The War of Art
Steven Pressfield

“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.”
-p. 39

Living the artist life is hard. No one gives you a business card and a plaque on the door to help you feel official. There’s not a regularly salary. It comes with no overtime pay.

While we artists may turn up our noses at bourgeois needs like a pay raise and a corner office, the reality is that in our culture these things convey value. They tell us and others that we are legitimate–that we have a license to practice art, that someone has given us permission. In short, cash and clout confirm that we have cajones.

Without these cultural permission givers, artists often find themselves adrift and never progress professionally. Steven Pressfield would like us all to please, knock it off.

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles takes the rose colored lenses off our romantic notion of what it means to be a writer/painter/poet/etc and gets us all prepped for battle. What are we fighting? Resistance, mostly –our most prevalent foe. In this pithy book, Pressfield teaches us how to move beyond being amateurs. More than any other book, The War of Art taught me to become a professional artist.

Go ahead, get your marching orders.