Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 107

Most Things Don’t Work Out

Through dint of brutally waged, all or nothing, creative battles, professional artists learn something amateurs never do. They discover that the visions inside their minds that enthrall them at the outset of a new endeavor rarely come to pass in the way they think they will.
They learn that recognized success is not all strawberry sundaes
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Opportunities are Bullshit, Part Two

I’ve been feeling a little bad about the first Opportunities Are Bullshit post a few weeks ago. Particularly after Callie’s wonderful “Nella from France” follow-on.
My post was a bit of a rant, I confess. Ventilation of a pet peeve. I probably overstated the case. So lemme try again.
We all want our stuff to be seen.
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A New Model for an Old Classic

“As the nation’s largest physical bookseller, Barnes & Noble supports publishers who support our bookstores.”
—B&N spokesman, as reported this week in Publishers Weekly
What does that mean? We support publishers who support us?
Remember the scene in the movie You’ve Got Mail, when Indie bookstore owner Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) sells books at full price to Joe
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All Breakthroughs come with a Fever

I first came upon this concept in the writings of Laurens van der Post, the great South African. Are you familiar with him? He wrote one of my favorite books, The Seed and the Sower. The following comes from The Lost World of the Kalahari:
It has sometimes appeared to me that fever is designed, in
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No One Cares

The other night at dinner, I was asked how one might become a writer who makes his living with a big six publisher. Not a flavor of the month big deal first novel writer, nor a blockbuster bestselling novelist, but a blue collar, book a year, kind of writer. Writers that used to be referred
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“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

We were talking last week about stakes and jeopardy. It is critical in any story, I was saying, that the stakes for all characters be as high as possible—preferably life and death. There’s a further aspect to stakes/jeopardy that might be worth exploring this week.
The stakes in a story should always be on-theme.
Lemme digress for
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It’s Nella From France

I was upset when I read the title of Steve’s Writing Wednesday column the week before last: “Opportunities Are Bullshit.”
My thought process ran this route:
Really, Steve? There have been tons of great opportunities.
What about that interview with Mark McGuinness that just went up?
Wasn’t it an opportunity?
Or not?
When you have an interview with someone you’ve gotten
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“Have a Body Hit the Floor”

A few weeks back, we were talking about this tidbit of wisdom from screenwriter Jack Epps: “You can’t do everything in one draft.”
The corollary, we said, is to focus on only one aspect of your manuscript/screenplay/videogame at a time. One aspect per draft.
Today let’s talk about stakes.
(Ideally you and I should have thought deeply about
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“Eternity is in Love with the Creations of Time”

I only know Richard Ben Cramer from his work. But is there any better way?
Yes, he was a highly regarded journalist and had that newspaperman countenance of one perfectly suited to live behind the mask of a byline. Pretty people just can’t write like the crooked toothed and wild haired.
But what made him a one
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Opportunities Are Bullshit

Have you seen this clip from Harlan Ellison, the screenwriter? I rank it up there with Josh Olson’s all-time great rant, “No, I Won’t Read Your F*#king Screenplay.”
What Ellison says is that anytime he has done anything for “exposure,” he has totally wasted his time. I couldn’t agree more.
Sometimes “opportunities” are presented to us. A
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