Advice on Achieving Any Long-Haul Dream
Episode Stats
Summary
In a world that celebrates overnight success, it s easy to forget that very often, achieving your dreams takes a heck of a long time. You may know Steven Pressfield as the bestselling author of books like The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, and The War of Art. But as he details in his new memoir, Government Cheese, it took more than a quarter century for him to become a published novelist. Today, on the show, we discuss the lessons Steven gleaned that apply to achieving any dream, including how to overcome a propensity for self-sabotage, get your ego out of the way, finish what you start, and develop a killer instinct.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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In a world that celebrates overnight success, it's easy to forget that very often,
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achieving your dreams takes a heck of a long time. My guest knows this all too well. You may know
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Steven Pressfield as the bestselling author of books like The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of
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Fire, and The War of Art. But as he details in his new memoir, Government Cheese, it took more than
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a quarter century for him to become a published novelist. Today on the show, Steven talks about
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what he learned in that journey and the many odd jobs from driving trucks to picking apples that
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he took along the way. We discussed the lessons Steven gleaned that apply to achieving any dream,
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including how to overcome a propensity for self-sabotage, get your ego out of the way,
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finish what you start, and develop the killer instinct. This is a great, motivating conversation
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on learning not to pull the pin on important commitments in your life. And we'll explain
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what that means coming up. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash Pressfield.
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All right, Steven Pressfield, welcome back to the show.
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Steven Pressfield. Hey, it's great to be back, Brad. Thanks for having me.
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You got a couple new books out, but one we're going to focus a lot on today is called Government
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Cheese, a memoir. And what's interesting about you is you're a successful writer. You've published
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10 novels, one of which, The Legend of Bagger Vance, was turned into a movie directed by Robert
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Redford. You've also published several nonfiction books geared towards creative types, entrepreneurs.
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And I think what a lot of people don't realize is that you didn't get your first book published
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until you were 52 years old. And I think most people would imagine you were publishing books
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from your 20s and 30s onward. I'm curious, did you know you wanted to be a writer in your 20s?
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And did you think finding success as an author would take as long as it did?
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No, I didn't. But here's the story. When I was, I guess, 22 or something like that, I got a job,
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my first real grown-up job as a copywriter at an ad agency in New York City. And I had a boss named
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Ed Hannibal who wrote a novel called Chocolate Days, Popsicle Weeks. It's the real thing. And it
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became a hit. And he quit. And he was like a star. And so I said to myself, well, why don't I do that?
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You know? So I quit and tried to write a novel. And totally, you know, I had no business even
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thinking about doing something like that. It was just total immature, idiotic thinking of thinking
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that something was going to be easy, was going to be a piece of cake, you know, just I'll just walk
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into it and it'll be fine, when obviously that was not the case. And my life from there on sort of ran
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off the rails completely. So I sort of backed into the concept of writing. It wasn't like I wanted to
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do it or I really thought that I, you know, this was a goal of mine. But it's like once I kind of,
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the bottom dropped out of my life, it was like the only way that I could get back, in my mind anyway,
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was to sort of write my way out of it. So I do the next 27 years or however long that was,
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was just sort of trying to, you know, what went wrong with the first novel was I got 99.9% of the
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way through, and I choked and blew it up, blew up my marriage, blah, blah, blah. So in order to sort
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of redeem myself in my own eyes, I sort of had to write my way out of that. And that's kind of how I,
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I got on this 27 year passage through the wilderness.
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So in Government Cheese, you take readers through what you did with your life between
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your first novel failing, and then until you got The Legend of Bagger Vance published.
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It's called Government Cheese. Interesting title for a memoir. What's the story behind that title?
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Well, people today might not know in this day of food stamps and other sort of voucher programs that
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feed the hungry. But back in the day, when this story took place, they had the Department of
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Agriculture and state departments of agriculture had programs to feed the poor, and they literally
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would give away enormous blocks of cheese, government cheese. It was a USDA cheese product,
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number one, whatever. And there would be, in addition to that, there would be things like
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powdered milk or dried beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, that kind of stuff, canned peaches,
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whole, you know, you could totally live off of this stuff. And when I was driving trucks,
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one of the things that was part of this odyssey here was that we delivered this surplus food to
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poor communities. This was in North Carolina, out on the coast. And that was a real,
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one of the most satisfying things I did in this whole time, because it really helped people,
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you know? And I also have a whole metaphor for it of how it relates to writing, if we want to get
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into that at some later date. But that's what the Government Cheese title means.
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When did you sign up for this long-haul company where you're delivering,
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you know, sometimes you're delivering tobacco, you're delivering this government food.
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When did that happen, and why did you sign up to become a truck driver?
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I think I was maybe 28 or 29, something like that. And I was trying to get back together with my wife
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back in North Carolina. And I was dead broke. And I went to a trucking school, you know,
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one of those one-month things where they teach you how to drive a tractor-trailer. And I just
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couldn't get a job. I, you know, applied everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. And I,
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I, this was something that I really wanted to do because I felt like I, I had to get my life on
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track again with a kind of a job that would pay the rent, you know, and that had some hope of
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stability to it. So finally, I had just gotten fired from another job and was driving out of town.
