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One of the great COIN seminars of all time:

Counterinsurgency: A Symposium April 16-20, 1962

And….this:

I’ve enjoyed a sporadic conversation with Steve Pressfield , author of Gates of Fire and Killing Rommel, ever since he started his Tribes site. While most of our discussions had to do with COIN, tribalism, ancient history and Afghanistan, Steve is also generous with his time and advice with those who aspire to become better writers. Pressfield distilled his philosophy of writing, learned from the school of hard knocks, into a short handbook, The War of Art which I heartily recommend. Steve also features a “Writing Wednesdays” as a weekly tutorial in the writer’s craft and the acquisition of a professional mindset.

In the spirit of “Writing Wednesday”, Steve invited me to pose three questions to him based on my impressions of The War of Art. Here are my questions and Steve’s answers:

ZP: You write in The War of Art about “the muse”and Socrates‘ “heaven-sent madness”. It sounds very much like the “flow” described by creativity theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Does the intensity of that experience ever lead the artist astray ?

SP: In my experience, Mark, the writing process bounces back and forth between two poles.  One is the let-’er-rip mode, which could be called “flow,” or “Dionysian.”  That’s the one when the Muse possesses a writer and he just goes with it.  But yes, as you suggest, it can lead you astray.  It’s the like the great ideas you have at three in the morning after two too many tequilas.  This mode has to be balanced by a saner-head mode, which sometimes to me almost feels like a different person–an editor, a reviser.  That’s really when you put yourself in imagination in the place of the reader and ask yourself, as you’re reading the stuff that this “other guy” wrote: “Does this make any sense?  Is this any good?  Have I got it in the right place, in the right form?  Should I cut it, expand it, modify it, dump it entirely.”  Then you become cold-blooded and professional.  You get ruthless with your own work.  This is the time, I think, when “formula” wisdom can help, when you can ask yourself questions like, “What is my inciting incident?” or “What is my Act Two mid-point.”  Not when you’re in the flow, or you’ll censor yourself and second-guess yourself.  But now, when you’re rationally evaluating what you produced when you were in flow.

This back-and-forthing, I imagine, would be true in any artistic or entrepreneurial venture.  It’s great to let it rip and really get down some wild, skatting jazz riffs.  But then we have to come back and ask ourselves, “Is this working for the audience?  Is this working for the work itself?”

ZP: Amateurs reach a tipping point where they “Turn pro”. Is turning professional more from innate character or from the lessons of experience?

SP: Some people are born “pro.”  I have two friends, identical twins, who are both tremendous producers of excellent work and they’ve never suffered a minute of Resistance in their lives.  The lucky bastards.  For the rest of us though (at least this is my experience), only after many painful hard knocks … really when it becomes simply too excruciating to continue living as an amateur (and thereby suffering the agonies of never completing anything, always screwing up, forever feeling inadequate in our own eyes and just plain not respecting ourselves) do we finally, out of sheer emotional self-preservation, say to ourselves, “This crap has gotta stop!  We gotta get our act together!”

ZP: Artists run straight into hierarchies, filled with gatekeepers, between ourselves and a goal. Go through or go around?

SP: There’s an axiom in Hollywood that if you write a truly great script, it will not go unrecognized.  I think this is true.  What I mean by that is that gatekeepers can be our friends.  They can open gates as well as close them.  In fact, I vote for jettisoning the term “gatekeeper.”  It’s negative and self-defeating–and it’s an insult, I think, to the editors, agents, publishers and development executives whose agenda is not to exclude us, the artists.  In fact they’d like nothing more than to discover fresh talent, a hot new manuscript, a great pitch or biz proposal.  In my own experience, I got shot down again and again when my stuff wasn’t ready and wasn’t good.  But once I had done the work and elevated my material to the professional level, I found open doors and helping hands.

All that is not to say that “going around” can’t be a good idea too.  Look at Seth Godin, who’s the poster boy for damning the torpedoes and taking his stuff straight to the marketplace with incredible success.  In my own career though–now that you’ve made me think about it, Mark–I realize I’ve always gone the traditional route.  And the “gatekeepers” I’ve met have become, almost within exception, great friends and allies–and I’ve wound up helping them, in other ways, almost as much as they’ve helped me.

