Life-Changing Books Podcast Episode 49. Steven Pressfield: Author of The War of Art

Stephen, thank you so much for coming on the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great, Nick, and thank you very much for having me. I'm looking forward to plunging in.

You have been awake since 5:45 this morning, you said, and that is Pacific— 4:45 this morning. Yeah. Wow. That is early because I'm out here on the East Coast. You're on the West Coast. So, I'll make sure that I bring the energy and we can have a fun conversation. For those in the audience that aren't familiar with your work, and I'm sure there aren't that many, can you introduce yourself to everybody?

Um, I am a writer. Um, probably the 2 books that most people might have heard of, of me, are right behind you: The War of Art, which is about the craft of writing, and Gates of Fire, which is a fictional, uh, historical fiction about the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae. And, um, you know, I'm sure we'll get into my whole story here. So let's call it that, you know, let's start top of that.

Okay, perfect. Well, let's dive into the story. So I read that you wrote for 17 years before you ever ended up making a single dollar from your writing. And then funny enough, the money that you earned was for a screenplay, an option in a screenplay that was never actually produced. So let's go back to those early days. What got you initially interested in writing?

My first job, it was in advertising in New York. I was like a junior copywriter at Benton& Bowles. And I had a boss named Ed Hannibal who quit and wrote a novel, and it was a success. It was an overnight success. Overnight he became a star. So, I was 22 years old and I said, well, shit, why don't I do that? You know? What could possibly go wrong? So, that's— that was up until then, I had never even really thought about it, you know.

Mm-hmm.

From that initial attempt, which became an utter fiasco and kind of sent me spiraling down the rat hole, I sort of felt like I was just driven by shame to keep going until I finally could, you know, achieve something. And so, that was a long— that was how that odyssey began.

Yeah, and then it was another 10 years, if I'm not mistaken, before you first published a novel. So 27 years in the making, 21 different jobs, 11 different states. And I did have a question for you based on reading The War of Art. Was the Marines your most miserable job, or was there something else that sort of taught you to embrace the suck, as they say?

I had a lot of miserable jobs, but no, the Marine Corps was not. Probably my most depressing job was I worked as a sculptor's assistant, and And I was, you know, a welding sculptor's assistant who actually was a wonderful guy, but my job was to sort of to weld little lily pads, to cut them out with tin snips out of a thing of brass and weld little lily pads that would go on a frog sculpture.

Oh, wow.

And other sort of things like that. And that was, that was, that was one of the worst ones.

Did I read that you were also a fruit picker for a little while? That's an interesting position.

I did pick apples for a season in Washington State, which is Sounds idyllic. It sounds like, you know, you're under the apple trees, you know, but it was really, really hard, hard labor, bunkhouse-type labor.

Well, it's funny. I just got back. We were talking about my sort of nomadic lifestyle. I just got back from Colombia in South America. And I did—

Good for you.

I did a half a day as a coffee picker. And although it is idyllic and you can sort of envision what that is like on a Wednesday morning, picking coffee in the mountains outside of Medellín, I can imagine how day after day after day that would get pretty tiring and pretty repetitive, especially in the days before headphones and music and iPods and things like that.

Yes.

The reason that I decided to bring this up is because you mentioned that you want aspiring writers to learn from your mistakes and avoid these situations. And so to say that it took you this long, there are some faster ways maybe that you can get to a published book or to get your work out there. So That's why I wanted to bring that up.

But now that actually I hear you say that, Nick, I really think that in a lot of ways you sort of have to go through what you have to go through. And I certainly think for me, I mean, I'm not saying this for other people, but for me, I think I really needed to go to have the full course, you know, to get to— I'm just a really slow learner. It took me a long time.

Yeah, well, it, uh, it certainly paid off. And so, as I mentioned before the episode too, I was reading on your website that your fictional 96-year-old literary agent has a couple of mantras for young writers. And since we do have a lot of young writers in the audience, or aspiring writers in the audience, I'd love to have you talk a little bit about those and what they mean to you.

By the way, my real agent right now, Sterling Lord— I just did an Instagram post about this— He's 100 years old.

Oh, wow.

And so I had— and in fact, he just made the deal like a year ago on my newest book, A Man at Arms. So at 100 years old, he's still— but my fictional agent was actually a real agent. He seemed that he— like he was 96. I think he was only 70 or something at the time. But one of his mantras was that talent is bullshit. And he definitely believed that hard work was what it was all about. And what he said was that he had seen a million writers with talent coming oozing out of their fingertips, but if they don't have the perseverance and the tenacity to stick to it, and if they, if they get precious, if their ego gets in the way, if they're not kind of willing to, uh, to listen to other people, that talent Hard work burns out, talent flames out. So that was one of his mantras, but it's really, it's me saying that really, even though he said that too. I'm a believer that talent is vastly overrated, that it's the hard work that really pays off.

Yeah, there's that saying that I love, which is hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. And so—

I never heard that before. That's definitely true.

Yeah, oftentimes you see very talented people that struggle a lot with the resistance, which we'll get to in a minute. But before we dive into some specific questions about The War of Art and my feedback for you on the book, I wanted to start with The Legend of Bagger Vance because it was turned into a film directed by Robert Redford and acted out by Will Smith and Matt Damon and Charlize Theron. And so I'm a Boston guy, and I was wondering if you got to go to the set of the movie as it was being filmed and if Matt Damon taught you a Boston accent and what it might sound like.

