sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of
yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from.
I was starving as a screenwriter when the idea for The
Legend of Bagger Vance came to me. It came as a book, not
a movie. I met with my agent to give him the bad news. We
both knew that first novels take forever and sell for nothing.
Worse, a novel about golf, even if we could find a publisher,
is a straight shot to the remainder bin.
But the Muse had me. I had to do it. To my amazement,
the book succeeded critically and commercially better than
anything I'd ever done, and others since have been lucky too.
Why? My best guess is this: I trusted what I wanted, not what
I thought would work. I did what I myself thought was
interesting, and left its reception to the gods.
The artist can't do his work hierarchically. He has to
work territorially.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD 153