The 2015 Book Project

I’d heard about this book before, mentioned in reverent tones at writing conferences, by writers and writing consultants alike. It makes every list of “Best Books on Writing” that I ever run across. Before I read it, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The name Steven Pressfield loomed large, as having some kind of genius to which I would never rise. I put off reading this book because, as the cover promises, it’s a “kick in the ass” – and I wasn’t ready for one, yet. I thought it would be a good book to kick off the non-fiction section of The 2015 Book Project, and it was.

In The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, Pressfield calls the enemy of the creative process “Resistance” (with a capital “R”, mind you). This Resistance appears whenever you are pursuing any creative calling: writing, painting, composing… it doesn’t matter what it is, just that the activity is what you feel called to do. Resistance is what pulls you away from that.

The book is packed with lines that I found nodding my head along to, talking about how sitting down to write is the hard part, not the writing. How Resistance seems to come from external circumstances, but often it is in our own self. The first 2/3 of the book are excellent: a great pep talk to sit down and get to work, regardless of what you feel like doing. The last third of the book seems to run off on some philosophical and spiritual tangent that I did not quite understand. There are still a few gems tucked away, but not as many.

Favorite Quotes:

“Resistance will unfailingly point to true North – meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to the calling or action that we must follow before all others.” – p. 12

“Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, ‘I’m never going to write my symphony.’ Instead we say, ‘I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.’ ” – p. 21

“We don’t just put off out lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.” – p. 22

“What does Resistance feel like? First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything.” – p. 31

“The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it… So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.” – p. 41

“He [the writer] eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind.” – p. 77

“The most important thing about art is to work.” – p. 108

Should you, as a creator, read it?

Yes. If you’re struggling to sit down and write or paint or compose, this might be the pep talk you need. Don’t expect it to solve your writing problems for you, because as Pressfield says, you still have to do the work. There are a lot of helpful tidbits about being an amateur vs. being a professional; about creating even when no one is watching, and a lot about failure and how to use it to your advantage. There is a lot more than the handful of quotes I typed out above.

And with that kick in the pants, I’m going to go CREATE.

Have you read The War of Art? If so, what did you think?