# What It Really Takes to Accomplish Your Dreams (ft. Steven Pressfield)

An episode of [SOLVED with Mark Manson](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247526593), 28 Aug 2024, 58 min.

Audio: https://claritaspod.com/measure/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/441/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/episode.flightcast.com/zubuzbnbht7gxdzkhxxcg8ll.mp3

Steven Pressfield was 52 years old when he published his first hit novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Prior to that, he wrote tirelessly for decades in obscurity, supporting himself with odd jobs along the way. After writing several more novels and movie scripts, he distilled all of his wisdom into The War of Art, his now-famous treatise on the grinding process of creativity. Now in his 80s, Steven looks back on his work and life with a clear-eyed view of what it truly means to make it as a creative professional. In this episode, he explains why he persisted writing for decades with little to show for it, how he compensated for his own lack of talent, why creating great art is actually a grueling war fought within the artist’s own mind, and much, much more. Enjoy. CHAPTERS Chapters • 00:00:00 Introduction • 00:02:13 Persisting at writing... for decades • 00:06:40 The Resistance • 00:14:23 Patience when facing The Resistance • 00:22:12 Is The Resistance actually a good thing? • 00:26:52 Turning Pro • 00:32:22 How much do hard work, skill, and talent matter? • 00:40:48 Does great art require suffering? • 00:44:57 How Steven's military experience influences his work • 00:49:52 Honoring your muse • 00:56:04 What writers can learn from advertising • 00:58:08 The Daily Pressfield ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://bit.ly/4w46FMH FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson Solved IG: https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/ Twitter: https://x.com/markmanson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson

## Transcript

[0:00] Steven Pressfield is your favorite author's favorite author. No one describes the emotional struggle of the creative process and the terror of presenting your work to the world in as much detail and depth as Steven has. If I had to guess, his seminal book, The War of Art, is on more bookshelves of writers, musicians, producers, and artists than almost any other book.
[0:20] Steven has a long and storied career with many winding and twisting paths. When he was young, Pressfield was an advertising copywriter, a school teacher, a tractor trailer driver, a bartender, an oil field roustabout, a mental hospital attendant, and a fruit picker.
[0:35] He wrote tirelessly during this period, for over 20 years, before he got his first break with some screenwriting jobs in Hollywood in the 80s. But after working on a bunch of scripts for B and C movies to pay the bills, he broke through with his first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, at the age of 50. It was only then, after nearly three decades of struggle, that his career finally took off.
[0:56] In today's episode, you're going to learn from Stephen about how persistence isn't actually about persistence. We discuss how the skill of something is usually not actually the skill of something, i.e. the thing that makes a writer or singer or artist great usually isn't simply how they write, paint, or sing. It is the skills around how they write, paint, or sing.
[1:15] We talk about career longevity and suffering for your creativity and whether that's a myth or not. We talk about how turning pro is such an important concept, not just for aspiring artists, but for people who have big goals around anything in life in general. And of course, we talk about the capital R resistance, that mental and emotional barrier that we all create for ourselves and stands between us and our deepest desires.
[1:39] The Resistance rears its head in all of us, particularly when we're on the cusp of some important breakthrough or change. Stephen has written multiple books on The Resistance, and the concept is central to much of his work. So I guess I will stop resisting this episode and just get on with it. This is Stephen Pressfield. Brawl. Do you even podcast? Like, brawl. This is the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.
[2:08] Steve, it's good to see you again. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, thanks for coming on. I want to talk about persistence because, you know, just to do a little bit of math here, you spent all of your 20s and most of your 30s attempting to write novels, failing. You came to Hollywood.
[2:30] tried to write screenplays. Your writing career didn't even really get going until you were – Yeah, it was 52 when Legend of Bagger Vance got published. So your hit came at 52. Even just being able to like – it sounds like pay rent didn't happen until around 40. Yeah. That is decades of –
[2:51] Persistence, like talk to me about what the mindset was during that time. Like how did you keep going for that many years? I just couldn't do anything else and be happy. You know, from time to time I took jobs in advertising back in New York, you know, cause he could make some money.
[3:09] But at the end of the day, I would be so depressed that I had to go home and try to write something for real. And the trying to write real stuff was what kind of kept me sane. So I just really knew there was no other thing for me to do. And then when I got to Hollywood, then I was actually making money. I could pay the rent. And I felt like I was learning.
[3:34] that I was on the path. So even though I hadn't succeeded in any real sense, I felt like, okay, I'm in graduate school or whatever it is, and I'm working towards it. So it sounds hard that long period of time when you look at it from the outside, but it really wasn't. I just didn't have any other choice, and it was fun along the way. It's funny because...
[3:55] I imagine you get some of this too. Like I often get emails from 22 year olds, you know, saying, I've been trying to do this for three years and, you know, it's too late. Like I'm too old. It's never going to work. And of course I, you know, I'm at, I'm 40. So I, I, I chuckle, you know, like, oh yeah, so old. Um, I'm, I'm just, I wonder what your perspective on, um,
[4:23] on people's the power to keep going uh through adversity and doing it for the right reasons i suppose right like doing it because yeah writing the things you genuinely love and
[4:36] not because it's going to get you a book deal, but because it's what keeps you sane. Yeah. I mean, I think if you're a dancer, you know, your body's breaking, but you want to dance, right? That's the thing. If you're a singer, if you're a musician, you know, it's in your fingers, you want to do it. Yeah. I think it has to be a real calling and not, you know, you're doing it for fame or to get it. But I don't know today...
