Making Your Creative Mark
Nine Keys to Achieving Your Artistic Goals
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Eric Maisel’s prolific, multifaceted career is a testament to his profound understanding of what it takes to live out one’s creative ambitions. A therapist who is also a bestselling author, coach (and coach trainer), columnist for Professional Artist magazine, and featured blogger for Psychology Today and the Huffington Post, Maisel is an expert on all that blocks the creative. In Making Your Creative Mark, Maisel distills his decades of coaching, teaching, listening, and creating into nine keys, including Passion, Confidence, Empathy, Stress, and Relationship. Each key’s lesson helps creators implement real solutions to their individual challenges. Whether they are writers, painters, actors, composers, or craftspeople, readers will learn to “unlock” what has kept them from beginning, continuing, completing — and succeeding.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Art is often work that you do alone and for yourself, but Maisel (Mastering Creative Anxiety) stresses that you are also "creating for other people; you are relating to other people; you are working with marketplace players and selling to your audience." Accordingly, the therapist and "creativity coach" offers practical advice designed to overcome the blocks that artists face on their own, as well as the challenges of being an artist in the world. Organizing his work according to nine themes (or "keys" e.g., passion, freedom, empathy), Maisel marshals diverse therapeutic techniques, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness meditation, in addition to sensible self-assessments in order to help artists cope with obstacles like self-censorship or lack of focus. While many of these are useful, the pragmatic recommendations sometimes feel tedious or generic, and his attempts to appeal to a myriad of artist types (e.g., musicians, writers, visual artists) suck the life from portions of the book. Still, his advice on relating to the outside world other artists, the market, societal pressures is astute and contains valuable lessons.
