Steven Pressfield: A Man at Arms - Danger Close with Jack Carr

[Music] this is the danger closed podcast beyond the books with me jack carr welcome to the danger clothes podcast an ironclad original presented by sig sauer my guest today is steven pressfield steven pressfield is the author of gates of fire legend of bagger vance afghan campaign and a host of other books his latest novel is a man at arms and we didn't get into it as much as i wanted to on the podcast because he kept asking me questions about my latest novel about writing about the amazon series with chris pratt so we had a great time great conversation and he's also the author of a series of books on creativity uh you may have heard of the war of art turning pro do the work authentic swing warrior ethos uh anyone involved in any sort of creative endeavor read these books so without further ado my friend the great steven pressfield all right steven pressfield thank you so much for jumping on the podcast i'm so excited to see you and uh especially just because it's a chance for us to catch up for about 45 minutes which is really my favorite part of it jack great to see you we've missed each other twice when you were here filming but uh so this will have to do for the time being until we can see each other in person that's right but hopefully the next congratulations let me say right away congratulations on the success of the devil's hand i read it i love it it's great we can talk a lot about it and congratulations on your stuff with chris pratt and the filming and everything that's going on with you god bless you you're smoking hot well thank you so much i mean the inspiration i mean i have uh just outside of the frame here are all the other not just your books but the ones you've inspired me to actually to read from your reading list the ones my wife is like what is this obscure thing showing up that you did on on ebay that there was one left so i have those all over here but uh no it's so great to see and hopefully i'll get to to we got the link up in person next time i'm out in los angeles so okay and what is that behind you you got a professional studio there now what's going on you have the full-on setup this is not like we do have a microphone you know we got a little blackout curtain behind you know yeah you're getting all set here stand back here i don't know i noticed i sure did i noticed it yep and man at arms right here i have both of uh with this one you signed for me and one i uh i purchased obviously uh that is so nice thank you but yeah i always like to buy uh the books obviously from from people that uh that i know and respect and and uh uh i'm very fond of so yeah this was amazing i loved reading this and i loved that you let me read it early and uh i got to give you a blurb but just getting being able to read this book early was uh was such an honor so thank you for uh for trusting me with that oh absolutely and you know so great to read your stuff always jack we can really get into that as we talk oh awesome what is that behind you what typewriter is that behind you what's going on there this typewriter here is um it's not actually the original typewriter that i used to carry for years in my van am i when i was living in my chevy van but it's it is an old funky one from uh an ad agency where i used to work many moons ago when this was what you worked on and at one point they were moving on to ibm whatever and they said we're selling all these so i bought it and i've had it for years yeah they actually sold it though they didn't just give them away they didn't just give it away i think this was like 25 bucks or something wow but what year is that do you know yeah um i don't you know it's got to be the 70s or something or earlier yeah it's beautiful i love that i'm going to get in i'm really getting into typewriters these days and when we move to the next house i want to have the my library i'm looking over here because my books are now stacked up in front of me here on shelves that go three deep uh we're in the last house they were right behind me and we're in this rental right now but next one i want to put a lot of thought into the library so i'm not reaching back three deep to try to like pull a book out i need a reference and knocking things over in the process um so i want to get a little more organ i mean they're organized here but they're just a little more difficult to get to but i want to have them spaced out with typewriters from different eras uh throughout so i want so i can look over there and uh and have a kind of a history of the typewriter as well you know i don't know if you know this jack but tom hanks is a tremendous do you know this is a tremendous typewriter aficionado he's got like hundreds of them he does in fact when i first got this or i had to get it refurbished i actually boxed it up and sent it to new york from california to his typewriter guy that you know refurbished it you know i read about it somewhere in you know some story about him but he's got a he's got that you know hundreds of these things so yep there was a show i think it was on netflix and i forget the name of it right now but there was a documentary they did uh that he i think he might have produced it but he was featured prominently uh where it showed how he had the typewriters that which that's what gave me the idea ah he had like a bookshelf behind him like a library yeah and it was beautiful and i loved it so that that's a great uh documentary i wish i could remember the name right now but i might have to get the name of that typewriter uh refurbishment uh place that's the one i was working with i was going to send a few things to in berkeley california shut down so yeah let's go back a little a little farther there so typewriter from new york so let's uh let's work up to a man at arms so let's go from uh from marine corps from leaving the marine corps or let's go to boot camp to paris island and then uh and then out of paris island and up to a man at arms for those that uh that don't know your back story because i think most people uh know you today and uh don't know the law the journey that you took unless they've dove and have have explored the uh the non-fiction side of the house on creativity with war of art and turning pro and authentic swing and do the work and all those and then they get a little bit of a glimpse into that background and that journey and all that work that it took to get where you are today so um what was that path into the into the marine corps um let's see you want me to get jack you want me to do like a quick overview of yeah let's do that let's see let's do that a bunch of questions too here i want to interview you a little bit here and i got this amazing cup by the way too i want to work up to this let's work up to this cup because it worked it goes in conjunction with a man at arms and uh i wanted to save it it's my first time actually using it and it's uh it fits this is 15 fluid ounces of my black raffle coffee wow it fits almost perfectly 15 fluid ounces uh so yeah this thing is off thank you for sending this to me this is okay this is just for people to know this is a it's inspired by the spartan co-thon k-o-t-h-o-n which was uh plutarch wrote about it and it was a the cup that the spartan army brought with them when they went on military campaigns and they had to drink out of streams and rivers and stuff like that and the cup was designed it had a dark interior so no matter how crappy the water was you couldn't see it and it also had a concave lip that supposedly would catch the uh you know whatever impurities are there and that's the spartan shield there with a lambda for like ketamon on it it's made by joel cheryko master potter in minnesota and um if you look up jericho pottery c h r c-h-e-r-r-i-c-o you can get one of these things and they ain't cheap they're like 300 bucks a piece oh wow hey i don't know if you knew that jack i did not know that because yeah because you just sent it to me so i didn't uh yeah thank you wow amazing that's that's it's beautiful and i did i read the whole description though and uh and i loved that because there was there's no obviously no photos of these there's not so much what it would actually have looked like so yeah um so i read the whole description and found out about the lip and the color on the inside and all that stuff so that was that was fascinating so i'm probably not going to use it too much because i'm worried i'm going to break it so it's going to go right back there with my all my special stuff here after uh after we have our talk here but yeah leaving into the marine corps maybe a little bit of an overview i'll give you a quick overview so i really was uh in the marine corps dodging the draft in vietnam and i joined as a reservist you know hoping that they would not call me up i definitely did not want to go there and they did not call me up thank goodness so but i was an infantryman and you know as far as uh you know had like one one millionth of your experience jack of the in the military but um the paris island back in the day when it was serious they were messing around back then yeah well the quick sort of overview going back to like this typewriter was i my first job was in new york i worked in an ad agency a big ad agency in new york and i had a boss named ed hannibal and he quit and wrote a novel and the novel was a smash overnight hit and he became like a star overnight so i'm like 22 years old i said well [ __ ] why don't i do that what am i wasting my time here in advertising so i quit and and i was an overnight success too it was only 30 it only took 35 years but no seriously what happened was i sort of tried to write this novel which was way over my head i had no clue what anything was and i basically had a nervous breakdown and blew up my marriage and everything else and i wound up kind of on the road for a bunch of years and uh you know carrying a typewriter like this which i never touched and this is sort of anybody that's read the war of art i was the the concept of resistance with a capital r that was what was beating the hell out of me my unlike you jack who knew that he wanted to be a writer and was prepared for it i was just overwhelmed