Tuesday, The War of Art, and Wow

BooksInTheMail

Yes, wow and The War of Art in the same sentence! I know you will want to know why and I’m about to explain. As you’ve noticed, I’ve been re-reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, to get my mojo back in action. It’s not an easy thing to push aside resistance and overwhelm. It’s the bane of an artist’s life. Mr. Resistance drops by with Mrs. Overwhelm and they end up having a party at my place without my permission. They’re lousy house guests, too, leaving all manner of distress in my house.

My quest for artistic sanity began quite a while ago when I decided I needed to purchase and work with The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Breaking through artist block with various tasks was a welcome relief to the drudgery that comes with the fear of making a mess of a lovely, perfectly white canvas.

Read it, did it, passed the test. I hummed along quite well, for a while, working on my paintings in small segments of time, mostly twenty minutes. Worked well until it happened one day that it didn’t work.

What are you going to do? It happens.

In comes another great book, The War of Art. The kick butt writing style of Steven Pressfield and how he over comes resistance helped me get back on the horse, so to speak. All good. Until it happened again. Dead stop.

I don’t know how that works, but it works really well to stop me from getting anything worthwhile done. Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Pain-in-my-neck show up and it’s over. But lately, they don’t stay as long as they had in the past. With my copy of Pressfield’s book close by, and writing about it here, I’m back.

So for the Wow part: Here I am, writing my little blog, working hard on developing this new platform, discussing my displeasure with Mr. Resistance when I received an email to my brand, spanking new dot com email address. I didn’t think it even worked. Mr. Pressfield’s literary representative contacted me saying she read my blogpost about his book, and would I like a few copies of it along with two others he wrote.

Would I? I was doing back flips! Yes I would, and thank you so very much! They arrived last week. I was so excited I couldn’t even think straight to start reading.

I need to breathe.

I’ve decided to have a little fun with my lovely gifts by spreading the love, the words, and wonderful direction these books can bring artists of all stripes. First I have to figure out the what and the how of the idea in my head. And if WordPress acts nicely and cooperates, we can enjoy a little contest of sorts.

Stay tuned.

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Author: Dora Sislian Themelis

As a fine artist, I paint, knit, and make jewelry, to figure it all out.

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