Reviews

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

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_rg's review

4.0

If you ignore the stuff sbout god, and divinity and so on, you can learn a quite a few useful things from this book. I would recommend it, if you can overlook the references to god and divinity.

l0yalr3ads's review

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challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.75

wolfbridge's review

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informative

3.25

Much better than King’s “On Writing” but could do without the religious stuff.

katiegilley's review against another edition

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2.0

There were some great quotes in here (I've shared my Kindle highlights on Goodreads), but I didn't enjoy this overall. In its favor: it was a fast read, some of his advice was solid (show up to do the work), and he tried to be funny. What didn't work for me: this guy is full of bologna (no offense, Mr. Pressfield). I was hanging on by a thread through most of this book, but he completely lost me when he proposed that people get cancer because they're being attacked by their unfulfilled destinies and they'd be cured if they just did what they were born to do. At that point, I couldn't even try to take anything else seriously.

If you're looking for writing inspiration, stick with Bird by Bird, The Writing Life, and Writing Down the Bones.

whimsicalmeerkat's review

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2.0

An interesting book, whether you are an artist or not. Pressfield writes well.

tashaseegmiller's review

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5.0

I'd put off reading this for a while for reasons I don't know, but I shouldn't have waited. It is inspiring and ignites the creativity within me by helping identify what it is that makes things complicated when it comes to creating.