Steven Pressfield

Every, the Iliad or the Odyssey or any of those other great works always start with an invocation of the muse, right?

Homer writes, you know, goddess, you know, tell the story, you know, and basically the

the artist is stepping or taking his ego out of the picture and saying, I'm not the one that's going to tell you this story about ancient Troy.

The goddess will tell through me.

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?