Now that you are equipped with the fundamental understanding about what causes creative block, how to overcome it and how to achieve a stronger mind, here is a list of resources that will help you dig deep into each topic interest according to your profession. This may not be a complete list in the whole wide world, so when you know a great book to add into the collection, please let me know. Enjoy the booklist!
What causes creative block?
Creative block is a mind state when our brain is not producing ideas and not functioning the way we want it. It is a glitch in the system where you get hang-ups and blanked-out. There is simply nothing there and you will think that you lost it. To read more detailed information about what causing creative block and how to break through fear, visit my previous article CAUSES: CREATIVE BLOCK. [ read article ]
Overcoming Creative Block
Nobody is immune from this so-called creative disease. There’s nothing wrong catching it, don’t be alarmed, and definitely there’s no need to be panic. To learn more about ways you can do to kick creative block out of the way, read my previous article OVERCOMING CREATIVE BLOCK. [ read article ]
Exercise Makes Great Minds
Just like any part of your body organs, your brain becomes stronger and more functional if it is well trained. In order to grow creatively you need to step outside your comfort zone. We need to exercise our brain’s neuron by engaging in some new activity, place or event. When you stretch your mind, it never returns to its previous shape. To learn more the complete guide for mind exercise, read my previous article SPARKLING CREATIVITY. [ read article ]
Creative Block
Our previous title The Writer’s Block turned out to be a blockbuster, with more than 50,000 copies sold. That’s why we’re following it with the illustrated Creative Block, which extends the audience to anyone in need of a creative burst, whether for a business presentation or a first novel. Author Lou Harry, the genius behind our wildly successful Voodoo line, has culled great advice from dozens of well-known contemporary creative people in many genres, from popular fiction (bestselling author Nicholas Sparks) to theater (Tony Award-winning director Robert Falls) to comedy (Saturday Night Live writer Hugh Fink) to children’s books (Anna Grossnickle Hines). He presents their comments in his inimitable witty style, keeping readers chuckling even as they break through to new levels of creativity.
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The Writer’s Block: 786 Ideas to Jump-Start Your Imagination
Inspiration Running Low? Is Your Muse out to Lunch? Need a Nudge to Channel Your Creativity? Here’s the first book on writer’s block that’s packaged in the shape of a block—3″ x 3″ x 3″—with 672 pages and more than 200 photographs throughout. Next time you’re stuck, just flip open THE WRITER’S BLOCK to any page and you’ll find an idea or exercise that will jump-start your imagination. Many of these assignments come straight from the creative writing classes of celebrated novelists like Ethan Canin, Richard Price, Toni Morrison, and Kurt Vonnegut. Within these pages, you’ll learn how Joyce Carol Oates uses running to destroy writer’s block. Elmore Leonard describes how he often finds ideas just by reading the newspaper. E. Annie Proulx discusses finding inspiration at garage sales. Isabel Allende tells why she always begins a new novel on January 8th. And John Irving explains why he prefers to write the last sentence first. Fresh, fun, and irreverent, THE WRITER’S BLOCK also features advice from contemporary editors and literary agents, lessons from the awful novels of Joan Collins and Robert James Waller, a filmography of movies concerning writer’s block (i.e. The Shining, Barton Fink) and countless other surprises. With this handy little book at your side, you may never experience writer’s block again!
