Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - ​​Steven Pressfield

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

​​Steven Pressfield wrote for 27 years before publishing his first book, the novel The Legend of Bagger Vance. His relentless pursuit of a writing career led him through a diverse array of experiences. Along the way, he held 21 different jobs in eleven states, embracing roles such as a schoolteacher, tractor-trailer driver, and advertising professional. His stint as a screenwriter in Hollywood allowed him to immerse himself in storytelling from a cinematic perspective, which later influenced his approach to writing novels and non-fiction works, such as Gates of Fire, A Man At Arms, and The War of Art. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: House of Macadamias https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/tetra ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra

Tetragrammits. You write a uberk about self-doubt, you know, I'm a big believer that self-doubt is a good thing, and so even when the voice is telling me, you know, there may be this isn't such a great thing that you're working on, I'll push through pretty much all the time, and usually it works out. When do you know it's worthy of committing to an idea concept? When is it clear to you? I think it's just an instinctive thing for me, you know?

I kind of ask myself, I'm sure you ask yourself a similar question. If I wasn't gonna make any money from this, if I knew this was just gonna be only for me and that's the end of it, what I still do it, and I really wanna say yes to that. And if I can't say yes to that, and that's the end of it. What I still do it, and I really want to say yes to that. And if I can't say yes to that, then I'm not going to do it. So it's just sort of just a feeling for me like,

I just got to do this thing. It's started, it's growing in me. I've got to complete whatever it is for good or ill. Tell me what an initial idea looks like. A lot of times, I will have an idea and I'll write it down and I'll forget about it. Would it be a sentence? Would it be a concept? Would it be a name? I usually think in concepts. It could be, for instance, I have a recurring character in my books, Tellamon of Arcadia, the one man killing machine

of the ancient world. So I might have an idea like, what's the next Tellamon book? Where's he going? And I might just write that. Another book about Alexander the Great. You want to really get into details here? I'm sure, great.

Always. OK. As much detail as possible. Well, here's a story in this one. And this goes right along with the creative act. You know, I brought the book here, you gotta sign this, Bill, I think two sentences came to my mind.

I have always been a soldier, I have known no other life. And I just, I knew those were the first two sentences of a book, and I'd loved that. You didn't know who the character was. I didn't know who was saying, or you had with the line. Just the two sentences, and I thought, and I'd sort of tried to't know who the character was. I didn't know who was saying. Or you had with the line. Just the two sentences and I thought,

and I'd sort of tried to force myself at the end. Who is this with it? And I just couldn't get anywhere, so I just put it away. And like, maybe three months later, it came to me and I said, it's Alexander the Great. And then I thought, oh, fuck, this is a book that's told in first person by him.

So I'm gonna have to enter that voice and do that. But I thought, fuck yeah, you know. And so then I sort of came back to that idea and got a little bit more farther, put it away for again for a couple of months. So when you have the idea, it's going to be a first person book, Alexander the Great. Do you start then by doing research?

Yes, I did in this case. But I already knew a lot about Alexander the Great. I already was kind of a amateur historian of it. I remember asking our mutual friend Randy Wallace, do you do research, or you know, for like Braveheart? How did he do it? And he said, I always get the story first. Then I'll pursue the research. So in some ways, knowing too much of history

could negatively influence your freedom as a storyteller. Exactly. It's like, like in that case where there's two sentences come to me, I'm a believer in everything that you say, and you write in your book, that it's coming from some other place, right? And it already is formed as an idea. And there have been a million books about Alexander the Great

to use this example, right? That they attack it from every different angle. Mary Reynolds written two of them that were from completely different angles. So this one, as it's sort of coming to me, I've always been a soldier, whatever, is obviously it's already got a point of view. It already has a way that it's thinking got a point of view. It already has

a way that it's thinking. So I'm trying from then on to just sort of be true to that or to sort of excavate it, you know, one shovelful at a time and let it reveal itself. Are all fictional works written from the point of view of a character? No. I mean... Tell me the different ways that works. Ah, well for instance, I mean, I don't actually know that much about it either, but for instance thrillers like Tom Clancy thing will almost always be written. In fact, it's a rule of the genre, I think, in the third person from a kind of an all-knowing

author. For instance, they'll be a scene like a... Make an observer. Yeah. Or a really wise storyteller. Like, a thriller will start like Vienna, 1971, a limo speeds down and crashes and a guy falls out and dies, right? Cut to Kenya. Somebody digs up a fossil. Cut to Harvard, a professor's, and that's sort of how it works. So it doesn't really start with a character, sort of an overview, but a lot of fiction is written through the eyes of a particular character, like to kill a mocking bird would

be told by the daughter scout in the first person. So it goes both ways. For a long time, all my stuff was written in the first person as a character in the story. And then I kind of thought, I got to get beyond this. You know, this is limiting, you know. And so I've done a few in that all-knowing third person author. Is it a different process? Yeah, definitely.

Definitely. Yeah. Who's you're not putting yourself in the story you're seeing the story? Yeah, but also I mean when you're talking through a particular character's idea or a point of view that flavors everything and colors everything in a good way usually you know and it gives you the right or a lot of tools to work with, you know, whereas, and so does the third person thing, but they're different tools. In the first person, you also have the advantage of expressing the feeling of

the character because you're the character. Yeah, but also you're really hoping that the reader will identify with that character and will get, you know, and start to root for that character. That's a really big plus if you can get that thing going. Have you ever written from the point of view of a bad guy as opposed to the hero? No, never have. I never have. It's always the thing you think to do though. Yeah. Can I ask you a question? Yes. One of the big things in the Creative Act in your book is the idea of source, capital S source.

And I have my own kind of thought about that. I would call it the muse, you know? So what I wanted to ask you is, was there a moment when that idea came to you? Have you always felt that like when you were 11 years old, how did that sort of evolve into your conscious where you could name it? More recently, to put a name on it,

I always knew it didn't come from me, but I didn't know where it came from. And over time, the more often I would have these experiences of something remarkable happening, it became clear there's some other force at play, or as I described in the book, sometimes almost like your hand is being directed by something else. Do you consider that to be divine? I do. I do.

And how would you define divine? I don't. Any description of it would limit it, and I see it as sort of an infinite wisdom. Does that infinite wisdom reside anywhere? I believe everywhere. Or is it a human phenomenon? Would it exist a million miles in space? I think it would exist anywhere. It's the energy that drives all things, all nature, all life, all growth, everything. Is it like the force? Could be in some sort of way. It could be. We each use a word in our books

that we capitalize. In your book, you capitalize resistance. And in my book, I capitalize source. Yes. What do you think that says? Well, I also capitalize muse. It's taking the word source or the word resistance exists in a dictionary and can be used and like it's the electrical sources,

that thing there, right? So we're both trying to sort of elevate it to another level. This isn't just a simple little thing. This is a metaphor for a big, big concept. You know? I think it's interesting that the word that you're capitalizing was resistance as the big principle at play, and in mind, it's source, as the big principle at play and in mind it's source as the big principle at play to me. They're in opposition. Yes Yes, I just think that's really interesting. Yeah, it's like we're almost coming at it from opposite angles looking at the same thing Yes, although I would say to bring in the kind of the muse part of it that would be the same as source

So that I'm I'm really talking about the same thing you are, right? But I'm kind of highlighting that element that fights the obstacle that fights it. Yeah. And the fact, to me at least, trying to make sense of my own creative process and what it's like, the big breakthrough to me that helped me in my work was to recognize that there was a negative force. That nobody that I've known has talked about that at all. It's really tough. I thought I'm just a loser who's being defeated by my own self. But to say to myself, no, there's a force out there like gravity. That made a whole, all the difference in the world to me in my own work. Because now

I can say, ah, that's what this is. You know, this negative thing I'm feeling, it's only that. And I can dismiss it and hopefully move on. Yeah. And the beauty of that idea is that it's wide enough to be anything that's getting in your way. It could be laziness. It could be you set up some story,

right, right, right. Internal story that prevents you from doing the work or some self-chatter about not being good enough. All of those things fit in that category of resistance. Yeah, although I would say some of those things can be benign, but resistance is never benign. It's malign. How do you know which of the things are benign and malign? I think it's really hard to do. And my sort of rule of thumb is when in doubt, it's malign. Yeah.

