Lex Fridman Podcast - #102 – Steven Pressfield: The War of Art

Episode Date: June 20, 2020

Steven Pressfield is a historian and author of War of Art, a book that had a big impact on my life and the life of millions of whose passion is to create in 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 Gates of Fire about the Spartans and the battle at Thermopylae, The Lion's Gate, Tides of War, and others are some of the best historical fiction novels ever written. Support this podcast by supporting these sponsors: - Jordan Harbinger Show: https://jordanharbinger.com/lex/ - Cash App – use code "LexPodcast" and download: - Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe - Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 05:00 - Nature of war 11:43 - The struggle within 17:11 - Love and hate in a time of war 25:17 - Future of warfare 28:31 - Technology in war 30:10 - What it takes to kill a person 32:22 - Mortality 37:30 - The muse 46:09 - Editing 52:19 - Resistance 1:10:41 - Loneliness 1:12:24 - Is a warrior born or trained? 1:13:53 - Hard work and health 1:18:41 - Daily ritual

The following is a conversation with Stephen 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, in 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 Thermopoly, the Lionsgate, Ties of War, and others are some of the best historical fiction novels ever written.

As 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 create despite the millions of excuses that filled the head. In his work, Stephen has articulated this struggle better than anyone I've ever read. Quick summary of the ads, two sponsors, the Jordan Harbinger Show and Cash App. Please consider supporting the podcast by going to jordanharmerger.com slash lex and subscribing to it everywhere after that and downloading cash app and using code lexpodcast. Click on the links by all of the stuff. It really is the best way to support

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advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world. And now here's my conversation with Stephen Pressfield. Music 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 we're in the dynamic in our mind, it's 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, you know, that, you know, a great part of your day, I'm sure, is dedicated to reaching that place of, you know, of total commitment and in the face of competition, in the face of adversity, et cetera, et cetera, 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 and 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, you know, 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 and Napoleon or anybody like that, are you 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, you know, 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 mail of the species. So, wars just the realization of that imperative. I think so. So you've written about Spartans in the Battle of Thermopoly, you've bought Alexander the Great, about the 6th day war in 67 in Israel against Egypt, Jordan, Syria. What 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 wish I knew more about the Mongols,

because I certainly, from what I've, what little I know, I think that was a very, their conquest was a very transformative bringing cultures, you know, in a horrible, bloody way together. But gosh, what's then the most transformative? Maybe the Roman conquest, you know, establishing the Roman Empire and bringing that culture, maybe Alexander the Great's wars that united east and west at least for a minute.

So building of empire, do you have a sense? So there's wars, I mean the sixth Day War is not about building empires, it's about how 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. That's I believe right. So that has transformative effects in the World War II. I mean personally, my family and so on that 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 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, I want your land. It's some kind of, it has echoes of the creative force that makes humans unique to other animals. Like wars, it can't be just four people or ten people or a hundred 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 passionate 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. Let me take it from a completely different side. I don't think that I, in writing about war, I'm 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, you know, uh, Victor Davis, Hanson or whatever. Um, to me, the human being, we are spiritual beings in a physical envelope. And there's a automatic terrible tension within that, and which creates a war inside ourselves. So the outer war, when I think about the Israeli army standing up to, you know, whatever,

tend to want odds or whatever it was, that is a metaphor to me of the fight we're fighting inside ourselves. It 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 we're 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 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 Thermopoly, 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 Thermopoly enacted as a group what Jesus Christ enacted as an individual, a sacrifice of their lives for the greater, for the greater good. I don't know if that answered 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. It's not what's interesting about it to me. But didn't you just say with wars and metaphor that we're all essentially in various ways warriors? If we think of it in terms of Jungian archetypes, I'm 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. But not to the be all and end all of everything else. You know, there's a, in my book, The Virtues of War, have you read that? There's a character named Telemann, 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 gymnasts, 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, you know, all day long. If we go to the Sixth Day War, you write about, in Lionsgate, you write about the Sixth Day War in Israel. I think of the words 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 is 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 it entirely. I'm a Jew. I identify with the Israeli people. I was going to see it entirely from their side. So that's probably not what you're asking, but to me, the Six Day War and that whole,

you know, 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 it's where David founded Jerusalem, it's all where the 12 tribes were, et cetera, et cetera, Moses came and brought the people. So to me, the Sixth 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, but religion, please. 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? They believe in Muhammad or whatever, or did they arise in a certain place and a 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. No, I don't think so. So you can 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 six day were worse, secular, and it really was not, you know, a religious thing with them as much as it was a national thing. So having spent time in Israel, how is the world where military conflict is directly felt as opposed to maybe if we look at the US, where it's distant and far away? How is that world different? How are the people different? It's very different, as you know.

