2011, Music

Do the Work (2011) by Steven Pressfield

If you struggle with completing things on time, or completing things
at all, this is a book for you. (When I say things, I mean creative
endeavours.) However, you really only need to read Pressfield’s The War of Art, as this book repeats many of the themes discussed there.

This book is helpful to me, but it’s also a crock, a lie, a marketing gimmick. It’s 100 pages in the hardcover form, but that’s only because of the formatting. It’s probably somewhere between 50-66 pages if we’re being charitable. If not, it’s even less. Sure, some of that formatting is to an artistic
purpose – to emphasize the words – but it’s also to disguise that this
isn’t anything more than an article hiding as a book. Frankly it should
be available for free online, perhaps as a way of convincing you to buy The War of Art – which you should read and probably buy if you are a struggling writer.

I would highly recommend getting this from the library if you do indeed want to read more of Pressfield’s very astute assessment of how to write. But don’t buy it.

6/10 feels charitable in retrospect

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