Daniel Clausen's Blog - Posts Tagged "steven-pressfield"
Review of Steven Pressfield's The War of Art
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
This book is first and foremost a treatise on writing as labor. Writing is work -- much like going to the gym, fighting a battle, or plowing a field. That is the philosophy of the book -- one I tend to agree with.
Haruki Murakami talked in much similar terms about writing in his book about running. He wrote a book about running and the discipline of running; but he was also talking about the virtues necessary to be a writer.
Much of the book talks about the forces of "Resistance." Think about resistance as the accumulated forces trying to get you not to write, not to finish, to say you're a writer but to really live life as a fraud. It also tells a story -- over a course of vignettes -- about how one writer deals with his personal form of resistance.
The book is about motivation and professionalism. There are parts about other things, but mostly the book is about those things. You may also like the chapters about muses. Most of the passages are written in 1-2 page vignettes. Thus, perhaps the best way to read this book is in five to ten minute sessions before you're about to write.
This book is unrateable. It’s clear the author’s audience is himself. You may rebuke, “When is writing not?” But honestly, this time it really is for himself. It is very personally written. (I've written something very similar for myself, and it reads similarly). Thus, much of it will not connect with you. When it does, though, it will likely connect deeply.
Does that make it a two-star, three-star, four-star...it doesn't matter.
If you need this book. Read this book. I didn't need to read this book, but I still benefited from it. If you really don't need this book because you never face resistance when you write, then you don't need this book at all.
Here is the strange thing, one section in particular – Resistance and Fundamentalism -- just blew me away. I’m also an International Relations scholar and it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything on Fundamentalism that rang so clear and beautiful as that. If I could take those two or three pages and make them required reading for every IR scholar, I would.
Thank you, Mr. Pressfield. Well done.
This book is first and foremost a treatise on writing as labor. Writing is work -- much like going to the gym, fighting a battle, or plowing a field. That is the philosophy of the book -- one I tend to agree with.
Haruki Murakami talked in much similar terms about writing in his book about running. He wrote a book about running and the discipline of running; but he was also talking about the virtues necessary to be a writer.
Much of the book talks about the forces of "Resistance." Think about resistance as the accumulated forces trying to get you not to write, not to finish, to say you're a writer but to really live life as a fraud. It also tells a story -- over a course of vignettes -- about how one writer deals with his personal form of resistance.
The book is about motivation and professionalism. There are parts about other things, but mostly the book is about those things. You may also like the chapters about muses. Most of the passages are written in 1-2 page vignettes. Thus, perhaps the best way to read this book is in five to ten minute sessions before you're about to write.
This book is unrateable. It’s clear the author’s audience is himself. You may rebuke, “When is writing not?” But honestly, this time it really is for himself. It is very personally written. (I've written something very similar for myself, and it reads similarly). Thus, much of it will not connect with you. When it does, though, it will likely connect deeply.
Does that make it a two-star, three-star, four-star...it doesn't matter.
If you need this book. Read this book. I didn't need to read this book, but I still benefited from it. If you really don't need this book because you never face resistance when you write, then you don't need this book at all.
Here is the strange thing, one section in particular – Resistance and Fundamentalism -- just blew me away. I’m also an International Relations scholar and it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything on Fundamentalism that rang so clear and beautiful as that. If I could take those two or three pages and make them required reading for every IR scholar, I would.
Thank you, Mr. Pressfield. Well done.
