What It Really Takes to Accomplish Your Dreams (ft. Steven Pressfield)

Steven Pressfield was 52 years old when he published his first hit novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance. Prior to that, he wrote tirelessly for decades in obscurity, supporting himself with odd jobs along the way. After writing several more novels and movie scripts, he distilled all of his wisdom into The War of Art, his now-famous treatise on the grinding process of creativity. Now in his 80s, Steven looks back on his work and life with a clear-eyed view of what it truly means to make it as a creative professional. In this episode, he explains why he persisted writing for decades with little to show for it, how he compensated for his own lack of talent, why creating great art is actually a grueling war fought within the artist’s own mind, and much, much more. Enjoy. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:13 Persisting at writing... for decades 00:06:40 The Resistance 00:14:23 Patience when facing The Resistance 00:22:12 Is The Resistance actually a good thing? 00:26:52 Turning Pro 00:32:22 How much do hard work, skill, and talent matter? 00:40:48 Does great art require suffering? 00:44:57 How Steven's military experience influences his work 00:49:52 Honoring your muse 00:56:04 What writers can learn from advertising 00:58:08 The Daily Pressfield ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Steven Pressfield is your favorite author's favorite author. No one describes the emotional struggle of the creative process and the terror of presenting your work to the world in as much detail and depth as Steven has. If I had to guess, his seminal book, The War of Art, is on more bookshelves of writers, musicians, producers, and artists than almost any other book. Steven has a long and storied career with many winding and twisting paths. When he was young, Pressfield was an advertising copywriter, a schoolteacher, a tractor-trailer driver, a bartender, an oilfield roustabout, a mental hospital attendant, and a fruit picker. He wrote tirelessly during this period, for over 20 years, before he got his first break with some screenwriting jobs in Hollywood in the 80s.

• 0:43Mark Manson?

  But after working on a bunch of scripts for B and C movies to pay the bills, he broke through with his first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, at the age of 50. It was only then, after nearly three decades of struggle, that his career finally took off. In today's episode, you're going to learn from Steven about how persistence isn't actually about persistence. We discuss how the skill of something is usually not actually the skill of something, i.e. the thing that makes a writer, or singer, or artist great usually isn't simply how they write, paint, or sing. It is the skills around how they write, paint, or sing. We talk about career longevity and suffering for your creativity, and whether that's a myth or not. We talk about how turning pro is such an important concept, not just for aspiring artists,

• 1:25Mark Manson?

  but for people who have big goals around anything in life in general. And of course, we talk about the capital R resistance, that mental and emotional barrier that we all create for ourselves and stands between us and our deepest desires. The resistance rears its head in all of us, particularly when we're on the cusp of some important breakthrough or change. Steven has written multiple books on the resistance, and the concept is central to much of his work. So I guess I will stop resisting this episode and just get on with it. This is Steven Pressfield.

• 2:08Mark Manson?

  Steve, it's good to see you again.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on.

• 2:11Mark Manson?

  Thanks for coming on. I want to talk about persistence, because, you know, just to do a little bit of math here, you spent all of your 20s and most of your 30s attempting to write novels, failing. You came to Hollywood. Tried the right screenplays. Your writing career didn't even really get going until you were

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was 52 when Legend of Bagger Vance got published.

• 2:38Mark Manson?

  So you, your hit came at 52. Even just being able to like, it sounds like pay rent didn't happen until around 40.

• 2:48Mark Manson?

  That's a, that is decades of persistence. Like, talk to me about what the mindset was during that time. Like, how do you, how did you keep going for that many years?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I just couldn't do anything else and be happy, you know, from, from time to time, I took jobs in advertising back in New York, you know, because you could make some money. But at the end of the day, I would be so depressed that I had to go home and try to write something for real. And, um, the, the trying to write real stuff was what kind of kept me sane. So I just really knew there was no other thing for me to do. And then like when I, when I got to Hollywood, then you actually, I was actually making money. I could pay the rent and I felt like I was learning that I was on the path. So even though I hadn't succeeded in any real sense, I felt like, okay, um, you know, I'm in graduate school or whatever it is and I'm working towards it.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  So, you know, it wasn't, it really, it sounds hard, that long period of time when you look at it from the outside, but it really wasn't. I just didn't have any other choice and it was fun along the way.

• 3:54Mark Manson?

  It's funny because I imagine you get some of this too. I, I often get emails from 22 year olds, you know, saying, I've been trying to do this for three years and, you know, it's too late. Like, I'm too old. It's never gonna work. And of course, I, you know, I'm at, I'm 40, so I, I, I chuckle. Like, oh, yeah, so old. Um, I'm, I'm just, I, I wonder what your perspective on, on people's, the power to keep going, uh, through adversity and

• 4:30Mark Manson?

  Doing it for the right reasons, I suppose, right? Like doing it because you're writing the things you genuinely love, not because it's going to get you a book deal, but because it's what keeps you sane.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think if you're a dancer, you know, your body's breaking, but you want to dance, right? That's the thing. If you're a singer, if you're a musician, you know, it's in your fingers, you want to do it.

• 4:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  I think it has to be a real calling and not, you know, you're doing it for fame or to get it. And I don't, but I don't know today if anybody could really have a sort of a career like I did, where you did, it took so long, you know? I don't know how people do it today, but I guess it's true. It never, it's life, that's the way it is.

• 5:15Mark Manson?

  You do, I mean, it does happen. I do think it happens more in writing than than other art forms.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  A long wind up.

• 5:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, like a long buildup over a long period. Like I think E.L. James, who the Fifty Shades of Grey woman, I think she was in her 50s or 60s when she wrote it and it was her first book. You do hear stories, but it is like what stands out to me with your answer to that is, is that it just sounds like you would have done it anyway.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would have done it anyway. It wasn't for the money, I certainly wasn't making any money.

• 5:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I read a thing about when Cormac McCarthy died. You know, I love to read obituaries and because it's a great sort of, you know, biography of a person that apparently he, I don't know if this happens anymore, but he had written like before he broke through, with I guess All the Pretty Horses was his kind of breakthrough. He had written like four or five, like really good novels that didn't sell for shit.

