Steven Pressfield

**Steven Pressfield** (0:24)
The concept of resistance for the capital R is that there's a negative force built into the universe, a diabolical, intelligent, ever-mutating force whose only charge is to stop you and me from becoming our authentic selves, from achieving self-actualization one way or another.

**Rick Rubin** (0:50)
So it's not about our work. It's stopping us from being ourselves.

**Steven Pressfield** (0:54)
It's stopping us from being what we were born to be and doing what we were born to do, which it doesn't necessarily apply to work. It could be something else. Nobody teaches you about this. So a lot of people with all the best intentions succumb to this negative force. One of the aspects of this force is it's so diabolical that you don't even know it's there.
I mean, it defeated me for like seven years of running around all across the country doing all kinds of stuff. And I never knew it was there. And then when I finally could give it name to it and say, ah, there's a negative force fucking me up.
Then I kind of could free myself from it. Cause I could say, ah, I see you. It's sort of like the predator, where it could blend into the jungle and you never knew it was there until it killed you. And once they saw, oh, there it is.

**Rick Rubin** (1:51)
In your process from having a first draft, how close is the final book to your first draft?

**Steven Pressfield** (1:59)
It's pretty close.

**Rick Rubin** (2:00)
Really?

**Steven Pressfield** (2:01)
Which is, I was reading, what was it? It's a book called Writing the Blockbuster Novel, and it was by the agent, I forgot his name, of Ken Follett, the guy who did Pillars of the Earth, a million things. And one of the things in the book was, he showed like a first draft of one of Ken Follett's book or part of it, and then showed how it changed, like, radically, the second draft, ninth draft, that kind of thing. And when I read it, I thought, oh man, I must be doing something wrong because mine doesn't really change very much. But it doesn't, it just doesn't.
There may be two or three big building blocks that might change. I might move something from the third act to the second act, or I might come up with two new things that would fit in there. Basically, a lot of times, and I feel bad about this, it's like-

**Rick Rubin** (2:50)
There's no right or wrong way though, it works.

**Steven Pressfield** (2:52)
It came out the first time pretty much like I hoped it would.

**Rick Rubin** (2:55)
Tell me about the editing process. Do things get shorter?

**Steven Pressfield** (2:59)
No, for me, they don't.
They stay about the same. If I wind up adding something, I'll usually take something out.

**Rick Rubin** (3:07)
But are you working towards a length or no? It just happens that way.

**Steven Pressfield** (3:10)
It just happens kind of by itself. I sort of have a sense for how long it should be. The main thing I'm checking against myself is, is the reader getting bored?
If I drag this out for another 60 pages, am I going to lose them? Or if I make it too short, is it not going to actually come together?

**Rick Rubin** (3:29)
Do you always work on one thing at a time?

**Steven Pressfield** (3:31)
I like to work on one thing at a time because I like to get completely immersed in it. But sometimes the outer world, you have two things, right? One thing, you may be collaborating with somebody on something, so you gotta do that, but you don't want to let the first thing go.
I can't juggle four or five balls. What about you, Rick, when you're working in this studio?

**Rick Rubin** (3:54)
I like to juggle different projects. It works as a palate cleanser. I feel like if I get too close inside of something, I lose my objectivity.
So for me, especially with music, when I'm working on multiple things, the best situation is for me to come back to it, even after a day of thinking about something else and feeling like I'm hearing it for the first time, that really helps me.

**Steven Pressfield** (4:20)
That makes sense to me.

**Rick Rubin** (4:21)
Yeah.

**Steven Pressfield** (4:22)
On the other hand, I can tell you that on certain projects, for me getting completely immersed in it, so it's really the only way to go.

**Rick Rubin** (4:31)
Do you ever start a project and then abandon it?

**Steven Pressfield** (4:34)
Almost never, which is kind of odd too. Mainly, I think it's because if you're writing fiction, if you're writing a novel, you have to, in order to sell it to a publisher, you have to write the whole thing, right? It's not like non-fiction where you can do a proposal and get a contract based on the proposal. So if I'm toying with two or three ideas, which one do I want to do? I have to ask myself, which one are you willing to spend two and a half years on completely on the come, you know?