by it and terrified of it and anyway after many jobs i drove trucks i worked in the oil fields i picked fruit i worked for ad agencies again i taught school blah blah blah blah blah blah and i finally kind of wound up in hollywood and i had like a 10-year career as a screenwriter and that was sort of my college education as a writer you know sort of what you sort of knew you know just from the get-go and then at one point i wrote a book the legend of bagger vance and that became a movie and that sort of launched me onto a career of writing books and that's been like the last 25 years for me so uh i just kind of knocked around for a long time yeah and so that that so the chevy van you're you're in the chevy van and you're doing going to these different jobs working your way across the country don't you hop back to new york at some point and then yeah i did i did it a couple of times like one of the things that i would do is i i would work in advertising for like two years save all my money quit and go to some place cheap and just live and write a novel and then and i did that three different times and none of them sold and um but that was kind of a way of you know of uh the school of hard knocks way of learning how to how to write something how to write a sentence and how did you get that foot in the door in hollywood i've heard you talk about the difference between a writer and a writer producer um on different projects and what that means and who you got teamed up with and how that all came about so how did that uh how did that initially start you roll into los angeles in a van and then and then and how does it happen like what happened actually i actually uh well i'll go back a little bit this third novel that i wrote that i couldn't even get my mother to read uh i i was really at the end of my rope like you know really thinking of getting out one of those meat cleavers and cutting my head off um and uh i i thought why don't i just go to hollywood instead of killing myself you know i've failed as a novelist or maybe i'll fail as a screenwriter and that'll be the next phase and i happen to have a uh a female friend who had worked for an agent this is while i'm in new york and she said well you got to write a screenplay you know you got to have a piece of material so i kind of went down to the store got a book how to write a screenplay and the short version of it was i did get an agent so i went out there and i had an agent but i like for about five years or six years i couldn't sell anything i just was i wrote like nine scripts each one took me like half a year to write and i'm while i'm working jobs and um finally my agent said to me would you object to be t if i teamed you up with an older established writer and i said no because i'm desperate you know so he did team me up with a guy named ron chucet who did the original alien he and his original partner dan o'bannon and i worked with him for about five years and that sort of got me you know at least making money and in the game yeah until we had a falling out and bump at a bump but uh that was how i originally uh you know got into it got it and then from there do you go off and do a couple screen stream plays on your own after that or do you dive back into novels or how does that are you doing both at the same time how does that we sort of uh you know my my my partner at one point you know i was like the slave right it was a good thing in the sense that i oh the difference between a writer producer and a writer writer uh my partner ron was really a writer producer meaning that he he had great ideas like if you remember the first alien when the thing bursts out of the guy's chest yeah that was like that he was the kind of guy that would have great ideas yeah but he was not somebody that could sit down at a keyboard and actually write yeah so he needed to have a partner who who did that so i was sort of the writer writer of the group and he was the writer producer and he was the guy that was the brand name he was a guy that got us into meetings got us jobs so on and so forth so at one point after we've been working for about four or five years i felt like i'm doing all the work and i sort of demanded more credit in which case we had an immediate divorce right it was like no you can't have any credit so i did say so i did you know just sort of go out on my own and and it worked to my amazement you know did you get the same agent i'm sorry did you keep the same agent or did you switch agents yeah i kept the same agent yeah yeah okay or actually i had another one after that um but you know what jack let me ask you a few things i wanted to talk to you about a couple of things i want to talk about the devil's hand for a minute all right all right because i can't tell you how much i enjoyed reading it and how it totally hooked me from page one and just pulled me through and what and i you know no offense to anybody else that's writing in this genre but i can't believe there's anybody better than you at what you're doing and it's really it's you know it's just a joy to read boom straight through it congratulations it's great thank you what i wanted to ask you i wanted to ask you this is seriously writer to writer is kind of shopdog is that okay if we do this absolutely um let's see let's imagine that there's somebody listening that says i want to write thrillers i love thrillers i want to write them i wanted to ask you what are the the conventions of a thriller um and i'll get you started with a couple and then i'd love to hear you talk about this for a minute like one of the things and tell me if i'm wrong about thrillers is they're always written in the third person right it's never i or maybe rarely rarely there are they do exist but uh uh nelson demille has done a couple like um there's a few guys out there mark granny just experimented with it in his past not the book this year but the one previous so it does happen but you're right it's not uh it's not but it's it's hard to do i think because you sort of skip around right you're there's one scene in america one in russia one in a submarine whatever and the other thing i while i'm trying to get you going on this jack is that many thriller writers have a character that's a repeating character you know like james reese is in your in yours or uh jack reacher or something like that that goes on from book to book so um tell me what are some of the conventions of a thriller so i think every author that you ask this question to that works in that space and writes a medical thriller now or a legal thriller now political thriller now military thriller now techno thriller there are all these different sub-genres of thrillers and each one will probably give a slightly different answer based on their own experience as a reader i think so uh so my perspective on this comes from the fan perspective from the reader perspective from someone who has been inadvertently studying this my whole life because i love reading because i love the genre because i love these stories i love the books that had protagonists main characters with with who had backgrounds that i wanted to have in real life one day so i was i naturally gravitated to tom clancy and nelson demille and david morrell and aj quinnell and jc pollock and mark olden and steven hunter and all these guys in the 80s and 90s who had protagonists with backgrounds in vietnam either as marine snipers or army special forces or navy seals or cia special operations or something along those lines so um so my background so that my answer is informed by that reading experience throughout my entire life really so um for me that uh those elements that make a good thriller i think um is that there's there seems to be the ones that i liked anyway that i think that i was drawn towards and identified with had some element of conspiracy in there so and i don't think everybody will give that that same answer but uh but for me i liked those uh i liked that element of revenge in there as well um there doesn't have to be a uh you know a huge twist but a surprise uh hints um i loved parts of these thrillers that uh i mean obviously what you're the goal is is to have somebody turn the page at the end of the chapter not put it down keep them up throughout the entire night when they get to the end of the book have things resolved enough where they feel satisfied with that reading experience but also leave them with that one little thing that makes them want to get the next book right you can't just stop it and leave all these things unresolved because they've spent they've trusted you with their time at this point right right right their most valuable asset and they get to the end and there's no resolution and then you have to get the next book so that's the art part of it is trying to figure out where you leave those resolutions how much is is the how much resolution does the reader need uh to feel satisfied but then also really want to get that next book so which you certainly did in the devil's hand it's like we're waiting for the next one yeah thank you so that's the goal but the elements um of a of a thriller that conspiracy one is the one that pops out to me uh and maybe in like my first novel had the main theme was revenge and you gave me that idea to have a yellow sticky next time that said revenge without constrain on it revenge on it so i just had that right there the entire time i was writing that first novel um so i like that i identify with that so even if that's not the main theme of the other books uh thus far there's there's that sub theme of revenge in there because i think as readers as humans we all identify with that because we know we can't do that sort of thing in real life because keep us from doing that you know actual laws and uh and uh and moral ethical type considerations but uh but there's something very satisfying about reading about someone who who sheds those societal norms and gets that revenge whether it's a yeah or a movie there's something just very satisfying about that so uh for me those are two important elements of any thriller let me ask you another thing jack i noticed that like almost all the thrillers that i read um one scene will take place in one place and