Writing Wednesdays: “The War of Art” eBook for $1.99!

If you‘re like me, you want to clear your desk every night before you head home. You want to make sure that anything that might impair you that evening at home is off the to-do list and out of your mind. Then you’ll be able to relax without having unresolved work issues hanging over your head.

Always Refreshing!

Now this is a very good strategy to rid you of repetitive paperwork/accounting/office management. But it can be the death knell for creative work. Forcing yourself into making a decision about a particular project just to get it off your desk will bite you in the ass later on. I can’t tell you how often I’m haunted by the consequences of my hurry up and move on decisions. If you see me walking down the street cringing, you’ll know I just remembered one.

And don’t forget business decisions are creative work too.

Whether or not you should make that call and press for better terms with that vendor may seem like a run of the mill decision, but it’s not. You need to creatively think about what it is that decision will do for you. You may win a marginal short term victory, but your vendor may hate you for being such a penny pincher that she does the least amount possible to keep you happy. Your inventory is mishandled so your customers return more goods and are dissatisfied etc.

Making the call and pressing for a reduced fee may be the right choice. But until you sit with the problem for a little while and map out the pros and cons of a decision, you’re running on “first draft-itis.” And no one should see your first draft of anything.

Why do we do this?

We do it to avoid confrontation. It deflates our anxiety, gives us “thank God I got that over with” relief.

It’s important to remember though that life is conflict. It just is. These are why stories, things built on the bedrock of conflict, are so important to us.

That doesn’t mean that it is all about screaming or passive aggressively getting your way. It means that in any human interaction, there is a clash of one kind or another. We communicate in order to figure out where we differ (where should we go to eat?) and then we confront the controversy and make it go away (how about a Mexican restaurant?). If you both love Mexican food, problem solved. If one of you wants Sushi, then there’s stress.

The courage to do nothing is all about remembering that you don’t know everything. You are capable of changing your ideas about things. You can hold two opposing thoughts in your head without jumping off a cliff. Really you can. You can hate taxes and also believe that the government should raise them to help people incapable of taking care of themselves.
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Posted in What It Takes
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Writing Wednesdays

“The War of Art” eBook for $1.99!

By Steven Pressfield | Published: October 13, 2010

One of the mantras of Writing Wednesdays is the ongoing effort to think like a professional, work like a professional, be a professional. But sometimes it’s not so bad to be a lucky amateur either. To wit, here’s a serendipitous tale from a couple of weeks ago.

The eBook "cover" takes off from the original hardback cover

I had just received the umpteenth note—this time via Facebook—from a frustrated reader who was trying to order the Kindle eBook of The War of Art. (The Amazon page has been crashing regularly since it first went up.) “Why,” the reader wanted to know, “does Amazon keep saying there’s no such book? And why can’t my wife get The War of Art for her iPad?”

I responded on Facebook by apologizing for the mess and explaining the various tech and contractual problems. To my surprise, I got a message right away from a third party, who happened to have spotted the exchange. His name is Michael Ashley and he wrote back: “I’ve got a new company and I can fix this whole snafu for you.”

A week later we were in business. Michael’s company, FastPencil, is setting things up so that The War of Art can be ordered for Kindle or Ipad, Nook, SONY and a bunch of other eBook platforms. The price will be determined by the individual platforms (somewhere around the standard $9.99) once all systems are up. But for two days next week—October 20th and 21st—the book can be ordered from this site only for $1.99.

FastPencil is an interesting company. It’s fun for me to work with people who are young and hungry, who are at the tech cutting edge and who have big plans and dreams. FastPencil does hardback, paperback and on-demand publishing too; they’re in the process of corraling a stable of writers right now for a new imprint they just launched last week. If you’re a writer and you’re struggling with the same eBook problems I was, shoot an e-mail to Michael Ashley, mashley@fastpencil.com, or Steve Wilson, swilson@fastpencil.com. Michael is the CTO and Steve is the CEO/Prez. They’re hungry!

I’d also like to thank Seth Godin, Jeff Sexton, Mark Safranski, Mark McGuinness, Jonathan Fields and Justine Musk, among others who have opened my eyes to some of the new ways for writers to reach their audiences.

The War of Art eBook for a buck ninety-nine for two days next week! today and tomorrow!

I’ll send reminders via Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday and will do a post here that Wednesday, with a widget that will make everything happen with a couple of clicks.

For more information about the eBook and lessons learned from writing about a carton of eggs, visit the Oct. 20 Writing Wednesdays post.

Posted in Writing Wednesdays
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51 Responses to ““The War of Art” eBook for $1.99!”

Bill
October 19, 2010 at 11:10 pm

It appears your book is not available on Amazon’s Kindle UK store… I assume then this is for the US only?

Reply
Peter Lakanen
October 20, 2010 at 7:50 am

I bought your book earlier this year and loved it. Just grabbed the PDF for two bucks. Thanks for making this available.

Reply
Simone
October 20, 2010 at 8:15 am

Same problem… I can’t seem to find a way to buy the ebook.
Is it somehow US only?

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Albert Hathazi
October 20, 2010 at 10:07 am

I just purchased it from FastPencil and I was a no hassle process. I just signed up for the account and I purchased it for $1.99. I have read about 10 pages so far and I love it. Spread the word folks.

Reply
CJ Barbre
October 20, 2010 at 12:51 pm

Eureka! Steven, I found you through a best tweets site that took me to Jeff Sexton Writes that pointed me here. I plan to get myself an eReader for Christmas.

Meanwhile, may I please post your five steps on my blog and refer readers back to your site? I’ve read a great deal about writing and that is the very best information to date. Look forward to your reply.

Reply
pixites
October 23, 2010 at 6:45 am

@mash will there be an android app available soon? or late?

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Morgan Mohabir
January 10, 2011 at 6:40 pm

hey there great post! Enjoyed it!

Reply
ginger
May 18, 2011 at 1:36 am

BOOOOOO…. I missed this. :/

Fantastic Book Btw

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Mysore
June 7, 2011 at 3:27 am

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Lani Faulhaber
July 27, 2011 at 10:16 am

Respect to author, some wonderful entropy.

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