A Bit of Optimism - Determination with Steven Pressfield

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Creative success is notoriously elusive, but those who have made the journey insist it comes down to three factors: hard work, luck, and talent. Steven Pressfield wants to add one more thing to that list: a muse. And he should know.His muse guided him to incredible success as an author of fiction, nonfiction, and movies including hit books like: The Legend of Bagger Vance, The War of Art, and Gates of Fire. Steven’s story of the long and bumpy road he took to find his muse and his success can help the rest of us find ours a little quicker. This is… A Bit of Optimism.For more on Steven and his work, check out: his new memoir, Govt Cheese: https://stevenpressfieldstore.kinsta.cloud/product/govt-cheese-signed-copy/and his other published works: https://stevenpressfield.com/books/ 

There is an unresolved debate about what it takes to have creative success, about what the right balance of hard work, luck, and talent is. But Steven Pressfield wants to add one more thing to that list, a muse. And he should know, it's his muse that guided him to have incredible success as an author of fiction and nonfiction and movies. His books include The Legend of Bagger Vance, The War of Art, and Gates of Fire. Stephen shares the story of the long and bumpy road he took to find his muse, so hopefully the rest of us can find it a little quicker. This is a bit of optimism. Stephen Pressfield, thank you so much for doing this. It's so good to see you.

Thanks for having me, Simon. It's great to see you. Oscar Wilde said that, I'm starting with an Oscar Wilde quote. Oscar Wilde said, I find that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. I think that that might be you. People know you for your remarkable work, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The War of Art, Gates of Fire. And the thing that I find remarkable about you as a writer is very, very few writers are able to so seamlessly waft between fiction and nonfiction, which is kind of amazing. But when I talk about life imitating art far more than art imitating life, it's your actual life

that is just insane and really as remarkable as some of your books and some of the stuff you come up with out of your imagination. And so that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Let me jump in right at the start here to say I'm sure that what you're talking about is my newest book called Government Cheese, a memoir. about is my newest book called Government Cheese, a memoir, and that you were the person, before I wrote a word on paper, I asked you to come on over to my place here in Southern California, and just let me kind of throw some ideas at you and tell you what you, and you tell me what you thought of them. And so you did, much to my great delight, and that really helped me enormously. So I want to thank you, Simon. You're actually, other than my girlfriend, Diana, you're the only one I talked to before I plunged in on this thing. Well, I think you give me too much credit, but I'm such a fan of yours. I'm a

fan of your perspective on the world as well. It's really this life that you've lived up until where you became a writer, all these crazy jobs you've had that I find interesting. So how old were you when you joined the Marine Corps? 21, I think. I was just out of college. I joined the reserves, the Marine Corps reserves, as a way of dodging the draft in the Vietnam era, hoping that they would not call us up, and they didn't. Why did you choose the Marines? You could have gone into any of the other forces. What was it about the Marine Corps that you thought, you know, I'm going to choose a path to dodge the draft. I'll take, you know, one of the more difficult forces.

Well, that's a good answer to that, Simon. That is, I tried all the other ones first. I tried all the easy ones first. And they were all, I mean, the first one I went to was the Coast Guard. So I figured how bad could that be? But they were all totally full because everybody else was trying to dodge the draft too. So the only one that still had any spaces left was the Marine Corps. And so when they said, you know, please join, I was overjoyed. So after the Marine Corps, did you know what you wanted to do? Like, I'm so curious how you became a writer. Because my journey as a writer was overjoyed. So after the Marine Corps, did you know what you wanted to do? I'm

so curious how you became a writer because my journey as a writer was a complete accident. I wasn't one of those people, they say everybody has a book in them. I was never one of those people who imagined I had a book in me. I had an idea that somebody else said, you should write this. When I was done with Start With Why, my first book, I literally said to myself, okay, that's it. I'm done. My one book inside me, that's it. It's over. My career as a writer was an accident. Did you have a sense that you wanted to write? Did you write as a kid? No, I'm kind of like you, Simon. It's like the way it happened for me was my first job was in advertising in New York. And I was like a junior copywriter for Benton and Bowles. And I had a boss named Ed Hannibal who wrote a novel that became an immediate hit.