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The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Novelist Steven Pressfield (The Legend of Bagger Vance; Gates of Fire) goes self-help in The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle. Dubbing itself a cross between Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War and Julie Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, Pressfield’s book aims to help readers “overcome Resistance” so that they may achieve “the unlived life within.” Whether one wishes to embark on a diet, a program of spiritual advancement or an entrepreneurial venture, it’s most often resistance that blocks the way. To kick resistance, Pressfield stresses loving what one does, having patience and acting in the face of fear. (Reviewer: Publishers Weekly)
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The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain
Flaherty (The Massachusetts General Handbook of Neurology) mixes memoir, meditation, compendium and scholarly reportage in an odd but absorbing look at the neurological basis of writing and its pathologies. Like Oliver Sacks, Flaherty has her own story to tell a postpartum episode involving hypergraphia and depression that eventually hospitalized her. But what holds this great variety of material together is not the medical authority of a doctor, the personal authority of the patient or even the technical authority of the writer, but the author’s deep ambivalence about the proper approach to her subject. Where Sacks uses his stylistic gifts to transform illness into literature, Flaherty wrestles openly with the problem of equating them, putting her own identity as a scientist and as a writer on the line as she explores the possibility of describing writing in medical terms. She details the physiological sources of the impulse to write, and of the creative drive, metaphorical construction and the various modes of stalled or evaded productivity called block. She also includes accounts of what it feels like to write (or fail to write) by Coleridge and Joan Didion as well as by aphasiacs and psychotics. But while science may help one to understand or create literature, “it may not fairly tell you that you should.” To a student of literature, Flaherty’s struggle between scientific rationalism and literary exuberance is familiar romantic territory. What’s moving about this book is how deeply unresolved, in an age of mood pills and weblogs, that old schism remains. Writers will delight in the way information and lore are interspersed; scientists are more likely to be divided. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (Reviewer: Publishers Weekly)
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Standing at Water’s Edge: Moving Past Fear, Blocks, and Pitfalls to Discover the Power of Creative Immersion
For most people who seek to create — whether they are artists, writers, or businesspeople — the daily task of immersing themselves in their creative work is both a joy and a profound challenge. Instead of stepping easily into the creative state, they succumb to chronic procrastination and torturous distraction. In Standing at Water’s Edge, psychologist Anne Paris calls on her extensive experience in working with creative clients to explore the deep psychological fears that block us from creative immersion. Employing cutting-edge theory and research, Paris weaves a new understanding of the artist during the creative process. Rather than presenting the creation of art as a lonely, solitary endeavor, she shows how relationships with others are actually crucial to creativity. Shining a light on the innermost experience of the artist as he or she engages with others, the artwork, and the audience, Paris explores how our sense of connection with others can aid or inhibit creative immersion. She reveals a unique model of “mirrors, heroes, and twins” to explore the key relationships that support creativity. Paris’s groundbreaking psychological approach gives artists valuable new insight into their own creative process, allowing them to unlock their potential and finish their greatest projects.
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The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
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. The approach may have been born of the need to reach an audience greater than choreographer hopefuls, and the diversity of examples (from Maurice Sendak to Beethoven on one page) frees the student to develop his or her own patterns and habits, rather than imposing some regimen that works for Tharp. The greatest number of illustrations, however, come from her experiences. As a result, this deeply personal book, while not a memoir, reveals much about her own struggles, goals and achievements. Finally, the book is also a rumination on the nature of creativity itself, exploring themes of process versus product, the influences of inspiration and rigorous study, and much more. It deserves a wide audience among general readers and should not be relegated to the self-help section of bookstores.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. (Reviewer: Publishers Weekly)
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The Art of Creative Thinking: How to Be Innovative and Develop Great Ideas
The Art of Creative Thinking provides clear, practical guidelines for developing one’s powers as a creative thinker. Using examples of entrepreneurs, authors, scientists and artists, John Adair illustrates a key aspect of creativity in each chapter. Stimulating and accessible, this book will help readers understand the creative process, overcome barriers to new ideas, learn to think effectively and develop a creative attitude. It will help them become more confident as a creative thinkers. The Art of Creative Thinking provides a fresh concept of creative thinking. New ideas are the seeds of new products and services, and this book will open the door to them.
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Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: A Woman’s Guide to Unblocking Creativity
We’ve all been there. The words just won’t come out right, or at all. We get halfway into a creative project and then unexpectedly run out of steam. We get nervous about something we’re passionate about and put down the paintbrush or turn off the computer. Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued is about understanding blocks in the creative process and getting to the bottom of what causes them. Author Susan O’Doherty, a psychotherapist specializing in helping artists of all sorts get unstuck, says that many of the things that block us are gender-specific: women’s fear of success; competing in male-dominated fields; the stress of trying to do serious creative work while holding down a job and, often, caring for a family. Procrastination, a problem for women and men, also gets its due. With the proper tools, however, she assures us that we can regain control over our creative lives. This practical and accessible guide uses case studies from O’Doherty’s practice, straightforward advice, and helpful exercises to help women nurture their creativity.
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The Creative Spirit
Creativity is not for artists only! This sumptuously illustrated companion volume to the acclaimed PBS television series draws on the wisdom of Japanese Zen masters, maverick entrepeneurs, and leading inventors to show how creativity can be cultivated by anyone to improve the quality of their lives. Color illustrations throughout.
