{"id":1570,"date":"2009-10-19T01:00:38","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T07:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/?p=1570"},"modified":"2009-12-27T11:20:33","modified_gmt":"2009-12-27T17:20:33","slug":"interview-with-the-war-of-art-author-steven-pressfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/2009\/10\/interview-with-the-war-of-art-author-steven-pressfield\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with the War of Art author Steven Pressfield"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the<\/a>A little while ago I posted a small post<\/a> about reading the book “the War of Art<\/a>” by Steven Pressfield. It was a good book, and it got me thinking about how resistance has started to plague me and my photography. I had some questions that were more photography specific than the book was, but\u00ac\u2020 book reading is a one way medium right?<\/p>\n

Apparently not. First, Steven is blogging, and has a Wednesday<\/a> column that talks more about the things he mentioned in his book. The second, is that I was contacted by Callie, who works with Stephen and had seen my blog post, to see if I was interested in submitting some questions that I could then blog about!<\/p>\n

The first thing that hit me was resistance telling me that my questions would be no good, and that Steven wouldn’t even want to answer them. How appropriate! I shook it off, wrote down my questions, and sent them off. Here are the answers that Steven provided.<\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: Your book seems to be directed at writers and painters. Do you think that the principles of fighting resistance apply to photographers as well?<\/p>\n

Steven<\/strong>: Absolutely.\u00ac\u2020 I didn\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t think so at first, but that was just because I was dumb.\u00ac\u2020 I originally thought the principles of Resistance would be of interst only to writers; in fact the title I had in my mind was \u201a\u00c4\u00faThe Writer\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s Life.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9\u00ac\u2020 My editor and publisher, Shawn Coyne, said, \u201a\u00c4\u00faNo, this is much bigger than that; this applies to all artists.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9\u00ac\u2020 So he came up with \u201a\u00c4\u00faThe War of Art.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9\u00ac\u2020 But since the book has been published and I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4ve gotten letters and e-mails from readers, I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4ve learned that Resistance is out there everywhere.\u00ac\u2020 What has surprised me most is the number of letters I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4ve gotten from entrepreneurs\u201a\u00c4\u00eeand the number of coaching\/management\/leadership\/business blogs and seminars that have responded with great enthusiasm to the book.<\/p>\n

What is an entrepreneur?\u00ac\u2020 Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach has a great definition.\u00ac\u2020 He says an entrepreneur is someone who \u201a\u00c4\u00fadoes not expect to receive compensation (i.e. money) until he has created value for somebody else.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9\u00ac\u2020 That would be all of us artists, including photographers.<\/p>\n

For me, from what I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4ve learned since The War of Art was published, I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4d say that anyone who is trying to follow a vision\u201a\u00c4\u00eewriter, photographer, business person\u201a\u00c4\u00eewill experience Resistance.\u00ac\u2020 Anyone who needs to self-motivate, self-discipline, self-validate will find himself fighting that fight and facing those demons.<\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: You mention both art and craft in your book. I think many photographers, myself included, go back and forth thinking their work is art, or craft. Is it both, or does it not matter, and it is just another form of resistance?<\/p>\n

Steven<\/strong>: Photography is both art and craft, wouldn\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t you agree, Chris?\u00ac\u2020 The technical side of it could be called craft, just as in writing, stuff like structure, composition, etc. is craft \u201a\u00c4\u00ec that is, it\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s something that can be taught and something that can be learned.\u00ac\u2020 But of course photography is art too.\u00ac\u2020 That\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s the part that can\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t be taught.\u00ac\u2020 Resistance, I think, comes in to the art part.\u00ac\u2020 It\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s not so hard to learn craft; we can apprentice ourselves to a master and learn it, just like going to school.\u00ac\u2020 But the art part can only come from our own vision\u201a\u00c4\u00eeand for that we have to face Resistance on our own.<\/p>\n

Craft can be a huge help to overcoming Resistance, I think.\u00ac\u2020 It gives us the tools we need to enact our vision.\u00ac\u2020 And just the doing to something physical\u201a\u00c4\u00eethe lighting, the composition, the tech stuff\u201a\u00c4\u00eecan help get our momentum going.\u00ac\u2020 After that though, it\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s all up to us and our vision.<\/p>\n

Chris<\/strong>: What is it about resistance that makes it so strong when we try to move from taking pictures for fun to trying to make a living from them? What do you think the best tool for photographers would be trying to make that transition, and battling resistance?<\/p>\n

Steven<\/strong>: Wow, that\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s a great question.\u00ac\u2020 I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4m not sure I have a good answer.\u00ac\u2020 I think what you mean is that Resistance kicks in hard when the stakes are raised, when we go from being an amateur (whose heart is only partly invested in the act) to a professional, who is in it, heart and soul.\u00ac\u2020 This comes down to a question of courage and commitment.\u00ac\u2020 How much do we want it?\u00ac\u2020 How important to us is pursuing our dream?\u00ac\u2020 The more Resistance (i.e. fear) we feel, the surer we can be that we have to do it, for the sake of our owns souls \u201a\u00c4\u00ec and the greater the damage will be to our inner world if we fail to do it.<\/p>\n

There\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s a tech term in mountaineering called \u201a\u00c4\u00faexposure.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9\u00ac\u2020 A climber is \u201a\u00c4\u00faexposed\u201a\u00c4\u00f9 when there is a drop underneath him.\u00ac\u2020 By that definition, we can be ten feet from the summit of Everest and not be exposed, if there\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s a nice shelf two feet underneath us.\u00ac\u2020 On the other hand, we can be exposed when we\u201a\u00c4\u00f4re only ten feet above sea level, if that ten feet is a pure drop.\u00ac\u2020 What\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s the answer when we\u201a\u00c4\u00f4re exposed?\u00ac\u2020 Whatever it takes to give us the courage to keep going.\u00ac\u2020 It does come down to that, I think.\u00ac\u2020 It may be recklessness that works for us, or a vision of ourselves as warriors or professionals or gunslingers or \u201a\u00c4\u00fachosen ones.\u201a\u00c4\u00f9\u00ac\u2020 Maybe we just see ourselves as crazy and go for it.\u00ac\u2020 Or the pain of not doing it may be so great that we have no choice but to do it.\u00ac\u2020 The best I can say, Chris, is that EVERYBODY feels it.\u00ac\u2020 Nobody\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s immune.\u00ac\u2020 It\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s kind of like a first-time Mom giving birth; it seems absolutely impossible when you think about it\u201a\u00c4\u00eeand yet women have been doing it for millions of years and they keep on doing it.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Thank you very much Stephen. I appreciate that you took the time to answer my questions. I am sure that the people reading your answers got something out of it. Readers, don’t forget to check out Steven’s blog, and Wednesday<\/a> column.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little while ago I posted a small post about reading the book “the War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. It was a good book, and it got me thinking about how resistance has started to plague me and my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[10,251],"series":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pffAy-pk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberward.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}