And overnight, he became a star. And I was like 22, 23 years old or something. And I just said to myself, well, why don't I do that? You know, it seems so easy. So, of course, 30 years later, I finally got one published. So I was an idiot too. I just thought, how hard can it be? He just did it.

But it turned out to be a little harder than I thought it would be. You know, I also started in advertising. I wasn't a copywriter, but that was also my first foray into the workforce. I also bumbled through advertising. So you worked for Benton and Bowles for how long? Not long, like maybe not even a year, I don't think. Did you leave or did they ask you to leave? No, that was when I quit to write a novel, just like my boss did.

Oh, so you legitimately quit to write a novel. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I said, yeah, that's it. I'm writing a novel. You said 30 years later it came out, but you weren't holed up in a room for 30 years. So how long did you give this writing thing a try? Well, I wrote the first one, the first novel.

I spent like maybe 18 months, two years being supported by my wife, my young wife, Leslie. And of course, I had no business in the world trying to write a novel. No sense of how hard it was or what writing was or any of the skills that you have to have of how do you finish something? How do you get through the middle? How do you handle rejection? Blah, blah, blah. So anyway, at the very end, when I had it was like on the one yard line,

I just blew the whole thing up. I sort of acted out, cheated on my wife, blew up the marriage, and sort of entered a state of shame and guilt. Then I was like on the road. That was when all these many jobs that I had started. And so sort of the only way I, that I could kind of redeem myself in my own eyes was to try to write something. I tried to actually do this thing that I meant to do that I thought like an idiot was easy. And so that sort of started me on this 27 year odyssey. So you attempt to write this novel, your wife supports you in your dream. You find that it's harder than you expected. And with all of that emotion,

and I know what it's, I mean, I know I lost two relationships in the middle of writing one of my books because of the stress. I'm not my best self. I'm an asshole when I'm writing a book because I'm always on edge. So you're near the end of this thing. You realize it's not good enough. It's not good. This was too difficult. And in that fit of emotion, you act out, you blow up your marriage, and then you leave. You go on a journey. Where do you go first? Well, actually, what happened was in a last ditch attempt to save the marriage, Leslie and I went out to San Francisco. We had a Chevy van, a 65 Chevy van and a cat. And so we were just there for a few months. And it was very clear that I couldn't support her or do anything. I was such a basket case.

So we split up at that point. I took the van. I had like 60 bucks. She had 60 bucks. She kept the apartment in the cat. And I just sort of went out kind of on the road. And I was on the road for a long time after that. Just working jobs and other jobs

and other jobs. One of them was driving trucks in North Carolina. Another one was working in the oil fields in Louisiana. I taught school. I worked in a mental institution. I picked fruit as a migrant laborer, and I went back to advertising a couple of times and saved money in various times, quit, wrote another novel. That didn't get published. Worked again, various times, quit, wrote another novel that didn't get published, worked again, saved money, quit, wrote another novel that didn't get published. At a certain point when I was about ready to hang myself, because I knew I couldn't keep doing this forever, I said, well, why don't I go to Hollywood and try to write for the movies? You know, since I failed as a novelist, why don't I fail as a

screenwriter? So I did have about a 10-year career as kind of a B, C-list screenwriter. And at that point, like 27 years on, I finally did sit down and did write a novel and did get published. And that was The Legend of Bagger Vance. So you were taking these crazy odd jobs just to make a little bit of money so that you could go back to writing. Was that the reason? That was part of the reason, but also certain jobs like when I was driving trucks at that point, I really wanted to do that. I thought I've completely given up on writing. I can't do this. There's no hope for me. Let me just be a blue collar guy, have a blue collar skill. And I just, that was all I wanted to do, you know? So I had about, you know, a little more

than a year of driving trucks in North Carolina. And I just woke up one morning and I couldn't do it anymore. At that point, I really did decide I've just got to figure out how to write one way or another. I've got to find some way to sit down and do this. This is an age old question and I struggle with it. If you have a dream to do something, be an actor, be a writer, be a screenwriter, whatever it is, and it's not working out, at what point does grit kick in and what point do you have to know when to quit? So for example, like Alan Rickman, he didn't find any kind of commercial success until I think he was in his forties as an actor and people admire him because he stuck with it until it worked. If somebody looks at you and says, I've always wanted to be a writer and I started in my early twenties and I've written

