Happy St. Patrick’s Day. This holiday used to be a much bigger deal to me back when I was at Boston College (duh… for many reasons), and David and I even got in the spirit by running the 5k race they hold in Southie. This year, though, not so much. I spent the day in a low-key way with my sisters, with wine and apps, not even beer. But it was delightful.
Here’s what I’ve been reading and enjoying this week:
What I’m Reading and Enjoying:
Two shows (one new, one not) have been excellent: Catastrophe (Amazon Prime video) and Shrill (Hulu). They’re both great and so funny! Highly recommend.
In honor of Pi(e) day — my favorites: this pecan pie, Gail Simmons’ spaghetti pie, and I’m planning on making this Meyer lemon pie.
It’s also Women’s History Month. So let’s celebrate by reading about what women writers recommend reading during Women’s History Month!
This week’s menu plan:
(In case you need ideas or inspiration)
Sunday: Chickpea tika masala by Cookie & Kate
Monday: Leftovers
Tuesday: Almost-spring chicken and pasta (recipe coming!)
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Curried lentil and coconut soup + roasted cauliflower
Friday: Leftovers
Saturday: Shrimp over creamy tarragon pasta
Title: The War of Art
Author: Steven Pressfield
Date: 2016
Format: Library book
I’ve been on a reading jag of non-fiction books focused on creativity, productivity, time, flow, and energy. On the positive side, it’s been wonderful to dedicate some time to figure out how I best use my time, trying to be efficient and capture the enthusiasm for the work I’ve been wanting to do in the research and writing realm without getting buried in overwhelm or spread too thin.
The downside is that it brought me to this book. I’m surprised I finished it, to be honest, and the only reasons I think I did was that it was that it was (1) less than 150 pages in total, and not all chapters or headings took up a full page (some were as brief as a single paragraph), and (2) it was also entertainingly bad.
The book centers on the creative’s struggle to create in the face of Resistance; it outlines what Resistance is (yes, with a capital R) and how creatives can overcome it. I’m probably just not a match for the bravado and aggression in the author’s style, but most of the pages I flagged contained quotes that were simply strange rather than motivating. For example:
“Resistance is not out to get you personally. It doesn’t know who you are and doesn’t care… Resistance in fact operates with the indifference of rain and transits the heavens by the same laws as the stars” (pg 11). Umm…what? This just simply doesn’t make sense to me.
There were also a few passages that felt really problematic in that illness was simply labeled as a way creatives “get ourselves in trouble because it’s a cheap way to get attention,” and is a form of Resistance. For example:
“Trouble is a faux form of fame…Ill health is a form of trouble, as are alcoholism and drug addiction, proneness to accidents, all neurosis including compulsive screwing-up, jealously, chronic lateness…the working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble” (pg 24).
Banishing sickness (physical and mental illness) isn’t as simple as an artist deciding to not tolerate trouble in life and banishing it from your world. It’s not a lack of bringing enough energy to the war that’s the challenge here.
Also: “Doctors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their business is non-health related” (pg 27). Umm… what? (Again). This statistic didn’t have a reference or citation, so I’m in the dark about where this came from.
The part that I did mull over was a quote in the Introduction reading “there’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance” (Intro). It’s interesting that we in the current state of technology have first the barrier of sitting down to write and then deflecting the allure of the distractions like email, social media, or procrastination through other (usually valid!) busywork.
I also liked this quote, which isn’t actually from the book, but an excerpt from another author, who in turn is quoting Goethe:
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” – W. H. Murray, in The Scottish Himalayan Expidition, quoting Goethe (pg 122).
