Steven Pressfield's Blog

My business partner Shawn Coyne has a term that he can’t utter without personal and emotional abhorrence.

“Third party validation.”

He HATES it. He hates the very idea of it. When he sees it in others, he shakes his head. When he discovers even a glimmer within himself, he’s horrified and moves heaven and earth to eradicate it.

What is Third Party Validation?

3PV is the need for approval from someone else.

Be it said, all of us crave approval and validation. We’re human. Our DNA was formed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution where survival meant life in the tribe, in the primitive hunting band, where exclusion from the group meant death.

It’s in our blood, the need for Third Party Validation. 

That doesn’t make it any less of a vice.

Can you read your own stuff and form an objective opinion? Can you screen your film and know which parts work and which don’t?

We can collaborate with editors and producers. We can listen deeply and heed their counsel. But in the end, we must develop our own nose for the truth.

The film director must have the final word on his picture. He and he alone must be the judge of when it’s ready for release to the world.

The post Third Party Validation first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

Have you read Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit? I quoted a passage in one of my books and she made me pay 250 bucks. It was worth it because the passage was so great. Here it is:

I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.

Twyla Tharp is one of the world’s great choreographers. Her day is spent in the dance studio, doing tough, hard physical work. Yet she starts before dawn at the gym. Why? Again, it’s about the Inner Game, the Mental Game.

Twyla Tharp is not so much preparing her body as readying her mind. With each repeated motion—a hamstring stretch, a shoulder press, a Downward Dog pose—she is reinforcing for herself the conviction that “I am a professional, I am a warrior, I am an athlete,” all three of which translate directly to “I am a dancer, I am a choreographer, I am an artist.”

In a way, Ms. Tharp is brainwashing herself. Deliberately. She is using habit and ritual to reinforce her identity as an artist and to power her for the day as a creative force. When she leaves the gym and heads to the dance studio, she can honestly tell herself, “Nothing I’m going to do for the rest of the day will be harder than what I’ve just done.”

That’s power. That’s the mindset of the professional, the warrior, the artist.

The post Twyla Tharp first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

It’s 4:30 in the morning and we’re on our way to the gym. This is six days a week, rain or shine, Christmas, Fourth of July, your birthday. I hate it. Everybody does. We’d all rather be home in bed munching bon-bons. Why do it then? For me, it’s not because I imagine I’m going to be the next Mr. Universe.

It’s about the mental game.

Yes, the fitness and health aspects are important, even indispensable. But what this pre-dawn expedition is really about for me is the Inner Game. I am preparing myself mentally and emotionally for the day’s work that will start for real in a couple of hours.

Maybe you’re a runner, maybe you’re a biker, maybe you practice martial arts or yoga or tai chi, maybe you train for the Ironman or the Spartan race. It’s all great! And it’s all for the same reason—to rehearse, to prepare, to beat into our thick skulls the mindset of embracing adversity.

When we work out physically, we are doing three things that are superb rehearsals for creative work.

We’re doing something we’d rather not do.We’re doing something that resists us.We’re doing something we’re afraid of.

In the gym or on the track or the trail, we experience moments of real physical fear. A weight we don’t think we can handle. A hill we’re not sure we can climb. Watch the faces of men and women at CrossFit or any other serious venue of training. See them going deep within, psyching themselves up to overcome the fear, to ready themselves for the pain, to anticipate the level of effort and intensity they’re going to have to summon.

That’s the artist’s way. That’s the mindset of the professional, the warrior, the independent operator.

The post Going to the Gym in the Dark first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

I got a note this morning from Phil Britton about the Wednesday 8/6 post, “Empathy.” Phil writes, “I’d love to hear your take on how to balance this with the idea of ‘never play to the gallery.'”

Great question. I can see I haven’t been clear enough in the past couple of posts. 

What I DON’T mean, and DON’T lobby for is “giving the fans what they want.” Forget that. The artist’s role is to lead. Nobody in Liverpool in 1962 was waiting for “Love Me, Do.” But when the Beatles released it, suddenly everyone went crazy.

“Give the people what they want” is legitimate, I think, if we’re debating where to locate our new frozen yogurt store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Answer: where there is no frozen yogurt store now.

But for you and me as artists, that concept is creative death.

