This short book is filled with short chapters—some one or two paragraphs long, some a few pages—that are primarily to motivate people who are or aspire to be writers or painters or another kind of artist. But it’s also inspirational to folks who want to start exercising or lose weight or quit some addiction. The basic message is, essentially, you can’t keep saying stuff to yourself like, “I’ll start the novel tomorrow.” “I’ll start exercising/eating well tomorrow.” It’s all about overcoming Resistance to whatever goal(s) you have.

According to one segment, “Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there’s tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.”

This book is a lot of encouragement to delay gratification and work toward longer term goals. Drugs, alcohol, sex, and so on are ways to occupy our minds and our time and put off other goals we might have in mind, like starting a business or furthering our educations or finishing that novel we’re writing. It’s the kind of book you can flip a few pages through to remind yourself why you aren’t spending all your free time watching movies and drinking margaritas, which is easy, and therefore, fun. Working on bettering ourselves takes, well, work.

This was the most actually motivating motivational book I have ever read. It really lit a fire under me. And that is quite remarkable; normally anything remotely motivational makes me vomit. But this book, this book.

The author names and defines Resistance. The thing that holds you back from writing. The thing that is endlessly creative, endlessly stubborn, that wants nothing more than for you to not write. Or not to whatever the great important thing is that you are meant to do.

In fact, while this book is superficially about writing, this book really has nothing to do with writing, and everything to do with the fact that anything worth doing is hard. If you don’t have resistance, then that means what you’re doing doesn’t matter. Only things that really matter have resistance. For you it could be painting, founding a non-profit, raising whole and healthy children, overcoming an addiction, engineering an invention, any number of things, but one thing is certain: it will be hard.

This book is written in many chapters and each chapter is one single page. The chapters are topics or vignettes or examples, each bite-sized but powerful. It’s perfect to read one chapter a day and get yourself motivated to go write! Put your butt in the seat and do it!

I feel like this book is actually, in my experience, the single most important book for a writer. You have to name the problem and visualize the enemy in order to get focused and intentional and overcome that enemy. Before reading this book and naming that enemy, I constantly floundered with procrastinating writing. After, everything changed. Not saying I don’t have my days, but…really. It was a huge mindset shift. I plan to re-read this book every year. I also bought an extra copy and gave it to an aspiring writer friend of mine who’s going through a hard time.

Don’t do it because it’s easy, my friend…do it because it’s hard.

In the end, a lot of things about this book didn't work for me. I thought I would love it. It was recommended by some people I really trust. I found that it suffered tremendously from its writer's limited viewpoint as a white, male, older-generation writer. I don't often like to bring identity politics into things, but his position of entitlement, one he probably does not even know he occupies, colours his prose. It is and isn't as "easy" as he likes to make it. But he forgets his privileged position when he writes. He forgets everyone isn't him. He does refer to past hard times, but those do not seem to leave residual self-doubt, which is a huge stumbling block for the nascent artists I know. He does not particularly have a plan, and his suggestion of blocking out all else leads very strongly to forcing other people to pick up the pieces of your life around you, and leads to what I like to call binge-writing as opposed to writing as a lifestyle. The first part was better than the rest of the book -- it might leave you a bit inspired.

I was looking for some inspiration as I prepped for NaNoWriMo and this book had it in spades. So many great takeaways for anyone who is pursuing something creative either as a side hustle, passion project or full tine career.

I marked up so many pages and will be revisiting this book many times to come.

Yuck.
This was a legitimate waste of 2 dollars.

Pressfield is a former Marine, the author of a novel on the Greco-Persian Wars and a fan of the Bhagavad Gita, so probably someone who's become an expert in getting one's shit together in the face of adversity. "The War of Art" is precisely about how to muster strength and determination in any creative enterprise against our inner adversary, which he calls Resistance (name it procrastination or self-sabotage or writer's block if you prefer).