No, but I will say this. Well, the first thing they did when they optioned the book was to fire me.

Ah.

Which, of course, makes a lot of sense. That's what happens in the movie business when a director like Robert Redford comes on board a project. He wants to make it his project, and the first person he wants to do it— so anyway, they let me visit for one day. You know, it was like, time— you know, here's a cup of coffee, there's the van to take you back to the airport. But I will say of Matt Damon, by far he was the nicest guy on the set. Way, way— he was the only guy that I would say was a, was a real human being, you know. So I've been a big fan of his ever since, that he's a good guy and I wish him all the best.

That's fantastic. So you said in your introduction that you're a writer. Just to set the stage one more time for everybody, how many books have you published and what year was that first book published in?

The first year I think was 1995, and I was like 53, 52, 53 years old, and I've done— I think this is the 20th one coming out now.

Wow, that's fantastic. Yeah, it does show for a lot of aspiring writers in the audience that you need to go through the process and that it does take a lot of time. I— we live in an instant gratification world sometimes where, where younger professionals, they just want to shortcut everything and Your mission there or your message is very pure. It takes a long time.

Yeah, it certainly did for me. This, you're right, this is a culture of instant gratification of, you know, do a video that goes viral and the next thing you know, you're a star. And, you know, one of the things I always say is if you were, if your ambition was to be a concert pianist or a brain surgeon and you had a time schedule, you'd say, well, it's going to take me 13, 14, 15 years to learn this stuff, right? But yet somehow to be a writer, you figure, oh, and I did myself. I thought, oh, I'll just knock it out of the park, you know, in 6 months.

How long does it take you to write the average book? And I'm sure that it varies.

Not too much. It's maybe 2 to 3 years.

2 to 3 years. And then what about for The War of Art specifically?

That was a real quickie. That came out in about 4 months or something like that.

You know, What's surprising about that book is the way that it was written. I mean, I've read hundreds and hundreds of nonfiction books, and you followed a very unique style. Do you think that happened because you came from the world of fiction first, or did you just have this vision for the book in your mind and you said, let me go execute against it?

Well, let me ask you, Nick, when you say you thought it was a unique style, what do you mean by that?

So your book is broken down into 3 sections, and there's almost— I don't know what you would call them— mini essays, you know, 1-page-long, 2-page-long essays that fill up. And there aren't chapter titles like there are in a lot of standard nonfiction books that, that maybe have 12 to 24 chapters and each chapter has subchapters. Like, you've written little essays and it comes to life. I mean, I really love the way that you wrote it.

You know, I'm not sure how— you know, I have to credit my dear friend and editor, Shawn Coyne. He came up with the title. The War of Art was his. I called it The Writer's Life, which was a terrible title. And I basically gave him a giant pile of pages and he broke— he's a big believer, and I am too, in 3-act structure, you know, that anything you should break into 3 acts. And so, he did that. And I thought it was a great way of organizing the book. As far as the short chapters go, I just— and that book at the time when it came out in 2002 was really short. Because nowadays books have gotten so short that The War of Art starts to look like War and Peace, you know? But you know what, what I was kind of preaching there was a kind of a no bullshit way of looking at things. And so it called for kind of quick, short chapters that just would sort of punch the reader in the face, I hoped.

Yeah, I got punched in the face a few times. I had skimmed the book a couple of times in the past because people would direct me to a certain page or a certain portion of the book. And for whatever reason, this was my first time really going through and reflecting on every single page. And I've got to say, the book did punch me in the face. I came face to face with a lot of things that I deal with, and it gave a lot of the resistance that I face on a day-to-day basis sort of a new life. I mean, it created this entity that I could understand a little bit more. So you say that The War of Art is about work, not about genius. So what do you mean by that?

I don't know. When did I say that?

I read it on the website. I read it on the website.

you know, iteration of what my 96-year-old fictional agent said.

Yeah.

I really do believe that genius is vastly overrated and you can't get by on that alone, even if you had it. And that basically any sort of creative enterprise, whether you're a choreographer or a software developer or an entrepreneur or a dancer, an actor, a writer, whatever, filmmaker, the main issue that you come up with is your own resistance, your own internal self-sabotage, much more so than the problems of the actual work. The actual trying to make a novel work or make a movie work is nothing compared to overcoming your own tendency to sabotage yourself, I think, at least in my life. And so the way to do that is through some form of a work ethic. And some form of a professional mindset that says at the start, if you know you're going to go into something for 2 years, 2 and a half years, you got to really set your mind, you know, like a movie director who takes on a project and knows Francis Ford Coppola is going to shoot Apocalypse Now in Vietnam or the Philippines, wherever the hell he was, you know, knowing that he's going to have a heart attack, his star is going to have a heart attack, you know, the financing is going to run out, et cetera, et cetera. steeling yourself mentally and having the mental toughness and the work ethic to just keep grinding rather than imagining that through pure genius or talent, you can knock it out of the park, you know, in a week or something like that.