then you'll cut to another scene with a completely different characters you know like your scenes at the very start with the box cutters and you there's a like a chapter of a muslim woman that works cleaning the airplanes and and it's just a chapter about her and a little bit about her life and in the end she tapes box cutters under a couple of seats prior to 9 11. and then the scene will cut to to russia or to you notice so you might go 10 scenes in a row where each one is in a different place and like your central character might not be in any of those scenes is that something that you'd deliberately do or is that in all thrillers or what do you think about that i think it's something that i deliberately do um because i liked that in the books that i read growing up and continue to read today um i like to uh to end in chat a chapter wanting to know what happens next and sometimes you need to go and continue that in the next chapter and leave it hanging and then jump right in but that's the art part of it once again that's the heart um i mean you can follow formulas i've never done that but you could i guess follow a formula if you do enough reading on how to write and that sort of thing um but uh but you can do everything quote unquote right but miss that one important piece that heart these novels have to have heart and that's what makes them stand out from all the other ones that are out there so you have to put so much of yourself into them that uh that that reader can connect with it because they know that you had this passion going into these pages into these sentences so they know that they can trust you with that time and uh so so i like to jump around because for the not all the time but but for the most part i do go back and forth because i don't want the reader to also to forget what's been going on um and i want to keep it fresh enough where they turn the page go to the next chapter and it changes scenes but maybe it's something that happened three chapters ago continuing that part of the storyline and then at the end obviously they all have to go together and that's part of that resolution where the reader goes ah now i see now i see where all these different uh disconnected uh chapters people events uh all come together at the end and now it makes sense so uh so that's just something that that i do and i i didn't get that from a book or anything i got that from books in general as that reader so um i just write what's uh what's really in here i mean i'm i'm sort of the same way like i know when when when i was a screenwriter and if i was going to be writing uh western i would just go to the theater and just watch like or go to the video store and watch 10 of them you know and i would just sort of study them and i'd ask myself you know what are the scenes that they every western has and how do they you know and you sort of imbibe it by osmosis rather than than you know studying it or anything but i want to ask you a couple other things it seems to me that like a tom clancy story or certainly a jack carr thriller is is hardware heavy in a sense that's like another aspect of it where the not only the weapons but the vehicles and even and particularly like the the fight scenes including the hand-to-hand fight scenes are something that if you're a geeked out reader and this is where it's great that you really were at a 20-year career as a navy seal and did all this stuff that like when a fight scene is happening james reese is in the overturned van or something as you're reading it you're saying well this isn't [ __ ] you know this is what how it really goes down and i think readers love that right would you say that you feel like you've got to kind of give them that i think so but it's very natural for me to do so it would be very unnatural for me uh to just have a character that picks up a knife a pixel a firearm without describing it because there's that's an opportunity to uh to develop that character through his choice of weapons through his choice of how he carries that weapon his choice of belt shoes and all those things are opportunities for me to tell a story about that person to include the vehicle now in tom clancy's case uh he goes very deep obviously into submarines onto intercontinental ballistic missiles like all those things and i read those growing up and i probably didn't understand a quarter of that stuff that he was in sixth fifth grade sixth grade seventh grade yeah and those types of things that's a lot to be digesting back then um and i do that not at that i would never be able to describe a submarine the way that he does or a weapon system that has uh some sort of a strategic type of uh of impact like these intercontinental ballistic weapons um but uh but you know what i can bring in my knowledge of an m4 of uh of a winkler tomahawk of a dynamous blade like these sorts of things are very natural for me to describe and talk about because they've been such a part of me from before i was in the military i was just always a student of weapon craft a student of warfare uh so it's very natural for me to uh to incorporate all these things into the storyline it would be hard for me not to do that i'd have to really har try hard not to uh to to incorporate those things in a way that uh that helps develop the character for those who who who understand um how the how how that uh what that means for someone to carry a 1911 cocktan locked in a leather holster on a leather belt that sort of thing driving an old f-150 from 1975 different from someone driving a new board raptor with uh right in a kydex uh hole right with a nylon belt uh that sort of thing so all these things tell you something different about the character and they certainly they add tremendous credibility and authenticity to it you know as you're reading you feel like ah this is the real deal this guy really knows what he's talking about and then you know just to to contrast what we were talking about about um switching from scene to scene i was thinking about my own book a man at arms which is a kind of a different thing where the central character telamon is in every scene right and so i sort of envy you when i was when i'm reading you know the devil's hand i thought you know i wish i'd love to do that too or you cut around back and forth but but certain books you can't you really it's like in movies where tom hanks might be in every scene in the movie you know something like that let me ask you another thing jack well i've got you here yeah yeah well you've got me um somebody asked me this question the other day and i didn't really know how to answer they were talking about writing a fast-paced book that kind of you know right that keeps you moving and keeps you turning the pages and certainly the devil's hand in all your books are really fast-paced how do how do you do that so i don't do it consciously uh in fact i start off a little slower uh consciously and that i want to build up to something um it's just not it's thus far anyway it hasn't been natural for me to dive right in with i mean there's action in the beginning but there's but there's not um i guess it's not a sustained like i need to describe i need to build up this foundation uh for the reader for understanding as things move forward so although yes they might start with an action here in a in a prologue or in that first chapter um i do settle it out and that's conscious because that's what i liked to read growing up that's what i still have to read today i like to get an understanding i like to understand uh the history i like a little some character development even if it doesn't come right off the bat i like having that prologue or first chapter that that generates some questions and how slowly those are answered over the course of the novel and then it speeds up throughout with a couple of hard hits in there um and settles back and then it has to end with that resolution so uh and hopefully in a thoughtful way um all the violence uh the character development um i do put a lot of thought into that um but i want it not to just be my thought into it i want to be thoughtful if that makes sense thought full violence um and so i do spend a lot of time developing that but once again it's very it's very natural for me to do that but i do i do i am conscious of not just starting off and maybe this will change over time depending on the book and the theme and the storyline and all that sort of thing um but just like start off with something a hard-hitting car chase and then maintaining that pace throughout i think it's a little bit exhausting for for the reader you need to have that just like in a movie um you have to have that time for the for the audience the viewer to sit there relax have a bite of popcorn have a little bit of coke or pepsi or whatever yeah and think about what just happened and then question what might happen going forward because i think if you don't give the reader or the viewer a chance to do that they're just they're here the whole time without being able to think ahead and have that that i wonder what's going to happen oh and get that sort of a reaction it's just no there's no pace to it so uh so i do think about that but so far it's been very natural for the books to go that way so it feels natural when you're reading it it really does it feels like you just you uh do you do you outline a book before you begin how in what detail do you lay it out before before you begin or do you just start in oh i do i outline for sure i start with that that one page executive summary and this is held true uh for all the books to include book five that i'm working on now and book six because i know where book six goes i know i have the one page executive summary for book six already so that when i'm writing i'm not wasting any bandwidth worried about how i'm going to end book five book five i know beginning middle end uh and then i know book six already so i'm not wasting this bandwidth as i'm writing book five worried about book six at all so i know exactly where it's going so all my bandwidth is focused on making book five right now the best it can possibly be without that little voice saying oh boy you think you're going to end this one way well how does that