Three I've Recently Finished for My WIP

Photo: Cover of The War of Art, from Pressfield's own site--http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Brilliant and succinct meditation on the artist, the artist's calling, the philosophy of being a writer, and it does all of these things in ways that I would never have thought imaginable.  Some very memorable things in here, such as the fact that Krishna says that we all have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor.  (This means that we, as writers, have the right to work on our art--in fact, he says, we have the obligation to work on our art--but that we do not have the right to dictate to the gods, to Fate, or whatever, what should happen to our art after we create it.  So you write, and you finish, and you move on.  Brilliant in its simplicity.)  Or that we are all meant, in a Zen-like way, to do one thing in our lives, and that we allow our Ego, and specifically what he calls Resistance, to get in our way.  I'm not much for self-help books (this one, The Secret, and The Road Less Traveled are the only ones to ever do anything for me), but The War of Art is a keeper.  This one book inspired me to get up at 5ish every morning to write before I go to work, and to also work last thing at night before I go to bed.  I'm not creating genius all that time, first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but I am creating something.

Genius.  If you're a writer, buy it.  It'll change you.
Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

A pale addendum to it's predecessor, The War of Art.  The latter I consider to be the Bible of self-help and kick in the butt for writers.  I've recommended it to others (and I recommend it to you); I re-read a portion of it everyday.  This one, not so much.  Sort of cashing in on the respect of the first one, to be honest with you.  Can't hurt to read it, and it's pasted together in such a way that it'll take you less than an hour to read.  But it probably won't help, either.  Nothing new, or of depth, here.

Food for the Dead by Michael E. Bell

Brilliant book, and by a local guy, too.  The backbone of the research I've undertaken for my current WIP.  The style is deceptively simple--or just simple--but the key to it is the matter-of-fact and laid back approach he brings to his interviews and to his dissemination of fact and folklore.  Well summarized, if not a little slapdash with the Stukeley/Tillinghast/Mercy Brown and Nellie Vaughn parts.  Some facts come at you circuitous, but it's a good read, anyway, especially if you live where I do.

Quote Quorner

More quotes from Steven Pressfield's The War of Art:


"Our job in this life time 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..."

This one has a bit of fatalism and Zen to it, but I like it.  I agree with the concept of not wanting, wanting, wanting, but being.

"The Mother of All Fears...[is] Fear That We Will Succeed..."

"The playwright Agathon tells us, 'This alone is denied to God:/the power to undo the past."

"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."

More on pros next time.

Quote Quorner

A new-ish segment of the blog, similar to the epigrams, but with room for short comments.  The following quotes come from Steven Pressfield's The War of Art:


"...Krishna instructed Arjuna that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor..." Page 161.

I love this line.  This is great advice and a great mindset for all writers to have.  We have a right to our production as writers, as I take this line, but we do not have the right to the fate of this writing.  In other words, we can only make the writing the best we can make it, and we can try to make it see the light of publication (we can contact agents, pass out copies or chapbooks, etc.), but we cannot firmly set our minds on the work's publication.  It is more important for writers to write, and produce, than it is for them to see the bestseller list.  If we get published, so be it, but keep writing.  Do that, and do that well, and good things will happen.

"Of any activity that you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?  If you're all alone on the planet, a hierarchical orientation makes no sense.  There's no one to impress."

Pressfield was talking about the difference between territory and hierarchy here.  Basically he was saying that if we write to impress, to make the bestseller list, to see ourselves on the shelves, to make money, than we're seeking hierarchy in some form, and we're not really writing, but striving to impress or seek material gratification.  But if we'd write even if we were the only one still alive, we're not seeking to impress--as there's no one left alive to do so, nor anyone alive to read our books--but we are writing to live, to simply be ourselves.  We're writing because we have to, with nothing materialistic to gain from it but the satisfaction of seeing it done.  We're being true to the art, to ourselves.  "The artist...must do his work for its own sake" (151).

"...the artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling" (151).  I don't write so that an agent will accept me.  I do not write so that I will get published (though that would be an agreeable consequence).  I do not write for any other reason than because I have to write, I want to write.  Writing is my territory; it's what I do.  I don't need anyone's validation of this--though I'll certainly take the compliments and offers for representation and publication when I get them.  But I write for me, and for no other reason.

I'll quote from other sources from time to time as well, but I want to focus on some bits of wisdom from this book, as it struck me solidly, and I hope it does for you, too.  If you haven't bought a copy yet, do so.

The War of Art--Steven Pressfield

Brilliant and succinct meditation on the artist, the artist's calling, the philosophy of being a writer, and it does all of these things in ways that I would never have thought imaginable.  Some very memorable things in here, such as the fact that Krishna says that we all have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor.  (This means that we, as writers, have the right to work on our art--in fact, he says, we have the obligation to work on our art--but that we do not have the right to dictate to the gods, to Fate, or whatever, what should happen to our art after we create it.  So you write, and you finish, and you move on.  Brilliant in its simplicity.)  Or that we are all meant, in a Zen-like way, to do one thing in our lives, and that we allow our Ego, and specifically what he calls Resistance, to get in our way.  I'm not much for self-help books (this one, The Secret, and The Road Less Traveled are the only ones to ever do anything for me), but The War of Art is a keeper.  This one book inspired me to get up at 5ish every morning to write before I go to work, and to also work last thing at night before I go to bed.  I'm not creating genius all that time, first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but I am creating something.

Genius.  If you're a writer, buy it.  It'll change you.