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I'd sort of said goodbye to my wife, given up on that whole thing. And I stopped at this one final
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trucking company that I had applied to before and been rejected a couple of times. And the
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dispatcher was a guy named Hugh Reeves. And the first book inside of Government Cheese is called
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Hugh Reeves. It's dedicated to him. He hired me. And so that kind of got me into that world,
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which was a world that I never thought I would be into.
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And in this part, talking about leading up getting hired by the trucking company,
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you talk a lot about shame. Like you just, you just felt ashamed all the time, early in adulthood.
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So, you know, early twenties through your, even your thirties, what were you like feeling shame
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about? Cause I imagine that a lot of young men might feel this similar shame.
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Well, in my case, it was because, you know, I, I quit this job in advertising to write a,
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to write a novel, right? I thought I was pretty cool. And I had a young wife and she supported me.
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And like I say, I got right up to the one yard line and I totally choked and blew it.
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So I was ashamed of myself before my own self for failing like that. But then I was ashamed because
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I had let my wife down. You know, I'm supposed to be a husband. I'm supposed to be a provider,
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or at least I'm supposed to be, you know, a person that can finish a job. Even if you fail at it,
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at least you should finish it. And so that was sort of the great shame that, that I had. And also I
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blew up the marriage by kind of acting out in ways that won't need, don't need to talk about here on
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the show, but enough that I felt like I had really screwed up my wife's life as well, you know? And
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so I carried a lot of that shame for a long time. And which in a way was a good thing because it was
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certainly a motivating force to keep me going forward. And you also talked about, there was
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just moments too at the trucking company where you just biff something up and you just beat yourself
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up. It's like, Oh, look, here I am. I'm being a screw up again. I can't even do this simple
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trucking job, right? Either. Yeah. I mean, that was somehow for me, my demon was self-sabotage
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and self-destruction of just getting in my own way. I would just screw things up as if there was
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some demon inside me that was just waiting to, uh, you know, would make my hand to do something
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that my head didn't want it to do. And the thing about driving, you know, tractor trailer over the
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road, big rigs is when you screw up, you screw up royally, you know, it's a big mess. So I was
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just fighting for years and years, this tendency within myself to get in my own way to sabotage
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myself. And later on, I'm sure we'll get to this as we talk more today, Brett, when, uh, I wrote the
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book, the war of art, which was about this internal force that I call resistance with a capital R
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that's where my idea of resistance came from, from my own demons and, uh, and the fight to try to
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overcome them. And were you still trying to write during this time? Like you were, you know, working
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the big rig thing and then moonlighting as a writer, was that still happening? No, I absolutely wasn't.
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In fact, I, um, once that first book sort of went down in flames, it was like, I said to myself,
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this was a crazy mistake. I never should have done it. I'm never going to think about it again.
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And so during this time, I never did try to write anything, but weird thing. It's almost like a
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character in a story. I kept my typewriter. I had my typewriter with me the whole time and I just
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never got it out until one particular moment, a few years later, when things turned around for me.
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So you, you talk about when you were the long haul driver, you would oftentimes deliver
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government cheese and especially you deliver them to like rural churches in the South.
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What did you learn about life and writing while making these deliveries?
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You know, it's, it's funny that the lessons you learn in these kind of jobs that have nothing to
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do with your true calling, which in my case was writing are not direct lessons. It's not something
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that you can use immediately, or you can, you know, write about or use as subject matter, but you learn
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deeper lessons. Like one thing that, that happened when I was driving trucks is I dropped a trailer
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one time. Talk about screw ups. If you've ever seen a trailer come unattached from a tractor and crash,
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that's what happened to me. That, and it was my fault totally. And so a few days later, somehow the
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boss, Hugh Reeves, who was, who had hired me, he didn't fire me for that. But a couple of days later,
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he took me out to, to lunch at this hot dog place in Durham, North Carolina, just to have a talk.
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And he said to me, he said, son, I can see that you're going through some process in your head.
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I could see you're living out some kind of something. He said, I don't know what it is. And I don't want
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to know what it is. But what I want you to realize is you're working for me and your job is to deliver
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loads. That's all your job is. When I send you out on the road, I don't care what's going on in
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your head. You've got to finish the mission, whatever it is. And so that was an amazing sort
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of moment for me. I really come to Jesus moment for me that almost anybody else would have known
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that from their whole, just any, just growing up. But that was something that I've used forever
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since then. And particularly as a writer that, you know, when you're, when you're a writer,
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you're completely on your own. You have no boss. If you take on a project and you start it,
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there's nobody that you have to report to, to finish it. It's all up to you. It's all self-discipline.
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And so many times I've sort of had a vision of Hugh Reeves in my head saying that thing to me,
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I don't care what your issue is. Your job is to complete the mission at all costs. And that has
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worked for me over and over again to just remember that. And then you also talk about when you would
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make these deliveries to these churches, you were just driver, right? The people were very friendly,
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very polite, had that Southern hospitality, but they'd just say, driver, take your truck over here
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and we'll take care of everything else. And then when they were done unloading the things, they'd say,
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driver, thank you for your time. They didn't care who you were. You were just driver. You were just
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there to deliver the goods. Yeah. Which was kind of odd to me at the time, you know, because I made,
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I mean, we did a lot of other loads other than surplus food, but I probably delivered maybe 40
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of those loads to different churches all over the place. And it was always the same for, I don't know
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why it was, but they would always address you as driver. You were anonymous and they didn't want you
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participating in any of the offloading or anything like that. I would go smoke a cigarette, you know,
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over under a live oak somewhere and just, you know, be an observer, which I considered to be a real
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privilege because these scenes were so human, you know, and so heart-rending that, you know, I just
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considered it a privilege even to be part of it and particularly be a part of it that was helping, you know.
