Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be

by Steven Pressfield

At Sterling’s request, Tom had read the manuscript of Gates of Fire. His note to me said, among other kind things, “There is a first-rate novel in here. I am confident you will pull this off.” I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. Tom Guinzburg barely knew me. There was no profit in it for him to reach out. He did it because he was a good guy with a generous heart. That note changed my life. I taped it to the screen of my eight-bit Kaypro and took courage from it every day of the six months it took me to get three hundred pages out of that manuscript. When you and I put our ass where our heart wants to be, the universe responds. We change. We see ourselves differently. But others, sometimes those we are not aware of (and whom we have no idea are aware of us), see us differently too. They may come to our aid in ways we could never have predicted and by some word or act of kindness change everything.