ANCIENT& not so ancient WISDOM
offering a weekly positive perspective

September 23, 2004

"Everyone has a burden they don't understand... It's time to lay that burden down and start playing the game that only you were meant to play."

- Bagger Vance, a character in the novel The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield (1943 - )

from Steven Pressfield's website...

Steven Pressfield was born in September 1943 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He graduated from Duke University in 1965, got married, and moved to New York City, where he found work as a copywriter at Benton & Bowles Advertising. His boss, a terrific writer named Ed Hannibal, quit the business and wrote a very successful first novel. It looked so easy. Mr. Pressfield thought: Why don't I do that too?

Big mistake. Within two years he was divorced, broke, and living in a van down by the river. He drove cabs and tended bar in New York, taught school in New Orleans, drove tractor-trailers in North Carolina and California, worked on oil rigs in Louisiana, picked fruit in Washington State, and in general worked all the jobs that writers work when they're running away from writing.

Somewhere in here he completed three novels, none of which saw the light of publication. When the last one crashed and burned, in New York in 1980, Mr. Pressfield was faced with a choice between hanging himself and bolting for Tinseltown. The coin came up heads. So (as Newman once said of Kramer on Seinfeld),

"he packed a grip and split for the Coast."

Over the next fifteen years, Mr. Pressfield wrote or co-wrote 34 screenplays, several of which got made into extremely forgettable movies. (Mr. Pressfield refuses to name them.) He did, however, finally succeed in turning pro as a writer and actually paying the rent. (He detailed these experiences in 2002 in "The War of Art.")

During various bouts of despair over the years, Mr. Pressfield had discovered solace in Gandhi's favorite book, the Bhagavad-Gita. In 1995 the idea came to him to rip it off. The result was a novel, "The Legend of Bagger Vance," which became, a couple of years later, another powerfully sleep-inducing cinematic experience. Fortunately the book did better, even sneaking onto a couple of best-seller lists. Mr. Pressfield decided to go legit.

Three historical novels set in ancient Greece--Gates of Fire, Tides of War and Last of the Amazons--followed. The books have enjoyed respectable success in the States, but they've become monsters in their native land. At the close of 2003, the three were #1, #5 and #8 on the Greek best-seller lists. That September, the city of Sparta made Mr. Pressfield an honorary citizen.

A fourth book set in ancient Greece, The Virtues of War, A Novel of Alexander the Great, is due from Doubleday in October 2004.

Like all writers, Mr. Pressfield doesn't know where his next idea is coming from and firmly believes that he will never work again...

Wishing you a comforting hand during the difficult times of your journey.  

Sincerely,