Monday, February 25, 2013

Link of the Week


     Author Steven Pressfield is probably best known for his book about the ancient battle of Thermopylae -- The Gates of Fire.


   But before he was a best selling author and writer he struggled.  He lived out of his car, and it took him 17 years before he received his first paycheck for a novel.  A former Marine and son of a sailor, he wrote and wrote until he published his first book, The Legend of Bagger Vance.  (Made into a motion picture starring Will Smith, Charlize Theron, and Matt Damon).  That was 1995.   Now he has many more titles to his name.  Most of them are historical fiction.  I've read The Gates of Fire, I own a first edition, and it deserves a book review of its own.  Maybe it is time to read it again...
  
     Pressfield, however, began a blog to help aspiring writers publish, write, and to write well.  In his own words: 

     "My writing philosophy is a kind of warrior code—internal rather than external—in which the enemy is identified as those forms of self-sabotage that I call "Resistance" with a capital R (in The War of Art). The technique for combating these foes can be described as "turning pro."

     "I believe in previous lives and the Muse—and that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration, whom we call artists."

     This is a fantastic blog if you are interested in publishing that first novel.  Or if you simply need just a little motivation to get those stories out and on the page.  Check it out.

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