Notes of 'The War of Art' by Steven Pressfield

The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

Break through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Foreword by Robert Mckee

Book ONE

Pressfield labels the enemy of creativity Resistance, his all-encompassing term for what Freud called the Death Wish – that destructive force inside human nature that prevents one to accomplish long-term laborious task.

A rogue’s gallery of the many manifestations of Resistance. In the instance of writers it is ‘block’, a paralysis whose symptoms can bring on appalling behaviour.

Book TWO

Pressfield lays out the day-by-day, step-by-step campaign of the professional: preparation, order, patience, endurance, acting in the face of fear and failure. He emphasizes that the professional focuses on mastery of the craft.

Book THREE

Looks at the ‘The Higher realm’. He says, ‘when we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us…we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete’. Indeed stunning images and ideas arrive as if from no where. He shifts gears and looks for the cause of inspiration not in human nature, but on a ‘higher realm’. The ultimate source of creativity is divine. The innate power to discover the hidden connection between two things – images, ideas, words – that no one else has ever seen before, link them, and create for the world a third, utterly unique work. Like our IQ, talent is a gift from our ancestors. In the fortunate talented few, the dark dimension of their natures will first resist the labour that the creativity demands, but once they commit to the task, their talented side stirs to action and rewards them with astonishing feats. In short, if the muse exists, she does not whisper to the untalented. When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty.

What I do

How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I have put in my time and hit it with all I have got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome resistance.

What I know

The secrete is this. 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.

The Unlived Life

Resistance is the toxic force on the planet. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. If you believe in God you must declare Resistance evil, for it prevents us from achieving the life God intended when He endowed each of us with our own unique genius. The Romans used Genius to denote an inner spirit, holy and inviolable, which watches over us, guiding us to our calling. A writer writes with his genius, and artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center. It is our soul’s seat, the vessel that holds our being-in-potential, our star’s beacon and Polaris.

BOOK ONE

Resistance – Defining the enemy.

Resistance is Infallible: 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 never sleeps: The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.

Resistance is fuelled by Fear: Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.

Resistance only opposes in one direction: Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher, it kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.

Resistance is most powerful at the finish line:

Resistance recruits allies: The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.

Resistance & Procrastination: Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize.

Resistance and trouble: The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble.

Resistance and this book: What finally convinced me to ahead writing this book was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead. I was developing symptoms. As soon as I sat down and began, I was okay.

Resistance & sex: Sometimes Resistance takes the form of sex, or an obsessive preoccupation with sex. Because sex provides immediate and powerful gratification. It goes without saying that this principle applies to drugs, shopping, TV, gossip, alcohol and the consumption of all products containing fats, sugar, salt, or chocolate.

Resistance & Fundamentalism: The artist and the fundamentalist both confront the same issue, the mystery of their existence as individuals. Each asks the same questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of my life?

The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self-confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world.

The fundamentalist entertains no such notion. Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. The fundamentalist cannot stand freedom. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats to the past. He returns in imagination to the glory days of is race and seeks to reconstitute both them and himself in their purer, more virtuous light. He gets back to basics. To fundamentals.

Fundamentalism and art are mutually exclusive. He creates destruction. Even the structures he builds, his schools and networks of organizations, are dedicated to annihilation, of his enemies and of himself. Fundamentalist experiences resistance as temptation to sin.

The difference is that while the one looks forward, hoping to create a better world, the other looks backward, seeking to return to a purer world from which he and all have fallen.

The truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

Resistance & Criticism: When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived our own life.

Resistance & self-doubt: If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), Ám I really a writer? Am I really an artist?’ chances are you are.

Resistance and fear: The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that the enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. An professional actor takes up roles that challenges him. He refuses roles that are repetitive.

Resistance and isolation: The theme of the book – even if we can’t at the start understand the problem or articulate it. As the characters arise, each embodies infallibly an aspect of the dilemma, that perplexity. These characters might not be interesting to anyone else but they are absolutely fascinating to the writer. They are us. The writer imagines the reader, whom he conjures as an aspiring artist much like his own younger, less grizzled self, to whom he hopes to impart a little starch and inspiration and prime, a little, with some hard-knocks wisdom and a few tricks of the trade.

Resistance and healing: The concept seems to be that one needs to complete his healing before he is ready to do his work. This way of thinking is a form of Resistance. The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt. What better way of healing than to find our center of self-sovereignty?

Resistance and support: Seeking support from friends and family is not desirable. The more energy we spend stoking up support from colleagues, the weaker we become and the less capable of handling our business.

Good dreams with muse: A dream that inspires and encourages it is a deeper self that is delivering the dream like that. Don’t talk about it. Don’t dilute its power. The dream is for you. It’s between you and your Muse. Shut up and use it.

Combating resistance: Turning professional

Professional	Amateur
Plays for keeps	Plays for Fun
It’s his vocation	The game is his avocation
Full-time	Part time.
Seven days a week	Weekend warrior
Do not over identify with out jobs	Over identifies with out his avocation, his artistic aspiration. He takes it so seriously that it paralyzes.
She doesn’t talk about the mystery	Amateur over glorifies and is preoccupied with the mystery.
Knows that fear can never be overcome	Believes he must first overcome fear.
	Takes external criticism to heart

A Professional: Somerset Maugham was asked if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. ‘I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. ‘Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine O clock sharp’. In terms of resistance, Maugham was saying, ‘I despise Resistance, I will not let it faze me; I will sit down and do my work.’ He reckoned another, deeper truth: that by performing the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, he set in motion a mysterious but infallible sequence of events that would produce inspiration.

What writer feels like: Principle of priority a) You must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important and b) You must do what’s important first. What’s important is work.

The artist must be like that marine who is miserable. He has to love being miserable. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt and humiliation.