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But later on as a writer, I started to think that writing was a lot like this. Like when you're a
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writer, you're delivering a load and the load is the book and the content of the book. And you hope
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that like government cheese or surplus food, you hope it's going to be sustenance for somebody. But yet
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you, the writer, you didn't make the cheese, you know, you didn't harvest the pinto beans or can the
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peaches. All you are is a vehicle to deliver it. And nobody really cares who you are. They're just
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there for the material, which I think is exactly as it should be that you are anonymous. You know,
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I'm a big believer in the muse and in other dimensions of reality and that kind of thing.
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So I really felt like that particular load where you're anonymous was a real metaphor for what the
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writing or any artistic endeavor is. You are, you're a vehicle and you're not the maker of the stuff.
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I think that's a good point because I've noticed there's a tendency today with a lot of the social
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media stuff for creatives like writers or even entrepreneurs to really think, talk about themselves
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and like, you know, what they go through. And it's, I think it can be useful in some instances.
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Like you do that a lot with your work, kind of give insights to the process. But sometimes there's
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something about when you get yourself or your ego too attached to your, whatever it is, the work that
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you're delivering, it messes it up. It just doesn't land the same.
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I think it's absolutely true. In fact, I would say that any artist's task as they're developing
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from a neophyte to somebody that's capable of doing work is to somehow get past their ego. And as long
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as their ego is there, it's going to screw them up and they're never going to get it right. You have
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to, I think, deliver from another place, you know? And I also think when you start to think
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that you're the one that's creating this, you're in trouble too, because it's not true.
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You are getting it from somewhere else, from some other level of reality. And your job is to be
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enough of a professional and to be enough of on top of your craft that when you get this kind of
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transmission from the cosmic radio station, that you're capable of delivering it in a digestible
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form to people on this material plane, if you know what I'm talking about, Brett.
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Yeah. And then connect it to your other book, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be. You talk
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about this, like the ego, and there's this great chapter. It says, when we try to sing or write or
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dance from the ego, we fall on our face. It is impossible to sing or write or dance from the
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ego. I think that's true. And like, that's what was happening to you. Your ego was getting in the
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way of yourself. That's why you probably choked on that first novel. Yeah, for sure. And my ego
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was totally connected to my tendency to sabotage myself. How do you overcome that, right? Like,
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what did it take for you? Was it just like you had to drive the trucks and do these jobs not related
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to the writing for you to finally figure that out? I mean, I do think, you know, I'm doing a kind of
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a video series on Instagram now that I'm calling In the Wilderness. And it refers to the kind of
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passage that we all sort of have to go through, I think, where we're kind of outcasted from what we
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would call our normal world. And we sort of, it's like an analogy would be the Odyssey, Odysseus' story
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by Homer, you know, which was his 10-year Odyssey. That's sort of the granddaddy of all legends that
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have to do with this. And where I do think you have to suffer and you have to be humbled and you
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have to have this shit kicked out of you one way or another before you sort of finally get to a point
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where you, in a way, not even in a way, I think it's absolutely exact, where you give up. And that
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giving up is a giving up of the ego. You know, where you just say, I can't fight this anymore. You
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know, I mean, I just can't do it anymore. And some shift happens in that point. At that point,
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it's sort of like someone who has a problem with alcohol finally saying, I'm defeated by this. I
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just can't, I don't have power over this. Help, you know, somebody help me, you know? And when that
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person makes the decision, okay, I'm going to join AA or I'm going to quit or I'm going to, whatever it
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is they're going to do and change my life, that's, I think, the same thing that happens to anybody
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that's trying to, to find who they, who they are and what their calling is.
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No. So tying this back to the legend of Bagger Vance, it's based on the Bhagavad Gita,
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right? And it was a, you're a great reader, Brad. It's great that you, that you know that.
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And I think like at the beginning of the Gita, Juna has that moment where he sees this epic war going
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on and it's like family against family. And he's like, I don't know what to do. I can't. And that
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was his surrender moment. Yeah, exactly. You know, actually I had never thought about that before in
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that, in that terms, but it's exactly true. Like in, in screenwriting, you know, that was another
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career that I had sort of along the way here. There's a term called the all is lost moment.
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Have you heard of that before, Brett? Yeah. And that's, that's what our Juno was in. And that,
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I think in our real life, we need to get to one of those. And maybe we need to get to many of those
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because that's the only way real progress I think is made. When you run into an absolute brick wall
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and the resources that you've called on in the past are not sufficient to get over that brick wall.
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And you have to somehow find something somewhere. Right. That's when the ego dissolves. And that's
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when you can receive, like, I know you're a big fan of like divine help, the muses. That's when you
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become more receptive because the ego has finally fallen away. Yes, exactly. We're going to take a
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quick break for your word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay. So you did this long
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haul thing, still weren't writing during this time. You left that job because they were rearranging.