• 6:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  But apparently he had either an agent or a publisher that kind of protected him and. Threw enough money at him to kind of keep him going. And it was like, you know, this was like a 20 year deal before he finally broke through. So, but I'm not so sure if that maybe that happens more than we realize today.

• 6:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Where somebody is brought along by another mentor or somebody that has a little bit of power.

• 6:40Mark Manson?

  You popularized this concept of the resistance with a capital R. Generally, it's the the resistance that we feel towards not just creatively expressing ourselves, but like positive changes in our lives. I'm curious, so you, according to my count, this might be wrong. You have done five Hollywood screenplays, 10 novels, 11 nonfiction books. I'm curious, when has resistance shown up the most for you in your career? And how did you fight through it?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Wow, what a question. I mean, resistance is sort of omnipresent. I mean, the worst that it ever was for me was at the beginning. When I first sat down and tried to write something where it just resistance just completely defeated me. You know, my own self sabotage, I couldn't finish anything. I had a hell of a hard time starting anything. And and resistance, you know, is a real diabolical, ever changing, protean, intelligent force that will fake, can we, can we, can we use a profanity here?

• 7:45Mark Manson?

  Of course, this is the fuck podcast.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Fuck out of you, you know? You know, I've been doing this now for almost 50 years.

• 7:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  And it never goes away. It never diminishes. It's always subtle, always nuanced, always devious. So I face it, you know, all the way through a project, beginning, middle, end and in between.

• 8:04Mark Manson?

  Can you give me an example of how maybe how it showed up earlier in your career? Like maybe a story of a way you sabotaged yourself? And then I'd be curious, how has it shown up recently with say, your most recent book? Or or one of your recent books?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  All right, I'll plunge in right to the deep end right away. The first book that I tried to write, I was like. Twenty-two or twenty-three years old, I had quit a job in advertising. I was married. I was a young guy with a young wife in New York City. And I wrote for like two years and got right close to the end. A great place when resistance will strike, right? You're afraid to put something out there to be. So the bottom line was I cheated on my wife in such a way that she would find out about it. In other words, I really acted out in psychological terms.

• 8:51Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  To just blow up my life.

• 8:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  And, and my wife's life and the book. So that I wouldn't have to face that. So that was pure resistance. I had no concept that there was such a thing. But it was this negative force of self-sabotage to stop, you know, me from finishing what I was trying to do.

• 9:11Mark Manson?

  I'm glad you bring up the wife thing because, because, you know, going, going back through the War of Art, which at this point I think I've gone through three or four times, you know, it's every five years or so I'll go back and kind of go through it again. It's like a nice reminder.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  I do too.

• 9:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 9:29Mark Manson?

  But I'm glad you bring that up because when I was kind of going back through it, I, to me, the, the concept of the resistance, it can apply so well in personal relationships.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 9:39Mark Manson?

  Family relationships, romantic relationships. I think there's something, there's definitely, it's very much tied to like a sense of vulnerability. You know, like writing a novel. Is such a vulnerable, or any book, any creative work is such a vulnerable process. Like you are putting such a deep and personal part of yourself out into the world. And that's fucking terrifying. And I think in the same way, a marriage or a relationship or, um, you know, having intimacy with somebody. It's very similar in that it's, it's terrifying because you're making yourself vulnerable. You're exposing like a very deep

• 10:22Mark Manson?

  personal part of yourself and making it possible to be hurt.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:27Mark Manson?

  And so the resistance is like. It's like the protective shield that shows up, you know?

• 10:33Speaker 01

  I mean, my sort of rule of thumb of that is that resistance will strike anytime you're trying to move from a lower level to a higher level. Politically, morally, you're trying to take a, you know, a stand on something like that. Or, you know, in terms of giving to the world or risking anything, that's when it'll strike. It isn't necessarily a only creative stuff, you know? So like you say, it is, you're getting vulnerable. You're gonna, you're gonna dare to stand out from the crowd, say something that'll put you in a relationship too, when you have that hard conversation, you know, that, you know,

• 11:12Speaker 01

  then resistance will really tend to sabotage that and make you act out in some crazy way. So you don't have to have that conversation.

• 11:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, I know how that goes.

• 11:25Mark Manson?

  It's funny, so this is super recent. I actually just, my wife and I had a big fight about a week ago. And it was kind of unresolved. And she's Brazilian, so she's like, you know, explosions everywhere, you know? It's like emotions going everywhere. But, you know, I'm a classic middle America Anglo-Saxon male, you know? It's like, I just like bottle, like just suppress, deny, you know? Everything's fine, nothing's wrong. But it was funny because a couple of days went by and it was like, it's like, we really need to resolve, like, we need to pick this conversation back up and deal with it. And we're not like, and I wasn't like, I was finding reasons to always, you know, oh, I

• 12:10Mark Manson?

  gotta go do this thing. So I finally, after a couple of days, I guess you could say I felt the resistance. And the resistance was saying, oh, well, I need to, I need to go back to the studio. And like, ah, well, I've got this work thing and ah, like this friend's in town, you know? And we'll do it tomorrow, we'll do it tomorrow. And then finally, I realized, I actually sat down to write a letter to her.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 12:34Mark Manson?

  Because that felt easier than actually like standing in front of her and having the conversation. And I've done this a few times throughout my marriage. And so I sit there and I write this letter to her and just pour everything out on the page, which I guess it like feels more natural for me. So I've got the letter, I print it out, and then I stick it in the desk drawer and like go back to my like as if nothing happened. And like another two days go by and I told her, I was like, I wrote you a letter and she's like, well, give it to me. I'm like, uh, I'll give it to you tomorrow. And it's just, so it's funny because it's like the resistance, it's like this amoeba that just like,

• 13:15Mark Manson?

  you know, fills the vacuum, like no matter which way you pivot, it pivots with you, you know, and it's the only way through it is through it. Like you have to meet it head on.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So have you given your wife a letter?

• 13:30Mark Manson?

  I did, I did.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  And what happened?

• 13:32Mark Manson?

  Last night, we actually had an amazing conversation.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Good for you.

• 13:36Mark Manson?

