The following is a conversation with Steven Pressfield,

author of several powerful nonfiction and historical fiction books,

including The War of Art, a book that had a big impact on my life

and the life of millions of people whose passion is to create

an art, science, business, sport, and everywhere else.

I highly recommend it and others of his books on this topic,

including Turning Pro, Do the Work, Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit,

and The Warrior Ethos. Also, his books Gets a Fire

about the Spartans and the Battle of Thermopylae,

The Lionsgate, Ties of War, and others are some of the best historical fiction

novels ever written. Some of you know I don't shy away from

taking on a big difficult challenge. One of the hardest for me

and for millions of others is the discipline of staring at an empty page

every day, pushing on to think deeply to create

despite the millions of excuses that fill the head.

In his work, Steven has articulated this struggle

better than anyone I've ever read. Quick summary of the ads, two sponsors,

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consciousness, love, and power. I will continue to return home to the

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And now, here's my conversation with Steven Pressfield.

Steven, modern society in many ways dreams of creating universal peace,

and yet war has molded civilization as we know it throughout its history. So

let's start at the high philosophical level. If you could imagine a world without war,

how would that world be different? Perhaps put another way, what purpose has war served?

Why do we fight? I think we're basically the same creatures

internally that we were in the cave, in tribal society, back for however many hundreds of

thousands, millions of years, which means that the dynamic in our mind is a kind of an us versus

them dynamic where our tribe is the people and everybody else or whatever. And I don't see that.

I don't think that's changed one iota over the centuries. It's just a question of how

one might sublimate that urge to compete. You're a martial artist. A great part of your day,

I'm sure, is dedicated to reaching that place of total commitment and in the face of competition,

in the face of adversity, etc., etc., which is, I think, natural and great for the human race

on an individual basis. So the hope that I have, if there is any hope, personally, I don't think

the human race is going to be around very long, but would be in sports or in other kind of

sublimated activities where people can act out their need for conquest or aggression or so forth,

but at the same time relate to their opponents as human beings that when the game is over,

you embrace your competitor and stuff like that. So you think war was inevitable? It's a part of

human nature as opposed to a creative force in society that served the benefit? Well, I'm sure

it has benefited spreading cultures and mixing cultures and stuff like that. But I think the

urge to conquest, if you think about Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or Napoleon or anybody

like that, or even individual, or if we even think about one of the plants that we're looking at

right outside, I mean, if you let a particular plant have its way, it would take over the whole

hillside. And certainly in the days of Alexander the Great, let's say, there were who knows over

the face of the earth, hundreds of little kingdoms, China, Japan, Asia, Europe, wherever,

and every prince that grew up dreamt of conquering his neighbor and conquering a neighbor after that.

That seems to be a universal human imperative, at least in the male of the species.

War is just the realization of that imperative. I think so.

So you've written about Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae, about Alexander the Great,

about the 68 war in 67 in Israel against Egypt, Jordan, Syria. War not just out of those, but in

general, do you think has been most transformative for the world?

Well, these are great questions, Lex. Easy ones, right?

I mean, I wish I knew more about the Mongols, because I certainly from what little I know,

I think that was a very, their conquest was a very transformative, bringing cultures in

an horrible, bloody way together. But gosh, what's then the most transformative?

Maybe the Roman conquest, establishing the Roman Empire and bringing that culture.

Maybe Alexander the Great's wars that united east and west, at least for a minute.

All right. So building a vampire, do you have a sense?

So there's wars. I mean, the, the 68 war is not about building empires.

It's about deep held, deeply held religious, cultural conflict, and holding the line,

holding the border. And then there is conquest, like the Mongols, that what is it some large

percentage of the population is a descendant of Genghis Khan, I believe, right? So that has

transformative effects. And then World War II, I mean, personally in my family and so on,

the transformative effects. Let me ask you this, Lex, why are you,

what are you trying to get at with these questions? What is this kind of the theme that you're,

you're aiming at? Well, I talked to Eric Weinstein and he said,

everything is great about war except the killing. And there's a romantic notion of war.

Certainly there's a romantic notion of being a warrior, but there's a romantic notion of war

that somehow there's a creative force to it. That because we fight out of that fighting,

comes culture, comes music and art, and more and more desire to create with the societies that win.

And to me, war is not just, hey, I have a stick and I want your land. It's some kind of,

it has echoes of the creative force that makes humans unique to other animals.

It can't be just four people or 10 people or 100 people. You have to have thousands of people

agreeing, usually thousands or more, for something so deeply that you would be willing to risk your

own life. And there's a romantic notion to that. And because you've written so well and passionately

about some of these, I wanted to see, because I don't have any answers, I wanted to untangle that.

If there is a reason we fight, that's more than just anger and hate and wanting to conquer.

Well, let me take it from a completely different side. I don't think that I,

in writing about war, am really that interested in war per se. I'm more interested in the metaphor.

I think, for me, I'm really writing about my own internal war and the war against myself

and against my own resistance, my own negativity, all of those things that are,

that spirituality would be the opposite of. So, I'm not really an expert on war. It's not like

talking to Jim Mattis or to Victor Davis Hansen or whatever. To me, the human being, we are

spiritual beings in a physical envelope. And there's a automatic, terrible tension within that,

which creates a war inside ourselves. So, the outer war, when I think about the Israeli army

standing up to whatever, 10 to one odds or whatever it was, that is a metaphor to me

of the fight we're fighting inside ourselves. For me, the Six Day War was, as you know,

my feeling was it was about a return from exile. It was sort of the culmination of the reestablishment

of the state of Israel, which had never really been completed because the holiest places of the

Jewish people were in the hands of their enemies. So, now, on the other hand, Alexander the Great's

conquest, I think, were a whole other different scenario where the metaphor was that Alexander's

father, Philip, I think, created the first nation, capital N nation, and he created a sort of a pathway

for these guys who were mountain men and basically barbarians, Macedonians, and

and by creating this army and this dream of conquering the world, which Alexander took to the,

you know, really enacted, he gave them a way of rising out of themselves, of transcending

themselves, not just individually, but as a people. So, that would go along with what you're

saying, Lex, of a certain creativity to it. But again, that's not for whatever, and I'm just

realizing this as I'm answering this. That's not really what's interesting to me about these stories.

And the Spartans, what was a whole at Thermopylae, that was a whole other kind of metaphor of war.

That was a sort of a willingly going to one's own death for a greater cause, just like to me,

the Spartans at Thermopylae enacted as a group what Jesus Christ enacted as an individual,

a sacrifice of their lives for the greater good. I don't know if that answers your question, but

that's how I see it. I do feel like, you know, I get invited to speak to ring core groups and

things like that all the time, and I decline because I don't really feel like I'm a spokesman

for the warrior class or anything like that. That's not what's interesting about it to me.

