Month: June 2011
Posted from the road, Jacksonville NC: I’m reading Shawn’s Friday posts about book proposals in our “What It Takes” series. I love ‘em. They’re educational for me too. Until I read Shawn’s first post, I didn’t know what a book proposal was. Until he showed me one a couple of months ago, I had never seen one. Reading this, you may think, “How can that be? How can Pressfield have a 15-year book career and not know what a book proposal looks like?” The answer is simple: You don’t need a book proposal for fiction. That’s good news and bad…
Read MoreI got an e-mail a few weeks ago from Jeff Wills, who is writing an historical novel and was curious about how I did research. I promised I would answer in this space as soon as the launch of The Profession was over. So … here goes: JW: My question is about your method of research and writing. I know your position is do “as little research as possible” and jump in, but I guess I’m interested in some of the details of how YOU jump in. SP: First, Jeff, though I do advocate plunging in on the work even…
Read MoreI have a recurring dream. In the dream I’m invited to climb into the back seat of a limo that’s about to drive off to someplace fabulous (sometimes the dream is about a fancy home or a fantastic restaurant). The dream always ends badly. It’s trying to tell me something. Publication day—which was yesterday for The Profession—is like getting into the back seat of that dream limo. Publication day gets our hopes up. We’re human. We’re prey to the folly of anticipating rave reviews; we’re itching to check sales on Amazon. I’ve been up and down with these expectations through…
Read MoreSteve Martin opened his performance with Steep Canyon Rangers by thanking the audience for being there—saying that he knew asking us to join him for a night of bluegrass was like Jerry Seinfeld asking his fans to join him for a night of bassoon. It wasn’t what any of us expected—or necessarily wanted—from him, and he hoped we liked it. We did. While my ears, eyes, and soul were drinking in the music, all I could think about was “the crossover.” In the late 90s, country musician Garth Brooks released an album under the name of “Chris Gaines.” He created…
Read MoreIn one world, he’s the celebrated author of The War of Art—a book that has quickly become the field manual for anyone engaged in creative or artistic work of any kind, especially entrepreneurs and writers. In the other world he’s the king of all military epics and historical sagas — a thinking man’s Tom Clancy whose novels about The Battle of Thermopylae, Alexander the Great, and The Peloponnessian War are favorites among grunts, generals, and literary critics alike. Unfortunately, there’s not nearly enough cross pollination between the two worlds. Few of Steven’s fiction fans have read his non-fiction, and even…
Read MoreFirst things first: our Kindle and Nook winners from last week’s un-Contest. Congrats to Lou Sancio and Rachel Hope, who will get their new eReaders ASAP—and to the six other lucky devils listed below, who will each get a signed first edition of The Profession. Winners, I’ll e-mail you all personally and we can confer on personalized inscriptions, addresses etc. Here’s how I picked the winners. We had a big long list on Excel; I scrolled down with my eyes closed, then stopped when I felt the vibes and opened my eyes. Whatever name was beneath the cursor … you…
Read MoreI can’t think about William Blake’s “The Lamb” without thinking about Shelby’s and Jonathan’s impressions of Foghorn Leghorn reading the poem: “Ah… Little Lamb. Ah, say… Ah, Little Lamb. Dost thou know… I, say, I say, dost thou know who made thee? We were seniors in Ms. Wilmers’ high school English class and she had just finished asking us: “Why can’t you imagine the vision of a song or a poem in your own head? Why do you need videos?” She wasn’t able to help us create a shared visual image of the poem and blamed it on our reliance…
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