simmo

The first couple of sections are about 'resistance' to your art (in this case writing, buy equally could be applied to any art, or any occupation), what forms the resistance manifests itself and what you can do about it.

The book is very easy to digest, straight forward, short and filled with (mostly) practical tips to get you from the stage of thinking about writing your opus (and planning on starting it tomorrow) to actually just getting on with it. Essentially the advice is 'be professional' - treat writing like you were being paid for it - turn up to it in the morning, sit down and write. Don't worry about the inspiration, that will come (in this case Pressman presents the process of writing as 'pleasing the Muses', though I am not sure if this is a allegory for putting yourself in the right frame of mind, or whether he actually believes a higher power is rewarding his discipline with the ability to write).

The third section is a bit metaphysical for me - really I think the 'just sit down and do it' approach is enough without prayers to the muses, Buddhist doctrine or 'doing it for God' (whey to go with mixing of mutually exclusive belief systems btw).

So mixed over all, but contains good practical advice when not sacrificing chickens to the scary book-gods.