Books/The War Of Art

Subtitle: Break Through the Blocks and Win your Inner Creative Battles
Author: Steven Pressfield

Being professional: preparation, order, patience, endurance, acting in the face of fear and failure — no excuses, no bullshit. The professional focuses on the mastery of the craft.

Summary

It's not the writing part that is hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Each of us have an unlived life, the cause of which is Resistance. It is the shadow of Genius. Some people don't live their lives unless death is imminent (the author gives the example of a cancer patient). The author gives the extreme example of Hitler that it was easier for him to start Word War II than stare at a blank canvas as an artist.

Book One: Defining the enemy

It is said that naming your demons gives you power over them. That's the first thing the author does. Give a name to force causing us to procrastinate: Resistance.

Resistance fights against any act that is in favor of our long-term growth, health or integrity. Resistance is intangible but it can be felt like a negative, repelling force. It's main purpose is to prevent us from doing the work that we meant to do. Resistance is the enemy within.

Resistance is invisible, internal, insidious, implacable, impersonal, indifferent, infallible, indefatigable and universal.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.

Resistance aims to kill. Resistance feeds on our fear. It keeps working in the direction of least resistance. It kicks in the strongest near the finish line, like Odysseus opening his bag of winds just as Ithaca was on the horizon.

Resistance is mostly self-sabotage, but it can also recruit others to sabotage us (remember Resistance is universal, so others have it too).

Symptoms of Resistance: procrastination, anything that gives instant gratification or pleasure, getting into trouble as a form of faux fame, cruelty to others or self, drawing attention to oneself in all the negative ways, self-dramatization and victimhood.

The author theorizes that people struggling to overcome Resistance often choose someone who is succesfully overcoming Resistance as their mate. He says that Resistance "disfigures" love.

Going meta: Resistance tried to convince the author to put it metaphorically into a fiction book instead of writing a non-fiction book exposing it.

Diagnosing Resistance: First you feel unhappiness, then you seek instant gratification, then it becomes clinical. Consumerism takes advantage of Resistance's victory over us. It feeds us with further distractions.

Resistance makes you criticize others for living their authentic lives. (I am still going to criticize this author in the Review section. This trick doesn't work on me.)

Self-doubt and fear are indicators that Resistance is at work. We must act in defiance of what Resistance is trying to convince us of.

So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.

Thinking that you can do your best work after some kind of "healing" is also Resistance. The author calls going to support groups also as a form of avoiding work, hence Resistance.

Rationalization is the right-hand man of Resistance. Don't believe it. Realization of our own fear might evoke shame, which might act against Resistance. Rationalization tries to replace shame.

Book Two: Combating Resistance

Professional vs Amateur. Being Professional is committing to something full time despite the Resistance. Professional writers don't wait for inspiration to strike them. They just sit down and start writing.

A professional has gotten good at one important skill: being miserable. Those with jobs are pros already. They just have to treat their calling the same way. A professional doesn't overly associate themselves with their work or love it too much. A professional takes money but does it for love. The taking money part is to have a proper professional attitude about it.

The professional: is patient (accepts delayed gratification, accepts Hofstadter's law), seeks order, acts in spite of fear, doesn't accept excuses (i.e. doesn't give in to Resistance), takes adversity into account, is prepared to face Resistance, doesn't show off, masters technique, doesn't hesitate to ask for help, doesn't take success/failure/rejection/humiliation personally, self-validates, recognizes their limitations, reinvents themselves, recognizes other professionals.

There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will.

Book Three

This part seems like complete nonsense to me at the time of writing. I might revisit it in the future.

Review

The author goes too far when he says that sickness, depression and anxiety could be bundled under Resistance too. Some parts of the book are overly macho.

Also, this book is somewhat cringe-worthy if you're an atheist.