The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Yes you read that correctly, not the Art of War by Sun Tzu (which I hated) but the War of Art. A mistake many have made, including several bookstore employees after asking for their assistance in finding this book.
I’ve been excited to read this for a while but unfortunately I’ve not been able to find it at local bookstores. This meant I had to resort to ordering it from Amazon, something I try not to do in support of local bookstores.
The War of Art is a book on overcoming your creative battles. It’s split into 3 parts, the first is on resistance, what it is and understanding it. The second is on overcoming resistance by doing what the author calls ‘turning pro’ and the final part touches on the state beyond resistance when you’re in a ‘higher realm’.
The book is structured quite differently to most. It’s broken up into many topics, with each topic varying in length, from just a paragraph to two pages. Most are on the shorter side though, so it can be read quicker than you think.
I nearly stopped reading this book, I felt the start was lacklustre and it didn’t seem to be meeting my expectations but I’m glad I continued and finished. Even though it’s not great I did take a few things away, things I touch on below.
The more you fear and have self-doubt about creating something, the more that thing is for you. You wouldn’t have fear if it wasn’t important. So do it.
If you didn’t love what you were doing you wouldn’t feel fear you would be indifferent, fear is a good sign when trying to create.
Put the same energy you put into your day job into your passion e.g. turn up every day and do the work. You go to work no matter what, now have the same energy for your passion.
The artist should work for money because money brings professionalism, but money shouldn’t be the goal. You should definitely think about ways to make money as it stops people from using you.
Learn to split your work from yourself, you are not your work. This allows you to be indifferent to the reception your work receives.
Nothing else matters but what you think of your work.
There were other interesting things I took away from this which I want to elaborate on. For example in the third part of this book the author really looks at creativity in a spiritual sense, as something that cannot be understood, an ethereal feeling. We are given this thing that we are born to do, that’s within us, we are not born blank slates, but with tasks predetermined for us.
There is also a fascinating diagram in the book which you will find below. It shows the ego and the self. The ego is who we are on our day to day normal life, the self is who we want to be/born to be. Many are too busy succumbing to their ‘ego’ to reach their ‘self’ .Pressfield gives the example of a person being diagnosed with cancer and then suddenly realising what is most significant in their life, that is the self.
An important point that I initially agreed with but subsequently changed my mind on is the concept of doing work for your own sake and not for external approval. Pressfield claims that the most important work is the work you would do if there was no-one on the planet. Stating that Arnold Schwarzenegger would still go to the gym and Stevie Wonder would still be at a piano. These are examples I struggle to deal with because in all essence if no-one was around what would be the point, although we should create for ourselves you can’t discredit that external factors play a part, if only to a certain extent. But I may be taking those examples too literally and we’re probably saying the same thing.
I’ve heard many people lament about not creating for external approval but who would be there to take in our work if no-one was around?
I understand the premise of The War of Art, it’s meant to give you the motivation to create the things you are destined to create but it doesn’t do the best job. You may take more away from it if you’re a writer.
This isn’t a well known book so it’d be great to know your opinion if you’ve read it!