Yeah, no, it's a really interesting way of phrasing things. And I think it's a very important lesson for everybody to learn. Like I said, especially people who are looking for instant gratification. I just interviewed another author the other day. And in her book, it's a recent book, called Self-Publish and Succeed. She references you a lot because her main message to everybody is the book writing process takes 1 to 2, maybe even 2+ years. And a lot of people are trying to self-publish, they shortcut with Amazon, the book hasn't been edited, it hasn't been well thought out, the process only took maybe a month or 2. And so she points that— she points back to that, to be a professional, you need to understand it's going to take a lot of time and effort. What I'd like to do is sort of paint this, this picture of resistance for everybody and try to articulate some of my biggest takeaways, which might be a little harder for me to do than you might be able to. But I loved in the introduction, or right in the beginning of the book, you have a quote that says, are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what resistance is. And so, so many of us face those problems. We get out of bed and then we're just faced with this like dreary blah. I don't know what to do next. And so how did you come up with that metaphor? And when did you start to form this idea of like resistance as maybe something that you could describe in that way?

It took me a long time, Nick. It was, you know, I— when I quit advertising to try to write a novel, I put in like about 2 years of writing. And I had no business writing a novel. I had no clue what a story was. I had no work ethic, nothing. But I got to the very end, you know, within like, you know, a few days of finishing it. And I just freaked out. I blew it up. I blew my marriage up. I blew my life up. And that, that was pure Resistance, Resistance with a capital R, defeating me. And I had no clue, no clue it even existed, no clue to it at all. And then I knocked around to working a million jobs, kind of running away from, from writing. And finally, when I sort of got back into it and started to actually try to write seriously, I realized that there was this force that had been kicking my ass all this time. And I thought that I was just a bum and a loser and I didn't have it, I was crazy, whatever. But I sort of just gave a name to this force and called it resistance, which is what it felt like to me because it would resist me. You know, I want to write something and this force was resisting me, you know, distracting me, making me procrastinate. making me, you know, go into 1,000 dead ends chasing women, whatever, you know? And once I sort of gave it a name for myself, and at that time I thought, I must be the only person in the world that has this. Nobody else experiences this but me. I'm the only— but once I gave a name to it, then I could overcome it a little bit. I could say in the morning when that horrible feeling would hit me as soon as I opened my eyes, you know, let's procrastinate, let's go Go to the beach, you know, whatever, that I could say, oh, that's not me talking, that's this force. And it's my job to overcome it. So I need to develop the habits and the willpower, et cetera, et cetera. And at that point, you know, I did start to get a handle on it, but it took, I don't know, 7 or 8 years of just totally being knocked around and beaten up without any clue that it existed or that there was this force.

Well, I think a lot of us end up in that position. You know, even though you've sold so much and the book has gained a lot of notoriety, there are a lot of people who are unaware and they can't articulate or describe this force that's holding them back. There's an equation that— this is one of those lines that punched me in the face in the beginning of the book, which is, most of us have 2 lives: the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the 2 stands resistance. So there's a little bit of math. It's like, Up here you have the potential, sort of the ultimate version of you, and then down here you have what you currently are, and in between stands the resistance. And personal development, I mean, it's why this podcast exists. It's why these books are behind me. It can help a lot of people close that gap, and you sort of defined it as, as that gap. So, man, I wish you could quantify like the difference between where we are today, most of us on average, and sort of the potential that we have, because I think everybody would read the book if they understood that gap. Yeah.

Well, you know, actually in Jewish mysticism, my rabbi, Rabbi Mordechai Finley, explained this to me one time when— and he had read The War of Art a bunch of times and he was definitely, you know, it meant a lot to him. And in Kabbalistic, in the Kabbalistic lexicon of Jewish mysticism, there's a concept that we exist on this level, the material level, and above us is the soul or the neshamah in Hebrew. And that the soul is trying to communicate to us, like they say that above every blade of grass is an angel crying, grow, grow, right? And from the bottom, we're trying to reach up to the neshamah, to the soul. And in between it, according to Jewish mysticism, is a force that's called the Yetzer Hara. And what Rabbi Finley said to me, he said, what the Yetzer Hara is, what you would call resistance, Steve. And so that really opened my eyes to something. I thought, oh, I'm not the only one that thought of this, that this exists in other, you know, disciplines and other points of view. So that's definitely, I think, the way the world works. A high level, a low level, and a force in between trying to stop the 2 levels from communicating.

There are a lot of disciplines that rely on sort of those 2 differences. Like, I think of sales as an example, since I've read so many sales books, and I saw some time selling. Your prospect has an ideal solution. And here's where they currently are. And if you can close that gap, then they'll buy your product. And I think if we can close that gap of resistance in whatever discipline that we live in, I mean, we can become more successful, we can become happy. And there's a quote that I'll read to everybody about unhappiness. You say that resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and erectile dysfunction, which makes me smile. I think it's true. I think it is the most toxic force on the planet.

I agree. I couldn't— you know, that's—

it is.

I mean, I think if you look at even— we said we weren't getting into politics, and we won't. But if you look at the polarization that's going on in America today, I mean, I'm a believer that each individual that was part of whatever group it was, and you could really get into their minds and their souls, you would see so many of them hung up on some form of resistance in the sense that they have a dream that they're absolutely not fulfilling. And they're unconscious of this, unconscious that they've been defeated by this force of resistance. And so they project their frustration outward. Pick an enemy, pick the other side, if you're right, it's the left, if you're left, it's right, whatever. And rather than face that, rather than face the fact that they're not living up to their own dream, they're not following, you know, on the path to becoming who they already really are, that energy, that becomes dark energy and it becomes deflected into some sort of outer hostility towards You name it, pick a subject, pick a topic, pick a target. That's it.

Well, I do enjoy conversations, I suppose, about meta-politics, you know, and, and that's really interesting. So with your understanding of resistance, if, if the main problem is the resistance, it's the dark energy, what, what can we do as the United States to start to fight against this? Is it just become more aware of the resistance? How does that happen in your mind?