  But it was, it was terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying. I have found, and I'm curious what you think about this, like I have found that when dealing with, with resistance, it's, sometimes it's too intimidating to just try to take it all on at once. Like I've often found it simpler to just kind of chip away at it, you know, like, like a book, for example, if you think about this big magnum opus that you want to write, often that's so intimidating that you just never start. And so I've always found it useful to just think about, okay, let's write one good page, you know, and like not worry about anything past that. And then like, once you have one good page, it's like, okay, now let's write another good

• 14:19Mark Manson?

  page and like not worry about anything past that. Have you found that true in your life?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely. In fact, I just was reading, I'm reading a book now called 4,000 Weeks. Have you heard of it?

• 14:30Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  You know, it's about, it's a sort of, it masquerages as a time management book, but it's much deeper than that. Basically, it says, we mortals cannot manage time, you know?

• 14:40Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  And one of the points that, that he was making is in a long-term project, like a novel or something like that, that people flame out and resistance defeats them when they think, oh, I gotta write this goddamn thing in three weeks, you know, let me charge. Whereas when the person that succeeds, and this is deaf for whatever reason. This is how I work. This is one area I haven't had a problem with. Is being really patient and saying, this is gonna take me two years, you know? I'm only gonna get, you know, another inch.

• 15:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Today, you know, if it's like a, like an infantryman that's gonna, you know, get one trench closer to the enemy. So I, I am patient that, and it does work.

• 15:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  You know, to take the pressure off, because it is a marathon, you know, and. And, uh, yeah, so I'm, I agree with you completely. Just biting, all you can do in one day is what you can do in one day. Right? And physical training, the same thing, you're not gonna become, you know, a decathlon champion today. You know, it's gonna be whatever you're gonna do.

• 15:41Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  It's gonna take a year, two years, for the rest of your life.

• 15:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Let me say, say one thing, Mark, on that flip side of what your, your story about your wife.

• 15:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  I have sort of a different thing with my girlfriend.

• 15:54Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Where, which I've never told her, if she watches this, you know, don't give me a hard time. Where I found myself bringing up all kinds of grievances in my head about her. Ah, there and this, that, the other thing, right? And thinking, you know, I gotta, I gotta really, you know, face. And then I suddenly realized that whatever I was working on in, in the book world, whatever I was writing. I was really afraid of the next step. And this of, you know, deflecting it, if I had done that, if I had opened my mouth, which I did not.

• 16:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  That would have fucked me up completely, not to mention my girlfriend. And that would have sabotaged the work that I was doing. So when I said to my, I said, this is resistance. This is my own resistance to facing what I have to, what I'm afraid to do on the page.

• 16:41Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  And immediately, all the grievances went away and I thought, oh, this is just bullshit that I'm making up in my, in my head to. So resistance is gonna, can work the flip way too.

• 16:50Mark Manson?

  The other way, yeah.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:51Mark Manson?

  It's interesting, one thing that I have learned throughout my career is that, is like learning my own patterns.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah.

• 16:58Mark Manson?

  Like the, the mental gymnastics that my resistance plays, so it's. I think in the if there's anything that gets easier, it's just recognizing those patterns.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:09Mark Manson?

  The things that trip me up on book number one by like book number two and three, I'm like, oh, I remember when this happened the other time. I'm not going to play that game with myself, you know, you can like.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Can you give me a specific thing, Mark, that you were thinking up?

• 17:24Mark Manson?

  You know, there's this thing in in in screenwriting about the the second act, you know, being like where everything falls apart. I for me with every single book I've written, it's always chapter three. And I don't know why.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Chapter three out of how many?

• 17:40Mark Manson?

  Doesn't matter. It's always chapter three. I'd say it's generally around ten to fifteen thousand words. And I think it's the same reason the act two thing happens, which is the initial idea is very clear in my head and exciting. You know, so chapter one is always exciting. There's always kind of this honeymoon phase you have with any project. And then that carries through to chapter two in my experience or just generally how I do chapters. By the time I get to chapter three, that's when you find out if if if the idea really works or not. And and of course, if it's not working, there's all sorts of like frustration and denial and justification, rationalization.

• 18:24Mark Manson?

  You know, and it's I I've spent probably more time working on a chapter three of a book than like half the rest of the book combined. And eventually, by the time I got to my third book, I just kind of realized like, okay, this is a thing that seems to just keep happening with me.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  And what's your answer to it? What was your solution?

• 18:43Mark Manson?

  My answer was don't get so emotionally invested. You know, it used to be the first couple of times it happened, it was like, oh, my God, my book is a failure. No, like, it doesn't work, no, but like, I need to start over from scratch. And a couple of cases, I did start over from scratch, whereas by the time I, you know, I got a few books in, I'm like, okay, it's. Everything's going to feel like it's it falls apart soon. So like, be ready for it. And then we'll we'll deal with it when we get there and and like we'll we'll kind of go through it logically and not overreact and not. Make a huge deal about it.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 19:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  That's exactly what I, what I do. My exact same experience. And, uh, you know, I would sort of analogize that, uh, like if we were football players, if we were in the NFL, we're gonna go through a season, right? Then we got the preseason, that's kind of exciting. Then we get into the first few games and we go, ah, this is pretty, you know, it's exciting. We're getting, we're getting somewhere. And then you're, you're six games in and you're three and three.

• 19:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  And right, you go, oh, fuck, you know, the season could go over the cliff right now. And you're really sort of faced with the stage where it becomes, the season becomes a grind.

• 19:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Right? It's another eight more games till you get anywhere near the postseason and you get that, you know, that charge again. And so for me, it's like in a book, it's like, just keep doing it.

• 19:56Mark Manson?

  Keep going.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  This is where tedium, you know, it's, you know, you just gotta keep grinding week after week.

• 20:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  And, and like you say, it's very important not to panic and not to overreact to that.

• 20:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  It's really interesting that, thanks for saying that, that helped me a lot.

• 20:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  I feel like I'm not alone.

• 20:14Mark Manson?

  I believe like one, one of the times that we, we hung out together, I vaguely remember you mentioning that you, you often struggle with the, the last chapter. Am I?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I think everybody does. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you don't.

• 20:27Mark Manson?

  It's funny, cause I often have, like, the last chapter is often like very

• 20:31Speaker 01

  No problem.

• 20:32Mark Manson?

  From the, from the, from when I start, I kinda know where I'm gonna end.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Ah, I mean, I do too, but still when you get to it.