Yeah. Which is a, I think a good default position, because you got to defeat it anyway, whether it's benign or belignant. How did you come to write the War of Art considering you were writing fiction? The short version is friends used to come to me once I became like a working writer and they'd say I'm sure you get this a million times I've got a book in me you know can we and I would sit down you know till two in the morning with with friends trying friends and I found myself stressing

to them, you're going to come to this force that's going to try to stop you, laziness, procrastination, and I was trying to psych them up to overcome that when it happens. And of course, nobody ever listens to me right now. I never did what they were going to do. So finally I'd done this enough and it was such a pain in the ass and a waste of time and I said, let me just write this down and then when somebody comes to me I'll just say here, read this, you know. It didn't start as an idea for a book. It happened in real life.

Yes. And when did you recognize the resistance? I it's not like I can remember a moment or anything but always I felt when I sat down at the keyboard that there was a negative forces radiating off that board or the blank page and pushing me away, you know, so and it felt like it was resisting me, like I want to get into this thing and it's pushing me, pushing me back. And I felt it for years but I never gave a name to it and I always thought it was only me. I thought nobody else experienced, it's me, me, something wrong with me. And at some point, I just, I don't know, the name just was there.

And I thought, ah, this is a force. And somehow I have to get around it. I'm never going to do anything. But what was the impetus behind writing the creative act? Because certainly you were doing all kinds of great stuff. You didn't need to write it. What made you want to put it on paper? I get to produce a lot of music with a lot of artists, but still in terms of artists in the world, it's a tiny amount that I get to work with. I thought if there was a way to share what happens,

this information, and it's not really about music, It's about something else. It's about a way of looking at things. It's about a series of ideas. But I didn't know what they were. So it was more of a opportunity for discovery. And then set out to figure out what those things were. So you didn't really know what you thought until you tried to write it down? No, I didn't know at all what I thought. And I had a vision that it was a philosophical book, more than a practical book. And it was a book that if you read it over time, it would mean something different to you. Which I think is true. And the other big desire was it was a book that when you're reading it, you want to stop

reading it to go make something. That's how empowering it felt. That's how it was. Has it changed your life in any way? The success of it? So I'll give you an example of something that has really impacted me from the book was the idea of there being the four phases of the creative process. And that in that last phase, it's okay to set a deadline.

Now, I would never set deadlines before. And I would have projects go past their prime. Getting the material happens on its own timetable. But once you have the material being able to present it, that can happen on a schedule. And that changed my life. Aha. I mean, the thing that I really love about the creative act

is that it is a philosophy. It's a whole view of what the universe is, the nature of the universe, the nature of the energy flows that go on in nature of how something comes out of nothing, that's a brave thing to come up with, and it's a great thing, it's a great gift or anybody that reads it, you know, so I take my add-off to your recognition. Thank you so much. You really did a great thing there. Thank you, thank you. I don't feel like

it's original material in any way because it's only what I've seen it's not like this is a philosophy I've made up. Yeah, it's kind of the same for me in the World Art and things like that. It's really like you say to start the book. This is just what you experienced. There's no books that you can read about this in the same way with me. It's just my experience. Like if we were both carpenters, we would say, you know, you better not hit your thumb with the hammer, you know, that doesn't work. It's very rooted in reality of practice.

Yeah. It's like this worked, right? Right. And let me tell you about it. Yeah. Tell me about your reading habits. Even though I write fiction mostly, I read nonfiction. And a lot of what I read is research for what I'm doing.

Just to go back to Alexander the Great for a second. When I was working on a couple of books on that subject, I used to go to UCLA Library and there was a section in one particular shelf about that long and was only these Alexander the Great Books. And I just read them all. I just took them out one at a time and so that becomes kind of my reading thing rather than reading the latest novel or something like that. And the reason I don't read fiction very much is if it's a strong voice and a strong point of view it'll fuck me up. You know I'll either

start to copy it or I'll be intimidated by it or I'll... I sort of like to write a managing, I'm just the only person in the world that's doing this. I don't want to know about the whole universe of other people doing it. But I'm always reading something. It's interesting. Do you think yourself as a competitive person? Not really, but I just don't want to know who else is out there doing other stuff. I just want to focus on what I'm trying to do right in front of me. When you read 10 books about Alexander the Great, how different is the information?

Really, really different in each one. So if you were to read one book about Alexander the Great, you wouldn't have a great picture. No, no. Just apropos of nothing. One of my favorite research books that I read about there, Alexander, was by a guy named Walter Engels and it was about mules. It was like, how did Alexander get 50,000 men across the Iraqi desert in the middle of summertime? How did he feed them? And he would sort of figure out, a lot of it was, everything was loaded on mules.

And so he kind of got down to the nitty gritty. How far can a, if a mule were loaded only with its own water and its own fodder? How far could it go? And it wasn't very far. It was like two days or something like that. And so the book was called Alexander the Great and the logistics of the Macedonian army.

So it sounds like really getting into the weeds, but I love that shit because it really makes it, when you're describing a campaign or something like that, a military campaign, it makes it really real for the reader. It's not, you know, some phony bloney thing. It's like, here's the nitty-gritty of how they had to get it to a certain place right when the harvest came in so they could steal it from all the farmers. And if they were choosing this one route to get them to Babylon, they had to go past fortified cities that they would have to storm and take, you know,

capture. They'd lose a lot of people doing that, but if they went this longer way, if they were like little towns, they're unfortified, they could just go in and take whatever they needed, food and stuff like that. So that kind of thing, I just thought that was really fascinating. But that would happen after you've already got the story of it that you are telling. Yeah, yeah. That's just kind of filling in the details. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about your story of Alexander the Great. What's the story arc? There actually were two books, but I'll just tell you about one. It was called The

Virtues of War. And it was the one that came out of those those two sentences. I've always been a soldier. I have no know of the life. And I would actually really think of it this way too, I thought, well, this is talking about Alexander as a soldier, not as a conqueror, not as a person who was trying to unite the world, not as somebody that may have been in touch with the gods or anything like that, just being a soldier. So I thought this would apply to as far as readers would go. Anybody that's in the military or would be interested in that, and I'm interested in that. So it then became a title, became the virtues of war.

And each book was a specific virtue of a warrior. In other words, it was the kind of the idea of the warrior as an ideal, the warrior archetype, as an ideal state of mind. And the virtues would be, you know, courage, selflessness, living for the men, patience, virtues that you might not think of. And the weird kind of thing, Rick, is that those virtues of a warrior, I I find are the same virtues of an artist. And I think of it exactly the same way. Selflessness, patience, courage, a love for the enemy, that kind of thing. So that idea shaped the story. But again, those two sentences came to me and sort of implicit, you know, like an analogy

I would make was like, if we were digging up a dinosaur, a buried fossil, right? And those two sentences were like, we found one toe, you know, here when you use our little paintbrushes and got them all, and then, but implicit in those two sentences was the whole book, in my opinion. It was just a matter of sort of excavating it and letting it so that no sentence or scene or character in the book would conflict with those two sentences. So I believe they were divinely given, coming from somewhere, right? This book existed in the other dimension, and was my job to bring it forth in this one.