I mean, I think obviously it happens on a totally individual level. I don't think there's any way to do this on any collective level.

Yeah.

It has to be. And all of us are dealing with it in one way or another. Like the quote that you just read, each of us have 2 lives, the life we live and the unlived life within us. You know, and the unlived life within us is that dream that we might have, that vision of who we might be, the realized self we might be. And the only way to bring that forth is through introspection, to find out what that is, what the dream is, first of all, and then to face up to it and take whatever steps. And I find that from people I know and for myself, as soon as you take the first step, it doesn't have to be more than 20 minutes, a great weight lifts off you. And you say to yourself, oh my God, it's like I see the light. You know, it's a long path ahead. You know, it's going to take a lot, a lot of work and a lot of commitment. But at least you can kind of see, oh, this is why I've been so miserable. And this is why my life has been going nowhere for so long. Because I just haven't faced that dream of mine and taken a step to realize it.

I think a lot of these principles are more important today than they ever have been because social media, it creates this illusion of success for most people. You're looking at snapshots in time, people's best moments. It creates a lot of anxiety. And then politics is more cutthroat than it ever has been. And it's just mining our attention, right? It's sucking our attention away. And so the resistance grows stronger and stronger and stronger because we're sort of like lulled into submission. I think as a general population, it's a pretty scary thing to think about.

Yeah, I agree with you, Nick, but I would say it's a little differently. I think, like in my parents' generation, the dream as someone grew up was to go to work for a company like General Motors or IBM or Westinghouse, where you would have a job for your whole life, right?

Mm-hmm.

And you would have security, medical, blump-a-da-bump-a-da-bump, right? And what's happened over the last 40 or 50 years is that sort of imagined contract between the employer and the employee has gone away.

Mm-hmm.

We've all seen people that they were like 3 days from collecting their pension and Westinghouse fires them, or industries just go bust, they just vanish. The steel industry goes away, et cetera, et cetera. So, we as individuals, I think these days are thrown back more and more into we're almost forced to become entrepreneurs in some way. We're almost forced to somehow be our own brand, right? And whereas in the old days, you didn't have to do that. You could just kind of plug into, you know, people go to work for the post office and stay that for the rest of your life, right?

Yeah.

And so, when you're forced back into asking yourself, who am I? What do I really love? What is my gift? What can I give to the world? How can I make some money out of this? How can I monetize whatever I love? Then you're really running into resistance because now you're asking those key questions. Who am I? Why am I here? Et cetera. And that's why, you know, social media amplifies that tremendously, like you say, because we're constantly seeing people on the beach with their beautiful boyfriends or girlfriends throwing a beach ball, whatever. And we feel like, oh man, my life is so lame compared to that.

Yeah.

The pressure is on these days to sort of find your calling. And I confess, I'm probably guilty of contributing to that, you know, but there is a lot of pressure on people today and maybe too much.

Yeah, there is a lot of pressure. And you say that resistance, and this is a really interesting point too, based on what you just said, resistance is directly proportional to sort of the size of the task at hand. And if the size of the task at hand is to elevate your personal brand to meet the expectations of the average consumer on social media or whatever, in politics to become as educated as possible. Like, those are really big things to attack, and therefore the resistance is that much higher because they're proportional. So that's scary.

Yeah, that's absolutely true. I mean, now there's a good side to that. You know, the analogy that I use is that If you think of a tree in the middle of a meadow, let's say on a sunny day, and the tree is your dream, your novel you want to write, the screenplay you want to write, the nonprofit you want to start, whatever it is, as soon as that dream appears in your mind in the sunny day, there's going to be a shadow. The tree is going to cast a shadow. And the shadow is directly proportionate to the size of the tree. And the shadow is resistance.

Ah.

That's how it comes into— it never— resistance always comes second. There's always a dream first. So the good side of that is if we're feeling tremendous resistance to something, we're super depressed, we're super paralyzed, you know, we're super down on ourselves, that's a good sign because it shows that there's some dream inside us, the tree in the meadow, that is so big that it's casting this giant shadow. Conversely, if we had just a little dream, a little bush in the, you know, just have a little tiny shadow, that wouldn't matter to any of us. But so resistance is directly proportional to the size of the dream that we have. So if we have big resistance, big dream, and that's a good thing.

Yeah. One of my favorite authors, Tim Ferriss, and I know he's a big fan of your work as well, He says, he talks about fear setting and he says, yeah, if you have a lot of opportunities in life, you are going to experience a lot of fear because you're fortunate. You have these opportunities. The dream is larger. That's why you feel the fear. So if you run at the fear, you can sort of destroy the resistance a little bit. And it's a, it's another fun little way to use that analogy.

Yeah.

The positive side to what you're saying too is that resistance arises from within. And that's a comforting thing for somebody like me who's made it this far in the conversation and they hear about the scariness of resistance, but it arises from within, which means it can be controlled. And eventually you can turn into a pro, which we'll talk about in a second. But where did you come up with this, this concept? I mean, it makes total sense. It's logic, but where did you come up with this concept that resistance arises from within and that it doesn't come from an external source?

I'm not sure. It just seems kind of obvious that that's where it's coming from. I mean, maybe it comes from an external source. It's possible that there's some quantum mechanics definition or something of it. But clearly we create our own fear in the case of resistance.

Yeah.

