#102 – Steven Pressfield: The War of Art

[0] The following is a conversation with Stephen Presfield, author of several powerful nonfiction and historical fiction books, including The War of Art, a book that had a big impact on my life and the life of millions of people whose passion is to create in art, science, business, sport, and everywhere else.

[1] I highly recommend it and others of his books on this topic, including turning pro, do the work, Nobody wants to read your shit and the warrior ethos.

[2] Also, his books Gets of Fire about the Spartans and the Battle of Thermopylae, The Lionsgate, Tides of War, and others are some of the best historical fiction novels ever written.

[3] Some of you know, I don't shy away from taking on a big difficult challenge.

[4] One of the hardest for me and for millions of others is the discipline of staring at an empty page.

[5] every day, pushing on to think deeply to create, despite the millions of excuses that fill the head.

[6] In his work, Stephen has articulated this struggle better than anyone I've ever read.

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[13] AI is my passion.

[14] And in some sense, this podcast is not as much about AI, but more about a journey of an AI researcher struggling to explore the human mind, the physics of our universe, and the nature of human behavior, intelligence, consciousness, love, and power.

[15] I will continue to return home to the technical, computer science, machine learning, engineering, math, programming, but also venture out to talk to people who had a big impact on my life outside the technical fields, writers like Stephen Presfield and Stephen King, musicians like Tom Waits, political leaders like, well, you know who, and even athletes.

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[45] And now here's my conversation with Stephen Pressfield.

[46] Modern society in many ways dreams of creating universal peace.

[47] And yet war has molded civilization as we know it throughout its history.

[48] So let's start at the high philosophical level.

[49] If you could imagine a world without war, how would that world be different?

[50] Perhaps put another way what purpose has war served?

[51] Why do we fight?

[52] I think we're basically the same creatures internally that we were in the cave, right?

[53] In tribal society, back for however many, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of years, which means that we're in a, the dynamic in our mind is a kind of an us versus them dynamic where our tribe is the people and everybody else or whatever, you know.

[54] And I don't see that.

[55] I don't think that's changed one iota over the centuries.

[56] It's just a question of how one might sublimate that urge to compete.

[57] You're a martial artist.

[58] You know, a great part of your day, I'm sure, is dedicated to reaching that place of, you know, of total commitment in the face of competition in the face of adversity, etc., etc., which is, I think, natural and great for the human race on an individual basis.

[59] So the hope that I have, if there is any hope, personally, I don't think the human race is going to be around very long, but would be in sports or in other kind of sublimated activities where people can, act out their need for conquest or aggression or so forth, but at the same time relate to their opponents as human beings and when the game is over, you know, you embrace your competitor and stuff like that.

[60] So you think war was inevitable.

[61] It's a part of human nature as opposed to a force, a creative force in society that served the benefit.

[62] Well, I'm sure it has benefited you know, spreading cultures and mixing cultures and stuff like that.

[63] But I think the urge to conquest, if you think about Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or Napoleon or anybody like that, or even individual, or if we even think about one of the plants that we're looking at right outside, I mean, if you let a particular plant have its way, it would take over, you know, the whole hillside.

[64] And certainly in the days of Alexander the Great, let's say, there were, who knows, over the face of the earth, hundreds of little kingdoms, China, Japan, you know, Asia, Europe, wherever, and every prince that grew up dreamt of conquering his neighbor and conquering a neighbor after that.

[65] That seems to be a universal human imperative, at least in the male of the species.

[66] The war is just the realization of that imperative.

[67] I think so.

[68] So you've written about Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae, about Alexander the Great, about the sixth day war in 67 in Israel against Egypt, Jordan, Syria.

[69] what war, not just out of those, but in general, do you think has been most transformative for the world?

[70] Well, these are great questions, Lex.

[71] Tough, easy ones, right?

[72] I mean, I wish I knew more about the Mongols, because I certainly, from what I've, what little I know, I think that was a very, their conquest was a very transformative, bringing cultures, you know, in a horrible bloody way together, but, gosh, what's then the most transformative?

[73] Maybe the Roman conquest, you know, establishing the Roman Empire and bringing that culture, maybe Alexander the Greats, wars that, you know, united east and west, at least for a minute.

[74] So building of empire, do you have a sense?

[75] So there's wars, I mean, the six -day war.

[76] is not about building empires.

[77] It's about deeply held religious, cultural conflict and holding the line, holding the border.

[78] And then there is conquest, like the Mongols, that what is it, some large percentage of the population is a descendant of Genghis Khan, is believe, right?

[79] So that has transformative effects.

[80] And then World War II, I mean, personally and my family and so on the transformative effects let me ask you this lex why are you what are you trying to get at with these questions what is this kind of the theme that you're you're aiming at well i talked to eric weistine and he said everything is great about war except the killing and uh there's a romantic notion of war certainly there's a romantic notion of being a warrior but there's a romantic notion of war that somehow there's a creative force to it.

[81] That because we fight out of that fighting comes culture, comes music and art, and more and more desire to create with the societies that win.

[82] And to me, war is not just, hey, I have a stick and I want your land.

[83] And it's some kind of, like it has echoes of the creative force that makes humans unique to other animals.

[84] Like wars, it can't be just four people or 10 people or 100 people.

[85] You have to have thousands of people agreeing, usually thousands or more, for something so deeply that you would be willing to risk your own life.

[86] And there's a romantic notion to that.

[87] And because you've written so well and passionate about some of these, I wanted to see, because I don't have any answers, I wanted to untangle that.

[88] If there is a reason we fight that's more than just anger and hate and wanting to conquer.

[89] Well, let me take it from a completely different side.

[90] I don't think that I, in writing about war, am really that interested in war person.

[91] say.

[92] I'm more interested in the metaphor.

[93] I think for me, I'm really writing about my own internal war and the war against myself and against my own resistance, my own negativity, all of those things that are, that spirituality would be the opposite of.

[94] So I'm not really an expert on war.

[95] It's not like talking to Jim Mattis or to, you know, Victor Davis -Hansson or whatever.

[96] To me, the human being, we are spiritual beings in a physical envelope.

[97] And there's a automatic, terrible tension within that.

[98] And which creates a war inside ourselves.

[99] So the outer war, when I think about the Israeli army standing up to, you know, whatever, 10 to one odds or whatever it was, that is a metaphor to me of the fight we're fighting inside ourselves.

[100] For me, the six -day war was, as you know, my feeling was it was about a return from exile.

[101] It was sort of the culmination of the reestablishment of the state of Israel, which had never really been completed because the holiest places of the Jewish people were in the hands of their enemies.

[102] So now, on the other hand, Alexander the Great's conquests, I think were a whole other different scenario where the metaphor was that Alexander's father, Philip, I think, created the first nation, capital N nation, and he created a sort of a pathway for these guys who were mountain men and basically barbarians and Macedonians and by creating this army and this dream of conquering the world which Alexander took to the really enacted he gave them a way of rising out of themselves of transcending themselves not just individually but as a people so that would go along with what you're saying Lex of a certain creativity to it.

[103] But again, that's not for whatever, and I'm just realizing this as I'm answering this, that's not really what's interesting to me about these stories.

[104] And the Spartans, what was a whole at Thermopylae, that was a whole other kind of metaphor of war.

[105] That was a sort of a willingly going to one's own death for a greater cause, just like to me, the Spartans at Thermopy enacted as a group, what Jesus Christ enacted as an individual, a sacrifice of their lives for the greater good.