• 20:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  I find that's the one, the last two or three chapters, let's say out of 45 chapters. I put them off. I've like sort of, uh, maybe it's a good thing, cause it's fresh when you do it. But those are, you know, real terrors kinda strikes then. And also for me, it's now you're close to the point where you're actually gonna ship it. Like in Seth Godin's phrase, you know, you're gonna expose it to the world and then it's like, uh, that's always been for me, a real hard moment.

• 21:08Mark Manson?

  Interesting. One of the things that I've noticed too, and I, again, I think this is analogous to relationships and, uh, just things in your personal life. Like, as I've become more experienced creatively, I've realized that the resistance is actually a sign of a good thing. Because it means. I'm doing something novel and important to me. You know, like I I've noticed that when I don't feel any resistance, it's because I'm usually just kind of on autopilot creatively. And I'm not very emotionally invested in what I'm making. And so, you know, I don't know, I feel like there's a

• 21:52Mark Manson?

  it's something I say to my my team sometimes. It's like the fact that you're nervous about putting it up means it's probably good. Like, that's been my experience is that like the things, the things that are good are like, I've I've never not been nervous about them. And then the things that aren't good, I'm often not nervous about them.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's that's been my experience too. It's like we were talking, you and I before we got on the camera here about as as you were moving in your business in a different direction, that it was a challenge and it was difficult and you were sort of looking for that, you know? And I I feel I feel the same way. I mean, I think if I'm not racked by self doubt through whatever part of the process, something's wrong.

• 22:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  You know, and there's something that I know I've I've said this before, but I'll say it, I'll say it again here because maybe it'd be helpful. My theory about resistance is that resistance always comes second. By which I mean that the dream or the the project is is first.

• 22:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  In the sense that there would be no resistance if there wasn't a dream.

• 22:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  If there wasn't a book or something like that. And the bigger the dream and the more important it is, I I say this to myself all the time, the more resistance I'm gonna feel. So like, when when I have that self doubt or when you say something is really challenging and for anybody on your team or whatever, that's a good sign.

• 23:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Because it means that whatever it is that's creating that resistance is something important. Otherwise, it would be, you know, big dream equals big resistance. Little dream equals little resistance. So big resistance is a good sign to me. Doesn't make it any more fun. You know, it makes it really hard, in my opinion. But it it is encouraging. And I've certainly had many moments where I'm freaking out over something and I'll just say to myself, wait a minute, you know? The the fact that there's so much, you know, blowback coming at you is a good sign. So relax.

• 23:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  You know, and keep, just keep plugging.

• 23:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's funny. This I'm just imagining somebody who dreams about having a creative career, listening to this. Like I, when I think about my younger self, my image of, when I was young, I wanted to be a musician. And my image of being a musician was very much a fantasy. Like it had nothing to do with what is actually involved with being a musician. But it's just, it's all fun, glory, attention, accolades.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:26Mark Manson?

  Whereas the reality is, is much of what we're talking about. It's like a very emotionally demanding and exhausting process. That is still fun and invigorating, but it's also like, it is, it is extremely taxing in a way. That I think like, I guess, most people don't, don't assume to be true.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I was, I'm the same way, you know, I thought the same thing. But it's definitely, the process is not cinematic.

• 24:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  The, the, it's not, there's no glamour, right? It's you're grinding a lot of the time. Like Robert Greene talks about this, the tedium is a big part. You know, if you're a pianist, you gotta do scales, you gotta do, how long does it take to master? You know, Beethoven's Ninth or something like that, right? And the only way to do it is, you know, just do it over and over and over. And then in many ways, that's the difference between a pro and an amateur.

• 25:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  An amateur will, will fold. And I certainly folded many, many times before I sort of realized this is, this is what it is.

• 25:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  You know, you signed up for this and you don't want to do anything else. So, you know, shut the fuck up and do it, you know? And in its own crazy way, it is rewarding.

• 25:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Cause you do feel like, you know, this, these are the trenches, we're in the trenches now. And it's a war of attrition.

• 25:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So, speaking of which, you have another book here called Turning Pro. Uh, I'm glad you mentioned that. I, I love this concept just because, and again, this is something that I find applicable. Both within creative work and also outside of creating work. But can you describe briefly just what is your concept of turning pro? And what is the significance of it?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Okay, I certainly think in my own struggles that like when I blew up that book I was just telling you about and other things, and I asked myself, what am I doing wrong?

• 26:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  And I think the answer for me was I'm acting like an amateur and not like a professional. And an amateur is really a kind of a weekend warrior, right? When an amateur, if you have an amateur attitude, you hit adversity, you fold.

• 26:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  You know? Whereas a professional will not fold. And so there are certain things that a professional will do in anything, even just a regular job. You show up every day. You show up on time. You stay there the whole day. You don't quit at lunchtime or anything like that. You do the best you can. When you run into troubles, you dig deep. You know, you solve the problem. You work the problem and you solve it. Another thing about a professional is a professional plays hurt, like athletes. I always think about Kobe or Michael Jordan or something. There's so many, Tom Brady as kind of the consummate professionals.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Like an amateur, if you get hurt, it's like, okay, I gotta take some time off. If you're a pro, you just have to, you just do it. And that way of thinking really helped me a lot because it took any judgment or self judgment. I didn't say to myself, oh, you're weak, you're lazy, you're crazy, you're sick. I just said, you know, you're thinking like an amateur.

• 27:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  And the other thing is it's free turning pro. It doesn't mean you have to say, okay, I'm only going to work for money from now on, right? But you can just flip a switch in your head and say, in fact, I had a friend, a woman. Who took up golf at age thirty five or something like that. And she'd been doing it for a little while. And she said, let's meet, we'll go to whatever it was. And we got together and she came out. She'd been playing for, you know, like a month or two months. She looked like an LPGA pro. She had like the primo clubs, you know, and she said, you know, I just thought of it this way. I'm not going to be an idiot that's out there hacking. Even though I'm not good, I'm going to think of myself as a professional and I'm gonna, I'm gonna take lessons.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, you know, build in a program that I'm gonna work on my short game, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, wow, that is really smart. I never heard of anybody doing that.

