No day without lines

Steven Pressfield asks some questions of the reader in his book, The War of Art. A few of these include: Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let if gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

The War of Art is largely addressed to artists and writers – “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: 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.” Resistance, according to Pressfield, cannot be seen, touched, heard or smelled, but it can be felt. “We can experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”

In my experience as a writer, resistance pushes and steers me into reading books, watching television, and reading newspapers. I know writers who would rather vacuum floors and wash dishes than sit down and write. If I’m in the midst of writing a long book demanding weeks or months of writing, I leave the day’s work with the last paragraph and sentence unfinished. The following morning I can finish the sentence and the paragraph and then it becomes much easier to plug into the work. Ernest Hemmingway always used this trick and I read about it somewhere and have used it ever since. It helps me walk through resistance, particularly when I’m writing fiction. I find non-fiction somewhat easier to write. A cookbook, for example can be arranged into particular chapters – meat, fish, vegetables and so forth. I’ve never been able to plan a work fiction further than a chapter or two and, consequently, resistance becomes potent.

Steven Pressfield is a fine author. I’ve read his Gates of Fire, a story about the famous Spartan/Persian battle of Thermopylae and in my opinion it is very good novel.  Here is another Pressfield quote about resistance: “You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts and later to the School of Architecture. Ever seen one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I’ll say in anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War 11 than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.”