[5:03] If anybody could really have a sort of a career like I did where you did – it took so long. Right. You know? I don't know how people do it today. But I guess it's true. It never – it's life. That's the way it is. You do – I mean it does happen. I do think it happens more in writing than other –
[5:21] Art forms. A long wind up. Yeah. Yeah. Like a long build up over a long period. Like I think E.L. James, the 50 shades of gray woman, I think she was in her 50s or 60s when she wrote it. And it was her first book. You do hear stories, but it is like what stands out to me with your answer to that is that it just sounds like you would have done it anyway.
[5:46] Yeah, I would have done it anyway. It wasn't for the money. I certainly wasn't making any money. Yeah. You know, I read a thing about when Cormac McCarthy died. You know, I love to read obituaries. Yeah. Because it's a great sort of, you know, biography of a person that apparently he, I don't know if this happens anymore, but he had written like before he broke through with, I guess, All the Pretty Horses was his kind of breakthrough. He had written like four or five like really good novels that didn't sell for shit. Yeah. Yeah.
[6:13] But apparently he had either an agent or a publisher that kind of protected him and threw enough money at him to kind of keep him going. And it was like, you know, this was like a 20-year deal before he finally broke through. But I'm not so sure. Maybe that happens more than we realize today where somebody is brought along by another mentor or somebody that has a little bit of power.
[6:40] You popularized this concept of the resistance with a capital R. Generally, it's the resistance that we feel towards resistance.
[6:50] not just creatively expressing ourselves, but like positive changes in our lives. I'm curious. So you, according to my count, this might be wrong. You have done five screenplay, Hollywood screenplays, 10 novels, 11 nonfiction books. I'm curious, when is resistance shown up the most for you in your career? And how did you fight through it? Oh, wow. What a question.
[7:14] I mean, resistance is sort of omnipresent. I mean, the worst that it ever was for me was at the beginning, when I first sat down and tried to write something where it just, resistance just completely defeated me. You know, my own self-sabotage, I couldn't finish anything. I had a hell of a hard time starting anything. And resistance, you know, is a real diabolical thing.
[7:37] ever-changing, protean, intelligent force that will fake – can we use a profanity here? Of course. This is the fuck podcast. That will fake the fuck out of you. I've been doing this now for almost 50 years. Yeah. And it never goes away. It never diminishes. It's always subtle, always nuanced, always devious. So I face it all the way through a project, beginning, middle, end, and in between. Can you give me an example of –
[8:06] maybe how it showed up earlier in your career, like maybe a story of a way you sabotaged yourself. And then I'd be curious, how has it shown up recently with, say, your most recent book or one of your recent books? All right, I'll plunge you and ride to the deep end right away. The first book that I tried to write, I was like...
[8:25] 22 or 23 years old, I had quit a job in advertising. I was married. I was a young guy with a young wife in New York City. And I wrote for like two years and got right close to the end, a great place when resistance will strike, right? You're afraid to put something out there to be. So the bottom line was I cheated on my wife in such a way that she would find out about it. In other words, I really acted out in psychological terms to just blow up my life
[8:55] and the book so that I wouldn't have to face that. So that was pure resistance. I had no concept that there was such a thing, but it was this negative force of self-sabotage to stop, you know, me from finishing what I was trying to do. I'm glad you bring up the wife thing because, you know, going back through the war of art, which at this point, I think I've gone through three or four times, you know, it's every five years or so, I'll go back and, you know, I'll go back and
[9:24] kind of go through it again. It's like a nice reminder. I do too. Yeah. But I'm glad you bring that up because when I was kind of going back through it, to me, the concept of the resistance, it can apply so well in personal relationships. Yeah, definitely. Family relationships, romantic relationships. I think there's something...
[9:46] There's definitely – it's very much tied to like a sense of vulnerability. You know, like writing a novel is such a vulnerable – or any book, any creative work is such a vulnerable process. Like you are putting such a deep and personal part of yourself out into the world and that's fucking terrifying. And I think in the same way, a marriage or a relationship or, you know, having intimacy with somebody –
[10:16] It's very similar in that it's terrifying because you're making yourself vulnerable. You're exposing like a very deep personal part of yourself and making it possible to be hurt. Yes. And so the resistance is like, it's like the protective shield that shows up, you know?
[10:33] I mean, my sort of rule of thumb of that is that resistance will strike anytime you're trying to move from a lower level to a higher level. Politically, morally, you're trying to take a stand on something like that or in terms of giving to the world or risking anything. That's when it'll strike. It isn't necessarily only creative. Right, right.
[10:59] So like you say, it is – you're getting vulnerable. You're going to dare to stand out from the crowd, say something that will put you – and in a relationship too. When you have that hard conversation, you know, that – you know, then resistance will really tend to sabotage that and make you act out in some crazy way. Yeah. So you don't have to have that conversation. Yeah. Yeah, I know how that goes. Yeah.
[11:25] It's funny. So this is super recent. I actually just – my wife and I had a big fight about a week ago and it was kind of unresolved. And she's Brazilian. So she's like explosions everywhere. It's like emotions going everywhere. But I'm a classic –
[11:47] middle America, Anglo-Saxon male. You know, it's like, I just like bottle, like just suppress, deny, you know, everything's fine. Nothing's wrong. But it was funny cause a couple of days went by and it was like, it's like, we really need to resolve. Like we need to pick this conversation back up and deal with it. And we're not like, and I wasn't like, I was finding reasons to always, you know, oh, I gotta go do this thing.