Yeah. I've never been to Israel, actually. Well, you haven't. I haven't felt it. Ah, 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? You know, 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. From, if you're in Israel, and if you and I were Israeli citizens right now, you would be a fighter pilot or a tank commander or whatever. You know, you would not just be just, you know, 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, on this thing. Fuck them

will kill them. You know, if they dare to cross the line, and that's a whole different point of view To me, it's actually a healthier point of view. You think so. Yeah, there's no So let me ask the hard question is Maybe it's an impossible question is how do we resolve that conflict in Israel and in Israel or anywhere anywhere where the Israel and Israel or anywhere anywhere where the instinct is to reach out in US and say a few and in the people yeah. Here's my here's I think that the only way the two warring sides or two sides that are opposed to one another can ever really come together is when there's mutual respect we get just more water. I got it. When there's mutual respect and and they can see each other as equals and there's and when there's mutual fear, you know, where

where one side says we don't dare cross a 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 will bingle 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, right, then it's just a human nature. You can see it in Trump and what he does to any vulnerable minority, right? It's, it's, 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, will kill you, is really a good way, is a good place to start from. Because now you can sit down on an opposite side to 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's, that we're not hurting each other? So you kind of said that you need to arrive at a balance, some kind of balance of power. Yeah. that need to arrive at a balance, 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 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, long standing patres and animacies, thousands of years old can go away under the right circumstances in a, on a what time scale? I mean, that for instance, I don't know if it's something, people have to die, do generations have to die and pass away and new generations come up with less hate or can a singular 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. We keep thinking that that's gonna happen. But I think we're in a real spiritual realm here when you're talking about that. You're in a realm of Buddha, Jesus, whatever, something like that, that we're 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 we'll do it. You see us as people continuing to fight. You know, it's a really great question, like 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, 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 insane, but it was that sort of warrior archetype that we were talking about before 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. It's hatred, yeah.

It's true. 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 hatefuls. You get the hate out at, yeah. At a, you know, at a less, yeah, 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, 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 the military

conflict. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like when you, if you need United States, have a draft, for example, what, how the populace would respond different than they did in previous generation. 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 is being used more and more. I should recuse myself on that when I really haven't thought about that. You haven't thought about it. 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 the Mopoli. It means just different talk about the difference in 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, a last valor is no more. Because there, the 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 normal. 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 a writing, in general,

have you thought about what it takes to kill a person if you yourself could do it? 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 but I would imagine in the real world that it would change you utterly forever. Because you can't help but identify with a 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. How, 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 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 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, a hundred, that changes in tires societies. I mean, that's what we've seen. Well, 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 and war really emphasizes that, but in general, the fact that this thing ends, it does. It does. And, uh, shit. And, uh, and I was serious, no. 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, Lex. Uh, actually, I'm 75. And I just, I 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 too but I actually I always have I think and, you know, the fact of mortality is kind of gives

meaning to life, you know, I think that's why we want to create. That's why we want to make a mark of some kind or and the other aspect of it is what's on the other side of that mortality. I'm a believer in previous lives. So I sort of, and I, 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? You know, I sort of, 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. and eating some other form of life, or what a demented thing. You know, why couldn't we just have a solar panel on our head and, you know, be friends with everybody? So I sort of, I don't get what that was all about, but that's sort of the big issue. I've read the Ernest Becker's denial of death,

for example, is Ernest Becker's denial of death, for example, is that Ernest Becker's a philosopher that said that the death, that the fear of death is really the primary driver of everything we do. So Freud had what the... Right. They... I would agree with that. So you've always thought about your own mortality. Yes, definitely. And can you elaborate on the reincarnation aspect of what you were talking about, like

that we kind of, what's your sense that we had previous lives? Well, in what, have you thought concretely, or is it a lot of it kind of as? 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 gonna be completely different and completely their own person. And that person that they are doesn't change over life.

There's one of the things that I did in my book, The Artist 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, you know, kind of a body of work throughout over, you know, a period of 30, 40, 50 years, you know. 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 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, and they're 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 that those into the new one Sam playing this is probably a pretty good word. I'm taking some of the good But well you can't take all the good parts because the bad parts is what makes the person right? Let's say you're taking it all together. Okay. This is humans only a 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, 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, right? The Greeks did it in an anthropomorphic way, right? 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, right? 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, you know, 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 a, do you ever see the movie City of Angels, the visual of the movie, it was Meg Ryan, and the ghost stage. 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. He 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. like that is a force, it's a consciousness, it's something that are right here right now. 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, it's like somebody knocks on the door and puts it in, I mean, in the Iliad, where God's and God is his 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, bump, bump, bump, bump. 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 that 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, uh, 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 he was dealing with certain issues. His conscious self was dealing with certain issues that were really out of his control. 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. 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 of to this other realm, whatever, whatever that is. I mean, certainly songwriters for a million years have said, you know, a song just came in over their head, right? Palm, just all I had to do was write.