[106] I don't know if that answers your question, but that's how I see it.

[107] I do feel like, you know, I get invited to speak to Marine Corps groups and things like that all the time, and I decline because I don't really feel like I'm a spokesman for the warrior class or anything like that.

[108] That's not what's interesting about it to me. But didn't you just say with war as a metaphor that we're all essentially in various ways warriors?

[109] If we think of it in terms of Jungian archetypes and think of our life at least as males, and the earliest archetypes that kick in are the youth and the wanderer and the student, kind of thing.

[110] And then at some point around age 15 to 20, whatever, the warrior archetype kicks in.

[111] And we want to play football.

[112] I want to do martial arts.

[113] We want to join the special forces.

[114] We want to hang out with our buddies.

[115] That's our great bond.

[116] We want to test ourselves against adversity and so on and so forth.

[117] But at some point, that archetype, we move beyond that archetype and we become fathers and teachers and so on and so forth and then there are many archetypes beyond that towards the end so I'm I'm interested in the warrior archetype but not to the be -all and end -all of everything else you know there's a in in my book the virtues of war have you read that there's a character named Telemann who's actually it's a long story But when he's with Alexander's army, and when they arrive in India, he becomes fascinated by the gymnosophists, the fakirs, the naked wise men, the yogis.

[118] And he says to Alexander that these guys are warriors beyond what we are, even though they do nothing because they are inside their own.

[119] selves, you know, all day long.

[120] If we go to the Six -Day War, you write about, in Lionsgate, you write about the Six -Day War in Israel.

[121] I think of the wars you've written about, it's the one we're still in many ways in the midst of today.

[122] Yes.

[123] So what is at the core of that conflict in Israel?

[124] The Israeli -Palestinian conflict?

[125] I mean, today is the Israeli -Palestinian conflict, but it's echoes of the same conflict in that part of the world with Israel.

[126] What is, in your sense, the nature of that conflict, what can we learn about society and human nature from that conflict?

[127] That is one of the hottest conflicts that still goes on today.

[128] Well, when I was working on the Lions Gate about the Six -Day War, I wrote in the introduction that this was not going to be a multi -sided story.

[129] I was taking it entirely, I'm a Jew, I identify with the Israeli people, I was going to see it entirely from their side.

[130] So that's probably not what you're asking, but to me, the Six -Day War, and that whole, you know, it's a piece of land that's holy to at least three religions and probably more.

[131] And from the Jewish point of view, it's where the state of Israel, it's where David founded Jerusalem, it's all where the 12 tribes were, et cetera, et cetera, or Moses came and brought the people.

[132] So to me, the Six -Day War was about, as I said, a return from exile, from diaspora, after 2 ,000 years.

[133] Now, obviously, from the Palestinian point of view or the Saudi Arabian point of view or whatever, it's a whole other scenario.

[134] Religion is at the core of this conflict in some ways.

[135] Religious beliefs.

[136] Religion and racial slash ethnic, tribal identity.

[137] I mean, again, what is a Jew?

[138] Is a Jew somebody that believes in the religion or is it somebody of a certain race that race arose in a certain place?

[139] Same thing as a Muslim.

[140] What is a Muslim?

[141] Did they believe in, you know, Muhammad or whatever?

[142] Or did they arise in a certain place and a certain ethnicity?

[143] Because if we landed from Mars, we couldn't tell a Jew from a Palestinian, could we?

[144] You know, just looking at them.

[145] Right.

[146] You could easily mix them and you'd never know.

[147] And the specifics of the faith is not necessarily the thing that defines the person.

[148] No, I don't think so.

[149] Right.

[150] So you can be, like many are secular Jew living in Israel.

[151] and still have a strong body.

[152] Definitely, definitely.

[153] In fact, almost all of the Jews, the fighters that I spoke to from the Sixth Day War were secular, and it really was not, you know, a religious thing with them as much as it was a national thing.

[154] So having spent time in Israel, how is the world where military conflict is directly felt as opposed to maybe if we look at the U .S. where it's distant and far away.

[155] How is that world different?

[156] How are the people different?

[157] It's very different, as you know.

[158] I've never been to Israel, actually.

[159] Oh, you haven't.

[160] I haven't felt it.

[161] Ah, well, you should definitely go.

[162] I mean, here in the United States, where when an incident like Charlottesville comes up, you know, where people are chanting, Jews will not replace us, blah, blah, blah.

[163] the impulse in the Jewish community is to think of, well, how can we reach out to the other side?

[164] You know, how can we show them that we are human beings like they are and show them that we care for them, et cetera, et cetera.

[165] That's the sort of distant from war.

[166] If you're in Israel, and, you know, like if you and I were Israeli citizens right now, you would be a fighter pilot or a tank commander or whatever.

[167] You know, you would not just be, you know, working at MIT or whatever.

[168] And I would be in the Army, too.

[169] And so from their point of view, they say, all those people who hate us, can I curse on this?

[170] Of course.

[171] On this thing.

[172] Fuck them, we'll kill them.

[173] You know, if they dare to cross the line.

[174] And that's their whole different point of view.

[175] To me, it's actually a healthier point of view.

[176] You think so?

[177] Yeah.

[178] There's no. So let me ask the hard question is, uh, well, maybe it's an impossible question is how to resolve that conflict in Israel and in Israel or anywhere anywhere where the instinct is to reach out in US and say F you and the people yeah here's my here's I think that the only way the two warring sides or two sides that are opposed to one another can ever really come together is when there's mutual respect we get just more water uh I got I got when there's mutual respect and, and they can see each other as equals, and when there's mutual fear, you know, where one side says, we don't dare cross a line with this other side, and the other side says the same thing.

[179] I think then you can kind of reach across that thing and say, okay, we'll stay here, you stay here, we'll mingle in cultural ways, and we'll have interchange, you know, winter marriage, da -da -da -da -da -da.

[180] But as soon as one side has, no power.

[181] As the Jewish people have had no power throughout the diaspora forever, right?

[182] Then it's just a human nature.

[183] You can see it in Trump and what he does to any vulnerable minority, right?

[184] And he's not alone.

[185] I'm not blaming him alone.

[186] That's human nature.

[187] So I do think that that idea of like, fuck you, if you cross the line will kill you, is really a good way, is a good place to start from because now you can sit down on opposite sides of the table and say, you know, what are we have in common?

[188] How can we, we want to raise our children, you want to raise your children, how can we do this in a way that we're not hurting each other?

[189] So you kind of said that you need to arrive at a balance, some kind of balance of power.

[190] Yeah.

[191] But you haven't spoken to the fact that there's deeply rooted hatred of the other.

[192] So is there no way to alleviate that hatred or is that I mean what what role does love and hate can go away I really do I mean if you look at even even now that I haven't seen this in person but they say that the Saudis and the Israelis are collaborating on certain things you know by their mutual fear of or antagonism to Iran I do think that even really long long standing hatreds and animosities thousands of years old can go away under the right circumstances.

[193] In a, on what time scale?

[194] I mean, for instance, I don't know if there's somebody, do people have to die, do generations have to die and pass away and new generations come up with less hate or can a single individual learn to not hate?