[12:12] So I finally, after a couple of days, I guess you could say I felt the resistance. And the resistance was saying, oh, well I need to go back to the studio. And like, ah, well I've got this work thing. And ah, like this friends in town, you know? And we'll do it tomorrow, we'll do it tomorrow. And then finally I realized,
[12:30] I actually sat down to write a letter to her. Wow. Because that felt easier than actually like standing in front of her and having the conversation. And I've done this a few times throughout my marriage. And so I sit there and I write this letter to her and just pour everything out on the page, which I guess it like feels more natural for me. So I've got the letter, I print it out, and then I stick it in the desk drawer and like go back to,
[12:59] as if nothing happened and like another two days go by and i told her i was like i wrote you a letter and uh she's like well give it to me i'm like uh i'll give it to you tomorrow and it's just so it's funny because it's like the resistance it's like this amoeba that just like you know fills the vacuum like no matter which way you pivot it pivots with you you know and it's the only way through it
[13:24] is is through it like you have to meet it head on yeah and so have you given your wife a letter i did i did actually what happened last night we actually had an amazing conversation good for you but it was it was terrifying it was absolutely terrifying um i have found and i'm curious what you think about this like i have found that when dealing with with resistance it's
[13:49] Sometimes it's too intimidating to just try to take it all on at once. Like I've often found it simpler to just kind of chip away at it. You know, like a book, for example, if you think about this big magnum opus that you want to write, often that's so intimidating that you just never start. And so I've always found it useful to just think about it.
[14:11] okay, let's write one good page, you know? And like not worry about anything past that. And then like once you have one good page, it's like, okay, now let's write another good page and like not worry about anything past that. Have you found that true in your life? Absolutely. In fact, I just was reading, I'm reading a book now called 4,000 Weeks. Have you heard of it? Yes. You know, it's about...
[14:31] It's sort of it masquerades as a time management book, but it's much deeper than that. Basically, it says we mortals cannot manage time. Right. And one of the points that that he was making is in a long term project like a novel or something like that, that.
[14:49] People flame out and resistance to defeats them when they think, oh, I got to write this goddamn thing in three weeks. Let me charge. Whereas when the person that succeeds and this is death for whatever reason, this is how I work. This is one area I haven't had a problem with.
[15:04] is being really patient and saying, this is gonna take me two years. I'm only gonna get another inch today. If it's like an infantryman that's gonna get one trench closer to the enemy. So I am patient that when it does work, to take the pressure off, because it is a marathon.
[15:27] And, yeah, so I agree with you completely. Just biting. All you can do in one day is what you can do in one day. Right? In physical training, the same thing. You're not going to become, you know, a decathlon champion today. You know, it's going to be whatever you're going to do. Right. It's going to take a year, two years, the rest of your life. Yeah, for sure. Let me say one thing, Mark. Sure. The flip side of your story about your wife. Yeah. Yeah.
[15:51] I had sort of a different thing with my girlfriend, which I've never told her. If she watches this, don't give me a hard time. Where I found myself bringing up all kinds of grievances in my head about her. Ah, this, that, the other thing, right? And thinking, you know, I got to really get on a face. And then I suddenly realized that whatever I was working on in the book world, whatever I was writing, I was really afraid of the next step.
[16:20] And this of, you know, deflecting it. If I had done that, if I had opened my mouth, which I did not. Yeah. That would have fucked me up completely, not to mention my girlfriend. And that would have sabotaged the work that I was doing. So when I said to my, I said, this is resistance. This is my own resistance to facing what I have to, what I'm afraid to do on the page. Right. And immediately all the grievances went away. And I thought, oh, this is just bullshit that I'm making up in my, in my head. So resistance is going to work the flip way.
[16:49] The other way, yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. One thing that I have learned throughout my career is that – is like learning my own patterns. Ah, yeah. Like the mental gymnastics that my resistance plays. So it's – I think in the – if there's anything that gets easier, it's just recognizing those patterns. So the things that trip me up on book number one by like book number two and three, I'm like, oh, I remember when this happened the other time.
[17:17] I'm not going to play that game with myself. You know, you can like... Can you give me a specific thing, Mark, that you were thinking of? You know, there's this thing in screenwriting about the second act, you know, being like where everything falls apart. For me, with every single book I've written, it's always chapter three. And I don't know why. Chapter three out of how many? Doesn't matter. It's always chapter three. I'd say it's generally around...
[17:45] 10 to 15,000 words. And I think it's the same reason the act two thing happens, which is the initial idea is very clear in my head and exciting, you know, so chapter one is always exciting. There's always kind of this honeymoon phase you have with any project. And then that carries through to chapter two in my experience, or just generally how I do chapters, by the time I get to chapter three, that's when you find out if, if, if,
[18:10] If the idea really works or not. And, um, and of course, if it's not working, there's all sorts of like frustration and denial and justification, rationalization, you know, and it's, I, I've spent probably more time working on a chapter three of a book than like half the rest of the book combined. And,
[18:33] Eventually, by the time I got to my third book, I just kind of realized like, okay, this is a thing that seems to just keep happening with me. And what's your answer to it? What was your solution to it? My answer was don't get so emotionally invested. You know, it used to be the first couple times it happened, it was like, oh, my God, my book is a failure. No, like it doesn't work. No, but like...
[18:53] I need to start over from scratch. And a couple of cases I did start over from scratch. Whereas by the time I, you know, I got a few books in, I'm like, okay, it's, everything's going to feel like it's, it falls apart soon. So like be ready for it. And then we'll, we'll deal with it when we get there. And, and like, we'll, we'll kind of go through it logically and not overreact and not make a huge deal about it. Interesting.
[19:14] Yeah. That's exactly what I do, my exact same experience. And, you know, I would sort of analogize that, like if we were football players, if we were in the NFL, we're going to go through a season, right? We've got the preseason, that's kind of exciting. Then we get into the first few games and we go, oh, this is pretty, you know, it's exciting, we're getting somewhere. And then you're six games in and you're three and three. Yeah. And right, you go, oh, fuck, you know, the season could go over the cliff right now. And you're really sort of faced with...