• 28:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  So it is a great flip of the switch to just kind of think of yourself as a professional instead of an amateur.

• 28:47Mark Manson?

  I love this idea. I I've written in relationships and not just relationships, but like major life decisions. You know, I think people often wait to feel good about something before committing to it. And I've often written that, no, you commit to something and then that's what makes you start to love it.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:07Mark Manson?

  And I think it's true with people. I think it's true with with occupations. I think it's true with choosing a place to live. I had this conversation, uh, actually the, the, this book, reviewing the book helped me in a conversation recently. I was talking to, to somebody, a friend who, she's wanted to start a business for a long time. And she's saved up a bunch of money and she's got ideas and she keeps, she keeps dabbling. Like she'll test something here or she'll like hire somebody and do a little project here. And, uh, and she keeps giving up. And one of the things she told me is she said, I'm wasting money. Like it didn't go the way I expected. I'm wasting time and I'm wasting money. And I, I told her, I was like, look, like, fuck all that.

• 29:52Mark Manson?

  First of all, like, go, you know, sign up, do your LLC paperwork, open a bank account, put your savings in that bank account. Give yourself six months and then like set a schedule and just work the schedule. Like pretend the business already exists. And then give yourself like a certain amount of money and a certain amount of time. And then if the money runs out and the time runs out and the business isn't, you're still not making any money like, okay, well, you gave it, you gave it your a legitimate shot. But if you're gonna just sit here and like dip your toe in the water over and over, like nothing's gonna happen, you know, so. There's something about formalizing.

• 30:31Mark Manson?

  Like the, the professional mindset of like building time into your schedule, building a place in your house.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:38Mark Manson?

  You know, setting aside. If it involves money, setting aside money and like maybe a separate bank account.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:45Mark Manson?

  Like I, I just think there's like so much mental utility to doing that.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Couldn't agree more. And I think, you know, the gods notice that.

• 30:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  You know, they look down, they say, you know, Mark's got an office, he's got a payroll, he's got a sign outside on the door. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give him, I send him a customer, I'm gonna send him a few ideas.

• 31:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  I think that it's truly, it sounds like I'm being facetious, but there is a sort of a law of the universe. I don't know what it is. That when we commit to something like that, things start to happen in some crazy way. The universe does respond.

• 31:19Mark Manson?

  If you were to make a pie chart.

• 31:25Mark Manson?

  Hear me out. If you were to make a pie chart of the importance of hard work, skill and talent, like what would that look like?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Hard work would be 75%.

• 31:38Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Talent would be 15% and, and skill would be 10%.

• 31:44Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Cause I, I think that, like, if you read something that I had written when I was 22 or 42, you'd say this is dog shit, you know? But I flatter myself that, you know, finally in my 50s, I was able to produce some stuff that was readable, you know? And that is purely a process of hard work and learning, learning the skill and getting better rather than, than talent. I mean, I would say for me, I don't have very much talent at all.

• 32:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  But you can get better.

• 32:21Mark Manson?

  One of the things that.

• 32:23Mark Manson?

  Like something, an idea that I've been noticing or thinking about a lot more is that often the actual skill of something is not what people think the skill is. And let me give you an example. So like, well,

• 32:37Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 32:37Mark Manson?

  Well, with writers, it's, it's, it's easy. Like the example for us is easy, right? It's like, it's, the skill is less the writing, it's more the editing and revision, right? Like it's the difference, everybody's first draft, everybody's first draft is garbage. What actually distinguishes like a great piece of writing from a mediocre piece of writing, other than the idea is, is just how well you're able to go through and polish and compress and

• 33:08Mark Manson?

  you know, make it sing, as they say. Like I, I would personally argue that I think revision and editing yourself is a more important skill than just pure putting words on the page. I don't know if you would agree with that or not, but like when I think about music, I know so many, especially like I went to music school, I studied music, I initially aspired to be a professional musician. I knew so many insanely talented musicians. I still know some insanely talented musicians who, who never made it and

• 33:45Mark Manson?

  who in many cases were quote unquote, the best musician, you know, of our class or, or of our cohort. But they didn't make it and quote unquote, worse musicians did make it in the industry and

• 34:02Mark Manson?

  what I've kind of discovered as I've gotten older is that the, the, the skill in the music industry isn't actually the pure musicianship, like the, the people you hear on the radio aren't the best singers in the world. They're not the best songwriters in the world. They're not,

• 34:20Mark Manson?

  you know, they're not the most talented at their instrument. It's, they have

• 34:28Mark Manson?

  Come across some sort of stylistic or creative. There's something unique about them creatively that they've put together. That the combination of many things works in a way that it doesn't for most people. And like, for instance, I have a friend, she is an amazing singer, like just gorgeous voice. But like her, like the, the style of music that she does. The audience values other things more than just purely the quality of, of the voice. Right? Um, there's like the image and the energy and the vibe and the stage presence and all this stuff.

• 35:13Mark Manson?

  Like in, in, in that genre of music, that, that is actually the skill that gets you paid.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:19Mark Manson?

  And so I, I just, I guess where I'm going with this idea is that often like the, the skill that gets you paid in a creative field is, is often not the skill that you initially assume that it is. Does that make sense?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does. Yeah.

• 35:34Mark Manson?

  And it's, uh, I guess when I was young, that was very disappointing to me, but now that I'm older, I'm like, you know, it's, it's just, I guess it's, it's, um, learning to think about the right things. You know, in what you're doing.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Hmm. I would actually put a different set of skills in there too. That's not that I don't agree with you a hundred percent. But then there's the sort of the skill of how do you do it over a long period of time?

• 36:05Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  How do you manage your emotions? Forgetting about the music itself.

• 36:10Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  How do you handle rejection and come back again?

• 36:15Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  That, that I think is, are the skills that, well, nobody teaches you that, number one. You don't learn that in school.

• 36:21Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of the people that do have tremendous talent and don't make it. That's why they don't have, and a lot of it is self-promotion too, you know? How do you, um, go on another audition and another audition and, and, and learn to present yourself in such a way that people will respond to it?

• 36:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Or if you're a writer and you're basically alone in a room, how do you weather the various crises?

• 36:49Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  That come up in a two-year project, right? That that would, you know, knock somebody else off their off their footing and make them make them quit.