[195] I think a single individual can learn to not hate because it certainly doesn't seem to over thousands of years doesn't seem to work, you know, we keep thinking that that's going happen but uh i i think it's we're in a real spiritual realm here when you're talking about that yeah you're in a realm of you know buddha jesus whatever something like that that where uh you know a a a true change of soul happens but i do think that's possible so what do you think is the future of warfare especially with uh what many people see is the expansion of the military -industrial conflict.

[196] Do you, I know you're not a military historian.

[197] I'm asking more as a metaphor.

[198] Do you see us as people continuing to fight?

[199] You know, it's a really great question, Lex, because I think now with social media, TV, movies, all of these things that create empathy across cultures.

[200] It becomes harder and harder, I think, to totally demonize the other the way it was in previous wars.

[201] I also think I don't really see an appetite for people wanting to go to war these days.

[202] And in a way, I don't know if that's good or bad.

[203] It's like everybody's so fat and lazy and so concerned with how many clicks they're getting.

[204] that, you know, whereas I know at the start of World War I, both the younger generations were eager to go to war.

[205] You know, I think it was insane, but it was that sort of warrior archetype that we were talking about before that generational testosterone eros thing.

[206] Whereas nowadays, I don't know.

[207] I mean, it's hard to say, say there's not going to be another war because there always are, but it's sort of hard to imagine people getting off their ass these days to do anything.

[208] Well, it's funny that you mentioned social media as a place for empathy, sure, but it's, in a sense, it's a place for war as well.

[209] Or hatred, yeah, true.

[210] And perhaps the positive aspect of hatred on social media is that it's somewhat less harmful than murder and so it kind of dissipates sort of the hatefuls you get the hate out at yeah at a you know at a less yeah on a daily basis and thereby never boils up to a point where you want to kill it's also a really weird thing that's going on that I don't know if anybody really understands like with video games where kids are acting out these incredible horror things right But you know that if they cut their finger, they would like freak out, you know?

[211] And I also don't think that many of the people that are hateful on social media, if they were face -to -face with the person, it wouldn't.

[212] So there's a sort of two mental spheres happening at the same time.

[213] And I don't know how that.

[214] Maps to the actual military, how that actually maps the military conference.

[215] Yeah, yeah.

[216] Like when you, if you in the United States have a draft, for example, how the populace would respond different than they did in previous generation.

[217] Yeah, I think they certainly would.

[218] Yeah.

[219] Another question, I'm not sure if you thought about it, but I work on building artificial intelligence systems.

[220] In our community, many people worried about AI being used in war, so automating the killing process with drones and in general as being used more and more.

[221] I should recuse myself on that one.

[222] I really haven't thought about that.

[223] I'd rather ask you what you think about it.

[224] Well, it's interesting, I mean, because it's so fundamentally different from if you look at the Battle of Thermopylae.

[225] It means just if we talk about the difference between a gun and a sword.

[226] I'll tell you one little anecdote.

[227] There was a Spartan king, I don't know which one it was, but at one point they showed him a new invention and it could launch a bolt that would, you know, kill someone at a range of 200 yards.

[228] And the king wept and said, alas, valor is no more.

[229] Because their point of view of war, it was highly ritualized, as you know.

[230] And the code of honor was that you were not supposed to be able to kill another person unless you yourself were in equal danger of being killed.

[231] And any other way of doing that, even bow and arrow, was considered less than manly and less than honorable.

[232] And maybe we should go back to that because at least it makes the stakes real and true.

[233] Not that we could.

[234] Not that's the point.

[235] You were in the Marine Corps, so we talk about the real, the bloody conflicts.

[236] You've written about many of them.

[237] so let me ask a personal question have you sort of as writing and in general have you thought about what it takes to kill a person if you yourself could do it and how that would make you feel of course one never knows I certainly I have not been in combat I haven't killed anybody but I would imagine in the real world that it would change you utterly forever because you can't help but identify with the person that you've just killed and it's another human being and I mean I have a hard time killing a spider so I would imagine that it's something that warriors understand and nobody else understands and you've spoken with many how I mean you've spoken with people who've seen military combat oh yeah in Israel what have they been able to articulate the the experience of killing it's this it's sort of just what I said I mean I'm even thinking of one pilot that I interviewed over there who you know was strafing a tank in his Mustang and saw at really low altitude and, you know, saw what his bullets did to the guy and could see his face and everything like that, which is even, you know, one remove or more removes from an infantryman, what an infantryman does.

[238] And he said that that same thing that I said, that it just changes you and you can never say it, never look at the world or look at anything the same way again.

[239] And when that happens at scale, it's thousands, 10s, a thousand, hundred, that changes entire societies.

[240] I mean, that's what we've seen.

[241] At least it, but the problem is it doesn't change the politicians back home.

[242] Right.

[243] How important is mortality, finiteness, the fact that this thing ends to the creative process.

[244] So killing and war really emphasizes that, but in general, the fact that this thing ends, it does it does and uh shit and at a serious note do you think about your own mortality do you meditate on your own mortality when you think about the work you do that's another great question Lex I actually I'm 75 and I just was having I had breakfast in New York a few months ago with a friend of mine who's like my exact same age and I said to him I said Nick do you ever think about mortality and he said every fucking minute of every day and I was kind of relieved to hear that because I do I do too but I actually I always have I think and I think you know the fact of mortality is kind of gives meaning to life you know I think that's why we want to create that's why we want to make a mark of some kind or and the other aspect of it is what's on the other side of that mortality I'm a believer in previous lives so I sort of and I the question I've never been able to answer among many many others is like why are we even here right why are we in the flesh you know I sort of I like to believe that God or some force is we're on some kind of journey.

[245] But I'm not sure why we were put in this world where the ground rules are, if you think about animal life, that you cannot live from one day to the next without killing and eating some other form of life.

[246] I mean, what a demented thing, you know?

[247] Why couldn't we just have a solar panel on our head and, you know, be friends?

[248] with everybody.

[249] So I sort of, I don't get what that was all about, but that's sort of the big issue.

[250] Have you read to Ernest Becker's denial of death, for example, is that Ernest Becker's a philosopher that said that the death, that the fear of death is really the primary driver of everything we do.

[251] So Freud had what the...

[252] Right.

[253] I would agree with that.

[254] So to you, you've always thought about even your own mortality.

[255] Yes, definitely.

[256] And can you elaborate on the reincarnation aspect of what you were talking about?

[257] Like we kind of, what's your sense that we had previous lives?

[258] In what, have you thought concretely or is it a lot of it kind of as?

[259] No, I've thought concretely about it.

[260] I mean, it's very clear when you see children.

[261] young kids or even dogs and cats that they come into the world with personalities and three kids in a family are going to be completely different and completely their own person and that person that they are doesn't change over life and I you know there's one of the things that I did in my book The Artist's Journey is that there were certain things where I tracked are just listed in order like all of Bruce Springsteen's albums or all of Philip Roth's books, you know, kind of a body of work throughout over, you know, a period of 30, 40, 50 years, you know.

[262] And you can see that there's a theme running through all of those things, that it's completely unique to that person.

[263] Nobody else could have written Philip Roth's books or Bruce Springsteen songs.

[264] And you can even see sort of a destiny there.

[265] So I ask myself, well, where did that come from?

[266] It seems to be a continuation of something that happened before and that will lead to something else.

[267] Because it's not starting from scratch.

[268] It seems like there's a calling, a destiny in there already.

[269] This gets back to the muse and all that kind of thing.