When did your interest in military start? It's a good question because I wasn't like raised in a military family or anything. I was in the Marine Corps, but that's a reservist. I was never in combat, really. And it didn't really sink into me. Did you go through training as part of that? Yeah. But I think the bottom line is that I see the creative process, the writing process as a war.

It's an internal war, the war of art, right? And there are enemies, resistance, and we, as artists, need the same virtues that a warrior has, because it's a war every day, in my opinion. Even though there are days when the wind is behind us and we're rolling along pretty good, nonetheless we've got to fight every day. So I think that's sort of why, because it wasn't like I ever planned it, and I'm sure you would agree with this stuff too. Like pretty much all the fictional books I've written have some element of combat in them one way or another.

Maybe it's somebody like in the legend of Bag of Vance, it's a guy who was in the war and is dealing with it afterwards. Or in Gates of Fire about the Spartans, the 300 Spartans, that's obviously flat out about a thing. But I think I just see the struggle to write, the struggle to be an artist as a battle. And so it tells itself naturally in that metaphor. I understand that Gates of Fire is taught in military schools now. What is it about the book that inspires a military to teach it? And what's it like writing cannon like that? Yeah, and when I found out about that, I thought that was pretty cool. But I think it really

isn't, I didn't really do it with me. I think it's, the subject matter is the ancient Spartans and the Battle of Thermopoli, where the 300 Spartans stood against, you know, 2 million Persians or whatever and died to the last men. And that story, whoever told it, me or or anybody else, is, and that culture, the Spartan culture, is a real exemplar of the warrior ethic, the concept of honor. If there is such a thing as a good war, that was it, because it was entirely defensive. They were massively outnumbered. They knew they were going to die, and yet they did die. It's really like the Christ story, but instead of one person, it's 300. How is screenwriting different from other types of writing?

You don't have a lot of the tools that you have in a novel. You can't go into a character's head. You can't use prose or wonderful prose or wonderful to cover anything. Because it's only dialogue. It's visuals, it's photos, you know, it's what the camera sees and it's action and it's dialogue. That's all it is.

That's your palette. Movies are pictures, right? But that can be really great and really strong because movies really give you text and subtext that you don't have in a novel. For instance, two characters can be talking to one another and we could be talking about anything mundane or whatever it is. But if I'm an assassin and my job is to kill you and you know that I'm an assassin, what we do with our expressions and stuff like that can be really, really powerful because it's not in text, it's not steddovertly. So the audience looking at Rick says,

he knows this motherfucker is going to try to kill him. And they really become involved in it, that's how it went. So movies are a lot of fun to write that way. The problem with it is, I know you've heard this a million times, is the screenwriter is the low end of the totem pole. And pretty much you're going to get fired and somebody's going to get fired and somebody's going to replace you and somebody's going to replace them and replace them and replace them.

And when you finally see the movie, God willing, it gets made, you look at it and you go, I know this has nothing to do with anything I thought about. And particularly if you were the original writer, if you were a wrote in original screenplay, you had a vision for something. Plus you get no respect and, you know. Welcome to the House of Macadamias. Macadamias are a delicious superfood. Sustainably sourced directly from farmers. Macadamias, a rare source of Omega-7 linked to collagen regeneration, enhanced weight management, and better fat metabolism.

Macadamias, art healthy and bring boosting fats. Macadamias, paleo-friendly, keto and plant-faced, Macadamia's, No wheat, no dairy, no gluten, no ghee M.O's, no preservatives, no palm oil, cracked black pepper, and chocolate dipped. Snack bars come in chocolate. Coconut white chocolate and blueberry white chocolate. Visit houseofmacademias.com slash tetra. Do you think your ability to tell stories comes more from reading or more from watching movies? Great question. More from movies. Because I had like a 10-year career as a kind of a B level or C level screenwriter. And I think that's sort of where I learned what I think of as

story, you know, three acts and all of the beats that they teach you as a screenwriter. I still sort of apply them, you know, to novel writing as well. You know, you're talking the creative act about how you shouldn't have too many formulas, you got to break the mold and that kind of thing. And I think that's definitely true. As soon as it becomes formulaic, there's no more that feeling of the epiphany. It's just painting in between the numbers. And yet, the opposite side of that is, if we think of a genre like film noir or western or love story, whatever, that has certain beats and obligatory scenes that you have to

have, if a writer or a director or whatever can come up with really great creative ways of hitting those beats so the audience doesn't even really know it, then you got something really cool, I think. Yeah, I think also if you could subvertage on Rob by combining it with another shot of John or that goes in. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure it's the same in music, right? You're constantly subverting something that

Holt and John did or whatever. Yeah, this is the way these people do it, and this is the way these people do it. But what's it like? If it takes elements of this group, elements of this group, or we add a Caribbean rhythm to a rock song, what does that do?

Yeah. Just finding new combinations. Yeah, what I wanted to ask you was, if you had to describe your job, your vocation, how would you describe it? What is it that you do? I would say it's different for different artists I work with. In general, it's supporting the artist through the project.

Sometimes it's supporting the artist through the project. Sometimes it's more creative where I'm offering musical ideas or sometimes it's more psychological in terms of giving them the support they need to do their best work. Sometimes it's helping them remove the outside voices, you know, the record company who says it has to be due on this date when the artist, like, but if it's due by that date, it won't be as good as it could be.

And the artist is one must live with it forever. And the record company moves on to the next one. So helping the artist own the process and not let the trivialities of business undermine the creative process. That's a big part of it. Yeah. So you're a mentor in one sense, right?

Or you're also a protector, right? You create an environment in which, I mean, they always say about movie directors that one of the great things that they do for their actors is create a safe space where the actor feels like I can really go for it, right? Absolutely. And is that, that's probably a big part of what you do as well?

And to create a space where the artist feels comfortable being their most vulnerable. Because that's where the magic happens. Yeah. Baring your soul. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's hard to do.

And there must be moments when the musicians, the artists say to you, you said, okay, to do this, Rick, I'm really scared. Do they do that? And you somehow give them permission? So somehow the permission, it becomes clear. It's implicit in the way that things happen. There's no judgment. They'll be helpful criticism to get us where we need to go,

but it's never rooted in judgment. In any kind of writing, screenwriting or novel writing or whatever, there's that moment when you sort of deliver your draft to somebody that's going to pass a judgment on it, right? It may be a very helpful judgment. You know, it can be your editor that's really going to tell you which I mentioned is what you do primarily. And that's a really fraught moment for the writer. There's a lot of times even with, you know, I know I go into a state of shock when I get those, you know, that 12 page memo. When you do that, when you have to say to a band or whatever, this isn't working or do

you have a way that you do that? Do you do it in a really general way? Is it different each time? I would say it's different each time. The goal is to make the work not personal. So you write a book and if I talk about the book Strings and Weaknesses, I'm not talking about your strengths and weaknesses, Stevens. There's this thing outside of ourselves. And we're a team together to make this thing outside of ourselves the best it could be. Do you ever verbalize that directly to the people that you're working with, or is it just implicit? I feel like it's mostly implicit, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has come up sometime. I remember one time I was sitting with an artist who played me, but first time I met an

artist, very successful artist, and he's played me all the songs, and I made all my notes, and then I read them all the notes. And he looked at me like, with this stunned look on his face, he's like, have you ever talked to an artist like this before? And I said, I do this talked to an artist like this before? And I said, I do this every day. What do you mean? And it's like, no one's ever talked to me like this.

