Steven Pressfield

Too soon.

Like pulling the pin came from railroad.

If you want to uncouple one car from another, the trainman would pull a heavy steel pin and the cars would uncouple.

So like you would wake up one day in a bunkhouse six weeks into a season and so-and-so would be gone.

He'd say, oh, you know, what happened to Andrew?

Oh, he pulled the pin.

So at the time that I was there, I was trying for the first time to finish a book.

And I had run out of money, and this is why I was working to get the money.

And I realized that in my life, I had pulled the pin on everything that I'd ever done, on my marriage, on this, that, the other.

And this friend of mine, John...

Would I wanted to quit before the season ended, you know, and he would not let me do it.

You know, he sort of just had he just took me under his wing.

And so that was another thing which is drilled into my head in the sense of.

Am I going to finish this project?

Fuck yeah, I'd rather die.

I will die before I'll give up on this project.

And it was all because of him.

So those are two mentors that weren't writing mentors, but that I used there.

Those lessons stuck with me forever.

And I will say one thing, too, for anybody that's struggling with finishing anything,