But didn't you just say, with war as a metaphor, that we're all essentially in various ways warriors?

If we think of it in terms of Jungian archetypes, and think of our life at least as males,

and the earliest archetypes that kick in are the youth, and the wanderer, and the student,

and that kind of thing. And then at some point around age 15 to 20, whatever, the warrior archetype

kicks in. And we want to play football. I want to do martial arts. We want to join the special

forces. We want to hang out with our buddies. That's our great bond. We want to test ourselves

against adversity and so on and so forth. But at some point, that archetype, we move beyond

that archetype. And we become fathers and teachers and so on and so forth. And then there are many

archetypes beyond that towards the end. So I'm interested in the warrior archetype, but not

to the be all and end all of everything else. In my book, The Virtues of War, have you read that?

Yeah. There's a character named Telamon who's actually, it's a long story, but

when he's with Alexander's army and when they arrive in India, he becomes fascinated by the

gymnosophists, the fuckers, the naked wise men, the yogis. And he says to Alexander that these guys

are warriors beyond what we are, even though they do nothing because they are inside their own

selves all day long. If we go to the Six Day War,

you write about, in Lionsgate, you write about the Six Day War in Israel.

I think of the wars you've written about, it's the one we're still in many ways in the

midst of today. Yes. So what is at the core of that conflict in Israel?

The Israeli Palestinian conflict? I mean, today it's the Israeli Palestinian conflict, but

it's echoes of the same conflict in that part of the world with Israel. What is in your sense

the nature of that conflict? What can we learn about society and human nature from that conflict?

That is one of the hottest conflicts that still goes on today.

Well, when I was working on the Lionsgate about the Six Day War, I wrote in the

introduction that this was not going to be a multi sided story. I was taking an entirely,

I'm a Jew, I identify with the Israeli people, I was going to see it entirely from their side.

Yes. So that's probably not what you're asking, but to me,

the Six Day War and that whole, it's a piece of land that's holy to at least three religions

and probably more. And from the Jewish point of view, it's where the state of Israel,

it's where David founded Jerusalem, it's all where the 12 tribes were, etc., etc.,

Moses came and brought the people. So to me, the Six Day War was about, as I said, a return from

exile, from diaspora after 2000 years. Now, obviously from the Palestinian point of view

or the Saudi Arabian point of view or whatever, it's a whole other scenario.

Religion is at the core of this conflict in some ways. Religion and police.

Religion and racial slash ethnic tribal identity. I mean, again, what is a Jew? Is a Jew somebody

that believes in the religion or is it somebody of a certain race that race arose in a certain

place? Same thing as a Muslim. What is a Muslim? Do they believe in Muhammad or whatever?

Or did they arise in a certain place in certain ethnicity? Because if we landed from Mars,

we couldn't tell a Jew from a Palestinian, could we? Just looking at them, you could easily mix

them and you'd never know. And the specifics of the faith is not necessarily the thing that

defines the person. No, I don't think so. So you could be like many are secular Jew

living in Israel and still have a strong bond. Definitely. In fact, almost all of the Jews,

the fighters that I spoke to from the sixth day were secular and it really was not

in our religious thing with them as much as it was a national thing.

So having spent time in Israel,

how's the world where military conflicts is directly felt, as opposed to maybe if we look at

the US, where it's distant and far away, how's that world different? How are the people different?

It's very different, as you know. Yeah. I've never been to Israel, actually.

Oh, you haven't. I haven't felt it. Well, you should definitely go. I mean,

here in the United States, where when like an incident like Charlottesville comes up,

you know, where people are chanting, Jews will not replace us, blah, blah, blah.

The impulse in the Jewish community is to think of, well, how can we reach out

to the other side? How can we show them that we are human beings

like they are and show them that we care for them, et cetera, et cetera? That's the sort of

distant from war. If you're in Israel, like if you and I were Israeli citizens right now,

you would be a fighter pilot or a tank commander or whatever. You would not just be

just working at MIT or whatever. And I would be in the Army too. And so, from their point of view,

they say, all those people who hate us, can I curse on this? Of course. Of this thing?

Fuck them, we'll kill them. We'll kill them. If they dared across the line,

and that's their whole different point of view. To me, it's actually a healthier point of view.

You think so? So, let me ask the hard question. Well, maybe it's an impossible question.

How do we resolve that conflict? In Israel or anywhere?

Anywhere where the instinct is to reach out in US and say FU and the people.

I think that the only way that two warring sides or two sides that are opposed to one another

can never really come together is when there's mutual respect. We'll get just more water.

When there's mutual respect, and they can see each other as equals, and when there's mutual fear,

where one side says, we don't dare cross the line with this other side,

and the other side says the same thing. I think then you can kind of reach across that thing and

say, okay, we'll stay here. You stay here. We'll mingle in cultural ways, and we'll have interchange,

you know, winter marriage, da da da da da da. But as soon as one side has no power,

as the Jewish people have had no power throughout the diaspora forever, then it's just a human nature.

You can see it in Trump and what he does to any vulnerable minority.

And he's not alone. I'm not blaming him alone. That's human nature. So I do think that that

idea of like, fuck you, if you cross the line, we'll kill you is really a good way, is a good

place to start from. Because now you can sit down on opposite sides of the table and say,

you know, what do we have in common? How can we, we want to raise our children? You want to raise

your children? How can we do this in a way that we're not hurting each other? So you kind of said

that you need to arrive at some kind of balance of power. But you haven't spoken to the fact that

there's deeply rooted hatred of the other. So is there no way to alleviate that hatred? Or is that,

I mean, what role does love and hate come? I think that hatred can go away. I really do. I mean,

if you look at even, even now that I haven't seen this in person, but they say that the Saudis

and the Israelis are collaborating on certain things, you know, by their mutual fear of or

antagonism to Iran. I do think that even really long, long, longstanding hatreds and animosity,

thousands of years old, can go away under the right circumstances.

In a, on what time scale? I mean, for instance, I don't know.

Does some people have to die? Do generations have to die and pass away? And new generations come up

with less hate? Or can a single individual learn to not hate?

I think a single individual can learn to not hate because it certainly doesn't seem to,

over thousands of years doesn't seem to work. You know, we keep thinking that that's going to happen.

But I think it's, we're in a real spiritual realm here when you're talking about that.

You're in a realm of, you know, Buddha, Jesus, whatever, something like that,

that we're a, you know, a true change of soul happens. But I do think that's possible.

So what do you think is the future of warfare, especially with what many people see as the

expansion of the military industrial conflict? To what? Do you, I know you're not a military historian.