[19:42] the stage where it becomes, the season becomes a grind. Yeah. Right? It's another eight more games till you get anywhere near the postseason and you get that, you know, that charge again. And so for me, it's like in a book, it's like, just keep doing it. Keep going. This is where tedium, you know, you just got to keep grinding week after week. Yeah. And like you say, it's very important not to panic and not to overreact to that. So it's really interesting that, thanks for saying that, that helped me a lot. You know, I feel like,
[20:12] I'm not alone. I believe like one of the times that we hung out together, I vaguely remember you mentioning that you often struggle with the last chapter. Am I remembering that correctly? I think everybody does. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you don't. It's funny because I often have like the last chapter is often like –
[20:31] No problem. From when I start, I kind of know where I'm going to end. I mean, I do too. But still, when you get to it, I find that's the one – the last two or three chapters, let's say out of 45 chapters, I put them off. I've like sort of –
[20:49] Maybe it's a good thing because it's fresh when you do it. But those are, you know, real terrors kind of strikes then. And also for me, it's now you're close to the point where you're actually going to ship it. Like in Seth Godin's phrase, you know, you're going to expose it to the world. And then it's like, that's always been for me a real hard moment. Interesting.
[21:09] One of the things that I've noticed too, and again, I think this is analogous to relationships and just things in your personal life. As I've become more experienced creatively, I've realized that the resistance is actually a sign of a good thing because it means –
[21:30] I'm doing something novel and important to me. You know, like I've noticed that when I don't feel any resistance, it's because I'm usually just kind of on autopilot creatively. And I'm not very emotionally invested in what I'm making. And so, you know, I don't know, I feel like there's a,
[21:52] It's something I say to my team sometimes. It's like the fact that you're nervous about putting it up means it's probably good. Like that's been my experience is that like the things that are good are like I've never not been nervous about them. And then the things that aren't good, I'm often not nervous about them.
[22:12] Yeah, that's been my experience too. It's like we were talking, you and I, before we got on the camera here about as you were moving in your business in a different direction, that it was a challenge and it was difficult and you were sort of looking for that. Yeah. And I feel the same way. I mean, I think…
[22:30] If I'm not racked by self-doubt through whatever part of the process, something's wrong. Yeah. You know? And there's something that I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again here, because maybe it'd be helpful. My theory about resistance is that resistance always comes second.
[22:49] By which I mean that the dream or the project is first. Yeah. In the sense that there would be no resistance if there wasn't a dream. Yeah. If there wasn't a book or something like that. And the bigger the dream and the more important it is, I say this to myself all the time, the more resistance I'm going to feel. So like when I have that self-doubt or when you say something is really challenging for anybody on your team or whatever...
[23:18] That's a good sign because it means that whatever it is that's creating that resistance is something important. Otherwise, it would be, you know, big dream equals big resistance. Little dream equals little resistance. So big resistance is a good sign to me. It doesn't make it any more fun. Yeah.
[23:36] You know, it makes it really hard, in my opinion. But it is encouraging. And I've certainly had many moments where I'm freaking out over something. And I'll just say to myself, wait a minute, you know, the fact that there's so much, you know, blowback coming at you is a good sign. So relax, you know, and just keep plugging. Yeah. It's funny. I'm just imagining somebody who...
[24:01] dreams about having a creative career listening to this. Like I, when I think about my younger self, my image of, when I was young, I wanted to be a musician. And my image of being a musician was very much a fantasy. Like it had nothing to do with what is actually involved with being a musician, but it's just, it's all fun, glory, attention, accolades. Whereas the reality is,
[24:31] demanding and exhausting process that is still fun and invigorating, but it's also like, it is, it is extremely, uh, taxing in, in a way that, uh, I think like, I guess most people don't, don't assume to be true. Yeah. I mean, I was, I'm the same way, you know, I thought the same thing, but it's definitely the process is not cinematic. Yeah. The, the, the,
[24:58] It's not, there's no glamour, right? It's you're grinding a lot of the time. Like Robert Greene talks about this, that tedium is a big part. You know, if you're a pianist, you gotta do scales, you gotta do, how long does it take to master, you know, Beethoven's Ninth or something like that, right? And the only way to do it
[25:17] is, you know, just do it over and over and over. And in many ways, that's the difference between a pro and an amateur. Like an amateur will fold. And I certainly folded many, many times before I sort of realized this is what it is. You know, you signed up for this and you don't want to do anything else. So, you know, shut the fuck up and do it, you know?
[25:41] And in its own crazy way, it is rewarding. Yeah. Because you do feel like, you know, these are the trenches. We're in the trenches now and it's a war of attrition. Yeah. So speaking of which, you have another book here called Turning Pro. I'm glad you mentioned that. I love this concept just because – and again, this is something that I find applicable to
[26:03] both within creative work and also outside of creating work. But can you describe briefly just what is your concept of turning pro and what is the significance of it? Okay, I certainly think in my own struggles that like when I blew up that book I was just telling about and other things, and I asked myself, what am I doing wrong? And I think the answer for me because was I'm acting like an amateur.
[26:30] and not like a professional. And an amateur is really a kind of a weekend warrior, right? When an amateur, if you have an amateur attitude, you hit adversity, you fold. Yeah. You know? And whereas a professional will not fold. And so there's certain things that a professional will do in anything, even just a regular job. You show up every day.