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They were going to make you like a set of an employee, a contractor, and you're going to be
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in charge of your own truck. You left and then you, you, you took a job picking apples. What was going
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like, why that? Like, how did you end up doing that? Well, there are a few other things between the
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two. And one of them was that I did start writing a book and I had, in fact, it was a book about the
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trucking company, a novel. And I had saved money. I worked in New York and advertising for, I don't
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know, a year or something. I'd saved 2,700 bucks. And I moved to a small town in Northern California
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and just to write. And I did for, I think maybe 20 months. And then I ran out of money.
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And so I thought it made sense to go do this migrant labor thing because it was something that
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you could, you could go, you could make money, you could come back and you'd have enough,
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you know, I'd have enough to finish the book. So I sort of stumbled into that thing kind of by
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accident. And so again, it wasn't like a planned thing or anything, but it was just
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you needed money, a thing on the fly. When you're working on the second novel,
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were you still haunted by those previous demons of you just sabotaging yourself?
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Absolutely. In fact, the whole, because with the first book, I couldn't finish it. That was,
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that was my self-sabotaged demon. I couldn't get to the end of it, you know? And so for the second one,
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when I went to go, you know, do this migrant labor, I still hadn't finished it then.
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So it was very much in my mind. I got to finish this son of a bitch, you know, one way or another,
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whatever happens to it, you know, I don't care if a guy throw it in the trash,
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you know, I got to finish it. So yeah, that was very much in my mind.
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So you took the job, like what, what did you take from that experience picking fruit? And then
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there's this, I want to talk about this, this phrase you picked up there, pulling the pen.
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It's a great question, Brett. And it's right on target here. And now I don't know what migrant
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labor is like today, but back then it was done. It was like the depression in a way. It was done by
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what they call fruit tramps. And these were guys that would follow the harvest. And most of them were
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alcoholics, winos. And, uh, the, the joke is a tramp is an itinerant worker. A hobo is an itinerant
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non-worker and a bum is a non-itinerant non-worker. And, uh, so a lot of these guys were at least heirs
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of the riding the rails school of, of tramp life. And when a car is uncoupled from a, from a train,
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the trainman pulls a pin out of, you know, between the coupling of the two cars. So the phrase pulling
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the pin means to quit something. So like you would wake up in a bunkhouse in the morning and somebody
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be missing and you'd say, you know, Hey, what happened to Harry? And he'd say, Oh, he pulled the pin.
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Um, so for me, that was absolutely on target. I like pulled a pin on this book that I tried to
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write. I pulled the pin on my marriage. I pulled the pin on the trucking company where I really just
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bolted. I just couldn't do it anymore. I bolted. And so I was absolutely determined, you know,
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not to do that, but the demons were there. And actually, like I said, the first book in government
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cheese is named after Hugh Reeves, who was my mentor or boss at the trucking company. And the
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second book, which was about fruit picking is named after a guy whose name I didn't even know his last
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name. I just call him John from Seattle. And he was a guy, uh, who was a great picker and, uh, one of
00:25:28.360
these hardcore road guys. And he knew he just sort of sussed out, sussed it out in me. He could see what I
00:25:37.120
was struggling with and he wouldn't let me kind of rode me, wouldn't let me, you know, sneak out of
00:25:43.800
it in any way. And he would come over to me. And when I was in one of these moments and he would
00:25:49.300
just sort of tap me on the forehead with one finger with his forefinger. And what he meant by
00:25:54.140
that was it's all up here, kid. You know, you got to get your mind right. And for some reason,
00:26:02.760
again, this is one of the sort of lessons that you learn that stick with you forever.
00:26:07.280
You know, so thanks to him, I did get through that thing. I did finish it out. Oh, here's one
00:26:14.020
thing just for whatever this is worth. It's a silly detail, but I thought it was interesting.
00:26:18.700
The way you pick apples or any kind of fruit is they will pay you like three quarters of your salary
00:26:26.300
for what you do, but they'll hold a quarter of it back. And they'll give you that as a bonus if you
00:26:34.160
finish the season. But if you don't finish the season, if you pull the pin, you lose that bonus.
00:26:40.580
But yet still, so many people don't make it to the end that the orchards or whatever it is,
00:26:49.020
they make a lot of money off of that. So in any event, thanks to John from Seattle,
00:26:54.940
I did finish that. And I did finish the book, even though it never got published.
00:27:01.400
Well, yeah. What happened then? So you actually finished this book. You didn't choke and stop.
00:27:04.660
Not like the first one. You finished the second book. What were you hoping? Like,
00:27:09.180
did you really think like, this is it? This is going to be my big break?
00:27:11.700
No. No. I mean, I, I sort of had, you know, crazy hopes about that, but I just wanted to finish
00:27:24.280
it. And actually, I write about this moment in the, in the war of art, which was the moment when I
00:27:31.060
finally finished that book. And this was before computers. So it was on a typewriter. So you
00:27:38.080
actually had a stack of pages. And when you finished a book in those days, you would roll
00:27:43.680
the last page out and put it on the bottom of the stack. And I looked at that and I thought,
00:27:49.980
you know, I did it. Nobody knows that I did it. Nobody cares. It doesn't make any difference to
00:27:56.500
the world or to anybody, but I know. And I will say this to anybody that's listening that has that
00:28:04.760
same sort of demon in them. I, I have found over the years since then, that once you defeat that
00:28:11.580
demon, you'll never have any trouble finishing anything again. And I never have, but getting
00:28:18.400
over that hump was a, was a big one. And not only do you know, right? Like by finishing something,
00:28:25.420
you're able to show yourself, you can do this. The muses know as well. You talk about this,
00:28:29.840
it's chapter 49 and put your ass where your heart wants to be. It says, the goddess is like Santa
00:28:35.460
Claus. She knows when you've been naughty or nice. I'm not being facetious. Somehow by some mechanism
00:28:41.300
unknown and unknowable to mortals, the higher dimensions see and know what's going on down
00:28:45.440
here on the material plane. When you and I put your ass, you know, where the muse notices and she
00:28:51.520
responds. I think, you know, as I wrote it and I believe it completely that when we're trying to do
00:29:00.700
anything creative, we're, our role is to connect to the higher dimension, whatever that is, to our
00:29:10.140
self, capital S self. And that, you know, the Greeks thought of gods and goddesses there. You could
00:29:17.540
think of it as the quantum field or something else if you looked at it another way.