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Understanding Writing Blocks
Why do capable students and scholars fail to complete writing projects? What are “writing blocks,” and how can writers overcome them? Why are writing blocks more common for advanced and experienced writers who are not supposed to need help? And why are they more common in the humanities than in the sciences? Keith Hjortshoj answers these and other questions in Understanding Writing Blocks. This book demystifies the causes of writing blocks, which are often ignored, misunderstood, or attributed to obscure psychological disorders. Hjortshoj examines blocks instead as real writing problems arising from specific misconceptions, writing behaviors, and rhetorical factors present at different stages of the writing process. In a lively and informative style, he defines the nature of writing blocks, examines their causes, and offers advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and professional writers the diagnostic tools and strategies necessary for getting their work done. Although appropriate for any writing course, Understanding Writing Blocks targets advanced composition students and graduate writers who are most likely to encounter immobilizing obstacles, and whose experience supports the author’s assertion that a writing block is usually “an affliction of the good writer.” Hjortshoj draws his material and evidence from extensive research, interviews, and consultations with blocked writers from his twenty-five years of teaching. Especially helpful to students working on dissertations and other complex projects, Understanding Writing Blocks illuminates the factors that undermine writing ability in a wide range of endeavors.
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The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life
As the baby-boom generation swells the ranks of the American middle-aged, life expectancy has increased 50% since 1900, older people are becoming more physically and mentally active than ever before and diseases are more easily preventable, detectable and treatable. A doctor specializing in gerontology for 30 years, Cohen focuses on creativity, which he stresses is “not just for geniuses” but holds potential for everyone at every age. With a wink toward Einstein, Cohen uses the formula “C=me2″ (creativity equals a mass of knowledge plus the interaction of inner and outer experience) to describe his theory of lifelong creativity, which may be manifested both privately (”creativity with a little c”) and publicly (”big C”). Cohen identifies four developmental phases in mid- and later life–reevaluation, liberation, summing-up and encore–that provide opportunities for creativity to blossom. He cites the latest scientific research, which disproves dated views of inevitably deteriorating brain function, points out the advantages of experience and the willingness to experiment that come with age, and notes that the adversity and loss that often crop up later in life actually encourage creativity by forcing change. With sidebars noting the accomplishments of many people well past midlife, excellent exercises for igniting creativity and thorough appendices, Cohen provides a wealth of information and a fresh, timely perspective on aging. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. (Reviewer: Publishers Weekly)
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Outwitting Writers’ Block: And Other Problems of the Pen
If you’ve ever found yourself staring at the blank page all day, or cleaning out the refrigerator for the fifth time in a week just to avoid seeing that taunting blinking cursor, then you’ve experienced writer’s block.
The good news? It means you’re a writer. It’s not important that you have these times; what’s important is how you deal with them. OUTWITTING WRITER’S BLOCK will provide tricks of the trade to help any writer break through the dreaded block and become a more creative and better writer than before. Filled to the brim with exercises designed to jump-start creativity, encouraging tips from fellow writers and instructors, and tools for analyzing the causes and cures for the nefarious Blank Page syndrome, this book is like Drain-o for clogged creative pipes.
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Creative Awakenings: Envisioning the Life of Your Dreams Through Art
Utilize your creativity to manifest your personal intention. Work in the spirit of the laws of attraction to visualize the life of your dreams. Follow the journey of twelve artists, each who will set a personal dream or intention. Witness the process that each artist takes, as they create a mixed-media piece that sows the seeds of their intention. Step-by-step techniques for a variety of mixed-media processes accompany each piece of finished art. Read about how their lives changed as a result and learn how to set intentions of your own using the bonus tear-out “dream-prompt” cards.
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Write: 10 Days to Overcome Writer’s Block. Period.
Sound familiar? This is what Dr. Karen E. Petersen – who has overcome writer’s block herself – calls “the write-or-flight response.” In this revolutionary book, psychologist and novelist Karen E. Peterson presents an easy, effective way to beat writer’s block in only ten days. Based on new brain research and sound psychological principles, this innovative program shows writers how to conquer writer’s block using: exercises to conquer the “write-or-flight” response; techniques to creative that elusive “writing mood”; parallel monologue and interior dialogue to jump-start the writing process; and checklists to see which side of the brain is blocking you. With case examples and a healthy dollop of humour, “Write” helps both seasoned and neophyte writers to enjoy the process of sending their creativity – and productivity – soaring to new heights.