But then you ever see that thing where of Keats's notes for a thing of beauty as a joy forever? It's like covers an entire page. of Keats' notes for a thing of beauty as a joy forever. It's like covers an entire page, and it's like, you know, he's crossing this out and that out and that's, you know, he's consciousnesses, his conscious mind is working on it. But 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, knock 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 a good other great question. For me, it just took probably 30 years. And I don't even, 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 it in the words. And I think that's why these teachers of meditation use tricks and co-ons and stuff like that. But for me at least, I think it was just a process of years, of years and years of trying and finally beating my head in the wall and finally little by little giving up the bad beating of the head. But there doesn't seem to be any trick. Everybody who 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, he's watching you down there beating your head in the ball. You're like a Marine going through an obstacle course or a martial artist trying to learn, you know, like, uma thermon during the casket, you know, trying to make that little four inch punch, you know. The muse or the goddess is just sort of watching him. It's Lex, he's trying. He's trying. I'm going to come back in another couple of months and see if he's still there. Yeah. And finally, she'll say, all right, he's had a, he's been, he's paid his dues.

I'm going to give it to him. And finally she'll say, all right, he's paid his dues. I'm gonna 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, there's certainly there's no shortcut,

but is there a process? So you're in 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 way to look at it too. But what are you drilling? You're just sitting and you're writing, you know? Just writing.

You're writing, then you're looking at what you wrote. You know, you're hitting moments when it flows, you know, and then you're in your other hitting moments where you just can't do anything. And you're trying to, from the moments that weren't flowed, you're trying to come back and look at and say, what did I do? How did that happen? Where was 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 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 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, because 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 about on the phone is my editor, Sean Cohen, who was the guy who bought Gates of Fire when he was an editor at Double Day and who basically when I finish a book, I give it to him. And he gives me, you know, 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 I really skilled editor, which Sean is, understands 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 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 defining what genre you're working in and I'm gonna 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 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 showed me was that I had violated certain conventions of the genre. And you just You can do that, you know, it's got to be You know has to be done the right way and so he pointed out certain things to me So he must be a prolific reader himself to actually that's such a it's a 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 cat for illness, cat detective, he studied how

it works, what makes a story work, et cetera, et cetera. So 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

you try to not be dependent on that other person because it's so painful to make those mistakes. You really feel like, 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 this is exactly like, you know, they would say, you're attacking, you're asking the wrong questions. Right? It's right. And that's extremely, you know, painful, especially when you, what's, yes, painful and helpful, but there's disagreement and so on. when you watch, it's painful and helpful, but there's disagreement and so on. And through that comes out a better product. And 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 Yetsah-Hara. It's a force that if this up here is your soul of Nesha-Mah trying to talk to you, us down here, the Yetsah-Hara 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 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 like this. 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, bump, bump, ruined, so we're protecting ourselves and even our desire to create, as we were talking about before, comes out of that fear

of death. 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 God's travel swiftest 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, I'll 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 Mopoli, 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 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. I see there. In a way, I'll give you a bad example. Trump is the ego. That's probably a very good example. 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 on to itself and feels so threatened. Yeah. By, I could talk more about this if you want. No, for sure. That's, that's fascinating. It's just, 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 a, you know, the self obsession

of it. Why fear such a predominant thing? Look, 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? It's first it goes on the guy's face and it pops out of his chest, but it always just has

that one monomoniacal 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 Pumphrey Bogart character has to acting, operating out of the self, has to give up his selfish dream of going off with Ingrid Bergman, Neil Solund, the love of his life, and instead, you know,

puts around the plane to Lisbon, while he goes off fight the Nazis. 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. Yeah. Do you think there's a, this is probably the answer is either obvious or impossible, but you think there's an evolutionary advantage to resistance? Like, 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, you know? 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 sort of 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 when I live in now, where they do have to deal with that fear and they do have to deal with all that stuff. The human condition. The human condition and the meaning and the purpose comes from the resistance being there and the struggle to overcome it. 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. Right? So the the sort of in a way, it's sort of a surrender to it, you know. Or it's just

sort of like turning on the light in a dark thing. It's like it's gone. It's like turning on the light in a dark thing. It's like it's gone But not quite because it comes back again tomorrow morning. Yeah, exactly So yeah to keep changing light bulbs every day So what's been maybe recently but in general maybe in your life was 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. You know, 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, you know, it keeps changing form. And as you move to hopefully a higher level, when your resistance gets a little more new on, stint, a little 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. So I mean, your battle is sitting down and writing to some number of words to a blank page. Yeah. They have a process there with this battle. They have a number of hours You put in I'm definitely

a believer that even though this battle is fought on the highest sort of 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 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'm rehearsing myself. The gym is called resistance training, right? You're working against resistance, right? Yeah. And I don't want to go.