[270] So, yeah, it's almost like there's this, let's call it a god.

[271] It's passing, it's almost like sampling parts of a previous human that has lived and putting those into the new one.

[272] Sampling, this is probably a pretty good word.

[273] Taking some of the good, well, you can't take all the good parts because the bad parts is what makes the person.

[274] Right.

[275] Let's say taking it all together.

[276] Okay.

[277] This is humans only, or does it pass it on from animals in your view?

[278] I don't know.

[279] That's above my pay grade.

[280] I don't know.

[281] So, okay, so you talk about the muse as the source of ideas, maybe.

[282] Since you've gotten a few glimpses of her in your writing, tell me, what is it possible for you to tell me about her?

[283] Where does she reside?

[284] What does she look like?

[285] I mean, you can look at it in many different ways, right?

[286] The Greeks did it in an anthropomorphic way, right?

[287] And they created gods that were like human beings.

[288] But if you look at it from a Kabbalistic Jewish perspective, Jewish mysticism, you could say that it's the soul, the neshima, right?

[289] That the soul is above us on a higher plane, our own, your soul, my soul, and is trying to reach down to us and communicate with us.

[290] And we're trying simultaneously to reach up to it, through prayer or through, if you're a writer or an artist, you know, when you sit down at the keyboard, you're entering into a kind of prayer.

[291] You're entering into a different state of an altered consciousness to some extent.

[292] You're opening yourself, opening the pipeline, or turning on the radio to tune into the cosmic radio station.

[293] Another way of looking at it, this is an...

[294] Did you ever see the movie City of Angels?

[295] The visual of the movie, it was Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage.

[296] Yeah, yeah, I've seen it.

[297] And right, the visual of the movie sort of was Meg Ryan is a heart surgeon.

[298] And as she's operating on somebody, suddenly Nicholas Cage in this long duster coat like Jesse James appears right next to her in the operating room.

[299] And he's an angel.

[300] and he's waiting to take out the soul of the patient on the operating table.

[301] And she doesn't see him.

[302] She's totally unaware of him.

[303] And so is everybody else in the operating room, except maybe the guy who's about to die, who suddenly sees him.

[304] But I kind of believe that there are beings like that.

[305] Or if you don't like that, it's a force, it's a consciousness, it's something that are right here, right now.

[306] and they're trying to communicate to us and like through a membrane like tapping on that window over there they're like right out there and they carry the future they are everything that is in potential all the works that you will do lex your startup whatever else you're doing they they know that and it's not really you that's coming up with those ideas, in my opinion.

[307] Those things are appearing, you know, it's like somebody knocks on the door and puts it in.

[308] I mean, in the Iliad, where gods and goddesses appear along with the human antagonists on the battlefield all the time, right?

[309] There'll be, you know, Homer flashes to Olympus and then back to the real world.

[310] And there's a thing where one Aphrodite, let's say, wants to help Paris.

[311] and so she says, well, I will appear to him in a dream and I'll take the form of his brother and I'll say bum -a -bum -a -bum -a -bum.

[312] So that's creatures' beings on one dimension as the Greek sought communicating with and I believe that that's exactly what's going on in one, whatever analogy you want to use.

[313] That communication, to which degree is, do you play the role in that communication as opposed to sitting at the computer if you're a writer and staring at the blank page and putting in the time and waiting?

[314] What, so if, in your view, are these creatures basically waiting to tell you about your future?

[315] Or is there a choice?

[316] How many possible futures are there?

[317] How many possible ideas are there?

[318] That's a great question.

[319] I think there's basically, yes, there are alternatives, you know, degrees within it.

[320] But if you look at Bruce Springsteen's albums, how much could he have done really differently?

[321] Yeah, he would, you can just see there's a whole impetus going through the whole thing.

[322] And nothing was going to shake him off that, you know?

[323] And yeah, maybe the river could have been different.

[324] It could have been called something else, but he was dealing with certain issues.

[325] His conscious self was dealing with certain issues that were really out of his control.

[326] He was drawn.

[327] He was called to it, right?

[328] Nothing could stop him.

[329] And so it is sort of a partnership, I think, the creative process between a creative impulse that's coming from some other place or it's coming from deep, within us is another way to look at it.

[330] You know, it's like if we're acorns and we're growing into oaks.

[331] So the conscious artist who's sitting there at the keyboard or whatever is applying his or her consciousness to that, but is also going into opening themselves to the unconscious and to this other realm, whatever that is.

[332] I mean, certainly songwriters for a million years have said, you know, You know, a song just came in of their head, right?

[333] Palm just, all I had to do is write.

[334] But then you ever see that thing where of Keats's notes for a thing of beauty as a joy forever?

[335] It's like covers an entire page and it's like, you know, he's crossing this out and that out.

[336] And he's, oh, his consciousness is, his conscious mind is working on it.

[337] But so I do think it's a partnership.

[338] And I think that I know when I was first starting out as a writer, I worked in advertising.

[339] and I tried to do novels that I could never do.

[340] I was like really unskilled at getting to that, tuning into that station.

[341] I just, I beat my brains out and was unable to do it, you know, except because I was sort of trying too hard, it was sort of like a Zen monk or a monk of some kind trying to meditate and just like constantly thoughts driving you crazy.

[342] but over time you know knock wood i've kind of gotten better at it and i can sort of let go of those that part of me that's trying so hard and um so these angels can speak a little more easily through the membrane can you put into words the process of letting go and clearing that channel of communication what does it take that's another great question for me it just took it took probably 30 years and I don't even I would I guess I would liken it to meditation even though I'm not a meditator but it would seem to me to be one of the hardest things in the world to just sit still and stop thinking right and so it's very hard to put into words and I think that's why these teachers of meditation use tricks and co -ons and stuff like that but for me at least I think it was just a process of years of years and years of trying and finally of beating my head in the wall and finally little by little giving up that beating of the head but there doesn't seem to be any trick everybody wants a hack these days and I don't think there is a hack if you look at it in terms of the goddess the muse he's watching you down there beating your head in the ball you're like a marine going through an obstacle course or a martial artist trying to learn, you know, like Uma Thurmond in the casket, you know, trying to make that little four -inch punch, you know.

[343] The muse or the goddess is just sort of watching going, well, Lex, he's trying.

[344] He's trying.

[345] I'm going to come back in another couple of months and see if he's still there.

[346] And finally, she'll say, all right, he's had a, he's been, he's paid his dues.

[347] I'm going to give it to him.

[348] So the hard work and the suffering, yeah.

[349] But, you know, I'm also being Russian in wrestling and martial arts, we're big into drilling technique.

[350] I was also just even getting at, certainly there's no shortcut, but is there a process?

[351] So you're a, that can be, the process of practice.

[352] So you had two, one, you had an example of meditation.

[353] So it's essentially the practice of meditation.

[354] Is, you I think so little drill, I think, is a good way to look at it, too.

[355] But what are you drilling?

[356] You're just sitting and - You're writing, you know?

[357] Just writing.

[358] You're writing.

[359] Then you're looking at what you wrote, you know?

[360] You're hitting moments when it flows, you know, and in your other hitting moments where you just can't do anything.

[361] And you're trying to, from the moments where it flowed, you're trying to come back and look at it and say, what did I do?

[362] How did that happen?

[363] Where was my mind?

