Creativity for Life: Practical Advice on the Artist's Personality, and Career from America's Foremost Creativity Coach [Paperback]

Ph.D. Eric Maisel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 8, 2007

Over the years, Eric Maisel has worked with thousands of creative people, including writers, musicians, artists, dancers, and actors. He knows firsthand the struggles they must face, and through his many books and professional practice he’s helped them find balance in their lives while pursuing their artistic endeavors. Firmly grounded in psychology, Creativity for Life explores all the challenges confronting an artist: deciding if you have talent (or if that’s even important); determining your level of commitment; pursuing stardom; honing your craft; overcoming blocks; taking care of the business end of your artistic life; finding your place in culture; coming out as an artist; finding love and friendship inside and out of your artistic community; and using your art to explore your inner life. A comprehensive approach to the much-misunderstood artist's life, this book, contains both nuts-and-bolts ideas and exercises and inspiration to nurture growth as an artist and a person. It includes update and expanded material from Maisel's Life in the Arts.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"This book will save new artists and working artists years of wasted effort and thousands of dollars in therapy. This is a brilliant, wonderful book -- a bible. Maisel is a sage."
-- Heather Sellers, PhD, author of Georgia Under Water and Page After Page

"Eric Maisel has done it again! This indispensable guide to actually living as an artist must be on every working artist's shelf to be read again and again. Ten thumbs over the moon!"
-- Jennifer Louden, author of The Life Organizer and The Woman's Comfort Book

"In Creativity for Life, America's premier creativity coach delves deeply into the issues that challenge writers, artists, musicians, and performers and provides them with unique strategies and stimulating insights to achieve their creative destinies."
-- Nita Leland, artist and author of The New Creative Artist

"Eric Maisel is the therapist, counselor, coach, and friend we all want and need. He provides the psychological tools to help artists lead a mature, functioning, productive, and enriching personal and creative life."
-- Bobette Buster, adjunct professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts and La Fémis, Paris

"Eric Maisel has taught me more about the creative life and how to live it successfully than any other author. Creativity for Life is for anyone who has ever dared to live an extraordinary and fully exposed life."
-- Sharon Lebell, author of The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness

"This is the most comprehensive book on creativity that I have encountered. I will make this book required reading for the students in my creativity coaching training as well as for clients embarking upon a creative path."
-- Jill Badonsky, MEd, creativity coaching trainer and author of The Nine Modern Day Muses (and a Bodyguard)

"If you are an artist who wants to get a project finished, read this book. It gave me new understanding of my artist personality and why I put things off. Most important, it gave me new courage to forge the path I know I have to take."
-- Coleen Rajotte, documentary filmmaker

"Eric Maisel speaks as the artist's friend and ally. His book will serve as a powerful encouragement for people who undertake the courageous and often lonely adventure of finding, protecting, and nourishing their creative voice."
-- Stephen Nachmanovitch, author of Free Play: The Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: New World Library (March 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1577315588
• ISBN-13: 978-1577315582
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Eric Maisel, Ph.D., widely regarded as America's foremost creativity coach, is the author of more than 40 books. His titles include Making Your Creative Mark, Coaching the Artist Within, The Van Gogh Blues, Fearless Creating, Mastering Creative Anxiety, Creativity for Life, A Writer's Paris, A Writer's San Francisco, and many others.

In addition to training creativity coaches, leading workshops nationally and internationally, and maintaining an individual creativity coaching practice, Dr. Maisel is in the forefront of the movement to rethink mental health. He writes the Rethinking Psychology blog for Psychology Today and among his books in this area are Rethinking Depression and Natural Psychology: the New Psychology of Meaning.

Dr. Maisel leads Deep Writing workshops at workshop centers like Esalen, Kripalu, Omega, Hollyhock and Rowe and in locales like San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, Prague and Rome. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, he has conducted hundreds of interviews, and his print column "Coaching the Artist Within" appears monthly in Professional Artist Magazine.

Dr. Maisel is also interested in the challenges that smart people face. His forthcoming book Why Smart People Hurt appears from Conari Press Fall of 2013. Dr. Maisel's websites are www.ericmaisel.com and www.naturalpsychology.net. He can be contacted at [e-mail].

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Midwest Book Review, May 2007 Issue May 1, 2007

By Lori L. Lake

Format:Paperback

The latest from Eric Maisel is an amazing and wonderful book that any writer, musician, artist, or performer would benefit from reading. In CREATIVITY FOR LIFE, Maisel brings together concepts and ideas he's discussed in previous books, but here every part is synthesized and complete. It's a smorgasbord of examples and tactics. He breaks new ground in detailing the artist's personality in ways that that the non-psychologist reader will instantly understand, and the book is highly accessible to anyone from beginner to master.

In the introduction he distinguishes between the "artful life," which is the way many people wish to live; the "art-filled life," which includes the joy that art brings; and an "art-committed life," the process of actively choosing to be creative. It's this latter that's the focus of the book.

"As soon as you decide to be creative in a particular domain and that you mean to live as a novelist, biochemist, actor, or sculptor, you introduce a set of profound challenges that you would not have confronted if you had `settled' for artful living and an art-filled life" (p. xii). In four major sections, Maisel thoroughly examines the challenges faced in seeking an art-committed life: The Challenge of the Artistic Personality, The Challenge of the Work, The Challenge of Relationships, and Strategies & Tactics. Each section is brilliantly detailed and will make sense to anyone at any stage of invention, innovation, or imagination.

Because creative folks face major obstacles that non-artists do not, Maisel spends a great deal of time giving hints, ideas, and suggestions. Just a few include ways to silence negative self-talk, using visualization, focusing, and practicing one's craft while bringing to it skills such as regularity, honesty, self-direction, intensity, joy, discipline, and more. He tells us, "Creativity is the act of making one choice after another" (p. 120). Living an art-committed life is the same. As Maisel says late in the book, "Lifelong creativity isn't given to you. You must earn it and attend to it every day... You will have to dig deep to find the requisite honesty, courage, and resilience to live an artful, art-filled, art-committed life... You must really want it and really commit to it in order to have it... to crack through everyday resistance and create for a lifetime" (p. 319-320).

I approach every new nonfiction book by Maisel with giddy excitement, wondering what fresh aspect of the creative process he'll unearth, dust off, and show around. Sometimes I feel like the man must personally know me and the challenges I face in writing - but we have, of course, never met. Maisel is just an amazing creativity coach and counselor who knows the secrets and insecurities, triumphs and tribulations of those who seek the creative life. This book is the next best thing to personally experiencing Maisel's creativity coaching, and I highly recommend it. ~Lori L. Lake, Midwest Book Review

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and Enlightening, April 10, 2007

By Beansky

Format:Paperback

As a trainer of creativity coaches, I felt like this book was a delightful feast. The information is both exceptionally intuitive and timelessly helpful to both those who work with creative people and the creative individual themself. If you are a creative person all you need to do is open this book to feel validated, understood and inspired. It is a motivating reality.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A good overview of the creative personality April 18, 2008

By Taylor Ellwood VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The author presents a fairly detailed and good overview of the artistic personality and the challenges that the artist faces, both in terms of internal challenges via the personality of the artist, and career challenges that can also occur for the artist. The author also includes exercises at the end of each section that can the artist can use to help him or herself out by answering some good questions. Additionally creativity coaches can also use the exercises to help clients.

A couple problems I found is that the exercises weren't really integrated into each chapter. The writing is also fairly dry, which occasionally had me feeling that I was slogging through the book.

Overall, I'd recommend this book as a resource to both creativity coaches and artists who are looking for some understanding and help.