Steven Pressfield on Truth and Fiction

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This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Steven Pressfield, author of the creativity classic The War of Art and a string of other bestselling fiction and nonfiction books.

In today’s show Steve talks about his latest novel, The Knowledge, which he describes as “the origin story of The War of Art“, based on his life as a taxi driver and struggling novelist in 1970s New York. He reflects on the relationship between truth and fiction in his writing, and explains the artistic and editorial decisions he made when fictionalising from his own life experience.

Steve also has some forthright and provocative things to say about some of the myths about creativity that we allow to hold us back – so I’m expecting howls of protest from some quarters this week!

You can pick up The Knowledge via Steve’s imprint, Black Irish Books, as well as Amazon and all the usual bookstores.

I recommend you also subscribe to Steve’s blog, where he shares his hard-won creative wisdom every week.

Take Steven Pressfield’s Creative Challenge (and you could win his latest book)

Every week, at the end of the show, I ask my guest to set you a Creative Challenge – something practical you can do that will help you put the ideas from the show into action.

Here’s how you can take part – and maybe win yourself a copy of Steve’s latest novel The Knowledge:

1. Listen to the interview part of the show, either in the player above or on iTunes or your favourite podcast platform.

2. In Steve’s words the challenge is to “examine your own life and ask yourself – did I have an All Is Lost Moment? And if so, when was it? what happened? And what epiphany, i.e what big insight, came out of that?”

As Steve says, the All Is Lost Moment is the moment when you hit rock bottom, and you really do feel that all is lost in your life or your career, that you’re as far away as it’s possible to get from reaching your goal and realising your dream or ambition – but it’s also a moment where you see the reality of your situation clearly, and gain a big insight that – somewhat paradoxically – leads to a profound change in you that helps you to move forward towards your goal. So life is very different before and after the All Is Lost Moment.

3. Once you’ve completed the challenge, leave a comment below this post telling us what commitment you’re going to make for the year ahead. So once you’ve given this some thought, and you’ve identified your All Is Lost Moment, leave a comment below, describing the moment itself, the insight it gave you, and the changes you made as a result.

You have until midnight United States Pacific time on Friday 9th June 2017 to complete the challenge and leave your comment.

4. Once the challenge has finished, I will pick 3 winners at random from the comments, who will receive the prize Steve has kindly donated of his novel The Knowledge. I want to stress I’ll pick the winners at random, I won’t be judging the comments as the challenge is not a competition.

5. Over the weekend I will send a bonus recording with my feedback on your comments and what we can all learn from the challenge. I’ll be looking through the comments for common patterns, whether that’s ways a lot of you get stuck, or great solutions you’re finding to the challenge. I’ll also be sharing reflections and advice from my own experience as a writer and a coach.

6. Important – the feedback recording will NOT be released on iTunes or anywhere else the show is syndicated. It will only be available via the 21st Century Creative mailing list – click here to join the list (and get a free Creative Career course).

One last thing…

If you’re enjoying the show it would be a huge help to me if you would take a moment to subscribe to The 21st Century Creative in iTunes.

And if you’d like to leave a brief review in iTunes, that would be even more helpful.

The more people who subscribe and review the show, the more visible the show will be in the iTunes store, and the more creators I can help with it.

This is particularly important in the first few weeks of a podcast – so if you enjoy the show, and you’d like to support it, taking a few moments to subscribe and/or review will give the podcast the best chance of success.

Thank you!

Mark McGuinness is a poet, a coach for creative professionals, and the host of The 21st Century Creative Podcast.