00:29:21.760
But somehow they do know, the goddess knows, and, and she does reward you and she does grant you
00:29:29.460
respect. And I, I felt that in that moment too, Brett, I felt like, even though I couldn't really
00:29:34.880
put my finger on it, I felt like I'd scored some points with heaven, even if I didn't score any in
00:29:40.440
the material world. I mean, that's an important distinction. I think sometimes people expect
00:29:45.060
everything they do to have some sort of public recognition. You make the point that that's not the
00:29:49.880
most important thing. Like the most important thing is that, that private recognition. Cause
00:29:54.880
that's, what's going to keep you going. Yeah. And the most important thing period is to keep going
00:30:00.180
because if you think about it, I mean, if you and I wanted to be brain surgeons or concert pianists,
00:30:08.260
we would say to ourselves, well, okay, it's going to take, you know, 15 years or something full time
00:30:14.420
to get to that place. But yet when people think about writing or acting or something like that,
00:30:22.160
they think, well, I'll just slip into it and it'll be fine. I mean, that's what I thought,
00:30:25.940
like an idiot. And so the, the, the main goal is to just keep going, to find the sustenance,
00:30:36.340
the emotional sustenance to keep going. Because at least in a field like writing,
00:30:42.940
where you can write until you're 80, 90 years old, it's not like professional football or your
00:30:48.100
career's over at, you know, whatever age you do get better. And the state that you were in when you
00:30:54.840
were 30 is not the state you'll be in at 45. You'll be much better and so on and so forth.
00:31:02.020
So the name of the game is to find the wherewithal to keep going because you do get better and you can
00:31:10.520
get closer to the dream by just keep hammering away. And so after, okay. So after the second book,
00:31:16.540
it didn't get published. Did you just keep writing? Like you were like, well, I finished that one
00:31:20.500
onto the next one. Yeah. I went on, I did, I did, I saved more money and I was driving a cab in New
00:31:27.620
York city at that time. And, uh, and then I, I wrote another one that also didn't get published,
00:31:34.180
couldn't find anybody. And at that point I said to myself to talk about an all this lost moment.
00:31:39.680
I said to myself, okay, I've done three now, you know, and, uh, it's probably total of seven years
00:31:46.800
full time. In addition to all the other work, just trying to support myself. And I just don't
00:31:52.940
have it in me to do a fourth one. I, I, I can't do it, you know? And that was an all is lost moment
00:32:00.040
for me, followed by an epiphany where the epiphany was, let me move to Hollywood and try to write for
00:32:06.060
the movies, figuring that, you know, I failed as a novelist. Why don't I fail as a screenwriter too?
00:32:11.840
So that kept me going for another 10 years. So after this third novel, how old were you
00:32:20.040
at this point? How old was I? It's a good question. I think I was
00:32:22.580
30, let's see, 38, something like that. Okay. So yeah, I mean, you're hitting middle age
00:32:28.800
at this point. And let's talk about this. So, you know, we've talked about, you did the truck driving,
00:32:34.060
you did the fruit picking also during this time from your twenties until, you know, through your forties,
00:32:38.640
you did, did a stint as an oil field worker. You were a school teacher. You worked at this rural
00:32:43.580
doctor's office. You drove a taxi. When you look back on the diversity of jobs you had,
00:32:50.000
like, do you think they shaped you into the man you are now and the writer you are?
00:32:54.500
Yes. Yes. I know that that's not the kind of thing that people do anymore as a kind of a
00:33:03.600
the university of hard knocks type of thing. But for whatever reason, if I look back on it,
00:33:10.800
I needed to do it. You know, I grew up as a sheltered kid and I needed to get my butt kicked
00:33:17.240
a little bit. And so, yeah, I really do think that, that although I never set out to do any of
00:33:23.600
those things, if you, if you think about those jobs that you just rattled off, they're all the kind
00:33:29.400
of jobs that require no skill other than trucking that you actually have to know something. But the
00:33:34.700
other things are things you can just walk in. If you got a pulse, you can do them. So, but like I
00:33:40.720
say, you, you learn lessons along the way that passage through the wilderness is, is necessary.
00:33:47.300
I think. Okay. So you're about 38. You've given up writing novels because none of them were getting
00:33:52.360
published and you start writing screenplays and you found some success in writing screenplays.
