Book Review: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

The Art of War meets "The Artist's Way" in this no-nonsense, profoundly inspiring guide to overcoming creative blocks of every kind.

I have heard some fellow creatives say that this book helped unblock them and how it helped their creativity. I have been feeling somewhat blocked lately and thought this would be a good time to crack it open and learn about some unblocking techniques.

What I Liked

There were a few quotes that I liked. I think there were two of them. The VERY last pages of the book were excellent. I am not saying this to be snarky either, but it was. It was if the majority part of the book was his morning pages, and then the last chapter was the real book. For that reason alone I will read Turning Pro, but I am just gonna borrow that one from the library.

In the next section, i complain about this but t goes both ways I think. I did like the inspirational feel of it at times. Like if i needed some inspiration then this would be a great book.

What I Did Not Like

Oe thing that I did not like was the short snippets of text that made up a chapter. I will be honest, going into this book I thought would be akin to reading The Artist Way or Bird By Bird but no, it was like a paragraph made up a chapter and that was it. And there weren’t even any techniques in the book. It was all inspirational

I really thought that I would be gleaning some insights on how to become unblocked in this book and i felt that what i got was….not that.. If it had been toughted as an inspiratinal book or such then ok, I might not have felt so disappointed, but ugh I am STILL blocked…Which I realize is no fault of the author but still.

There were no real techniques in this book. Expect a prayer to say before you start writing. I am like if it were THAT easy, there would be a lot more authors out there but alas

I hated this book. Aside from a few quotes, I felt this want even worth the money I spent on it and I THINK I  even got it on a sale.  I had to force myself to slog my way through it, and I am glad that I did because the last chapter was great, but all the other chapters were just ugh… I WANT MY 2 DOLLARS BACK!!

I think the reason that I was so disappointed though is because I went into it expecting one thing and got another. I wanted techniques that he used to write or to get unblock and instead it was a sappy inspirational book. I feel that had I been in the right frame of mind then I would have thought differently about this book.