The War of Art

• What I do: 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.
• The life we live, the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
• In a weird sort of way, think about this: It was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.

Resistance's Greatest Hits

• These actions elicit Resistance:

  • The pursuit of any calling in the creative arts.
  • The launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise.
  • Diet, abs.
  • Spiritual advancement.
  • Something to overcome an unwholesome habit.
  • Education.
  • Courage.
  • Anything to help others.
  • Commitment of the heart.
  • Taking a stand.

• Any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower, any of these will elicit Resistance.

• Resistance is invisible.

• Resistance is internal.

• Resistance is insidious. It will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. Resistance has no conscience, and if you take it at its word, you deserve everything you get.

• Resistance is implacable, it cannot be reasoned with.

• Resistance is impersonal. It doesn't know who you are and doesn't care.

• Resistance is infallible.

• Resistance is universal.

• Resistance never sleeps.

• Resistance plays for keeps. When we fight it , we are in a war to the death.

• Resistance is fueled by fear.

• Resistance only opposes when we move from a lower sphere to a higher one. It kicks in when we week to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, spiritually.

• Resistance is most powerful at the finish line.

• Resistance recruits allies (other people) who want to sabotage you. Because they are also struggling against their own Resistance.

• Procrastination: We don't say "I'm never going to write my symphony", we say "I'll write my symphony tomorrow."

• Procrastination is a habit. There is never a habit when you are without the power to alter our destiny.

• If you feel hollow after sex, drugs, shopping, masturbation, TV, gossip, alcohol, sugar, this was because of Resistance. It knows it has distracted us with a cheap, easy fix and kept us from doing our work.

• Getting into trouble: a cheap way of getting attention. Anything that draws attention to ourselves is a manifestation of Resistance. The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing here work.

• Creating soap opera in our lives is a symptom of Resistance.

• Self-medication: some diseases can be real, but they can also be resistance.

• Victimization: a form of passive aggression, you want to be gratified by your experience/wanting to be rescued. Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work.

Resistance and Fundamentalism

• You will not cure your restlessness by contributing your income to Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.

• Artist: freedom, self-confidence, hope for the future, his faith is that humankind is advancing. Fundamentalist: in his view, humanity has fallen from a higher state. The truth is not out there awaiting revelation, it has already been revealed.

  • Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced, and the dispossessed.
  • In desperate times, races need a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Nazis, Islamic fundamentalism, etc. Fundamentalists cannot stand freedom. He cannot find his way into the future, so he retreats to the past.
  • Fundamentalism and art are exclusive. This is why fundamentalists destroy stuff. He creates this image of Satan, the image of a foe, to which he defines and gives meaning to his own life.
  • Humanist: humankind is called up to co-create the world with God. This is why he values human life so highly. In his view, things do progress, life does evolve, each individual has value, at least potentially, in advancing this cause. The fundamentalist cannot conceive of this. In his society, dissent is not just crime but apostasy.
  • You can't just condemn fundamentalists, because they've had a different life. They probably are not ready for freedom. Those who do not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

• Resistance/criticism: You might be criticizing people out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

• Realized individuals almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement.

• Resistance/fear: It's good to be fearful, because the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

  • Professionals turn down roles they've done before. If you're not afraid, then why waste your time?

• Resistance/love. If you feel Resistance, there's love there too. The more Resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested project is to you, and the more gratification you get from doing it.

• 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.

• Isolation: When I'm writing a book, even without characters, I'm imagining the reader, whom I conjure as an aspiring artist much like my younger self, to whom I hope to impart a little starch and inspiration and prime.

• What is "healing"? Healing from what? Resistance knows that the more psychic energy we expend dredging and re-dredging the tired injustices of our lives, the less juice we have to do work.

• Rationalization: a way for us to justify why we shouldn't work. These rationalizations usually don't mean shit.

• Resistance gets beaten!

Book Two: Combatting Resistance

• Amateur vs professional: the professional plays full-time. The professional is there seven days a week. They commit to it full-time.
• "I write only when inspiration strikes, fortunately it strikes every morning at 9:00."
• Being miserable: marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction from having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any other outfit. They despise those who don't know how to be miserable. You want to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, because this is war, and war is hell.
• Being pros/being in your job:
  • Showing up every day.
  • Showing up no matter what.
  • Staying on the job all day.
  • Being committed over the long haul.
  • The stakes for us are high and real.
  • Accept money for our labor.
  • We do not overidentify with our jobs. (Resistance loves that amateurs overidentify with the job they are doing, and that they take it so seriously it paralyzes him.)
  • We master the technique of our jobs.
  • We have a sense of humor about our jobs.
  • We receive praise or blame in the real world.
• Being an amateur:
  • Not showing up every day. Not committed over the long haul. No money. No sense of humor about failure. No mastery of the art. No judgment to the real world.
• The price of being in the arena: things hurt. Stop complaining and be grateful. You become a pro if you have a real failure.
• Professionals: though they accept money, they do their work because of love. They have to love it, otherwise they don't devote their lives to it.
• The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it.
• Because there is money involved, you have the proper professional attitude.
• Thinking of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. Resistance loves pride and preciousness.