And the proof of that is that once you sort of stare it in the face, it goes away. It's not like it has a life of its own, you know, like a tiger that's standing across it. We're creating it. I don't know if you've ever— every time I mention this, nobody's ever heard of this movie. Have you ever heard of a movie called Forbidden Planet?

Forbidden Planet? Is it an animated— I'm not sure.

It's a great— I'll save you the trouble. It's like from the '50s. It's one of the first sci-fi movies back then with Robby the Robot and Walter Pidgeon. is the star of it, but the sort of the climax of this— of the story is this scientist who, Walter Pidgeon, is on a planet out in space with his own imagination, with his own dark id, ID, has created these monsters that are coming after his family and everything, and they're trying to burn their way like through a steel door, super, super thick steel door. And he has to, in his mind, turn off these monsters. And you can see basically his head explodes. You know, it doesn't really happen like that. But the analogy to resistance is absolutely true that like it's a monster that we create through our own fear. And it's almost like when you look straight at it instead of running for it, it goes away.

Hmm.

So it is self-generated in that sense that It's like a hologram in a way. It just, you know, you pull the plug and the hologram just vanishes. Yeah.

Well, the reason that I, I asked the question, and thank you for explaining that, it does seem goofy when you think like, how did you come up with the fact that it's self-generated? I think once you've achieved the basic level of awareness that it exists, that sort of becomes a little bit more obvious. But there are probably a lot of people out there who wake up every morning and just think this has to be an external Like, I can't get started. There's no way this is me. And I know that we have a lot of that blame game culture nowadays. But once you, once you understand that it's not a peripheral opponent, it's comforting. At least I'm comforted by that because I know that I have control, which is important.

Yeah, that's absolutely true.

Yeah. So book 2 is combating the resistance. Book 1 was defining it, which we just did. Turning pro. I love it when you say resistance hates it when we turn pro. So what do you mean by that?

Well, when you say book 2, you mean book 2 within The War of Art divided into 1, 2, 3 parts. So once we've sort of defined resistance and we say that, okay, there is this force, this negative force, the next question becomes, how do we combat it? You know? And to say pure willpower, sometimes that doesn't work, you know, because we just can't generate enough willpower. Or so anyway, the concept that really helped me, I'll give you the long answer here, which I know you know this from reading it, but sometimes when we're being defeated by resistance, we'll do one of two things. We'll either say that we're sick, there's something wrong with us, we need to go to a shrink, we need to have therapy, we need whatever. The other thing that we might say is that we're guilty of some kind of a sin. we're wrong. And that's what, and then we need to, then we sort of blame, in either case, we blame ourselves. Judgment enters the picture. So I was thinking to myself, trying to figure out how to combat this, how can I get out of this judgment thing and stop judging myself? Because that only makes it worse. So the concept that sort of struck me was maybe the reason I'm having a problem dealing with resistance, is that I'm thinking like an amateur instead of like a pro. And how does an amateur think? If an amateur runs into adversity, an amateur folds, right? An amateur is kind of a weekend warrior. An amateur shows up kind of part-time and will work only until it gets hard and then they'll quit. You know, they'll come up with some excuse of quitting. Whereas a pro, is there every day, early, on the job, ready to do it all day long. If we think of Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or something like that, these guys are consummate pros. And another thing that a pro does is a pro plays hurt. If you're injured, you know, maybe you've tweaked your ankle and you've got to go out to a basketball game or whatever, one way or another, a pro gets it together. Like, Before the Super Bowl, I remember there were questions of would Patrick Mahomes play because he was in a concussion protocol. And players that really knew it, they said he's playing. Don't worry, there's no doubt that he's playing. And I think that that sort of attitude, if we can just think of ourselves as professionals, really gets us over a lot of the hump and gives us, you know, a way of looking at things that isn't so brutal to ourselves, to just say, I'm a professional, today's the day the whistle blew, I'm going to show up.

And so do you need to love the work that you're doing prior to falling in love with sort of the monotonous piece of it, or is that a prerequisite to becoming a professional? Do you need to love your work?

I mean, I think absolutely. In fact, I know where you're sort of getting at, Nick, here. Sometimes people will define an amateur and they'll say, oh, an amateur, which comes from the Latin root to love, right? Amo, amas, amant. An amateur plays a sport or does something because they love it. Whereas a pro, they'll say, oh, they do it just for money. But I think that's exactly the opposite, that the amateur doesn't love it enough. They're just sort of dabbling and they're just sort of playing with it. And if you really love something, like say Tiger Woods or somebody like that, you're in it with both feet. You know, you turn pro, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna do it with your whole soul.

Mm-hmm.

So, I do think you have to love it. And then because tedium is an element of the game as well. You know, if you're Tiger Woods or pick anybody else, you're gonna be hitting 500 to 1,000 balls a day. On the range, working hard, hard, hard, hard, hard. And that is boring, but that's part of the deal. If you want to be a brain surgeon, you've got to, you know, if you want to be a concert pianist, you've got to play a lot of scales and do a lot of kind of tedious stuff. That's being a professional.

When I was a little bit younger and I was playing sports, I grew up in the Boston area, my dad would always say things like, well, you know, Larry Bird, when he was growing up, would hit 500 free throws on his crooked rim before he could go to school, you know, and that kind of stuff. And that's what it takes. You need to have a love of the game in order to be able to tolerate the redundancy of the tasks that you need to sort of complete in order to form the foundation. So it's a beautiful way.

Yes.