I'm asking more as a metaphor. And would you see us as people continuing to fight?

You know, it's a really great question, Alex, because, because I think now with

social media, TV, movies, all of these things that create empathy across cultures,

it becomes harder and harder, I think, I think, to totally demonize the other,

the way it was in previous wars. I also think I don't really see an appetite

for people wanting to go to war these days. And in a way, I don't know if that's good or bad.

It's like everybody's so fat and lazy and so concerned with how many clicks they're getting

that, you know, whereas I know at the start of World War I, both the younger generations were

eager to go to war. You know, I think it was, it was insane. But it was that sort of warrior

archetype that we were talking about before that, that generational testosterone,

eros thing, whereas nowadays, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say there's not

going to be another war because there always are. But it's sort of hard to imagine people

getting off their ass these days to do anything. Well, it's funny that you mentioned social media

as a place for empathy, sure. But it's, in a sense, it's a place for war as well.

For hatred, yeah. True. For hatred. And perhaps the positive aspect of

hatred on social media is that it's somewhat less harmful than murder. And so it kind of dissipates

sort of the hate folds. You get the hate out at a, you know, at a less, on a daily basis.

And thereby never boils up to a point where you want to kill.

It's also a really weird thing that's going on. I don't know if anybody really understands,

like with video games, where kids are acting out these incredible horror things, right?

But you know that if they cut their finger, they would like freak out, you know?

Yeah. And I also don't think that many of the people that are hateful on social media,

if they were face to face with the person, it wouldn't. So there's a sort of a two

mental spheres happening at the same time. And I don't know how that

maps to the actual military, how that actually maps to military conflict.

Like when you, if you in the United States have a draft, for example,

how the populace would respond different than they did in previous generations.

Yeah. I think they certainly would. Yeah. Another question. I'm not sure if you thought

about it, but I work on building artificial intelligence systems. In our community,

many people worried about AI being used in war. So automating the killing process.

With drones and in general, it's being used more and more.

I should recuse myself on that when I really haven't thought about that.

Yeah. I'd rather ask you what you think about it.

Well, it's interesting. I mean, because it's so fundamentally different from

if you look at the Battle of Thermopylae. It means just if we talk about the difference

between a gun and a sword. I'll tell you one little anecdote. There was a Spartan king,

I don't know which one it was, but at one point they showed him a new invention and it could

launch a bolt that would kill someone at a range of 200 yards. And the king wept and said,

Alas, Valor is no more. Because there, point of view of war, it was highly ritualized, as you know.

And the code of honor was that you were not supposed to be able to kill another person

unless you yourself were in equal danger of being killed. And any other way of doing that,

even bow and arrow, was considered less than manly and less than honorable. And maybe we

should go back to that because at least it makes the stakes real and true.

And not that we could. Not that's the point. You were in the Marine Corps, so

we talk about the real, the bloody conflicts you've written about, many of them. So let me

ask a personal question. Have you, sort of as writing and in general, have you

thought about what it takes to kill a person if you yourself could do it in the war?

I have thought about it, yeah.

And how that would make you feel? Of course, one never knows. I certainly,

I have not been in combat. I haven't killed anybody. But I would imagine in the real world

that it would change you utterly forever. Because you can't help but

identify with the person that you've just killed. And it's another human being. And I mean,

I have a hard time killing a spider. So I would imagine that it's something that

warriors understand and nobody else understands.

And you've spoken with many. I mean, you've spoken with people who've seen

military combat in Israel. What, have they been able to articulate the experience of killing?

It's sort of just what I said. I mean, I'm even thinking of one pilot that I interviewed over

there who was strafing a tank in his Mustang and saw at really low altitude and saw what

his bullets did to the guy and could see his face and everything like that, which is even,

you know, one remove or more removes from an infantryman, what an infantryman does.

And he said that same thing that I said, that it just changes you and you can never say it,

never look at the world or look at anything the same way again.

And when that happens at scale, it's thousands, tens of thousands of hundred,

that changes entire societies. I mean, that's what we've seen.

At least it, but the problem is it doesn't change the politicians back home.

Right. How important is mortality?

Finiteness, the fact that this thing ends to the creative process. So

killing in war really emphasizes that. But in general, the fact that this thing ends,

it does. It does. And shit. And a serious note, do you think about your own mortality?

Do you meditate on your own mortality when you think about the work you do?

That's another great question, Alex. Actually, I'm 75 and I just was having,

I had breakfast in New York a few months ago with a friend of mine who's like my exact same age.

And I said to him, I said, Nick, do you ever think about mortality? And he said,

every fucking minute of every day. And I was kind of relieved to hear that because I do,

I do too. But actually, I always have, I think. And I think the fact of mortality

is kind of gives meaning to life. I think that's why we want to create.

That's why we want to make a mark of some kind. And the other aspect of it is what's on the other

side of that mortality. I'm a believer in previous lives. The question I've never been able to answer

among many, many others is like, why are we even here? Why are we in the flesh? I like to believe

that God or some force is we're on some kind of journey. But I'm not sure why we were put

in this world where the ground rules are, if you think about animal life, that you cannot live from

one day to the next without killing and eating some other form of life. I mean, what a demented

thing. Why couldn't we just have a solar panel on our head and be friends with everybody?

I don't get what that was all about, but that's sort of the big issue.

Have you read Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, for example? Is Ernest Becker a philosopher

that said that the fear of death is really the primary driver of everything we do? So Freud had

what? I would agree with that. So you've always thought about even your own mortality.

Yes, definitely. And can you elaborate on the reincarnation aspect of what you were talking

about? What's your sense that we had previous lives? Have you thought concretely, or is it a

lot of it? No, I've thought concretely about it. I mean, it's very clear when you see children,

young kids, or even dogs and cats, that they come into the world with personalities.

And three kids and a family are going to be completely different and completely

their own person. And that person that they are doesn't change over life. And there's one of the

things that I did in my book, The Artist's Journey, is that there were certain things where I

tracked or just listed in order, like all of Bruce Springsteen's albums or all of Philip Roth's books,

kind of a body of work throughout over a period of 30, 40, 50 years. And you can see that there's

a theme running through all of those things, that it's completely unique to that person. Nobody else

could have written Philip Roth's books or Bruce Springsteen's songs. And you can even see sort

of a destiny there. So I ask myself, well, where did that come from? It seems to be a continuation

of something that happened before and that will lead to something else, because it's not starting

from scratch. It seems like there's a calling, a destiny in there already. This gets back to the

muse and all that kind of thing. So yeah, it's almost like there's this, let's call it a God,

it's passing, it's almost like sampling parts of a previous human that has lived

and putting those into the new one. Sampling is probably a pretty good word.

