Muse Review: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles – Steven Pressfield

This book is one of the best books I have EVER read on the nature of struggle in the creative process. In short, this book will provide me material to write numerous blog entries both here and in my other blog, The 15-Minute Writer for the next several weeks, if not months.

First of all, I love, love, LOVE the title.  The clever play on words caught my attention… I mean come on The Art of War… The War of Art? Great stuff.  The book is arranged into three sections: Resistance, Battling Resistance and Beyond Resistance. Within these sections are brief one to three-page essays about the aspects of the Resistance that dwells within every writer and most of the rest of the world. Short, direct writing illustrates each point.

This book does something that has never been done before… at least in my mind it hasn’t, which is that it defines the true essence of the Inner Critic.  If you are not familiar with this name you've experienced it: That nagging voice in the crevices of your mind who whispers doubts in your ear when you sit down to confront the blank page. It says things such as:  “This is stupid. Why are you wasting your time? Who do you think you are? Why would anyone want to read this sh!@.” And on and on. Natalie Goldberg calls this “Monkey Mind.” Others call it writer’s block. Still others call it “untapped potential.”  Regardless of what name you give it, it is the essence of Resistance.

Pressfield pulls no punches when writing about Resistance.  It is the enemy.  And you are at WAR. (Hence the substance behind the clever title for the book.)

“Resistance will unfailingly point to true North—meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing… Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to out soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.” p12

I've highlighted quotes on almost every page of this book.  All excellent insights and all worthy of exploration. This book is required reading for anyone who wants to write, paint, start a business, lose weight, or commit yourself to a life of service to others. Anyone who has:

"experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work that you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be."

I think that this covers everyone on the planet. The message of this book is universal: Resistance is a cunning and ruthless enemy who does not give up ground easily.

Case and point:  I read this book for the first time almost a YEAR ago. I loved it so much that I felt that I needed to read it again, so I started rereading it on Monday.  I even had a first draft of this post written on 4/27/2010, but failed to finish it up until now. Relaunching the blog was in my mind for the last 2 years, but again and again I discovered new excuses why I couldn't begin: Kristen's grad school work load is busy and I need to help out more with the laundry and cooking; I need to read up on blog design since I can't format the text correctly; Overtime spent on urgent projects at work eat into my free time; There is so much in this book I don't even know where to begin (so it is easier not to start at all).

Resistance is real, and it kills the creative spirit or any urge to reach for something that makes you better. The War of Art helps you "know thy enemy" and how you must fight it.  Don't allow Resistance prevent you from reading this book. Get a copy today. 

Stay tuned for future Musings on this book. There is a lot to explore and discuss here.

Writing Exercises from Foolsgold

Here are a few of the excellent writing exercise ideas from Foolsgold: Making Something Out of Nothing and Freeing Your Creative Process:

• What can I learn from... (page 27)
• Ask life expanding questions everyday... begin with the words: "I wonder" (page 48)
• What do you collect now? As a child? Why do/did you collect these things? (page 58)
• "What in your life, your body, your job, your business, your world, is dammed up that needs freeing? What beliefs or ideas or judgments have you been holding that might need to be released? It may well be ideas you feel sure about. A position you're proud to hold. You might want to write, 'I believe [list five things] because…'" (page 89)
• "Where in your life do you feel boxed or fenced in?" (page 155)
• "What's breaking your heart?" (page 197)

Muse Review: Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing and Freeing Your Creative Process

I was really looking forward to reading Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing and Freeing Your Creative Process, since one of her other books, poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words, is one of my all time favorites. I wanted to see what Wooldridge's take on creativity would be and if it could help me with the book I am working on.

It disappointed me and didn't deliver. The sub-title, Making Something from Nothing and Freeing Your Creative Process is somewhat deceiving.  It spends plenty of time discussing her creative ideas, but not very much about her creative process. I also think this would have been stronger if she explored how other creative individuals approached the process.  What works for one person doesn't necessarily work for a different person.

It does have nice, lyrical writing throughout the book and does produce a few good writing exercise ideas (to be covered in another post later in the week).
Rating ** (Borrow It from the Library)

About Ratings: ***** -- Well Worth it at Full Retail Price; **** — Buy on Sale/Discounted; *** — Buy Used; ** — Borrow It from the Library; * — Waste of a Good Tree

Taming the Dragon (NaturallySpeaking) that is...

I purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking Speech Recognition Software because I was pleased with the performance of the free iPod Dragon Dictation app. So I am playing with it right now, trying to learn how the application works and if I can teach this thing to write faster than I can type. I definitely think this has a lot of potential and I like the opportunity to have another way to write. Even if it's just to get the raw ideas down on paper. 

I wonder how many people are out there who would choose to be writers but their keyboarding skills are not letting them pursue their dreams. 

Where did I hear about Dragon?  From a doctor who treated me for pneumonia in urgent care last December. When he found out I was a writer he asked me if I used it. That is what helped him get through all of the writing tasks he had to do in medical school. 

So I downloaded and started playing around with the Dragon Dictation app, and I was  impressed with its accuracy. The only drawback was that I could only use it when I was in a place with a strong wireless signal that my iPod Touch could pick up.  Which isn't convenient since that place happens to be either in my family room or dining room, which between dogs barking, SpongeBob blaring, kids arguing, the phone ringing... you get the picture.  I needed something a little more powerful.

