On Creativity
The Artist's Way ..... The Vein of Gold...... The Writer's Journey..... Life, Paint, and Passion
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The Artist's Way By Julia Cameron, 1992 Amazon Review With the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life, Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan lead you through a comprehensive twelve-week program to recover your creativity from a variety of blocks, including limiting beliefs, fear, self-sabotage, jealousy, guilt, addictions, and other inhibiting forces, replacing them with artistic confidence and productivity. This book links creativity to spirituality by showing how to connect with the creative energies of the universe, and has, in the years since its publication, spawned a remarkable number of support groups for artists dedicated to practicing the exercises it contains. More info |
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The Vein of Gold By Julia Cameron From Booklist , October 15, 1996. Cameron's The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (1992) worked so well for so many people it became a best-seller, thus turning Cameron into a creativity guru for artists of all kinds, but especially for writers. Cameron's mind-freeing exercises are the basis for many a workshop and writers' group, and the wisdom she has gained through teaching has inspired her to develop new and even more probing techniques for liberating what she believes is our innate creativity. Cameron characterizes her teachings as "a process of creative individuation and emergence," or, to use that dreadful New Age phrase, of freeing the inner child. To her credit, Cameron is perfectly aware of readers' resistance to such approaches, but she forges ahead nonetheless, reminding us that a closed mind is antithetical to creativity. She encourages readers to explore various "kingdoms" of sight, sound, story, attitude, relationship, spirituality, and possibility both in her narrative and in work sheet-based exercises, all aimed at mining that "vein of gold," our creative heart. Donna Seaman More info |
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The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler Amazon.com At the beginning of The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler asserts that "all stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams, and movies." Some may be hard-pressed to accept this idea (and will wonder how storytellers from Homer to Shakespeare to Robert Altman might respond to the proposition). Others may imagine that since Vogler uses movies like the Star Wars trilogy and The Lion King to defend his mythological philosophy, he is, unwittingly, listing the reasons why Hollywood films of the last 20 years have been so unimaginative. But there's no doubt that Vogler's notion, based on psychological writings by Carl Jung and the mythmaking philosophy of Joseph Campbell, has been profoundly influential. Many screenwriters have used Vogler's volume to understand why certain scenarios sell, and to discover a blueprint for creating mythic stories of their own. Now in its second edition, The Writer's Journey sets forth archetypes common in what Vogler calls "the hero's journey," the mythic structure that he claims all stories follow. In the book's first section, he lists the different kinds of typological characters who appear in stories. In the second, he discusses the stages of the journey through which the hero generally passes. The final, supplementary portion of the book explains in detail how films like Titanic and The Full Monty follow the patterns he has outlined. --Raphael Shargel More info |
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Life, Paint and Passion : Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression by Michelle Cassou, Stewart Cubley Who says we can't paint? We do! We couldn't wait to paint when we were five years old, what happened? With Life, Paint, and Passion, Michelle and Stewart help us to undo years of social conditioning and self judgement about our creative abilities. Anyone can paint. Painting is a natural and joyful expression of our souls. This book serves as a guide to help us unblock ourselves from ourselves and release the creative spirit that we all have. More info |