Taking some of the good, well, you can't take all the good parts because the bad parts is what

makes the person take it all together. Okay, this is humans only or does it pass around from animals

in your view? I don't know. That's above my pay grade. I don't know. So okay, so you talk about

the muse as the source of ideas, maybe. Since you've gotten a few glimpses of her in your writing,

tell me, what is it possible for you to tell me about her? Where does she reside? What does she

look like? I mean, you can look at it in many different ways. The Greeks did it in an anthropomorphic

way. They created gods that were like human beings. But if you look at it from a Kabbalistic Jewish

perspective, Jewish mysticism, you could say that it's the soul, the neshama, that the soul is above

us on a higher plane, our own your soul, my soul, and is trying to reach down to us and communicate

with us. And we're trying simultaneously to reach up to it through prayer or through, if you're a

writer or an artist, when you sit down at the keyboard, you're entering into a kind of prayer.

You're entering into a different state of an altered consciousness to some extent. You're

opening yourself, opening the pipeline or turning on the radio to tune into the cosmic radio station.

Another way of looking at it, this is an, did you ever see the movie City of Angels? The visual

of the movie, it was Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage. Oh, and they go skate? Yeah, I've seen it, yep.

And right, the visual of the movie sort of was Meg Ryan is a heart surgeon. And as she's operating

on somebody, suddenly Nicholas Cage in this long duster coat, like Jesse James, appears right

next to her in the operating room and he's an angel. And he's waiting to take out the soul of

the patient on the operating table. And she doesn't see him, she's totally unaware of him.

And so is everybody else in the operating room, except maybe the guy who's about to die,

who suddenly sees him. But I kind of believe that there are beings like that. Or if you don't

like that, it's a force, it's a consciousness, it's something that are right here right now.

And we, and they're trying to communicate to us. And like through a membrane,

like tapping on that window over there, they're like right out there. And they carry the future.

They are everything that is in potential. All the works that you will do, Lex,

your startup, whatever else you're doing, they know that. And it's not really you

that's coming up with those ideas, in my opinion. Those things are appearing, you know,

it's like somebody knocks on the door and puts it in. I mean, in the Iliad, where gods and goddesses

appear along with the human antagonists on the battlefield all the time, right? They'll be,

you know, Homer flashes to Olympus and then back to the real world. And there's a thing where

one Aphrodite, let's say, wants to help Paris. And so she says, well, I will appear to him in a dream.

And I'll take the form of his brother. And I'll say, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. So that's

creatures beings on one dimension, as the Greeks thought, communicating with, and I believe that

that's exactly what's going on in one, whatever analogy you want to use.

But that communication, to which degree is, do you play the role in that communication, as opposed to

sitting at the computer, if you're a writer, and staring at the blank page, and putting in the

time and waiting? What, so if in your, in your view, is, are these creatures

basically waiting to tell you about your future? Or is there choice? How many possible futures

are there? How many possible ideas are there? That's a great question. I think there's basically,

yes, there are alternatives, you know, degrees within it. But if you look at Bruce Springsteen's

albums, how much could he have done really differently? Yeah, he would, you can just see

there's a whole impetus going through the whole thing. And nothing was going to shake him off

that, you know? And yeah, maybe the river could have been different, it could have been called

something else. But, but he was dealing with certain issues. His conscious self was dealing

with certain issues that were really out of his control. He was, he was drawn, he was called to

it, right? Nothing could stop him. And so it is sort of a partnership, but I think the creative

process between the creative impulse that's coming from some other place, or it's coming from deep

within us is another way to look at it. You know, it's like if we are acorns and we're growing into

oaks. So the conscious artist who's sitting there at the keyboard or whatever is applying

his or her consciousness to that, but is also going into opening themselves to the unconscious

and to this other realm, whatever, whatever that is. I mean, certainly, songwriters for a million

years have said, you know, a song just came into their head, right? Yes. Palm just, all they had to

do is write. But then you ever see that thing where of Keats's notes for a thing of beauty is a joy

forever? It's like covers the entire page and it's like, you know, he's crossing this out and that

out, and he has his consciousness, his conscious mind is working on it. But so I do think it's

a partnership. And I think that I know when I was first starting out as a writer, I worked in

advertising and I tried to do novels that I could never do. I was like really unskilled

at getting to that, tuning into that station. I just beat my brains out and was unable to do it,

you know, except because I was sort of trying too hard, it was sort of like a zen monk or a

monk of some kind trying to meditate and just like constantly thoughts driving you crazy.

But over time, you know, not wood, I've kind of gotten better at it. And I can sort of let go of

those, that part of me that's trying so hard. And so these angels can speak a little more easily

through the membrane.

Can you put into words the process of letting go and clearing that channel of communication?

What does it take?

That's another great question. For me, it just took probably 30 years. And I don't even, I would,

I guess I would liken it to meditation, even though I'm not a meditator. But it would seem to

me to be one of the hardest things in the world to just sit still and stop thinking.

Right? And so it's very hard to put into words. And I think that's why these teachers of meditation

use tricks and koans and stuff like that. But for me, at least, I think it was just

a process of years and years of trying and finally of beating my head in the wall

and finally little by little giving up the beating of the head. But there doesn't seem

to be any trick. Everybody wants a hack these days. And I don't think there is a hack.

If you look at it in terms of the goddess, the muse, she's watching you down there

beating your head in the wall. You're like a marine going through an obstacle course or

a martial artist trying to learn, you know, like Uma Thurman doing the casket deal,

trying to make that little four inch punch, you know. The muse or the goddess is just sort of

watching going, Alex, he's trying, he's trying. I'm going to come back in another couple of

months and see if he's still there. And finally she'll say, all right, he's had a,

he's beaten, he's paid his dues. I'm going to give it to him.

So the hard work and the suffering, yeah. But, you know, I'm also being Russian

in wrestling and martial arts. We're big into drilling technique. I was also just even getting at

that. There's certainly, there's no shortcut, but is there a process? So you're at the practice,

there can be the process of practice. So you had two, one, you had an example of meditation.

So it's essentially the practice of meditation. I think it's a good drill. I think it's a good

way to look at it too. But what are you, what are you drilling? You're just sitting and you're,

you're writing, you know, just writing, you're writing, you're, then you're looking at what you

wrote, you know, you're hitting moments when it flows, you know, and you're, and you're, and in

your other hitting moments where you just can't do anything and you're trying to, from the moments

that were it flowed, you're trying to come back and look at and say, what, what did I do? How did,

how did that happen? War was in my mind, you know, but I think it's just a process of over and over

and over and over until finally it gets a little bit easier. And did you, did you always, when you,

when you read something you write, did you always have a pretty good radar for what's good and not

after it's written? No, I think I do now. But, but no, it was always really hard for me to know

what was good. I mean, do you edit the process of editing? Is the process of looking at what you've

written and improving it? Are you a better writer or an editor? How often do you edit?

