I recently read a book titled ‘The War of Art’ by Steven Pressfield. It argues that the writers’ biggest enemy is Resistance, and advocates ways to identify and deal with it. Here are my notes – part 2 from the book:
Now consider the amateur: the aspiring painter, the wannabe playwright. How does he pursue his calling? One, he doesn’t show up every day. Two, he doesn’t show up no matter what. Three, he doesn’t stay on the job all day. He is not committed over the long haul; the stakes for him are illusory and fake. He does not get money. And he overidentifies with his art. He does not have a sense of humor about failure.
The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love.
The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing.
The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it. The payoff of playing-the-game-for-money is not the money (which you may never see anyway, even after you turn pro). The payoff is that playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude.
Technically, the professional takes money. Technically, the pro plays for pay. But in the end, he does it for love.
The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work.
The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.
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.
The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.
The professional identifies with her consciousness and her will, not with the matter that her consciousness and will manipulate to serve her art.
The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so reinforces Resistance. Editors are not the enemy; critics are not the enemy. Resistance is the enemy. The battle is inside our own heads.
A professional schools herself to stand apart from her performance, even as she gives herself to it heart and soul.
The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.
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.
Resistance has no strength of its own; its power derives entirely from our fear of it.
The pro keeps coming on. He beats Resistance at its own game by being even more resolute and even more implacable than it is.
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.
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 our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.
When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.
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.
Artists have invoked the Muse since time immemorial. There is great wisdom to this. There is magic to effacing our human arrogance and humbly entreating help from a source we cannot see, hear, touch, or smell.
Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
What does it tell us about the architecture of our psyches that, without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us (and counsel us wisely) on how to do our work and live our lives? Whose voice is it?
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’re not doing the work; they’re just taking dictation.
I think angels make their home in the Self, while Resistance has its seat in the Ego. The fight is between the two.
The Self is our deepest being. The Self is united to God. The Ego hates the Self because when we seat our consciousness in the Self, we put the ego out of business.
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’re stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
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