Interview With Steven Pressfield
A few weeks ago I got the chance to ask Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art, a number of questions regarding creativity and the creative process. I asked you all to send in your best your questions which I passed onto Steven. I hope you enjoy this little dialogue. I look forward to your thoughts.
Thank you for your questions and Steve, thank you so much for your thoughts!
You talk about fear quite a lot in TWOA, however what do you have to say to the nagging anxiety that tends to accompany the very beginnings of ideas? Personally, I often find this anxiety paralyzing. Could you speak to this and how you’d suggest to break through the specific fear that comes at the very beginning of a new project?
That fear is a good thing. It’s pure Resistance and what it means is that this particular project (the one that is eliciting so much fear) is the one you have to do, the one that your inner being is calling you to test yourself against. If you weren’t feeling any fear, THAT would be cause for worry—because it would mean that the project-you’re-about-to-tackle really didn’t mean anything to you.
As for breaking through the fear, I go with the Nike slogan: Just do it. Take a deep breath and plunge in. There’s no trick and no easy way.
Where there’s war, there’s hurt. How do we channel our past failures into something meaningful in order to create a brighter future with purpose?
Again, I’m from the hardcore school. Past failures mean nothing. If anything, they’re a positive because you’ve learned from them. Now is everything. Nothing counts, nothing exists except the job at hand. Fuck the past. Don’t give it a moment’s thought. Even if your past is full of successes, fuck it. They won’t help us on the project-at-hand, just as our past failures won’t hurt us.
I heard a great quote a while ago about defensive backs in football. Somebody said, “A good defensive back has to have a bad memory.” What he meant was that DBs, and anybody who defends against the forward pass, are gonna get burned a lot. Wide receivers are going to beat them on routes, they’re going catch passes on them and score touchdowns on them. If the defensive back lets himself dwell on those past failures, he’s finished. He has to have a bad memory. Forget the times you got beat and play the current down, the down that’s happening now.
And the converse of that - How do you go about creating when the skies aren’t so dark? Often some the best creative moments and seasons happen in times of loneliness and pain. How best should one create in a season of hopefulness and happiness?
Good question. Success has to be forgotten or put aside just the same as failure. When Stevie Wonder goes into the studio and sits down at the piano, he forgets “Fingertips, Part Two” completely. None of his hits even cross his mind, except to remind him that he has succeeded in the past and so he’s likely to succeed in the future.
The job at hand is everything. Resistance would love us to think about our past successes or failures. That’s one way it’ll beat us. We have to focus on the job in front of us and do it. Nothing else.
Do you think that it is art, or all initiative, or creativity that is opposed by whatever force you believe exists in the universe that makes it so difficult to create? And in that sense, what is it about beauty that causes the forces of darkness to turn against it and anyone who wishes to join the dance?
I think it’s all initiative and all creativity. I’m not sure why. The best explanation I can come up with is a form of Newton’s Law (I think it’s Newton) that says that for every action in nature, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. For every impulse that makes a green shoot sprout from the forest floor and seek to climb toward the sun (creation), there’s an opposite force that is making the leaves on the ground decay and return to the earth (entropy.) In a way, both are good. Without the rich soil created by the decomposition of fallen leaves, downed trees, etc., the fresh young shoot would have no medium in which to grow.
But that explanation leaves me unsatisfied. I guess I have to say I don’t really have an answer. Maybe that opposing force is “evil.” Maybe it’s just the jealousy of those beings/forces that have themselves failed to rise toward the light. Lucifer (“Light-bearer”) was an angel, remember, the brightest of them all.
If I get a flash on this answer, I’ll let you know!
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