Five Years of Forgotten Books: Day One, 2008

This begins a month long celebration of Friday's Forgotten Books. The books reviewed here daily this month are all ones that appeared on my blog. A lot of great reviews, most really, appeared on the blogs of the reviewer and finding them was just too much work. So I have limited myself to ones I had quick access to.

I would like to thank the people who have posted a review every week for five years (in the case of Bill Crider) and almost every week in the case of James Reasoner, Todd Mason, Evan Lewis, Kerrie Smith, Randy Johnson, Bonnie Lawson, J.F. Norris, Scott Cupp, Martin Edwards, Ed Gorman, George Kelley

and the many many more who have posted reviews on many occasions. Too many to name.
I'd like to thank J. Kingston Pierce for sharing some of this journey with me. And I'd like to thank Todd Mason. Evan Lewis and George Kelley for lending a hand on innumerable occasions.
I feel like an Oscar recipient who is forgetting people, but I thank you if I did.

Julie Hyzy is the author of the White House Chef Mystery series including STATE OF THE ONION and , new this month, HAIL TO THE CHEF. She also write the Alex. St. James series: DEADLY BLESSING, DEADLY INTEREST, and new last month, a collaboration with Michael A. Black, DEAD RINGER. 

(bio from 2008)
 
THE WAR OF ART is a great little book. And, at least in hardcover, a bit strange looking. My treasured copy is a slim 165 pages tucked into a hard silver binding with three small square mirrors embedded on the cover. Not the sort of thing I’d pick up on my own. It’s available in paperback, but I received this copy from my friend, Ken Rand, who was cleaning out his shelves and decided the powerful little volume needed a new home. This isn’t a mystery—it isn’t even a novel. THE WAR OF ART is (she sheepishly admits) a self-help book for writers. It’s a “get your butt in the chair and write” book, but it’s not for the faint of heart. When my friend sent it to me about a year ago, I read it that afternoon. Standing up. Pacing, actually. For some reason, I felt as though I’d be cheating if I sat while I read. Sections are small, sometimes only a single paragraph. It moves fast and I turned pages sometimes more quickly than I changed directions. The idea behind this book is that “Resistance” is what keeps us from staying in our writing chairs each day. Resistance is what creates our obstacles, encourages us to procrastinate, prevents our success. Author Steven Pressfield gives Resistance human characteristics in order to make his point: Resistance wants us to fail. And we, as writers, must fight Resistance.Sure, it’s a gimmick. But whether you call it Resistance, your inner critic, or the demon on your shoulder whispering disapproval, we working writers can’t simply wait for the Muse to hit in order to do our jobs. We have to keep our butts in our chairs every day. And we have to keep our eyes off the obstacles and on our personal goals. For me, THE WAR OF ART is a godsend. For me, it works. When I mention THE WAR OF ART to writer friends, I’m surprised to find that no one else has ever heard of it. Does this mean it’s been “forgotten,” or has it just not made the rounds yet? I don’t know. But I do know that I’m grateful to Patti for this blog invitation, and my opportunity to share this gem of a book with others.