Special Guest: Steven Pressfield - Part 2

Hello and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. In this episode, I have both Steve Pressfield and Sean Coyne joining me to talk about resistance and talk about how you can build your career as a writer. And it's all around Steve's new book, Nobody wants to read your shit. This is part two. And so if you haven't listened to last week's episode, you're going to want to start there because Steve has joined us for two entire episodes. Steve, of course, is a really smart guy. He's been writing for a long time and getting to quiz both Sean and Steve around how to become a better writer has been a lot of fun for me and I think you're really going to enjoy it. So we're going to jump in and get started on this part two with Steven Pressfield.

Alright, so we were talking some last time. I liked the question you had for Shawn of like, can you see it in their eye? And it's, it's interesting because if I look back over 10 years of working for myself, I remember a time in the first year where I spent half the day playing this stupid video game called World of Warcraft or Warcraft or something like that. And it was because of so many things where now I know how to lock it in and work. A buddy of mine was saying I was talking to yesterday, who's a writer, he says he's building a new house and he's going to rip the Internet out of the room that he writes in because he just falls into the Wikipedia holes all the time. And I'm like, no, I can. When I decide to work, I just work. But that's been a long process, learning. And actually right before we got on the phone, I was talking to a guy named Cal Newport who wrote the book Deep Work. And you know what? I feel like there's this resistance that keeps us from working like you talk about. And what are practical ways that you can stop wasting time avoiding your work and just get it done? What I've always tried to do. I say this thing right. I assume the future version of Tim will be lazy and stupid and procrastinate. And so what can I do now so that Tim in a week has no choice but to get his work.

Done to meet him again? I'll go back to what I said before about the look in the eye. I Think if I talk about my own life, I had like about a seven year period of kind of wandering in the wilderness of sort of yielding to resistance and like destroying my entire life until I had like the same moment that an alcoholic has when you wake up face down in the gutter at five in the morning and your children have been kicked out on the street and your wife has been turned out, you know, turning tricks, you know, and you finally say to yourself, man, I gotta get it together, you know, this is not working. So it seems like there is that sort of, for me, that turning pro moment when you kind of hit bottom. And once you've sort of had that moment, everything falls into place. And you don't need tips, you don't need any advice. You just kind of know, you know, as you're tempted to screw off yet again, you can sort of look down that road to back waking up again in the gutter and you say, you know what, I better. I gotta work, I gotta keep working. That's sort of my answer to that. It requires a come to Jesus moment when you just realize, you know, this way of life is not working for me. I got to change my ways.

And I'm just. There's God.

I mean, that's bs, huh?

Yeah, I know, I figured that was coming. No, I feel like what I want to do when people are looking at this is like, so when I work in the jail, I do this work in the jails I used to. And the guy I did the work with, he's like, people always say you got to come to the end of your rope, but you get to decide where the end of your rope is. And so what I like to do is what can I do to stop making this mistake before it gets any worse, you know, Because I want to fix things by looking at other people's mistakes instead of having to make them all myself. And so, like, what are the things that I can do to make sure I'm avoiding common pitfalls? Because you said a minute ago when we weren't recording, so I'm going to bring it up is you said something like, Stephen King isn't out asking people's advice on how he should write, but he also wrote since he was like 8 years old or whatever. So a lot of people are afraid that if they're starting when they're 40, it's too late now. And so I want to think about like the people that are just coming into their creativity late in life. What can they do to kind of fast forward some of the stuff that you have to go through.

Okay, I got an answer for that. Okay, there's one word. Habit. Okay, there are. Amateurs have amateur habits, pros have pro habits. And by the way, I think anybody starting at 40, I mean, I didn't really get rolled until I was 50, but when I talked, we were talking a minute ago about the come to Jesus moment, and you finally decide, I've got to get out of the gutter and do this. What happens when you get out of the gutter is you adopt professional habits, you turn pro, you think of yourself as a professional writer. You teach yourself by force of will the habits that a writer has, which is at X hour each day, I go into my room, I turn off the Internet and I work for X hours. And I do it every day or five days a week, or however you know, even if you can only do one hour, you do it every day, just like a professional would. And you strengthen those habits every day and make sure that you don't fall off the wagon over and over again. Because every day that you strengthen a habit, a habit keeps you from having those moments of decision where you can say, I'm not going to go to the gym, I'm not going to work out today. You're in such a zone in the habit, you just say, I'm just doing it. You wake up and you're already there at the gym. So that's the answer to that, I think.