The Professional

• The professional understands delayed gratification. Any job takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. This is a marathon, not a sixty-yard dash.

• The professional seeks order. He eliminates chaos from the world in order to banish it from his mind. He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.

• A pro views their work as craft, not art. All creative endeavor is holy, but she knows that if she thinks about it too much, it will paralyze her. So she concentrates on technique. No waiting for inspiration, she acts in anticipation of its apparition. Amateurs: the over-glorification and preoccupation with mystery. Professional: shuts up, does her work.

• A professional acts in the face of fear. There is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.

• A professional accepts no excuses. The professional knows that if he caves in today, he'll be twice as likely to cave in tomorrow.

• A professional plays it as it lays. He conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, bad hops, good breaks all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level only in heaven.

• A professional is prepared, not just about the craft, but she knows that the Resistance will throw stuff at him that he's never seen before.

• A professional does not show off. He does not impose his style as a means of drawing attention to himself.

• 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 because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.

• A professional does not hesitate to ask for help. It does not occur to her that she knows everything, or can figure out everything out on her own. On the contrary, she seeks out the most knowledgeable teacher and listens with both ears.

• A professional does not identify with her instrument (body, voice, talent). She assesses things coolly, impersonally, objectively. Madonna does not walk around the house in cone bras. She does not identify with "Madonna". Madonna employs "Madonna".

• A professional does not take failure or success personally. He seats his professional consciousness in a place other than his personal ego. This is REALLY HARD, because evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts (biological, not just psychological).

  • Resistance uses fear of rejection to paralyze us and prevent us.
  • The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so enforces Resistance.
  • She loves her work, but she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances.
  • The next will be better, and the one after that will be better still.
  • She knows that Resistance is using criticism against her on a more diabolical level.

• A professional endures adversity. You cannot let yourself take humiliation personally. Humiliation is the external reflection of internal Resistance.

  • The core cannot be buried, even beneath a mountain of guano. The core is bullet proof. Nothing can touch it unless you let it.
  • "Dues were paid."
  • 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. Tiger Woods: control emotion, govern emotion, did not take things personally, didn't react with outrage or indignation, didn't groan, sulk. He maintained sovereignty over the moment.

  • You can't allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning, the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Short of a family crisis, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods.
  • Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It wants us to stake our self-worth on the response of others to our work. Resistance knows we can't take this.
  • A professional blows critics off. Critics are the unwilling mouthpieces of Resistance and as such can be truly cunning and pernicious.
  • 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 (agent, lawyer, accountant).

• A professional reinvents himself. He doesn't permit himself to be bound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful.

• A professional is recognized by other professionals.

• "You, Inc." Making yourself a company reinforces the idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-running-the-show.

  • If you think of yourself as a corporation, it gives us a healthy distance on ourselves. We're less subjective. We don't take blows as personally. We're more cold-blooded, we can price our wares more realistically. I'm not me, I'm Me, Inc.

• RESISTANCE HAS NOT POWER OF ITS OWN, ITS POWER DERIVES ENTIRELY FROM OUR FEAR OF IT. A bully will back down before the twerp who stands his ground.

  • The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, to the exclusion of all else. Ancient Spartans: the enemy is nameless and faceless. If they did their work, no force on earth could stand against them.
  • The pro beats Resistance at its own game by being more resolute and even more implacable that it is.

• There's no mystery to becoming pro, you just act on it. We make up our minds to view ourselves as pros and we do it.

Book Three: Beyond Resistance

• The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.
  • This is important because if you sit down day after day and keep grinding, something starts to happen. When we sit down every day and do our work, power concentrates around us.
  • Professionalism: the Artist's Code or the Warrior's Way. Egolessness and service.
• "Good for you. Start the next one today."
• Mysteries: people give it faces (Greeks/gods, American Indians/animal forms).
• The works exist. They just need a creator.
• Artists have invoked the Muse since time immemorial.
• Faced with out imminent extinction, 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 Ego and the Self

• Self: Wishes to create, to evolve. Ego: likes things the way they are.

• The Ego is the part of the psyche that believes in material existence.

• The Ego's job is to take care of business in the real world. It's important, but there are worlds other than the real world, and this is where the Ego runs into trouble.

• Me: I don't really like the Ego vs Self part.

• A hack: Someone who second-guesses his audience. He thinks he's superior to them. He's afraid that being authentic won't sell. So he tries to anticipate what the market wants, then gives it to them.

• A hack is a demagogue. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others.

• Territory:

  • A territory provides sustenance.
  • A territory sustains us without any external input. 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.
  • A territory can only be claimed alone.
  • A territory can only be claimed by work. A territory doesn't give, it gives back.
  • A territory returns exactly what you put in. Every erg of energy you put in goes infallibly into your account. A territory never devalues, never crashes, what you deposited, you get back, dollar-for-dollar.

• On being hierarchical or territorial: if you were the last person on earth, would you still do it? Arnold would still go to the gym, and fashion addict would pillage a store and get some clothes.

• The supreme warrior virtue: "Contempt for death".

• Are you a born writer, painter, scientist? In the end, the question can only be answered by action: Do it or don't do it.

• 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.