“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writer’s 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.”
Steven Pressfield writes this in one of the first pages of the book The War of Art. And I can give you a hint, writer is replaceable with whatever you aspire to. Regardless if you want to be a writer, a musician, an artist, an athlete, or whatever you can dream of, what you need to get to is the doing part. If you don’t “sit down to write”, you won’t be a writer. If you don’t practice the guitar, you won’t be a guitarist. If you don’t paint, you won’t be an artist.
The entire book centers on Resistance, and there are quite a few passages that I really enjoy. Some provoke me, other tickle me, other again make me nod emphatically with personal recognition. Here’s another personal favorite:
“Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don’t do it. If you’re doing it, stop.”
I am way too familiar with Resistance. It’s like an acquaintance that’s overstayed his welcome – boy, would I love to get rid of it! And I think there’s actually a way to at least reduce the frequency when this acquaintance comes a’knocking: by sitting down to write, step by step I train myself to do the work, regardless of the Resistance I feel or not. In time, Resistance might knock more seldom, knowing it’s futile?
Inspired to continue blogging on the theme from the #blogg100-challenge in 2017 I give you:
The book ”The WAR of ART” by Steven Pressfield.