Let me just jump in with a very small story about James Patterson. James Patterson, before he became multi zillion copy best selling writer, he worked in advertising and he was very successful in advertising. And actually a friend of Steve's from advertising who I met years ago, told me a story about Patterson. He was working at J. Walter Thompson and he's a creative director, not James Patterson, but Steve's friend. And he would go in every morning, he'd get to work at 9 and he knew not to go to James Patterson's office and knock on the door at 9 o'. Clock. He knew the time to go talk to James Patterson was at 9:30. And he said the reason why he knew that is that James Patterson got into work every day at 7 and he wrote from 7 o' clock to 9:15. Then he took 15 minutes to have a cup of coffee and then he opened his office door. Then it was all advertising until the rest of the day. And Steve's friend told me that had a very big effect on him because he knew if he wanted to aspire to something larger, he had to adapt a habit like that. And James Patterson spent 25, 30 years in advertising before he decided to start his professional writing career. He wrote a few books while he was in advertising, but I betcha he wrote about eight or nine novels that didn't go anywhere before he started his professional career. So that power of habit is really important. And as Steve says, you don't have to be specifically throwing away all of your life and boring down on that one all or nothing moment. If you have the power to just have the discipline to set aside that hour and a half and get to work early. You know what? James Patterson's advertising work was probably quite a bit better because of that habit.

Yeah, I talk a lot about the differences between processes and goals and how a process, if you pick the right process, it will get you way past any goal you could come up with. And that's kind of what you're talking about, is it's not about the goal of writing the book. It's about the process of every single day at this time I sit down for this long and I work on my craft.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And another way to. Another word for process is practice. Like having a yoga practice or having a martial arts practice.

Right.

If you have a yoga practice, you know that like every day for an hour, for whatever it is, you go into that dojo, into that sacred space, and you do downward dog and whatever it is that you do. And I think that's what writing or any other art is about. Steven Soderbergh, when he won the Oscar for Traffic, I think made a great speech and he just held up the statuette and he said, this is for everybody who spends just one hour a day doing their craft. And I remember at the time I was like in tears when I heard that, because I thought, that's so true. It doesn't have to be. Like I said before, you know, your entire life, but that one hour a day, if you're committed. I'm sure that if we walked into James Patterson's office, Sean, when he was doing his first things and looked in his eye, we would say, this guy's gonna make it right. You know, he's committed. Even though 7 o', clock, that's not that early, you know, a lot of people, the day's over at 7:00'. Clock, God bless them.

Yeah. With that idea of practice, you know, if we look at Malcolm Gladwell's outliers or other things I've written on this, it's really important what they bring out is it's not just important to practice, but it's important to do the right kind of practice. And how these people move forward year after year after year because. Because they're doing the right types of things during that practice time. So what would you say are the right types of things during my writing practice time?

Well, let's define the word practice for a second, because I think maybe we're getting off it a little bit practice. I'm not talking about practice like you would sit at a piano and practice scales. I'm really talking about a practice meaning a daily ritual, habit that you're committed to, lifetime type of thing. If it's yoga, if it's martial arts, if it's meditation, whatever it is. So if you're a writer, you have to be writing something. So you're writing project number one, book number one. And your practice is to start from the beginning. However you do that, outline it, block it out, write it, whatever it is, your practice is to put in that year, that two years, whatever it is, and take it from beginning to end. And then when it's done, you start the next one, and your practice is to do that. And hopefully with each book, each record album, each piece of software, each whatever it is, you're learning more, you're getting better, you're putting in your time. Like Malcolm Gladwell Sundays, you have 10,000 hours and you're getting better. Like James Patterson, like you say, Sean, I'm sure his first six or seven novels, he threw them in the trash, right? And they probably deserved to go into the trash. But he. If you look at it over time, you got to admire the hell out of the guy, right? You know, if you're the muse and you're looking down from heaven and seeing him in his office day after day after year, you say, this guy's gonna make it. He's got.