I don't want to get out of bed. I hate to be, you know. 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 book?

What's the next project that you're gonna 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 gonna, well, what's the next album? You know, now he's on Broadway. That was a great idea, right?

Where'd that come from? You know? But, and then for him, what's after that? You know? Because 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 it'll take us revenge on us. So the next resistance to me, a sort of, or a big aspect of it is what's next? You know, when I finish the book I'm working on now, I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. And if we see, at the same time you have a kind of, you have a sense that there is 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 uh what's this kind of

like quantum mechanics I guess once once you it, maybe once you talk to the muse It's 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. Thanks. Oh There's a alternate reality alternate realities. Yeah, but they're not that far apart I mean Bruce Springsteen is not gonna write you know a Joni Mitchell song, you know No matter how hard he's the one I'm brought 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

Springsteen thing to do. It's a next sort of evolution form. Why not take his music to there, you know in retrospect It all makes Yeah 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 I 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 the championship will go the add down to I mean everything down to how will it feel to stand on the podium and so on

Do 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, there's no gold medal at the end. No. In fact, I would like to think 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 100 pages into the other when you finish the first one. But it is a journey, it's a process. I don't think 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 gonna win the Oscar, you know? It's interesting for the creative process that might be dangerous. It's, I mean, maybe you can, like, why is that dangerous? Because I kind of know you're the ego. It's the ego. Because you're giving yourself over to the ego. You know, I'm keep saying this myself, my job, I'm a servant of the muse. I'm there to do what she tells me to do. And if I suddenly think, Oh, I'm really, I just want to, you know,

whatever, the news doesn't like that. And, you know, she's on another dimension for me. I'm trying to square that's because I agree. I'm trying to square that with, 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 that it does in writing. Any of the ego, there's something.

Well, let me, when you say that, I know what you mean, Lexan, I do think there is a sort of, you know, it's interesting to watch interviews with Steph Curry, who's such, obviously such a nice guy, with Steph Curry, who's obviously such a nice guy, but he's got such tremendous self-confidence, but it doesn't border on ego so much because he's worked so hard for it,

but he knows, so he has visualized. He has visualized, maybe not so much winning, 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 this sort of a thing like that where you were, where you were a choreographer or a filmmaker or whatever, might be doing an internal thing where they're saying, I can make an Oscar-winning movie, I can direct this movie. I'm banishing these thoughts that I'm not good enough.

I can do that, I can edit it, I can score it, I can, you know, bump it, a bump it, a bump. But 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, 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 artist I've seen, you're haunted by self-doubt. Is that resist? I mean, the confidence. Yes.

But even beyond the self, but then the self, above the self doubt, oh, it's the bigger picture. It's self-belief, you know, the self-belief. Yeah, I'm freaking out. Yeah, I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to do, but you know, I know I can do this. Yeah. And when you look at me, take a bigger picture. Yeah. So the writing process, is it fundamentally lonely? So, 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 have my desk used to face a wall instead of seeing 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, whether you create or 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 affection for them, kind of like children that have gone off to college and now are You know you only see him at Thanksgiving

Definitely I have affection form 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. What do you think makes a warrior? Is it a warrior born or trained in the realm,

in the big realm, in the realm of writing in the creative process? 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% in headaches. And I use another analogy other than warrior

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, you're carrying a new life inside you. And in terms of bravery, if your child, your two-year-old child, is underneath the car, is coming down the street, the mother is going to stop a Buick with her bare hands. So that's another way to think about how a writer has to think about, or any creative person has to think about, I think, what they're doing, what 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, Ariana Huffington. I did this conversation with her. I didn't know much about her before then, but she has recently been, she wrote a couple books and been promoting a lifestyle where she basically created a Huffington post and she gave herself like, I don't know, 20 hours a day, just obsessed with her work and then then she fainted, passed out, and kind of there's some health issues. And so she wrote this book saying that, you know, sleep, basically you wanna establish a lifestyle

that doesn't sacrifice health. That's productive, but doesn't sacrifice health. She thinks that 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 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, 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. I'm from 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 non-stop, 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 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 as always there. I'm sure he eats perfect, great stuff, gets to sleep, gets the train or whatever. A trainer does to him for his knees and his ankles and whatever. So I or Kobe Bryant or anybody that's 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 it doesn't 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 it gives you a lot of other time to optimize your health. Yeah, because you need to. You're in training.

