Steven Pressfield

So they're sort of asking, you know, help me, show me, you know, that kind of thing.

And I had a mentor, you know, Rob, we were talking about that earlier, a guy named Paul Rink.

He's like, can I get into the weeds on this thing, Andrew?

Please, please.

And...

He sort of introduced me to this concept.

This was like the first time I tried to write a book.

I was like 27 or something like that.

And well, I actually tried and failed before, but it was the first time I ever finished one.

And I used to have breakfast every morning.

This was in Carmel Valley, not so far from where you grew up.

And with my friend Paul Rink, who was maybe 30 years older than me.

He was an established writer.

He knew John Steinbeck, knew Henry Miller from Big Sur.

And he told me about the muses, the Greek goddesses, the nine sisters, whose job it was to inspire artists, right?

The classic image of the muse is Beethoven at the piano and a kind of a shadowy female figure is kind of whispering in his ear, you know, bringing him da-da-da-dum, right?

And so he wrote out for me, my friend Paul,

the invocation of the muse from, he typed it out on his Remington manual typewriter, the invocation of the muse from the Odyssey, from Homer's Odyssey, translation by T.E.

Lawrence.

And I've kept that, it burned up in the fire, lost it in the fire, but I've kept that for like 50 years.