Right.

He's got the drive. You almost can't fail in a situation like that because you're gonna get better. You're gonna get better.

Yeah, I think that's the hope for me when I think about, you know, we talked about, like, my taste far outstrips my ability right now. And my thinking is, if I just show up and keep doing it every day, I can't help but get somewhat better.

Here's another thing that I think is important to remember, and it goes off of what you just said, Tim, about how your taste outstrips your skill set or whatever. A lot of people don't even have taste.

And this is important. This is really important because there are certain people who are monomaniacal. And what I mean by that is that they'll go and they'll sit in their office and they'll do the things that we're talking about that James Patterson does, but they'll have no taste, they'll have no intention, they won't explore the territory that they want to succeed in. And success meaning to tell a great story in a particular genre. So having the understanding that there is a way to develop your taste so that you can distinguish between masterful craftsmen and people who are just sort of not so great. That's part of the writer's education too, and it's a crucial part. So, you know, outside of. And this is one of the things that I think helps people, the story grid helps people, is it gives them the sensibility of being able to evaluate and analyze stories and storytellers so that they can understand exactly what they're doing. It's no coincidence that certain writers grab you and they suck you in and you can't stop reading them. And the more you know about craft and the more you know about the way language and scenes work and a way, the better a writer you're going to be. And having an intention for your work is just as important as being there.

Well, how do I develop my taste then?

In fact, let me. I think that's great, Johan and Tim, this is to what we were talking about before we started recording this thing where in my book, nobody wants to read your shit. The book is about my working in five different fields of writing. Advertising, movies, fiction, nonfiction and self help. And we were talking about you, Tim, and how you've done stuff where you've done programming, you've done Internet marketing, you've done books that were about, you know, kind of self help, non fiction thing. And the point here to what Sean was saying is to get experience in the real world where you get feedback for the stuff that you're doing so that you're not just alone in an office or alone in a room writing. Like for me, working in the movies was a great experience in terms of learning what a story was. Because I was in meetings, I was pitching, I was working with other writers, I was actually having movies getting made and learning and learning what a story was and getting real feedback. And just like you, Tim, in the fields that you've been in, you're getting feedback, you're getting to do real work that's exposed in the real world and that you learn from as you go along. So it can be a trap to get too stuck in your own room, in your little garage, you know, in your hermetically sealed world, it's better to be out. The other thing about working in the real world, even in fields that are not your dream field, not the one you really want to, is you. You encounter mentors and people will take you under their wing, you know, And I've had quite a few of them, you know, and you learn those great lessons that stay with you all the way through. And it's the real world too. So that what you're being told is not theoretical, it's not abstract. It's because, you know, we got to pay the rent, we got to put asses in the seat, we gotta sell tickets.

You know, here's the trick that you can do.

Here's the trick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A lot of the posts that I write are like lessons that people told me, you know, like, just for fun, I'll just throw one out here. When I first got out to Hollywood, I worked with this director named Ernie Pintoff, who, who passed away tragically a few years ago. But we would like sit side by side. He was like a real pro. I was like 30 years younger than him. And every time we would get stuck in the story, he would say, have another body hit the floor. And what he meant was kill somebody. And why did he say that? Because it raised the stakes. And after about the 50th time of him saying that to me, I thought, well, oh, I get it. You know, the stories get bogged down because it's not really. The stakes aren't high enough. So that's. In the real world, you meet mentors and you learn. That's how you learn, you know. And also you teach people too. But real world experience, even in a field that's not your dream field, is a great thing.

So, I mean, are you telling people they should quit their job and whatever, they're bagging groceries at Kroger. Or maybe they're working a mid level management job and should they go work somewhere in advertising or something that involves writing so they can actually make steps that way?

I do think those jobs help, you know, to get sort of closer to it instead of a totally unrelated, waste your time job. Of course, those jobs are kind of hard to get to begin with.

Yeah, it takes a while to get them.