how are you going to start book six or what does that mean for the character going i already know so that's not there at all all that bandwidth is right there making book five the best it can be so i start with that one page executive summer which is like a flap in a in a book like right there similar although a lot rougher obviously with a few other random thoughts thrown in um and then i take that and turn that into an outline and thus far it's been prologue part one part two part three and epilogue um that's just been a natural way for me to do it i won't necessarily always do it that way but that's kind of how it's worked out thus far and then i get that as detailed as i can without it slowing me down so if i get to a part where i'm like uh how's the reader gonna gonna you know is everyone gonna believe this or how am i gonna get james reese out of this situation and i'm not gonna spend a week thinking about that if i can't figure it out i just go around it threw it over it continue because i know i have a year to figure this stuff out i'm not going to uh i'm not going to get bogged down on the outline side of the house knowing that i have all this time because what i'm really doing is i'm adapting i'm capitalizing on momentum i'm looking for gaps in the enemy's defenses i'm doing all the same things that i did on the battlefield i'm doing it in a book i'm doing it in a in a place where if i mess up the consequences aren't nearly as dire i can sleep on it i can get up and fix it tomorrow i can go i can edit it four months from now so i can figure out this six months from now i can figure out this one problem in part two third chapter in part two so i don't need to get bogged down in that i can just keep driving forward ah i'm i'm def i'm a believer in that too it's the old thing of the editor's mark of tk meaning to come right and you just sort of it's like blitzkrieg right where you hit it's resistance in the enemy you just go around them you know you bypass the the point of resistance and you'll come back and mop it up later yeah oh yeah no it's very and all these that's what this i mean that's what all these books do so when people ask me hey what should i read i want to write a novel what should i what should i read and you know i always caution them hey you can spend the rest of your life reading about how to do something and it doesn't have to be writing it can be anything doesn't even have to be on the creative side of the house it can be anything in life you can study things almost too much and it's very easy to do that these days because of the internet because we've spent like back let's say 1985 well there was a finite amount of things you could read on how to do something go to your local library and you could read a few books on a certain subject and that was about it uh but now you could do it forever so i think that's a uh that's very dangerous uh for someone that's uh one that doesn't even know that it's resistance they think they're studying they think they're doing resist they think they're they're doing research but really they're procrastinating yeah yeah and you gotta have a certain point where it's time to get down and do the work and that's why these are so fantastic and i did want to ask you about how you do this with your with your publishing company that you started to get these these out there and what these are for those that are watching or listening these are books on on creativity and these are books on leadership these are books on life these are so fascinating i love the so i always recommend these to everybody that asks me hey what should i read i want to be a writer i want to be a screenwriter i won't do anything in the creative space these are the books i recommend and uh and i say read these and then get to work exactly what it says it even says it right here the work and you know even if you do the work there's no guarantee that you'll be quote unquote a success or you'll get to that stage where you want but i can guarantee if you don't do the work you will not get there so uh so i i recommend these to to everybody these are absolutely fantastic thank you thanks for that how did you uh how did you come up with with starting to do that what was the inspiration behind wanting to do this series of books on creativity and resistance um they they started with the one book the war of art and i have one more question i want to ask you i know can we run a little long absolutely oh my gosh you have a yes absolutely i mean i started with the one book the war of art and that was basically i'm sure you'll relate to this completely jack being a professional writer your friends would come to you they say i've got a book in me you know and i know i want to write it you know and i would sit down with my friends like till two in the morning you know over coffee and beer and whatever telling them you know and trying to psych them up and mainly telling them about resistance with a capital r their own tendency to procrastinate to sabotage themselves to [ __ ] up etc and just kind of psyching them up to you know sit down and do the freaking work you know and of course nobody ever listened to me so after doing this like 10 times i finally i had like a couple of months off and i thought i'm going to write this down and then i'll just give it to somebody here read this you know so that was how the war war of art started and sean coined my partner published it he had his own company then and then after that we just sort of decided well let's do another now let's do another let's do another and they've and so they've the bunch of follow-ups came after that yeah those are fantastic um and for anybody watching listening you can get through these fairly quickly um and which is also wonderful because it's not intimidating um some books you know some other ones up there on the shelf that might be eliminate a little intimidating because just because they're thick these ones not thick and you can get through these fairly quickly and there's so much valuable information in here and not just information but wisdom and that's the that's the the key is taking past experience whether it's successes or failures and then applying that those lessons to future decisions and that's what we call wisdom moving forward and that's what we a lot of people tend not to do uh at the strategic level when we're talking about uh politicians and everybody else who can study our history and hopefully take lessons from history and apply those to future decisions but uh we're lacking a lot of wisdom i think uh in a lot of spaces these days but that's what these are these are uh these are books about really about wisdom you sharing that and i sincerely appreciate you doing that i think i have a note in one of these actually i think we talked about it um yeah i wrote there's a man going around taking names johnny cash uh and i got it from page 71 and so that was one of the things that uh for my first novel the terminal list that kept me kind of on that path was having that theme of revenge simon schuster they took out all my uh johnny cash quotes because they're like ah there's uh there's rights with the estate and all that stuff so i was allowed to keep one which was there's a man going around taking nothing because johnny cash took that from somebody in the 1800s and it's an unknown source so we were allowed to use uh use that one without any copyright issues but this one what did it say i said 71 so yeah hear it right here and this one says be brave my heart plant your feet and square your shoulders to the enemy meet him among the man killing spears hold your ground so i have that highlighted here in uh in turning pro so that obviously resonated as that that's everything well for anybody that's listening that's a quote from the real life warrior poet archilicus uh from like uh the 7th century bc that's a true quote it's nothing i i made up or anything amazing um oh so i want to ask you one thing jack yes yes getting back to thrillers and and the way thrillers operate i know some books this is about character some books will be not thrillers but other types of books will be all about examining some character hamlet you know or something that really go in depth to that and i wanted to ask you how how do you well how can i put this how much weight do you put in say uh in in any book because i know you like you're going to have six books and probably a lot more with james reese how much weight do you put into the character of of james reese as opposed to the action or or whatever else there is a lot um so i think that these books are resonating with people one because of that authenticity piece because i take those emotions and the feelings behind certain events that happen downrange or in life in general and then i take those and apply them to that completely fictional narrative so although it's a fictional thriller political thriller uh the emotions that the protagonist feels come from a real place so it's so it feels like it's real but not just the protect well i'll go stay with the protagonist with the main character for a second we're all on journeys we're all on that hero's journey um i was introduced to joseph campbell very early in in life in 1988 through a series of interviews he did with bill moyers on pbs called the power of myth uh found here with a thousand faces uh right after that and of course that resonated and either i think it was just subliminally i started applying that hero's journey to things that i read to the things that i saw on movies or on television um and just tape would would apply that journey to hey did this work why did i not like this movie as much as this one or why did i not like this book is it because yeah is it because that main character didn't interact with a mentor along the way is that why is it because he didn't uh he didn't face that that crucible in the way that he could use either knowledge or a tool that was passed on to him did he not come back from where he started and pass on those lessons like were there missing elements so in life we're all on this journey and so my books aren't just james reese in another situation and then i pick him up the exact same character drop him in another