Summary
Great writers are professionals who show up every day. Everyone who struggles is an amateur that waits for inspiration. Writing is a craft and a job. View it that way and everything becomes easier.
Key Takeaways
To be added on a reread. See notes below.
What I got out of it
To be added on a reread. See notes below.
Table of Contents
Summary Notes
Foreword
As I leafed through Book One, “Defining the Enemy,” I saw myself staring back guilty-eyed from every page. But then Book Two gave me a battle plan; Book Three, a vision of victory;
and as I closed The War of Art, I felt a surge of positive calm.
Seeking “support” is Resistance at its most seductive. No, the cure is found in Book Two: “Turning Pro.”
How does an artist achieve that power? In the second book Pressfield lays out the day-by-day, step-by-step campaign of the professional: preparation, order, patience, endurance, acting in the face of fear and failure—no excuses, no bullshit.
And best of all, Steve’s brilliant insight that first, last, and always, the professional focuses on mastery of the craft.
What I Do
When I start making typos, I know I’m getting tired. That’s four hours or so. I’ve hit the point of diminishing returns. I wrap for the day.
How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it.
All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.
What I Know
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.
The Unlived Life
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
As powerful as is our soul’s call to realization, so potent are the forces of Resistance arrayed against it.
Resistance is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, harder to kick than crack cocaine.
Book One – Resistance – Defining the Enemy
Resistance’s Greatest Hits
The following is a list, in no particular order, of those activities that most commonly elicit Resistance:
1) The pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional.
2) The launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise.
3) Any diet or health regimen.
4) Any program of spiritual advancement.
5) Any activity whose aim is tighter abdominals.
6) Any course or program designed to overcome an unwholesome habit or addiction.
7) Education of every kind.
8) Any act of political, moral, or ethical courage, including the decision to change for the better some unworthy pattern of thought or conduct in ourselves.
9) The undertaking of any enterprise or endeavor whose aim is to help others.
10) Any act that entails commitment of the heart. The decision to get married, to have a child, to weather a rocky patch in a relationship.
11) The taking of any principled stand in the face of adversity.
In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower
What are the characteristics of Resistance?
Resistance is Invisible
Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled.
But it can be felt.
Resistance is Internal
Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated.
Resistance is the enemy within.
Resistance is Insidious
Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that’s what it takes to deceive you.
Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.
Resistance is Implacable
Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable. Reduce it to a single cell and that cell will continue to attack.
Resistance is Impersonal
Resistance is not out to get you personally. It doesn’t know who you are and doesn’t care.
Resistance is Infallible
Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—mean-ing that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.
We can use this. We can use it as a compass.
Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
Resistance is Universal
We’re wrong if we think we’re the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.
Resistance Never Sleeps
Fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
Resistance Plays for Keeps
Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill.
Resistance is Fueled by Fear
Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it.
Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.
Resistance Only Opposes In One Direction
Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher. It kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually.
Resistance Recruits Allies
Resistance by definition is self-sabotage. But there’s a parallel peril that must also be guarded against: sabotage by others.
The awakening artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others. Once you make your break, you can’t turn around for your buddy who catches his trouser leg on the barbed wire. The best thing you can do for that friend (and he’d tell you this himself, if he really is your friend) is to get over the wall and keep motating.
The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.
Let’s consider the next aspect of Resistance: symptoms.
Resistance and Procrastination
Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize.
Resistance and Procrastination, Part Two
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.
Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives.
Resistance and Sex
Sometimes Resistance takes the form of sex, or an obsessive preoccupation with sex. Why sex? Because sex provides immediate and powerful gratification.
Resistance and Trouble
We get ourselves in trouble because it’s a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame.
Cruelty to others is a form of Resistance, as is the willing endurance of cruelty from others.
Resistance and Self-Dramatization
Creating 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 by bringing home a boyfriend with a prison record?
Resistance and Self-Medication
Do you regularly ingest any substance, controlled or otherwise, whose aim is the alleviation of depression, anxiety, etc.?
I once worked as a writer for a big New York ad agency.