Well, is there any way? Because a buddy of mine's in a writer's group and they get together and they all share their writing and kind of give each other tips and Feedback. And I've always. I kind of roll my eyes at that because I'm like, why do I need other crappy writers telling me that my writing's crappy?

I'm with you, too. I couldn't agree more.

But what I'm getting at is, like, is there a way to fix this problem of how do I move forward out of the writing holes that I'm in and get that kind of good feedback on my stuff? And how do I find people to teach me, you know, to make another body hit the floor? How do I find those mentors in my writing?

I mean, I think you have to be working in some kind of writing field. Wouldn't you say, Sean?

Yes and no. I think just going back to what I was saying about taste, the way I've ever learned anything was to watch somebody better than I doing it. And there's no better way to do that than to read within your genre that you want to be successful. So I say this. Everybody always comes to me, and they say, give me the obligatory scenes and conventions of my genre so that I can plug them in and make my story work. And sure, someday I'll do that for as many genres as I can, but there's only so much one man can do.

But what you need to do in light of that is to read within yourself. So if you say to yourself, I need to solve a particular problem in my work, go find books that have solved those problems in very innovative ways and be inspired by them. And we've talked about this before, Tim, where people often have this fear, oh, I'm ripping off the bag of. Or I'm ripping off J.K. rowling. And I'm not really original, but those are inspirations that you can use as structural hand holding as mentors, mentorship through sort of intellectual mentorship by people who don't even have to talk to you. Their work can mentor you. And just to briefly talk about that thing about people who are bagging groceries, should they quit their job and lock themselves in a room and become dedicated artists? There's conflict in every single human experience. And stories are built on conflict. And you can learn particular setups and payoffs for scenes in everyday life. And some of the best stuff, like, there's that classic scene in Annie Hall. Woody Allen's in line in a movie theater. There's some blowhard behind him talking about Marshall McLuhan and Marshall McLuhan's life and this and that and hot and cold and. But. And so Woody Allen thinks this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know Marshall McLuhan's life's work at all. So he pulls Marshall McLuhan out, and he has him explain to him that he's an idiot. And that's a moment where Woody Allen was obviously in some wine in the theater. He said, I'm gonna put that in my movie. And these are the things that a writer and a creative artist can play off of in their everyday life.

Yeah, I wonder, because I've done a lot of this on my end is I constantly want to find people who have made all the mistakes and to teach me how to avoid those mistakes. And most of the time, if I look back at my career, that always signals some kind of major growth for me, where I find somebody that knows what they're talking about, about a certain problem. I'm. I get them to tell me what to do, and I just do whatever they say. You know, there's a reason that right when I decided to start writing fiction, I just happened to start the podcast with the great Sean Coyne on how to write great stories. You know, it's like, these aren't. And it's because I seek these people out. And what I find is there's two ways to find a great mentor that I found. One is to start out by being helpful in any way that you possibly can. I mean, any way that you can make the person that you want, their help, their life just the slightest bit easier if you start there. And then when you ask for their advice, you do whatever they say without question. The only questions you're allowed to ask. That's a good one, too, are clarifying questions so you understand exactly what you should be doing. Because I know on my end, when people ask me questions or for advice and I give them advice, and they immediately argue with me about why they think my advice is wrong, I'm like, you know what? Just forget it. But people that go out and do what I say and come back and report, man, I'll keep helping them for free because it makes me feel good. And so, on this subject of getting help, a lot of people kind of decide ahead of time, well, nobody's going to help me, or I'm not going to be able to get anybody to help me. But if you understand just kind of basic psychology, a lot of times you can get just amazing people to give you advice that, if you take, will radically change everything that you do.