It is hard getting used to using your voice to command your computer. This is something right out of Star Trek or as I remember it, the device Commander Adama (the Lorne Greene one, not the Edward James Olmos one) used in Battlestar Galactica.

First impressions - Pros: 

• A great way to capture ideas quickly and efficiently. 
• Probably good for writing junk documents such as lists, chat sessions and some e-mail
• The voice commands work well and it will be interesting to see how much you can do with them.

Cons: 

• Will definitely need to proofread carefully. During these early "training" days, the application misses some of the words and leaves out important little ones like articles and prepositions occasionally.
• Because I've done very little training with it., And it seems to miss a lot of the words that I'm trying to enter. 
• The voice commands work pretty well, but not all of the time.
• I think this tool might make my writing wordier, unfocused, and more unpolished when using it. 

So tune in the coming weeks to get the answers to these questions. Does the Dragon work well for him? Does Michael end up losing his voice trying to write?  Has he gone insane with frustration and irritation? Watch this blog for updates and a final verdict!

Muse Review: TV-Tropes

Here is an interesting site that manages to breakdown the myriad of character, plot, setting, dialogue "tropes" or building blocks of fiction in a a giant wiki-like format.  The problem with a trope is that many times it is used way too often.

The site defines a trope in the following way:

Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations. On the whole, tropes are not clichés. The word clichéd means "stereotyped and trite." In other words, dull and uninteresting.

Have you ever wondered when you watch a family sitcom or drama why you feel like you've seen this episode before? Probably because you have. The plots of these shows often have similar issues and resolutions. Such as the favorite plot staple: The Evil Twin. Or why Phil Dunphy on Modern Family reminds you of another dad in some other show?  Well it turns out that there is a trope for that, the Bumbling Dad. And the trope extends into other mediums such as films, literature, and comics.

There are even music tropes. Ever notice that the you can count on certain songs to be used to promote movies, introduce certain characters or sequences of events? Such as:

"Walking On Sunshine" by Katrina And The Waves was used in pretty much every trailer for family comedies in the 1990s and 00s.

"Who Let The Dogs Out" will be used in any children's movie featuring talking dogs, and it will be used in a scene where the aforementioned canine's escape from a pet pound/locked room/generally do something cool that involves knocking down something or someone. 

This is a fascinating site where you can spend hours just browsing through all of the different tropes. (Which is one of the reasons this post is a bit later than I intended.) The site illustrates each trope with dozens of examples of it in many different mediums.  The writers of the site are also careful about not revealing spoiler information by hiding it by changing the color of the text to white on a white background, so you can only see the spoiler info if you highlight the white text.

If you are a writer and want to avoid the dreaded cliche, or just want some information about how a story can be put together, you need to check out TV-Tropes.  Keep an eye on the Grist for the Muse in the weeks to come on using TV-Tropes to improve your fiction writing skills.  Until then, browse and enjoy! TV-Tropes gets **** out of 5 stars.

Muse Review Website Rating Scale: * - SPAM is more enjoyable and entertaining; ** - Content not fit for a link farm; *** - An OK site, probably won't be back here often; **** -  Good resource, bookmark and visit often; ***** - An essential resource to consult daily.

Muse Reviews: Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing

Elmore Leonards 10 Rules of Writing Limited Edition by Elmore Leonard

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


Really William Morrow? You take a one page article from Elmore Leonard and stretch it, and I really mean S—T—R—E—T—C—H it into an 89 page book. Even so less than half of these pages have text on them, and on the pages that do have text on them might consist of a sentence or maybe a short paragraph illustrating one of the 10 rules. At a $14.95 cover price I can’t recommend this for any writer. It is obviously intended to be a gift book for writers (and probably then only writers who are huge Elmore Leonard fans).  The thick, smooth card-stock pages with whimsical cartoons scattered throughout it can only be appreciated by those people struggling to find a last minute gift idea for a writer friend, not a serious writer looking for some good writing advice from one of popular crime fiction’s masters.





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Maximum Verbosity -- Why I Hate H.P. Lovecraft

There has always been a reason that I hated H.P. Lovecraft. If the densely packed paragraphs of prose, unbroken by any smidgen of dialog whatsoever wasn’t enough, the seemingly ham-handed attempts at creating an atmosphere of dread and foreboding didn’t do it… it was the vocabulary. For a “pulp” author, Lovecraft really hit the thesaurus hard. I actually had to look up the word effulgence in the dictionary because I had no idea what it meant. 

Yet, many authors such as Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Clive Barker and Alan Moore see him as a pioneer of the speculative fiction genre. He used the term cosmic horror to describe his work, which is according to his entry in Wikipedia: “the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity.”

His writing reminds me of a game mode you entered in the granddaddy of all text-based adventure games, Zork by typing the word “verbose:” Maximum Verbosity. That is what prose by Lovecraft sounds like to me. When was the last time you used one of these often repeated words on this list: Cyclopean (47), Accursed (76), or Daemoniac (55)?

I have never used any of these words in any of my writing until now, so anyone who wants to keep a tab, mark this: Cyclopean (1), Accursed (1) or Daemoniac (1)