That's another great question. Great question. Cause I do think that in writing, the real process

of looking at it is the process that an editor does rather than what a writer does. The gentleman

I was just talking to on the phone is my editor, Sean Coyne, who was the guy who bought Gates of

Fire when he was an editor at Doubleday. And who basically when I finish a book, I give it to him.

And he, and he gives me, you know, he, he editing doesn't really mean like crossing out commas.

It really means looking at the overall work and saying, does it work? And if it doesn't work,

why doesn't it work? Is there something wrong here? You know, like if you were building the

Golden Gate Bridge, you know, and one span was out of whack, you know, you could, and I think a

really skilled editor, which Sean is, understands what, what makes a story tick. And he also has

the perspective that I've lost in something I've wrote, because I'm so close to it to say, you

know, this, you know, this isn't working. And that is working. What kind of advice has he given you?

Is it like layout? Like, this story doesn't flow correctly. Like you shouldn't start at this point.

Or does he even sit back at a higher level and say, I see what you're doing, but you could do better.

No, he doesn't do that. Okay. But a lot of it is about genre and kind of the

defining what genre you're working in. And I'm going to get up here to just bring something

over here for the camera. This was one where Sean tore this down and made me start from scratch.

And what the specifics of it were really, this is a supernatural thriller. That's the genre,

sort of like Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist. And what he made, what he showed me was that I kind of,

I had violated certain conventions of the genre, you know, that, and you just can't do that, you

know, it's got to be, you know, it has to be done the right way. And so he pointed out certain things

to me. So he must be a prolific reader himself too, actually. That's such a tough job of editor.

Yeah. Again, he was sort of born to do that. He just kind of glommed onto it. But since he was

his first job publishing, you know, cat thrillers, you know, cat detective. But, you know, he studied

how it works, what makes the story work, etc., etc. And so he really, he's great. And I think any

really successful writer, unless they're utterly brilliant on their own, has got to have a great

editor behind them. But you yourself edit as well. I'm constantly trying to learn from him and teach

myself. Everything you see in my blog posts about, that it's about the craft of writing,

is me trying to teach myself the rules so that, you know, I'm sure it's the same in martial arts

or anything else, right? You try to not be dependent on that other person because it's so

painful to make those mistakes. You really feel like, God, I wish I could get it right the first

time, the next time I do it. Well, in research, we go through that. In research, more than writing,

so what you do is a little more solitary. In research, there's usually two, three,

four people working on something together, and we write a paper. And there's that painful process

of where you write it down, and then you share it with other, and not only do they criticize the

writing, they criticize the fundamental aspects of the approach you've taken.

I would think so. So that's exactly like, you know, they would say, you're attacking,

you're asking the wrong questions, right? Yeah. And that's extremely, you know,

painful, especially when you, well, it's painful and helpful, but there's disagreement and so on.

And through that comes out a better product in the end. If you want to still have an ego,

but you also want to silence it every once in a while, so there's a balance. In your book,

The War of Art, you talk about resistance with the capital R as the invisible force in this

universe of ours that finds a way to prevent you from starting or doing the work.

Where do you think resistance comes from? Why is there a force in our mind that's constantly

trying to jeopardize our efforts with laziness, excuses, and so on? That's another great question.

I mean, in Jewish mysticism, in Kabbalistic thinking, it's called the Yetzar Hurrah,

right? And it's a force that if this up here is your soul of Neshama trying to talk to you,

us down here, the Yetzar Hurrah is this negative force in the middle. So I'm not the only one

that ever thought about this. But, and I don't know if anybody really knows the answer, but here's

my answer. I think that there are two places where we as human beings can seat our identity.

One is the ego, the conscious ego, and the other is the greater self and the self in the

Jungian sense. The self in the Jungian sense includes the unconscious and butts up against what Jung

called the divine ground, which what I would call the muse, the goddess, or whatever. And I think,

and the ego is just this little dot inside this bigger self. And the ego has a completely different

view of life as from the self. The ego believes, I'm going to give you a long answer here, Alex.

No, perfect. The ego believes that death is real. The ego believes that time and space are real.

The ego believes that each one of us is separate from the other. I'm separate from you. I could

punch you in the face and it wouldn't hurt me. It would only hurt you. And in the ego's world,

the dominant emotion is fear, because we are all made of flesh. We can all die. We can all be hurt.

We can all be ruined. So we are protecting ourselves and even our desire to create,

as we were talking about before, comes out of that fear of death. The self, on the other hand,

the greater self that butts up against the divine ground, believes that death is not real, that time

and space are not real, that the gods travel swift as thought. And the ego also believes that,

I mean, the self believes that there's no difference between you and me that we're all one. If I hurt

you, I hurt myself. Karma, right? And in the world of the self, of the greater self,

the dominant emotion is love, not fear. Now, so I think that, let me go farther back here,

a long way to answer your question. When Jesus died on the cross, or when the 300 Spartans

willingly sacrificed their lives at their monopoly, they were acting according to the rules of the

self. Death is not real. No difference between you and me. Time and space are not real. Predominant

emotion is love. So in my opinion, we as conscious human vessels are in a struggle between these

two things, the ego and the self. To me, resistance is the voice of the ego saying,

and it's a fearful voice. Because if when we identify with the self, we move our consciousness

over to the self as artists or scientists opening ourselves up to the cosmic dimension,

to the other forces, the ego is tremendously threatened by that. Because if we're in that

space, that headspace, we don't need the ego anymore. So I think resistance is a voice of the

ego trying to keep control of us. In a way, I'll give you a bad example. Trump is the ego.

That's probably a very good example, right? It's a zero sum world for him. And for anybody that's

in that. And the opposite of that would be somebody like Martin Luther King or Gandhi.

And that's of course why they all wind up getting assassinated. Because that voice,

that ego is hanging onto itself and feels so threatened by... I could talk more about this

if you want to. No, for sure. That's fascinating. It's interesting why the

fear is attached to the ego. I really like this dichotomy of ego and self and that struggle.

It's just the ego has the self obsession of it. Why fear is such a predominant thing?

Why is resistance trying to undermine everything? It's fear. It's out of fear.

Let's think about the whole thing in terms of stories. In a story, the villain is always

resistance, is always the ego. The hero is always, of course, always not everything,

but you know what I mean? Pretty much represents kind of the self. If you think about the alien

on the spaceship, that's like the ultimate kind of villain. It keeps changing form, right?