That's true. And just to tell a little bit of a story about how Steve and I decided to Call his new book Nobody wants to read. You'd shit. A lot of people don't want to face deep truth from a mentor. And so what they'll do is they'll argue with you and they'll say, well, I don't work that way. That's not the way things come to me. So when we were debating how to present this book, this is Steve's title, and what we were thinking about, is this too harsh? Is this something that's going to turn people off? Because it's discouraging. But the fact is that we want to attract people who want to hear the deep, dark truths and to act on that truth as opposed to people who want to be petted. Well, I'm speaking for myself. I don't know if this is Steve's point of view, but this is the way I've sort of come to fall in love with the title of this book is because it's a truth that says you need to be empathetic to who you are writing for. And yes, of course you're writing for yourself, but what you need to do is translate your vision into a story that other people are going to be passionate about and enjoy. So the harshness of nobody wants to read your shit is something to tell people. Hey, always keep this in mind. This is not just for you. This is not a solipsistic way of exploring your inner stuff and your inner child and bringing out the flowery language of your childhood in a way that can be expressive and interesting. This is about translating a personal experience, personal truth, into a story that other people can enjoy and take something out of.

Yeah, it's really hard as I think about how to put that into the book, because I feel like there's these times where I'm like, well, I'm just trying to tell a kind of fun story that I would like to read. But when I think to the last episode and I think about putting the theme into it and knowing what I'm trying to say, that's where I start to worry of, like, well, maybe I don't have a theme for this thing. Like, maybe I'm not trying to say anything important. And how big of a problem is that? Maybe I haven't had enough horrible experiences in my life to pull from. You know, I've just kind of had an easy life, so my books are never going to have these deep themes. Is that an actual concern I should be having?

Sure.

This morning to me.

Actually, I don't think so, Tim, because I think that I'm a believer in previous lives. And I believe that, you know, we come into this life with a whole past, even though we're not aware of it. And so the actual events of our life really don't have anything to do with what we're capable of writing. I mean, Proust was in bed, you know, for 22 years or whatever, you know, so, no, I don't. I don't think you have to worry about that.

I think it's resistance, as you know, you would. Thinking about these things and letting them wrap their tails around you in your mind has one major purpose, and that's to keep you from moving forward with your story. So when you start really looking at navel gazing and all that stuff in terms of, oh, I'm not doing this and I'm not doing that, that's a great sign that resistance is bearing down on you. So keep moving.

Let me ask you, Tim, why do you want to write fiction?

So I've been playing with it for a few years, and it's always been this kind of thing I do that I don't talk about. And then when I do talk about it, it's in that kind of typical way that people that do this kind of on the side, like, I'm never actually going to get around to that. And so last summer I was talking to a friend of mine about kind of what's next in my career. And, you know, I had all these decisions, you know, all these kind of philosophical, like, who am I? Questions. And he's like, haven't you been writing fiction for a couple years? And I'm like, well, yeah. And he's like, well, why don't you do that? And I said, because I don't know that I can be successful. And he's like, well, that's not really a great reason. And so that's when I kind of started dabbling again. Like, okay, I'm going to take this serious eventually. I'm going to take this serious soon. And then I go to see the new Star wars movie. And I'm watching this movie and I am so excited to be at the movie, and I'm so happy to be there. And, like, they just did such a great job with it. And it just filled me with this joy that it's this type of joy that only comes from a great story that I get when I read great books and all these things. And I realized in that moment, this is what I want to do for other people, is I want to be a part of bringing this type of joy into their life. And the way that I want to do that is writing fiction. And so that's what kind of pushed me over the edge finally, to take this seriously and start putting in the hours and putting in the time and putting in the effort to learn how to do it and to do it well.

Well, that's a great answer, Tim. I think that's an artist's answer. I think an actor's sitting in the audience seeing some, you know, Olivier on stage. Oh, wow. I want to. I want to be able to produce the rush that this guy gave to me, watching him, you know, or an athlete seeing another athlete perform. So I think that's a. That's a great answer. That's a totally valid answer. I don't think you need to have tremendous angst and the existential ennui and all this kind of stuff to be purging from your system. You know, just the idea, like, why does somebody want to sing? They see someone else singing, they say, wow, that is great. That is fun. I want to do that, too.

Is the answer I want to be a famous writer a bad answer?

Yes.

Why?