multiple novels and none of them have gotten published and I've got all these odd jobs. At what point do you say to somebody, well, stick with it because look what happened to me versus, you know, maybe it's time to quit. Maybe that's not your call. At some point, even though I was never published and it didn't look like I was ever going to be published, I did say to myself, I'm a fucking writer and this is what I'm going to do. And I'll do it until I die. You know, if I have to support myself doing whatever else I have to do, I'm going to do it. But the other thing, let me say this, Simon, I did find all the time, even when I was just writing my own stuff and nobody saw it but me, that I thought I was getting better,

stuff and nobody saw it but me, that I thought I was getting better, that I was learning. I was reading. I evaluated my stuff and I said, you know, it's still not good, but it's getting better. And then when I got out to Hollywood, and at that point, I think I was like 39 years old or something like that, 40 years old, for sure I could see I was getting better from year one to year 10 because I was starting to get work. And you know how it is as you're working, you're constantly delivering material and people are giving you feedback and you're learning stuff. And you're also, you're learning your craft. You're watching a million movies. You're talking

to other writers about what makes a story work, and you're learning. So I wasn't in despair. I felt like I'm making progress. I could tell that I was really better than I had been 15, 20 years earlier. So that kept me going. This is interesting because it forces us to make the distinction between doing something for passion and doing something for commercial gain, even if it's just to pay bills. Yes. I'll tell you a breakthrough I had, Simon, and maybe this will be of interest to people. At one point when I was working in the movies and it became very clear to me that I had to decide, am I going to write the crap that people want or am I going to write what I want? Because I went to a bunch of meetings at various studios

and stuff like that. And it was very clear that the ethic was, we will do anything for a hit. I don't care what it is. And I said to myself, that's not the business I'm in. I'm not going to do anything for a hit. So I had a kind of a real crisis of how am I going to, you know, survive if I do this? And I thought to myself, if I imagine two concentric circles, that there's got to be, and one of them is what I want to do. And the other is what might sell. There's a little overlap there. And I thought I can make a living in that little overlap. And I said to myself, I'm only going to do what interests me, but hopefully I'll pick something that might be commercial at the same time.

When I first articulated the concept of why, I would turn down work with people who weren't interested in my ideology. They just wanted the hired gun. And I would wait for those gigs where there was that little bit of overlap. And I think there's something to be said for that discipline to find that overlap for somebody who's trying to achieve their dream and is afraid of selling out. In Hollywood, there's a thing, there's a phrase, which I'm sure you've heard, one for love, one for money. And what they mean by that is that you might take a movie that's just to pay the bills. And then the next movie you take will be for love. That's sort of a way that a lot of people do it. But yeah, it is tough to say no to some of those things. But you know, if you go down that path, it's the end of your soul. The money gets addicted. How many

books did you write before Bagger Vance? None. None that got published. But how many manuscripts did you write before Bagger Vance? Three. Each one that took maybe two, two and a half years full time. Why did Bagger Vance work? That was a big deal. That was a very successful book that then became a movie. You hit two jackpots. I had a Hollywood agent, a good guy, was a friend of mine. And he'd been working for like five years of my career. And my career was actually starting to take off as a screenwriter. And then I had the idea for The Legend of Agravance, but I had it as a book, not as a movie.

So I went in and had a meeting with my agent. I told him, I've got to write this book. I'm seized by this. And I myself thought it was a really dumb idea. I thought a book about golf is like the dumbest thing I could think of. And about the metaphysical, mystical aspects. I love golf and I sort of grew up in the game, but even though I loved it, I knew it was a really, really dumb idea. So basically my agent fired me. He said, get the fuck out of here. But I was seized by the idea of the book, even though I thought

this is not commercial, nobody's going to buy it. Remember, I've never had any success writing a novel, and here's this really dumb idea. And I wrote it really fast, and to my amazement, it sold right away and became a movie right away, like in three weeks. This is sort of another aspect of the, is it for love or is it for money, is that every time I've written anything that I thought was completely uncommercial, it has worked commercial. Gates of Fire was another one right after that. Every time I've started something, I think, oh, this is a surefire hit. It completely flames out. So I've realized that I don't have any idea what's going to sell. No clue. All I can ask myself is, am I seized by this?