situation the next book pick him up drop him he's an evolving character because we're all evolving along our own journeys in life um no one's staying stagnant even if you think you are you're probably not you're evolving time is passing and you're choosing how you're going to spend that time um and so is my character james reese he's along this journey he's trying to figure out what he is is he a killer is he a soldier is he a hunter what what is he in life as he hopefully takes that what we talked about those lessons learned from previous experiences and applies them going forward as wisdom um so we're all on this journey so i want the reader to be along on that journey with james reese as he evolves as he grows hopefully but maybe he stumbles a few times maybe like we all do in life um so that'll all be part of this journey so it's not just the same character dropped in different scenarios so i'm very cognizant of that and then also even just characters that appear for one chapter like the the woman you mentioned in in the dialogue to the devil's hand she needs a background and uh i want people to connect with her on some sort of a level and even though she might never be mentioned again um she has to have this background in the connection she just can't be a person with a name from a country that's it no she has to have something that humanizes her to the reader and that includes bad guys as well they have to for me anyway i like to have that background because we all have it in real life we all have baggage we all have failures we all have successes we all have things that shape us so even for minor characters that just show up for a few paragraphs i have that background in there and i think that's important let me ask you this is bringing me to another question the bad guys the villains yes how much uh how much thought do you put into the villains and what what are the what do you what characteristics or what do you need in a build what makes a great villain in a thriller i love riding the villains because uh for me for james reese it's um i won't say easy i never use that term but uh i don't have to go and interview say a navy seal sniper from ramadi at the height of the war and then take the answers to whatever questions i ask from him and then have it filtered through whatever biases i have whatever other research i've done uh and then spit that back out into a fictional narrative so there's all these like playing that game of secret along the way almost um i can just remember what it was like to go on ramadi at the height of the war and set up in an abandoned building or go into somebody's house and to do the job so then i can take that feeling and emotion and apply it directly to that to that fictional narrative now for let's say a lobbyist i don't have any touch points with lobbyists politicians no touch points there it's something that i would never want to do i can't imagine i mean even though politics is the art of compromise just i'm not very good at that not the compromise piece i understand its importance in that realm but it's not something that i'm attracted to um i was it was in my dna to be a navy seal and to be a writer um it is definitely not in my dna to be a politician so i have to put a lot of thought into that and luckily there are a lot of real world examples that our politicians give us almost daily uh hypocrisy or you know twisting of laws or just you know whatever we have so much material out there that i can draw on uh and same thing on the lobbyist side of the house i can there's so many books out there about lobbying and this sort of thing i can really i can uh i can take real world examples from multiple sources and then morph them into a single character that's uh that has a trait or two traits that uh that i want to explore or exploit uh as a as a novelist so uh so it's so much fun for me to go into the to uh to the bad guys and to develop those bad guys and then when i'm talking about someone that's not a lobbyist that's not a politician but that's a terrorist or something like that um well i have a background on as far as the history side of the house goes the personal experience side of the house goes i've done a lot of reading obviously on terrorism and insurgencies and counterinsurgencies and warfare that i can weave in to these different characters to develop them and hopefully humanize them a little bit along the way so so that those parts are probably the most uh most fun for me as an author will will you ever do jack will you like like i will sometimes for my villain i'll do a file that's just about the villain and i'll just sort of it's really i'll make up a whole life story for him and i'll you know kind of you know get a real handle on what's what he's do you do that kind of stuff too so what i do is i write at the top of my outline i have the name and the position um and i do a lot of research into the name to make sure that it's uh it's accurate for the background in the part of the world and i look at multiple spellings then i'll call someone to ask to confirm and that sort of thing but i won't have the full background attached because i don't quite know it yet um i kind of i know exactly i know exactly not exactly i know pretty much where they're from what their point uh the point of them being in the novel is so that's that's there but then i get to know that character through his or her interaction with other characters as i write so as i write particularly the dialogue i found i didn't expect this going in i get to know the personalities of these characters through the dialogue and as they talk their personalities come out and then i jive back into that research to more fully develop those characters and that background to support that personality that's come out as i've created this dialogue with other characters so that's kind of what i found thus far anyway and that's just that just came about naturally ah that's really interesting to me jack because i sort of do the same thing and you're talking about really you're sort of discovering the character almost as the camera is rolling so to speak right yep just like if we meet somebody for the first time and you're talking to them or you're uh you're running into someone that you and is always character dependent but maybe you've met a few times or maybe it's an old friend so there's different ways that that you're going to interact with those people based on your background their background what you need them to do to move the story forward so all those things help develop those characters more fully and i really enjoy that let me go back to the protagonist for a second yeah yes the character of the protagonist of james reese in your case um now there are a lot of ways as a novelist where you can kind of reveal character right you could do an interior monologue right you could have james you know talking about this and that and and uh which is different than a screenplay as you know uh yeah i've learned a lot about this over the last year working on these the scripts for the amazon series so very very different which is which is so good that's really interesting because you can only use what they say or what they do you really can't get into that voiceover is really like a no no um but is there a a a way that you will reveal james reese's character to the to the reader or are there ways that you deliberately say i'm not going to do that like i'm not going to have an extended interior monologue or or do you nope it's what comes it's what comes naturally um so i don't start off with hey i'm not gonna do this but i definitely start off with uh hey i'm going to do this if that makes sense so i'm going to have him question certain things i'm going to have let's say katie uh question him about something or have her think about something that he said or look notice something that he does and have her question so there's all sorts of ways to develop those characters whether it's from the person's point of view or from someone else's point of view observing them which is probably even more more powerful way to to do it i think or thus far it has been anyway uh and there's a few different points where i want to do that throughout each story knowing that a reader um might miss it if i just throw it in once uh and i found that out from the first novel the the my editor had very few edits for for all the novels thus far and i give you credit for that because of that yellow sticky that i had that brought everything back to that theme of revenge and the second book everything brought back to that theme of redemption third book everything that brought back to the dark side of man so as i was writing whether it was a paragraph a sentence a chapter they all had to somehow directly or more importantly indirectly tie back to those themes and so there was very there were very few few edits um but uh but one but one of the edits that was in there um was uh was about that very thing was about hey you've been involved with this book um for the last year and a half um the reader's reading it once they're reading it for the first time so what you know you think you're giving something away right one sentence one word that's hidden in there once all these other words uh and you'd think that by dropping that one in there that you've you've blown it you've given it away you want to give a hint as from what's to come but not give it away perhaps so that when the reader gets to the end they they like oh now i remember what that in chapter seven yeah yeah when the author wrote this or the character said this or this person did this um and so my editor said you know but the reader doesn't so you need to add a couple other hints yeah you've added a couple other hints in here and i thought oh my gosh it's going to totally give it away and it doesn't i mean a few people figure some things out but not everybody the vast majority do not um so uh so yeah so i've i've discovered that early on that i don't need to worry too much about um ruining the surprise if there's a surprise if there's a twist um if there's something that i don't want to reveal until a certain part of the novel um but i want to hint at it that uh that i don't have to be overly