In other words, so straight. Just delivering the truth. Yeah, yeah. But it was never, you're no good. It's the second verse lyrics might not be as good as the first verse lyrics. The bridge is the weakest part of the song. Maybe we can make that better. And I'm not even saying I'm right. I'm saying this is what I see. And then we talk about it. How do you get to the place where you are

in Alrogor? You can be that person. I mean, did you start out in the music business wanting to do that or did it just kind of evolve? It just happened. I didn't know that it was a job. I always had the ability to know what I liked. Which is really, really rare. I could articulate. It's never a debate. It's like we're working together to get to the best goal. So an example that happens all the time in the studio is a suggestion

is made to me that sounds terrible. And I say, hmm, okay, let's hear what that sounds like. And then it's demonstrated. And it was incredible. It happens to me all the time. You're wrong in other words. I'm wrong in my head. But I don't allow what's in my head to impact anything. All that matters is what's outside of us. We don't argue over the fear, I guess. Which I see all the time, bands getting the fights bands break up over theoretical argument.

It's a form of resistance. Yeah, it's exactly what we, that gets in the way of the process. Like exactly what it is. Let's take all the stories out of it. Let's demonstrate it and then talk about what was demonstrated. Yeah. So, as you sort of evolved into what you're doing now, I sort of imagine that maybe you

opened your mouth a few times in a situation when you were young, sprouted doing this. And after a session, somebody said, I want to hear what this guy says. You guys shut up. what does Rick say? Is that sort of how it kinda happened? It happened two different ways, because earlier in my career, right when I was starting, I was more dictatorial, because I knew what I knew, but then I thought, because I know this,

this is the way it is. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Now, I knew A way, and it was successful, and people liked it, but it wasn't as collaborative. And then very quickly, I realized, if it was on me to do everything, I couldn't do that much. But when you're working with really talented people, and collaborating together to make the best thing you can make, you can make much more beautiful things and many more beautiful things. Now I realize I'm open and I really listen and I have no ego about whether it's the artist's idea, my idea, the second engineer, a person visiting makes a comment, we'll try anything, and if what comes out of the speakers is better,

that wins always, not having any sense of ownership over any idea. I mean, that's a great gift that you must have genetically or something, because very few people can let go of their ego or the idea of controlling something, you know, even a little bit You know, I mean, that's a great thing I can I'm trying to think of any instances in my life where I've experienced that and it's really hard to think of any What's fun about it is

if I see a picture a certain way and then a collaborator Tells me a picture that's different than my picture. Instead of rejecting that picture, I think about, hmm, what is it about this picture? The person is suggesting. And it's harder to solve their puzzle instead of the puzzle I already solved for myself. So like if I hear something, I might have an internal puzzle of like, okay, this is how I would do it And then when I hear how they would do it, it's like well, I wouldn't do it anything like that

That's a real puzzle because it's not following my default path. Yeah, yeah That's a real gift that you've got, you know, I mean I think when people ask me sometimes for help and writing I'm no good at that and the reason is asked me sometimes for help in writing, I'm no good at that. And the reason is that I would sort of tell them, well, how, this is how I would do it. And that's the last thing they need to know, you know? And people always react badly to that, and they should, you know? And finally, I always wanted to back in, I would say, look, you know, just do it the way you want to do it. But I don't have that gift that you have. Well, I remember about four years ago going out to dinner with you and asking you to help

me finish the book because I felt like I was at an impasse and you refused, but you were great. And you gave me confidence to continue, but refused to participate. Let me say I declined to do the right thing. No, same. You could pick your words, same. But I could see that this was your thing. Absolutely. No, a million percent. Well, I could see that this was your thing. Absolutely.

And all I wanted to do was encourage you to do it. And you did. And you did. And you did. And I was at an interesting point in the process where all of the material that's in the book was out of me. There were a thousand pages of all of these ideas and more. So how do we take these madman ramblings and turn it into something that someone can...

Yeah, and I got to say, you did a fantastic job. You have Neil Strauss to help you. I don't know what the anticipation that was, but you guys did a great job. And beyond that, it's a really well-written book, above and beyond the structure, which was hard enough, and the concept and the ideas. It's perfectly written in the right tone of voice just long enough, not an extra word in there. So, you know, I take my hat off to you. You did a great job. You did it. And worked hard to have every word be meaningful. And I can see it. Yeah. Every word to be

toneally right as well as accurate. Yeah. Yeah. So there could have been a version of a sentence that said the same thing just as clearly but didn't have the same emotional impact. Yeah, and a lot of time was put into is this the way to say it where you feel it as opposed to just telling explaining this way of machine works. Yeah, And there are a lot of books on creativity that 99.99% of them don't do that. They're written that other way. And you know, after like 12 pages you go, forget this. It's funny when I started this project eight years ago working on the book, there were

not books about creativity. There was one, there was Wyletharps book, it was the only one I could find at that on creativity. Yeah, which was a great book. Great book. Yeah. But in the wake of working on it, all these creativity books started coming out. And as it was happening, I was thinking, is it taking too long? Yeah. I mean, missing the window. Clearly, there's a hunger for books like this because look at all these books coming out on a subject where before there was only one.

Yeah. But when I met with you four years ago, I had this feeling of like the contents out of me, I don't know how to present it. I feel like I'm supposed to be working on the next thing. Like I'm off schedule, not my schedule, the universe is. Now it proved not to be the case. But that's what it felt like in me was like It's taking too long now. I'm at that stage where all the ideas are here This shouldn't be as hard as it is That's the easiest part of all right is to get the ideas out

And how do you put them together is the real hard part. Apparently so. How's your relationship changed to your work over the course of your life? I tried to be a writer to write from like 1967 to 1995. And although I did a few things that I thought were good, it never was really coming from the place it had to come from, which is from another dimension of reality. And at some point with the book was the Legend of Bag of Vance, that was the turning point for me. The stuff that I started writing was coming from that place that it's supposed to come from.

And it's been that way ever since. So that was a radical change. Even though I could never have predicted what those books were or the tone of voice that they were in or the subject matter. And I can't really describe what that change was exactly. The only thing I can say is I think it came at the end of beating my head into the wall endlessly and

finally something happened, something changed, I don't know why. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy using one of Squarespace's best in-class templates. With the built-in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins and menus, so your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with fluid engine, a highly intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No coding or technical experience is required. Understand your site's performance with in-depth website analytics tools.

Tware space has everything you need to succeed online. Create a blog. Monetize a newsletter. Make a marketing portfolio. Launch an online store. The Squarespace app helps you run your business from anywhere. Track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go. Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website. Visit squarespace.com slash tetra and get started today. This is very hypothetical question. Do you think there was a way that if you knew something

different than you knew? No. That could have happened 20-something. You know that. I don't think it could have. Yeah. Because I think, and I'm not, I don't even know why I'm saying that, but I think it's because the change happened on some other level. Yeah. Unconscious soul level. Yeah.

Nobody could have given me a hack or a tip or shown me anything or even if I had met somebody like you that had been, you know, gave me a safe place and encouraged me, I still don't, it wouldn't have. I don't know why I say that, that's just my instinct. I think it just had to happen down another level. Is it all about the relationship you have with yourself? Was there some element of giving up? Yes, absolutely. That allowed Agarvance to have.

That's what I would say. That was the whole thing. You gave up on something. Yeah, and I'm not even sure what, but definitely that was what happened. Like, Zan and the Art of Artree were, he learned to let go of the arrow at the right time. Yeah, you stopped trying and did it. Yeah. is that right? Yeah, within it within reason. Yeah When backer vans became successful First of all did it get successful right away out of the box all at once. Yes, right away After 30 years of nothing happy to happen again When you found that out

Tell me what happened inside of you. That's a great question, Rick. And by the way, the level of success was really tiny. I mean, it's like the advance was 25,000. I'd spent it like two seconds, you know? But in one sense, I felt like, I felt like my life is worthwhile now. I felt like I've sort of...

