I probably wouldn’t have found this book on my own, but after seeing a strong recommendation from TikTok comedian Lucy Blehar, I added it to my library request list.
I’m a writer, but most days, one that actually struggles to sit down and get my fingers typing. I don’t know why that’s such a common trait of writers, that the thing we most want to do is the thing we will do just about anything to avoid.
And that’s where this book comes in. Now, it’s not a miracle worker. If I want to be fully honest, I’ll admit that I am currently writing this review to avoid the short story that I’m meant to be working on. But what it did do was give me a framework to understand that avoidance. Pressfield calls it resistance, and he says we “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.”
The book is worth it for that page alone because it describes exactly that panicky feeling I get when I sit down to write and immediately try to find a way to justify switching to another task. And he doesn’t pretend that there are any tricks to getting past that resistance other than sitting down every day and getting to work. Which is really annoying, because actually getting to work is hard. But it’s true. When I actually do sit down to do the work consistently, the ideas really do start to come, the plot takes shape. There aren’t any shortcuts, or at least none that I’ve found.
It’s a fairly short book, made out of short little chapters. That’s how a book on writing should be, I think. It gives us little bits of insight and then kicks us in the butt and tells us to get back to work.
Ok, ok, I’m going. Just as soon as I finish washing the dishes.