[364] you know but i think it's just a process of over and over and over and over until finally it gets a little bit easier and did you uh did you always when you read something you write did you always have a pretty good radar for what's good and not after it's written no i think i do now but uh but no it was always really hard for me to know what was good.

[365] I mean, do you edit the process of editing is the process of looking at what you've written and improving it?

[366] Are you a better writer or an editor?

[367] How often do you edit?

[368] That's another great question.

[369] Great question, because I do think that in writing, the real process of looking at it is the process that an editor does rather than what a writer does.

[370] The gentleman I was just talking to him on the phone is my editor, Sean Coyne, who was the guy who bought Gates of Fire when he was an editor at Doubleday and who basically when I finish a book, I give it to him.

[371] And he gives me, you know, he editing doesn't really mean like crossing out commas.

[372] It really means looking at the overall work and saying, does it work?

[373] And if it doesn't work, why doesn't it work?

[374] Is there something wrong here?

[375] you know, like if you were building the Golden Gate Bridge, you know, and one span was out of whack, you know, you could, and I think a really skilled editor, which Sean is, understands what makes a story tick.

[376] And he also has the perspective that I've lost in something I've wrote, because I'm so close to it, to say, you know, this, you know, this isn't working and that is working.

[377] What kind of advice has he given you?

[378] Is it like layout, like this story doesn't flow correctly.

[379] Like, you shouldn't start at this point.

[380] Or does he even sit back at a higher level and say, I see what you're doing, but you could do better.

[381] No, he doesn't do that.

[382] Okay.

[383] But a lot of it is about genre and kind of defining what genre you're working in.

[384] And I'm going to get up here to just bring something over here for the camera.

[385] um this was one where sean tore this down and made me start from scratch and what the specifics of it were really this is a a supernatural thriller that's the genre sort of like rosemary's baby or um the exorcist and what he made what he showed me was that i kind of i had violated certain conventions of the genre you know that uh and he just can't do you just can't do that that.

[386] You know, it's got to be, you know, it has to be done the right way.

[387] And so he pointed out certain things to me. So he must be a prolific reader himself too, actually.

[388] That's such a tough job of editor.

[389] Yeah.

[390] Again, he was sort of born to do that.

[391] He just kind of glommed onto it.

[392] And, and, but since he was his first job publishing, you know, cat forillers, you know, cat detective, you know, he studied how it works, what makes a story work, et cetera, et cetera.

[393] And so he really, he's, he's great.

[394] And I think any really successful writer, unless they're utterly brilliant on their own, has got to have a great editor behind them.

[395] But you yourself edit as well.

[396] I'm constantly trying to learn from him and teach myself.

[397] Everything you see in my blog posts that it's about the craft of writing is me trying to teach myself the rules so that, you know, I'm sure it's the same in martial arts or anything else, right?

[398] You try to not be dependent on that other person because it's so painful to make those mistakes.

[399] You really feel like, God, I wish I could get it right the first time the next time I do it.

[400] Well, in research, we go through that.

[401] In research, more than writing, so what you do is a little more solitary.

[402] Uh -huh.

[403] In research, there's usually two, three, four people working on something together, and we write a paper.

[404] And there's that painful process of where you write it down, and then you share it with other.

[405] And not only do they criticize the writing, they criticize the fundamental aspects of the approach you've taken.

[406] I would think so.

[407] So it's exactly like, you know, they would say you're attacking.

[408] you're asking the wrong questions, right?

[409] Yeah, and that's extremely, you know, painful, especially when you, well, yes, painful and helpful, but there's disagreement and so on.

[410] And through that comes out a better product in the end.

[411] If, as you want to still have an ego, but you also want to silence it every once in a while, so there's a balance.

[412] In your book, The War of Art, you talk about resistance with the capital R as the invisible force in this universe of ours that finds a way to prevent you from starting or doing the work.

[413] Where do you think resistant comes from?

[414] Why is there a force in our mind that's constantly trying to jeopardize our efforts with laziness, excuses, and so on?

[415] That's another great question.

[416] I mean, in Jewish mysticism, in Kabbalistic thinking, it's called a Yetzir -Hara, right?

[417] And it's a force that if this up here is your soul of Neshima trying to talk to you, us down here, the Yitzahara is this negative force in the middle.

[418] So I'm not the only one that ever thought about this.

[419] But, and I don't know if anybody really knows the answer, but here's my answer.

[420] I think that there are two places where we as human beings concede our identity.

[421] One is the ego, a conscious ego.

[422] and the other is the greater self.

[423] And the self, in the Jungian sense, the self in the Jungian sense includes the unconscious and butts up against what Jung called the divine ground, which what I would call the muse, the goddess, or whatever.

[424] And I think, and the ego is just this little dot inside this bigger self.

[425] And the ego has a completely different view of life as from the self.

[426] The ego believes, I'm going to give you a long answer here, Lex.

[427] No, perfect.

[428] The ego believes that death is real.

[429] The ego believes that time and space are real.

[430] The ego believes that each one of us is separate from the other.

[431] I'm separate from you.

[432] I could punch you in the face, and it wouldn't hurt me. It would only hurt you.

[433] And in the ego's world, the dominant emotion is fear, because we were all made of flesh, We can all die.

[434] We can all be hurt.

[435] We can all be ruined, bum, but to bump.

[436] So we're protecting ourselves and even our desire to create, as we were talking about before, comes out of that fear of death.

[437] The self, on the other hand, the greater self that butts up against the divine ground, believes that death is not real, that time and space are not real, that the gods travel swiftest thought.

[438] And the ego also believes that, I mean, the self believes that there's no difference between you and me that we're all one.

[439] If I hurt you, I hurt myself, karma, right?

[440] And in the world of the self, of the greater self, the dominant emotion is love, not fear.

[441] Now, so I think that, let me, I'll go farther back here, a long way to answer your question.

[442] when Jesus died on the cross or when the 300 Spartans willingly sacrificed their lives at Thermopy they were acting according to the rules of the self death is not real no difference between you and me time and space are not real predominant emotion is love so in my opinion we as conscious human vessels are in a struggle between these two things, the ego and the self.

[443] To me, resistance is the voice of the ego, saying, and it's a fearful voice.

[444] Because if, when we identify with the self, we move our consciousness over to the self as artists or scientists opening ourselves up to the cosmic dimension to the to the other forces the ego is tremendously threatened by that because if we're if we're in that space that head space we don't need the ego anymore so i think resistance is a voice of the ego trying to keep control of us there um in a way i'll give you a bad example trump is the ego that's probably a very good example right yeah it's a zero -sum world for him.

[445] Yes.

[446] And for anybody that's in that.

[447] And the opposite of that would be somebody like Martin Luther King or Gandhi.

[448] And that's, of course, why they all wind up getting assassinated.

[449] Because that voice, that ego, is hanging on to itself and feels so threatened by, I could talk more about this if you want to.

[450] No, for sure.

[451] That's fascinating.

[452] is just, it's interesting why the fear is attached to the ego.

[453] I really like this dichotomy of ego and the self and that struggle.

[454] It's just, ego has a, you know, the self -obsession of it, why fear is such a predominant thing.

[455] Like, why is resistance trying to undermine everything?

[456] It's fear.

[457] It's out of fear.

[458] Let's think about the whole thing in terms of.

[459] stories.

[460] In a story, the villain is always resistance, is always the ego.

[461] The hero is always, and of course, always is not everything, but you know what I mean, pretty much.

