Steven’s Comments (group member since Jun 20, 2008)

Steven’s comments from the Q&A with Steven Pressfield group.

Thanks, Jody. Of course I'm only a guy and what do I know, but I really believe that that warrior sisterhood is a part of the feminine psyche that's been buried under centuries of male domination, brainwashing, "feminization," etc. It's not all Manolos and "Sex and the City!"

Excellent questions, Richard. To the first, I'd say yes indeed, I do believe that human nature is a settled thing, as you say, that seems to manifest itself in the same ways over and over again in different cultures, e.g. tribal societies of ancient ages and contemporary urban gangs. And yes, in writing "Amazons," I very deliberately and consciously used models of other cultures, particularly the horse cultures of the American Indians of the West. As to response from female readers, there have been two types: very enthusiastic responses from women who can relate to the Amazons and who feel that that side of the feminine soul has been underexpressed and underappreciated, and tepid to antagonistic from those who are more traditional. Basically they just tune the story out. Thanks for the terrific questions!

Jeff, that was a very thoughtful and honorable response. I agree completely with your distinction between country and government. What's wrong with our government now, the current administration, in my view, is that they are not keeping their oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," which is, in my opinion, the true expression of the soul and identity of the country. In fact the Bush administration, in my view, holds the Constitution in contempt. Their loyalty, in my opinion, is to their own party and even to a thin slither of interest groups within it. A very strong case could be made that they entered their administration with the absolute goal of advancing the interests of their party at the expense of the Constitution and of the country as a whole. This is probably not an answer to your question, but it's what I think.

1) "Gates of Fire" by quite a margin.

2) I hope so.

3) Still "Tides." Although books are like kids, you love 'em all.

No, I don't think there's any correlation. If there is, it might even be inverse. I'm not sure what factors make a book sell. Look at "Davinci Code." Nobody saw that coming, least of all the writer.

I don't have the next ones in a queue, Jhhk. I salute you and envy you. I'm just hoping the next one pops up when I need it. Did you see the very interesting (to me) comment by Norman Mailer that was quoted in his obituary, where they asked him if he had any regrets? He said yes, there were a few books he had in his head that he wished he had written. Sounds like you will not have that problem. As a sidebar on this, apropos of nothing, I was just at a reunion of college buddies; I asked one friend, who had been married three times, if he had any regrets. He said, "I wish I had married a few more women."

I did have "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea" but just couldn't get into it. Nothing against the book, which was excellent. It's weird but sometimes when I've worked really hard for a long time in a particular area, I don't want to read about it any more.

Come out from behind the ferns, H. To answer your question seriously, I think most writers struggle between picking topics that seem "commercial," as opposed to going strictly with their hearts and zinging off into some ridiculously obscure area. For my own money, I find that I have to really LOVE a topic because I'm going to be spending two years or more working on it. Sometimes one can look back on a book or a topic that succeeded and think, "Oh sure, that was a slam dunk from Day One." But often the writer, alone and shoving off into the unknown, is wracked with doubts and is certain he's absolutely nuts to pursue the topic he's pursuing. When I originally wrote "Gates of Fire," I thought that absolutely no one would be interested in the subject matter except me. I thought, "Americans can't even spell Thermopylae, let alone pronounce it, let alone care about what happened to some foreigners they've never heard of twenty-five hundred years ago." But I was just SEIZED by the story, so I went ahead. I was absolutely amazed when Americans responded to it, and even more so when Greeks did because I was sure they would rip a Yank to shreds for daring to trespass on their history. On the other hand, I've taken topics that I thought were absolutely "sure things" commercially and had them fizzle completely. So you never know. My conclusion is to go with what I love and try not to second-guess the marketplace. Every time I do, I'm wrong.

"Gates" took about two years, Thomas. I already had an agent from a prior book, "The Legend of Bagger Vance," but when he took "Gates" out, he couldn't find a buyer. Here's what worked: my manager from Hollywood, Rich Silverman, had the bright idea and managed to plant an item in a Daily Variety column about screenwriters who had also written novels. The item mentioned "Gates" and gave a very brief description of the subject matter. An editor at Doubleday, Shawn Coyne, just happened to spot it and phoned my agent. That was how the book got published.

Jhhk, I wish you luck. In a way I'm glad "Gates" hasn't been made as a movie yet. At least it hasn't been screwed up!

Arrggh, Matt, "blueprint" must have slipped past me. Terrible! I owe myself fifty lashes. Yes, an anachronism like that is bad news because it "breaks the frame" and pops the reader out of the story. I agree with you completely. Another tiny glitch is using foreign-derived terms like hors-d'oeuvre. Terrible. But they can pop in there if you're not careful. As for Spartans and Marines, I was just trying to imagine the Spartans as I thought they must have been, given what I had read about them and what my instincts told me. I had no agenda about making a statement for the modern world. Another error: I had a tomato in the first few editions, till readers wrote me saying, "No, No ... no tomatoes in the Old World back then." I made it a pomegranate.

Heather, I'd say in a novel backstory is wonderful. Where would Dickens be without it? In many ways, the novel's whole existence is so it can deliver backstory.

Movies are different. The best screenplays, in my opinion, allude and hint and let us figure it all out ourselves (thought I love a good flashback as much as the next guy.)

Backstory in a novel can be worked in in a million ways. One is simply to go inside a character's head while he or she is doing one thing and have them recall something else. It doesn't have to be a freestanding section that is backstory alone.

I say go for the backstory.

