Category — artist

Julia Cameron

Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
Now in paperback, the national bestseller that is breaking down the mythology behind the “writing life.”

What if everything we have been taught about learning to write was wrong? In The Right to Write, Julia Cameron’s most revolutionary book, the author asserts that conventional writing wisdom would have you believe in a false doctrine that stifles creativity.

With the techniques and anecdotes in The Right to Write, readers learn to make writing a natural, intensely personal part of life. Cameron’s instruction and examples include the details of the writing processes she uses to create her own bestselling books. She makes writing a playful and realistic as well as a reflective event. Anyone jumping into the writing life for the first time and those already living it will discover the art of writing is never the same after reading The Right to Write.

View More about The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life

The Artist’s Way makes you write first thing in the morning. This is a great and powerful thing; start doing it regularly and subtle magic things WILL start happening. A nice new blog about writing and gettin’ ‘er done, http://writetodone.com/, has some nice tips on doing just that: How to Write First Thing in the Morning.

Check it out!

More essential writing tips can be found in today’s FreelanceSwitch post: Essential Reading for Writers and Novices Like Me. Now read these and then get writing!

Sark

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Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
acidfreeink.com says: My partner sent me this book (via Amazon!) when I was going through a particularly hard time in my life. He had not read it, but a coworker mentioned the book to him and he thought it would be something I would like. While laying on my couch at home sick with pneumonia the doorbell rang and this book was delivered. I read it that day from cover to cover that day. This book touched me deeply - I credit it (and SARK) with helping me take my first step to making my creative dreams real. (I have also gone on to buy every other book SARK has written). If you are having trouble remembering what it is to live life with joy, Inspiration Sandwich will help you take the first steps to getting there.

an amazon.com customer says: Believe in daily miracles!
And let discovering SARK’s books be one of them! This book is filled with SARK’s distinctive handwritten thoughts and doodles. The colored inserts are a touch that adds some visual jump to the book. I particularly like the inserted small book ‘Daily Miracles’: there are miracles everywhere, relax, fill your heart with wonder, you are not alone, have an adventure, relax. These thoughts are the backbone of “Inspiration Sandwich” and SARK gives all kinds of great examples and suggestions on how to incorporate them into your life. If you’re looking for some ideas on how to add joy and passion to your life, in SARK’s words, “Eat this book”.

View More about Inspiration Sandwich: Stories to Inspire Our Creative Freedom

Steven Pressfield

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DO YOU:

1. dream about writing the Great American Novel?
2. regret not finishing your paintings, poems, or screenplays?
3. want to start a business or charity?
4. wish you could start dieting or exercising today?
5. hope to run a marathon someday?

If “yes,” then you need THE WAR OF ART. Now, in this powerful, straight-from-the-hip examination of the internal obstacles to success, bestselling author Steven Pressfield shows readers how to identify, defeat, and unlock the inner barriers to creativity. THE WAR OF ART is an inspirational, funny, well-aimed kick in the pants guaranteed to galvanize every would-be artist, visionary, or entrepreneur.Steven Pressfield enjoys great international success as a bestselling novelist.But in order to reach the top he had to do a lot of work to fight the inner demons that told him he couldn’t make it.THE WAR OF ART is his challenge to creative block, and his succinct, straight-from-the-hip style will help every reader unleash their personal ambitions, be they literary, artistic, or business-minded. According to Pressfield, the internal obstacle to success is Resistance.Resistance is the difference between the life you lead and the life you want to lead, and can take many forms.Pressfield shows readers how to identify and defeat Resistance at every turn and challenges them to change their amateurish, unsuccessful habits into a professional attitude that can get the job done. Finally, Sun Tzu for the soul!Inspirational, funny, and a great kick in the pants, THE WAR OF ART is the perfect book for anybody who had a goal circumvented by life and circumstance:which is to say, you and everybody you’ve ever met.

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Caroll Michels

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The classic handbook for launching and sustaining a career that “explodes the romantic notion of the starving artist”, with new and expanded resources for succeeding in the burgeoning Internet art market (The New York Times)Now in its fifth edition, with over 85,000 copies of previous editions sold, How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist is the preeminent guide to taking control of your career and making a good living in the art world. Drawing on over two decades of experience, Caroll Michels walks artists through the complicated process of balancing grants, gallery representation, private dealer sales, and a personal studio to ensure a public profile and a steady income. Included is a wealth of insider’s information on getting into a gallery, being your own PR agent, and negotiating prices, as well as innovative marketing, exhibition, and sales opportunities for various art disciplines. The new edition is fully updated with strategies for using the Web-everything from generating income through freelance work, to creating an entrepreneurial web site for promoting work to agents and clients, to assessing online galleries. An expanded and updated appendix adds more than 200 new resources such as Web designers, insurance and legal services for artists, internships, art colonies, and corporate and public art programs.

View More about How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist, 5th ed.: Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul

Ted Orland

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Thoughts/Words/Reviews:

“This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people; essentially-statistically speaking-there aren’t any people like that. Geniuses get made once-a-century or so, yet good art gets made all the time, so to equate the making of art with the workings of genius removes this intimately human activity to a strangely unreachable and unknowable place. For all practical purposes making art can be examined in great detail without ever getting entangled in the very remote problems of genius.”
–from the Introduction

Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn’t get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. The book’s co-authors, David Bayles and Ted Orland, are themselves both working artists, grappling daily with the problems of making art in the real world. Their insights and observations, drawn from personal experience, provide an incisive view into the world of art as it is expeienced by artmakers themselves.

This is not your typical self-help book. This is a book written by artists, for artists — it’s about what it feels like when artists sit down at their easel or keyboard, in their studio or performance space, trying to do the work they need to do. First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic. Word-of-mouth response alone-now enhanced by internet posting-has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity nationally.

Art & Fear has attracted a remarkably diverse audience, ranging from beginning to accomplished artists in every medium, and including an exceptional concentration among students and teachers. The original Capra Press edition of Art & Fear sold 80,000 copies.

An excerpt:

Today, more than it was however many years ago, art is hard because you have to keep after it so consistently. On so many different fronts. For so little external reward. Artists become veteran artists only by making peace not just with themselves, but with a huge range of issues. You have to find your work…

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Julia Cameron

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Thoughts/Words/Reviews:
The Artist’s Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist’s life. Still as vital today-or perhaps even more so-than it was when it was first published one decade ago, it is a powerfully provocative and inspiring work. In a new introduction to the book, Julia Cameron reflects upon the impact of The Artist’s Way and describes the work she has done during the last decade and the new insights into the creative process that she has gained. Updated and expanded, this anniversary edition reframes The Artist’s Way for a new century.

View More about The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity [10th Anniversary Edition]