[462] It represents kind of the self.

[463] If you think about the alien on the spaceship, that's like the ultimate kind of villain.

[464] It keeps changing form, right?

[465] First, it goes on the guy's face, then it pops out of his chest, but it always just has that one monomaniacal thing to destroy, you know, and just like the ego, just like resistance.

[466] And maybe Alien is a bad example because Sigourney Weaver has to sort of fight on the same terms as the alien.

[467] But maybe a better example might be something like Casablanca, where in the end the Humphrey Bogart character has to acting operating out of the self has to give up his selfish dream of going off with Ingrid Bergman Neil Salon the love of his life and instead you know puts her on the plane to Lisbon while he goes off to fight the Nazis and you know in the desert I don't know if that's clear but in but in almost every story.

[468] the villain is the ego is resistance is fear is that zero -sum thing and in almost every story the hero is someone that is willing to make a sacrifice to help others it's letting go of that fear is what leads to productivity and to success yeah do you think there's a this is probably the answer is either obvious or impossible, but do you think there's an evolutionary advantage to resistance?

[469] Like, what would life look like without resistance?

[470] That's another great question.

[471] I think I also believe that resistance, like death, gives meaning to life.

[472] If we didn't have it, it's going to be, you know, what would we be?

[473] We'd be in the Garden of Eden picking fruit and just happy and stupid.

[474] you know um and i do think that that myth of the garden of eden is really about this kind of thing you know where where adam and eve decide to sort of take matters into their own hands and and um acquire knowledge that until then god had said i'm the only one that's got that knowledge and of course once they've acquired that knowledge they're cast out into the world you and i live in now where they do have to deal with that fear and they do have to deal with all that stuff.

[475] The human condition.

[476] The human condition and the meaning and the purpose comes from the resistance being there and the struggle to overcome it.

[477] To overcome it, right.

[478] And also the other aspect of it is that it's not real at all.

[479] It's not even like it's an actual force.

[480] It's all here, right?

[481] So, the sort of, in a way, it's sort of a surrender to it, you know?

[482] You know, or it's just, it's a certain to its reality.

[483] It's sort of like turning on the light in a dark thing.

[484] It's like, it's gone.

[485] But not quite because it's never really.

[486] Because it comes back again tomorrow morning.

[487] Yeah, exactly.

[488] So you have to keep changing light bulbs every day.

[489] so what's been maybe recently but in general maybe in your life what's been the most relentless or one of the more relentless sources of resistance to you personally i mean it's always the same it's about writing for me um and and evolving within my own body of work you know it never um goes away it never gets any less do you have particular excuses particular justifications that come out?

[490] No, it's always the same.

[491] Well, I would say it's always the same, but it's really not because resistance is so protean.

[492] You know, it keeps changing form.

[493] And as you move to hopefully a higher level, resistance gets a little more nuanced and a little more subtle, trying to fake you out.

[494] But I think you learn that it's always there and you're always going to have to face it.

[495] I mean, your battle, is sitting down and writing to some number of words to a blank page.

[496] Do you have a process there with this battle?

[497] Do you have a number of hours that you put in?

[498] Yeah, I'm definitely a believer that even though this battle is fought on the highest sort of spiritual level, that the way you fight it is on the most mundane, I'm sure it's like martial arts must be the same way.

[499] I mean, I go to the gym first thing in the morning and I sort of am rehearsing myself.

[500] The gym is called resistance training, right?

[501] You're working against resistance, right?

[502] And I don't want to go.

[503] I don't want to get out of bed.

[504] I hate to, you know, but I'm sort of fortifying myself to be ready for the day.

[505] And, you know, like I said, over knock what over years I've learned to sort of get into the right kind of mindset and it's not as hard for me as it used to be.

[506] The real resistance, I think, for me, and I think this is true for anybody, is the question of sort of what's the next idea?

[507] What's the next book?

[508] What's the next project that you're going to work on?

[509] And when I ask that question, I'm asking it of the muse.

[510] I'm kind of saying, what do you want me?

[511] Or I'm asking it of my unconscious.

[512] If we're looking at Bruce Springsteen's albums.

[513] It's kind of, well, what's the next album?

[514] You know, now he's on Broadway.

[515] That was a great idea, right?

[516] Where'd that come from, you know?

[517] But, and then for him, what's after that, you know?

[518] Because that body of work is already alive.

[519] It already exists inside us, kind of like a woman's biological clock.

[520] and we have to serve it and we have to otherwise it'll give us cancer you know I don't mean to say that if anybody has cancer that they're not you know but you know what I mean it'll give it it'll take its revenge on us so the next resistance to me is sort of or a big aspect of it is what's next you know when I finish the book I'm working on now I'm not sure what I'm going to do next but see at the same time you have a kind of you have a sense that there is a Bruce Springsteen single line of albums.

[521] So, like, it's already known somewhere in the universe what you're going to do next, is the sense you have.

[522] In a sense, yes.

[523] I don't know if it's like predetermined, you know, but it's, but there's something like that.

[524] Yeah, I'd like to believe that there's, it's kind of like quantum mechanics, I guess.

[525] Once you observe it, maybe once you talk to the muse, it's one thing for sure.

[526] It was always going to be that one thing.

[527] But really, in reality, it's a distribution.

[528] It could be any number of things.

[529] Yeah, I think so.

[530] There's alternate realities.

[531] Alternate realities.

[532] But they're not that far apart.

[533] I mean, Bruce Springsteen is not going to write, you know, a Joni Mitchell song, you know.

[534] No matter how hard he dropped.

[535] He still went on Broadway.

[536] I mean, he still did that, which is not a Bruce Springsteen thing to do.

[537] So I think you're being, in retrospect.

[538] I think it is a Bruce Springsteen thing to do.

[539] It's a next sort of evolution for him.

[540] Why not?

[541] Take his music to there, you know?

[542] In retrospect, it all makes perfect sense, I think.

[543] Yeah.

[544] Because if you pull it off, especially.

[545] Do you visualize yourself completing the work?

[546] Like Olympic athletes visualize getting the gold medal.

[547] Do you, you know, they go through, I mean, that's actually a really, you can learn something from athletes.

[548] on that is years out, certainly two, three years out, some people do much longer.

[549] Every day, you visualize how the day of the championship will go, the end down to, I mean everything, down to how will it feel to stand on the podium and so on.

[550] Do you do anything like that in how you approach writing?

[551] No, it's always in the moment.

[552] Yeah, it is in the moment, I think.

[553] Because it's such a mystery, you just don't know.

[554] I think it's different from sports.

[555] Right.

[556] Because you don't know the destiny.

[557] There's no gold medal at the end.

[558] No. In fact, I would like to think that as soon as you finish one, the next day you're on the other.

[559] And in fact, hopefully you've already started the other.

[560] You're already, you know, 100 pages into the other when you finish the first one.

[561] But it is a, it's a journey.

[562] It's a process.

[563] I don't think it is a. In fact, I think it is a. it's very dangerous to think that way.

[564] To think, oh, this, I'm going to win the Oscar, you know?

[565] It's interesting.

[566] For the creative process, it might be dangerous.

[567] It's, it's a, maybe you can, like, why is that dangerous?

[568] Because I kind of know.

[569] Because it's the ego.

[570] It's the ego.

[571] Because you're giving yourself over to the ego.

[572] You know, I keep saying this myself, my job, I'm a servant of the muse.

