Break Through the Block and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
The War of Art has been one of the most influential books that I’ve had the pleasure of reading. I decided to take a venture down the path of secular (non-Christian viewed) books and read this masterpiece by Steven Pressfield in under four days. It will change the way you view your creative blocks and what you can do to overcome them.
Over the next three days, I will post some quotes pulled from the book to give you a taste of its contents. Purchase this book today and enjoy it like I have.
Book One – Resistance: Defining the Enemy
When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty.
Be a master to the form, but a servant to the craft.
It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.
The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew each day.
The working artist will not tolerate trouble in his life because he knows trouble prevents him from doing his work. The working artist banishes from his world all sources of trouble. He harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in his work.
Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce.
To combat the call of sin, i.e., Resistance, the fundamentalist plunges either into action or into the study of sacred texts. He loses himself in these, much as the artist does in the process of creation. 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.
If you find yourself criticizing other pele, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.
Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.
The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
It is commonplace among artists and children at play that they’re not aware of time or solitude while they’re chasing their vision. The hours fly. The sculptor and the tree-climbing tyke both look up blinking when Mom calls, “Suppertime!”
