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Creativity Books from Amazon

Think you've got a book inside of you? Anne Lamott isn't afraid to help you let it out. She'll help you find your passion and your voice, beginning from the first really crummy draft to the peculiar letdown of publication. Readers will be reminded of the energizing books of writer Natalie Goldberg and will be seduced by Lamott's witty take on the reality of a writer's life, which has little to do with literary parties and a lot to do with jealousy, writer's block and going for broke with each paragraph. Marvelously wise and best of all, great reading.

“A good book is one whose advice you believe. A great book is one whose advice you follow. I have found Carol Dweck’s work on mindsets invaluable in my own life, and even life-changing in my attitudes toward the challenges that, over the years, become more demanding rather than less. This is a book that can change your life, as its ideas have changed mine.”
–Robert J. Sternberg, IBM Professor of Education and Psychology at Yale University, director of the PACE Center of Yale University, and author of Successful Intelligence

Wherein we discover that many of the "rules" for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think. Goldberg brings a touch of both Zen and well... *eroticism* to her writing practice, the latter in exercises and anecdotes designed to ease you into your body, your whole spirit, while you create, the former in being where you are, working with what you have, and writing from the moment.

With her popular career counseling sessions, motivational speeches, workshops, and television specials, Barbara Sher has become famous for her extraordinary ability to help people define and achieve their life goals. Now she tackles a problem that millions of people face today in a universe of infinite possibilities. Sher identifies someone she calls The Scannersomeone who frequently has a multiplicity of interests, but finds it hard to create a successful life he or she loves because their passions and abilities are taking them in so many different directions. Sher identifies 7 types of Scannersranging from the Serial Specialist (someone who learns all about one subject, only to get bored and need to move on to the next) to Sybil (a person with so many areas of interest, she cant finish a thing). Contrary to popular wisdom, Sher tells Scanners that theirs is a unique ability, not a liability. She also states that they must do everything they love, not zero in on one pursuit at the expense of all others. With dozens of powerful techniques Sher has developed to free people from goal paralysis, readers will stop thinking of themselves as dabblers or dilettantes, and find innovative ways to live lives of variety, challenge, and joy.

In creativity lies the true path to freedom is this book's central and oft-repeated thesis, and Levitt uses a mishmash of mystical Judaism, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Hinduism and other spiritual and philosophical traditions to inspire readers to tap into their own creative genius. Poet Levitt talks mostly about writing here, but asserts his message applies to "anyone who longs to return to his creative source and to express both the journey and what he finds once he is there." Levitt is a warm and often wise teacher, but his lessons can come off as a bit too precious, a bit too New Age. On the importance of asking questions, Levitt muses that questions "can be the moon calling to us to join them there, which we know how to do. To embrace a question born in our imagination is to feel embraced."

Perhaps the leading choreographer of her generation, Tharp offers a thesis on creativity that is more complex than its self-help title suggests. To be sure, an array of prescriptions and exercises should do much to help those who feel some pent-up inventiveness to find a system for turning idea into product, whether that be a story, a painting or a song. This free-wheeling interest across various creative forms is one of the main points that sets this book apart and leads to its success. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Surprisingly, this long essay about society and art and sexism is one of Woolf's most accessible works. Woolf, a major modernist writer and critic, takes us on an erudite yet conversational--and completely entertaining--walk around the history of women in writing, smoothly comparing the architecture of sentences by the likes of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, all the while lampooning the chauvinistic state of university education in the England of her day. When she concluded that to achieve their full greatness as writers women will need a solid income and a privacy, Woolf pretty much invented modern feminist criticism.

From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Ilene Rosoff
When Dr. Jean Houston began The Foundation for Mind Research in 1965, her aim was to explore cultures in order to uncover the many ways peak human potential was defined and achieved. After extensive research using techniques such as dream work, altered states of consciousness and biofeedback on thousands of subjects, she began to conduct workshops that focused on psychophysical (mind/body) awareness and enhancement to reach a higher level of being.

Wherein we discover that many of the "rules" for good writing and good sex are the same: Keep your hand moving, lose control, and don't think. Goldberg brings a touch of both Zen and well... *eroticism* to her writing practice, the latter in exercises and anecdotes designed to ease you into your body, your whole spirit, while you create, the former in being where you are, working with what you have, and writing from the moment. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
SARK, an author, artist, and incest survivor with many years of therapy and self-healing behind her, wishes to shine her "beacon of hope to the world" as she encourages and inspires women of all ages to become "succulent." She defines this as transcending past pains and feeling the freedom of full self-expression. Very candidly she shares the tragic, the glorious, the intimate, and the adventurous in her life, dispensing sage advice and a lengthy menu of readily doable suggestions for arousing creativity and nurturing self-discovery. Bubbly, humorous, and at times just far-out, SARK is enjoyable to listen to. Her program, comprised of passages from her 1997 book of the same title, stories, and anecdotes, belongs in public library self-help collections and also in the hands of men who seek a better understanding of the women in their lives.?Barbara Vaughan, Buffalo State Coll. Lib., N.Y. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.

Excerpt - on Page 3: " ... is recognizing it. For a decade and a half, I have taught a process of creative individuation and emergence, The Artist's Way. (Many of you may be familiar with my first creativity book by that name.) When people ask ...