My War of Art

The Resistance is a powerful and sly combatant, with a mastery of many weapons and an impeccable grasp of timing. With force, she knifes me with a headache the moment I sit down to write. With grace, she hurls doubt bombs that explode into clouds of weak ideas, filling the air with less ambitious topics than what I committed to research that day. She plunders inspiration, energy and most of all, time. But she hasn’t vanquished me yet. I’m over twenty pieces into my summer of daily writing, and the war has just begun.

The day I committed to this project, I drew a blank. I was so hot that I could not think of anything else. But the commitment to defeat the Resistance led me to write about just that feeling. My first battle was a victory; I just had to write.

That first week, every piece took me the whole day, sometimes bleeding into the next. Every paragraph sounded awkward in my head, but I couldn’t find the words to make it right. One friend told me an article read like an asthma attack.

The final moment before hitting send was especially hard at the beginning. On the first day I called a friend for a pep talk, having stared at the publish button for twenty minutes in silence. But every day, the writing muscle was strengthening. The skirmishes against the Resistance were going in my favour.

My return to London was a shock to the system. My mind swirled with stimulus, but my time whispered away. I started cramming my writing into the night, anxiously toiling to meet my personal commitment. But still I kept fighting the Resistance.

Sometimes the Resistance tricks me into believing I’ve won. She lets me be chuffed when I’ve written content that I think is devilishly clever. Then I don’t even hear the faint chirp of a cricket in response, which means it probably hasn’t landed as well as I thought. Or, I think I’ve taken a stand, only to receive feedback to stop sitting on the fence. I’d been too afraid to be more bold.

Other days I merely wound the Resistance, without the strength to take her out completely. I squeeze out some writing, dissatisfied with the quality but held captive by the limited hours in a day. I tell myself I will come back to it later, to fix it. But there’s not enough time to revisit all the old fights when every day presents a new one.

Now that I am three weeks in, the Resistance’s tactics have shifted. She knows I will write every day, that I have the drive, if not always the skill. Lately she’s been using mind games. She tells me that writing is cool and all, but is it worth the time? Are you ever going to be good enough?

She’s making me afraid to speak to newspapers, publishers, book agents, for fear of not being taken seriously, or failing at getting published. I am hiding behind a shield of ineptitude, waiting for the right moment to strike, instead of running headfirst into opinions and criticism to get my battle scars.

So this week, I’m tackling the Resistance with a boring but underrated weapon: planning. I’ll let you know how it goes. Thank you for bearing witness to the struggle, and for all the encouragement and feedback you have given already. On the days when I don’t feel like I am winning the war, you are a crucial ally in helping me soldier on.

PS: If you haven’t read Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, it is inspirational in helping to get started today on all those wonderful projects you keep putting off.