Book Review: The War Of Art

Sometimes a book can give you just what you need at that specific moment. It’s great to read a book and discover how you seem to recognize a lot of the information. It’s like you already know it but you never really thought about it. For me, Steven Pressfield accomplishes this with his book The War of Art - Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.

Clear And Concise
It’s a small book containing a lot of short and easy-to-read chapters. This is good. The book is about winning your inner creative battles, and it’s good to see the writer doesn’t need 500 pages to explain this. It’s about starting, so the sooner we are done reading the book, the sooner we can start. Start what? Start creating!

There are negative forces inside each one of us that holds us back from doing what we know we should be doing. Pressfield calls those forces Resistance. It’s those forces that keep the writer from writing, that keep the painter from painting and the composer from writing his symphony. And for a writer, it’s not the writing itself that’s hard, it’s the sitting down to write.

You Are Not Your Work
The book is divided into three parts, or ‘Books’. In Book One the enemy gets defined. And it’s clear what the enemy is: Resistance. And we can read how Resistance is something we all experience in one way or another. When does it occur, and in what forms?

Book Two tells us how we can combat resistance. This is described in a great way comparing the attitude of a professional with that of an amateur. A professional knows what it takes to create, and will not have anything hold him back from that. A professional will accept his own creations as they are, and does not take failure or criticism personally:

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly, But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still.

Beyond Resistance
Beyond Resistance is the title of Book Three. In this part we are taken a step further and take a look at the forces that help us when we act and start working like a pro. Every person is unique and is here with a mission. Will you do what you do even if you would be the last person on the face of the earth?

The War of Art not a practical manual on how to overcome procrastination and get more productive. Rather it’s a great description of a problem, the possible solutions and the reason why we should beat this enemy.

Not Just For Writers
I went to the bookstore to ask for this little book, they looked it up and said: “Oh, that book about overcoming writers block?!”. And that’s really not what it’s about. Steven Pressfield is a writer himself, so this form of art is close to his heart. But the book is great for any creative person, because it’s about the creative process, not the writing process.

Reading these words made me turn the last page with a smile:

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

Photo by I Love Trees