Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 92

The Universe is Self-Ordering

[Today's post is an updated version of one of the first to run on this blog. It's one I've always wanted to bring back.]
Chaos. The Big Bang. Crap flying everywhere.
Imagine yourself back at the beginning of time. The universe is raw energy, blasting faster than light-speed in all directions. (Stay with me, this is going
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Pages from a Book Proposal

["The Book I've Been Avoiding Writing" (a.k.a. "Three Years of Writing and 40+ Years of Thinking About The Lion's Gate") is a mini-series about the writing of my new book, The Lion's Gate. Thanks for tuning in as it runs Mondays and Fridays over the next few weeks.]
Steve, there are three questions you have to
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The Western Wall, Part One

["The Book I've Been Avoiding Writing" (a.k.a. "Three Years of Writing and 40+ Years of Thinking About The Lion's Gate") is a mini-series about the writing of my new book, The Lion's Gate. Thanks for tuning in as it runs Mondays and Fridays over the next few weeks.]
Day Nine in Israel. Danny is taking me
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When You Publish a Book

The Lion’s Gate has been out for about a week now.
The book represents, for me, three years of 24/7 work and an untold tonnage of emotion. Now it’s out there in the real world, on its own. Nothing I think or say or do will have more than the most negligible influence on the way
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I Can’t Interview Moshe Dayan

I was saying in the last post that a writer needs help. I don’t care who you are; you can’t do it alone. You need smart friends.
One of mine is Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart. Here’s how he saved The Lion’s Gate, long before I left for Israel, long before I had talked to a
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Foolscapping “The Lion’s Gate”

Why am I here in Israel, interviewing veterans of the Six Day War in-person? Why not write the book based entirely on research? That’s how I wrote Gates of Fire and six other novels.
It worked then. Why won’t it work now?
That is a great question and the answer is absolutely critical.
I have a trick for
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What Paul Learned, Part Two

Continuing from last week’s post: How did my friend Paul change via the process of writing and completing his first novel?
I offer the following thoughts to Paul as well as to our readers, not as “lessons learned” of “the right way” or “the wrong way.” What follows are only observations. They’re subjective. I may be
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The Lion’s Gate

The Lion’s Gate officially hits shelves and sites today.
Thanks for all of the comments to the mini-series running Mondays and Fridays. The series will run a few more weeks, with more background on The Lion’s Gate’s road to publication.
Another thank you to all the First Look Access Subscribers who took part in the 100-copy, first
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How I Learned Hebrew

Back at the hotel a few nights later, after a second interview with Ran Ronen, a legendary fighter pilot and commander in the Israel Air Force. Danny is making coffee and toasting two-day-old bagels.
“We gotta have an ops meeting.”
An operations meeting is a meeting to plan combat action, to lay out a flight mission. We’re
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Panic Attacks

I’m having panic attacks now that I’m here in Israel. It has nothing to do with fearing rocket barrages or suicide bombers. Those, I’m cool with.
If a Jew is going to die, I figure, he might as well die here and die from something like that.
No, my terror is much more free-floating.
I have no idea
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