Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 112

The Girl from WAZE

I’ve been traveling overseas for the past few weeks, and one of things I’ve encountered is a vehicle navigation system called WAZE. WAZE has a couple of cool features that I’d never seen before. (Forgive me if this kind of system is old-hat to you; it was blockbuster, earth-shaking news to me.)
First, WAZE takes traffic
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Lighten The Load

[I almost never do this, but this guest post by Mark Mars compelled me to make an exception. Mark's zine, Brooklyn To Mars (see link below), ain't bad either. Thanks, Mark. I'll be back next week  --- Shawn.]
There was pounding on my door.  I clicked “file save” and got up from my desk to answer
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Thinking A Career

Once we turn pro (and even before we do), our Muse has plans for us. Those plans are our career-in-potential. They exist, whether we choose to believe in them or not. And they’re operating upon us, influencing us like the gravitational pull of an enormous invisible star.
If you’re a writer, your career-in-potential is a shelf
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iCrazy Interrupted

The headline stared out from the magazine rack in the check-out line. Beyond the guess-which-celebrity-has-the-worst-beach-body headlines was:
iCrazy
Panic. Depression. Psychosis.
How Connection Addiction Is Rewiring Our Brains
It was splashed across the top of Newsweek.
* * *
In January, my husband and I bundled up our kids and headed skiing. The lodge where we ate lunch was the only
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Finding “Real”

To say that a voice (or a look or a sound) is “real” in art requires quotation marks. We will never speak in our “real” voice because the very act of speaking in a compelling and interesting manner requires, first, a point of view—and every point of view implies a voice that is dictated, and
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Art and Amplification

I was at a dinner party the other night.
It was a book party for a friend and it was as good as those things get. Lots of fun arguments about the state of the business, where the opportunities were, hypocrisy, stupidity, cowardice etc.
Then, as these things go, someone asked if we could all switch seats.
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The “A” Story and the “B” Story

In screenplay lingo, writers and directors refer to the “A” story and the “B” story. (There can be a “C,” “D,” and “E” story, but let’s leave those alone for the moment.)
The “A” story is the dramatic core of the movie. It’s the foreground—the primary throughline that the protagonist follows. The “B” story is a
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It’s All About The Cookies

I used to hang out with Customer Service’s evil twin Customer Hell.
You might know him. He deflects problems like Roger Federer does tennis balls—he sends them in directions you aren’t expecting, until  you waste hours of time, scrambling to sort things out.
After years of being around him—whether at the phone company, the TV company, with
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Inside the All Is Lost Moment

We were talking last week about an All Is Lost Moment coming immediately before a Turning Pro moment. We cited Rocky, The Hangover and Big Night as examples. Sounds arcane, I know. Hang in with me.
In a movie, the All Is Lost moment is that crisis (usually two-thirds to four-fifths of the way through the
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Art and Polarity

The other day I overhead this conversation:
Man #1: “I ran into Frank Smith (not his real name) at the beach yesterday…”
Man #2: “Isn’t that the guy who cheated on his wife, got a DWI, and said all of those nasty things about Jill’s daughter in law?”
Man #1: “…Well…yes…but I try not to judge.”
I run into
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