Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 125

Fear, Golightly, Python

Two weeks ago, Jeremy Brown asked if going "after the ideas that scare [Steve], because that's where the remarkable is hiding" carries over to my work. Have been thinking about it since then.
I'm not out in the jungle hunting Scary.
Scary pops up on its own—often falls into two categories—and I figure it out from there.
#1:
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Write For A Star

[The blog is on vacation this week. Here's an encore of one of our most popular posts.]
"Write for a star" is one of the primal axioms of screenwriting, but it has applications across many other fields as well.
What does it mean to write for a star? Writing for a star means create a role that
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Flashman Tells It Like It Is

George MacDonald Fraser, author of the famous Flashman novels, joined the Border Regiment straight out of school, and first saw active service in 1944, at the age of 19, in the 'forgotten front' of the Burma campaign. In his memoir, Quartered Safe out Here, Fraser remembers his experiences with his infantry section, employing all the
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Recycling: That Idea in the Blind Spot

Last week I started thinking about recycling as a strategy.
Here's what usually happens when something slaps me in the face:
There's something I've been doing, or something someone I know has been doing, but I never consider it. I see it, I know it's going on, but I don't put a name on it. I don't
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An Ask Too Far

In the past year or so I've become aware of the verb "ask" used as a noun. I simultaneously like it and am appalled by it. It's honest. Probably way too honest.
An "ask" is a request for an action or a favor. I was reporting the contents of a long e-mail to a friend; she
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Spitfires over France

Pierre Clostermann was a Free French aviator who flew over 400 missions as a Spitfire and Tempest pilot in RAF squadrons during WWII. He is credited with the destruction (reports vary) of between 15 and 33 Luftwaffe aircraft.
Clostermann was awarded, among numerous other decorations for valor, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Silver Star and the
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Don't Cruise in the Eye of the Storm

Outreach campaigns are like children. Each is different.
An example:
I have two kids. My son passes out on planes within the first few minutes and sleeps the entire way. My daughter is energized by being strapped into her seat and becomes that nightmare child who kicks the back of your seat the entire length of a
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Live from Quantico

I'm usually reluctant (not to say, mortified) to run an interview of myself, particularly in this space. I don't want anything to go here that smacks of ego—and an interview, no matter how well-intentioned, always bears some elements of that stuff. But this particular sitdown came out pretty good, I think. It passes the "Will
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Pericles' Funeral Oration

Once a year in ancient Athens, the city came together to honor her sons who had fallen in battle. "The bones," wrote Thucydides, "are laid in the public burial place, which is in the most beautiful quarter outside the city walls. [Then] a man chosen by the city for his intellectual gifts and for his
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The Change Up #1 Revisited

Thank you for all the comments and e-mails that followed last week's What It Takes post. I've spent the past week thinking about what I wrote, why I wrote it, and how I feel about the responses.
Seth Godin mentioned that Steve's books are gifts. I agree. Change up the old Hair Club for Men line,
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