Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield recounts his own war with Resistance:

In 1966, as a $150-a-week copywriter for Benton & Bowles, one day while rewriting the just-add-water text for the back label of Gravy Train dog food, Mr. Pressfield asked himself, “Shouldn’t I be doing something a little more worthwhile?” He decided to quit and write a novel.

Big mistake. Within three years Mr. Pressfield was divorced, broke, and living in a van down by the river. He drove cabs and tended bar in New York, taught school in New Orleans, drove tractor-trailers in North Carolina and California, worked on oil rigs in Louisiana, picked fruit in Washington State, and in general worked all the jobs that writers work when they’re running away from writing.

Somewhere in there he completed three novels, none of which saw the light of publication. When the last one crashed and burned, in New York in 1980, Mr. Pressfield was faced with a choice between hanging himself and bolting for Tinseltown. The coin came up heads.

Over the next 15 years, Mr. Pressfield wrote or co-wrote 34 screenplays, several of which got made into extremely forgettable movies. (Mr. Pressfield refuses to name them.) He did, however, finally succeed in turning pro and becoming a world-renowned author, with such classics as The Legend of Bagger Vance and Gates of Fire, for which the city of Sparta made Mr. Pressfield an honorary citizen.

Like all writers, Mr. Pressfield doesn’t know where his next idea may take him, but he does know one thing … that anyone who wishes to achieve success, in whatever chosen arena, must do so by winning the day against the enemy, Resistance.

To learn more about Steven Pressfield, visit www.stevenpressfield.com today!