[573] I'm there to do what she tells me to do and if I suddenly think oh I'm really I just want to you know whatever the muse doesn't like that and you know and she's on another dimension for me I'm trying to square that because I agree I'm trying to square that with I think there's a meditation to visualizing success in the athletic realm to where it focuses, it removes everything else away to where you focus on this particular battle.

[574] I mean, I think that you can do that in many kinds of ways.

[575] And in sports, the ego serves a more important role, I think, than it does in writing.

[576] The ego, there's something...

[577] Well, no, let me, when you say that, I know what you mean, Lex, and I do think there is a sort of a you know it's interesting to watch interviews with Steph Curry yeah who's such obviously such a nice guy but he's got such tremendous self -confidence you know that it but it doesn't border on ego so much because he's worked so hard for it you know but he knows so he has visualized he has visualized maybe not so much winning you know as just him being the best he can be, him being in the flow, you know, doing his thing that he knows he can do.

[578] And I do think in the creative world, yeah, there is a sort of a thing like that where you, where, you know, a choreographer or a filmmaker or whatever might be, do an internal thing where they're saying, I can make an Oscar winning movie.

[579] I can direct this movie.

[580] You know, I'm banishing these thoughts that I'm not good enough.

[581] I can do that.

[582] I can edit it.

[583] I can score it.

[584] I can, you know, bump it, bump, and I don't think that's really ego.

[585] I think that's part of the process in a good way, like an athlete does that.

[586] So extreme confidence is what some of the best athletes come with.

[587] And you think it's possible to, as a writer, to have extreme confidence in yourself?

[588] I do think so.

[589] You know, that I'm sure when John Lennon sat down to write a song, he felt like, shit, I can do this, you know?

[590] I'm not so sure.

[591] I think, because the great artists I've seen, that you're haunted by self -doubt.

[592] It's that resist.

[593] I mean, the confidence.

[594] Yes, but I mean, I guess, but even beyond the self, above the self -doubt.

[595] Oh, it's the bigger picture of self -belief, you know?

[596] Yeah, I'm freaking out.

[597] Yeah, I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to do it.

[598] But, you know, I know I can do this.

[599] Yeah.

[600] When you take a bigger picture.

[601] So the writing process, is it fundamentally lonely?

[602] No. Because you're with your characters.

[603] You are.

[604] So you really put yourself in the world.

[605] Absolutely.

[606] You know, I've written about this before that I used to, my desk used to face a wall instead of seeing, and people would say, well, don't you want to look out the window?

[607] But I'm in here.

[608] I'm, you know, I'm seeing, you know, the Spartans.

[609] I'm seeing, you know, whatever.

[610] And the characters that are on the page or that you create are not accidents.

[611] You know, they're coming out of some issue, some deep issue that you have, whether you realize it or not.

[612] You might not realize it until 20 years later or somebody explains it to you.

[613] So your characters are kind of fascinating to you.

[614] and their dilemmas are fascinating to you.

[615] And you're also trying to come to grips with them.

[616] You know, you sort of see them through a glass darkly, you know, and you really want to see them more clearly.

[617] So, yeah, no, it's not lonely at all.

[618] In fact, I'm more lonely sometimes later going out to dinner with some people and actually talking to people.

[619] Do you miss the characters after it's over?

[620] let's say I have affection for them kind of like children that have gone off to college and now are you know you only see them at Thanksgiving definitely I have affection for him even the bad guys maybe especially the bad guys especially the bad guys you've said that writers even successful writers are often not tough -minded enough I've read that in the post that you have to be a professional in the way you handle your emotions you have to be a bit of a warrior to be a writer so what are what do you think makes a warrior is a warrior born or trained in the realm in the bigger realm in the realm of writing and the creative process I think they're born to some extent you have the gift like you might have the gift as a martial artist to do whatever martial artists do.

[621] But the training is the big thing.

[622] 90 % training, 10 % genetics.

[623] And, you know, I use another analogy other than Warrior as far as writer, and that's like to be a mother.

[624] If you think about if you're a writer or any creative person, you're giving birth to something, right?

[625] You're carrying a new life inside you.

[626] And in terms of bravery, if your child, your two -year -old child, is underneath a car is coming down the street.

[627] The mother's going to like stop a Buick, you know, with their bare hands.

[628] So that's another way to think about how a writer has to think about, or any creative person has to think about, I think, what they're doing, what this child, this new creation that they're bringing forth.

[629] Yeah, so the hard work that's underlying that, I've just a couple weeks ago talked to, just happened to be in the same room, both gave talks, Arianna Huffington.

[630] I did this conversation with her.

[631] I didn't know much about her before then, but she has recently been, she wrote a couple of books, I've been promoting a lifestyle where she basically, she created the Huffington Post and she gave herself like, I don't know, 20 hours a day, just obsessed with her work.

[632] And then she fainted, passed out, and kind of, there was some health issues.

[633] And so she wrote this book saying that, you know, sleep, basically you want to establish a lifestyle that doesn't sacrifice health.

[634] That's productive, but doesn't sacrifice health.

[635] She thinks that you can have both, productivity and health, criticizing Elon Musk, who I've also spoken with, for working too hard and thereby sacrificing, you know, being less effective than he could be.

[636] So I'm trying to get at this balance between health and obsessively working at something and really working hard.

[637] So what Arianna is talking about makes sense to me, but I'm a little bit torn.

[638] To me, passion and reason do not overlap much or at all sometimes.

[639] Maybe I'm being too Russian, but I feel madness and obsession does not care for health or sleep.

[640] or diet or any of that.

[641] And hard work is hard work and everything else can go to hell.

[642] So if you're really focused on whether it's writing a book, everything should just go to hell.

[643] Where do you stand on this balance?

[644] How important is health for productivity?

[645] How important is it to sort of get sleep and so on?

[646] I'm on the health side.

[647] Yeah.

[648] I mean, there was a period of my life when I was just I had no obligations, and I was just living in a little house and just working nonstop, you know.

[649] But even then, I would get up in the morning and I would have liver and eggs for breakfast every day.

[650] And I would do my, you know, exercise, whatever it was.

[651] But although I was still doing like, you know, 18 hours a day.

[652] But I'm definitely, I kind of think of it sort of like an athlete does.

[653] Yeah.

[654] I'm sure that, like, Steph Curry is totally committed to winning championships and stuff like that.

[655] But he has his family.

[656] He sees his family, you know, the family is always there.

[657] He, I'm sure he eats, you know, perfect, great stuff, gets his sleep, you know, gets the, the, the, you know, whatever a trainer does to him for his knees and his ankles and whatever.

[658] So I, or Kobe Bryant or anybody that's operating in a high level.

[659] So I do think I'm from that kind of the health school.

[660] The good thing about being a writer is you can't work very many hours a day.

[661] You know, four hours is like the maximum I can work.

[662] I've never been able to work more than that.

[663] I don't know how people do it.

[664] I've heard of people do 10, 12, I don't know how they do it.

[665] So it gives you a lot of other time to do it.

[666] Optimize your health.

[667] Yeah, to do the exercise.

[668] Because you need to.

[669] You're in training.

[670] You know, you're really, you're burning up a lot of B vitamins.

[671] when you're working here.

[672] Yeah, but...

[673] Maybe it's a Russian thing with you, Lex.

[674] Well, it's not even a Russian thing.

