Read with Steph 2024

Read with Steph 2024: The Backstory

Florida, early 2014. I felt stagnant. If there is such a thing as reverse seasonal depression–depression from the forever sunshine of the sunshine state–I had it, so I applied to graduate school.

Best choice I could have made for myself at that time. In a whirlwind, I applied and was accepted to the Children’s Literature and Writing for Children program at Simmons University for Fall 2014, and next thing I knew, I was moving to, like, the seat of the Revolutionary War.

I threw myself into the thick of it and grew in leaps and bounds from the experience. But, even with the connections I made and the fancy graduate degree, I went through a round of drafting, and rejections, and another, and another. Stagnation returned.

You can only afford so much graduate school in response to stagnation, so I turned to my fellow graduates and online writing communities for inspiration and recommendations and found many excellent craft books along the way.

Ten years later, in 2024, I find myself pulled back toward some of the books that provided me with insights over the years, and now I want to share the experience of reading some of these books with you.

Welcome to the Journey

This is a journey that I invite you on. If you feel stagnation or entropy whenever you think about your creative pursuits, if you feel alone in the struggle, walk a little while with me.

You can keep it simple: Just read the posts I share on my Ko‑fi blog as some food for thought. In my posts, I’ll go beyond rehashing and summarizing the text. I’ll share my insights, make connections between texts, and emphasize real-world examples and applications for the theories presented.

If you want to drop a couple of dollars my way, I’ll even provide you with worksheets to go side by side with the reading. Some will be centered on the intersection of real life and creative pursuits like time management or setting realistic priorities and goals. Some will provide creative exercises you can apply to your creative writing endeavors.

And, if you want to go all in, you can borrow the books I’m reading from your local library or even go buy them from an indie bookstore (or any bookstore–you do you, but I’ll make it easy to find the links to the books on Bookshop and Libro.fm). Read along. I’ll be pacing each book out over the course of three months, so even the longest will only require about 3 pages of reading per day, just to make it easier for all of us with adult lives and full time jobs.

Grab a highlighter, a notebook, and post-its. Share your own insights and chat with me on ko-fi, Discord, Instagram, Threads, or even Facebook if you’re a dinosaur.

If your journey to push through stagnation and find your creative self brings you parallel with mine, even just for a few moments here and there, you’re welcome to join me.

Our First Book: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

I first encountered The War of Art through a TikTok recommendation in the Dark Times of 2020-2021. I’d tried reading some other books about creativity more broadly because I’d lost my internal spark and nothing quite hit the nail on the head the way that The War of Art did. When I described it to my best friend Rachel, she said it made her think of Stealing Fire by Steven Kolter and Jamie Wheal, which had inspired her. The concept of creativity as an act of theft didn’t work for me, but through Stealing Fire I found my way to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. Through my discussions of The War of Art, I’ll be bringing in concepts from Flow that run parallel.

Pressfield uses the word Resistance to describe the force within ourselves that impedes our creativity. Csikszentmihalyi would call this same force Psychic Entropy. I’ve thought of it as stagnation because the visual of a stinking stagnant pool of water gives me something I can work with mentally.

To combat this Resistance, Pressfield argues the case for going pro–which is less about becoming a full-time creative and making a career out of your creative pursuits and more about giving yourself and your creative endeavors the weight they deserve as part of your life and existence. Csizentmihalyi presents a similar view: to achieve a state of flow, a task must meet a certain level of challenge and skill level. As our skills grow, the challenge, too, must grow for us to find flow in the same tasks.

If you manage to push past Resistant, Pressfield describes the higher experience of finding yourself and your voice, your muse, in your creative pursuits. Here is the flow state at its finest, those moments when we find joy, self-fulfillment, and growth in our creative pursuits.

We’ll break this all down week by week from January through March.

January

In January, we’ll focus on Book One, “Resistance: Defining the Enemy.”

Here’s a week by week read-along schedule for January:

• January 1st to 7th: Pages 1 t0 16
• January 8th t0 14th: Pages 17 to 28
  • See below note about this week’s reading
• January 15th to 21th: Pages 29 to 39
• January 22nd to 28th: Pages 40 to 53
• January 29th to 31st: Pages 54 to 57 (end of Book One)

January 8th-14th Reading Note: I want to emphasize that there are a handful of ableist takes in this book regarding mental illness and victimhood, specifically from pages 25 to 28. The headings of these pages are:

• Resistance and Self-Dramatization
• Resistance and Self-Medication
• Resistance and Victimhood

During the weekly post where these pages are included, I’ll make it very clear when I’m addressing these sensitive issues. As someone with an autoimmune disorder and depression surrounded by neurodivergent friends and family, I know how delicate these topics can be and I want anyone joining in to have the foreknowledge of where they may want or need to skip a couple of pages.

February

In February, we’ll focus on Book Two, “Combating Resistance: Turning Pro.”

• February 1st to 7th: Pages 58 to 74
• February 8th t0 14th: Pages 75 to 82
• February 15th t0 21st: Pages 83 to 93
• February 22nd to 29th: Pages 94 to 101 (end of Book Two)

March

In March, we’ll finish off with Book Three, “Beyond Resistance: The Higher Realm.”

• March 1st to 7th: Pages 102 to 121
• March 8th to 14th: Pages 122 to 135
• March 16th to 21st: Pages 136 to 146
• March 22nd to 28th: Pages 147 to 159
• March 29th to 31st: Pages 160 to 165 (end of Book Three)

April and Beyond

If you want a glance ahead, here are the three other books for this year’s read along:

• April through June: Wired for Story by Lisa Cron
• July through September: Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
• October through December: Creating Character Arcs by K. M. Weiland

I’ll provide more specific pacing for each of these as their months get closer.

Read Along Resources

• Find The War of Art here on Bookshop
• Add this Google Calendar to your calendar for reading pacing
• Downloadable PDF of the reading calendar