And just to explain something that you kind of rephrased for everybody. So in the book, there are 3 acts, as you mentioned, and act number 2 is titled Turning Pro or is about turning pro, but you also have another book about turning pro. So why did you decide to write an entire book on that subject?

I just thought that I hadn't gone into it deeply enough and that there were a lot of other things that I wanted to say. I want to just focus on that alone. And sometimes people will discover Turning Pro, that book, before The War of Art. And that's kind of an interesting phenomenon because it's— the two of them really bleed into each other, of course.

Yeah, they do. Well, that's what I'll be reading next. Somebody on the Book Thinkers team, Jimmy, just reviewed that book for everybody. So Yeah, that got me interested. But, um, book 3 within The War of Art is Beyond Resistance: The Higher Realm. So before we transition off of the book, I'd love to have you explain how the higher realm sort of fits into the picture here.

Well, you know, if, if it's true what we're positing here, that there is such a thing as resistance, and if it's true that, you know, all the things we talk about— the bigger the resistance, the bigger the dream, et cetera, et cetera. Then the question is, what does this all mean? Why is there this thing called resistance? What are the implications of it, you know, for the rest of our psyche, our development, our ability to love, our ability, you know? So that was what part 3 was about for me. And oddly enough, I've heard a lot of people, first time they read The War of Art, they say, well, I love the first 2 parts, but you really got into airy-fairy stuff in the third part. And then oddly enough, a couple of years later, they'll write to me and they'll say, I get it. I've been doing it long enough and now I see exactly what you were talking about. Well, I'll let you take it here, Nick, rather than me just blathering on. Is there something else that you wanted to hit, to pull out in that section?

I'd love to hear your expanded thoughts. I guess the only thing that I would add is that What might be happening with most readers is they're coming in with some sort of basis or foundation in personal development as a genre, nonfiction. Maybe they've read some of these other books, maybe they've struggled with resistance, so it makes a lot of sense to them, but they haven't been dealing with it long enough to sort of understand the meta-conversation. And, and so maybe that's what's happening, but you know better than I do. So what else would you like to add about that?

Well, I'll just cite one chapter in in that third part of the book, which is a line from the poet William Blake, who was kind of a visionary British poet. And he said, eternity is in love with the creations of time. Now, let me deconstruct that.

Mm-hmm.

What he meant by that, I think, if we're talking about 2 levels of reality, the material world that we are, the time-bound world where there is such a thing as time and the higher realm where there is no such thing as time, no such thing as death, no such thing as separation into individuals. You know, it's the realm where the gods live, the realm of pure potentiality. What he's saying when he says eternity, he means this upper dimension. And when he says eternity is in love with the creations of time, he means the creations of time, would be the book that you would write, or the symphony that I would write, or the dance that someone would create. And when Blake says eternity is in love with that, what he's saying on the metaphysical level is that that higher realm actively participates in this lower realm. And if you and I have a dream that we want to bring forth, there will be forces, cosmic forces that will ally themselves with us and provide us with a tailwind and get us going. That when you and I sit down at the typewriter, write a novel or whatever it is, we're not alone. And I would call those forces, I call them simply the muse, you know, from the Greek goddesses whose job it was to inspire artists. But very definitely, Just as there is a negative force of resistance that's trying to stop us from achieving our goals, there is a positive force that's a tailwind that, you know, from the Big Bang on, there's a force of creation that wants to bring into existence on the material plane, the dreams that exist only in potential. Beethoven sits down and goes, da da da dum, right? and something helps him produce that symphony that comes from that. So that's why Act 3 of The War of Art gets into kind of airy-fairy stuff where I'm saying, and I utterly believe this 100% from my 50 years of slaving and doing this, that there is a goddess, there is a muse, there are forces of the higher realm that are our allies and that will come to our aid if we show ourselves to be good soldiers and loyal servants of the muse.

Yeah, well, I'm, I'm a firm believer in that, that higher plane as well. And, uh, you know, what you just said reminds me of a couple different things. I guess one question would be, have you read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho?

I have, yeah. Yeah, and I think, I think it's a terrific book. Yeah.

I think it's a terrific way to look at that higher plane, to state your intentions to the world and, and watch the world manifest these things or help you to manifest these things. So I guess for people that are listening and interested in maybe a softer introduction, that would be a fun recommendation for people. But, uh, what do you read about the higher realm? Are there specific texts that you would recommend?

Let me just say one thing about what you were just talking about, the alchemist. And sometimes I think that concept gets what's the word, misappropriated or misapprehended. And like, there was a book called The Secret.

The Secret.

Yeah. The whole thing about the law of attraction, basically that was turning into some sort of a magical thing that if you put your intentions out to the universe, all of a sudden the Cadillac's going to appear in your driveway, you know. And of course, that's complete bullshit. Once you put your intentions out, then Work for another 30 years.

Yes.

You know, and utterly dedicated. And then you yourself, with the aid of those forces, will produce, you know, that Cadillac. Yeah, I mean, that metaphorical Cadillac.

No, I think that's a very important line to draw as well for everybody listening. I'll never forget when I first read about the reticular activating system in your brain, which is like the filtering mechanism. And so when you say yellow car, and then you go outside and you see a yellow car, for the first time in a month, it's not because the yellow car appeared, it's because you're filtering for it. And so, what's nice about stating your intentions, it's not that it'll materialize out of thin air, but it's that you'll be able to focus and filter for opportunities maybe that you can then go execute on for 30 years that maybe you weren't aware of before. And so, very different. Yeah, very, very important line to draw.