Do I love to do it? And then just do it and roll the dice. What is the relationship between luck, hard work, and talent? All of them are important. Talent is the least important, I think. Luck and hard work, I would say, are important. Talent is the least important, I think. Luck and hard work, I would say, are equal. 40% each and 20% talent. Without hard work, you have nothing. That's non-negotiable, you've got to do that. And luck, in a way, I do think you make your own luck in the sense

that, like for me, I was just so overdue when The Legend of Bagger Van sold as a book and as a movie. I'd just done so many things that had come so close and never had gotten there that, you know, the gods had to give me a break. But talent, I think, is the least important of all. In certain fields like music, like singing, like dancing, like professional basketball, there is such a thing as talent. And you'll agree with this, Simon, I think, in writing, you can get better. I always say that right now, at my age, people tell me that I have talent. But for 40 years, they told me I was a bum. And I was a bum. You know, if I go back and read those first three books I wrote, they're unpublishable.

I worked my ass off on them. They're just not good enough. But you can get better. So at least in that case, talent as a writer, I'm sure James Joyce and Henry Miller were bursting with talent. But you can also be kind of a journeyman person and just learn and just get better over the years. And also, again, I'm a believer in the goddess. I believe in the muse. And I think that if you keep showing up for her day after day after day, she will help you a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more so that it isn't just craft

that's getting better. You are getting better in the sense of being able to dive deeper into the pain zone and come back with something good. If I go back and read Start With Why, as know, as much as I love the concept, the way it's written, you know, I sometimes cringe to myself and it's a little repetitive. And I'm really proud of Infinite Game because it's a better written book. Again, love Start With Why for what it is, but I would probably write it a little differently if I wrote it again.

You know, I started completely rewriting it. The publisher wanted me to do a 10-year anniversary edition. And I went back and I started completely rewriting it. And then I stopped and I realized I was afraid that I was doing new Coke. If you remember, it was one of the worst decisions in the world. You have this amazing selling product called Coca-Cola. And for no reason, no discernible reason, you decide to change the formula. And I realized I've got a book that continues to sell well, that people still find inspiration. I don't exactly know what it is about that book that connects with people because like you, I didn't expect it to do what it did. And by the way, that book outsells

all my other books by a mile. Maybe it is the writing style that is part of the magic of the book. And I shouldn't be so arrogant about the writing style just because I quote unquote, think I'm a better writer. And so I decided to just let it be because I didn't want to do New Coke. I think you were very smart to do that as you were talking about that, Simon. I thought it wouldn't surprise me if you wrote a whole second version of Start With Why and it wasn't as good as the first one, even though you're a better writer. Because, you know, you caught lightning in a bottle in the first one. Who knows why? Maybe it was just the time.

It was the passion that you brought to it. Whatever it was, sometimes a better written thing is not as good. I think that's true. Some of the most entertaining and joyful and inspiring movies aren't necessarily the best written movies. And sometimes the best written things that are technically magical that the critics love, nobody wants to actually watch it or read it. Maybe I shouldn't even say I'm a better writer. I'm a different writer because I'm older as well, too. I have new points of view. And I think that you and I have

this in common, which is I can't not do this. I'm compelled by this idea. I'm compelled by this story. And I will never forgive myself if I don't write this down in a way that other people can see what I can see or hear the music that I can hear. Yes. When did you discover this idea of muse? At what point did you realize that that was elemental to the willingness to commit yourself? It's not even hard work. It's sacrifice. It's loss of income. It's loss of relationships. When did you discover that to have a muse made all of those things worth it? I think I was maybe 32 something years old, something like that. I saved money. I moved to a little town in Northern California and I was determined to write a book and finish

it. This is my second one. And I used to get up each morning and I would go visit a friend of mine down the street. His name was Paul Rink and he lived in a camper and he was an older guy. He's like maybe 30 years older than me. And he was a writer. We would talk, you know, he would tell me books to read and so on and so forth. He used to say a prayer every morning before he sat down to write. And the prayer was the invocation of the muse from the Odyssey by Homer, the T.E. Lawrence translation, Lawrence of Arabia. And he typed this out for me,

and he gave it to me. And I still have it. And I say that prayer every morning to this day. But so he introduced the ancient Greek idea that there are goddesses, nine sisters, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, which means memory, and that their job is to inspire artists. And that as Homer, when he started to write the Odyssey, the first words are a prayer to the goddess. Oh, divine poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man, Odysseus, right, who after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy was made to stray grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart through all the seafaring

ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope for them, for his fellows he strove in vain. By their own witlessness they were cast aside to destroy for meat the oxen of the exalted sun, wherefore the sun god blotted out the day of their return. God blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O muse. So that's the prayer. And I also believe that that description of Odysseus's journey, it's the hero's journey, and it applies to almost every story you can possibly think of. I find always as I'm doing this before another book or another book, I go, wow, this is right on target for whatever I'm doing.

So Paul introduced this idea to me that when you sit down to write, you're kind of entering a sacred space. You close the door, you banish all distractions, and you say a prayer to the goddess. I'm here to work for you. Help me, you know? And I had never thought about that before, but it just completely rang bells of me. And I said, this is it. This is how it works. Over time, my belief and understanding of this has only deepened. And I always say that the goddess is the only woman in my life that I've always been faithful to. And she has always been faithful to me. She has never let me down. And that has

affected my whole life. I mean, I really believe that we live on two levels, a higher level and a lower level. And the higher level is where the goddess is. and that's where we're trying to get as artists. We're trying to get there and then come back and deliver the goods. The thing that I think is so important about the prayer, what you're doing is you're making your writing an act of service. Yes. As opposed to, I'm going to write this book so that people love me. I'm going to write this book that gets made into a movie.

I'm going to write this book so that I have commercial success. You're writing the book for yourself. But when you write the book for the muse as an act of service, I think you let go of ego and you now hold yourself to a higher standard. I think you can be more objective as to whether, is this good enough for the muse? And remember too, Simon, that that prayer was Homer, probably the greatest writer that ever lived, unless we count Shakespeare, maybe someone in the same league. That was him invoking the goddess. sacred space, leaving your ego behind, and trying to reach a higher level via the practice, whatever it may be. I have a direct parallel. I had the opportunity some years ago to work out with some of the officers from the 101st Airborne. And we were going to do a circuit, and it was called a hero's workout. Ah, never heard this.

There were like five or six different stations. So you either are running or you're doing pull-ups or whatever. And we all sort of rotated a number of times, right? So we got to do everything a bunch of times. They said, today's workout is going to be a hero's workout. And they pulled out a piece of paper and told the story of, in this case, an airman. So not even their own service, they're soldiers, right? Of an airman who died in combat. They told us his name. They told us the circumstances that took his life. They told us where he was from. They told us the name of his wife and children. And they said, remember, today you are not working out for yourself. You were working out for him. And they said, remember, today you are not working out for yourself.

You were working out for him. Ah, great. And I remember what happened, which is very often when I work out, I'm working out for me. I want to get into shape. I have to push myself to have to find discipline. And sometimes I just can't find it. And on this day, working out for this fallen airman, I had endless energy and I wouldn't quit. And I found energy I'd never found before. It was this incredible environment of none of us are doing this for ourselves.

None of us are doing this in competition with each other. We were all doing this for him. Let us do him proud and work out harder than we've ever worked out before. And that's exactly what happened. In a sense, he was our muse. And I was not going to let him down. And I think that's what the invocation of the muse is, which is, I'm going to do this for someone and I won't let them down. I never really, when you've talked about it before, because I've heard you talk about the

muse and the importance of the muse, I'll be honest with you, I never really understood it. And now I get it. Now I get it. Well, it may change your life, Simon. It certainly changed mine. You really got me thinking. This is, I mean, I do that when I speak. When I speak before I come out on the stage, I always say to myself, always, sometimes I mutter it out loud underneath my breath, you're here to give. I always remind myself that I'm not here for book sales or followers on social media or a standing ovation. I'm here because I believe desperately in something that I think is valuable and I want to give it to people, whether they like me or not, whether they like the idea or not, I'm here to give.

