Review: The War of Art

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

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was a 4-start book until near the end, when Pressfield sets up what I consider a false opposition between creating for an audience and being true to yourself. We don't consider J.S. Bach a lesser artist for having produced his works for patrons, do we?

The War of Art was published before the idea of "1000 true fans" gained currency - a group of people who are, in effect, your patrons, who you create your material for and who, in turn, will buy pretty much anything from you. I wonder if Pressfield would still make such a strong dichotomy and cling so hard to the Romantic myth of the loner artist who produces brilliant work that often isn't appreciated by the masses. The modern reality (which the publishing industry needs to embrace, or it's doomed), is that there's no future in making things at random and firing them out at an uncomprehended public in the hope that they'll like one for some inscrutable reason, and buy enough copies to compensate for all the failures. Being in touch with your audience is just as important as being in touch with yourself, and the two are not mutually exclusive.

The earlier part of the book, though, on overcoming resistance, is excellent and worthwhile, and I do recommend it.

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Preorders for Changing Health Behaviours

(Crossposted from my hypnotherapy blog)



I'm very happy to announce that my book and CD Changing Health Behaviours (formerly entitled Life Leverage) is now available for preorder from the Hypno NZ shop at the special preorder price of $17.50 (NZD) plus postage and packing.

(As at when I'm posting this, that's about $9.50 USD, 7.5 Euro or 6.3 pounds, but currency conversions can change quickly.)

The files go out today for printing (of the book) and duplication (of the CD). The preorder period lasts until 31 December 2008, after which I will begin shipping, and the price will rise to $25.00 NZD plus P&P.

Preorder books will also be personally signed by me - please provide a note with your PayPal order if you want me to write anything in particular in them.

Changing Health Behaviours is based on several sources of material. One is this very blog, Living Skillfully, and you can check out a sample of what will be in the book by reading my series on Health Behaviours and Change Techniques. Naturally, I've reworked the material, expanded it, and incorporated more from the courses I run, Befriend Your Stress and Change Your Mind, but reading the blog will give you an idea of the topics I cover, what kind of things I say about them and the quality of my writing.

The book gives sound basic advice on what a healthy lifestyle consists of and, more importantly, personal change techniques that actually work to enable you to adopt a more healthy lifestyle. It includes a simple but practical introduction to using self-hypnosis and material on habit change, emotional management and change planning and execution.

The other main source is my hypnotherapy recordings. Again, you can listen to free samples of these in my podcast.

The CD which accompanies the book holds 20 MP3 tracks, all of my Healthy Lifestyle and Transformation Skills recordings, plus several extras. The total comes to over three hours. These are tracks that I give as bonuses to my clients, and the feedback I've had has been excellent.

At the end of each chapter of the book, I indicate which tracks to listen to in order to help you make the shifts of thinking, feeling and behaviour that I've been discussing in that chapter.

I normally sell these recordings on three audio CDs (Transformation Skills is a double CD set) for a total of $25, so $25 for all them (and a few extras) plus the book is a great deal, and $17.50, the preorder price, is an excellent deal.

So order now, and I'll ship you a personally signed book and CD to help you actually carry out those New Year's resolutions this time.

Life Leverage: my new nonfiction project

Over at Hypno NZ I've just announced Life Leverage: Simple techniques to improve your health and wellbeing.

The project is a book-and-CD combo, with the hypnotherapy tracks on the CD supporting the changes that the book talks about making.

I've created a mailing list where you can sign up for updates on this and my other hypnotherapy-related projects, such as audio recordings and videos. The idea is to assess demand so that I can decide what kind of a print-and-distribution model to adopt.

If health is a topic that interests you, please take a look. I try to stay on the scientific end of the health advice spectrum and make sure that my recommendations are well supported, but at the same time treat human beings as human beings and not squishy machines.