00:33:57.320
You started to make good money. You started to be a pro at it. But then at a certain point you
00:34:02.380
decided to leave screenwriting and go back to novels. I mean, what led that decision? Like what
00:34:07.740
led you to say, I'm going to quit this, this thing, this thing that I'm making money on and go back to
00:34:13.800
writing another novel? That's another great question, Brett. This again is kind of a, uh, reinforces my
00:34:20.620
belief in the muse. The novel was the legend of Bagger Vance. And it just kind of came to me one
00:34:27.760
day. The idea came to me and, but it came to me as a book, not as a movie. And I had an agent at the
00:34:35.920
time, a good agent who had worked really, really hard for me to get me established. And I had a
00:34:42.720
meeting with him and I said, I have good news. I have bad news. I have worse news. I said, the good
00:34:47.220
news is I've got an idea that I'm in love with because the bad news is it's a novel. So you can't
00:34:53.420
help me. And the worst news is it's a novel about golf, which is like the dumbest subject that anybody
00:34:59.420
could possibly write a novel about. So he basically fired me and he was right to do that. So the
00:35:06.760
question again, Brett, it wasn't like this was a conscious decision on my part. Oh, I'm going to now
00:35:12.160
try to write a novel. It just, the idea came to me and that was the form it came to me in and I was
00:35:18.100
absolutely seized by it and had to do it. And at the time that I was working on that book, I thought
00:35:25.760
this is the dumbest idea I've ever had. It's completely uncommercial. Nobody is going to want
00:35:32.300
a book on this subject and they certainly are not going to want it as a movie, but to my amazement,
00:35:39.180
they did. So that was kind of how when once you write one, then, you know, you get a chance to
00:35:46.440
write another. Well, why do you think it was a success when your other novels had failed? Like
00:35:51.680
what do you, what, what, what changed? Did you change? Was it the circumstances? Was it both?
00:35:56.140
I think for sure. I wrote that story from a different place than anything else I had done before.
00:36:05.020
Now, some of the screenplays that I had done, particularly ones that never got, saw the light
00:36:10.220
of day, that just kind of circulated in the town, but never got made. Some of them were really good.
00:36:16.880
They had really good ideas and it's, you know, they were really good, but they weren't
00:36:22.420
completely from my heart in the sense of they weren't coming from that other dimension of reality.
00:36:31.060
They weren't coming from the muse. And the legend of Bagger Vance was, I mean, even as I was writing
00:36:37.680
it, I thought, like I say, I thought, this is crazy. Who's going to like this? You know, I love it,
00:36:44.260
but who else is going to, it's so different from everything. And so I think I had finally turned a
00:36:50.760
corner, maybe by paying the dues for all those years that finally the goddess said, okay, I'm going to
00:36:58.820
give this guy a break. But for whatever reason, I was writing it from a different place and it was
00:37:04.660
coming out in a different way. And when I was done with it, I felt a kind of a pride that I had never
00:37:13.440
felt before. Before I'd been able to appreciate some of the best screenplays that I'd done, the
00:37:19.860
ones that never got made. I thought, you know, these are good. These are really good. But I never really
00:37:25.020
felt like, you know, on my deathbed, I'll be proud of this. And I felt that way about the legend of
00:37:31.740
Bagger Vance, the book, not the movie. So that was, that was a huge turning point. And that really is
00:37:37.720
where this book that we're talking about, Government Cheese, ends. Because at that point, I really had
00:37:44.020
become a working writer, a pro writer that had found my own calling and my own groove. And
00:37:51.960
the story from then on really is just a question of serving the craft and learning the craft.
00:38:00.660
Well, and then accompany this book and publish this book, we've been kind of talking about it,
00:38:04.160
Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be. What do you mean? Because it's a pretty provocative title.
00:38:09.100
What do you mean by that? And like, I mean, maybe did you learn this idea from just your varied life you
00:38:15.820
had before Legend of Bagger Vance? Yes, absolutely. This phrase, put your ass where
00:38:22.200
your heart wants to be, I don't even know. I don't think I stole it from anybody. I think it's my
00:38:28.140
original thought. But I've had it kind of rattling in my head for like 10 years. And the idea of it is
00:38:35.400
simply that it's another way of saying, commit. When you say put your ass somewhere, you're really
00:38:43.460
talking about your heart, you know, your physical body, the commitment to where if you fail, you're
00:38:51.680
going to, it's going to hurt. And there's something magic about making that commitment to whatever it
00:39:00.540
is. And, you know, you were talking before about how heaven does notice, the gods notice, and they do
00:39:09.000
notice when you put your ass where your heart wants to be. Like people say, okay, how do I be a writer?
00:39:16.220
I want to be a writer. My answer to that is sit down in front of the freaking typewriter and start
00:39:21.700
doing it. If you want to be a painter, put your ass in front of the easel. If you want to be a dancer,
00:39:27.800
get into the studio. There's something magic about putting your physical body and putting your
00:39:33.740
commitment, your commitment from the heart into whatever it is you want to do, where your heart
00:39:39.000
wants to be, what your dream is, that good things happen. I'm sure that when you started the art of
00:39:47.760
manliness, it was a leap, I'm sure. And I'm sure that you were putting your ass where your heart wanted
00:39:56.700
to be. And whatever issues, you know, I don't know the full story behind this, Brett, but I'm sure that
00:40:03.400
things started breaking your way at some point in ways that you couldn't account for. Because the gods
00:40:11.820
and the goddesses notice it, and the universe does intercede and intervene in your behalf when you put
00:40:20.700
your commitment where you really live, where your heart wants to be.