Our Literary Quests

Special thanks to Jodi Milner--at http://myliteraryquest.wordpress.com/--for including me in her Feature Friday series, and for publishing one of my posts on her website.  Go see her blog.  She has recently published her 300th blog entry, and there's a reason for that: her blog is awesome!  Her site's gotten more hits than the dark side of the moon (more hits than my right cheek during my dating years; more hits than the reputation of yesterday's celebrities; more hits than...okay, I'm done) and it has many sections for reference, including: Good Blog Reads, Places to Submit, Resources, Writers Cafe Blog (a group which she and I are members of on LinkedIn), Online Publications, Quickly Quotables, and more.

I continue to get work done on my novel(s); I will continue to wake at 5ish in the morning.  My thought now is: If I can do it during the workweek, why not on the weekends?  Write in the morning, mow the lawn in the later morning (so as not to wake the neighbors, or my better half), read in the breezy afternoon, hit the city at night for dinner...Sounds good to me.

I'm currently reading Steven Pressfield's The Legend of Bagger Vance and his The War of Art (which started all this), as well as The Secret (you can stop laughing now), H.P. Lovecraft's Letters, and God knows what else.  I spent a few hours reading outside today in a gorgeous, low- to mid-70s, sunny day, and now I'm typing this, eating two green apples with a small glass of wine, and about to watch the Sox game.  What's better than that?

Onward and forward...

5 a.m.

That's the time that I have successfully gotten up this week, every weekday, and written more for The Gravediggers for an hour before I showered, ate, and went to work.  In that time, I've managed to finish three chapters--drafts, edits, etc.--and I've been on-time to work each day as an added benefit.

Actually, there have been many more benefits!  By writing every morning between 5 and 6:15 or so, I've had the quiet that I don't get during any other time of the day.  I also get my thoughts during my waking-up moments, which are often the best and most creative ones I get all day.  I feel a sense of peace and contentment I don't get when I write any other time of day; I'm by myself, doing my own thing.  Just me and the keys.  It's rekindled the utter joy I used to feel writing fiction.

The reason I decided at first to get up even earlier than usual--I have a get up very early kind of job--is that I was run-down by the sheer number of words, edits, papers and corrections I have to do at my job.  When I got home, I couldn't bear the thought of doing any of my own, so I had to wait for the weekends.  So I decided that I would try to wake up early and get my words done BEFORE I was completely turned-off to writing by everyone else's writing.

And what happened?  By writing in the morning and then going to work, I got enough writing done so that I was excited about doing even more when I got back.  I knew exactly what I wanted to work on, so I was already invested and focused, already driven to get more words done--even though I was still dealing with the same volume of material at my job.  It just didn't bother me as much when I got back.  I was already working in my head all day what I wanted to do when I got back.

When I couldn't garner the energy to work any more when I got home (yesterday), I got the business end done: I got my recent rejections in order; I jotted down where I'd sent things, where I should send things, which responses I'd gotten back, which conferences were coming up...

The bottom line: I refused to allow myself the excuse anymore that I just didn't have time.  I found the time.  And this is coming from an insomniac, from someone who went to sleep between midnight and 2 a.m. usually, got up around 6 a.m. and did the day.  Turns out, waking up at 5 a.m. also makes you more tired, so you go to sleep from 10 pm to midnight instead, and then do it all over again.

I followed Steven Pressfield's advice (in his tidy The War of Art) and I overcame that particular Resistance.  Check the book out.  Maybe it'll inspire you, too.  Believe me, if I can change something, like getting up even earlier, then you can, too.

Successful Chapters & More

Well, it's been a little while.  Truth is, I haven't been here because I've been writing!  (And watching baseball games.)  I'm two or three chapters into THE GRAVEDIGGERS, and things are going well.  It's exciting and a little bit freaky.  Its success has seeped into a few other things in my life, such as:

--An online friend asked me how I've been able to write, as the job that pays The Man gives me all the reading, words and editing I'd never want to ask for.  At first, I responded, "Well, vacation helps."  Then, as she is of the same profession, I mentioned that you just have to sit down when you have the time, no matter when that is.  She writes when she's waiting at a doctor's, or at soccer practice, etc.  (She'd write early in the morning, like 5 a.m., but that's when she does her running.  "Oh," I said.  I have a friend of the same profession who hits the gym by then.  I'd rather be writing.  We're all a little bit crazy.)  I have a new wish that I can get up at 5 a.m. and write more, but we'll see how THAT goes.  It makes sense to do this, as tons of other writers who were of the same profession have in the past, not to mention busy mothers and people of other professions.  The bottom line: If reading too many pages, editing too many things, and just looking at too many words during the job make me not want to write when I get home, then I have to write before I see those things.  Right?

--Steven Pressfield's The War of Art is a small, tidy helper against what he calls Resistance.  And it all makes a lot of sense, and sounds more like me than I do.  Highly recommended for writers who aren't writing as much as they want to be.

--Examples of resistance that I have offered in this blog recently that I didn't know were examples of resistance: clearing the desk; organizing the office; not being able to use a laptop a lot; reading too much; blogging and e-socializing too much...Turns out, writing is done by just writing.  I'm typing this on a severely cluttered desk with nowhere near the same anxiety I used to have.  I'll bet you have a ton of things you think are actual problems, but are in fact just examples of resistance.

--Which reminds me: I have to do more writing now before the game comes on, and then Easter dinner.  See?  Blogging is an example of resistance, too.

   Happy Holidays!