Our boss used to tell us: Invent a disease. Come up with the disease, he said, and we can sell the cure.
We’re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratifi-cation, and hard work, we simply consume a product.
Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce.
Resistance and Victimhood
A victim act is a form of passive aggression. It seeks to achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution made out of one’s experience or insight or love, but by the manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent) threat.
Resistance and the Choice of a Mate
Sometimes, if we’re not conscious of our own Resistance, we’ll pick as a mate someone who has or is successfully overcoming Resistance.
Resistance and this Book
What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead. I was developing symptoms. As soon as I sat down and began, I was okay.
Resistance and Fundamentalism
The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
Resistance and Self-Doubt
Self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire to do it. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are.
The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident.
The real one is scared to death.
Resistance and Fear
Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign.
Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.
Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself.
Resistance and being a Star
Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance.
They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.
Resistance and Healing
The part of us that we imagine needs healing is not the part we create from; that part is far deeper and stronger. The part we create from can’t be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we’ve got, the better and richer that part becomes.
The part that needs healing is our personal life. Personal life has nothing to do with work. Besides, what better way of healing than to find our center of self-sovereignty?
Resistance and Rationalization
Rationalization is Resistance’s right-hand man. Its job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what cowards we are for not doing our work.
It’s one thing to lie to ourselves. It’s another thing to believe it.
Resistance can be beaten
Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.
Book Two – Combating Resistance – Turning Pro
Professionals and Amateurs
The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps.
To the amateur, the game is his avocation. To the pro it’s his vocation.
The amateur plays part-time, the professional full-time.
The amateur is a weekend warrior. The professional is there seven days a week.
In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation.
The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it.
He commits full-time.
A Professional
Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
What a Writer’s Day Feels Like
Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.
What’s important is the work.
We’re All Pros Already
Are there principles we can take from what we’re already successfully doing in our workaday life and apply to our artistic aspirations? What exactly are the qualities that define us as professionals?
1) We show up every day.
2) We show up no matter what.
3) We stay on the job all day.
4) We are committed over the long haul. Next year we may go to another job, another company, another country.
But we’ll still be working. Until we hit the lottery, we are part of the labor force.
5) The stakes for us are high and real. This is about survival, feeding our families, educating our children.
It’s about eating.
6) We accept remuneration for our labor. We’re not here for fun. We work for money.
7) We do not overidentify with our jobs. We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions.
8) We master the technique of our jobs.
9) We have a sense of humor about our jobs.
10) We receive praise or blame in the real world.
That was when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure.
For Love of the Game
To clarify a point about professionalism: The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn’t devote his life to it of his own free will.
The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing. Too much love can make him choke. The seeming detachment of the professional, the cold-blooded character to his demeanor, is a compensating device to keep him from loving the game so much that he freezes in action.
The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt extracted from the enemy one day, one hour, one minute at a time and paid for in blood.
Technically, the pro plays for pay. But in the end, he does it for love.
What are the aspects of the Professional?
A Professional is Patient
Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him.
Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion.
It knows we can’t sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.
A Professional Seeks Order
The professional cannot live like that. He is on a mission.
He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind.
A Professional Demystifies
A pro views her work as craft, not art.
She concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. Like Somerset Maugham she doesn’t wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition. The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration.
A Professional acts in the Face of Fear
The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear;
then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.
A Professional Accepts No Excuses
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.
A Professional is Prepared
His goal is not victory (success will come by itself when it wants to) but to handle himself, his insides, as sturdily and steadily as he can.
A Professional Dedicates Himself To Mastering Technique
The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.
The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not b e c a u s e he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in p o s s e s s i o n of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. He knows that by toiling beside the front door of tech-nique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.
A Professional Does Not Hesitate To Ask For Help
The student of the game knows that the levels of revelation that can unfold in golf, as in any art, are inexhaustible.
A Professional Does Not Take Failure (Or Success) Personally
A professional schools herself to stand apart from her performance, even as she gives herself to it heart and soul.
The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field.
The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still.
