The 1 Book Every Writer Should Read.
Reflections on The war of art — the holy book for creatives.
Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, is a must-read for all creatives — living and dead.
The people in my life are sick and tired of me quoting him. It’s not just the things he said but the way he said them, with a certainty that not even scientists use after conducting randomised controlled trials.
He emphatically stated that if you are a writer who struggles with procrastination, resistance is the reason. If you should be drawing, composing, or content creating and you keep putting it off, resistance is to blame.
If you are a German politician who decided to start a war instead of painting, resistance played a role. Yes, he did mention the very general you are thinking of.
Steven Pressfield did not pull his punches.
The power of shame
Some lines from the book are like those bible passages that admonishes us. Those passages that made you hang your head in shame, recognising that you were the problem all along.
Most people baulk at the idea of shame being used as a tool to motivate.
And I partly agree.
But we all need those moments when we stare in the mirror and just say ‘You little s***’
The essence of shame is that it does two things:
- It helps you identify the problem. In the words of Taylor Swift;
It’s me. I am the problem. It’s me.
2. It helps you pay penance. There is no repentance without a confession.
Forgive me art, for I have sinned. I said I was going to write today, but I spent all day scrolling social media.
So what even is Resistance?
Resistance is a force of nature. Like gravity, or photosynthesis.
If a rock is thrown up, it will fall down.
If a writer says they want to write, they won’t.
The force that brought the rock down is similar to the force that prevents the creative. Invisible, constant, and powerful.
So how then do planes fly if gravity exists?
Do we shut off gravity for planes to fly? No, we just fly despite gravity.
The same thing goes for creativity. You can't shut off resistance, you are meant to lean into it and lift off.
Resistance is equal to your level of interest. If you have a lacklustre interest in a pursuit, the resistance will not be as strong. The stronger the interest, the greater the resistance.
Resistance differs from laziness. Postponing a shower all weekend is not resistance. Postponing working on that book, song, or painting is resistance. Resistance shows up when there are real ramifications. When the stakes are high.
How do you battle Resistance?
It doesn’t involve any magical potions, earth-shattering forces or complicated formulas.
First, you overcome resistance by acknowledging it. Realising what you are up against will go a long way in preparing you to combat it.
Once you acknowledge the existence of resistance, you need to recognise what resistance bows to. Who does resistance respect? What kind of creativity does resistance yield ground to?
In a world of planes, not every metallic object can fly. Gravity does not just yield to everything, it yields to certain materials behaving in a certain way.
It's the same for resistance. Resistance yields to the professional.
Professional by day, professional by night.
Most creatives have side jobs. It’s the fashionable thing now, or should I say, the only way to survive. Gone are the days when you could live in an attic loft somewhere and dedicate your whole life to art, whether said art made you money or not.
Now, you have to recognise that your mere existence, even without venturing beyond the four walls of your abode, is billable.
Even if you went into a paranormal coma and required no sustenance whatsoever, there will still be direct debits ready to go out at the end of the month.
So yeah, most people have a ‘day job’. Are you considered a professional in your day job? If you are, what makes you a professional there?
At night and on the weekends, when you venture into your side hustle, do you approach it with the same professionalism you accord your day job? I am not saying you should work yourself at your creative side hustle until you end up hating it as much as your day job. But you need to bring a level of consistency and intensity to it that shows you respect the arts.
Are you a professional?
A professional is someone who
1. Shows up every day, or at least on a routine. Monday to Friday, 9–5.
2. Shows up no matter what. Apart from the occasional sick leave, we show up to our day job no matter what. No hot water to shower, yet we still arrive for our shift. Our trouser has a rip in the bottom area, but we still clock in. Our oatmeal got burnt, but we still show up for work.
3. Stays on the job all day. We don’t go home until the whistle blows. 9–5 doesn’t become 9–1 or 11–4. We are there for pre-stipulated hours, and we stick it out.
4. Is committed for the long haul. Except you chronically jump from one job to another, most professionals practice a career for life, even if they change companies or departments. They stick to it.
5. Recognises the stakes are high and real. Some of us don’t realise what we stand to lose by not working on our creative project.
In our day job, it’s very obvious that if you don’t work, and you get fired, you can’t pay rent, you can’t eat, and you can’t care of your family. But what if someone showed you what you are missing out on by not writing that book, starting that YouTube channel, recording that song, or painting that masterpiece?
What if someone shows you the award, the recognition, the money you stand to lose by half-assing your creative work? The stakes are high and very real, even when you don’t see it.
6. Accepts remuneration for labour. We recognise that our work is valuable, so we gladly accept remuneration for the value we have given.
7. Doesn’t overly identify with their pursuit. You can create, conceive, gestate, nurture it into existence, but the moment it’s out there, it’s gone beyond you.
Our art reflects us, just like our children resemble us, but we can’t take the way our work is perceived too personally. You are a distinct entity from your work the moment you release it because then it is open to the interpretation of others. So the professional does not hold back on their work, worried that if released for other people to enjoy and criticise, the critic's opinion is going to shatter his desire to continue creating.
That’s why you see artists release an album of twelve songs and you personally can only stand two of them. Despite that, the other ten songs exist. They are part of the body of work, whether appreciated or not.
8. Masters the technique of the job. Either at school or while on the job, you had to learn the ropes of your day job. Same for your creative pursuit. You need to spend time learning the ropes. When a professional is called upon to do something, he delivers, because he has learnt the know-how.
9. Has a sense of humour about their jobs. Being a professional means taking your pursuit seriously and also, not taking it too seriously.
10. Receives praise or blame in the real world. While the amateur is hiding their work away, overly attached to it, the professional steps forward and lifts his work over his head for everyone to see.
Imagine how bold that is. Then the professional walks away and returns sometime later with another work of art, hopefully better than the last. But the important thing is, he is playing on the real-world stage.
If you embody these characteristics of a professional in your creative work, resistance is bound to recognise that you mean business and give way for you to flourish.
I want to end this article by reflecting on my favourite chapter in the book.
Resistance and self-dramatization.
I love this chapter because when I first read it; it sent a spine-tingling awareness down my back. It was like getting confirmatory answers to a question you answered years ago but never knew if you were right or wrong.
Years before I read the words by Steven, I had already acknowledged this very concept. Self-dramatization, much more than procrastination, is a thief of time.
A few years ago, I unfollowed certain people on Twitter because I realised that almost every 2–3 working days, they had a new thing to be outraged about.
Either these inflammatory people generated the discourse or they jumped on an already existing discourse. Either way, I could count on them always being enraged and extreme in their views.
It was self-dramatization. A ploy for attention. And they got it.
One day, I decided I no longer wanted to play a part in it. I was getting older. Might seem like self-dramatization on my part to say so while just being in my twenties then, but time is a slippery mistress.
Spending a whole day being outraged about who should cook egusi soup, the husband or the wife, was not one of the highlight reels I wanted to look back on thirty years down the line. By the way, this is a real and recurring topic of discourse, and while I would not look down on the effect of oppressive patriarchy in Sub-Saharan Africa, the discourse is usually very unproductive in effecting any real change.
In the words of Steven;
Creating a soap opera in our lives is a symptom of resistance. Why put in years of work designing a new software interface when you can get just as much attention bringing home a boyfriend with a prison record?
Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown ups arm the phaser, the whole starship lurches from one spine tingling episode to another and the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone drops in to amp it up. Dad gets drunk, mum gets sick, and Jennie shows up for church with an Oakland raider’s tattoo.
Have you read The War of Art? Heard about the concept of resistance the author surgically lays bare in this book?
Do you recognise moments of resistance in your day-to-day life?
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