You're really, you're burning up a lot of BV vitamins when you're working here, I think. Yeah, but maybe it's a Russian thing with your legs. What's not even a Russian thing. I mean, it also may be youth, you know, at 35 you can be crazy. You know, this, this, they, they, they keep telling me, but I'm pretty sure I'll be added still at a later time too. I think it has to do with the career choice too. I think writing is almost for everything I've heard, it's almost impossible to do it more than a few hours really well. When you start to get into certain disciplines like Leelamasca, me engineering disciplines that really there's a lot more non-muse time needed. Right, right.

So the crazy hours that you're talking, that you often are talking about, have to be done. Mm-hmm. And it doesn't, so. 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 something I certainly struggle with. But yeah, I hear you a lot unclear 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. I get up early, I go to the gym, I have breakfast with some friends of mine. I come early by the way. That's like a how early.

Three 15 a.m. So we're talking really early. Really early. Now I'm crazy early, ridiculously early. But, and I haven't done that always, but that's kind of what I'm on now. So I'm in bed like, when I'm with my nephews that are like four years old and three years old,

I'm in bed before them. Okay. 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.

I have a trainer, I have a couple of guys that I work out with. And 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. But it's an intense kind of a thing that I definitely don't want to do. do a little warm up before stretching afterwards, take a shower, go have breakfast. 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. And then I'll come home and handle whatever correspondents 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 anything.

I don't think about the work at all. Do you listen to, oh, I mean afterwards. After work. Once the office is closed. But during, so this was like 12 to 3 kind of thing Something like that. Yeah, like that. Okay. The you listen to music. No, you have and you that's just me I mean, I don't think you know, but somebody can do it. It's fast. It's a different way. It's fascinating, you know the I mean, you're also

of most of many writers you've really, like I've already Stephen King, then writing it, you've optimized this conversation with the muse you're having, not optimized, but you've at least thought about it. So what can you say a little bit more about the trivialities of that process of, you said facing the wall. What do you have little rituals? You mean like the granular aspect of the granular aspects? Yeah. Um, is there a little rituals? I do have all kinds of what I'm not even going to tell you

about. Sure. But, um, the one thing, and I don't want to talk about this too much because it sort of jinxes things, I think. But the one thing I do try to do is when I sit down, I immediately get into it. First second, I don't sit and fuck around with anything. I immediately try to get into it as quickly as I can. 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 something I'm working on. So I've got pages already written and I'm kind of reading them a fresh 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. Then I'm going into it and try to change it a little bit. When do you know, sit down, 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 Dunn Steinbecker, one of the, or maybe both of them, 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 in afterwards, when you're done, the office is closed. The office is closed, I let the mues take care of it, you know?

And I don't want to, and I think it's a very unhealthy thing to worry about it or think about any creative process. You don't like a long walk later, think about, yeah, that then I will sort of keep my mind open to it, but I won't be like obsessing about it. about that. Yeah. So 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? So go terms of writing. So yeah, the writing, well, no, writing the office door closes. And then the rest of the day, you just do whatever the hell. 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 working. We'll make dinner or whatever. Go out to dinner or 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 with martial arts. The night before I'll be visualizing what I have to do the next day and getting myself psyched up for that. And then let's conquer out like a light and wake up with the crack of dawn.

So looking out into the future, this year, 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 write a letter to you 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 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 cre... I person person you know I never knew my first book was a legend of bag of ants I Had before that happened I had no clue that I was gonna be why eating 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 I had no idea what it was, which was going to be Gates of Fire.

No clue. So, so if somebody had sat me down at the start of that and asked the question, I would have been 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. that I'm open to it, you know. Well, I think I speak for a lot of people saying that we look forward to what that person looks like. Even thank you so much for talking to me today. It was fun.

Yeah, it's a great, 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 thank you for doing it. Hey, thank you for the great questions. You made me think I've certainly a bunch of questions I never ever answered before. Awesome. So thanks a lot. Thank you.

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 supporting the podcast by going to Jordanordanharbinger.com slash lex and download and cash app and using code lexpodcast. Click on the links by the stuff it's the best way to support this podcast. If you enjoy this thing subscribe on youtube review it with 5 stars and apple podcasts supporting 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.