You've found your purpose. I've been trying to do forever. If I die tomorrow, I won't be ashamed of myself. You know? Or that I certainly felt before that I would be ashamed of myself. Or that I hadn't lived up to what I hoped I could do. That was a big confidence builder in that sense. I thought, finally I did something and I'm proud of. The other thing was that speaking of source, that this thing came out of nowhere and seized me. I really felt like I didn't even write this book.

It's like I've read that Bob Dylan doesn't even remember writing his songs. It was sort of like that. So that gave me a whole other humility on the one hand, but also a real sense of optimism because I thought, if this happened once, maybe it can happen again, and I'll just roll it, you know, and just see what happens. Yeah, that was a big turning point. When the success happened in terms of outwardly people liking the book and it's selling, who did you tell?

I'm trying to think if my mom was even alive and I know my dad wasn't. I probably told her, but unfortunately she was in a kind of a mental state that wasn't so good for that. But who did I tell? Mostly myself, I guess, you know? It's a question I asked because the instinct is to tell your parents. Yeah, I'm not the bum you thought I was.

You know, that's got to think. I don't know, like my parents never thought of me as a bum, but clearly when something good would happen, they would care much more about it than I would. Like they reveled in my success much more than I did always. It was sort of different with my family, which is really my name because it's extended family,

where it was like, they sort of never got it. You know, it was like, it was like that story about David Geffen's mom that he talked about in In that documentary did where he was producing this thing at the Hollywood Bowl with Johnny Mitchell and And she asked him what do you do for these people? He said well, I managed him. I'm their manager and she said you I'm on their manager and she said, you? You know. There's a story about Jerry Lewis, who was always looking for his father's appreciation.

And he was invited to do a one man performance for the Queen of England. So he invites his dad, who was a failed comedian. And the dad's in the audience and Jerry kills at the performance, the Queen of England gives a mastanding ovation. Wow. And they go backstage after and he sees his dad and he's like, Dad, what do you think of that?

And his dad said, you still haven't got it. Ah. Ah. Wow, what is it about human nature that your own father, you know? It's a wild story. It's a wild story. It's a wild story.

It's a wild story. It's a wild story. It's a wild story. It's a wild story. It's a wild story. It's a wild story. It's a wild story. It's a wild story.

It's a wild story. It's a wild story. It's a wild story. It's a wild story. I asked you the question because the first instinct that I had was to tell my parents, and since my parents have passed, it's a weird feeling when something good happens because I don't know who to give it to. Or who to tell. It's weird to like congratulate yourself. It's okay with your parents. Anyone else seems kind of weird. I don't know if I agree with that. Tell me. I think that like if you believe in the muse, as I believe in the muse, and let's say just my story of Bagger Vance.

The muse gave me the book, wrote it for me, I just did it. So the communication is kind of between me and her, and I say, thank you. I'm your servant, thank you for whatever, and please don't leave me. But I think that's a really great private moment. I think that it's okay to have these moments I think completely inside of your own self that you don't share with anybody. Or you could, but they can never really appreciate it.

They mean, you know, nice work Rick, you know, a good job, you know, I'm happy for you, but they can't really appreciate it. Because again, it's such a war that this moment that you might have with you with another dimension of reality, you got to hang onto that plutonium rocket fuel because you're going to need it. Would you describe that conversation as a prayer? My version is a prayer.

Yes. It's a conversation, I guess, or it's just not even that. It's just a moment of, you know, you would sort of, for me, like, get down on one knee, bow your head, and just, you know, express gratitude. Yeah. You started as a copywriter? I did.

Tell me about that world. My first job out of college was like, actually, as an office boy at Grey Advertising in New York City. And I just wanted to be an advertising man, like advertising in New York City. And I just wanted to be an advertising man, like Harry Grant and the movies, just to come up with ideas. I just thought, let me do something, and there would be like a great Alka Selcester commercial,

that kind of thing. And I was really no good at it at all. I never got anywhere. I was, you know, it was so hard. I couldn't really do it, but it was, it was great training in a lot of ways. Just because again, it was sort of, you had to come up with ideas on demand. So then you sort of thrown into that area, but where do ideas come from?

Because I had never thought about that before. They never teach in that school, maybe in art school. So that's really been sort of the puzzle of my entire life. And what I was just talking about about them using bagger bands was sort of the answer. And that idea makes you view the whole universe in a whole different way than anybody ever taught you. And in fact, let me ask you, what is your model of the universe? If you know what I mean, how does it work?

Where are we humans? Where are these other things? How do they all come together? I'll try my best to answer. I don't know that I can, because I don't think about it in the holistic way. It's more case by case. Uh huh.

Okay, that's good enough. But I'll say, I feel like our part of it is intention and a willingness to do whatever it takes to do our best, a real commitment to the work, whatever that work is. It doesn't happen because you're remarkably talented and it just falls out of you. Yes, sometimes it just falls out of you. Yes, sometimes it just falls out of you, but you can't depend on it falling out of you and that it's always hard work. And if you're not working hard, it won't fall out of you. When the universe

is conspiring on your behalf, you have to pick it up because it's not screaming at you. It's not whispering. It's maybe whispering. So then you believe that the universe, whatever that is, source, has an intentionality. Yes. And it's recruiting you and me. Yeah. And everybody else is recruiting whoever the examples I give in the book, this one, art movements happen where they don't happen, one artist starts the movement and there are followers. We see the same types of things spring up all over the world and the ones who are the best artists are the ones with the best antenna to pick up this information. So there's a lot of work that we can do to prepare ourselves to allow it to come.

So what you're kind of talking about right now is sort of from the human point of view, from the artist's point of view down here on this level. But what I really want to ask you is, what does that say about the universe, whatever it is up there? Where is the timetable at all of a sudden? Cubism and everything else is gonna come out here. Is there an intentionality? I'm looking for the model. Because when you and I were growing up,

I'm sure we thought God is dead. The materialism is everything. There's no such thing as another dimension, or other dimensions, but you and I, in our evolution, we go, fuck yeah, there are other dimensions, and that's our whole life, you know. So I'm just trying to say, what's the greater model in your view? Is it a really positive thing that the universe has good things in mind and we're co-doing it? I believe the intention is positive. It feels positive. It feels positive to me too.

And I know it brings a sense of joy. Even if the material that I'm working on is tragic or horrifying. Yeah. When you see the good version of the information, there's a feeling of joy, and not because of what the content is saying, but because the way it's coming and how clear it is, and how beautiful a picture this is, the reality in it, the sense of humanity in it, we get to feel that. It feels good, we're alive.

Uh-huh. Okay, I'll take that as an answer. Yeah. Try my other. And the other thing is really is beauty. You know, whatever it is, the matter of how shitty the content is, what we deliver, or what artists deliver,

has got to be beautiful one way or another. Words, pictures, music, whatever. Yeah, and even, I don't know what that means. No, but even presenting something ugly has to be done in a beautiful way. Otherwise, it's just ugly. It's just ugly. It doesn't have the resonance of holding our attention. Yeah. We are drawn to beautiful things. I'm not sure why, but what the purpose of that is, but it's true, certainly true. What are some of the things you've quit doing?

Huh. I'm not a big social person. Social media or social life? Social life, I mean the idea of going to a party and sitting there and yacking over nothing was something that would, you have to shoot me to get me to do that. So that's one thing for sure.

Certainly any of those sort of trivial ego pursuits, I've tried to, you know, just because I don't have time for them, you know, between doing work, you know, doing whatever, you know, personal thing, family stuff, and in resting, recovering, that's pretty much, you know, I feel like I have a limited amount of time. I'm trying to serve the goddess and I'm trying to narrow it down to that.