Thanks Steve!

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson

This classic popular text from 2001 still holds up well as an introduction into the phenomena of emergence and the nature of self-organizing systems. Johnsaon uses a rich array of analogies and historical anecdotes to bring the reader to an understanding how bottom-up, “blind”, systems work and the principles behind them. Highly readable and next to no jargon. Probably due soon for an updated edition though, given the scientific advances in research in network and complexity studies.

How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy

Superb overview of the decline and fall of Rome with a rejection of the traditional assertions of causations for the end of the Roman empire ( Barbarians, Christianity etc.). Goldsworthy also sharply criticizes the popular idea among postmodern classicists today that the Roman Empire was “really” as strong during the fourth and fifth centuries as it was during the golden age of philosopher-warrior-emperor Marcus Aurelius. Or that there was no fall of the empire at all, just a gentle “transformation” into something new. Goldsworthy discusses the likelihood of Late antquity  ”paper legions” of Roman armies which, in any event, scarcely resembled in elan, tactics or fighting strength the ones that Julius Caesar wielded in Gaul.  A tour de force marred only by a weird epilogue that ranges from pedestrian to ( in it’s last sentences) truly awful - was it it tacked on as an afterthought? Did the editor of the rest of the book die before it was completed? Regardless, How Rome Fell is a worthy addition to an collection of popular ancient histories.

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

A rare, nonfiction book by novelist and blogger Steven Pressfield. The War of Art is a book that I strongly recommend to aspiring writers ( which includes most bloggers) and other people pursuing dreams, not because it is brilliant but because it is profound. Utilizing select personal vignettes and other anecdotes, Pressfield distills in everyday language the essence of what creative people need to understand if they are to succeed - concepts of “resistance”, which seductively undermine your efforts,  and being a “professional”, which is the mindset that will get you there.

Most of the readers of this blog are interested in military affairs to some extent so I will use this reference to explain why I read The War of Art from cover to cover. Pressfield captures the difference in what Col. John Boyd called the question of “To be or to do. Which way will you go?”.  By Boyd’s definition, Pressfield is a doer.

Steven Pressfield blogs on The War of Art of writing every Wednesday.

Hard to believe that this was an amateur production. For film making, this is akin to what the first great blogs were to publishing, a tipping point moment toward mass amateurization:

THE HUNT FOR GOLLUM - FULL Trailer 1 from Independent Online Cinema on Vimeo.

I watched the full 40 minute film a few days ago on my computer at The Hunt for Gollum website, it was impressive. Incidentally, the creators had permission from the Tolkien Estate to proceed as a non-profit venture and gave J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision, mostly culled from extant writings, notes and appendixes, a respectful treatment.

Hat tip to Scholars & Rogues.

I find that I have fallen criminally behind on reviewing books in the past six or so months and I’m going to try to make an effort to post on at least some of what I have been reading. Time to begin:

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter) by Garr Reynolds

 Garr Reynolds has done more than write a book about design; he has taken Zen principles and used them to design the book that he wrote. Zen Presentation is an aesthetic pleasure to read, a truly beautiful book where the author walked his talk.

Specifically, Reynolds will show you how you can make your slideware presentations better but Presentation Zen is really more than that; it’s about effective communication.  Understanding your own message and then crafting an authentic and persuasive vision. The principles Reynolds articulates while discussing sound design work equally well for the writer, the artist, the salesman or the organizational leader. Here are a few sections particularly worth your time to read:

What makes Messages Stick? 

The Art of Working With Restrictions ( all the Boydians out there will grasp this concept immediately) 

Two Questions: What’s your Point? Why Does it  Matter ?

Kanso, Shizen, Shibumi

Signal to Noise Ratio

The Need for Solitude

Many times, as the text itself is intentionally broken up visually by images and white space, I found myself reflecting at length on the implications of the passage before moving on to the next. Now that’s something that happens with reading certain classics - The Art of War,  Meditations (Penguin Classics), The Prince and so on - but far more rarely with modern authors, indicating that Reynolds effort  to discern and expound on the importance of the fundamentals was well executed.

If messages are meant to “stick” then Presentation Zen is a sticky book.