Books of the Month: The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

When I first got serious about writing over fifteen years ago, I dealt with imposter syndrome. I remember walking into my first creative writing workshop, wondering how long it would take for the other writers in the room to figure me out. Many of the literary references went over my head. When the professor made a Vonnegut joke, I was the only one who didn’t laugh. In my mind, I was a soccer player though my body had its objections.

What I learned then and what I know now is it doesn’t matter where you start.

For every Tiger Woods, there is a Scottie Sheffler. For every LeBron James, there is a Steph Curry. For every Lamine Yamal, there is a Didier Drogba, Jamie Vardy, or Clint Dempsey.

When comes to artistic pursuits, many people hold the belief that people are either creative or they’re not. Great athletes, musicians, and writers are labeled prodigies without recognition for practicing religiously at an early age.

S.E. Hinton started writing The Outsiders when she was 15 years-old.

Mary Shelley published Frankenstein when she was 20 years-old.

Stephen Crane published Red Badge of Courage when he was 24.

But, on the flip side:

Toni Morrison was 40 when she published The Bluest Eye.

Mark Twain was 41 when he published Tom Sawyer.

Raymond Chandler, 51, Annie Proulx, 57, and Frank McCourt, 66, all published debit works well into their adult lives.

Rick Rubin and Steven Pressfield are successful creatives who dismiss the notion that people are born great. They even go as far to say that everyone is born with creativity and has potential to produce art. They believe the difference is tapping into artistic frequencies and spending the time to do the work.

Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being and Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art have had a tremendous impact on my creativity over the past five years. As someone who delves often into self-help and craft writing books, I find their work transcends art, providing sound direction for living with purpose and gratitude.

Some of you may be familiar with Rubin already. If not, you’re certainly familiar with his work. King of Rock, Licensed to Ill, Danzig, Dice, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and Wildflowers are just a small sample from the dozens of albums he produced from the 80s and 90s. As co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, Rubin helped bring rap and hip-hop into the mainstream, but over the past forty years, he’s collaborated with some of the greatest recording artists of all time across a wide number of genres, including Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, Jay Z, Slayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Chicks, and Adele, the latter two who won Album of the Year at the Grammys.

The Creative Act is a compilation of thoughts about the creative process that reads similar to Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. His primary concept is receiving what he calls Source, a creative inspiration that can be found all around us and tapped into at any time. Rubin’s a strong proponent for living in the present and often considers himself a supporter for artists finding the work they were meant to produce. He writes about how the goal of creative work is to produce the best an artist can while in the moment, without deadlines, external pressures, or outsider opinions. He believes artists should create for themselves and nothing else because not even the gatekeepers, himself included, can predict how the finished product will be received. The only thing the artist controls is the work itself.

In the following passage, Rubin describes the origins of a creative endeavor.

In the first phase of the creative process, we are to be completely open, collecting anything we find of interest.

We call this the Seed phase. We’re searching for potential starting points that, with love and care, can grow into something beautiful. At this stage, we are not comparing them to the best seed. We simply gather them.

A seed for a song can be a phrase, a melody, a bass line, or a rhythmic feel.

For a written piece, it may be a sentence, a character sketch, a setting, a thesis, or a plot point.

For a structure, a shape, a material choice, a function, or the natural properties of a location.

And for a business, it could be a common inconvenience, a societal need, a technical advancement, or a personal interest.

Collecting seeds typically doesn’t involve a tremendous amount of effort. It’s more a receiving of a transmission. A noticing.

As if catching fish, we walk to the water, bait the hook, cast the line, and patiently wait. We cannot control the fish, only the presence of our line.

While Rubin has been a household name since the early 1980s, Pressfield spent much of his early artistic life under the radar. A former copywriter and self-proclaimed B level screenwriter, Pressfield’s writer’s journey had been largely derailed by something he calls Resistance. For Pressfield, Resistance represents a combination of self-doubt, self-distraction, and self-sabotage that prevents an artist or anyone with a specific goal from staying focused.

In the passage below, he compares the fight between the creative Muse and Resistance as a daily battle in the endless war of completion.

Resistance is like the Alien or the Terminator or the shark in Jaws. It cannot be reasoned with. It understands nothing but power. It is an engine of destruction, programmed from a factory with one object only: to prevent us from doing our work. Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable. Reduce it to a single cell and that cell will continue to attack.

This is Resistance’s nature. It’s all it knows.

Known for his historical fiction, Pressfield found acclaim with his novel The Legend of Bagger Vance, which became a movie (though he admits, not a good one) directed by Robert Redford and featuring Hollywood stars Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron. His book Gates of Fire, about the Battle of Thermopylae, is taught to students at West Point. War of Art, which came after he’d managed his own personal battles with Resistance, propelled Pressfield to widespread notoriety and continues to rank as one of the top craft books for aspiring and seasoned artists.  

What makes Pressfield so unique is his ability to break down the mysterious elements of creativity and creation into industrial terms, overcoming Resistance, turning professional, and welcoming the Muse. In one of my favorite podcast episodes, Rubin features Pressfield on Tetragrammaton (November 29th, 2024), and the pair discuss many of the concepts found in their books, among them their views on talent, critics, inspiration, blocks, and abundance. Their own artistic journeys prove how regular people can unlock creativity by tuning into sources and overcoming the forces that prevent us from reaching our goals. Both authors also appear on Brian Koppelman’s The Moment, my go-to podcast for creative inspiration.

Whether the goal is finding inspiration or fighting resistance, The Creative Act and The War of Art reveal a normalized view of how artists can create personally satisfying works by building a receptive mindset and focusing on simple, every day actions.