00:40:24.720
Yeah. I started this while I was in law school. And so my time was limited, but I committed to
00:40:30.180
publishing three articles a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And I stuck to that schedule
00:40:34.680
religiously. And that meant I had to get up early and crank out an article. And yeah, it is a point
00:40:41.260
where I had those breaks come my way. And then now, you know, it's my wife and I, and we're still,
00:40:46.740
you know, we try to be pro about this. It's like, we have a schedule like Monday and Wednesday,
00:40:50.560
we're gonna have new podcasts up Tuesday, Thursday, we'll have an article, new articles up. We've stuck
00:40:57.600
to that for, for years. And like, you know, sometimes things go awesome. Sometimes, you know,
00:41:01.520
things don't land, but we just try to be consistent with it as much as possible.
00:41:06.360
And, and it's, I mean, it takes guts to do that, doesn't it? I mean, a lot of people talk about it,
00:41:12.940
but very few people actually do it. So I take my hat off to you. You know, you, you got into this
00:41:18.820
thing before a lot of people got into it. You know, you were one of the first people and it took
00:41:24.940
even more guts then. So the success that you've had is well earned. Well, thank you so much. And
00:41:31.540
I'm curious, how do you keep that commitment going for the longterm? Like keeping your ass
00:41:34.980
where your heart wants to be when you're, when you're not experiencing any success,
00:41:39.580
what did you figure out that helped you? I mean, for me, I had in those wilderness years,
00:41:45.980
I had no plan B, you know, every time I tried to sort of go straight and get a regular job,
00:41:53.940
I just couldn't stand it. You know, I couldn't stand going through the door that morning. And I've
00:42:00.680
heard that from a bunch of other people who've been in the same kind of situation. So there was really
00:42:06.880
kind of no way out of it for me, except to keep going forward. And it was very clear.
00:42:13.620
Well, you have this idea in your book about self-reinforcement. What do you mean by that?
00:42:19.600
This is a question, Brett, kind of about how do you last over the long haul? Because there are going
00:42:26.080
to be long, long periods when you're not getting any external, you know, third-party validation.
00:42:33.360
And the only way to overcome that, those periods, is you have to validate yourself.
00:42:40.880
Self-validation, self-reinforcement. And they don't teach you this in school. If anything,
00:42:48.100
they teach you the opposite. And certainly social media teaches you the exact opposite.
00:42:54.260
Social media teaches you to validate yourself based on number of likes, number of followers,
00:42:59.580
and all that bullshit, right? But the true reality is you are the only judge of your own stuff and
00:43:08.400
your own endeavor and your own commitment, your own progress. And so self-reinforcement is really
00:43:17.220
self-talk. And a lot of times, it's almost inane and silly and embarrassing when you think about it.
00:43:25.420
But you do have to sort of basically look in the mirror and say to yourself,
00:43:32.560
today was a good day. You know, we didn't make any money today. We didn't move the ball,
00:43:39.760
you know, three inches today. But we tried as hard as we could, and we stuck by our guns.
00:43:47.620
And validating yourself for that and learning to make that stick so you believe it is more important,
00:43:57.180
I always say, more important than talent. And I believe it's absolutely true because talented
00:44:02.860
people are a dime a dozen. But people that can actually stick it out are very, very rare.
00:44:10.020
You talk about John Keats and this idea of negative capability. And I really like this
00:44:15.680
idea a lot. And you quoted him from a letter that Keats wrote to his brother, George. And he gets to
00:44:22.380
this idea of self-reinforcement. And I'll read it here. This is what he says.
00:44:26.080
Several things dovetailed in my mind. And at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of
00:44:31.400
achievement, especially in literature, in which Shakespeare possessed so enormously. I mean,
00:44:36.880
negative capability. That is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,
00:44:43.900
without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. So self-reinforcement is just, you know,
00:44:49.360
being able to, you know, when things aren't going your way, or you don't know if things are going to
00:44:55.440
go your way, still being okay with that. Yeah, that's exactly it. It was the idea of being uncertain,
00:45:03.820
being wracked by self-doubt, but keeping going. You also talk about developing a killer instinct,
00:45:11.940
that, you know, writers, creatives, entrepreneurs need to have that. What do you mean by that? And
00:45:16.560
what does it look like? In a way, for me, like I was talking, my demon was finishing something,
00:45:25.560
right? I'd get right to the end of it, and then I'd choke. And I think one of the ways I defined that
00:45:31.720
for myself later was, I said, I don't have killer instinct. I got to, the, I'm locked in a struggle
00:45:39.660
with this freaking book, and I've got to, I've got to win. This is a war, and I have to win. And
00:45:47.180
from that point, I always decided I've got to have killer instinct to just bust through however hard
00:45:54.340
it is, and kill that son of a bitch. No, yeah, I think that's something I'm seeing my kids start
00:46:02.540
to develop, right? Like, you see this in sports. When kids first start playing sports, they're kind
00:46:08.100
of timid. Like, a lot of, some kids just have that natural killer instinct, like they're naturally
00:46:11.900
aggressive. But some kids, they have to learn it. This reminds me of, there's this great analogy of
00:46:17.100
Hector and Achilles. Achilles, he was just born manly, right? He just had that, because he's this
00:46:23.160
divine being. Hector, on the other hand, it talks about in the Iliad, he had to learn how to do it.
