Book Review: Turning Pro

Turning Pro Book

Turning Pro is the new book by Steven Pressfield, author of War of Art and Do The Work. In fact, I would argue that together, read in order, the three make a cohesive whole. Turning Pro is an essential followup to those previous works and answers any question of “Now what?” the first two books may have left.

That “now what?” is this: The time for amateur hour is over. You have made excuses for too long. It is now time to change. Time to pull the pin and release yourself from the train of other people’s expectations and desires. Time to ride the rails that only you can put down in front of you. Time to go pro.

I counted those earlier works among my favorites and essential to artists and creatives who wanted to break past the fear, self-doubt, and blocks we face daily to get to the hard work of doing.

For a writer like myself, that means having a routine and carving out space and time that is sacred for the task. Write every day. Because the muse only shows up for those that are at the same time and place, every day. That, anything else is not the work. Anything else is a hobby.

Even though I subscribed to many of the principles set forth already, even though I am a published author, even though I took much of what was laid out in his first two books to practice, this book was a wake up call for me.

If you are an artist or creator of any stripe, you need this book. If you are one who is stuck in a shadow career working on someone else’s job, you need this book. And, if you are a professional who thinks you have it all figured out, you really need this book.

Even more so, you need to give this book to anyone you know who you feel is in any of those places. I was only a quarter of the way in before I came up with a short list of people who I knew would benefit from it greatly (and sent it to them as a gift). Then, even after I had already purchased it and started to dig in, I received several emails from other trusted friends of mine telling me they were only part way through but could not wait to tell me to go and get it. Therefore, do yourself a favor and get the paperback. This is one to highlight, mark up the margins, and pass around.

My New Book — enough

I’m pleased to announce the launch of my new book, enough. It is available starting today in Paperback, ePub, and Kindle format. (iBooks coming soon, Apple willing. ePub works great on iPad though)

This series of original essays help to answer the question, “What is enough?”.

Enough is a very personal metric. Like our center of gravity, each of us must find what is enough by swaying from less to more until a comfortable medium is found.

The goal, then, is not to find what is, or will be, enough forever. That is impossible. The goal is to discover the tools and strategies you need to find what is enough for you right now and provide the flexibility to adjust as the conditions change.

The essays in this book explore many of the methods, practice, and strategies needed to meet this goal and discover what enough means to you.

This book represents years worth of work exploring this topic and writing the book. For those not in the know, that the first draft of this book was written entirely on iOS. So, to some, that may serve as invitation alone to purchase a copy and check out just what is capable on a post-PC device.

I know you will enjoy it and walk away the better for it.

I should also mention that, in celebration of the new release, the price of my first book, Keeping It Straight, has dropped for a limited time. If you have not read it yet I would be humbled if you bought both.

Finally, a heartfelt thanks to Randy, Penny, and Aaron at my publisher, First Today Press, for once again taking my words and turning into something worth reading. If you have a book in you I can think of no better group of people to help you get it out.

Once again that is…

Paperback  • ePub • Kindle

The Californian & The New Yorker | J. D. Bentley

The Californian & The New Yorker | J. D. Bentley.

I’m greatly dis­ap­pointed that the web allows medi­oc­rity to be so eas­ily dis­trib­uted, but I should not over­look the fact that it also offers this cheap, world­wide dis­tri­b­u­tion to the thought­ful and the tal­ented. If you work hard to learn a craft and even harder to mas­ter it, if you put great thought into what you say and who you want to say it to, then there’s no bet­ter place to be pub­lished than on a web­site you your­self own.

I wish I could give you a full and accurate account of how many days I think to myself that I should stop publishing anything I write online. That, perhaps, it would be better to pour all of these essays into a book and release a new one whenever I felt I had compiled enough of them.

Or that, despite the overwhelmingly positive feedback and kind regards from readers, no one is actually reading or, even worse, that my words are simply scanned and forgotten. Then there is also the fact that so much of my work is in places I don’t really own or control.

Then, I’m reminded of the fact that my work, no matter the quality, has the privilege to be in the same vast library of data as a writer of J.D. Bentley’s caliber. It is then that I can see few better reasons to press “publish”.