[26:53] You show up on time. You stay there the whole day. You don't quit at lunchtime or anything like that. You do the best you can. When you run into troubles, you dig deep, you solve the problem. You work the problem and you solve it. Another thing about a professional is a professional plays hurt.
[27:14] Like athletes, I always think about Kobe or Michael Jordan or something. There's so many. Tom Brady as kind of the consummate professionals. Like an amateur, if you get hurt, it's like, okay, I got to take some time off. If you're a pro, you just have to, you just do it.
[27:33] And that way of thinking really helped me a lot because it took any judgment or self judgment. I didn't say to myself, oh, you're weak, you're lazy, you're crazy, you're sick. I just said, you know, you're thinking like an amateur. And the other thing is it's free turning pro. It doesn't mean you have to say, okay, I'm only gonna work for money from now on, right? But you can just flip a switch in your head and say, in fact, I had a friend, a woman,
[28:01] who took up golf at age 35 or something like that. And she'd been doing it for a little while. And she said, let's meet, we'll go down or wherever it was and we got together. And she came out, she'd been playing for like a month or two months. She looked like an LPGA pro. She had like the primo clubs, you know, and she said, you know, I just thought of it this way. I'm not gonna be an idiot that's out there hacking even though I'm not good.
[28:27] I'm going to think of myself as a professional and I'm going to, I'm going to take lessons. I'm going to, you know, build in a program that I'm going to work on my short game, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, wow, that is really smart. I never heard of anybody doing that. Yeah. So it is a great flip of the switch to, to just kind of think of yourself as a professional instead of an amateur. I love this idea. I've written in relationships and not just relationships, but like major life decisions, um,
[28:56] I think people often wait to feel good about something before committing to it. And I've often written that, no, you commit to something and then that's what makes you start to love it. And I think it's true with people. I think it's true with occupations. I think it's true with choosing a place to live. I had this conversation, actually this book, reviewing the book helped me in a conversation recently. I was talking to somebody, a friend, and I was like,
[29:23] who she's wanted to start a business for a long time and she's saved up a bunch of money and she's got ideas and she keeps dabbling. Like she'll test something here or she'll like hire somebody and do a little project here. And she keeps giving up. And one of the things she told me is she said, I'm wasting money. Like it didn't go the way I expected. I'm wasting time and I'm wasting money. And I told her, I was like, look, like,
[29:50] Fuck all that. First of all, like go, you know, sign up, do your LLC paperwork, open a bank account, put your savings in that bank account, give yourself six months and then like set a schedule and just work the schedule, like pretend the business already exists.
[30:09] And then give yourself like a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time. And then if the money runs out and the time runs out and the business isn't, you're still not making any money. Like, okay, well, you gave it your – a legitimate shot. But if you're going to just sit here and like dip your toe in the water over and over, like nothing is going to happen. So there's something about formalizing –
[30:31] like the professional mindset of like building time into your schedule, building a place in your house, setting aside, if it involves money, setting aside money and like maybe a separate bank account. Like I just think there's like so much mental utility to doing that. I couldn't agree more. And I think, you know, the gods noticed that.
[30:53] You know, they look down, they say, you know, Mark's got an office. He's got a payroll. He's got a sign outside on the door. You know, I'm going to send him a customer. I'm going to send him a few ideas. I think that it's truly, it sounds like I'm being facetious, but there is a sort of a law of the universe. I don't know what it is that when we commit to something like that, things start to happen in some crazy way. The universe does respond. If you were to make a pie chart.
[31:23] Okay. Hear me out. If you were to make a pie chart of the importance of hard work, skill, and talent, like what would that look like? Hard work would be 75%. Okay. Talent would be 15%, and skill would be 10%. Okay. Because I think that like if you read something that I had written –
[31:51] when I was 22 or 42, you'd say, this is dog shit, you know? But I flatter myself that, you know, finally in my 50s, I was able to produce some stuff that was readable, you know? And that is purely a process of hard work and learning the skill and getting better rather than talent. I mean, I would say for me, I don't have very much talent at all. Yeah. But you can get better. Yeah.
[32:21] One of the things that – like something – an idea that I've been noticing or thinking about a lot more is that often the actual skill of something is not what people think the skill is. And let me give you an example. So like – What do you mean? Well, with writers, it's –
[32:40] It's easy, like the example for us is easy, right? It's like, it's, the skill is less the writing, it's more the editing and revision, right? Like it's, the difference, everybody's first draft, everybody's first draft is garbage. What actually distinguishes like a great piece of writing from a mediocre piece of writing, other than the idea is just,
[33:02] how well you're able to go through and polish and compress and, um, you know, make it sing as they say. Um, like I, I would personally argue that I think,
[33:13] revision and editing yourself is a more important skill than just pure putting words on the page. I don't know if you would agree with that or not. But like, when I think about music, I know so many, especially like I went to music school, I studied music, I initially aspired to be a professional musician.
[33:32] I knew so many insanely talented musicians. I still know some insanely talented musicians who, who never made it. And, um, who in many cases were quote unquote, the best musician, you know, of our class or, or, uh, of our cohort, but they didn't make it. And quote unquote, worst musicians did make it in the industry. And,
[34:02] What I've kind of discovered as I've gotten older is that the skill in the music industry isn't actually the pure musicianship. Like the people you hear on the radio aren't the best singers in the world. They're not the best songwriters in the world. They're not – you know, they're not the most talented at their instrument. It's – they have –
[34:28] come across some sort of stylistic or creative – there's something unique about them creatively that they've put together. That the combination of many things works in a way that it doesn't for most people. And like for instance, I have a friend. She is an amazing singer. Like just gorgeous voice. But like her –
[34:56] like the style of music that she does, the audience values other things more than just purely the quality of the voice, right? There's like the image and the energy and the vibe and the stage presence and all this stuff. Like in that genre of music, that is actually the skill that gets you paid. And so I just, I guess where I'm going with this idea is that often like the,
[35:25] The skill that gets you paid in a creative field is often not the skill that you initially assume that it is. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Yeah. And it's – I guess when I was young, that was very disappointing to me. But now that I'm older, I'm like –
[35:42] You know, it's just, I guess it's learning to think about the right things, you know, in what you're doing. I would actually put a different set of skills in there. That's not that I don't agree with you 100%.