Jeremy Allen White as “Carmy” in THE BEAR

Here’s what I DO mean when I say the artist must put herself in imagination in the place of the reader/viewer:

I was watching an episode of “The Bear,” Season Two. The opening scene took place in a hospital room. The character of Marcus was standing bedside with his mother or father (I forget which) in the bed. The director of the episode, Christopher Storer, had to decide where to put the camera for the opening shot.  He decided to put it at bedside level, beside the bed, looking up past the side of the patient’s head, toward Marcus standing beside the bed.

How did he make that decision?

He knew what the scene was about. He knew what he wanted the audience to feel, to understand, and to take away from the scene. He asked himself, “What’s the best way to achieve this? Where should I put the camera? Behind Marcus? Outside the room looking in? What rhythm should the scene be in? Do we need music? What music? How should Marcus play the scene? Etc.”

Christopher Storer put himself in imagination in the place of the viewer. He thought, “This is the opening scene of this episode; the viewer won’t know where the episode is going. I have to set this scene up so that it makes sense, it hooks the viewer, it leads on into the next scene, and so forth. Where do I put the camera?”

That’s what I mean by empathy. That’s what I mean by being aware of who our readers or viewers are—what they know of the story, what emotions have hooked them, etc.

We’re not pandering to them or “giving them what they want.” They don’t know what they want. We’re giving them WHAT THE STORY WANTS, which equates to what (we hope) is the most interesting, most fun, most entertaining, most moving, most enlightening version of the ten bazillion possible versions we could give them.

That what I mean by creative/narrative empathy. It applies in all fields and to all of us all the time.

Hope this helps.

The post To Pander or Not to Pander first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

We said in last week’s post that Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. And that as soon as you and I grasp this concept, we have made a primary Artist’s Breakthrough.

We have acquired empathy.

When we understand that nobody wants to read our shit, our mind becomes powerfully concentrated. We begin to understand that writing/reading/painting is, at its most fundamental level, a transaction.

The reader or viewer donates her time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you and I—the writer/artist/poet/singer/dancer—must give her something worthy of her gift to you.

How do we do this?

We work to develop the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs—the ability to switch back and forth in our imagination from our own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of our reader/gallery-goer/customer.

Is she following where we want to lead her?

We say to ourselves, “Recognizing that no one wants to read our shit, we must therefore stop at nothing until our shit is so interesting, so eye-catching, so funny/sad/sexy that the reader would have to be CRAZY not to jump at it.”

We learn to ask ourselves with every sentence and every visual image:

“Is this interesting? Is it fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she following where I want to lead her?”

The post Empathy first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

While we’re on the subject of hardball lessons that the aspiring artist needs to learn, let’s go straight to the Big One. What follows is the underlying truth that every writer and artist from Homer to R. Crumb needs to know and deal with:

Nobody wants to read your shit.

The book-length version

My first real grownup job was in advertising. I worked as a copywriter for a big ad agency in New York. The first thing you realize, writing ads and TV commercials is

Nobody wants to read your shit.

By shit, I mean your ads and commercials. Everybody hates them. Sight unseen, the audience despises everything you put before them. Your coupon ad for Preparation H, your trade pitch for Nugenix Man-Boosting Formula. They fast-forward through your commercials. They turn the page of the magazine. They hit the SKIP AD button on your YouTube spot.

This is true not just for ads, but screenplays, novels, comedy sketches, art installations, dances, one-act plays, musical revues, strip acts, standup routines. Nobody, not your dog or your mother, wants to read your grant application or sit through your opera or screen your documentary on the plight of indigenous hunter-gatherers in the Amazon.

It’s not that people are mean or cruel, they’re just busy. They’ve got stuff to do.

Nobody wants to read your shit.

Understanding this admittedly unpleasant truth produces, paradoxically, the single greatest breakthrough any writer or artist can achieve.

Empathy.

(More on this next week … )

The post Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

I’m borrowing (again) from my entrepreneurship guru, Dan Sullivan. Dan has crystalized the statement that every entrepreneur makes to him or herself, whether she does this consciously or not.

It’s the entrepreneur’s code, the independent businessperson’s declaration of principle:

I will expect no remuneration until I have created value for someone else.

Let me repeat that:

I will expect no remuneration until I have created value for someone else.

