Creating: A practical guide to the creative process and how to use it to create anything - a work of art, a relationship, a career or a better life. (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Love is what creating is about..." (more)
Key Phrases: undesired belief, professional creators, secondary choices, New Age, Robert Frost, The Living Art (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Robert Fritz is without doubt one of the most original thinkers today on the creative process in business, the arts, science, and life in general. His work has deeply impacted my life and the lives of many of my colleagues. Unlike many who write as outside experts about 'creativity', Robert Fritz takes you inside: the secrets of creating as understood by a master musician, artist and composer.'
Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Description

Whether you wish to create a work of art, a novel, a thriving business, nourishing relationships, or a deeply satisfying life, Robert Fritz, composer, artist, writer, and entrepreneur, reveals the guiding principles that can empower you to reach your goals.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st paperback edition edition (March 31, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449908011
• ISBN-13: 978-0449908013
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #275,986 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting the results you want, March 27, 2000

By	Channing Grigsby "cgrigsby3" (N. California) - See all my reviews

I bought this book because creating always felt like a white-hot, hit or miss, lightning flash, that also felt dangerous and fearful, like having to step off a cliff into thin air. Author of The Path of Least Resistance, Robert Fritz, in Creating, says thin air is good. And -- gulp -- he's right. For Fritz, creating is an ordinary and understandable skill we can learn -- and we can, he says, learn to do it better and more often. He's right about that, too. He says creating is getting the results we want in any area of our lives -- work projects, art work, career, relationships, community. It is a process with form and shape. It's not problem-solving, or reaching for the unusual, or about inventiveness or "creative ability." Anyone can do it. And he outlines nine stages of the process, from conception to living with what you create. Creating ranges far, around and through the subject, offering practical approaches and even a warm-up guide, and he deals with hindrances like the discrepancies between "Ideal-Belief-Reality" that get in the way. If this book helps you surface what he calls "invisible beliefs" that get in the way of what you want in life, it's worth three times the price. Fritz argues creating is not discovery. Some people take his seminar to discover what really matters to them, but as he says, that idea "presumes that what matters somehow already exists (p. 118)." Creating brings into existence something that did not exist before, makes something from nothing. This book is broader and deeper than the typical how-to-create book -- it doesn't talk about brainstorming or problem-solving or creativity. It describes how to become aware of the process and some of its pitfalls, and how to do it in a way that helps you get the results you want. I have no problem with a point of view that our ideas can help or hinder us in getting what we want. For those who do, this book may open their eyes.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pragmatic, demystification, just slightly marred, February 12, 2004

By	"thecompostlady" (Okanagan, B.C.) - See all my reviews

This book sets out to demystify creating, to pragmatically assist the reader in learning ideas and processes that can be applied to creating works of art, craft, business, et cetera. It's well worth reading for that pragmatic purpose. The first chapter sample, available on "look inside" on this web site, gives a good sample of Fritz' approach, uncluttered by the flaws noted in later sections of the book. He emphasized some steps and aspects of process that I wasn't so starkly aware of. I've created effective cartoons, articles, essays, songs, clothing designs, gardens, et cetera, but this book could help in becoming much more productive.

Some sections of the book launch into an attack on cultural assumptions. Bravo. Most of it was valid in supporting his approach to creating. However, I was uncomfortable with some of his extreme statements about certain disciplines and cultural traditions. He seemed to dismiss all of psychotherapy, and take some cheap shots, for instance, rather than limiting his comments to self-indulgent and deluded approaches. He overgeneralized and thus misrepresented other cultural traditions, ideas, and disciplines. For example:

"While meditation and psychotherapy may have replaced tranquilizing and recreational drugs, all of them presume you are entitled to feel good, even if you need to dull your senses and color reality to find happiness, self-love and fulfillment." p122 Fawcett edition, 1991

On the contrary, I would argue, going through a course of therapy based on Alice Miller's (sample title: Thou Shalt Not be Aware) views might allow and traumatized individual to function in life without enduring constant shaming, flashbacks, and emotional paralysis. It can be important to examine emotions, and feel good at times. Also the meditation I have personal experience of, mindfulness and insight meditation, as described by Chogyam Trungpa (sample title: Meditation in Action) and others are not about brainwashing oneself or dulling the senses. In fact, mindfulness meditation is likely to lead to some of the same insights and awareness Fritz describes in his discussion of the mind, separation, and so on. Fritz would do better if he didn't dismiss everyone else's work. Yes, it's true that people can get too focused on transient emotions and fixing the self. However, meditation and psychotherapy do still have something to offer, keeping in mind the 80/20 rule -- most of everything is crap, so buyer beware.

Ironically, right after Fritz' section on the lack of necessity to choose a right worldview, he launches into what is obviously his worldview. Oh, he has a disclaimer, and he's not dogmatic at that particular moment, but still, throughout the book, he does argue for his views of how things work, what will be if you follow his process. My suggestion: just ignore his adamant, paternalistic ranting, see through it, and go for his basic ideas, which are useful even though he has an obnoxious personality and a bit of a ham-fisted way of throwing around generalizations.

If you want to create something, this book can challenge you in a useful way.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great ideas, though not a totally reader-friendly book!, February 28, 2001

By	K.G. Cuzzin "K.G.Cuzzin" (Norwich, CT USA) - See all my reviews

I had to give it five stars because it did such a job stimulating me with its new ideas about creating. At times it's slow to pore over. You're excited at the stuff you're learning, but the prose feels a bit tedious, so it's like being chin-deep in water and wanting to race ashore for something great. But this book's concepts, about the structure of creating, are so mind-blowing to us "creatives" that it's a must to sit and take it a swallow at a time. Fritz's challenging ideas allowed me to expand my thinking about myself, to see myself not as a writer but as a creating person (one of whose creating modes is writing). My promotion of my written materials is an act of creating. So is the plan I'm putting together for my life. Wow!