concerned that i've given it away too early when when you jack when you've been now having working on the amazon series and sort of being a screenwriter do you do the thing with the index cards the three by five cards on the wall i don't know i know there's programs for it now where you can you know move things around on your on your computer but no i don't i don't have that yet um but i copy and paste uh and i had a program called scrivener for the third book and i thought that i would use that forever um and i have no explanation as to why i did not continue to use that it is set up kind of like microsoft word but you can drag research into chapters so you have to remember the website you went to you don't remember oh where's that photo that i wanted to reference for this chapter just describe this church or whatever it is you drag and drop it in and it's there in a research file attached to each chapter and then if you want to move if you're like you know what chapter four should really be chapter nine uh and you can just drag it and drop it back instead of having to copy yeah yeah yeah and then you know and then go back because i'm worried if i cut that i'm going to lose it so copy and then paste like you have to do in word this you can just drag and drop it and it's all constantly backing up and i thought i was going to use it forever but for some reason for this for book 4 for devil's hand i just started in word and just kept it and probably because there's so many things going on kids were in the house for cove but it wasn't yeah i just never got a chance to get organized but uh but it really helped on book three to be able to use scrivener and uh and to drag and drop chapters and organize things but even for this one book five i'm sticking with with word uh this time around as well ah it's you're a real instinctive writer jack you know i think i'm kind of the same way it's sort of like i get to the point where i say just write the [ __ ] thing you know we have to get to that point now but now with deadlines you know there's no messing around you know uh what was i gonna oh what was your yellow sticky for the devil's hand uh so well we so in the last year and a half we've gotten to be good friends and you got you let me know that i misinterpreted what you said on joe rogan's pocket i took it as you had a yellow sticky with one word on it next to your typewriter uh it looked in my mind exactly like the one behind you and that kept you on theme uh so that's what i did and then once we got to know each other you told me that that's not what you said on joe rogan that's just what i interpreted back then but what you did tell was a story of a a playwright who would have a one sentence theme for right play and uh so so i was so i was like ah okay uh i can have more than one word so for uh for the devil's hand it was what does the enemy learn by watching us on the field of battlefront yeah that's great it's uh it's a what we call in the military red selling it so it means looking at it from the outside and kind of um picking apart a plan taking about lessons learned applying them to future battle plans that sort of thing so um so that's what i did i wanted to put myself in the enemy shoes if i was iran china russia north korea super empowered individual terrorist organization what would i have learned by watching us in iraq and afghanistan syria and a couple other places as well but mostly iraq and afghanistan for the last 20 years and of course as i'm writing covet hits and i'm in the enemy's shoes and so i'm thinking okay the enemy's definitely learning something from our response to covet so that was real time incorporation a summer of civil unrest which kicked off while we were together actually yeah up at thunder ranch last year and uh so once again the enemy is learning from these things they're looking at these things with a passing interest or and going about their day no they're looking at uh at these things and figuring out how to uh exploit our weaknesses uh same thing a very contentious political season an election cycle once again they are learning from these things so the book became a lot more timely uh than when i outlined it than i initially anticipated when i outlined it in august of 2019 i had no idea that tomorrow yeah yeah turned into such a pivotal year in our country's history in the history of the world so uh so i've expanded my one sentence my one word theme into a sentence or possibly two uh for future novels well it really worked jack and it really that that really comes through when you read the book you know that that's that we're being watched you know and people are learning from us and we're making mistakes yeah oh certainly it's certainly true yeah there's no doubt about it you know just to throw in a little thing of my own for in a man at arms my newest book speaking of the protagonist i made a really conscious decision that you would never go inside his head telamon of arcadia this roman legionary that's on a mission in the first century a.d and that everything you would learn from him it would be from the outside because i wanted him it was like a movie like shooting a movie because i wanted him to be what he was to me which is kind of a man of mystery that i don't quite understand what he's what he what he wants and and that sort of thing so you would always see him through the eyes of one of the other other characters and uh that's another thing and i find and you do this too jack and it's very helpful i think i say this for writers that are watching us now or listening to us now that when another character subsidiary character reacts to our main character or talks about them and says this guy is a liar everything he says you know or he's only in it for money or whatever it is that can be a great way of of delineating the character's character because a lot of times of course the people will be wrong the people that are sussing out the character they'll be revealing their own prejudices but yeah and i noticed that uh it happened people do screenwriters do that in movies a lot too you know particularly like a western where you have a kind of a taciturn gunslinger a clint eastwood type of character other characters will comment on them and samurai movies they do this too it's a great technique to have other people react and and and make observations oh yeah i think that's probably more fun uh for for whatever it is more powerful yeah as well so i use that in in writing obviously it happens in the screenplays um and the scripts for the for the series and for any for any movie but uh and of course there's that um i forget who said john gardner i think was credited a couple other people have been credited with uh saying hey there's there's only two stories in all of of uh of fiction it's a a stranger a stranger comes man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town uh you know that's you know there's there's a lot there's a lot to that and especially in the western genre when we're talking about westerns and then uh with a lot of that crossover into uh the samurai films uh they share a lot of the same characteristics yeah yeah but uh there's a lot of that there's a lot of that stranger comes to town or man goes on a journey particularly stranger comes to town when we're talking about westerns or the samurai films those tend to be uh quite powerful because there's that mystery and people are reacting to that person who is this person and of course the child does it has a you know reinvigorated that stranger comes to town uh with yeah the jack reacher novels quite successfully yeah let me let me uh let me bring this to a bit of an end here a little closer podcast is this i'm sure because we're going to do this again yes we are but um tell me a little bit about the series about the chris pratt series what's going on where does it stand what are you doing oh my goodness so it is uh they're in the middle of filming right now so it's an eight part series for amazon prime uh filming episode four right now so um it's uh but it's i think everybody's journey and you you you know much more about this than i do my experience is very uh is a sliver of screenwriting and and the hollywood journey as a whole but uh my sense is that every project is different because all the people involved are are different and they have different experiences different life experiences different professional personal experiences that they bring to it so every time you bring a group of people together whether it's actors or producers or writers however this these these people get morphed and thrown into this uh this mix together they're all bringing these different backgrounds uh to it so i think everyone's experience is different so mine was that chris pratt optioned the book before it even hit shelves so it's not like it was out there and a bunch of people saw it and then uh and one chose it or 10 people wanted it or nothing like that it was before it even came out so that's part of part of my journey uh and antoine fuqua wanted it as well so chris and antoine got together to do it but chris optioned it um and then they uh put together a um got a show runner so like for those listening it's like a it's a screenwriter he does a lot does a lot more and uh we put together that first script so me the screenwriter put together that that first grip primarily him me just learning and then adding a few things here and there and then he took that with chris pratt and antoine and they shopped it around to netflix to amazon prime to hbo showtime apple and i guess there was some sort of a bidding war and amazon ends up with it uh so from there amazon dropped in a bunch of money and now you get that writer's room together there's 15 people that are now bringing their different life experiences into it and those are all different and then they take your novel and turn it into or they take the terminal list and turned it into uh seven other scripts based off with that foundation of the first one and then i was able to advise how do you feel about that jack do you feel like uh they're taking it out of your hands your baby is being what's your attitude toward that i'm just so thankful to be here and to be in this position