Very different, yes.

Well, I'd love before I ask a couple of final questions, fan questions, and we wrap up to discuss Amanda at So can you tell everybody about the book that just came out?

Man at Arms, you know, I, in addition to my books like The War of Art and Turning Pro, I also write real books, you know, stories, fiction. And Gates of Fire, the book behind your shoulder there, Tim, is one of them. And I wrote about 5 or 6 books set in the ancient world. That was kind of my métier, my place. And about 13 years ago, I decided I'm going back to the modern world, but I've always wanted to return to that ancient world that I love. So this book, A Man at Arms, is kind of a— it's a— the hero of it is one of the recurring characters from my other books, and it's set in Jerusalem and the Sinai Desert a few years after the crucifixion. And its hero is like a Clint Eastwood type of gunslinger of the ancient world, using a sword and stuff like that. And it's basically a Western. It takes place in the Sinai Desert. It's kind of a chase story with the Romans as the bad guys, and this hero as kind of the Clint Eastwood type of character. But it's sort of the summation of everything I'd been writing In in these in these ancient books, and also the it's a sort of a passage from fear to love in a in a in a shorthand way. Anyway, it's an ancient world story after 13 years of trying to bring it back again.

Well, I'll tell you that I actually grew up fascinated by the ancient world. I was the kid who ran around with probably like a a mismatch of things, maybe a Viking helmet and sword, but you know, armor from maybe the Roman soldiers or legions, and I would be talking about dragons and things like that. I know that it's not based, you know, in the dragon sphere of things, but, um, historical fiction— I mean, what, what initially got you interested in the ancient world, and why did you decide to write in that space?

You know, as we've been talking about the muse, we've been talking about inspiration and stuff like that, and I'm definitely a believer that we don't choose the books we're going to write.

Uh-huh.

The books choose us. And after— The Legend of Bagger Vance was my first book. So, after that, I'm now a published author, but in an area, a mystical golf novel, that there's no way to follow that with anything, right?

Yeah.

So, you might as well just be starting from scratch. So, I've always been like you, a lover of the ancient world. And I just thought about the Battle of Thermopylae, the 300 Spartans, which is a great story. That's Gates of Fire behind you. And, you know, that book sort of chose me. And never in my life did I ever think, oh, I'm going to write 6 books set in the ancient world. It was as much a surprise to me as it was to anybody else. But I was just seized by these stories and just had to tell them. And I found that I was, for whatever reason, I was absolutely at home in that world. And I felt like, you know, it was a piece of cake to visualize it and to feel what it was like. And, you know, whether from a previous life, I don't know what, but I was just drawn to it, not knowing why. There was no plan. It just happened.

You said in The War of Art that while writing fiction, you— these characters, you're spending a lot of time with them, you're developing them, and that in some ways they all represent you. Maybe a stronger, bigger, sexier version, maybe a meaner, more angry, villainous version, but they all sort of represent you. So is that accurate? Is that how you view them?

I do. I mean, I think that— but it's a you that you can't define. You can't. If you're Dixon Dickens, and you've got David Copperfield and Magwitch and Pip and Miss Havisham and all these characters, I'm sure we asked Dickens; he wouldn't say, "Oh well, Miss Havisham, she's that part of me." Bump it bump bump. Yeah, something much more mysterious than that. You know, or think about Bruce Springsteen's songs, or the songs of albums of anybody that has a long career, and the characters that they've created, and the And this, the, you know, the scenes that they've set up, the little stories, and that they're coming from some deep place that the musician himself or herself doesn't even understand, I think. And certainly that's true for me. I don't understand anything I've written until I look back on it. While I'm actually writing it, I don't know what I'm doing.

Yeah.

I'm just following, you know, the, the impetus from within.

That's interesting. I would love— I know that you touched on that subject, that meta subject within The War of Art a little bit, and I'll have to read more to see if you expand on it. But that would be an interesting thing to expand on as well, because so many of us wonder why a famous musical artist, when asked about their inspirations, will make a joke and kind of shrug things off. And it's because maybe they don't understand it. And that, that's a little bit weird to say when being asked questions. Like, I don't understand why I wrote that song or wrote that book, but I'm happy that you're, you're honest and open and can articulate about it in that way.

Well, you know, I think a lot of people are, a lot of artists are. I mean, I'm thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert. She's very much— if you've seen her TED Talks and stuff like that, she's very, uh, candid and forthcoming about how she feels that stuff is coming from some other dimension and it's not really hers. She's guiding it, you know, but But it's not really hers. And she really totally embraces that, the mystery of it, you know.

Yeah.

So, it's sort of— it's a 2-part thing. Like, in a way, it's like, on the one hand, we've got this kind of airy-fairy stuff where things are coming to us from another dimension. On the other hand, it's very much of a blue-collar work ethic thing where we've got to sit down and do the work. You know, Stevie Wonder sits down at the piano, and, you know, he's there all day. And that's, that's the way it is. And maybe 1 day out of 20, he'll come up with something great. The rest of the time, he's just trying.

What does your day-to-day look like today? Are you working on the next book? Do you transition from book to book to book? Or is there sort of a lull when a book like this just comes out the other day? What does your day-to-day look like?

Um, I'm a believer that there should never be a lull. That, you know, people sometimes ask me, what do you do between books? And I say, there's no such thing as between books. Now, actually, I am a little bit between books now because I'm promoting A Man at Arms, you know.

