'll know the idea is that it will be terrifying to you Prospect of exposing yourself to do this. And that's the one you should do.
I love that and I encourage you to do that dumb. Don't piss off the Muse with small Ambitions really or maybe not piss off don't insult the
In a 4-Hour workweek was a big idea of huge idea, you know and an idea that could have you could have fallen completely on your face, you know, you're putting this laughed you out of it, but you did it, you know, and it worked so I would say, you know to the same concept only with
fiction. Thank you. I am going to take that to
heart. Let me get back for one second to fear setting. There's just one thing I wanted to say. Yes, please to reinforce what you were saying.
A few years ago. I wrote a book called The Lions Gate which was about the 1967 arab-israeli war the Six-Day War and I went over to Israel and I interviewed a bunch of fighter pilots and I had never really talked to fighter pilots before and the thing that was that isn't that they have in common the mindset of a fighter pilot is exactly what you were saying, like when before they would go up on a mission, they would sit down and four hours in solitude.
Run the mission in their mind thinking of every possible thing that could go wrong. You know, what if I get a flame out over the Sinai desert, you know, what if my guns don't fire what if I'm attacked from out of the sun whatever and they would sort of in their mind play out all of these worst-case scenarios and when they played them out and they knew what they were going to do then they were ready to go and I thought that is a great way to think about things.
Because the last thing you always want to have have to be able to have to save something is although I never saw it coming right so I heartily agree with that that idea and fear setting that whole stoic concept. I think it's a great thing.
Let's use that as a jumping off point to something. I know very little about but I've seen it come up in in some discussions and that is the concept of I'm not going to get the pronunciation here, correct, but yet sir.
Sahara
this is yes your hurrah.
It's a hurrah. What is yetzer Hara?
You know, I wish I had my Rabbi Rabbi Mordechai Finley here to explain it to us. But he apparently it's safe. It's a phrase from Genesis and it's translated by Rabbi Finley as a turning toward evil and he has said to me that this is a concept in kabbalistic thought and Jewish mysticism.
And it's the equivalent of my concept of resistance from the capital horror. It's that force that exists in the world to stop us from going to a lower level to a higher level like in to realizing Our Calling to coming into our own that negative force and in Jewish mysticism. There's a concept that life happens on more than one dimension and that we live on the material Dimension and above us is a higher.
Mention, it's called the national mama. And that is the soul and the the what they talked about. The soul is that above every blade of grass is an angel saying grow grow the soul or what I would say would be the unconscious of the Muse is actively engaged in our life and trying to help us and we are trying to reach up to the Soul at the same time. The soul is trying to reach down to us and help us.
And in between the two is this Force called the yetzer Hara this negative force of self-sabotage and when Rabbi Finley told me that that was something that existed in Jewish thought for years and years. I thought I'm not crazy other people thought about the same thing and so actually in Genesis as I understand this right? I may keep you getting it wrong, but the is the story where God decides to destroy the human race.
It's and he regrets and repents that he made us and he looks down and he sees what he sees everywhere a turning toward evil. Meaning this is the yetzer Hara and this is when God decides to send the flood, you know to wipe us out and know uh survived right? So it's in this kind of spiritual sense. It's almost a flaw in the universe that when God created us at least according to kabbalistic thought he made
A mistake he screwed
up bugging bug in the software.
Yeah a bug in the software and if you certainly if you look at the human race, there is returning toward evil everywhere, right something wrong with us. And I would say it's a lack of connection to the soul. But we were talking about about the self and the ego resistance and everything. So in any event, that's what that's what the ETC is as I understand it. I may be wrong, but as I understand it in kabbalistic Jewish
Mysticism so I would love to ask just a few more questions in the first few are going to be related to my homework assignment or recommendation of writing fiction. So you said go big and in my mind, I'm thinking that could mean a novel could mean a screenplay as I'd like you to elaborate on what that means. But also I know that I have a tendency to read and prepare.
Hap successively often as a form of procrastination, right? I can read 10 books before I ever set pen to paper since I have no
Exposure or experience with fiction writing. Are there any books? I should read or things I should consider before I begin or literally should I just say to myself? I'm going to write a novel. I don't even know how novels are structured, but I'm going to start with page one today. So there's the question of what is Big what does that actually mean to you? And then how much preparation if any or education is the right amount before
beginning I think
When I say go big, I think that the Muse likes it, you know fortune favors the bold and I think when we when we try for something big we're taking the initiative and we're kind of invoking a tail wind behind us. Whereas if we kind of timid and we say, oh well, just let me do this small little thing that I'm going to do. I don't think the Musa likes that and I don't like an advertising when I was working in advertising I used to
Up with the tiniest ideas. It was really pathetic. You know what I bring them into the boss and he would like that's the wrong out. You know, it's it this is the idea the size of a postage stamp, you know, get the fuck out of here. You don't come back with something big and it was really hard for me to do, you know because I was afraid of it so I do think going big help invoke some use in a good way and sort of as a parallel to that Tim. I would say even though eventually you are going to have to learn what the story
Principles are I would say just Plunge in and follows just do something that you love. I mean I have it's too bad were not on video here because I have behind me a book by a friend of mine Mike mclelland all the sand sea and it's like seven hundred and eighty pages long or something and my quiz a lawyer. He's a functioning lawyers. You got a wife and kids and over like a 13-year period he would get up at the crack of dawn.
