His name is Steven Pressfield and he's been kicking my ass for over an hour.
My new friend Mark of the Kindlings turned me on to Pressfield at our last writer's meeting. I got the CD of his book The War of Art at the library and have been listening to him describe all my bad habits as if he knew me. It's a bit spooky.
I'm about a third of the way through the book and it's very good. He writes very directly, in a no-bullshit manner. So far he's spent a lot of time talking about what he calls "Resistance". This is a term he applies to anything that keeps us from doing our work. As far as I can tell, Resistance is roughly equivalent to Freud's thanatos impulse, or Death Wish, that force in our lives that moves us toward death and not life. The life force (Freud calls it eros) pushes us out of the comfortable womb, through pain to life. Thanatos moves against this, seeking pleasure that ultimatley leads to death. You can imagine the deadly effects of trying to be a grown man inside a womb.
Pressfield says that there are a million ways that Resistance can manifest itself--writer's block, illness, addiction, drama--but it must always be combatted by doing one's work, what one was put on the planet to do.
He seems to be headed toward Mother Theresa's "faithfulness, not success" comibined with a heaping helping of Josemaria Escriva's philosophy of work. I'll keep you posted.
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