A Professional Endures Adversity
The professional endures adversity. He lets the birdshit splash down on his slicker, remembering that it comes clean with a heavy-duty hosing. He himself, his creative center, cannot be buried, even beneath a mountain of guano. His core is bulletproof. Nothing can touch it unless he lets it.
The professional keeps his eye on the doughnut and not on the hole. He reminds himself it’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.
A Professional Self-Validates
The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
A Professional Recognizes Her Limitations
She gets an agent, she gets a lawyer, she gets an accountant. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing. She brings in other pros and treats them with respect.
You, Inc
For a writer to incorporate himself has certain tax and financial advantages. But what I love about it is the metaphor.
I like the idea of being Myself, Inc. That way I can wear two hats. I can hire myself and fire myself. I can even, as Robin Williams once remarked of writer-producers, blow smoke up my own ass.
Making yourself a corporation (or just thinking of yourself in that way) reinforces the idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and-consciousness-running-the-show. No matter how much abuse is heaped on the head of the former, the latter takes it in stride and keeps on trucking. Conversely with success: You-the-writer may get a swelled head, but you-the-boss remember how to take yourself down a peg.
I have one of those meetings with myself every Monday. I sit down and go over my assignments. Then I type it up and distribute it to myself.
A Critter That Keeps Coming
Why does Resistance yield to our turning pro?
Because Resistance is a bully. Resistance has no strength of its own; its power derives entirely from our fear of it. A bully will back down before the runtiest twerp who stands his ground.
The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else. The ancient Spartans schooled themselves to regard the enemy, any enemy, as nameless and faceless. In other words, they believed that if they did their work, no force on earth could stand against them.
No Mystery
There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our mind to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that.
Book Three – Beyond Resistance – Higher Realm
Approaching The Mystery
Why have I stressed professionalism so heavily in the preceding chapters? Because the most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
Why is this so important?
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.
This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight.
When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.
The Magic of Making a Start
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.
I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.”
The Magic of Keeping Going
When I finish a day’s work, I head up into the hills for a hike. I take a pocket tape recorder because I know that as my surface mind empties with the walk, another part of me will chime in and start talking
Life and Death
The moment a person learns he’s got terminal cancer, a profound shift takes place in his psyche. At one stroke in the doctor’s office he becomes aware of what really matters to him. Things that sixty seconds earlier had seemed all-important suddenly appear meaningless, while people and concerns that he had till then dismissed at once take on supreme importance.
Faced with our imminent extinction, Tom Laughlin believes, all assumptions are called into question. What does our life mean? Have we lived it right? Are there vital acts we’ve left unperformed, crucial words unspoken? Is it too late?
The Self, as Jung defined it, is a greater entity, which includes the Ego but also incorporates the Personal and Collective Unconscious. Dreams and intuitions come from the Self. The archetypes of the unconscious dwell there. It is, Jung believed, the sphere of the soul.
What happens in that instant when we learn we may soon die, Tom Laughlin contends, is that the seat of our consciousness shifts.
It moves from the Ego to the Self.
The world is entirely new, viewed from the Self. At once we discern what’s really important. Superficial concerns fall away, replaced by a deeper, more pro-foundly grounded perspective.
The Ego and the Self
Here’s what the Ego believes:
1) Death is real. The Ego believes that our existence is defined by our physical flesh. When the body dies, we die. There is no life beyond life.
2) Time and space are real. The Ego is analog. It believes that to get from A to Z we have to pass through B, C, and D. To get from breakfast to supper we have to live the whole day.
3) Every individual is different and separate from every other.
4) The predominant impulse of life is self-preservation.
5) There is no God.
Here’s what the Self believes:
1) Death is an illusion. The soul endures and evolves through infinite manifestations.
2) Time and space are illusions. Time and space operate only in the physical sphere, and even here, don’t apply to dreams, visions, transports. In other dimensions we move “swift as thought” and inhabit multiple planes simultaneously.
3) All beings are one. If I hurt you, I hurt myself.
4) The supreme emotion is love. Union and mutual assistance are the imperatives of life. We are all in this together.