• 36:58Mark Manson?

  That that is such a good point. The the emotional process. I I realize that too, like, there are a couple, like my roommate in music school, to this day is one of the most talented musicians I've ever been around, ever heard in my life. And um,

• 37:18Mark Manson?

  but it was funny, he lacked focus. He he would start one project and then get excited by this other project and then get excited by this other project. And so he never, he was never able to go like all in on one thing.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:29Mark Manson?

  For many, many years.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  And I would say that's a form of resistance.

• 37:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  You know? That sort of whatever, you know?

• 37:35Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Going from one to another, yeah.

• 37:37Mark Manson?

  And so even though he was, you know, musically just off the charts in terms of talent, the like, the emotional side of it wasn't.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:46Mark Manson?

  Wasn't lined up.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I'm sure this is true of athletes too.

• 37:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  There must be so many people who are like incredibly fast runners or whatever.

• 37:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  But some, who is the one that winds up being Hussein Bolt? There probably are ten guys out there that could that could beat him.

• 37:59Mark Manson?

  Theoretically, yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  But they flamed out somewhere along the way.

• 38:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's interesting, if you follow college sports, you you run into that like.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  I bet.

• 38:08Mark Manson?

  My dad is just obsessed with college football. And so there very frequently, there are stories of like just this insanely talented eighteen-year-old.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:17Mark Manson?

  Who can't stop partying, doesn't show up to workouts, you know?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Johnny Manziel, Johnny Football, yeah?

• 38:26Mark Manson?

  Exactly, that's a perfect example.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Do you believe there there is this perception or I guess conventional wisdom that to create great art, you have to live this varied, dramatic, tumultuous life? And uh, you know, you definitely had a lot of wide variety of life experiences. You have this, your bio has this list of all these odd jobs that you worked and,

• 38:56Mark Manson?

  you know, I I had a a wild and crazy twenties, lived all over the world.

• 39:04Mark Manson?

  Do you think that's necessary? Do you think you have to like?

• 39:08Mark Manson?

  Go experience a bunch of wild hardship and make catastrophic mistakes.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  I certainly think some of that helps.

• 39:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  But I mean, didn't Emily Dickinson like never leave her room or something like, you know?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do think obviously you have to see a few things and but I think at least for fiction writing, it's coming from the imagination a lot of the time, you know? And I think we also, all of us know a lot more than we think we do. And can access things that we don't think we can. I mean, Arthur Golden that wrote Memoirs of a Geisha or some, somebody Golden wrote, you know, a male Jewish guy, right, a Western guy.

• 39:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Was able to put himself in the mind of a Japanese geisha in the 1930s and 20s.

• 40:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  And where did that come from? He didn't do that, you know? So the imagination is a big thing, I think. Yeah, I don't know if you, if you, if you have to.

• 40:16Mark Manson?

  So you don't buy.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Do too much of that stuff, but just enough.

• 40:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  So you don't, so you don't damage yourself, you know? You don't want to get over the, you know?

• 40:25Mark Manson?

  I also think there's, there's a tendency to like glamorize

• 40:33Mark Manson?

  artists who have suffered.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:35Mark Manson?

  You know, you look at like the Kurt Cobains and.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:39Mark Manson?

  The, you know, Amy Winehouse's. And I think there's a faulty assumption that it's like, oh, you, you kind of have to be that way. But this comes back to the skill's not the skill, right? Like Kurt Cobain wasn't emotionally equipped to have a full career.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:58Mark Manson?

  And, and I think a lot of those kind of like emotionally unstable artists.

• 41:05Mark Manson?

  Flame out like that frequently.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. On the other hand, to take the other side.

• 41:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  I was thinking of a mentor of mine named Paul Rink. That we were once talking about a guy that we both knew. Who had been like a merchant seaman, he'd been in the war, he was in jail. And was finally was succeeding as a writer and was really found his groove. In his sixties or something like that. And I asked, I said to Paul, how do you explain it? The guy's been through so much crap and he can still do it. And Paul said something like. Suffering has never hurt any writer that I know of.

• 41:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  And so there's something to that in a way, too.

• 41:48Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  As long as it's not so much that it breaks your heart and you can't do anything.

• 41:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think there's probably some combination of the hardship and the struggle. Plus a certain amount of like self-awareness and ability to like communicate.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I'll speak it for my own self for a minute here. Like Gates of Fire is a book about the three hundred Spartans.

• 42:10Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  At Thermopylae, right? It's a, and so I've never fought with a spear and a shield.

• 42:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  I don't know anything about that. It's all entirely, you know, imaginary. But yet my time in the Marine Corps gave me a little bit of a sense of what. You know, men in groups are like and what that sort of thing is. But then the imagination has to take it. The last ninety yards, you know?

• 42:36Mark Manson?

  Right, right. Yeah. So you've, you've used a couple of war analogies just in our conversation already. You're a veteran, former Marine. Most of your fiction, all of your fiction is military.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Pretty much it's all of, you know, war related, yeah.

• 42:54Mark Manson?

  Um, and then even your nonfiction books, talking about the creative processes is there's so much.

• 43:01Mark Manson?

  So much language around conflict, battle, war, you know, resistance. I'm curious, how did your time in the military? Inform your, your creativity or teach you about creativity?

• 43:17Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm, I'm not sure it really did too much. But I, I certainly see life as a battle. And each day as a battle, you know?

• 43:31Speaker 01

  In like the first chapter of of the Daily Press Field, my newest book, said that the title of the chapter is Resistance Wakes Up With Me, which it which it does.

• 43:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  And it's sort of, you know, it's like people ask me, maybe, or anybody, when in your day do you first experience resistance? And I always say, the minute I open my eyes, right? So in other words, my, the way I experience a day is I wake up and there's like an enemy immediately, you know?

• 43:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  And that enemy is trying to make me stay in bed, fuck off any way I can, right? Like Arnold Schwarzenegger has a thing, when he talks about, I just saw this on Instagram or something, of like, when he wakes up in the morning and he opens his eyes, his motto is, don't think. He says, cause, he says, get out of bed. Get out of bed and go to the gym. Don't, if you start to think, that's the voice of resistance.