That's a good question. Do you feel like a soldier? Yes, I do. If you ask me what my profession was, I would say I'm a servant of the muse, and I'll go where she tells me to go. Now that means I might be a soldier, I might have a fight, or I might be an ambassador of peace, you know, or a flute playing, you know, minstrel or something like that. You're allowing yourself to be directed.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Whatever she tells me to do, I do. Yeah. How amorphous is she to you? Not to amorphous. she to you? Not too amorphous. Can you see her? No, no. I mean, I have a sort of a vague, you know, anthropomorphic concept, but... Does she speak in words? No.

But just like you say, my antenna, I'm definitely tuned into the Cos cosmic radio station all the time. And it's funny, I'm not even sure how the communication comes, but it does come. Maybe an idea comes in some sort of crazy floating form that's not words, but you get it. You feel like you get confirmation in the process. Like does something happen along the way? You have an idea, maybe you're unsure of it. Do you ever get a sign or a... Not like a bluebird landing there and I go, oh, that must be, you know, not that.

Or a dolphin coming out of it. No, but I will have moments where it is a confirmationly, oh, you're on the right track. Or dreams, I will have dreams that will tell me that, you know. Like in my dreams, we get into really the weeds here, but for me, water, particularly like a river that's flowing or spring coming out of a mountain side, or rain or something like that, is a sign of creativity for me. And whenever I have a dream that has that in it,

I go, ah, that's a good sign. It tells me something's happening. I'm not dry, water's coming out of the mountain side, that kind of thing. So that's kind of a confirmation that I'll get. And sometimes it's really vivid. I mean, it's like a hit you, boom. You know, it's like, you can't miss it.

You can't miss it. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? You want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add element electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Element electrolytes. Drink it in the sauna. Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt.

Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform at your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life.

So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra and stay salty with Element Electric Life. LMNT. The new book is called the Daily Press Field. How did it come about? I've been looking for a long time for a way to kind of bring all my stuff together, you know, in a way that it could really help somebody, you know. And so a 365-day concept, which I got from Ryan Holiday, who did, you know, The Daily Stoic, it sounded like that was a great way to do it because you could start day one at the beginning

of a project. And like the first chapter in this book is, the chapter heading is resistance wakes up with me. And it talks about how, in other words, it's from the minute you open your eyes, day one, what are you going to have to deal with if you're writing a novel or whatever project you may have. And so I just thought a 365 day thing is an ideal way to kind of help somebody, bring all my shit together. And so I wanted to do a book where you could open it to any page and you go, wow, that's exactly what I was hoping I would read today. I wanted to do like the War of Art squared, you know, not a small book but a big book. So that's what the Daily Press feel this.

Would you say there are any ideas from in this book that are from your fiction work? Yes, and that was another part that I really wanted to do. Like, we were talking earlier you and I about, why do I write books about war and what is the virtues of a warrior or something like that. And so there is a bunch of stuff in here. Again, that applies to an artistic venture. Like I wrote a book a few years ago called The Lion's Gate

that was about the Six Day War, the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, and I interviewed a bunch of fighter pilots and things like that, you know, and they talk about, as they were telling me these certain nuggets, I thought, fuck, this is exactly what I'm dealing with in my writers world, my artist world. So I got to use those stories too and then to turn the corner and make them clear that this is, you know, this is what we need to do in our own internal war of art. I'm going to randomly open the book and say that we get. Let's say something, yeah. Act two builds to a midpoint. Uh-huh. You want to tell me about that or shall I read it?

Go ahead and read it. Okay. There are two halves to a movie script, and the midpoint is threshold between them. We can talk about the importance of the two act breaks. But to me, the midpoint is as important, especially in the early going, to laying out of script's beats. This is Blake Snyder from Save the Cat, page 82. What he states about the movies is equally applicable to novels and dramas, not St. Nonfiction, including Ted Talks and children's books. And then there's the

quote. Ah, and that comes at the middle of this book because this is sort of talking about if you were writing any one of your books or writing a novel or anything like that and you use the Daily Press field as kind of a year long 365 day guide. In the middle of your project, the middle of the book, right, the middle of the year, you would be hitting this point of, what the fuck am I doing? You know, I have something that has to change in my story or in my book that's not necessarily a story. And so this whole, this is a whole week or two weeks that are just about that, that midpoint and going to detail, you know, this is how it works, this is what happens, so on and so forth. Tell me about how the midpoint fits into a three-act framework.

You really want to hear the whole idea? I really do. Okay, classic example of a midpoint of a movie is in the Godfather, the first Godfather. You know, there's that scene where Sonny and the family are gathered, and Michael Coilion is in a chair, and I can almost recite the thing. He says, this is after the dawn has been shot and is in the hospital, and Michael has gone to him.

And Salatso, the bad guy, is kind of reaching out for a meeting, and Michael Coilion says something like this. And the room is all of the guys in the, and he's sitting in his father's chair, the Godfather's chair, and he says something like this in the room is all of the guys and he's sitting in his father's chair, the Godfather's chair, and he says something like, they want to set up a meeting with me. Have our guys arrange the meeting because now I can't bring a weapon to that meeting, but if Clemensic can figure a way to plant a weapon for me, then I'll kill them both. And at that moment, that is the midpoint of that story.

At that moment, up to that moment, I'm going in over the weeds here, Rick. Please. Up until that moment, Michael Corleone Al Pacino, had been kind of an ancillary figure to the family. If you remember, he's a marine captain. He's brought his sweetheart, who's an American girl, you know, K, played by Diane Keaton,

not an Italian girl. He hasn't really been part of the family at all. In fact, the sonny and Frado and the other brothers have protected him. It's like, here you stay out of this. But in this moment, we suddenly realize that this is his story. It's not the Godfather of Marlon Brando. It's the Godfather Al Pacino. And the other point of the midpoint is the hero chooses a side and at this point Michael says I'm with the family you know where he says if you can plant the weapon I'll kill them both and everybody in the scene reacts like

they laugh right sonny laughs so you know this is a this is not like in a war where you shoot them 200 feet away you got to blow their brains all over you nice ivy leak suit. Another example, this is in dances with wolves, the Kevin Costner movie about American Indians, right? And when Kevin Costner starts out, he's a Civil War U.S. Cavalry Captain Officer, Lieutenant Dunbar. But at some point through the movie movie he becomes dances with wolves.

He becomes an Indian. He chooses sides. There's a moment in there in the midpoint where he goes, I'm no longer with these blue coat white guys. I'm with the tribe. They're my people. You know, when I'm working on a story, I'll ask myself, what is the midpoint of this story?

And does the hero choose sides? And another thing that comes from Blake Snyder is, the stakes of the movie go way up. The stakes of the story go way up. When Michael Corleone says, then I'll kill him both. You know, he's in it with both feet and the whole thing is gonna go really, really deep. And the same thing with dances with wolves,

when Kevin Costa goes, I'm with the tribe. You know, bad shit's going to happen, but that's the depth of the story. How does that relate to the three acts? Because it's different than three acts. We all it's in the middle of the second act. Middle of the second. Middle of the second act. So from then on, so the second act is always about a turning point. It should always have a turning point in the middle, or at least the point where the stakes go up and a character, the main character chooses sides.

