Turning Pro

by Steven Pressfield

was 31. I had saved up $2,700 and moved from New York City to a little town in northern California. I rented a house behind another house for $105 a month. I had my old Chevy van, my Smith-Corona typewriter, and my cat, Mo. Every Monday morning I walked into the village to the Bank of America and took out $25. That sum lasted me for the next seven days. I didn't talk to anybody during my year of turning pro. I didn't hang out. I just worked. I had a book in mind and I had decided I would finish it or kill myself. I could not run away again, or let people down again, or let myself down again. This was it, do or die. I had no TV, no radio, no music. No sex, no sports. I didn't read the newspaper. For breakfast I had liver and eggs. I was like Rocky. In the early mornings, I'd walk down River Road to my friend Paul Rink's house, which was actually a camper-shell mounted on a pickup. Paul was a writer. He had been a friend of Henry Miller's in Big Sur. Paul taught me what books to read and what writers to pay attention to. That was what I did at night. I read all the stuff that you're supposed to read in college but never do, or if you do, you're not paying attention. I read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Turgenev. I read Cervantes and Flaubert and Stendhal and Knut Hamsun, and I read every American except Faulkner. I was writing on my ancient Smith-Corona, which had a heavy carriage that physically shuttled back and forth as I typed. My cat Mo would curl up on the desk, on the le...