Jeff, I couldn't agree more. But it still leaves open the ethical question, "What does a true patriot do when his country's actions diverge from its own highest ideals, or when they flagrantly contravene them?" That was Tom's original question above, if I understand him correctly. What are your thoughts on that?

Thanks, Jody. No, I have never engaged in hand-to-hand combat except a couple of times when I came out very much on the short end. To help imagine that kind of hoplite combat though, I did spend a couple of days with Hunter Armstrong in Sedona, AZ. He is a swords master, Japanese and other schools, and a "weapons athlete" and a hoplologist (you can google his institute, which is very interesting.) Anyway he helped me get a real-life picture of what it must be like.

In the end, however, it's all about imagination. That's what fiction is. How could a Western, Caucasian man write "Memoirs of a Geisha?" How could Homer, who was blind and lived several hundred years after the fact of the Trojan War, write the Iliad. He asked the Muse to help him and so does every writer of fiction. In fact, I've found in my own writing that the more "fictional" a scene is, the more convincing it is to the reader. It's the real-life stuff that often comes off false.

I haven't Jeff, but now I'll have to put it on my GoodReads list. Thanks for the very kind words.

Now that's clear! (Though I didn't know George Washington ever backed away from the cause he was fighting for.) Your question seems to be the central ethical conundrum of the age, particularly for US warriors since Vietnam, and some would say even since Korea. I don't know the answer. It's a question of individual conscience. How bad is bad? How wrong is wrong? At what point does it become so bad or so wrong that even loyalty to one's own country, which I think we all agree is a virtue, simply isn't enough? I wish I could knock out some simple, clear answer ... but I can't. That's what plays and novels are made of, to contain those contradictions. Just like life.

Thanks, Jeff. Like I say, I'm humbled that "Gates" has proved to have such a positive effect for our men and women who are out there really "walking the walk."

Heather, I salute you for wading in to these ancient seas. Good luck! As for your question about marketing, I wish I could say I knew more. I'm struggling myself. One thing I'd say about female leads is that's probably very good. Most readers are women. If you look at Amazon's best-selling list for Historical Fiction, you'll see three female-themed books for every male. The word "Boleyn" leaps to mind. My advice: read a bunch of these. They're doing something right or they wouldn't be selling. Read Customer Reviews on amazon of these books; see what readers like and don't like about them. That will at least give you a feel for what's out there. You can then choose to ignore it if you wish. Other interesting sources are websites and mags that focus on historical fiction. Again read the reviews, read the letters to the editor. Be of good cheer: a female-themed historical novel is a product in demand these days.

I have a friend who's a Civil War history buff. He was telling me the mind-set of such enthusiasts (into which category fall readers of female-themed historical fiction as well.) He said, they don't say, "Oh no, not another book about Antietam," they say, "Oh boy, another book about Antietam!"

Excellent questions, JHHK! Let me answer them all together if I can.

When I was working on "Tides of War," back in '99 I think, my wonderful editor Shawn Coyne had some problems with the mansucript. He flew out to California and stayed with me for three days, going over everything. He sent me back to the drawing board for the next four months (and I probably should have done a month or two more.)

That would never happen today. Publishing has changed dramatically. Shawn himself has since left Doubleday, started his own publishing house which succeeded very well for a time; now's he a lit agent at Endeavor. Take as much as you want out of that!

Basically a writer today has to be an excellent self-editor. I'm very much opposed to paying money to freelance editors. Maybe it works out sometimes but I've never seen it happen. Editors today are so under the gun, they just don't have time to help shape manuscripts. In a way, that job has fallen to agents, at the pre-submission stage. For example, Shawn now does a lot of that for his clients at Endeavor -- working on the manuscript before it's submitted.

A good editor, yes, can make a tremendous difference. Sometimes the writer himself is just too close to his material. In practice these days, such a task usually falls to the writer's peers, colleagues and friends on an informal basis (and a lot of friendships are ruined thereby). Most of us need help. We need a fresh pair of eyes -- or more than one. That said, I'm still very much a believer in doing it yourself. It's your book. Listen, take things to heart, but in the end it's yours and you have to do it.

Thanks, MG and Annette. I'm tremendously humbled by the hugely positive response to my books, particularly "Gates of Fire" and "The Afghan Campaign" by troopers serving in harm's way for our country. That's kind of the ultimate test for this type of book. I'm honored that my stuff strikes a chord and seems to help a little.

As for writing about the current war in Iraq, I'm not exactly doing that, but my newest project, the one I'm working on right now (I'm too superstitious to say too much about it) definitely zigs and zags within that arena. I think we might put a couple of rounds on the target before it's over. We'll see!

I'm not much of a reader of fiction, Krischelle. Most of the books that have influenced me are ancient and factual. As I said in another post, Plato's Dialogues, Plutarch's Lives and his "Moralia" ("Sayings of the Spartans" and "Sayings of the Spartan Women." I love everything by Xenophon. Herodotus. People find Thucydides thick going but I love it. Passages in there are tattooed indelibly on my brain. Of modern stuff, two books that have influenced me tremendously are Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" and Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer." I think it's the cinematic style, the way they both make you a nd absolutely "see" something and let the emotion arise out of that.

As for Ayn Rand, I've tried a number of times to read "Atlas Shrugged" or "The Virtue of Selfishness" (is that the right title?) but I just can't get into them. I feel bad about it, but I just can't penetrate them.

Tom, I don't quite understand your question. Could you re-phrase it and write me back please?