[35:59] But then there's the sort of the skill of, how do you do it over a long period of time? How do you manage your emotions? Forgetting about the music itself. Totally. How do you handle rejection and come back again? Yes. That I think are the skills that, well, nobody teaches you that, number one. You don't learn that in school. And I think a lot of the people that do have tremendous talent and don't make it, that's why.
[36:28] They don't have, and a lot of it is self-promotion too. Yes. How do you go on another audition and another audition and learn to present yourself in such a way that people will respond to it? Yeah. Or if you're a writer and you're basically alone in a room, how do you weather the various crises that come up in a two-year project, right, that would knock somebody else off their footing and make them quit?
[36:58] That is such a good point. The emotional process. I realize that too. Like there are a couple – like my roommate in music school to this day is one of the most talented musicians I've ever been around, ever heard in my life. And – but it was funny. He lacked focus.
[37:20] he would start one project and then get excited by this other project and then get excited by this other project. And so he never, he was never able to go like all in on one thing for many, many years. And I would say that's a form of resistance. Yeah. You know, that sort of, uh, whatever, you know, absolutely another. Yeah. And so even though he was, you know,
[37:40] musically just off the charts in terms of talent, the emotional side of it wasn't lined up. I'm sure this is true of athletes too. There must be so many people who are like incredibly fast runners or whatever, but some, who is the one that winds up being Hussein Bolt? There probably are 10 guys out there that could beat him, but they flamed out somewhere along the way.
[38:02] Yeah. It's interesting. If you follow college sports, you run into that. I bet. My dad is just obsessed with college football. And so there –
[38:12] very frequently there are stories of like just this insanely talented 18 year old who can't stop partying, doesn't show up to workouts, you know. Yeah. Johnny Manziel, Johnny Football. Exactly. That's a perfect example. Yeah. Yeah. Do you believe there is this perception or I guess conventional wisdom that to create great art, you have to live this experience.
[38:39] varied, dramatic, tumultuous life. And, uh, you know, you definitely had a lot of wide variety of life experiences. You have this, your bio has this list of all these odd jobs that you worked. And, um, you know, I, I had a wild and crazy twenties lived all over the world. Um, do you think that's necessary? Do you think you have to like
[39:08] go experience a bunch of wild hardship and make catastrophic mistakes? I certainly think some of that helps. Yeah. But I mean, didn't Emily Dickinson like never leave her room or something like, you know? Yeah.
[39:25] Yeah, I do think obviously you have to see a few things, but I think at least for fiction writing, it's coming from the imagination a lot of the time, you know? And I think we also, all of us know a lot more than we think we do and can access things that we don't think we can.
[39:49] Arthur Golden that wrote Memoirs of a Geisha, or somebody Golden wrote, you know, a male Jewish guy, right? A Western guy was able to put himself in the mind of a Japanese geisha in the 1930s and 20s. And where did that come from? He didn't do that, you know?
[40:08] So the imagination is a big thing. I think, yeah, I don't know if you have to do too much of that stuff, but just enough. Yeah. So you don't damage yourself. You don't want to get over the, you know. I also think there's a tendency to like glamorize –
[40:33] artists who have suffered. Yeah, yeah. You know, look at like the Kurt Cobains and the, you know, Amy Winehouses. And I think there's a faulty assumption that it's like, oh, you kind of have to be that way. But this comes back to the skill is not the skill, right? Like, Kurt Cobain wasn't emotionally equipped to have a full career. Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of those kind of like
[41:02] emotionally unstable artists flame out like that frequently. On the other hand, to take the other side, I was thinking of a mentor of mine named Paul Rink that we were once talking about a guy that we both knew
[41:19] who had been like a merchant seaman. He'd been in the war. He was in jail and was finally, was succeeding as a writer and had really found his groove in his 60s or something like that. And I said to Paul, how do you explain it? The guy's been through so much crap and he can still do it? And Paul said something like,
[41:38] suffering has never hurt any writer that I know of. You know? Yeah. And so there's something to that in a way too. Sure. As long as it's not so much that breaks your heart and you can't do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's probably some combination of the hardship and the struggle plus a certain amount of like self-awareness and ability to like communicate. Yeah.
[42:04] Like I'll speak it for my own self for a minute here. Sure. Gates of Fire is a book about the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, right? And so I've never fought with a spear and a shield. I don't know anything about that. It's all entirely imaginary. But yet my time in the Marine Corps gave me a little bit of a sense of what –
[42:28] you know, men in groups are like and what that sort of thing is. But then the imagination has to take it the last 90 yards, you know? Right, right. Yeah. So you've used a couple –
[42:42] War analogies just in our conversation already. You're a veteran, former Marine. Most of your fiction, all of your fiction is military fiction. Pretty much it's all war related, yeah. And then even your nonfiction books, talking about the creative processes, there's so much language around conflict, battle, war, resistance. I'm curious, how did your –
[43:11] time in the military inform your, your creativity or teach you about creativity? I mean, I'm, I'm not sure it really did too much, but I, I certainly see life as a battle and each day as a battle, you know, um,
[43:31] in like the first chapter of the Daily Press Field, my newest book, said that the title of the chapter is Resistance Wakes Up With Me, which it does. And it's sort of, you know, it's like people ask me maybe, or anybody, when in your day do you first experience resistance? And I always say, the minute I open my eyes,
[43:51] Right. So in other words, my the way I experience a day is I wake up and there's like an enemy immediately, you know, and that enemy is trying to make me stay in bed.