We write a book. It’s got to sell. It has to “create value” for the reader. Otherwise, we’re not artists, we’re artistes.

Dan Sullivan of StategicCoach.com

You and I must remember always that art is a transaction. The viewer or reader or gallery-goer brings to the table something precious. Her time. Her attention. She may even actually pay money. In return, you and I must deliver something—an image, a song, a story—worthy of our reader or viewer’s time and attention.

This is not easy. Why are there forty million songs released every year but only six hundred that anybody actually remembers? Because it’s hard!

Why do I cite this Entrepreneur’s Code? I do it to get our feet planted firmly on the ground. So that you and I as musicians and filmmakers and video game designers can operate in the world as it really exists—and not in some “artistic” fantasy.

I will expect no remuneration until I have created value for someone else.

The post The Code of the Entrepreneur first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

We declared in the first post in this series that an artist is an entrepreneur. Let’s go further.

An artist is a working stiff.

The mentality of the artist is the mentality of the blue-collar worker

Are you a ballerina? You are not a sweet, sylph-like damsel.

You are a jock.

You are a professional athlete. You are tough. The ordeals you put your body through would cripple an NFL linebacker.

Yes, it’s romantic to be onstage at the Met in The Nutcracker and yes, your Mom and Dad will burst themselves with pride and little girls will gaze at you in awe and envy. But behind the legitimate romance of the balletic stage—and it is legitimate—are thousands of hours of grueling practice and classwork, nights coming home on the subway alone and freezing and exhausted. Torn ligaments, ruptured ACLs, bone spurs, sciatic nerve damage, plantar fasciitis, broken bones. Politics within ballet companies. Getting screwed out of roles. That’s not romance. That’s hard, backbreaking work, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

And we’re not even talking about self-doubt, fear, struggles with self-belief, sabotage by oneself and by others, arrogance, complacency, perfectionism, ambition.

Yes, succeeding as an artist takes skill and talent and genius. But more than that, it requires mental toughness. Because the artist is alone. Indeed, the ballet dancer may be part of a company and the comedy writer may have a gig on a cable show. But these jobs can end in the blink of an eye. We can all be on the street any moment.

How does the artist navigate this lonely, pitiless, competitive jungle? She must inculcate within herself the mindset of the entrepreneur, the professional, the warrior.

The post Artist = Working Stiff first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

I hate the word “creative.” Particularly when it’s used as a noun. That a person is a “creative.”

Why do I hate it?

Because it implies someone who is different from—and better than—the average blue-collar working stiff.

Van Gogh’s bedroom at 2, Place Lamartine in Arles, circa 1888.

There’s a romance to being an artist, isn’t there?

The novelist starving in a garret like Dostoevsky. William Burroughs on junk, Charles Bukowski the barfly. The ballerina, the photographer, the actor, the musician, the concert pianist. That’s romance, right?

What I’m hoping to do in this series of posts that I’m calling TK THS JOB N SHOVE IT is to disabuse all of us of this notion.

Being an artist is NOT romantic and if you and I undertake any artistic pursuit with that notion, we will flame out in a hurry.

The mindset of the artist is the mindset of the blue-collar worker, the mindset of the warrior, the mindset of the entrepreneur—the individual who is alone in his or her aspiration and must be tough as nails inside if she’s going to keep going and succeed.

The post The Romance of Being an Artist first appeared on Steven Pressfield.

If you think about it, the artist is the ultimate entrepreneur.

Virginia Woolf, entrepreneur.

She is in business entirely for herself.

She has no boss.

No mentor.

No paycheck.

No medical, no dental, no safety net.

She has no imposed daily schedule, no externally prescribed structure.

The artist possesses total workplace freedom. She can tackle any project she wants, execute it any way she wishes, take it to market in any manner she pleases.

She can write To the Lighthouse, audition for a Broadway play, compose a symphony, lay out the next Assassins’ Creed.

The artist is the ultimate rugged individualist.

She can rise to the top or crash to the bottom.

Nothing is stopping her from either outcome except her own exertions.

[P.S. This is the fourth in this series I’m calling TK THS JOB N SHOVE IT. You can see video versions of these chapters on Instagram at @steven_pressfield. I’m guessing there’ll be between 30 and 50 “chapters” when all is said and done.]

The post The Ultimate Entrepreneur first appeared on Steven Pressfield.