By Shawn Coyne | Published: December 16, 2011
About fifteen years ago a colleague and I had the pleasure of buying Christopher Hitchens a porterhouse steak.
We were in Washington, D.C., at a book launch party at Morton’s in Georgetown. My friend had acquired and edited a jaw dropper of a memoir by a former KGB operative. The event was a bit of a victory lap for him and he graciously lobbied on my behalf to attend. It was a wonderful time when such things were done in the book business. (more…)
By Steven Pressfield | Published: December 14, 2011
The past two and a half years have been really rough for me. Issues of love and work, health and mortality have pushed me into places I’ve never been before. Yet through all this balagan (chaos, in Hebrew), I’ve produced some of the best work of my life.
I think there’s a connection.
It’s a myth, in my opinion, that we need to have our ducks in a row to produce good work. When I first started writing seriously, in my late twenties, I would work for ten hours a day, in the prime of health, with nothing to distract me. Now I’m lucky if I get an hour and a half, and I’ve got more balls in the air than I can count. Yet I do more now, and do it better, than I did then.
When I was finishing The Profession eighteen months ago, I was so sick that I had to work standing up, naked from the waist down (don’t ask). I was so unstable emotionally that I couldn’t be alone at night. I was riddled with doubt. I had lost all bearings.
Yet the work was good.
The idea that we need to be fit and trim and sane and organized to do good work is baloney. The best stuff I’ve done, I’ve produced under excruciating pressure of time and money, amid massive Resistance, insecurity and self-doubt, with my personal life in chaos. Not that I’m recommending such a state. But the fact remains: you can light up the board even with both hands tied behind your back and your feet sunk in forty pounds of cement.
Athletes play hurt. Warriors fight scared. Mothers give birth cursing, and babies emerge to daylight bawling and thrashing and wishing only to turn around and crawl right back where they came from.
The act of creation, particularly self-creation, is messy. It hurts. It’s terrifying.
(more…)
By Callie Oettinger | Published: December 12, 2011
The special forces operator told me the children in Afghanistan need him more than his own kids.
My gut reaction: Tell him he’s off his rocker. His kids need him, too.
But then he explained that the kids in Afghanistan needed someone to fight for them. His wife was strong and could do that for their children in the United States, but he wanted to go fight for other children around the world—the ones who didn’t have someone. He liked it and he was good at it. (more…)
