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80 Steven Pressfield

The book, as I said, is called The Profession. It’s a military/politi-
cal thriller set a few years in the future, when mercenary armies
have replaced conventional ones.

Scene after scene almost worked. But they all ran onto the same
rocks: the events were so proximate time-wise that they could
be doubted and second-guessed. The reader could say, “That’s
bullshit, I was there and it didn’t happen like that.” And the
events were too emotionally charged (9/11 played a role and
so did fictional withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan) and
involved such painful real-world issues (did our troops die in
vain?) that they overwhelmed the basically simple story and
pulled it off its politically speculative-future theme.

Remember what we said before about friends and family? The
answer came from there, from two people very close to me (they
know who they are) who thrashed in and banged around inside
the problem. They couldn’t see the full solution, but the ideas
that they stirred up helped me see it.

The answer was to move the book out farther into the future.

That was the stroke that
split the diamond.

In other words, nothing mystical, nothing New Age-y, nothing
involving the Law of Attraction.