Because it's looking at it from the outside in. It's looking at it, as Sean would say, third party validation. What you're really saying, when someone says, I want to be a famous writer, and I believe it, that's probably 99.9% of the people who pick up a pen, you know, or a typewriter. It's really saying, I'm convinced that I'm worthless. I have an empty hole inside of me, and if anybody knew who I really was, they would despise me. But if I could just be a famous writer, suddenly I would be okay. And that's no good at all. Much better to say, wow, I read this book and it blew me away. And, boy, would I love to write something that would give somebody else the pleasure that that book gave to me. So, yeah, I think that to want to be a famous writer, if somebody says that to me, I can guarantee you they're never going to make it.

Well, and what are some other, like. Because I think about writers that are basically using writing to work out their issues or using.

That's okay, too, I think. I think that's really what writers do. It's what we were saying in our previous, or what I was saying in our previous podcast, that writing, in many ways, and I include, like, Bruce Springsteen writing albums or Jackson Browne or whoever, the writing process is like dreaming and that it's self therapy. It's Working out something unconscious that we're trying to evolve through and learn from part of our hero's journey or whatever it is that's going on deep inside us. And we're kind of writing our way out of that paper bag. And that's completely valid. It's more than completely valid, it's honorable. Now, the thing is, you can do that sort of writing and it kind of can come out like your own personal journal, which is, you know, you don't want to show to anybody. But if you can take. And actually, my first three books that never got published, that's what they were. It was angst, it was pain, it was my own self therapy. And people who would read them were just, you know, it was excruciating to read them. I would torture them and make them read this horrible crap, you know. But then you do. That's like those bad songs that people write or bad poems that they give to you, Right? But then, like we were talking about, Tim, about getting better. You do get better. And finally you sort of get over the hump, which I've thought about a long time. I've never been able to really define exactly what it is. But your stuff becomes ready for prime time, you actually can show it to somebody. And it's not excruciating. And that's sort of a mystery. It's just practice, practice, practice until it finally gets over the hump.

Well, we talked about this earlier, Steve and I, and you talk about it in the book, too, and nobody wants to read your shit. And we were talking about this in terms of Philip Roth, and I told you that story, and I had you buy that DVD of his interview on pbs, which was fantastic.

It was great.

And what Roth was talking about is he wrote these very traditional, wonderful short stories that were very literary, like Goodbye, Columbus, fantastic short story. And they're very serious. They're a very serious writer doing serious writing.

They're very writerly.

Yeah. And then he talks about this personal crisis that he had in his own life where, you know, his marriage was falling apart, things weren't going well, he got writer's block. He couldn't figure it out. So he spent more and more time out on the town in New York with his friends, and he found out that he was very funny and that his friends thought he was hilarious because he would. He would share all his anxieties with them and they thought he was so funn. So he finally figured it out, hey, I'm just gonna write a book like that guy would. And he Wrote Portnoy's Complaint. Right. So he found his voice, that raffian voice that we all fell in love with because it was part of his authentic self Then. I think one of the things that you discovered with Legend of Bagger Vance was that when you found that voice and you found that point of view to tell the story and you channeled it, all of that personal angst and stuff kind of fell back a little bit and you were able to sort of translate somebody else's story in your own brain through a channel, sort of something.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I think if there is a takeaway, like when do you know when you're moving beyond navel gazing to pure storytelling? It's when you can sort of, oh, that's my voice. I know how I'm writing now. I'm not going to get all self conscious as I'm writing paragraph one. I'm just going to let it fly and it'll be that thing.

It sounds like you should just start out by going to therapy.

Yes and no. I mean, there's no secret that a lot of writers have had mental breakdowns or have spent their lives avoiding those questions.

But here's the other issue here.

This is the right.

Or let's get into this issue a little bit, okay. Because we talk about therapy, then you sort of implicit in that as the idea, well, you should be writing about your own life, your own angst. And that's not necessarily true at all. I would bet you if we had. Who's the guy that wrote game of thrones? R.R. martin or somewhere.

George R.R.

Martin.

George R.R.

Martin. Right. Now think of what was this Tale of Ice and Fire? Was that the original?

I think so.

