Comments for Steven Pressfield Online

Comment on Paul’s All Is Lost Moment by Jim

Jim — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:25:45 +0000

Many times I feel like I’m a hack, a fraud. It scares me. It paralyzes me sometimes. I do everything but what I really want to do because of excuses, fear and procrastination. Every bit of it is Resistance.

Comment on The Difference Between Pain and Injury by Sonja

Sonja — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:25:17 +0000

Wow! That was great. So true, so true.

Comment on Paul’s All Is Lost Moment by Basilis

Basilis — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:19:36 +0000

The All is lost moment hunts me exactly at the finishing part of the book (last two or three chapters).
But this is good.
It’s the time that I feel the responsibility of my decisions.
So what should I do know, that all is lost:
Abandon, or continue?
It’s like walking lost (and thirsty) in the desert: It’s a long way to return, so will I stop or will I go on? There might be an oasis, right after the next sand hill, there might not.
I prefer to be the wondering bum into nothingness and find out, than stay right where I stand and just wait…

Comment on Paul’s All Is Lost Moment by Jerry Ellis

Jerry Ellis — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:49:13 +0000

Thanks for responding to my post, Steven. You’re doing a magnificent service for writers. I just signed on here recently and look forward to following you.

Comment on Paul’s All Is Lost Moment by Solid gold creativity

Solid gold creativity — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:27:02 +0000

Very useful! Thank you.

Comment on Paul’s All Is Lost Moment by Hope Muturi

Hope Muturi — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:25:09 +0000

Wao. Powerful.

Comment on Paul’s All Is Lost Moment by S. J. Crown

S. J. Crown — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 06:02:39 +0000

This is one of the reasons I’m so keen on the places in literature where sports and fiction come together. A great sporting event,like great fiction, usually features somebody overcoming this “All is Lost” moment. Besides Rocky, Rannulph Junah comes to mind!

Comment on Paul’s All Is Lost Moment by Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:06:00 +0000

What a great story, Jerry. You literally walked the walk. I hope the move gets made and you love it.

Comment on Paul’s All Is Lost Moment by Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:04:29 +0000

Pixie, thanks for writing. However, I must join Tyler in taking exception. Paul’s breakthrough wasn’t about achieving quality, it was about overcoming Resistance. The quality will come in time. What he did was epochal. He went from Someone Who Had Never Finished Something to Someone Who Had Finished Something (and from now on could keep finishing stuff.) That changes the DNA. That’s huge. When I had my own “finish it” moment, it took me another 23 years to get a book published. The quality wasn’t there yet, but the “turning pro” moment had happened. Like Lindbergh flying the Atlantic, there was no immediate payoff in the sense of airlines suddenly being able to fly people or cargo planes being able to fly freight. That would take years. But what Lindy did was take the human race from We Can’t Fly The Atlantic to We Have Flown The Atlantic. That’s what Paul did. He stepped into the cockpit in New York and stepped down in Paris. That’s a breakthrough, which is why I took him out a couple of nights ago to knock back a couple of single-malts and commemorate the moment. Thanks for writing in, Pixie, even if I must respectfully disagree with what you wrote.

Comment on Paul’s All Is Lost Moment by Jerry Ellis

Jerry Ellis — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:06:57 +0000

Fear and doubt are thugs in the night on a street most writers can not avoid walking to get to the inner and commercial home they long for. Your Rocky analogy is beautifully, simply and powerfully written, and I bet all your readers fully identify with it. I do. Many years ago I moved to LA to try to sell a script about a modern day Indian who felt he had to walk the 900 mile route of the Cherokee Trial of Tears to honor his 4,000 ancestors who died on the Trail in 1838. This was before Dances With Wolves and no one in the biz felt Americans would buy tickets to see such a movie. I became depressed, dust blowing in the wind. Was my script and idea just foolishness? I decided I was the man in the script, sold everything I owned and took a bus to Oklahoma to start walking the Trail back to my old Cherokee home in the mountains of north Alabama. I wrote a book, Walking the Trail, about my experiences. It went to auction in two weeks in NYC and Delacorte Press nominated it for a Pulitzer Prize. It has become a Native American classic and last year went on display in the National Teachers Hall of Fame. Who knows, my movie just might be made yet.