Excellent call. Ms. Nelson's book is on my shortest short list of favorite books about writing and creativity. It had a powerfully shaping and confirming effect on my thoughts and experiences when I first read it in the early aughts, after having discovered her work via her brilliant THE SECRET LIFE OF PUPPETS. She has preliminarily agreed to be interviewed for The Living Dark, and though I don't know how soon that might happen (because of my own uncertain schedule and availability), you can be sure that if/when it does, I will ask her about her ongoing thoughts on creativity and writer's block.
I started reading The War of Art yesterday. Absolutely ferocious and uncompromising tone. The clarity he seeks to instill is breathtaking. Amazing how most self-help books reinforce and thicken resistance.
It's an amazing book, isn't it? When you finish it and have let it cool down, his other three or four books in the same vein, stemming from that initial explosion of brilliance with The War of Art, are likewise well worth reading. I think Do the Work and The Artist's Journey are my favorite ones after TWOA.
And Roger that on the propensity of most self-help books to achieve the opposite of their intended effect by actually stimulating resistance. It's a rare book and author who can put forward something in a self-help vein and do so with sufficient grace and subtlety to make the thing actually helpful instead of counterproductive and also, as in so many cases, conducive to narcissistic self-absorption. Pressfield successfully avoids that particular Scylla-and-Charybdis double trap.
I see that! I just came from reading your post. Well done. Insightful. "Mr. X" is a useful characterization. You and I are clearly exploring similar territory in our writing and reflecting on creativity. I forget whether you're familiar with my A COURSE IN DEMONIC CREATIVITY, freely available at my website, but if not, be advised that you'll find much crossover value, as it's my book-length engagement with the idea and experience of collaborating with a demon muse. Here at The Living Dark I'm pursuing lines of thoughts that will go into a kind of sequel or expansion.
Victoria Nelson's book on Writer's Block (1985) has a lost to say about understanding blocks or "resistance." I found it very useful and provocative.
Looking forward to the series!
Best, Jay
Excellent call. Ms. Nelson's book is on my shortest short list of favorite books about writing and creativity. It had a powerfully shaping and confirming effect on my thoughts and experiences when I first read it in the early aughts, after having discovered her work via her brilliant THE SECRET LIFE OF PUPPETS. She has preliminarily agreed to be interviewed for The Living Dark, and though I don't know how soon that might happen (because of my own uncertain schedule and availability), you can be sure that if/when it does, I will ask her about her ongoing thoughts on creativity and writer's block.
I started reading The War of Art yesterday. Absolutely ferocious and uncompromising tone. The clarity he seeks to instill is breathtaking. Amazing how most self-help books reinforce and thicken resistance.
It's an amazing book, isn't it? When you finish it and have let it cool down, his other three or four books in the same vein, stemming from that initial explosion of brilliance with The War of Art, are likewise well worth reading. I think Do the Work and The Artist's Journey are my favorite ones after TWOA.
And Roger that on the propensity of most self-help books to achieve the opposite of their intended effect by actually stimulating resistance. It's a rare book and author who can put forward something in a self-help vein and do so with sufficient grace and subtlety to make the thing actually helpful instead of counterproductive and also, as in so many cases, conducive to narcissistic self-absorption. Pressfield successfully avoids that particular Scylla-and-Charybdis double trap.
Cool, I just wrote about Resistance too! I call him Mr. X.
I see that! I just came from reading your post. Well done. Insightful. "Mr. X" is a useful characterization. You and I are clearly exploring similar territory in our writing and reflecting on creativity. I forget whether you're familiar with my A COURSE IN DEMONIC CREATIVITY, freely available at my website, but if not, be advised that you'll find much crossover value, as it's my book-length engagement with the idea and experience of collaborating with a demon muse. Here at The Living Dark I'm pursuing lines of thoughts that will go into a kind of sequel or expansion.
Saw that! Love the title of the course.