and when you turn over something and you know more than i do um there's a lot of trust involved when yeah when you hand this thing over to somebody else so for me trusting chris and trusting antoine they couldn't be in better hands and i also know being a student of this just uh my whole life is that it's going to change you are now telling a story through a visual medium rather than on the written page yeah things are going to change so if you're an author and you think that your story's not going to change when you bring it to the screen well you're probably not right and if you are if you've maintained creative control let's say if you have 20 novels you're a huge name you don't need the money anymore you can do what you want someone wants to option it and you say okay but i'm maintaining creative control and you've never had any experience screenwriting before and you want it to stay exactly like the book well i don't know i mean maybe it could work out but for me i knew hey look at first blood david morrell's 1972 first blood much different than the film both fantastic in my opinion so but very different so i knew that things are going to change things are going to be different and what's great about this is that we've taken a different look at the book in that we're telling it as a psychological thriller so i love that it's set up from the beginning to not just be a political thriller not just to be an action type thriller it's already different in its perspective from the very beginning as a psychological thriller so uh so i like that and i think if if that story is told well by amazon and by chris and antoine whoever else is out there doing interviews then the reader the person that expects it or wants it to be exactly like the book knows oh it's already coming where they're already coming at it from a different perspective they're already coming coming to it as a psychological thriller so it's going to be different so in their head i think they'll be like okay it's going to be different rather than hoping that it's going to be exactly the same but without being prepared for it to be different so i'm thrilled and for chris he wanted to keep it gritty dark primal violent uh keep that keep that those themes alive uh that was very important to him but he also knew that the story would need to morph because we're now telling it as an eight-part series for amazon do i dare ask what your relationship is like with chris oh yeah yeah he's fantastic does he admire you does he want to be you as uh i don't know about that he's probably pretty happy with how things are going for for him but uh yeah he's great we um we linked up uh in 2018 spent five days in the backcountry together getting to know each other in person um and then we stayed in touch and got to be uh good friends over the last couple of years here and now we're involved in the project together so he's just he he is amazing such a good guy just a normal guy which was important to me because i wanted as i wrote the character i wanted the character to be somebody that you'd want to sit down and have a beer with somebody i want to have coffee with but also had the training the experience the mindset the drive to be able to flip that switch and do the job and get the things done that he needs to get done and so i thought who's that guy that can do that who's the guy that that needs to take a risk as an actor because i'm taking a risk uh leaving the military to do this my family's taking a risk yeah along this journey uh who's that actor that needs to take a risk and i thought that's chris pratt because he's done up to this point he's done things that are a little more fun and back then he hadn't done when i when i started writing the novel in december of 2014 he'd only done parks and rec and he'd only had this very small role in zero dark 30. he'd done some other things but those are the the two that stood out to me um and i knew that hey tom hanks did all these things in the 80s that were comedies and then he took a risk with philadelphia in the early 90s and then from then on he could do whatever he wanted and i'm like who's that guy who hasn't been the action hero yet in this way like he's uh and as time progressed he did guardians of galaxy he did um avengers he did jurassic world so he did these more action-centric films but not dark gritty violent primal not something that i thought um i thought that this is a person that wants to do something different that uh that and that can pull this off in a way that's going to surprise people so that's uh and he's just fantastic and antoine fuqua oh my gosh what an amazing man just uh that guy is you know when you're in the presence of someone that you're like there's something about this person that that's antoine and he is just such a visionary uh such a hard worker um so creative and so nice like he's like everybody involved in this project and so many people have come up to me on set and said hey we've been involved in hundreds of films we have never experienced a film that uh has this feeling to it they're like everybody is so kind this is just there's some sort of energy here um and so that's been really cool to hear from so many people on set and uh and so many people also are fans of the novels guys come up to me on set and say i tried to get on this movie because this phone because because i love the books and they want to talk to me about land cruisers they want to talk to me about guns and knives and military stuff motorcycles and so that's that's been been fun too but what's really stood out is that it's the similarities between a set and a military operation right so i walked on that set for the first time 350 people working on it craft food services that's like army logistics training you guys you got to feed the army all right then you have the uh the explosives guy on set and uh he's getting everything set up for the explosions and the stunt people to pull i've pulled the the stun people back and make them fly through the air and uh in the seal platoon you have your breacher you have very explosive guy on set you have your transportation person that's getting the vehicles moved around and putting the right positions getting everything set up well in a sealed platoon you have your mobility guy the actors as they walk on they're getting handed their weapons their night vision their gear all that stuff and then when they're done they have to turn it back in all that stuff has to be accounted for just like in a seal platoon you have antoine the director he's like the commanding officer out there and then you have chris pratt he is like the platoon commander or the troop commander uh setting that tactical level tone where he's setting that strategic level tone so a lot of similarities between a military operation and uh and the set and when will we be able to see this that is classified but actually i don't know it's uh sometime in 2022 but there's not an exact date i think there's probably a lot of things that need to be worked out they still have to get through filming without stopping because of covid um oh yeah yeah california still if somebody gets it they shut down for have to shut down for a certain amount of time and and that sort of thing so i think there's a few a few outliers in there that could derail things or delay things um haven't yet so knock on wood but um but we'll see hopefully sometime in 2022. okay great it's great to hear your enthusiasm for it i love this for you guys chris fratt and antoine i love the stuff they've done i think you everything you said is right on target i can't wait to see you know this project when it's up on it's it's two feet and standing tall i'm excited to see it it's uh i've seen a couple of the dailies they call them and i've seen a couple of the rough draft director's cuts from the first couple episodes and i'm i could not be more thrilled with the way it's great that it's starting out so uh so yeah we'll see we'll see are you let me ask you any questions my goodness we're way over time already and i did we barely got to a man at arms we talked a little bit about their series on creativity over here but look i have i have all these i had all these things to talk to you about all right fix here well we'll have to do it again sometimes yeah these ones right here look at this i mean look at all those those are the ones that keep arriving at the house and my wife's like what what is this like this one right here yeah israeli defense forces the six day war you know it took a little bit to track that one down yeah with the first marine division in iraq 2003 no greater friend no worst enemy this one though this one right here let's see where is it so i'm actually one of my characters in my the book that i'm working on now is inspired by this and i recommended this jimmy oh you can see it there yeah yeah have you have you had a chance to read it yet jack i've read it but i haven't i've read it the way you would do research i haven't like sat down with it with a whiskey or a coffee and and engrossed myself in it like you would a novel so i've read it the way i usually do a lot of the books that i do research for oh actually is to go through to read beginning read the end read the middle skim check it out like that's that sort of a thing do some research about it from other sources yeah but uh but yeah just i mean yeah you'll see when i when i send you a book when i send you book five you'll okay very immediately know um what uh what this book's influence i'll tell you one short story about that i know we're like way over time but when i was researching the lion's gate i was in israel and i interviewed dael dayan who was the daughter of moshe dayan and she's been a big um she's kind of a celebrity a writer and and uh she was assistant mayor of tel aviv at the time anyway i'm interviewing her and i ask and i've read the book i'm really steeped in that book and i'm asking her about you know tell me about this and she kept saying to me it's in the book in my other book read my other book it's in my she wouldn't i wanted to tell a story so finally i just said to her would you mind if i just stole everything in your books and just you know put it as if it was coming out of