Steven Pressfield
Website of author and historian, Steven Pressfield.
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Latest posts
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Inner Weather and Outer Weather
As I write this, a gale is howling outside. Rain is dumping in sheets; it’s the kind of weather that makes the voice of Resistance between my ears say, “This is nuts! You should take today off.” But there’s an entirely different atmospheric condition inside my head. My inner…
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You, Inc., Part Two
The concept of You, Inc. is a direct application of the idea of self-motivation instead of externally-imposed motivation, self-discipline in place of outside discipline, self-reinforcement in the stead of Third Party Validation. You, Inc. are two persons. You’re the CEO, who…
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You, Inc.
The following comes from The War of Art, pages 97-98. When I first moved to Los Angeles and made the acquaintance of working screenwriters, I learned that many had their own corporations. They provided their writing services not as themselves but as “loan-outs” from their…
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Artist = Entrepreneur, Part Three
If an artist is an entrepreneur (and she is), then she too must navigate the passage from externally-imposed structure to self-imposed structure. She must move from imposed discipline to self-discipline; from external validation to self-validation; from external reinforcement to…
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Act Like a Mother
That idea for a videogame that’s gestating inside you? That’s your baby. That novel. That album. That new business. The virtues you and I need to develop are the virtues of mothers. A mother puts her own needs second (or third or fourth or fifth.) The needs of her child come…
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Warriors and Mothers
What are the virtues of an entrepreneur? What qualities of mind do you and I need if we are going to succeed as artist/entrepreneurs? One answer (the one I usually use) is to say we need the virtues of warriors: Courage, patience, self-reliance, the ability to endure adversity ……
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The Business We’ve Chosen
Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn’t angry; I knew Moe, I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen.……
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Fear of Success Anonymous
This is going to sound like a joke, but I swear it’s true. I once joined Fear of Success Anonymous, aka FOSA. This was in Los Angeles, so almost all the group members were actors or screenwriters. The group got so popular it had to disband. I remember driving home from the final…
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487 Minus One = Zero
My first agent was a gentleman named Barthold Fles. He was seventy-six; I was twenty-nine. One day over coffee Bart asked me, “How much is 427 minus one?” I gave the obvious answer: 426. “No,” said Bart. “It’s zero.” He was speaking about pages in a novel. If the completed book…
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The Drive to Finish
It took me seven years to finish my first book. (I wrote about this in The War of Art.) I couldn’t sell it. Couldn’t find a buyer. In fact, it would be twenty-one more years before a novel of mine actually saw the light of publication. But finishing that first manuscript meant…