Hey, this is the moment. I'm Brian Coppelman. Thanks for listening. I'm really excited about this. My guest today is Steve Pressfield, a great novelist and screenwriter, and really a guy who has

written some non-fiction books that are among the most important books for creative people that I've ever read.

The War of Art, which I've mentioned on this show many times, is a book I wish I had when I was

starting out. And for me, it's one of the two best books ever

written along with the artist's way about what you have to do in order to figure out how to create the work you were meant to create.

And I've gotten to know Steve over the last 10 or 15 years.

I forgot, I wrote him somehow and we got in touch and had a few breakfast and so he knows the regard that I have for him and

I'm going to try to make the most of this interview time with Stephen Pressfield. Thanks for being here man.

Hey, thanks Brian. It's great to see you again. with Stephen I guess I want to start here when you were writing War of Art, when you started thinking about

why it's so scary to do this work.

Did you have any idea the impact that it was going to have?

None whatsoever.

You know, I sort of had, and in fact the War of Ar didn't have any impact for a long time, you know, my,

I was, my partner, Sean Coyne, who some of you guys may know, he had his own independent publishing company at the time called

Rugged Land and he brought it out because we couldn't sell it. I couldn't sell it to anybody

else. And he thought it was really great and he went to great lengths with the

advanced readers copy I don't know if you've ever seen that Brian it has like a silver cover

it's really like the heart it's a hard back and we thought

oh this is gonna make a splash you know and it just sort of I won't say it sank

without a trace but it didn't make any very any much of a splash and it then just

sort of took a long time word of mouth bump at bump because it came out in 2002 and so

it's been around for a long time.

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