This book is excellent for helping you break through the barriers that keep you from moving forward in your life.
The subtitle of this book — Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles — does a good job of describing the content that’s inside this book.
On one of the first pages of the book are 2 short paragraphs that introduce the main theme:
WHAT I KNOW
There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.
What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
* * * * *
I read this book a little over 12 years ago — in 2014. At the time, I was riding Light Rail to work every day, which meant I got to do a LOT of reading during my hour-long daily commute (a half-hour each way).
This was one book I was very glad I had time to read in large chunks of undivided time.
Because there are SO MANY nuggets of wisdom in The War of Art, I’m only going to share a few excerpts. But basically, the main message Pressfield is sharing in these pages is this:
Resistance has many characteristics.
Pressfield spells them out on several pages, most of which contain just one or two short paragraphs, describing each characteristic. According to these chapters, “Resistance is invisible, internal, insidious, implacable, impersonal, infallible, and universal.”
Resistance is also “fueled by fear” and “is most powerful at the finish line.”
Pressfield’s quote on the back cover of the book is good, too:
“Creative work is … a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”
(71% of over 31,000 Amazon ratings for this book are 5-star!!)
* * * * *
INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: At the back of the book, I saw that Pressfield (a former Marine) was made an honorary citizen of Sparta in 2003 — one year after The War of Art was published.
His second novel, a historical book of fiction that was published in 1998 (Gates of Fire), is about the Spartans’ battle at Thermopylae, narrated by one of the few survivors of that battle.
This book has become part of the curriculum at the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico. It’s also been placed on several recommended reading lists at these schools.