So at that point, like the stakes elevate, but also we can kind of see, we can see the ending coming now in the sense of, you know, if it's Moby Dick, we know, oh, they're gonna meet, they're gonna now in the sense of you know if it's Moby Dick we know oh they're gonna meet they're gonna fight to the death you know or if it's dancers with wolves we know the cavalry's gonna catch up it's gonna be the Indians versus the white guys and some bad shit you know it's gonna happen. How do you describe what happens in the first act and what happens in the third

act? The first act traditionally is like the hook. So what it's really about is really in the audience, starting a story in a sense that the audience is interested, oh, I got to see what's going to happen to Captain Jack Sparrow or whoever it is. So it's more important that it's interesting than that it really starts the story. There's a moment in the first act called the Insighting Incident and that's the moment

when like the story usually starts with what you would call the setup. To give you an example, if everybody remembers the movie Rocky, the first Rocky, if there's kind of the setup, which is Rocky's this kind of ham and egg fighter in Philadelphia. He goes to the gym where he trains and Mick, the guy who owns the gym, has given away his locker. All he's got to hang his stuff on a nail now, right? He's a bum, nobody respects him, he's going nowhere. That's the setup. Then there's a kind of an inciting incident with the moment when the story starts.

And in Rocky, the inciting incident is when the heavyweight champ Apollo Creed, the guy he was supposed to fight for the championship heard himself. So he's got to replace him. He goes through a book of contenders and he sees the Italian stallion and he says, I'm going to give this chump a shot at the title. So now the movie starts at the end of Act 1 we see, oh, Rocky, this bum is going to get a chance to fight the champion in the world. And theoretically, that really hooks us. So we go, wow, I got to see what's going to happen here. So then the other thing that they say, this I got

from Robert McKee, the great screenwriter and story teacher, he says that embedded in the climax is always embedded in the inciting instant. And what he means by that is like when we see Apollo pick Rocky to fight him, we know, oh, act three is going to be them in the ring really doing it, you know? And hopefully that pulls us through the whole story. We go, oh, that sounds great, you know? Or in Star Wars, we know Darth Vader's going to fight it out, you know, with Luke somehow at the end of the story, and we go, oh, great, let's go through this. So, Act III pays it all that stuff off, that's being set up in Act I.

There are also examples where those rules are subverted to create a different feeling. For example, I think of psycho. If you think of the beginning of psycho, the star of the movie in the first, I don't know, 15 minutes or so, it's taking a shower and gets murdered. Is it that soon? It's really early. but she's clearly the star of the movie. Yeah. So anything we think we know about a normal structure is... Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It can be subverted, yeah. But it's helpful to know the rules, to know... Yes. ...maybe if I break this rule, it'll have a different kind of an effect.

Yeah. Do you write every day? Maybe six days a week. Pretty much, you know, it's only if I absolutely cannot, you know, because of other obligations or something. But I always want to write something. I was going to say, do you always write with a specific purpose? Is it always like, I'm writing because I'm writing a new book and this is for the new book

or do you? Oh, yeah. Sit down to write because that's what you do on the writer. No, I'm always working on a project. I wouldn't just write. Just write. What is writing Wednesdays? Writing Wednesdays is my blog that my little friend of mine, a publicist, Calli Ottens,

gave me that idea years ago. And I started it out to do it on a Wednesday like it would be another chapter from the war of art that hadn't been written. And so it would always be kind of about the writer's battle, the artist's struggle, the internal struggle. So it's just, you know, it's my Wednesday block. I only do it once a week. Tell me about commitment. Just like what you've been saying, Rick, I mean in terms of being an artist or a writer, again, I believe in the muse. The muse is flying overhead. She looks down. She sees you or another musician at the piano or writing a song or driving on the freeway and pulling over

because they had an idea or something like that. And what she's looking for, what the goddess is looking for, or you would say the universe or source, is this motherfucker committed to me or not? Are they dabbling? Are they fucking around? Or are they in this, with both feet for real life and death? And if they are, then the goddess says, okay, I'm going to give this guy an idea, an idea for a song or whatever it is. So I think it's 100 percent like I have a book that just came out a little while ago called Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be. And what that's about is when I say put your ass, I mean your commitment.

If you put your commitment where your dream is, where your heart is, then good things will happen. So that's to me, it's an absolute essential, more important than talent. And it goes hand in hand, obviously, with hard work. If you're committed, you're committed to doing the work. And you're also committed to learning your craft and perfecting your instrument and being a vessel

that when lightning strikes, you're able to deliver. It's a beautiful description. I like that description a lot. We need you first get into exercise. I think I've always been into it. I start my day as you know, like you, with going to the gym or with some kind of physical fitness thing. As a sort of rehearsal and I know Randy Wallace, our friend, does the same thing.

He calls it little victories, you know? And a little victory would be, you know, putting in your hour at the gym or whatever it is or in layered Hamilton swimming pool. So I do it as a sort of a rehearsal because it's hard, I don't wanna do it. I'm afraid of it. And if I can do it every day, then I feel like I can go home and sit down

at the keyboard and I've got some momentum going. So it definitely is a big thing for me. It also seems to really enhance mood. Oh definitely. I don't like doing it, but I always feel better. Yeah. And more focused. Yeah, absolutely. Did the muse first come to you on Bagger Vance? No, no, I think she experienced the muse before. She was with me, but she shifted gears at that point. The first novel that I ever finished that I could never sell. I was living in a

little house in Carmel Valley, California. I'd save money from working and advertising and I had had enough to let go for a couple years and I had a friend a guy named Paul Rink who was a writer. He was maybe 30 years older than me, 40 years older than me and he lived down the street and every morning I would go have coffee with him. He lived in a camper outside of his little house and he sort of became a mentor to me. And he introduced me to the idea of the muses, which I had never really known anything about. And what they are, I'm going to wax, you know, verbose here. It's Greek mythology. The muses were nine sisters, the daughters of Zeus

and Nemasini, which means memory. And each muse was in charge of a certain art. Terpsichor was in charge of dance, Kaliope was in charge of music, and their job was to inspire artists. And the sort of the classic image that we have of the music is like Beethoven at the piano, and Agatus is kind of whispering in his ear, no, no, no, that kind of thing, right? So the whole kind of concept of the music is that on some divine level,

they know what the next book album, song is, whatever. So if Tom Waits is driving along the freeway, album, song is whatever. So if Tom Waits is driving along the freeway, and all of a sudden the song comes into his head, he has to pull over and write it down, that in Greek terms would be, ah, the goddess, look down on him and gave him this thing. So my friend Paul Rink, he typed up for me, the invocation of the muse from the start of the Odyssey of Homer's Odyssey, the

Te Larns translation, Lawrence of Arabia. And he typed it up for me and I still have it and it's like that long on a page and it's the very, very start of the Odyssey and it's Homer asking the goddess for help. You know, O divine Poise, goddess daughter of Zeus, sustained for me this song, bump it, bump it, bump it, it kind of goes on from that. And so the whole kind of, this idea, I'd never heard this idea before, but this was a mind-blower. I mean, it was incredible gift of a mentor to a young guy,

right, struggling. Was the idea that you can't command this force? You can't beg for, you can't promise, I'll do, the only thing you can do is invoke it. The invocation of the Muse, which is another word for prayer. The only thing you can do is kind of say, The only thing you can do is kind of say, God is, I'm here at your command. I'm just a servant, I'm a craftsman, I'll do the best I can. Please help me. You tell the story, you know what it is.

So this was a great gift for Paul to me. That really started me thinking, again, this is back to what we talked before about where do ideas come from, well they come from there? And I say that prayer every morning, you know, before I sit down, you know, out loud, you know, just like that. And I really mean it. You know, I'm saying it standing, sitting, standing. And you put your hands... Sometimes I'll put my hands on my body, just like this, but I'm definitely putting my mind in a truly serious state. Like if you were entering a Dojo and you bowed to the Sensei, that kind of thing.

