Three Questions With Steve Pressfield

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 ?

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