I mean, he creates this world of Westeros and all this crazy stuff, right? And I'm sure has absolutely nothing to do with his, with his real life, obviously, but I would bet you if we had him here, he could tell you, oh, I was dealing with the issue of betrayal. You know, my mother walked out when I was. So that was why I had Queen, whatever her name is. So what's interesting, Tim, like when we're talking about self therapy, this is amazing about how the unconscious works. James R.R.

Martin.

Is that his name?

George. George R.R.

Martin. His unconscious created this story, Game of Thrones, to deal with issues in his own life. But in this metaphor, this crazy, wonderful, creative metaphor that it's. Again, stories are like dreams, right? There's dreams communicated via symbols. Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what I'm saying here, Tim, but it doesn't need to be the angst of one's own personal life if you don't have to go there. He just pumped that. Pumped up the volume of that and made it work.

You know, Sean, you and I were talking about the guy that created the movie Apocalypse now and how, you know, it just destroyed him. Well, yeah, while creating this story. And then you have people that are just completely destroyed by their resistance. How do you navigate those two? You know, how do you know? Because you say, you know, I came over the hump and I finally found my voice. And then I was able to do that. And it's like the writing you were doing before you found your voice, you would. In that moment, you would have been like, no, this is my voice. I'm writing in my voice.

But you weren't there yet.

How do you kind of get through all that crap? Or do you just have to, like, I want answers besides just write some more. I mean, it's like, how do you, like, break through those walls of resistance, of feeling like I am doing it right, but then in two years, you're going to look back and be like, I was a disaster. What are those things that can kind of break me through those walls?

I think, Tim, there's no. I think you're asking. When you ask a question like that, you're sort of asking for tips, and there are no tips. It's like the Golf Digest. If you ever read a thing like that, you want to, well, you know, downwind, you want to tee the ball higher, you know, that is not. I'm afraid the answer is that you have to pay your dues. It's about suffering. It's about practice. It's about doing it over and over and over until it happens. Let me say one thing.

No, please do. Please do.

Talking about finding your voice. For me, the first, I don't know, seven or eight books that I wrote were in character as somebody else. So it wasn't at all finding the voice of Steve Pressfield. It was almost like an actor getting into a role. And that worked for me too, you know, that freed me from that self constipated, super self conscious, precious writerly crap that everybody goes through to write in the voice of somebody else. And the voices I was writing were like, way away from who I am as a person, but somehow they were truer to me than my own actual voice, if that makes any sense. I don't know how that helps, but.

I'll just throw something back at Steve that he's already talked about. Before and is deeply enmeshed in the war of art. And that is using these feelings of self doubt and anxiety and feelings of resistance as a North Star of sorts. And what that means is the deeper you get into this muddled Am I a writer? Am I not a writer? Am I really hitting my voice? Am I not hitting my voice? Is that those are the indications that you're getting close. It doesn't mean that you're getting further and further away. It means these are the times to lock down even harder and think about, well, okay, so I'm not writing in a voice. Why don't I pretend? Let me pretend to write in somebody else's voice and see where that takes me. Let me rewrite this scene from the point of view of the dog. Wonder what that would do for me. I'm just going to do it as an exercise. My intention is to rewrite this scene from the point of view of the family dog as the husband and wife are breaking up and will never speak to each other again. What would the dog experience? Making exercises that have clear intentions so that you can bring limitations to your anxieties is a great way to break through these moments of navel gazing and right early baloney. If you give yourself a clear problem and try and solve that problem. It takes. It's like, I'm sure you've experienced this as we all have. Okay, See, you've got a big, big meeting coming up. And this happened to me on my way to Nashville to see you, Tim. And I'm going through my checklist. I've got to get this done, I got to get that done. And what happens in the middle of it? I lose my glasses.

Right.

So all that other stuff is gone. All I have to do is find my glasses and then I can get in the car and then I can drive. Do you think that's a coincidence that we these things And Steve and I always say whenever you're close to finishing a novel or a project, you get deathly ill, you catch the flu, you, you cut your finger, you bonk your head. These things are indications that you are getting near the end and that you need to press on. So the way to fix those moments of self doubt is to find a clear intention that you can use as a way to focus your energy.