[675] It also may be youth, you know?

[676] At 35, you can be crazy.

[677] You know, they keep telling me, but I'm pretty sure I'll be at it still at a later time, too.

[678] I think it has to do with a career choice, too.

[679] I think writing is almost, from everything I've heard, It's almost impossible to do it more than a few hours really well.

[680] When you start to get into certain disciplines, like with Elon Musk and me, engineering disciplines, that really there's a lot more non -muse time needed.

[681] Right, right, right.

[682] So the crazy hours that you often are talking about have to be done.

[683] And it doesn't.

[684] I think that's true.

[685] Yeah, so there's still the two, three hours of muse time needed for truly genius ideas, but it's something I certainly struggle with.

[686] But, yeah, I hear you loud and clear on the health.

[687] So what does the perfect day look like for you if we're talking about writing, an hour -by -hour schedule of a perfect day?

[688] I get up early, I go to the gym, I have breakfast with some friends of mine.

[689] What's early, by the way?

[690] 3 .15.

[691] A .m. A .m. So we're talking really early.

[692] Really early.

[693] Now, I'm crazy early.

[694] It's ridiculously early.

[695] And I haven't done that always, but that's kind of what I'm on now.

[696] So I'm in bed like when I'm with my nephews that are like four, years old and three years old i'm in bed before them okay um you got a beat you wake up sorry you said exercise first yeah and what does that look like what's exercise for you you go to the gym i go to the gym okay um i i have a trainer i have a couple of guys that i work out with and uh i'll you know it's maybe an hour maybe a little more i'll do a little warm up before stretching afterwards take a shower go have breakfast um but it's an intention kind of a thing that I definitely don't want to do that's hard, you know?

[697] So you feel like you've accomplished something?

[698] First thing.

[699] That's a big accomplishment of the day.

[700] At the same time, it's not like so hard that I'm completely exhausted, you know?

[701] And then I'll come home and handle whatever correspondence and stuff has to be done.

[702] And then I work for maybe three hours.

[703] And then I just sort of crash.

[704] The office is closed.

[705] I turn the switch.

[706] I don't think about any.

[707] don't think about anything.

[708] I don't think about the work at all.

[709] Do you listen to, oh, I mean afterwards.

[710] After work.

[711] Once the office is closed.

[712] But during, so this was like 12 to 3 kind of thing.

[713] Something like that.

[714] Something like that.

[715] Okay.

[716] You listen to music?

[717] No. Do you have anything?

[718] But that's just me. I mean, I don't think, you know, but somebody could do it a million different ways.

[719] It's fascinating.

[720] You know, the, I mean, you've also, of most, of many writers, you've really, but like I've read Stephen King's in writing, you've optimized this conversation with the muse you're having.

[721] Not optimized, but you've at least thought about it.

[722] So what's, can you say a little bit more about the trivialities of that process?

[723] Of, like you said, facing the wall.

[724] What's, do you have little rituals?

[725] You mean like the granular aspect of it?

[726] The granular aspects, yeah.

[727] I do have little rituals.

[728] I do have all kinds of, which I'm not even going to tell you about.

[729] Sure.

[730] But the one thing, and I don't want to like to talk about this too much because it sort of jinxes things, I think.

[731] But the one thing I do try to do is when I sit down, I immediately get into it.

[732] First, second.

[733] I don't sit and fuck around with anything.

[734] I immediately try to get into it as quickly as I can.

[735] And the other thing is that writing a book or screenplay or anything like that is a process of multiple drafts.

[736] And it's the first draft that's where you're most with the muse, where you're going through the blank page.

[737] Like right now I'm on, I don't know what, the fifth or sixth, seventh draft of the thing I'm working on.

[738] So I've got pages already written and I'm kind of reading them afresh as I go through the story.

[739] So it's not quite where I am now.

[740] It's not quite a deep muse scenario.

[741] Partly it is, but it's also sort of bouncing back and forth between the right brain and the left brain.

[742] I'm kind of looking at it and trying to evaluate it, and then I'm going into it and try to change it a little bit.

[743] Do you know, sit down, get right into it, do you know the night before of what that starting point is?

[744] I always try to stop and I learned this I think Hemingway wrote about this or John Steinbeck or maybe both of them to always stop when you kind of know what's coming next so you're not at a facing a chasm you know.

[745] Yeah okay so and afterwards when you're done the office is closed I let the muse take care of it you know and I don't want to and I think it's a very unhealthy thing to worry about it or think about any creative process you don't like on a long walk later think about yeah that then I will sort of keep my mind open to it but I won't be like obsessing about right yeah because actually on walks sometimes things are popping your head you know and you go oh I should change that but that's not your ego doing it that's a deeper level okay so how does the day end so go in terms of writing so yeah the writing well no writing, the office door closes, and then the rest of the day, just do whatever the hell.

[746] Maybe go out to dinner.

[747] My girlfriend is not here now.

[748] She's in New York work, and we'll make dinner or whatever.

[749] Go out to dinner, something like that.

[750] And maybe I'll read something, nothing heavy.

[751] And I go to bed pretty early.

[752] And the gym is a big thing for me. I'll already, probably would be like with you with martial arts.

[753] The night before, I'll be, I'll be visualizing what I have to do the next day and getting myself psyched up for that.

[754] And then I'll just conk out like a light and wake up at the crack of dawn.

[755] So looking out into the future, this year, next few years, what do you think the muse has in store for you?

[756] I don't think you can ever know.

[757] It's probably something along the same.

[758] I really believe, you know, there's that exercise where they say to you, visualize yourself five years in the future and then write a letter from that person to yourself.

[759] I don't believe in that at all because I don't think you can, you know, there's a line out of Africa that God made the world round so that we couldn't see too far ahead.

[760] You just don't know as a writer or as a person, you know, I never.

[761] My first book was The Legend of Bagger Vance.

[762] Before that happened, I had no clue that I was going to be writing anything like that on that subject, anything at all, no clue until it just sort of came.

[763] And then when that was done, people said, well, you've got to write another one.

[764] I had no idea what it was, which was going to be gates of fire.

[765] No clue.

[766] So if somebody had sat me down at the start of that and asked the question, I would have been crazy to set it to set it so i just hope as as the future unfolds that i'm open to it you know well i think i speak for a lot of people in saying that we look forward to what that future looks like thank you so much for talking today it was fun yeah it's a great you got the best job in the world going around talking to people that you want to talk to and that they will talk to you you know so thank you for doing it hey thank you for the great questions you made me think i've certainly a bunch of questions I never ever answered before.

[767] Awesome.

[768] So thanks a lot.

[769] Great.

[770] Thank you.

[771] Thanks for listening to this conversation with Stephen Pressfield.

[772] And thank you to our sponsors, the Jordan Harbinger Show and Cash App.

[773] Please consider supporting the podcast by going to Jordanharbinger .com slash Lex and downloading Cash app and using code Lex podcast.

[774] Click on the links, buy the stuff.

[775] It's the best way to support this podcast.

[776] If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcast, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman, spelled without the E. Just F -R -I -D -M -A -N.

[777] And now let me leave you with some words from Stephen Pressfield.

[778] Are you paralyzed by fear?

[779] That's a good sign.

[780] Fear is good.

[781] Like self -doubt, fear is an indicator.

[782] Fear tells us what we have to do.

[783] remember one rule of thumb.

[784] The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

[785] Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.