Steven Pressfield is an extraordinary author and screenwriter. Esquire termed his book "the War of Art: Break Through The Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles" "A vital gem…a kick in the ass." The book was published in 2003, but everything in it is timeless.
Mr. Pressfield is also the author of "The Legend of Bagger Vance" and several astounding fiction books including his latest "The Afghan Campaign" which is garnering rave reviews
Nettie: Can you talk about your path? It's interesting all the stuff you did leading up to the point where you got to type "the end." What stands out for you?
Steven: I did tons of stuff. I picked fruit, tended bar, worked on oil rigs. I did all those things people do when they're running away something. I happened to be running away from writing.
Nettie: Did you know you were running away from writing?
Steven: Yes, in fact I was happily married, right out of college and I tried to write this book and I was 99% through and I was seized with panic. And I had all those resistance issues, "what if I succeed, what if I fail" etc. So I blew up the marriage and after that the bottom dropped out of my world. I fell out of the middle class.
Nettie: And you were creating your own drama to keep from writing this book?
Steven: Yes, even though it was an odyssey I was going through. I was doing all these jobs and I was driving across the country in my Chevy van and I met this couple and the guy was this cowboy. And he said, "Come on with me and be a cowboy." And I thought, "Well, that's cool. I could be a cowboy." And then I thought again, "No, that's enough. I went home and I started writing."
Nettie: Your book is deeply inspiring. It was given to me by an amazing musician, Casey McPherson , and it is the most inspiring book I've read in years on truly breaking free to do what you're destined to do.
The first section of your book covers resistance. Can you define resistance for us?
Steven: Sure, resistance is that mysterious force of self-sabotage that seems to exist in everybody's brain, in particularly independent artists, entrepreneurs and so forth. It takes the form of, in my experience of it, procrastination, coming up with excuses for why you're not going to do the thing you know you have to do. It can even be, for instance, spending time sharpening pencils, folding the laundry, all those things people do to avoid facing doing the work they really need to be doing.
In my case, I was sort of a slave to this like eight or ten years before I finally figured out what it was and learned I better overcome this if I'm going to ever get anything done.
Nettie: In your book you list different ways resistance presents itself, and can you talk about those?
Steven: The first and most common form that resistance takes is procrastination, where we tell ourselves; it's not that we aren't going to write our symphony; it's just that we're going to write it tomorrow.
Another big one is self-dramatization or soap operas. Creating soap opera in our lives. We blow up every small incident to distract ourselves. Another silly one is errands and the minutiae of daily life. People can kill an entire day like nothing with minutiae.
Resistance usually takes the form of a very seductive voice that you hear in your head,
"Ooh, shouldn't we be doing this?" – And it's always something that's not writing, that's not starting your business, that's not doing what you should be doing.
Two huge ones are fear of failure and fear of success. They're very common. Someone will have a book they want to write, but suddenly they start thinking about Tolstoy's "War and Peace" or Homer's "The lliad' and they think, "I'm never going to be good as them so why should I do it at all" and they talk themselves out of it.
Nettie: Is there more with fear of success?
Steven: People are afraid to succeed. If you do well, you're exposed, your out front and you have to live up to your success and that tends to make people afraid.
Nettie: And how does that work with the compulsion to self-destruct or self-sabotage?
Steven: What used to kill me is I would get 99% there and then I would just choke. I would explode my entire life, I would get divorced or do something that would keep me from finishing it.
Nettie: Was it sub-conscious?
Steven: Absolutely and that's the real insidious nature of resistance. Until you become really aware of it when you do self-sabotage you don't realize that it's this resistance demon inside of you and you just believe whatever your fevered brain is telling you.
Another form I didn't write about in the book is over-perfectionism where people feel like "I can't write my country music album, unless it's up to the level of the red-headed stranger."
Another thing is the concept of getting healed or getting well, or getting your act totally together – like saying, "Well, I'll get my stuff completely together and then I'll start my new business, I'll start my new novel once it's all together. And of course there's not really ever a time when you get "it all together."
Nettie: That's like when you have a child and there's never a really perfect time to have a child? Or a perfect time to start a business?
Steven: Exactly. It's always going to be a birthing process and it will be messy and bloody and you won't know the outcome but you have to go ahead and still do it.
Nettie: Now do you ever feel resistance?
Steven: Oh yes, it never goes away but what has changed is that I now recognize it as resistance and it doesn't fool me anymore. If the book teaches anything, the one thing to come away with is to be aware that there is this voice. And you recognize it as that siren trying to lure you away, you just say, "I'm not going to listen to it."
They say in combat everyone is scared to death, but it's the brave people that act in spite of their fear. And I think it's like that in the creative world or the entrepreneurial world, you just have to do it. You do it despite that voice and what the resistance is telling you.
Nettie: The professional faces the fear?
Steven: All the time. You just sit down and go to work and the fear goes away. People say like stage fright, you might be an actor waiting in the wings, you might be petrified but you get on stage and you're ok.
Nettie: What do you think is the biggest challenge in this day and age when there is a multitude of things that seem really important in this age of connectivity?
Steven: You have to have a tunnel vision, you have to know what it is that you want to do. You need to focus wholeheartedly on that. Block everything else out. It
Nettie: You believe beyond that, people should not cheat the world of their contribution right?
Steven: Yes. Exactly. I do believe we all have a destiny or calling and it usually isn't so small. It's not just a selfish act. It's really a gift. Somebody that writes music, a book or opens a great restaurant, that's purposeful. We're all in this together. We get something out of what we're all doing. Who knows what else it will inspire? We're all helping each other on this little spinning planet together.
Nettie: Brilliant and here's to more spinning! Thank you.