5) God is all there is. Everything that is, is God in one form or another. God, the divine ground, is that in which we live and move and have our being. Infinite planes of reality exist, all created by, sustained by and infused by the spirit of God.
Fear
Resistance feeds on fear. We experience Resistance as fear. But fear of what?
Fear of the consequences of following our heart. Fear of bankruptcy, fear of poverty, fear of insolvency. Fear of groveling when we try to make it on our own, and of groveling when we give up and come crawling back to where we started. Fear of being selfish, of being rotten wives or disloyal husbands; fear of failing to support our families, of sacrificing their dreams for ours. Fear of betraying our race, our ‘hood, our homies. Fear of failure. Fear of being ridiculous. Fear of throwing away the education, the train-ing, the preparation that those we love have sacrificed so much for, that we ourselves have worked our butts off for.
Fear of launching into the void, of hurtling too far out there;
fear of passing some point of no return, beyond which we cannot recant, cannot reverse, cannot rescind, but must live with this cocked-up choice for the rest of our lives. Fear of madness. Fear of insanity. Fear of death.
These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it.
Fear That We Will Succeed.
That we can access the p o w e r s we secretly k n o w we possess.
That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.
This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifty million years.
We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are.
We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the persever-ance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous.
We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to.
Of course this is exactly what happens. But here’s the trick. We wind up in space, but not alone. Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they’re better friends, truer friends.
And we’re better and truer to them.
The Authentic Self
We’re not born with unlimited choices.
We can’t be anything we want to be.
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.
Territory Versus Hierarchy
In the animal kingdom, individuals define themselves in one of two ways—by their rank within a hierarchy (a hen in a pecking order, a wolf in a pack) or by their connec-tion to a territory (a home base, a hunting ground, a turf).
This is how individuals—humans as well as animals— achieve psychological security. They know where they stand.
The world makes sense.
Of the two orientations, the hierarchical seems to be the default setting. It’s the one that kicks in automatically when we’re kids.
It’s only later in life, usually after a stern education in the university of hard knocks, that we begin to explore the territorial alternative.
The Artist and the Hierarchy
An individual who defines himself by his place in a peck-ing order will:
1) Compete against all others in the order, seeking to ele-vate his station by advancing against those above him, while defending his place against those beneath.
2) Evaluate his happiness/success/achievement by his rank within the hierarchy, feeling most satisfied when he’s high and most miserable when he’s low.
3) Act toward others based upon their rank in the hierarchy, to the exclusion of all other factors.
4) Evaluate his every move solely by the effect it produces on others. He will act for others, dress for others, speak for others, think for others.
The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for its own sake.
To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.
The Definition of a Hack
I learned this from Robert McKee. A hack, he says, is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for.
In other words, the hack writes hierarchically. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What’s hot, what can I make a deal for?
The Territorial Orientation
What are the qualities of a territory?
1) A territory provides sustenance.
2) A territory sustains us without any external input. A territory is a closed feedback loop. Our role is to put in effort and love; the territory absorbs this and gives it back to us in the form of well-being.
3) A territory can only be claimed alone. You can team with a partner, you can work out with a friend, but you only need yourself to soak up your territory’s juice.
4) A territory can only be claimed by work. A territory doesn’t give, it gives back.
5) A territory returns exactly what you put in.
The Difference Between Territory and Hierarchy
How can we tell if our orientation is territorial or hierarchical?
One way is to ask ourselves, If I were feeling really anxious, what would I do?
Of any activity you do, ask yourself:
If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?
The Supreme Virtue
Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: “Contempt for death.” For us as artists, read “failure.” Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue.
The Fruits of Our Labor
When Krishna instructed Arjuna that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, he was counseling the warrior to act territorially, not hierarchically. We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.
Then there’s the third way proffered by the Lord of Discipline, which is beyond both hierarchy and territory.
That is to do the work and give it to Him. Do it as an offering to God.
To labor in this way, The Bhagavad-Gita tells us, is a form of meditation and a supreme species of spiritual devotion.
The Artist’s Life
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.