Steven Pressfield

The Journal: The Reverse Outline (RO) Revisited and Shared Worlds

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * From James Scott Bell * Yesterday * Topic: The Reverse Outline (RO) Revisited * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” E. L. Doctorow From James Scott Bell’s newsletter, ” how about some old-school pulp fiction… free! My favorite genre is crime/detective fiction from the golden era, 1920-1950. Here’s a treasure trove, including issues of the most famous pulp … Read more

The Journal: Back to The Othgygnrkthers

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Topic: Back to The Othgygnrkthers * Yesterday * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “The world is visibly changing, and we have no idea what the outcome will be.” Kristine Kathryn Rusch “So release yourself from Outcome. Be unattached to Outcome, take a calming breath and just continue on.” My corollary Topic: Back to The Othgygnrkthers This will be another process topic, complete with a little waffling, so skip it if you want. Yesterday I said I was trashing the book. This morning, I thought Not … Read more

The Journal: Life Rolls Happen

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Life rolls happen * Hey Media, shut up already * Be Sure to Check “Of Interest” * Yesterday * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Even the pandemic flu of 1918 only killed one to two percent of the people who were infected.” Anthony Fauci, via The Passive Voice Life rolls happen. I’ll be headed out of town tomorrow morning (Friday) for up to a few days. How fortunate am I, to be able to love my day job and take it with me? Thanks to … Read more

The Journal: This is Important

In today’s Journal * Topic: This is Important: What I Offer * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Topic: This is Important: What I Offer Today I’m tooting my own horn, letting you know what you can learn from me and the various ways you can learn from me. I realized this morning I’ve never enumerated the various ways I teach. In case you didn’t know or as a gentle reminder, first I write this Journal almost every day. In it, I often post a topic that I believe will help someone out there. Sometimes some readers see my … Read more

The Journal: A Sad Letter

In today’s Journal * Topic: A Sad Letter * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Topic: A Sad Letter I wasn’t planning to post the Journal today, but something came up that changed my mind. On Steven Pressfield’s site today, he posted “Writing is a Bad Idea” (see https://stevenpressfield.com/2020/02/writing-is-a-bad-idea/). After a brief introduction, he posts (with permission) a letter he received from a broken writer in Finland. I hope you’ll go read the post. Some of the comments are cruel. I left a comment too, but I’ve inserted it below, because this is important. It’s unfortunate that Kati was … Read more

The Journal: No Seriously, Nobody Cares

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Topic: No Seriously, Nobody Cares * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Nobody cares.” Dean Wesley Smith Topic: No, Seriously, Nobody Cares This morning, Kris Rusch wrote a kind of rambling Business Musings post titled, “Nobody Cares.” When it goes public in a few days, I’ll link to it in “Of Interest” so you can see it for yourself. I suspect it was rambling because she was tired from just having finished teaching a live workshop in Vegas. (I wanted badly to tell her she could … Read more

The Journal: If I Could Dictate

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Topic: If I Could Dictate * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Note: I had this post all ready to go yesterday, but forgot to hit Publish, so here it is today. I’ll publish another one later today (as an experiment) to see whether both of them post at 5 p.m. this afternoon. Quote of the Day “I tend to fly and finish a lot of words… I don’t like to stop.” Diane Darcy, USA Today bestselling romance novelist Topic: If I Could Dictate Diane Darcy brought up an interesting … Read more

The Journal: Trusting the Process

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Have you ever blown an entire morning noodling with a single paragraph or, worse, a solitary sentence? Resistance has outfoxed you. You have hung up an entire battalion trying to capture an outhouse.” Steven Pressfield Had a good writing day today. This is a really twisted novel, but the disparate parts are starting to come together. Folks, this is the truly great thrill of writing into the dark: to just write the next sentence and let the story unfold as … Read more

The Journal: Today, and All That Entails

In today’s Journal * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Today I’m posting this primarily to get the “Of Interest” items out to you. I’m not sure yet what the day will hold. Some learning, certainly, almost certainly more work on licensing projects and maybe on my shared world bibles. And a couple of new story ideas (and a couple of older ones) have been nagging me over the past few days. Decisions, decisions. And then there are things I want. Like I want to set or re-set some new goals. I’ve been wanting to start writing at least … Read more

The Journal: More on Shared Worlds

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Topic: More on Shared Worlds * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “The toughest thing we do as artists is trust our own vision. If we don’t, we will not end up with a long career. … What good writers do is make familiar stories new, so new in fact that they seem breathtakingly original.” — Kristine Kathryn Rusch And for those of you who write in series, this one really struck me: “When you’re writing in your own world, you don’t go for the details … Read more