[44:03] of fuck off any way I can, right? Like Arnold Schwarzenegger has a thing when he talks about, I just saw this on Instagram or something of like when he wakes up in the morning and he opens his eyes, his motto is don't think. He says, get out of bed, get out of bed and go to the gym. If you start to think, that's the voice of resistance. So that's the enemy.
[44:25] that's going to try to undermine you and try to sabotage you. And to me, that's just the fabric of reality. Maybe you don't experience life like that, but I do. I feel like I have to win each day. If I don't, you know, give me another four days and I'll be an alcoholic. You know, it won't take very long, right? I'll go spiral down something. So,
[44:45] I guess that's why. I don't even really know why so many of my books have been war-themed. I'm just pulled to that. Yeah. Because it's a metaphor for the way I view life. It is clearly so helpful for...
[44:58] thousands and thousands of people to... I mean, I find it interesting in that it's almost like your fiction is kind of about external conflict, and then the nonfiction is about the internal conflict. Exactly. I think that's just how I look at it. I'll give you another metaphor that's the opposite of a military metaphor for a creative person, and that is the metaphor of a mother, that if you think about...
[45:20] an artist or a creative person, we're bringing something new into the world. We're pregnant with something, right? And while that thing is gestating inside of us, it's everything, right? Our ego, we don't care about ourselves. Everything is to protect this new life that's inside of us. And a mother, like compare a mother to a warrior,
[45:43] A mother will run into a burning building, you know, to save her child, right? She'll pick up a Buick with her bare hands. Right. And even once the child is born and is out there, it doesn't stop. The mother is still, you know, protective. And everything that she does is to enhance, you know, that child. So that's another great way, I think, more of a feminine way to think of this, the creative wars, you know? Yeah.
[46:13] I've thought about that quite a bit.
[46:17] It's like, you know, the things you create as children, and it's like, none of them turn out perfect, but you still love them all, like, equally. And the world accepts some more than others, but like, you know, you still love them all equally. I've, it's a fun way to look at it. You often talk about the concept of a muse, but like in the ancient Greek sense. And you also mentioned the, like, trusting the mystery.
[46:46] Like, what does that mean? Let me just describe for our listeners or viewers of who the muses were, just to start. They were Greek goddesses, nine sisters, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, which means memory. And their job was to inspire artists. And there was a muse of epic poetry, a muse of dance, a muse of music, blah, blah, blah, right?
[47:14] And the sort of the classic image of the goddess is Beethoven or somebody at the piano and this sort of spectral female figure is at his ear kind of whispering in his ear, you know, that kind of thing.
[47:31] So I think that when you work in any kind of creative art for a period of time, you have to – you realize that the ideas that you have are not coming from you. I'm sure you would agree with this, Mark, right? They're coming from somewhere else, right? Sure. And we're just sort of the channel that they come through. So that idea of these goddesses, of the muse, you know, flying around overhead really resonates with me. And I really sort of feel that –
[48:00] My job as an artist is to do whatever the muse tells me to and to be open to any impulse or intuition or idea that's coming in from another dimension of reality. Maybe it's your unconscious. I think it's somewhere out there in some other place. But that's, so, you know, as I'm working on one project, and you're probably the same way,
[48:30] Part of me is always looking out for the next one, you know, side of my, and I'm waiting for the phone call, you know, from the muse, you know, or the radio signal or whatever. And when it comes, then I feel like, ah, that's great. Thank you, you know. Yeah. And my job is just to serve that idea. That's how I sort of view the whole creator. I didn't always. Sure. But I do now. It's interesting because it's similar to the, you know, the waking up thing. It's like...
[48:57] Don't think too hard about it. Yeah. When it shows up, don't judge it. Don't analyze it. Yeah. Don't obsess over it. Yeah. Like, it's just kind of like... It knows a lot better than we do. Right. We may think we know, but we don't. Yeah. For me, it shows up a lot. Like, sometimes I'll have an idea...
[49:16] I mean, I have ideas all the time and I'll be like, oh, cool. That's an idea. But it's sometimes there are ideas that just persist. They like – it's like they get lodged in my brain. And I mean, some of them have been there for years. What do you do with ideas, Mark? Do you like write them down or dictate them into your phone or how does it work for you? I will take –
[49:38] I'll take some notes. So I have various, I've actually got a folder in my Google Drive just called book ideas. And there's probably a dozen little documents there. With anything- I do too, by the way. Okay, yeah. And it's anything from, I mean, some of them are literally just like,
[49:58] three sentences, three bullet points and maybe a title. Whereas others are like more fleshed out outlines, examples, you know, even full paragraphs written. But it's interesting because some of them, it's like a lot, most, I'd say most ideas that come, they're gone within a day or two. Every once in a while, you'll get one that sticks around for a while.
[50:20] It maybe feels really pertinent for like a couple months or maybe a year. And then every once in a while, there's, you know, probably could count on one hand. One will show up and it just sticks year after year after year until you make it. And then it goes away. And then you don't want to have anything to do with it.
[50:44] I'm so sick of you. Yeah. I find sometimes that an idea will come to me and I'll reject it immediately. You know, oh, that's a dumb idea, you know, but I might write it down. Sure. And...