The books is divided into three sections: 1) a definition of what Resistance really is and how it manifests itself, 2) guidelines on how to fight Resistance and stop bullshitting oneself, 3) a somewhat romantic (jungian / nietzschean) development on inspiration, enthusiasm (in the etymological sense), connecting to the Self and becoming what we are.

I have picked up this book from the shelf in order to get a boost for a writing project I'm working on (and because it was prefaced by Robert McKee!). Two sentences particularly remain on top of my mind: "If I were diagnosed with terminal cancer, would I keep doing what I do?" and "If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?" These are a couple of the kicks in the ass I got while reading this book. I need to begin now.

This book was annoying, but I liked it OK.

I thought it was funny that most of the people the author held up as paragons of success are borderline psychopaths who have cheated and lied their way to the top (Lance Armstrong) or have cheated and lied their way through their personal lives (Arnold Swarzenegger and Tiger Woods).

The author contradicts himself, too: In the chapter "For the Love of the Game" he says, "Playing for money, or adopting the attitude of one who plays for money, lowers the fever," which is a good thing, according to him. Sounds like the definition of a hack to me, right? Using your talent to complete an assignment that you don't want in order to get paid?

But then later in the book he says not to be a hack, that using your talent with the aim of making money will kill "the muse." Even though he has clearly done it himself, throughout his career as a writer, in order to make money and get where he is today. The book itself has a hackish feel to it.

One of its redeeming qualities is that it's a fast read--I finished it in a couple of hours (I'm a slow reader). And I liked when he talked about dreams he's had and their meaning and the difference between hierarchical thinking and territorial thinking. All the "fighting resistance" cheer-leading was good, too, in its way.

But I never would have read this book if a friend hadn't given me a copy. If I'd leafed through it in a bookstore, I wouldn't have bought it, because it's too cliched and dogmatic for my tastes. And unintentionally funny, the way a know-it-all blowhard is.

P.S. And he actually says people have been cured from cancer because, after they got their diagnosis, they started doing what they loved. Yes, I'm sure the chemotherapy and radiation and surgery had nothing to do with their cure. It was all because they started fighting resistance and doing what they loved. He should contact all the medical research centers and tell them of his startling cure for cancer! Shut down all the cancer hospitals, because once people find out they just have to start doing what they love instead of undergoing yucky chemotherapy, hospitals will be obsolete!

If you strongly believe in God and are easily offended DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW! THOU HAST BEEN WARNED!

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First of all, the book should be renamed to:

The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle with God's Help.

or (try to read it with one breath)

The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle because there's only one path for you to follow, the one God gave you and you cannot change it or choose anything else because it is how it is and you should start creating something for the Almighty because you have to give something back to Him with the help of His trustful angels that guide you throughout the whole thing and you should be thankful for that and do not forget that everything you do is because He wants you to but you also have to work your butt of everyday in spite of all the things I've just said while it would be easier for God to just flick His fingers and do it than use you as a puppet and when the time comes to harvest your labour because He's the Master of the Puppets! (Metallica's song starts playing in the background)

The second title is still work in progress but with His help I'm sure that I will find the right path to make it good and right and pure and heavenly. Where are some angels when you need them? Oh, I forgot, I can't hear them shouting their pleas at me to use my gifts and work towards my only path (set by God, mind you) when I'm succumbing to Resistance which Steven Pressfield compared to Hell. (Seriously? Am I reading a book about procrastination or a Supernatural fanfic?)

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind people who believe in God nor I think less of them (I used to be one of them) but why so much talk about God in a non-fiction book? (Sorry about the joke, couldn't resist) But seriously now, I think he should have trimmed down some references to God and angels and focus more on the writing part. He says, work your butt of to be better but know that when you do it angels help you? I can't do it myself? Really? I need the help of angels to produce anything? Well, I'm an unworthy piece of human dung if I need constant help of God and God's assistants.