Yes.

But in my mind, I'm not. But my normal— the way I feel about it is by the time you write the end on one book, you should be 90 pages into the next book, you know, from sort of doing it on the side and just getting it going. So that if you finish one book on Tuesday, you start the next book on Wednesday because you don't want to fall into that dip. That dip is death.

Oh yeah.

You want to keep momentum going. My theory on vacations is if I finish one book on Tuesday, I start the next book on Wednesday. Let me take that book till I sort of have a beachhead on that book, till I've got 30 pages, 60 pages, enough momentum that I can say, okay, The book has started, it's got— then I'll take a vacation for a few days, you know. But yeah, I don't think you ever want to fall into that gap between projects. That's death.

Yeah, Big Mo, as Darren Hardy calls momentum in the book The Compound Effect, works in both ways. I mean, you don't want it to work in that negative way because then you'll get stuck.

Absolutely.

Because I know we have a couple extra minutes here, I would love to, to have you give some additional recommendations to people in the audience who are interested in starting their first book. I know it's a— I know that's a lot of resistance to get over, and once they get in the swing of things, are there any tips or tricks or anything like that that you would recommend?

I'm, I'm not a believer at all in tips or tricks or hacks. I mean, the reality of, uh, if you want to become a concert pianist, sit down at the keyboard. You know, um, and there shouldn't be any trick to getting started. When— if, if, if you've— I'm talking to some young writer, artist now— if you feel— and this, I'm living proof of this from my 7, 8 years of hell— that you need some help to get started, that's Resistance with a capital R.

Yes.

So, those words you're hearing in your head, I need to study something. I need to read a book. I need to do a little research. I need to take a course. That is 100% bullshit. And that is the voice of resistance. That's not your voice. And trust me, at the same time you're hearing that voice, 10 million other people, other aspiring writers, actors, whatever, are feeling the— hearing the exact same voice. And each of us think, oh, that's me.

Yeah.

It's not you. It's resistance. So I have a mantra that I tell myself and it says, start before you're ready. And I think it's a great— when you find yourself preparing for something, that's bullshit, that's resistance. Just start. And once you've got, you know, if it's a novel, let's say, just sit down and start banging out an outline, start banging out the first few chapters. After you've, after you've done that for maybe 3 weeks or a month, then stop for a second and say, well, maybe I should prepare a little bit. But at least you've got something going. The magic of it all is just to start working and keep working.

Yeah, that's amazing advice. And I'm going to have to go back and listen to that whenever I feel resistance. It's really important. Have you ever spent any time in Rome or in any of the areas that you read about?

No, I haven't been to Italy at all. I would love to be there. Yeah. No, why? What are you thinking of?

No, I was just thinking because, you know, as far as the ancients go, I've studied a little bit of Stoic philosophy and I've spent some time reading like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius or On the Shortness of Life by Seneca, some books like that. And I've just— I've had this urge to go spend time in Rome, walk those streets, sort of feel the energy. I guess I'm sort of being pulled in that direction. So I was curious if you had ever done the same thing.

No, I haven't, Nick. I haven't been there. But one thing I have done, and I know, and I've met other people who've done the same thing, I'm a Hemingway fan. I'm a big Hemingway fan.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, you read about his years in Paris in A Moveable Feast and in the other things and the various cafes that he used to hang out in, et cetera, et cetera. And I've definitely, I've gone to Paris and I've kind of followed, you know, gone to those places, you know. So that was sort of my pilgrimage. And one of the interesting things when you read Hemingway, about him, where he writes with a little stubby pencil in the cafe, you know, and the waitress comes over and brings him a Pernod or whatever it is. When I went, I pictured sort of rundown dives.

Yeah.

When you go to the actual places that he went to, they are beautiful, you know, fantastic, you know, upscale places that he was, you know, it's hard to believe he was there with a little stubby pencil, but maybe he was.

Yeah, that's funny. I mean, I live in Massachusetts, and I know that Walden takes place not so far from where I've grown up. And I, you know, Henry David Thoreau, I've never spent any time over there. And, you know, I should do some of those little adventures. That's fun.

Well, you know, in a way, in a way, Nick, that's a form of— I say it for myself too— that's a form of resistance. You know, it's, well, maybe I won't write today. Maybe I'll go out to Walden Pond today.

True.

Just kind of groove on the vibes, and that will, you know, get me going, you know. And I'm sure that if Henry David Thoreau was here, he'd say, sit down at the desk and start writing.

No, it's a great point. I thankfully at Book Thinkers, I have a business partner that course corrects me, and I course correct him whenever we get ambitious goals or get sidetracked. I think it's very important to make sure we stay on the, on the track, make sure we don't get derailed. So Hey, amazing conversation today. I'm so happy that you took the time to accept our invitation and come on the show. Where should people go? What should they do if they want to learn a little bit more about you and your work?

First of all, thanks for having me, Nick. It's been a great conversation, real fun for me. I'm happy. I'll come back anytime you want.

Amazing.

Just my website is just my name, stevenpressfield.com, or amanatarms.com. If you go to it, it takes you to the exact same place. And when you land on this site, there's what, a splash page that's just about this book, but there's also an X up in the right-hand corner. If you click on that, it takes you to the underlying website that's more about The War of Art and other stuff like that. So that's the place to— and I'm on Instagram and all the other places too.

All right, we'll make sure we link everything in the show notes. Thank you so much.

All right, thanks, Nick.