00:46:28.820
I think a lot of people are like that. They have to learn how to develop that killer instinct.
00:46:33.200
And it's tough. I don't, there's really nothing you can do to tell your kid, except like, be
00:46:37.840
aggressive. And like, they ask, what does that mean? And I have a hard time even explaining to my
00:46:43.740
kids, like, what do I mean by that? But it means just like going for it. Like, just going for the
00:46:48.940
ball and not caring, like, you know, within the rules, but not, like, not being, like, you have
00:46:54.760
to like lose your self-consciousness and just care about scoring the point.
00:47:00.220
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's really a question of risk. Because if you fail, if you go for it and you
00:47:06.020
fail, you lose, right? And then you have all that terrible feeling, you know? But like Seth Godin
00:47:11.720
has this, he uses the phrase shipping. Are you familiar with what he says about this sort of
00:47:18.120
stuff? Yeah, I did. But you know, let other people know. He figures if you're Steve Jobs
00:47:23.160
and you've got, you've been working on the iPhone for the first time, you know, your company's got
00:47:29.520
it together. There comes a day when you got to ship it. You know, you got, what comes a day when you
00:47:35.720
have to say, okay, there may be some, you know, glitches in here, but we can't keep noodling with
00:47:41.600
this sucker forever. We got to ship it today. That's killer instinct to push the button and make
00:47:47.560
it go. Because if it fails, then who knows what the consequences are for your career. But Seth is a
00:47:54.880
great believer in shipping. When something is ready, don't noodle with it anymore. And that's killer
00:48:01.320
instinct. So you're approaching 80 and you're still putting out work. What keeps you going?
00:48:07.180
I am a servant of the muse, Brett. You know, I sort of take my assignments from her. And as long as
00:48:15.620
she's got another one for me, I'm going to keep doing it. And that's kind of, that's the way I live
00:48:23.180
my life. I live it kind of from, that's the way I live my life from the time when Bagger Vance first
00:48:30.020
got published, when my life really changed and I became, you know, a full-time working writer.
00:48:36.320
So I'm, I go from project to project and I become completely absorbed in it. And when one is done,
00:48:43.620
I go on to the next one. And to me, this is another idea from Seth Godin. It's a, it's a practice like a
00:48:51.400
Zen practice or a practice in martial arts where the end result success, quote unquote, is not the
00:49:01.300
goal. The goal is the practice itself. And you hope that, you know, you'll have a hit here and there
00:49:08.620
or you'll pay the rent here and there. But mainly I have a calling. It took me a long time to find it.
00:49:15.700
And my way I view my life is that I'm following that calling and I'll follow it as long as I can
00:49:23.200
still breathe. This reminds me of, um, Stephen Covey. We had his daughter on Cynthia Covey. She
00:49:29.660
finished a manuscript that he was working on before he died about a decade ago. And it was about living
00:49:36.540
life in crescendo. This idea that you still have stuff to put out, even if you've done well in your
00:49:42.480
career. And he's a lot like you, like the seven habits didn't come out until he was in his mid
00:49:46.180
fifties. And after he wrote the seven habits of highly effective people, family and friends be
00:49:51.400
like, well, Stephen, do you got anything? How can you top that? Right. I imagine like,
00:49:55.900
maybe you got that question. Like, how can you top legend of Bagger advance where Robert Redford
00:50:00.180
wanted to make that into a movie. And Stephen said, no, I've got something better than seven
00:50:05.100
habits of highly effective people. I mean, I've got this calling. So it might not be as prolific
00:50:09.220
as seven habits, but it doesn't diminish the importance of that work.
00:50:14.600
Yeah, I agree completely. There's a famous story about Cole Porter when he was writing songs for
00:50:20.560
Hollywood, where he had just written a song for some movie and they'd rejected it. You know,
00:50:25.280
the studio or the director, somebody had rejected it. And a friend said to him, Cole,
00:50:29.320
what are you going to do? I mean, your song just got shot down. And he said, I got a million of them.
00:50:34.320
There's another trolley coming down the track all the time. And I think that's a, that's a great
00:50:41.320
attitude to have because to get a little mystical source, capital S is infinite. And there is another
00:50:50.620
trolley coming down the track all the time. You just have to believe in it. You just got to be the
00:50:54.620
driver. You got to become the driver. Yes. Right. Deliver the goods, deliver the load. Right. Well,
00:51:00.700
Stephen, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the books and
00:51:03.900
your work? I am on Instagram, just under Stephen Pressfield. And I have a website and it's just my
00:51:11.720
name, Stephen Pressfield. And in fact, if you go there right now, you can pre-order Government
00:51:16.620
Cheese, a signed copy that will be hand delivered by me just about. And I'm in, you know, on Amazon
00:51:24.980
and all those things, just like, you know, every other writer that's in business. Awesome. Well, Stephen
00:51:29.940
Pressfield, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Hey, thanks, Brett. Thank you for having me.
00:51:34.440
My guest today was Stephen Pressfield. He's the author of the book, Government Cheese. It's
00:51:38.040
available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at
00:51:41.980
his website, stephenpressfield.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash pressfield,
00:51:47.420
where you find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:51:57.120
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:52:01.100
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you for the continued support. And until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen
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