And do you find when you get out on stage that you're sort of, I don't want to say being told what to say, but that things flow in an effortless manner? but that things flow in an effortless manner. I know that when I show up with a servant's heart, the words come easier. I have a better sense of humor. I'm much more egoless. And as a result, I connect much better with an audience and I become more relaxed.

In other words, I am myself as opposed to a performer. I want to change tax slightly here to go back to that formula. The other thing in that formula was luck. And you said you make your own luck. I think part of making your own luck includes putting your ideas in the world, right? Because if you keep it under your bed and show it to no one, then I can guarantee you there'll be no luck. I was at a party once at a friend's house and I was talking to this person and I said, what do you do?

And she said, I work, I mean, in whatever she does, but I really want to be a screenwriter. I said, amazing. Have you ever written anything? She goes, actually, I've written a pilot. I've written a pilot. I said, cool. What's it about? And, actually, I've written a pilot. I've written a pilot. I said, cool. What's it about? And she said, I can't tell you. I said, why not?

She goes, because you'll steal my idea. I said, well, I'm not a screenwriter. I have no aspirations to be a screenwriter. And I don't want your idea. But I'm really curious what your idea is. She goes, I can't tell you. I'm not going to tell you because. She goes, I can't tell you. I'm not going to tell you because you're going to steal my idea. And it occurred to me like, she doesn't know

who I know. And if she told me her idea and I went, my God, that's a good idea. I want to tell that to one of my producer friends and make an introduction because I think it's a great idea that this idea has to get made. She's defeating her own luck. Like the luck would be, I can't believe I told my idea that this guy and he introduced me to this producer and now I'm this world famous screenwriter, you know? And I remember in the early days of Start With Why, I told everybody my idea. I didn't care who stole it. That means they would just, you know, an old friend of mine years ago said, he wanted to tell me one of his ideas. And I said, do you want me to sign an NDA? And he goes, Simon, let me tell you something.

People who have no ideas are the ones who steal ideas. And they'll only be able to steal yours. And that's it. That's all they got. And they may not be able to execute on it anyway. People who have ideas have lots of ideas. Don't worry about it. And so I just remember telling everybody start with why. And

I think the luck of start with why was that enough people knew about it, that they kept making introductions to people. You know, I told somebody my idea and they said, you need to meet this publisher. And I shrugged my shoulders and said, okay. And the Ted talk came because I told somebody my idea and I said, oh my God, you got to meet this person who's putting on a TEDx in Puget Sound in Seattle. You got to meet them. And I shrugged my shoulders and said, okay, all of this luck came because I was putting it out there. That's making your own luck, I think. I mean, that was how my first introduction to you was seeing your TED talk of Start With Why. And I just said, whoa, this son of a bitch is onto something here. Who is this guy?

whoa, this son of a bitch is onto something here. Who is this guy? And so I would have been now a proselytizer for you. And I was, and I am. I said, oh, you got to watch Simon Sinek. The guy's fantastic. And so you're right, getting it out there any way you possibly can. Of course, that's very hard for a lot of creative types, including me. But you make your own luck that way too. I couldn't agree more. Even in the case of government cheese, you didn't keep it to yourself. You told your girlfriend and you told me. Both of us kicked you in the ass and you wrote it. That's right. And I'm trying to tell everybody I possibly can. Stephen, I love talking to you. I feel really inspired. I'm working on some stuff now,

and I really want to go back and write my own prayer to the muse. That's a good idea. It's like people who make up their marriage vows. If it's coming from the heart, it's a good thing. Exactly. In fact, your little thing where you say, before you go on stage and you say, let this be a gift, that's a prayer to the muse. And I think that she accepts it and that's all it takes. Stephen, you're a gift. Thank you so much for joining me. This has been magical, truly. Thank you so much. And to everyone else who's listening, check out Government Cheese. You get all of Stephen's experience and his philosophies on life as well. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

And if you'd like to learn more about the topic you just heard, please check out the Optimism Library at simonsenik.com, where you can get access to more than 35 Undemand classes about leadership, culture, purpose, and more. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.