First it goes on the guy's face, then it pops out of his chest, but it always just has that one

monomaniacal thing to destroy, you know? And just like the ego, just like resistance. And

maybe alien is a bad example because Sigourney Weaver has to sort of

fight on the same terms as the alien. But maybe a better example might be something like Casablanca,

where in the end the Humphrey Bogart character has to, acting, operating out of the self,

has to give up his selfish dream of going off with Ingrid Bergman, Neil Salund, the love of his life,

and instead puts her on the plane to Lisbon while he goes off to fight the Nazis in the desert.

I don't know if that's clear, but in almost every story, the villain is the ego, his resistance,

his fear, is that zero sum thing. And in almost every story, the hero is someone that is willing

to make a sacrifice to help others. It's letting go of that fear is what leads to productivity

and to success. Do you think there's, this is probably the answer, either obvious or impossible,

but do you think there's an evolutionary advantage to resistance? What would life look like without

resistance? That's another great question. I think I also believe that resistance like death

gives a meaning to life. If we didn't have it, it's going to be, what would we be? We'd be in

the Garden of Eden picking fruit and just happy and stupid. And I do think that that myth of the

Garden of Eden is really about this kind of thing, where Adam and Eve decide to take matters into

their own hands and acquire knowledge that until then, God had said, I'm the only one that's got

that knowledge. And of course, once they've acquired that knowledge, they're cast out into the world

you and I live in now, where they do have to deal with that fear and they do have to deal with all

that stuff. It's a human condition. The human condition and the meaning and the purpose comes

from the resistance being there and the struggle to overcome it.

To overcome it. Right. And also, the other aspect of it is that it's not real at all. It's not even

like it's an actual force. It's all here. In a way, it's a surrender to it. It's sort of like

turning on the light in a dark thing. It's like it's gone. But not quite because it's never

right. Because it comes back again tomorrow morning. Exactly. So you have to keep changing

light bulbs every day. So what's been maybe recently, but in general, maybe in your life,

what's been the most relentless or one of the more relentless sources of resistance to you

personally? I mean, it's always the same. It's about writing for me and evolving within my own

body of work. It never goes away. It never gets any less. Do you have particular excuses?

Particular justifications that come out? No. It's always the same. Well, I would say it's

always the same, but it's really not because resistance is so protean. It keeps changing form.

And as you move to hopefully a higher level, resistance gets a little more nuanced and a

little more subtle trying to fake you out. But I think you learn that it's always there and

you're always going to have to face it. I mean, your battle is sitting down and writing to

some number of words to a blank page. Do you have a process there with this battle? Do you have a

number of hours that you put in to sit down? I'm definitely a believer that even though

this battle is fought on the highest spiritual level, that the way you fight it is on the most

mundane. I'm sure it's like martial arts must be the same way. I mean, I go to the gym first thing

in the morning and I sort of am rehearsing myself. The gym is called resistance training, right?

You're working against resistance, right? And I don't want to go. I don't want to get out of bed.

I hate to be, but I'm sort of fortifying myself to be ready for the day. And like I said, over

knock wood, over years, I've learned to sort of get into the right kind of mindset and it's not

as hard for me as it used to be. The real resistance, I think, for me, and I think this is true for

anybody is the question of sort of what's the next idea? What's the next book? What's the next

project that you're going to work on? And when I ask that question, I'm asking it of the muse.

I'm kind of saying, what do you want me or I'm asking it of my unconscious? If we're looking

at Bruce Springsteen's albums, it's kind of, well, what's the next album? Now he's on Broadway.

That was a great idea, right? Where'd that come from? And then for him, what's after that?

That body of work is already alive. It already exists inside us kind of like a woman's biological

clock. And we have to serve it. And we have to otherwise it'll give us cancer. I don't mean

to say that if anybody has cancer that they're not, but you know what I mean? It'll take its

revenge on us. So the next resistance to me is sort of a big aspect of it is what's next?

When I finish the book I'm working on now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do next.

And let's see. At the same time, you have a sense that there's a Bruce Springsteen single line of

albums. So like it's already known somewhere in the universe what you're going to do next

is the sense you have. In a sense, yes. I don't know if it's like predetermined,

you know, but it's, but there's something like that.

Yeah, I'd like to believe that there's, it's kind of like quantum mechanics, I guess.

Once you observe it, maybe once you talk to the muse, it's one thing for sure,

it was always going to be that one thing. But really, in reality, it's a distribution,

it could be any number of things. Yeah, I think so. There's alternate realities.

Alternate realities, yeah. But they're not that far apart. I mean,

Bruce Springsteen is not going to write, you know, a Joni Mitchell song, you know,

no matter how hard he tries. I mean, he still did that, which is not a

Bruce Springsteen thing to do. So I think, I think you're being in retrospect.

I think it is a Bruce Springsteen thing to do. It's a next sort of evolution for him. Why not

take his music to there, you know? In retrospect, it all makes sense, I think.

Yeah. Because if you pull it off especially, do you visualize yourself completing the work?

Like Olympic athletes visualize getting the gold medal.

Do you, you know, that's, they go through, I mean, that's actually a really,

you can learn something from athletes on that is years out, certainly two, three years out,

some, some people do much longer every day. You visualize how the day of the, the championship

will go. They add down to, I mean, everything down to how will it feel to stand on the podium

and so on. Do you do anything like that in how you approach writing?

No. Because it's, because it is in the moment, I think, because it's such a mystery. You just

don't know. I think it's different from sports. Right. Because you don't know the destiny.

There's no gold medal at the end. No. In fact, I would like to think and

that as soon as you finish one, the next day you're on the other. And in fact,

hopefully you've already started the other. You're already, you know, 100 pages into the other

when you finish the first one. But it is a, it is a,

it's a journey. It's a process. I don't think it is a, in fact, I think it's very dangerous to

think that way. To think, oh, this, I'm going to win the Oscar. You know?

It's interesting for the creative process. It might be dangerous. It's, it's a, maybe you can,

like, why is that dangerous? Because I kind of, it's the ego.

It's the ego. Because you're giving yourself over to the ego. You know, I keep saying this

myself. My job, I'm a servant of the muse. I, I'm there to do what she tells me to do.

And if I'm suddenly think, oh, I'm really, I just want to, you know, whatever, the muse

doesn't like that. Yeah. And, you know, and she's on another dimension for me.

I'm trying to square that because I agree. I'm trying to square that with the,

I think there's a meditation to visualizing success in the athletic realm to where it focuses,

it removes everything else away to where you focus on this particular battle. I mean,

I think that you can do that in many kinds of ways. And in sports, the ego serves a more

important role, I think, than it does in writing. I mean, the ego, there's something.