Yeah, I always feel like it's like setting up these games to keep myself moving. You know, if I can just get to here, I can just do that. Or like I talked about, like, if I can set something up so that future timing and will make good decisions in that moment. Then it almost takes my eyes off of the resistance long enough so I could do something, anything, productive.

That's a good way of putting it.

And the other thing that you just said, Sean, that's so true, is that when you're feeling the resistance and you're very down on yourself about it, that's a good sign because it shows that you wouldn't have that resistance unless your idea, the idea that you were trying to work on wasn't a good idea and wasn't something that was important for you to do. Like right now. Before we started doing this podcast, Tim, Sean and I were talking about a new book that I'm starting right now. And I'm just overwhelmed by resistance to it. And I take that as a good sign because if there wasn't that resistance, it wouldn't be a good idea. If it was a lame idea, there'd be no resistance at all. So like you say, Tim, it's a matter of finding your way, just tricking yourself into getting to work. But the fact that you've got the resistance is a good sign because it shows there wouldn't be resistance. Resistance is the shadow and the tree that's casting it is the great idea that you have that you're trying to work on.

So my dream of one day no longer having resistance, it's not give it up.

It's never.

Yeah, it's been interesting when I work with writers, because when you work with new writers, they have this dream of like, if they could become a New York Times best selling author, then all of a sudden all their confidence would grow and they would feel like. And I'm like, man, the people that have found success, they feel all the same things. But you actually turned up a little bit because now people are watching them.

Right now, they're even more afraid. You know, book number two started at book number one, because how are you going to match it? You know, Elizabeth Gilbert, right, went through hell trying to top Eat, Pray, Love. Yeah, yeah.

And she's saying that one talk or.

Any artist just kind of gets more comfortable in that place of being completely uncomfortable and just realizes this is it, you know, like pre game jitters. So you're going out on the court, you know, you're throwing up and then, you know. Right, that's it, you know?

Yeah, she said that one in one of her TED talks, she said something like, the idea that she's still young and her best work is behind her, that's the thing that could get her drinking gin at 10 in the morning.

Yeah, I read this thing, or I think it was an interview with Paulo. I can't ever say his last name.

He wrote.

Yeah, that wrote the Alchemist. And he talked about how he would, like, get up in the morning and read the paper and then check the news and then make more coffee and then basically do anything he possibly, possibly could to avoid writing. And I'm like, but you're good at it. Like, it should be easier now that you're good at it, right?

No.

And that's what I think with you, Steve. It's like you have this entire backlist of successful books. It's like you should be like, oh, I can do this. I know how to do this. I'm just going to sit down and do this. But it's not like that anymore.

It's like Sean and I were just talking, like an hour ago about this new idea that I have. I think the muse gives you ideas that are always stretching it or beyond. And this thing that we were talking about, I've never done before, it presents problems that I've never dealt with, I've been afraid of, I've been avoiding for 30 years. So whatever experience you have, it helps in the sense that you can say to yourself, well, I know I've done it in the past, but this new thing I've never done before, it's like, you know, Michael Jordan never won that sixth title until he was there. Right? And I'm sure that, you know, he was thinking, can I? Can it be done? Can it be done? But again, it's. I think it's just getting comfortable in that state of discomfort, or at least just knowing that it's not a sign that I'm screwed up, that I'm going to fail. It's a good sign to have these butterflies, to be nervous, to feel this resistance. It's a good time, and you just have to rally whatever it is. Breakthrough, jump in the pool. But as I'm saying that, it's easy for me to say that now. Tomorrow morning when I sit down and face that dragon, it's going to be just as hard as it was, you know, any other day.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast for everything Story Grid related. You can see that at Story Grid. If you missed any past episodes or want to take a look at the show notes. All of that is up@storygrid.com podcast. And then, of course, you're going to want to pick up Steve Pressfield's newest book. Nobody wants to read, you'd shit. You can buy that@blackirishpublishing.com or of course at Amazon.com as well. Make sure you pick up a copy. I know you're going to love it. Thanks for listening to this two part series with Steven Pressfield. And starting next week, Sean and I are diving into a three part series called Publishing 101 where we're going to talk through all of the ins and outs of publishing. So that's going to come up next week and we will see you then.