your mouth and she said she said yeah and maybe you'll be able to make it a better story oh that's funny she was very sweet that's amazing that's great and for so for people that um i didn't bury out to ask you any questions but um and i was going to take a lot of notes too that was this is my opportunity to take a bunch of of notes from the from the master here but uh we'll have to do it again jack we will definitely do it again for sure uh and for those that aren't following you you are now in the social media realm for a while you had your website and you had blog on there you had the uh was the writing wednesdays is that what you had yeah yeah so you had those going on there i remember it's the tribe stupid i read that when i was downrange years and years ago so you have an amazing website such a great resource for for anybody particularly for for authors or uh aspiring authors writers and then now you're in the social media realm you have a you have your instagram page and on that instagram page you do a lot of book recommendations on there where a lot of these have have come from um so so where can people where can people find you and uh and what instagram is probably the main thing and i gotta say i learned this from you jack you know i'm following in your footsteps you know i thought i just i have to have a presence out there you know i can't be too much of old school but i'm i'm on instagram on my um and uh we're doing another new video series right now called the hero's journey right kind of get into that in sort of a lot of different ways and um but yeah that's it you know steven pressfield on instagram and uh i have my website and that's about that's about it i'm not like you jack i haven't got all of the the the apparatus yet but we're getting there we got a good uh microphone here you know i know i'm so impressed it looks so good i mean my goodness that's a good one uh and then and what's the next project then what are you working on right now and and how does that since we since we are already over time um do you take a i know you don't take a break like you start the next book the day after you finish the last one but after you do that after you write that first paragraph maybe or maybe it's a it's starting an outline or whatever that may be do you ever take a breath or is it are you constantly working i do take a breath you know and my theory of this maybe it's probably your theory too i'm very much afraid of like what seth godin calls the dip right where you finish project six and you haven't started project 7 yet and for me i immediately go over the cliff into you know despair and so i really want to like i always say when i finish book number whatever i want to be 90 pages into the next book already so that i can start you know that the next day but what what i will do jack is like once i've got some momentum going i feel on a new project i feel like i've got a beach head right the troops have landed yeah you know we've got the you know the food and we got the ammo yeah then i'll take a break because i know we've got enough momentum that i can go back to it got it two weeks later or something and it'll be there but i never want to just go off the cliff at the end of something not knowing what the next thing is going to do i've never heard you say that before we've never talked about that exact thing before but uh but i do i do the exact same thing so when i say i start the next one the next day i do but at the same time then there's other things that need to get taken care of and of course yeah and kids and all the rest of it you're constantly juggling all this insanity but uh but yeah i think it's important to do that as well to get right into that next one uh to get to be able to take to be able to take that breath to take that beachhead and then take that tactical pause yes tidy up a couple things that might need yeah maybe you need to do some press for this book you know that sort of thing yeah so i find that that's the and if you go back and you look at authors over time let's say go back to beginning of the 20th century on and you'll see authors that did take a break um between books and long breaks between novels uh and then go into exactly what you said a state of despair lot a lot of alcoholism a lot of yeah a lot of issues uh if you go back and study some of these guys uh during that that time period and i think that might be a reason right there is that they didn't jump right in i mean i don't know i'm just thinking about this yeah i don't know either but it would make sense that they didn't hop right in to that next one that they did take too long of a break and then start to worry and now you're taking a bandwidth with the worry hey can you do it again can i do uh can i write another book that resonates with the public with the readership the way the last one did and then time goes on like this and then they now they're adding some some things to the mist so helpful that might might not be so healthy and then off they go that cliff like you like you just described so i think it's important to take that beachhead just like in the military yeah with any project take that beachhead and uh and then uh then take a little bit of a breath yeah my my friend norm stahl is kind of a mentor to me he has an analogy i don't know if i told you this supposedly a rat a rat's teeth keep growing and at a pretty accelerated rate and if the rat doesn't keep gnawing and wearing the teeth down they grow back into his brain and kill him wow we've got to all keep gnawing and wearing down those teeth oh my goodness that's great i'm gonna i'm gonna write that down as soon as we're off here and maybe incorporate that into a novel whether it's true or not i think it's fantastic i love it i love it awesome well we are over time but thank you so much for doing this i mean it turned into an interview of me and i really wanted to talk to you about all this stuff but we will do it again um and i just want to also tell you how much i sincerely appreciate your friendship uh your mentorship your example um i want to thank you for writing your the novels that you you do and then also sharing uh the wisdom that you have uh in this series of books on creativity that anybody whether they're an author a sculptor a painter or a leader um should have in their library and should revisit often uh until they slay that resistance and well thanks to you thanks to you jack too and you know you're you're my hero i've learned so much from you i'm so happy that we've got this friendship that you know started you know whenever it was a year and a half ago and uh i know it's going to keep going and i can't wait to see you in person thanks for having me i really did want to ask you these questions and i'm sure that as far as anybody that's watching this they got a lot out of this you know so this was a this was a good one uh well thank you so much and hopefully i'll see you in la soon okay great all right to the gear highlight section of the danger clothes podcast and since i was just talking to steven pressfield about writing about books about research uh about inspiration about uh slaying resistance uh i figured i'd talk about the importance of building your library so uh what i love about books whether they're uh they're fiction or non is the paths that they can take you down in life as you continue to build that foundation of knowledge which hopefully allows you to turn some of that into wisdom as you move forward and can base those decisions on some of the things that you've learned from other people's experiences not just your own but uh from the study of history so uh steven pressfield's books right here uh but also he has those books and steven if you follow him on instagram uh has recommended a lot of other books and uh as you can tell i got quite quite a few so build that library especially today when it's so easy to control information because it's all online it's all electronic it can be edited it can be erased it can be cancelled and right here this is my dictionary from 1987. i still have it i've had many dictionaries over the years uh big gigantic uh leather bound ones but i keep coming back to this one because it's it's handy and i also like this because i can look up definitions today on the on google and i can compare those definitions to the definitions of 1987. so i spend a lot of time with this as i'm writing uh i just like it because it connects me to that uh that written word and that page and uh so highly recommend getting a dictionary not just a really nice one it's very cool to have a nice one but also getting one that you can uh toss in a backpack that you can uh have on a shelf and not have to have to worry about so uh definitely have a dictionary have a thesaurus and have it separate from what you can find online so uh this is mine right here you can tell it's been beat up quite a bit over the years but uh every single novel i reference this so uh build your library thank you for tuning in to the danger close podcast an ironclad original presented by sigsauer you can find steven pressfield at stevenpressfield.com and stephenpressfield on instagram and that is s-t-e-v-e-n press field and be sure and pick up his latest book a man at arms and if you haven't read any of his other books to date whether it's the series on creativity or his fiction historical fiction or non-fiction on this side of the house it's time to get started and if you like the conversation be sure to leave a five-star rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts to help beat some of those big tech algorithms i'll see you next time on danger close you

Channel: JackCarrUSA

Views: 7,042

Keywords: true believer, navy seal, eagle beyond, terminal list, jack carr, ken follett, order of man, podcast, savage son, jre clips, joe rogan, robert louis stevenson, free range american, jre #1467, navy seal training, discipline equals freedom, the terminal list, navy seals, youtube channel for men, masculinity, positive thinking, personal growth, personal development, extreme ownership, jocko willink, jocko podcast, jack carr terminal list, Sig

Id: _rfrLxJz9sA

Length: 78min 35sec (4715 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021