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ALSO BY STEVEN Last The PRESSFIELD of the Tides of War Gates Fire Legend of The Amazons of Bagger Virtues of Vance War Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles STEVEN PRESSFIELD If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book." Warner Books Edition Copyright © 2002 by Stephen Pressfield All rights reserved. This Warner Books Edition is published by arrangement with Rugged Land, 276 Canal Street, Fifth Floor, New York, NY 10013 Warner Books Time Warner Book Group 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 Visit our Web site at www.twbookmark.com. Printed in the United States of America First Warner Book Edition: April 2003 10 9 8 7 6 The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows: Pressfield, Stephen The war of art : winning the inner creative battle / Stephen Pressfield; foreword by Robert McKee.—1st ed. p. cm. I S B N 1-59071-003-7 1. Creative ability. 2. Creative thinking. 3. Authorship. I. Title. BF408.P74 2002 153.3*5 QB102-701260 ISBN: 0-446-69143-7 (pbk.) Cover design by Brigid Pearson Cover illustration by Milton Glaser 2002102091 theWARofART FOREWORD by Robert McKee S teven Pressfield wrote The War of Art for me. He undoubtedly wrote it for you too, but I know he did it e x p r e s s l y for me b e c a u s e I hold O l y m p i c r e c o r d s for p r o c r a s t i n a t i o n . I can p r o c r a s t i n a t e thinking a b o u t my procrastination problem. I can procrastinate dealing with my problem of procrastinating thinking about my procrastination problem. So Pressfield, that devil, asked me to write this foreword against a deadline, knowing that no matter how much I stalled, eventually I'd have to knuckle down and do the work. At the last possible hour I did, and as I leafed through Book One, "Defining the Enemy," I saw myself staring back guilty-eyed from every page. But then Book Two gave me a battle plan; Book Three, a vision of victory; and as I closed The War of Art, I felt a surge of positive calm. I now know I can win this war. And if I can, so can you. T o b e g i n B o o k O n e , P r e s s f i e l d labels the e n e m y o f creativity Resistance, his all-encompassing term for what Freud called the Death Wish—that destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a t o u g h , long-term course of action that might do for us or others something that's actually good. He then presents a rogue's gallery of the many manifestations of Resistance. You will recognize each and every one, for this force lives within us a l l — s e l f - s a b o t a g e , s e l f - d e c e p t i o n , s e l f - c o r r u p t i o n . We writers know it as "block," a paralysis whose symptoms can bring on appalling behavior. Some years ago I was as blocked as a Calcutta sewer, so what did I do? I decided to try on all my clothes. To show just how anal I can get, I put on every shirt, pair of pants, sweater, jacket, and sock, sorting them into piles: spring, summer, fall, winter, Salvation Army. Then I tried them on all over again, this time parsing them into spring casual, spring formal, summer c a s u a l . . . Two days of this and I thought I was going mad. Want to know how to cure writer's block? It's not a trip to your psychiatrist. For as Pressfield wisely points out, seeking " s u p p o r t " is Resistance at its most seductive. N o , the cure is found in Book Two: "Turning Pro.