Well, no, let me, when you say that, I know what you mean, Lex. I do think there is a sort of a,

you know, it's interesting to watch interviews with Steph Curry.

Yeah. Who's such, obviously such a nice guy, but he's got such tremendous self confidence,

you know, that it, but it's, it doesn't border on ego so much because he's worked so hard for it,

you know, but he knows, so he has visualized. He has visualized, maybe not so much winning,

you know, as just him being the best he can be, him being in the flow, you know, doing his thing

that he knows he can do. And I do think in the creative world, yeah, there is a sort of a thing

like that where you were, and, you know, a choreographer or filmmaker or whatever might

be, do an internal thing where they're saying, I can make an Oscar winning movie, I can direct

this movie, you know, I'm banishing these thoughts that I'm not good enough, I can do that, I can,

I can edit it, I can score it, I can, you know, mump it, mump it, mump it, but I, and I don't

think that's really ego. I think that's, that's part of the process in a good way, like an athlete

does that. So extreme confidence is what some of the best athletes come with, and you think it's

possible to, as a writer, to have extreme confidence in yourself? I do think so, you know, that I'm

sure when John Lennon sat down to write a song, he felt like, shit, I can do this, you know?

I'm not so sure. I think, because the great artists I've seen, that you're haunted by

self doubt, it's that resistance, I mean, the confidence. Yes, but I mean, I guess, but even

beyond the self, within the self, above the self doubt. Oh, it's the biggest, the bigger picture

of self belief, you know? Yeah, I'm freaking out, yeah, I'm worried that I'm not gonna be able to,

but you know, I know, I can do this. Yeah, and when you look at, when you take a bigger picture,

yeah. So the writing process, is it fundamentally lonely? No, because you're with your characters.

You are. So you really put yourself in the world? Absolutely. You know, I've written about this

before, that I used to, my desk used to face a wall instead of seeing, and people would say, well,

don't you want to look out the window? But I'm in here. I mean, I'm seeing, you know, the Spartans,

I'm seeing, you know, whatever. And the characters that are on the page, or that you create,

are not accidents, you know? They're coming out of some issue, some deep issue that you have,

whether you realize it or not. You might not realize it till 20 years later, or somebody

explains it to you. So your characters are kind of fascinating to you. And their dilemmas are

fascinating to you. And you're also trying to come to grips with them, you know, you sort of

see them through a glass darkly, you know, and you really want to see them more clearly.

So yeah, no, it's not lonely at all. In fact, I'm more lonely, sometimes later going out to dinner

with some people and actually talking to people. Do you miss the characters after it's over?

Let's say I have, I have affection for them, kind of like children that have gone off to college

and now are, you know, you only see them at Thanksgiving. Definitely I have affection for

them. Even the bad guys. Maybe especially the bad guys. Especially the bad guys. You've said that

writers, even successful writers are often not tough minded enough. I've read that in a post

that you have to be a professional in a way you handle your emotions. You have to be a bit of a

warrior to be a writer. So what are, what do you think makes a warrior? Is it, is a warrior born

or trained in the realm, in the bigger realm, in the realm of writing and the creative process?

I think, I think they're born to some extent, you have the gift, like you might have a gift as a

martial artist to do whatever martial artists do. But the training is the big thing. 90% training,

10%, 10% genetics. And, you know, I use another analogy other than warrior to, as far as writer,

and that's like to be a mother. If you think about, if you're a writer or any creative person,

you're giving birth to something, right? You're carrying a new life inside you. And in terms of

bravery, if your child, your two year old child is underneath a car is coming down the street,

the mother's going to like stop a Buick, you know, with her bare hands. So that's a,

that's another way to think about how a, how a writer has to think about, or any creative person

has to think about, I think, what they're, what they're doing, what this,

this child, this new creation that they're bringing forth.

Yeah. So the hard work that's underlying that I've just a couple of weeks ago talked to

just happened to be in the same room. Both gave talks area on the Huffington. I did this conversation

with her. I didn't know much about her before, before then, but she has recently been, she wrote

a couple of books and been promoting a lifestyle where she basically, she created the Huffington

post and she gave herself like, I don't know, 20 hours a day, just obsessed with her work.

And then she, she fainted, passed out and kind of, there was some health issues. And so she wrote

this book saying that, you know, sleep, basically you want to establish a lifestyle that doesn't

sacrifice health that's productive, but doesn't sacrifice health. She thinks you can have both

productivity and health, criticizing Elon Musk, who I've also spoken with for working too hard.

And thereby sacrificing, you know, being less effective than he could be. So I'm trying to

get at this balance between health and obsessively working at something and really working hard.

So I'm, what Ariane is talking about makes sense to me, but I'm a little bit torn to me.

Passion and reason do not overlap much or at all sometimes. Maybe I'm being too Russian,

but I feel madness and obsession does not care for health or sleep or diet or any of that.

And hard work is hard work and everything else can go to hell. So if you're really focused

on whether it's writing a book, it should, everything should just go to hell. Where do

you stand on this balance? How important is health for productivity? How important is it to

sort of get sleep and so on? On the health side. I mean, there was a period of my life when I was

just, I had no obligations and I was just living in a little house and just working nonstop, you

know? But even then, I would get up in the morning and I would have liver and eggs for breakfast

every day and I would do my, you know, exercise, whatever it was. But although I was still doing

like, you know, 18 hours a day, but I'm definitely, I kind of think of it sort of like an athlete does.

I'm sure that like Steph Curry is totally committed to winning championships and stuff

like that. But he has his family, he sees his family, you know, the family is always there.

He, I'm sure he eats, you know, perfect, great stuff, gets his sleep, you know, gets the train,

you know, the whatever a trainer does to him for his knees and his ankles and whatever.

So I, or Kobe Bryant or anybody that's a, it's operating at a high level. So I do think I'm

from that kind of the health school. The good thing about being a writer is you can't work for

many hours a day. You know, four hours is like the maximum I can work. I've never been able to work

more than that. I don't know how people do it. I've heard of people do 10, 12, I don't know how

they do it. So that gives you a lot of other time to, to do it. Optimize your health.

Yeah. Because you need to, you're in training, you know, you're, you're really,

you're burning up a lot of B vitamins when you're working here at the, yeah, but

maybe it's a Russian thing with you Lex. Well, it's not even a Russian thing. I mean,

it also may be youth, you know, at 35, you can be crazy.

