Turning Pro

Steven Pressfield's follow-up to The War of Art traces the passage from an amateur life to a professional practice. His premise is that turning pro costs nothing but a change of mind, yet it demands sacrifice: giving up a life that may have grown comfortable and a self that has come to feel like one's own. Pressfield says the change often comes through an inner odyssey whose trials are paid for emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, and he calls it messy and frightening. What the professional gains, he argues, is power, will, voice and self-respect, and the pro becomes the self he or she had always been but had feared to live out.

Jacqui Pretty, who founded Grammar Factory, described it as a book about treating creative work professionally, sitting down to do it every day instead of handling it like a hobby.