I really am asking for help. The goddess has never let me down. She just got better as it gave me a little more as it went along. Amazing. Beautiful. But isn't that in a way you're kind of a muse, so you're a facilitator of the muse for the musicians that come to you. It's not me. But you're helping them access that and creating a safe space where they can, you know,

because this to really sort of humble yourself like that? I can imagine certain ego, maniacal, young musicians, my grandma, I gotta do that bullshit, you know? But they have to, you know, if they're gonna get anywhere. When you finished your first novel and threw it away, tell me what was going on inside you that didn't allow you to either complete it or share it. It was for me the first time I ever really encountered resistance with a capital R and I had no idea what it was. And I was terrified to finish, to put something out there all over.

It was so lousy, it didn't know me, nobody would ever look at it. But I was terrified to face the music. And so I acted out in psychiatric terms. I cheated on my wife. I blew up my marriage because I couldn't get to the finish of that thing. And it was years later when I finally was able to say finish of that thing. And it's always, you know, years later when I finally was able to say, oh, fuck, that was my own self sabotage, destroying me at that moment, to stop me from finishing something and actually going somewhere. Did you ever go back and look at it?

No. It was gone, no, it's gone. Yeah, it was nowhere. It was something you had to put in the drawer and never look at again. I'm thinking about the two lines in the case of leading to the Alexander the Great. At what point do you know the story? Well, certainly in that case, there was a real historical things that really happened. there was a real historical things that really happened. So you have to think, okay, what is this about? What's the theme?

What story do I want to pull out of that? So I mean, I knew that there were going to be the three great battles that he fought. And I guess I just sort of worked through it kind of a, I have a thing where I, what I call a clothesline method where I kind of imagine a, a clothesline and, and you hang like pairs of underwear on this clothesline and maybe there's like 12 of them and those are scenes, right? And I sort of thought, I got a few of them on there and I realized, ah, this is about a certain, this is what it's about.

And then I kind of knew where the story had to be, what I could talk about and what we didn't have to talk about. You have key scenes before you might have an outline. Yeah. In fact, I'll tell you one for whatever the piece is worth. And this was the one that sort of split the diamond for me and the thing. Well, it was a real king in India named Poros, P-O-R-U-S, that Alexander had a great clash. One of his great battles was against this king. And the king was a really

wise person, you know, and from somewhere, I don't know whether I invented this or whether I read it somewhere, but there was a scene between the two of them where Alexander's army was on one side of this river, the Hadassby's river, ready to cross an attack. And Porus' army was on the other side, and they met in the middle on a barge, and they had a conversation. And on that barge, King Porus said, and Alexander had conquered the world, right? He was unstoppable. And Porus said to him, I will give you the hand of my daughter in marriage, and I will give you myself. I will instruct you in how to be a king.

And Alexander, like the Zyballs, rolled back in his head, and he said, what do you mean dear, you tell me I'm not a king, I've conquered the world. And Porus said to him, you are a conqueror. And Porus is much older. Alexander was like 24 years old. He says, you are a conqueror, but you're not a king. And the point he made was, how many of the people in the lands you've conquered have you made more free?

How many have you made more prosperous? What have you done to the world? When you look at my land across the river here, you'll see farms that are prosperous, beautiful children, the land flourishes, et cetera, et cetera. You're like a ship or an armada that crosses the ocean. The only thing you control is that spot right where you are. Even as you've passed all these other countries, Persia, and so on, all you've done is hired

the same people that you conquered, left them in charge to torture the people as they do. So you're not a king, you're a conqueror. And I realized that's the theme of the story. That's Alexander's evolution and how he sort of takes that to heart at that point. I don't know if that makes sense. It's an incredible story. So that kind of told me how it would end. Yeah.

Yeah. By the way, there's one other story that's actually a true story. So when Alexander was in India, he came upon yogis, Sardin's for the first time. They call him the gymnocephas, which meant the naked wise men. At one point Alexander and his retinue were passing along the banks of not the Ganges but some other river. And they came upon a bunch of yogis who were meditating in the sun and Alexander's lieutenants

kind of kicked them out of the way. One guy wouldn't move, one kind of old wise guy wouldn't move. And the lieutenant came, said to Alexander, was coming up. He said to the wise man, this man has conquered the world. What have you done? And the yogi said, I have conquered the need to conquer the world. And Alexander, at that point, left in appreciation. And he got it, right? And he said to everybody, as people he said, if I could be anyone in the world other than myself, I would be this man

right here. And so anyway, that's just a great story. So beautiful. Yeah. I have conquered the need to conquer the world. So you hear these historical stories and then you think I can build a fictional story. Yeah, I can find a through line that has a theme and that pays off in the end. You know, that posits an issue and that pays off in the end. Do you need to make any choices on behalf of the book, different than the information

that you're getting in research. You do and you need to. If the book is about something, it has a theme and every scene has to echo that theme in one way or another, sometimes you create scenes that should have happened or maybe they even did happen, but nobody reported them. But the point of that scene is to bring out a certain and aspect of the theme.

So yeah, definitely you would make it and create characters that don't exist or put words into the mouths of characters that if you really knew, if you could beam the guy back, he might say, I would never say that, but it doesn't matter. For you, the goal is always, would you say the most entertaining book? Is that right?

Well, it would be the one. I certainly want everything to be entertaining. It's like a word you would use to describe what you want the book to be. A book has got to deliver a load, just like a truck does, right? So that load is kind of the theme. What the book is about? Like Rocky's theme was a bum can be a champion if he's only given a chance. Couldn't in the American dream, right? And the movie delivers that, you know, in the end,

you know, he's still standing. So that's what I've tried to do. Whatever it's about, to like this Alexander book, is really about the military mindset and the virtues of a warrior. And by the end of the book, I hope that if I'm a young Marine or whatever, I mean, yeah, that's the truth. That's, I'd like to be like that guy, or I learned something about that guy. You could do a lot of other things. You could make it a tragedy. I'd like to be like that guy or I learned something about that guy.

You could do a lot of other things. You could make it a tragedy. The guy overreached or whatever like that, but that wasn't the story I wanted to tell. Would you say there's always a moral? Yeah, I mean, if there's a payoff to a theme, I don't know if you call it a moral, but there's a payoff to a theme, which could be negative, you know, the hero could fail, or it could be positive. At the time when you have several scenes, is that when you come to realize what the big

theme is? Yes. But you don't start with the theme, you don't know the theme when you're starting. Right. It's probably the same in what you're doing, right? But in fact, that's kind of the hardest question to answer. I find, what's it about? It takes me sometimes to start writing the entire book

and I don't know what it's about. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. In fact, it's happened more than once where my former editor and partner, Sean Cohen, he would write me notes and basically, he would tell me what it's about. He would say, this book is really about such and such as he's doing notes.

And I'd go, wow, it's right, I had no idea. Yeah. And then I'll go back and I'll have to cut everything that's not on the theme. Do you ever leave anything that's not on the theme? Or is it in service to the theme of all the way? It is, absolutely. Yeah. So there can't be a sidebar that's a great story.

You could, you know, if you have the time, you know, because in a book sometimes people are willing to read an extra 20 pages because it's fun, but you really shouldn't. I mean, here's where I sort of learned that. It's from Robert, you know, Robert McKee is. He tells this story. When he was a young director, actor, whatever he was in New York,

he got a chance to interview Patty Chaefsky, right, who is the only three-time Oscar winner for original screenplay, right? And somehow they got to be talking about the subject of theme. And Patty Chaefsky said, as soon as I figure out the theme of my play, because he was a playwright, he says, I type it out in like one sentence and I scotch tape it to the front of my typewriter. And after that, nothing goes into that script that is not on theme. Wow.

So that's a real lesson for me. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. And I imagine that if you don't know the theme until late in the process, then you have the cut-up on your stuff along the way. You can lead to that.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. you