The Resistance

It's never really easy, keeping up with the nuance in life and creating a world through music. And yet, that's just what we do, every one of us. The way I find time, the way I create isn't unique; in fact, it's nothing special at all. I just sit down and get to work. It's the part before sitting down that's the hardest to get through, just to sit down and get to work.

That's the message of my favorite book on creating--The War of Art. It's a slight book that packs a punch for anyone who creates. Its central thesis is that to create good things, you need to overcome the resistance and just get to making the art. (This is the war of the title.) The author, Steven Pressfield, speaks of many topics in the book: what it means to be a hack; the artificial hierarchies that we create, telling ourselves that we're not at the appropriate level in a non-existant chain to make our art; and criticism, not just criticism of our ourselves, but, more importantly, our criticism of others.

Regardless of how talented or business-minded we are, the truth endures that we must get down to creating. It doesn't matter if that creative output is ever sold, or, really, who hears, sees, or experiences it. What matters most is that the internal emotions are rendered externally, that we punch through the creative curtain and pull out something to show ourselves.