• 44:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  You know, so that's the enemy that's gonna try to undermine you and try to sabotage you. And to me, that's just the fabric of reality. Maybe you don't experience life like that, but I do.

• 44:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  I feel like I have to win each day. If I don't, you know, give me another four days and I'll be an alcoholic. You know, it won't take very long, right? I'll go spiral down something.

• 44:43Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  So I guess that's why, I don't even really know why so many of my books have been war themed. It just, I'm just pulled to that.

• 44:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Cause it's a metaphor for the way I view life.

• 44:55Mark Manson?

  It is clearly so helpful for thousands and thousands of people to, I mean, I find it interesting in that it's, it's almost like your, your fiction is kind of about external conflict, and then the non-fiction's about the internal conflict.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think that's just how I look at it. I'll give you another metaphor that's the opposite of a military metaphor for a creative person. And that is the metaphor of a mother. That if you think about an artist or a creative person, we're bringing something new.

• 45:24Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Into the world. We're pregnant with something, right? And, and while that thing is gestating inside of us, it's everything.

• 45:33Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Right? Our, our ego, we don't care about ourselves. Everything is to protect this, this new life that's inside of us. And a mother, like compare a mother to a warrior. A mother will run into a burning building, you know, to save her child, right? She'll pick up a Buick with her bare hands.

• 45:49Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  And, uh, and even once the child is born and is out there, it does, it doesn't stop. The mother is still, you know, protective and everything that she does is, is to enhance, you know, that, that, that child. So that's a, another great way, I think, more of a, more of a feminine way to, to think of this, uh, the, the creative wars, you know?

• 46:13Mark Manson?

  I've thought, I've thought about that quite a bit.

• 46:17Mark Manson?

  It's like, you know, the, the things you create as, as children and it's like, none of them turn out perfect, but you still love them all, like equally.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:26Mark Manson?

  And the world accepts some more than others, but like, you, you know, you still love them all equally.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:32Mark Manson?

  It's a, it's a fun way to look at it. You often talk about the, the concept of a muse, but like in the, the ancient Greek sense. And, um, you also mentioned the, like trusting the mystery. Like what, what does that mean?

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Let me just describe for our listeners or viewers of whatever, who the muses were, just as a start.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  They were Greek goddesses, nine sisters, the daughters of Zeus and Nemosy, which means memory. And their job was to inspire artists. And there was a muse of epic poetry, a muse of dance, a muse of music, blah, blah, blah, right? And the, um, sort of the classic image of the, of the goddess is Beethoven or somebody at the piano and this sort of spectral female figure is at his ear, kind of whispering in his ear, you know, da, da, da, da, that kind of thing. So I, I think that I'm, when you, when you work in any kind of creative art for a period of time, you have to, you realize that the ideas that you have are not coming from you.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  I'm sure you would agree with this, Mark, right? They're, they're coming from somewhere else, right? And, uh, and we're just sort of the channel that, that they come through. So that idea of these goddesses, of the muse, you know, flying around overhead really resonates with me. And I really sort of feel that, um, my job as, as an artist is to do whatever the muse tells me to and to be, um,

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Open to any impulse or intuition or idea.

• 48:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  That's coming in from another dimension of reality. Maybe it's your unconscious. I think it's somewhere out there in some other place.

• 48:22Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  But that's so, um, you know, as I'm working on one project and you're probably the same way. Part of me is always looking out for the next one, you know, side of my, and I'm waiting for the phone call, you know, from the muse, you know?

• 48:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Or the radio signal or whatever. And, and when it comes and I feel like, ah, that's great. Thank you, you know?

• 48:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  And, and my job is, is just to serve that idea. That's how I, that's how I sort of view the whole career. I didn't always.

• 48:50Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  But I, but I do now.

• 48:52Mark Manson?

  It's interesting because it's similar to the, you know, the waking up thing. It's like, don't think too hard about it.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:59Mark Manson?

  When it shows up, don't judge it, don't analyze it.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:04Mark Manson?

  Obsess over it.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:05Mark Manson?

  Like, it's just kind of like.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  It knows a lot better than we do.

• 49:08Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  We may think we know, but we don't.

• 49:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah. For me, it, it shows up a lot like, sometimes I'll have an idea. I mean, I have ideas all the time and I'll be like, oh, cool. That's an idea.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 49:20Mark Manson?

  But it's sometimes there are ideas that just persist. They like, it's like they get lodged in my brain. And I mean, some of them have been there for years.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  What do you do with ideas, Mark? Do you like write them down or dictate them into your phone? Or how does it, how does it work for you?

• 49:36Mark Manson?

  I, I will take, I'll take some notes, you know? So I, I, I have various, I've actually got a folder, uh, in my Google Drive of just called book ideas.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 49:48Mark Manson?

  And there's probably a dozen little documents there with anything.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  I do too, by the way.

• 49:53Mark Manson?

  Okay. Yeah. So within it's anything from, I mean, some of them are literally just like three sentences or three bullet points and maybe a title. Um, whereas others are like more fleshed out outlines, examples, you know, even full paragraphs written. But it's interesting because some of them, it's like a lot, most, I'd say most ideas that come, they're gone within a day or two. Every once in a while you'll get one that sticks around for a while. It maybe feels really pertinent for like a couple of months or maybe a year. Um, and then every once in a while, there's a, you know, probably could count on one hand, one will show up and it just sticks.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 50:34Mark Manson?

  Year after year after year. Um.

• 50:38Mark Manson?

  Until you, until you make it.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 50:40Mark Manson?

  And then it goes away.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 50:41Mark Manson?

  And then you don't want to have anything to do with it anymore. And then you're like, I'm so sick of you.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I find sometimes that I, an idea will come to me and I'll reject it immediately.

• 50:55Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  You know, oh, it's a dumb idea, you know, but I might write it down.

• 50:58Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  And maybe three months later or six months later, I'll look at it and I'll go, wow, that is a good idea. And then I will start, you know, to get some traction, you know, and I'll start to actually, let me put a little time in on this to see where it goes.

• 51:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but a lot of times for me at least, the first flush of an idea I is, is like, it's rejection of the call. You know, they.

• 51:22Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  I'll blow it off right away. Oh, it's a dumb idea. And then later I'll go, damn, it's a pretty good idea, you know?

• 51:27Mark Manson?

