The Artist's Way : A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
by Julia CameronList Price: $15.95
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The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz List Price:
$12.00
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by Robert Fritz
List Price:
$12.95
Our Price: $10.36
You Save: $2.59 (20%)
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. 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 we 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 your eyes.
Channing Grigsby
Comments? E-mail to: Channing
