Eric Maisel (and Photo of Sunset)
Eric Maisel wrote Fearless Creating, a book I really love and have devoured very slowly, nibble by nibble, over months and months. It has been worth the slow and steady approach, to really savor and learn from it well. Here is a web page he wrote about creativity:
http://www.ericmaisel.com/create.html
Here are two quotes from that quite long page:
…whatever else you might need to do, one thing that will help you grow more creative is consciously engaging in new explorations. If we do not explore, we do not get to go anywhere new, and if we do not go anywhere new, we can’t be creative…
…The psychologist Otto Rank, who took a special interest in artists, likened them to heroes. We know that everyday creative people are very fallible, very human, and regularly unheroic, just like you and me, so to call them heroic feels like hyperbole. Yet, since so many people fear making a creative effort, it turns out that there must be something heroic about launching yourself across that gorge and into that unknown jungle. Maybe everyday creative people really are heroic and maybe the courage they show is among the very most important: the courage to leave for the unknown.
By the way, this page is written in the same style as his books. If you like the page, I’d say a book by the man would be worth your while.
What is notable is that he is clear while writing about artists/creative people, that he is one by being a writer himself. This makes his work different, to me, than many other books written somehow as if they were from the outside looking in.
Some lesser-known books Dr. Maisel recommends on this subject are found at this page:
http://www.ericmaisel.com/store.html
This site is worth a look, my friends. It’s a little overwhelming, perhaps, but just jam-packed with encouragement for any creative soul. As they say on the email lists, NAYY (No Affiliation, Yadda Yadda…)
Photo: Sunset over Mount Hope Cemetery in Lansing, approximately May 26 (a Thursday). The little building you can see on the hill, is the RE Olds family Mausoleum. It’s a beautiful cemetery and I pass it nearly every day. I took an autumn photograph there in October 2003.