This is an umpteenth post in my series of people, places, things that inspires me to continue on this lively, rewarding, and often frustrating journey of creativity. Today I stear away from my usual photographic inclinations into one of my side inclinations: writing. Steven Pressfield is an author (most noted for The Legend of Bagger Vance among others) who has written two little books recently that I consider “must reads” for anyone living the creative life, wanting to live the creative life, or trying to live life creatively.
While he most often writes about war and warriors, Pressfield feels to me like a deeply spiritual, deeply connected individual who uses the warrior’s ethos in much the same way spiritual teachers such as Dan Millman (author of “The Peaceful Warrior“) do. He sees war as a metaphor for the internal struggles our individual psyches face and as such wrote The War of Art and, more recently, Do the Work as manifestos, directives, orders to we creatives to wrestle Resistance (his term for that force within each of us that thwarts creativity and its expression) to the ground, pin it there, and keep it subdued while we do the work of creating.
Let me tell you, for me reading 5 pages of either of Pressfield’s two manifestos and I am ready to tackle the largest possible projects that come to mind. Staying true to his ethos he defines Resistance, analyzes its methods and capabilities, and plans and executes a strategy for overcoming it. Written in a clear, direct, pull-no-punches style The War of Art and Do the Work offer an enormous service to those of us with fantastic ideas and a knack for being thwarted in our execution of them.
While The War of Art details Resistance and a method deal with it, Do the Work takes things one step farther and lays out the gameplan for how to begin and complete a project while simultaneously managing the wriggling demon of Resistance. I highly recommend reading and re-reading these two books to anyone who has more vision that voice, more getup than go, whose ability to begin new projects is more refined than their ability to complete them.
It is fortuitous that I was reading Do The Work this past week as one of the major manifestations of Resistance unleashed itself within me. Thankfully I had Pressfield’s book in hand to help identify it for what it was and guide me through the mental-emotional morass I found myself in. I will be writing an account of it in my next blog post; I am still working my way through the morass and have yet to find the right words to depict what I’ve been struggling with, but they are coming. So please bear with me as I put words to this confusing experience. It has been challenging, but so educational and timely!