You know, that's, that's what they, they, they keep telling me, but I'm pretty sure I'll be

at it still at a later time too. I think it has to do with a career choice too. I think writing

is almost, from everything I've heard, it's almost impossible to do it more than a few hours

really well. The, when you start to get into certain disciplines, like with Elon Musk and me,

uh, engineering disciplines, that really there's a lot more non muse time needed.

Right, right. So, um, the crazy hours that you're talking, that you often are talking about,

have to be done. And it doesn't, uh, I think that's true. Yeah. So there's still the two,

three hours of muse time needed for truly genius ideas, but it's, uh, it's something, something

I certainly struggle with. Um, but yeah, I hear you a lot louder and clear on the health. So,

what does a perfect day look like for you? If we're talking about writing an hour by hour

schedule of a perfect day, um, I get up early, I go to the gym, I have breakfast with some friends

of mine. What's early by the way? That's like a how early 15 am. So we're talking really early.

Really early. Now I'm crazy early. It's ridiculously early. Yeah. But, and I haven't done that always,

but that's kind of what, what, what I'm on now. Um, so I'm in bed like when I'm with my,

my nephews that are like four years old and three years old, I'm in bed before them.

Okay. Um, you gotta be, you wake up, sorry, you said exercise first. Yeah.

And what does that look like? What's exercise for you? I go to the gym. Okay. Um, I, I have a

trainer. I have a couple of guys that I work out with and, uh, I'll, you know, it's maybe an hour,

maybe a little more. I'll do a little warm up before stretching afterwards, take a shower,

go have breakfast. Um, but it's an intense kind of a thing that I definitely don't want to do

that's hard, you know. So you feel like you've accomplished something. First thing. Yeah.

That's a big accomplishment of the day. At the same time, it's not like so hard that I'm completely

exhausted, you know? Um, and then I'll come home and handle whatever correspondence and stuff has

to be done. And then I work for maybe three hours and then I just sort of crash. The office is

closed. I turn the switch. I don't think about any, I don't think about anything. I don't think

about the work at all. Do you listen to, oh, you mean afterwards? After work. Once the office is

closed. But during, so this was like 12 to three kind of thing. Something like that. Yeah. Something

like that. Okay. Uh, you listen to music. No. Do you have anything? But that's just me. I mean,

I don't think, you know, but somebody could do it a million different ways. It's fascinating. You

know, the, I mean, you're also, of most, of many writers, you've really, uh, but like I've read

Stephen King, that writing is, you've optimized this conversation with the muse you're having,

that optimized, but you've at least, uh, thought about it. So what's, can you say a little bit

more about the trivialities of that process of, uh, like you said, facing the wall? What's,

do you have little rituals? You mean like the granular aspect of it? The granular aspects. Yeah.

I have little rituals. I do have all kinds of, which I'm not even going to tell you about. Sure.

But, um, the one thing, and I don't want to like to talk about this too much because it

sort of jinxes things, I think. But the one thing I, I do try to do is when I, when I sit down, I

immediately get into it. First, second. Yeah. I don't sit and fuck around with anything. I immediately

try to get into it as, as quickly as I can. And the other thing is that writing a book or

screenplay or anything like that is a process of multiple drafts. And it's the first draft,

that's where you're most with the muse, where you're going through the blank page. Like right now,

I'm on, I don't know what, the fifth or sixth, seventh draft of some other thing I'm working on.

So when I'm, I'm, I've got pages already written and I'm kind of reading them

afresh as I, as I go through the story. So it's not quite where I am now. It's not quite a deep

muse scenario. Partly it is, but it's also sort of bouncing back and forth between the different,

between the right brain and the left brain. I'm kind of looking at it and trying to evaluate it.

And then I'm going into it and try to change it a little bit.

And when, do you know, sit down and get right into it? Do you know the night before of what

that starting point is? I always try to stop. And I learned this, I think Hemingway wrote about

this or John Steinbeck or one of the, or maybe both of them to, to always stop when you kind of

know what's coming next. So you're not at a facing a chasm, you know?

Yeah. Okay. So, and afterwards, when you're done, the office is closed.

The office is closed. I let the muse take care of it, you know? And I don't want to,

and I think it's a very unhealthy thing to worry about or to think about any creative process.

You don't, I got a long walk later, think about. Yeah. Then I will sort of keep my mind open to it,

but I won't be like obsessing about it. Because actually on walks, sometimes things will pop in

your head, you know, and you'll go, Oh, I should change that. But that's not your ego doing it.

That's the deeper level. Okay. So how does the day end?

Okay. So how does the day end? In terms of writing? So yeah, the writing, well, no, writing the

office door closes. And then the rest of the day, just do whatever the hell.

Maybe go out to dinner. My girlfriend is not here now. She's in New York work and we'll

make dinner or whatever. Go out to dinner, something like that. And maybe, maybe I'll

read something, nothing heavy. And I go to bed pretty early. And the gym is a big thing for me.

I'll already, sorry, probably with you, like with you with martial arts. The night before,

I'll be, I'll be visualizing what I have to do the next day, and getting myself psyched up for

that. And then let's conk out like a light and wake up with the crack of dawn.

So looking out into the future this year, the next few years,

what do you think the muse has in store for you?

I don't think you can ever know. It's probably something along the same. I really believe,

you know, there's that exercise where you, where they say to you, visualize yourself

five years in the future and then write a letter to your, from that person to yourself.

I don't believe in that at all because I don't think you can, you know, there's a line in

out of Africa that God made the world around so that we couldn't see too far ahead.

You just don't know as a writer or as a creator. I person, you know, I never knew, my first book

was A Legend of Bagger Vance. I hadn't, before that happened, I had no clue that I was going to be

writing anything like that on that subject, anything at all, no clue until it just sort of came.

And then when I've, when that was done, people said, well, you got to write another one. I had no

idea what it was, which was going to be Gates of Fire. No clue. So, so if somebody sat me down

at the start of that and asked the question, I would have been in crazy to say it. So I just hope

as, as the future unfolds, that I'm open to it, you know.

Well, I think I speak for a lot of people in saying that we look forward to what that looks

like. Stephen, thank you so much for talking today. It was fun.

You got the best job in the world going around talking to people that you want to talk to,

and that they will talk to you, you know. So thank you for doing it.

Hey, thank you for the great questions you made me think. I've certainly a bunch of questions

I've never ever answered before. Awesome. So thanks a lot. Great.

Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Stephen Pressfield,

and thank you to our sponsors, the Jordan Harbinger Show and Cash App. Please consider

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If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with $5,000 Apple podcast,

support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman, spelled without the E,

just F R I D M A N. And now let me leave you with some words from Stephen Pressfield.

Are you paralyzed by fear? That's a good sign. Fear is good. Like self doubt,

fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb,

the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.