[51:00] Maybe three months later or six months later, I'll look at it and I'll go, wow, that is a good idea. And then I will start, you know, to get some traction, you know, and I'll start to actually, let me put a little time in on this to see where it goes. Yeah. Yeah, but a lot of times, for me at least, the first flush of an idea is like it's rejection of the call. You know, I'll blow it off right away. Oh, that's a dumb idea. And then later, I'll go, yeah, that was a pretty good idea, you know. It's almost like a screening mechanism, right?
[51:30] the bad ideas will go away. Like they won't come back, but like the good ones will come back. Yeah. It's like the muse keeps knocking on the window. Yeah. Yeah. Don't forget that one. Yeah. Yeah. This is a good one. Yeah. Where do you go for inspiration?
[51:46] I watch movies. I read books. I'm always trying to steal something. That's another thing. Seriously, this is a great lesson from advertising. I remember as a junior copywriter and I'm working with an old-time art director, a guy named Zoltan Medveki, a great mentor to me. And I remember we had an assignment. We had to do an ad for something. And he immediately pulls out his trays of art books and old stuff. And I said, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? And he says, I'm stealing. Sure.
[52:15] And everybody does this, right? You look for, oh, that's a look we want. But he would always say, it's not stealing if you put a spin on it, if you give it a little bit of a twist. So I always try to steal from anywhere I possibly can. I mean, the legend of Bagger Vance is the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, just stolen, lock, stock, and barrel, and just translated from a war environment to a golf environment. Yeah.
[52:43] That's wild. That's totally wild. The advertising thing is – it's so interesting. First of all, there's so many successful authors who have backgrounds in advertising. Yeah, true. It's really interesting. And directors, Ridley Scott, you know, so on and so forth. Yeah.
[52:59] That's a – I'm not surprised. I studied copywriting when I was fairly young. I studied it because I was just trying to sell shit on the internet. So I also wasn't particularly excited or passionate about it. But –
[53:17] It's when young, when aspiring writers reach out to me, it's, it's often a common piece of advice that I give to them is a, is learn basic copywriting just because. That is a good piece of advice. Because copywriting teaches you to think about attention and hooking people. And I think as, as an author, I think.
[53:38] or a writer of any sort, ultimately what you're doing is you're, you're grabbing people's attention. Yeah, exactly. And you have to think like, you know, what's the best way to open this chapter? Yeah. You know, what's the best way to proceed from this idea to this idea? And, and I've just found it like, oh,
[53:55] overwhelmingly useful in my career. Actually, I have a book. I don't know if it's in this thing called Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit. Are you familiar with that one? And that really was sort of the lesson of advertising because everybody hates advertising and nobody wants to read it. So if you're writing an ad or storyboarding a TV commercial, you have to ask yourself in the teeth of that resistance, the people that hate what I'm about to sell, preparation age or something...
[54:21] How can I engage them? You know? How clever, what, I mean, you've got to come up with the most clever thing you possibly can, showing respect to the audience, right? And the same thing, like you say, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, how do I start this? How do I keep people going? You know? Because nobody wants to read it, you know? You've got to really hook them. It's got to be good. Yeah, it does. Air tight. Like not, as you said, not a wasted word. Yeah. Tell us about the daily press field.
[54:52] Okay, The Daily Pressfield is my newest book. I actually got the idea from Ryan Holiday. He told me this. He has a book, The Daily Stoic. You know, a 365-day thing that you read each, you know. And he said, you know, you've got so much content, you should do something like that. So I thought, as I'm thinking about this, that's a good idea. I thought...
[55:12] How could I take the material that's in The War of Art and Turning Pro and these other books in separate little books and put it together in a way that somebody could use as they were working on a project of their own, like if they were taking a year long thing? And I thought the 365 day format is a great way to do that because you can sort of start at day one. Yeah.
[55:34] And we were talking about, you and I, about second act horrors. Right? In the middle of the book, you're going to have a section about the second act. And then in the end, you're going to have a section about the terror that you get when you're close to the end. So I just thought that format, the daily...
[55:51] The Daily Press, actually Ryan gave me that title. I would never be egomaniacal enough to do that. But so I think it's a 365 day format is a great way to kind of coach somebody through all of the shit that you're gonna run into, all of the meant what we were talking about, the mindset. So that's what the Daily Press field is, it's brand new. And I sent you, we don't have it here. I totally fucked up. It's all right.
[56:20] Can I make a little pitch to the camera? Yeah. Do the pitch. Do whatever you want because I – my wife cleaned the office and we – I had a whole stack of books and they disappeared. I won't blame her. Yeah.
[56:35] But the Daily Pressfield is self-published. My girlfriend, Diana, designed the book, blah, blah, blah. It's a beautiful book. She did a great job. Yeah. And one of the ways we tried to make it different from what you would get from Simon & Schuster or something like that is we created like a really special gift pack that came with the book.
[56:56] and gave a secondary exercise book, some cards, some other goodies, all kinds of stuff. And that would be a great gift if you know somebody that's struggling and needs to kind of get it together. And so if you can't get this from Amazon or in a bookstore, you have to get it from my website, which is just my name, stephenpressfield.com.
[57:22] And it's more expensive, but it's a great gift and a big, a really pretty package. Amazing. We'll link to that in the show notes. And the next time I start on the next book. Tell your wife to clean up too much. The next book that I start on, I can go through it. Okay, you can do it. I'll let you know how it goes. Like you don't know it enough.
[57:46] Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Hey, Mark, this is great. Thank you for the great questions. We got to do this again. Yeah, absolutely. This is a great conversation. I think we've only touched, scratched the surface. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks a lot for having me. It's great. Cool. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burney. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.

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