And you know go out to his garage where you had an office and he would put in he would write 500 Words a day. But this this book the same C is a huge book. It's like a Tolkien textbook and you know with all kinds of crazy characters from everywhere and I really applaud that he did it that way and now he's on to the second book in the trilogy is going to be a third one. So for him going big really worked and I and it has gone it has worked for me, too.
That doesn't mean that it necessarily has to be 800 pages long, but just a big idea and I did it's kind of a scary idea that you say to yourself what I show this to people they're going to look at me and go what happened to you Tim. Are you? Okay, you know that that's where what I mean by big and should I just
assume this is never going to be read by anyone. Is that a helpful assumption to make couple
of kalat question would do it only for yourself you have coming only for yourself and is the
Because when I hear stories of someone working on things say in the mornings like The Kite Runner, right, but I mean the same is similar. I story I think the author was working in medicine at the time and would wake up super early and worked for a long period of time on this book when I think of my first foray into fiction if I think it's going to be a homework assignment like a daily homework assignment for years. There is a very large part of me. That just does not want
To do it unless the purpose behind it is therapy or this is going to be cultivating your connection with this other dimension you've described and that's the purpose of doing this. Do you have any thoughts on those points are concerns?
I mean it may be Tim that writing fiction is your calling. I don't know it could very well be you could say that non-fiction books and and podcast and stuff like that might be if you'll forgive me.
Might be a shadow career for
you. I don't know. Yeah, yeah could them
so in that case the exercise of writing fiction would be like a lifelong calling, you know practice from now until the end and and I would think that it's I think it's a good idea to hope that it will be successful that it will find a market that people will love it, you know, but at the same time, I think it's very important and I'm talking to myself to to turn off the self censor.
And not start to think oh shit Are people going to like this or is this have I gone too far in this scene, you know, in other words trying to second-guess the audience because an audience if it's out there you will find it and we'll find the work and if it isn't it won't but I would say just write to please yourself and always take the brave choice. You know, should I write this scene this way which kind of a chicken way or should I go really go for it and write it the big way and I would say always take the brave choice and monitor yourself.
As you go because what should happen is once you're into this you should really start to feel good. You should really feel a tailwind and really feel like ah shit. My feet are on the ground, you know, this is you know, I may be a beginner. I maybe I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm on the right path. If it doesn't feel like that then maybe it's not right idea.
Well, I took a with you I may I may reach out to you as my please do please do absolutely.
As my my stabilizing Wing that at some point and I
know but here you stand please do
thank you. I really appreciate that Steven. This has been so much fun. I would love to do another round at some point have another conversation like this.
There's hydrogen put me down in the books
whenever there's no shortage of topics to cover and maybe after I've actually given this a shot. I think that should be the stakes.
Should be the accountabilities. I can't have you on again until I have actually spent some time on this scary thing called fiction and just a few last questions and this one doesn't always work out but I like to ask it and it's not an easy question necessarily. But if you had a billboard metaphorically speaking to get a message or a quote or a question or an image out to billions of people assuming that would all understand.
It what might you put on that
billboard and you're actually this was a question in tribe of mentors that actually won't even answer to it was but what I said in that in tribe of mentors was I would not put up any billboard at all and I would tear them
all down
but answer your question a little more seriously, you know, because you're sort of saying well, what's what would be kind of a if you had to say one thing somebody to help
them exactly.
I would say
Life is is long.
This is what a friend of mine feels slot. 1 said to me. He said they always tell you life is short but actually life is long and if we find ourselves making mistakes or we haven't yet found our real calling don't drive yourself crazy with that, you know, there's plenty of time. Everybody thinks they've got oh if I don't do it in the next six months, I'm going to kill myself, you know, and I thought that to forever but look at me it took me forever to break through into anything and I still feel
That I've got a whole other lifetime ahead of me. And you know you Tim you've got like three lifetimes ahead. So be patient with yourself. I would say to people be kind to yourself. You're on a journey whether you realize it or not. We all are there's no way not to be and things will reveal themselves as they go but don't beat yourself up too much
Steven. This has been so much fun. I really appreciate you taking these home and people can find you at Steven pressfield again.
Savvy Steven, pressfield.com Twitter at s pressfield Instagram Stephen underscore pressfield will link to all of your books including the newest and one that I'm quite excited about a man-at-arms an epic Saga about a reluctant hero the Roman Empire and the rise of a new Faith checking all the boxes for me and are there any other comments you'd like to make any requests of my audience any
Parting questions or anything at all that you'd like to add before we bring this this conversation because
no I think that billboard that's that's my billboard. That would be that would be the final thing other than to say, you know, thanks for having me Tim. It's great talking to you get to know you a little bit and I hope I didn't overstep my bounds and you know giving unsolicited advice, but I hope I hope what I said helps a little bit and you know, we'll talk
again. I think I think you'd have to
this writing thing doesn't work out for you. Maybe that's your Shadow career before becoming a psychoanalyst. Maybe that isn't real calling and I have found this very helpful personally, and I'm sure it will help many other people out there. So thank you again Stephen and to everyone listening. Once again, you can find links to everything that we mentioned at Tim top log forward slash podcast and until next time. Thank you for tuning in.
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