The book had some good points (you have to look hard for them though), not new ones that I have never read before on the internet here and there from other artists too (who did not refer to God in every sentence), but nevertheless I will use them for my paper. I just felt that he jumped from one point to another with no reason. First, he says that we should write daily and practice our art, which is right in every way, and then he says we should put in use the gifts God gave us and produce something for him. In my opinion, these are two different things and should not be mixed. I felt like I was being brainwashed into believing that God gave me gifts/talents and I should give my work back to him and that angels are guiding me through my work. Really? I sit down everyday in front of my computer screen and squeeze my brain to think and push myself to write and be better and angels get the credit? I do all the work myself but angels and God are the ones that made me able to? Why would someone write something like that in a book about writing/creating? Why speak so specifically? He made people who believe in God appear awesome and powerful and great and full of potential and here I was looking at the sentences with a big question mark hanging above my head. What the whaaat? Make up your mind Steven, either I do the work and I get credit for it or God does and I don't have to work at all because he's almighty and with a flick of his fingers he can produce the work for me. It can't be both at the same time. Don't mix these things together.

Steven doesn't believe in evolution, he doesn't believe that we humans create anything ourselves, but that only God gives so God has to receive something back. I'm not writing anything for God (either he exists or not), I'm writing myself and for myself. Steven tells us to do so many things and push ourselves but when we finally do it's only with God's guidance. What the hell? If God takes the time to help me write/create why doesn't he do it from the beginning and lets me rot in hell while I try to create something with all my power? Oh, because of free will and stuff! Yeah, right...

I feel like I'm going to start talking about God and I don't want to because I'm sure I will offend someone (as if I haven't already) so I'll stop here. If you want to read this book and you don't believe in God try to think that all the things Steven says are told metaphorically (it's really hard to do it at some points though). If you can't finish it, it's ok, God will forgive your weakness. (Sorry, Resistance made me write that) Anyways, I'll read some more books about procrastination and writing and I hope they won't be God related (I still can't understand how Steven mixed them together xD)

On a personal, spiritual level, this is the most important book I've read in 20 years, at least. It gives voice to thoughts I've always had but haven't acknowledged in years and years, too self-conscious, or discouraged, or ashamed: art as religion, as obligation.

It's too bad that I needed someone else to give me permission to think that way again, but at least I got it back, yeah?

Anyway I've seen a lot of reviews disparaging this book for its frou-frou ideas about angels and the Muse, and I just want to say that I can see how that might be off-putting for some people--heck, it's off-putting to me, to some extent--BUT he doesn't lean on it nearly so hard as some have said, and anyway I really believe that it pays sometimes to overlook the way someone frames the things he says, and dig for the meaning underneath.

Holy cripes. This book! I highlighted it so hard on my Kindle that the poor thing crashed repeatedly. Then I special-ordered a hard copy so I can kiss it goodnight.

A MUST read.

Timely and Timeless! I’ve had The War of Art on my TBR list for years and finally made time for it over the last two days, in the 11th hour of 2018.

The book is full of ways to recognize and overcome roadblocks in the realm of creativity. While Pressfield often provides examples related to being a professional writer, the concepts can easily be applied to any professional discipline.

The book is divided into 3 parts: Resistance (Defining the Enemy), Combating Resistance (Turning Pro), and Beyond Resistance (The Higher Realm). I really enjoyed the first two sections, which I found preferable to the third, but the book is great all around. I could relate to many of the ways we let resistance impact us, but also could relate to some of the ways we distinguish professionals from amateurs. Both a nice reminder of what you have accomplished, and that there’s still room to grow and for improvement.

I highlighted numerous quotes throughout The War of Art and know it’s a book worth revisiting in the future, for fresh doses of motivation. It is a timely read, as people often look to set new goals for a new year. It is timeless because the concepts - including the discipline required to succeed - ring true, again and again.

A Professional Accepts No Excuses
“The professional has learned better. He respects Resistance. He knows if he caves in today, no matter how plausible the pretext, he'll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow. The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you're finished. The pro doesn't even pick up the phone. He stays at work.”

جميل وخفيف بيفكرني بكتاب الحرب على الكسل بتاع خالد أبو شادي وقراءته مش مجهدة.