Creativity Coach Eric Maisel

Eric Maisel is the author of Making Your Creative Mark, Brainstorm, The Van Gogh Blues, and other books on creativity and living a meaning-filled artistic life.

Taking a Creative Escape: 6 Ideas to Get You Started

A creative escape is a little time-out-of-time that you carve from your schedule to devote to running away to art.

Cultural Permission to Create

You feel at home in Paris because you are encouraged to sit and write and people watch, to adjourn to a neighboring cafe and write and people watch some more, and pass an entire day this way.

The Opinions of Others

Isn't this a lesson that we have to learn again and again, that every "objective opinion" is an assertion of idiosyncratic personality and not anything like the truth?

Crafting a Starting Ritual

One of the best ways to help yourself create every day is to craft a starting ritual that you begin to use regularly and routinely. These eight ritual ideas will help get you started.

Taking the Bad with the Good

In order to create, we must take the bad with the good. You are bound to write many bad paragraphs along with the good ones.

Autumn Writing Prompts

13 Engaging Ways to Play with Your Writing Around the Fall Season

By Chris Dunmire

Going back to school. Harvest time. Colorful falling leaves. Corn mazes, acorns, pumpkins, scarecrows, Halloween and Thanksgiving. In the Midwest, Autumn is the time of the year when cooler temperatures sweep in over summer's waning heat and the growing season comes to full fruition before winding down to dormancy. Fall officially begins in September and runs through October, November, and into December, when the seasonal change next morphs into winter. Inject some seasonal inspiration into your creative writing with these fall-themed writing prompts, photos, and printable projects and reflect on the meaning of the season to capture the transforming magic in the air for this colorful, transitioning space in the year.

Author Spotlight

'Living in the Light' Features with Shakti Gawain

By New World Library

Shakti Gawain is a bestselling author and a pioneer in the field of personal growth and consciousness known for her book Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want in Your Life. This inspiring series is based on the 25 year anniversary of her book Living in the Light: Follow Your Inner Guidance to Create a New Life and a New World where Gawain discusses how the ideas in the book are important today, what it means to become a creative channel, what trusting intuition looks like, and how we can grow and heal through consciousness and connection to help transform our world.

Spirited Woman Q & A

Interview with Storyteller and Spoken Word Artist Sally Shore

By Nancy Mills

Q. Sally, what is the difference between an artist and a spoken word artist?

A. Spoken word artists perform literature (poetry, prose, etc.). This is a "movement" that began in the early 90's. It was an organic thing mostly, folks getting up in clubs, galleries, theaters and performing literature before audiences. I don't think anyone who is performing today as a spoken word artist sought the label, we were all simply individually inspired to perform in this fashion. Most of us have left the labeling to the media.

Inspiring Creativity

5 Creativity Eroding Notions to Resist

By Kate Quinlan

Everyday you are subjected to attitudes and notions that influence your life, your thinking, your creating. Some of these attitudes are necessary cultural norms. Some are encouraging and liberating. But unavoidable are the damaging notions and opinions that can undermine your confidence.

Fostering Creativity

Robert Henri's 'The Art Spirit', Creative Genius, and Individuality

By Abby Connors

One of my favorite books is called The Art Spirit. It was written by the early twentieth-century American artist Robert Henri in 1923. “The Art Spirit” is a collection of Henri’s lectures and portions of his correspondence with his students, and it contains insightful, beautiful, and inspiring ideas about not only painting, but the arts in general. Henri lived at a time when art was firmly in the hands of art schools and academies which used very conservative and conventional approaches to artistic technique. In contrast, Henri believed in art as an expression of love for life.

---

Travel Adventure Prompts: Thailand

Local vs Foreign: The discrepancy between local and foreign is evident in so many places, this picture included.

Write a conversation between a local and a foreigner on this beach.

—Kristi Tencarre

Writing from the Deeper Self

First Drafts are Like an Artist's Sketch

By Naomi Rose

Sometimes you can be in such an inspired and aligned state that every word you write is a keeper, and there's nothing to do at the end but raise your eyes to the heavens and give thanks, then go take a walk or a bath, or play with your child or your cat. But more often, what you write will be a first draft, to be refined over time by further thinking, sensing, and leaps of understanding. Unless you have had a lot of experience doing first drafts, and then seeing how they lead to more clear, full, and subtle refinements — and even if you have had experience — it can be frustrating to have to withstand the impatience and edginess that writing a first draft brings about./p>

Process Art with SoulCollage®

Collaging with Cancer Series

By Anne Marie Bennett

In this intimate series, I take you through my cancer journey step by step, and show you how creating SoulCollage® cards helped me to express my feelings, find my balance, and create a haven of inner peace where I was able to stay connected to Self, Others, and Spirit. As I share my journey with you, I hope that it brings you or those you love some measure of inner peace, and a movement towards acceptance and a possibility of joy.

Second Time Around | Journey, Interrupted | Collaging the Fear | Standing Up to Cancer | Being Held by Community | Resting in the Healing Light | Stay Away | Celebrating Life | Goddess of Peace and Mindfulness | Cancer and the Wounded Body | My Healing Team | Possibility Awaits | Opening to Healing