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Writer’s Block: The Cognitive Dimension
Writer’s block is more than a mere matter of discomfort and missed deadlines; sustained experiences of writer’s block may influence academic success and career choices. Writers in the business world, professional writers, and students all have known this most common and least studied problem with the composing process. Mike Rose, however, sees it as a limitable problem that can be precisely analyzed and remedied through instruction and tutorial programs. Rose defines writer’s block as “an inability to begin or continue writing for reasons other than a lack of skill or commitment,” which is measured by “passage of time with limited productive involvement in the writing task.” He applies insights of cognitive psychology to reveal dimensions of the problem never before examined. In his three-faceted approach, Rose develops and administers a questionnaire to identify writers experiencing both high and low degrees of blocking; through stimulated recall he examines the composing processes of these writers; and he proposes a cognitive conceptualization of writer’s block and of the composing process. In drawing up his model, Rose delineates many cognitive errors that cause blocking, such as inflexible rules or conflicting planning strategies. He also discusses the practices and strategies that promote effective composition. The reissue of this classic study of writer’s block includes a new preface by the author that advocates more mixed-methods research in rhetoric and composition, details how he conducted his writer’s block study, and discusses how his approach to a study like this would be different if conducted today.
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The Creative Artist
I haven’t been able to put this one down. This book has given me the courage to begin making my art again. Every time I pick it up, I get ideas for paintings, drawings. I like how it is written like an art class, and has activities to get you unstuck. The activities are just vague enough to get you thinking of possibilities. This is far and away the best book to get you going! (Reviewer: K.D. Mullen)
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Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy
Acclaimed by Psychology Today as one of the best books of 1977, this study explores the relationship between therapist and patient, and explains the roots, methods, and aims of Gestalt therapy. Line drawings. “I love this book it is worth wile having it on your shelf. It is a book you always can find something new in regardless of how many times you have red it before. It is practical and logical, with a lot of good examples.” (Reviewer: Margoth Tove Kalstad)
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Make Your Creative Dreams Real: A Plan for Procrastinators, Perfectionists, Busy People, and People Who Would Really Rather Sleep All Day
For those of us who pass our days in a meaningless miasma of obligations and responsibility, SARK’s upbeat 12-step prescription for “making creative dreams” come true may be just the ticket. Designing the book herself, SARK (short for Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, author of Succulent Wild Woman) applies function to form with big and small font sizes, wild and wavy typesetting, drawings scattered liberally throughout, various exercises, Mad Lib-like blanks to fill in (”choose a micromovement and write it here_____”) and three 16-page full-color inserts (not seen by PW). In case you doubt SARK’s enthusiasm for her version of the creative life, she includes testimonials ranging from “John, Teacher” to “Val, Expressive Arts Therapist.” Despite SARK’s admirably unrestrained support for the creative life, it’s difficult not to cock a cynical eye at some of her suggestions, such as “let your dream vehicle out to play!” And while she encourages us to “feel free to color or draw in this book,” there isn’t actually all that much room to do so. SARK addresses the negativity toward creativity that so many artists face from family, schools and bosses, but the repetition of the word “dream” never quite seems to slide over into how to use it to tend an actual artistic career. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (Reviewer: Publishers Weekly)
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The Leader’s Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills: Unlocking the Creativity and Innovation in You and Your Team
“Stimulating and well written.” Business Executive “A practical, step-by-step guide that can help everyone ‘get creative’ and use that more effectively.” Long Range Planning Journal “If you are only going to read one business book this year, this is the one. No modern business leader should be unaware of these insights.” Brian McBride, VP Northern Europe, Dell Computer Corporation “Sloane delivers rocket fuel for the business brain.” Bill Penn, CEO, Sparx Group “Every business should embrace lateral thinking. Every leader should embrace this book.” Ajaz Ahmed, CEO, AKQA “This book teaches leaders how to transform creativity into meaningful innovation.” Shawn Javid, CEO, Insightful Inc. “Replete with lateral thinking puzzles to amuse, bemuse and encourage new ways of approaching problems. There are also plenty of real-life examples to reassure you that this stuff does work.” Jim Ewan’s blog “Paul Sloane’s new book is a lot of fun and helps you spot the places where you might not be thinking laterally enough. It also offers real-life lateral-thinking triumphs, debunking of popular myths and tips on structured thought to help avoid committing logical fallacies.” EasyJet Inflight Magazine “Lively and energetic…Packed with real-life examples, practical methods and lateral thinking exercises…A really exciting book and a worthwhile read for managers and students alike.” Business Executive “Practical methods and exercises are provided to help executives to both develop their own capacity for innovation and encourage and reward it in team members.” Reference and Research Book News “The book is rich with examples from the real world where creative thinking and action have led to astonishing successes (even with numerous failed attempts) and examples where conservationism and conventional thinking had led to obsolescence and catastrophe. An excellent book.” Free Book Source
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