  It's almost like a screening mechanism, right? Because it's like, the bad ideas will go away. Like, they won't come back, but like, the good ones will come back.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh. It's like the muse keeps knocking on the window, you know?

• 51:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Don't forget that one, you know?

• 51:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, this is, this is a good one.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:45Mark Manson?

  Where do you go for inspiration?

• 51:46Speaker 01

  I watch movies, I read books, I'm always trying to steal something.

• 51:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  That's another thing, seriously, this is, this is a great lesson from advertising.

• 51:53Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  I remember as a, I'm a junior copywriter and I'm working with a, an old time art director, a guy named Zoltan Medvecky, a great mentor to me. And I remember we, we had an assignment, we had to do an ad for something. And he immediately pulls out his trays of, of art books and old stuff. And he, and I said, what are you doing, Med? What are you doing? And he says, I'm stealing. And he's, and he, and everybody does this, right? You look for, oh, that's a look we want. But he would always say, it's not stealing if you put a spin on it, if you make it, give it a little bit of a twist. So I'm, I always try to steal from any, anywhere I possibly.

• 52:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  I mean, the legend of Bagger Vance is the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Just stolen, lock, stock and barrel, and just translated from a war environment to a golf environment.

• 52:43Mark Manson?

  That's wild. That's totally wild. The advertising thing is, it's so interesting. First of all, there's so many successful authors who have backgrounds in advertising.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, true.

• 52:55Mark Manson?

  It's really, it's really interesting.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  And directors, Ridley Scott, you know, so on and so forth. Yeah.

• 52:59Mark Manson?

  That's a, I'm not surprised, you know, I, I studied copywriting when I was fairly young. I, I studied it because I was just trying to sell shit on the internet. So I also wasn't particularly excited or passionate about it, but it's when young, when aspiring writers reach out to me, it's, it's often a common piece of advice that I give to them is, is learn basic copywriting. Just because-

• 53:28Speaker 01

  That is a good piece of advice.

• 53:29Mark Manson?

  Because copywriting teaches you to think about attention and hooking people. And I think as, as an author, or a writer of any sort, ultimately what you're doing is you're, you're grabbing people's attention.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 53:45Mark Manson?

  And you have to think like, you know, what's the best way to open this chapter?

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:50Mark Manson?

  You know, what's the best way to proceed from this idea to this idea? And, and I've just found it like overwhelmingly useful in my career.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Actually, I have a book, I don't know if it's in this thing called, "Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit." Are you familiar with that one? And that really was sort of the lesson of advertising because everybody hates advertising.

• 54:07Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  And nobody wants to read it. So if you're writing an ad or a storyboarding a TV commercial, you have to ask yourself, in the teeth of that resistance, the people that hate what I'm about to sell, Preparation H or something, how can I engage them, you know?

• 54:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  How clever, what, I mean, you've got to come up with the most clever thing you possibly can, showing respect to the audience, right? And the same thing, like you say, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, how do I start this? How do I keep people going, you know? Because nobody wants to read it, you know? You've got to really hook them. It's got to be good.

• 54:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it does. Airtight, like not, as you said, not a wasted word.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:50Mark Manson?

  Tell us about The Daily Press Field.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Okay, The Daily Press Field is my newest book.

• 54:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  I actually got the idea from Ryan Holiday. He told me this, he has a book, The Daily Stoic.

• 55:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  You know, a 365 day thing that you read each, you know? And he said, you know, you've got so much content, you should do something like that. So I thought, as I'm thinking about this, it's a good idea. I thought- How could I take this material that's in The War of Art and Turning Pro and these other books, in separate little books, and put it together in a way that somebody could use as they were working on a project of their own, like if they were taking a year-long thing? And I thought, the 365-day format is a great way to do that, because you can sort of start at day one.

• 55:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  And we were talking about, you and I, about second-act horrors.

• 55:37Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Right in the middle of the book, you're gonna have a section about the second act, you know? And then at the end, you're gonna have a section about the terror that you get when you're, you know, close to the end. So I just thought, that format, the daily, the daily, actually, Ryan gave me that title.

• 55:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  I would never be egomaniacal enough to do that. But, so I think it's a, it's a 365-day format.

• 56:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Is a great way to kind of coach somebody through all of the shit that you're gonna run into, all of the, what we were talking about.

• 56:10Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  The mindset. So that's what The Daily Pressfield is, is brand-new. And I sent you, we don't have it here.

• 56:16Mark Manson?

  I totally fucked up.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  It's all right.

• 56:19Mark Manson?

  My wife.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Can I make a little pitch to the camera?

• 56:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah, do the pitch, do whatever you want, because I, I, my, my, uh, we, we, my wife cleaned the office and we, I had a whole stack of books and they disappeared on the desk.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  I will blame her. But, um, The Daily Pressfield is self-published. My girlfriend Diana designed the book, blah, blah, blah.

• 56:42Mark Manson?

  Beautiful book.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  She did a great job.

• 56:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  And one of the ways we tried to make it different from what you would get from, uh, Simon and Schuster or something like that, is we created like a really special gift pack that came with the book and gave a, you know, a secondary exercise book, some cards, some other goodies, all kinds of stuff. And that would be a great gift if you know somebody that's struggling and needs to kind of get it together.

• 57:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  And, uh, so if, if you, you can't get this from Amazon or in a bookstore, you have to get it from my website, which is just my name, stevenpressfield.com. And it's more expensive, but it's, it's a great gift and a big, a really pretty package.

• 57:27Mark Manson?

  Amazing. We'll, we'll link to that in the show notes and, um... The, the next time I, I start on the next book.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Tell your wife to, yeah.

• 57:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Clean up too much.

• 57:38Mark Manson?

  The next, the, the next book that I start on, I'll, I can go through it.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:42Mark Manson?

  Let you know how it goes.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Like you don't know it enough.

• 57:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Hey Mark, this is great. Thank you for the great questions. We gotta do this again.

• 57:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  This is a great conversation. I think we, we've only touched, just scratched the surface.

• 57:56Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  So, thanks a lot for having me. It's great.

• 57:59Mark Manson?

  Cool. The Subtle Art of Not Getting a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie, edited by Andrew Nishimura, Jessica Choy is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.