Qualities that define us as professionals:

Ø We show up every day.

Ø We show up no matter what so as not to let down our co-workers, or for other, less noble reasons.

Ø We stay on the job all day.

Ø We are committed over the long haul. Until we hit the lottery, we are part of the labor force.

Ø We accept remuneration for our labor.

Ø We do not over identify with out jobs.

Ø We master the technique of our jobs.

Ø We have a sense of humor about our jobs.

Ø We receive praise or blame in the real world.

A professional is patient: The professional understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, no the grasshopper, the tortoise not the hare. The professional arms himself with patient, not only to give the stars time to align in his career. He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He conserves his energy. He prepares his mind for the long haul.

A professional seeks order: He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind.

A professional demystifies: A pro understands that all creative endeavor is holy, but she doesn’t dwell on it. She knows if she thinks about that too much, it will paralyze her. So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. She doesn’t talk about the mystery, while an amateur over glorifies and is preoccupied with the mystery.

The professional has learned better. He respects resistance. He knows if he caves in today, no matter how plausible the pretext, he will be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow. Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you are finished. The pro doesn’t even pick up the phone. He stays at work.

A professional prepares mentally to absorb blows. His aim is to take what the day gives him. He understands that the field alters every day. His goal is not victory (success will come by itself when it wants to) but to handle himself, his insides, as sturdily and steadily as he can.

A professional does not hesitate to ask for help.

A professional does not take failure (or success) personally. He cannot let himself take humiliation personally. Humiliation, like rejection and criticism, is the external reflection of internal resistance.

Tiger Woods – Photograph Flash – Tiger woods didn’t react reflexively. He didn’t take it personally & thirdly he didn’t take it as a sign of heavens malevolence. What he did do was maintain his sovereignty over the moment. He himself still had his job to do. The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keeps working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World war III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods.

The professional blows critics off. He doesn’t even hear them. Critics, he reminds himself, are the unwittingly mouth pieces of resistance and as such can be truly cunning and pernicious. The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme complement. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

A professional recognizes her limitations: She gets an agent, she gets lawyer, she gets an accountant. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing. She brings in other pros and treats them with respect.

He continues his journey.

A professional is recognized by other professionals.

You, INC: Making yourself a corporation (or just thinking of yourself in that way) reinforces the idea of professionalism. You the writer may get swelled head, but you-the-boss remember how to take yourself down a peg. If we think of ourselves as a corporation, it gives us a healthy distance on ourselves. We are less subjective. We don’t take blows as personally. I am Me. Inc. I am a pro.

BOOK THREE

As resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels.

Approaching the mystery: The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to your aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose. It’s an attitude of egolessness and service.

Invoking the muse: The last thing I do before I sit down to work is say my prayer to the Muse. I say it out Loud, in absolute earnest. Only then do I get down to business.

Sustain for me. Homer doesn’t ask for brilliance or success. He just wants to keep this thing going. Lastly, the artist’s wish for his work: Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings.

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic and power in it. Begin it now.

The process of self-revision & self-correction is so common we don’t even notice. But it’s a miracle. And its implications are staggering. Who’s doing this revising anyway without our exerting effort or even thinking about it some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us? Angels – Muse. What exactly is it doing? It’s Organizing. The principle of organization is built into the nature. Chaos itself is self-organizing.

When we like God, set out to create a universe – a book, an opera, a new business venture – the same principle kicks in. Clearly some intelligence is at work, independent of our conscious mind and yet in alliance with it, processing our material for us and alongside us. This is why artists are modest. They know they are not doing the work; they are just taking dictation. Its also why ‘noncreative people’ hate creative people’. Because they are jealous. They sense that artists and writers are tapped into some grid of energy and inspiration that they themselves cannot connect with.

Ego	Self
Resistance makes its home	Angels make it their home
Likes things jus the way they are	Wishes to create, to evolve
Believes in material existence
Death is real	Death is illusion
Time & space are real	Time & space are illusions – we move ‘swift as thought’ and inhabit multiple planes simultaneously
Every individual is different and separate from every other	All beings are one
The predominant impulse of life is self-preservation. We live and act out of fear in all we do.	The supreme emotion is love

Dreams come from the self. Ideas come from the self. When we meditate we access the self. When we fast, when we pray, when we are on a vision quest, it’s the self we are seeking.

The self is ever growing and ever evolving. The self speaks for the future.

The instinct that pulls us towards art is the impulse to evolve, to learn to heighten and elevate our consciousness. The ego hates artists because they are the pathfinders and bearers of the future, because each one dares.

We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. We know that if we embrace our ideal, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us.

Of course this is exactly what happens. But here’s the trick. We wind up in space, but not alone, instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable source of wisdom and companionship. We lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they are better friends, truer friends.

The authentic Self: Each kid was who he was. Even identical twins constituted of the exact same genetic material, were radically different from Day one and always would be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we are stuck with it. Find out who we already are and become it.

We have entered mass society. The hierarchy is too big. It doesn’t work anymore.

The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for its own sake. In the hierarchy, the artist faces outward. Meeting someone new he asks, himself. What can this person do for me? How can this person advance my standing? In hierarchy the artist looks up and and looks down. The one place he can’t look is that place he must: within.

I trusted what I wanted, not what I thought would work. I did what I myself thought was interesting and left its reception to the gods.

Qualities of a territory

Territory	Hierarchy
Provides sustenance
Sustains us without any external input. Our role is to put in effort and love. The territory absorbs it and gives it back to us in the form of well being
Can only be claimed alone
Can only be claimed by work
Returns exactly what you put in

The artist and the mother are vehicles, not originators. They don’t create the new life, they only bear it. That is why birth is such a humbling experience.

The sustenance one gets is from the act itself not from the impression it makes on others.

The supreme virtue: Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue.

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. Give us what you have got.