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Synopsis
Widely regarded as a modern classic, Fearless Creating has taken its place among the greats of creativity literature. As the best work available on the stages of the creative process, the anxieties associated with each stage, and the strategies for dealing with creative challenges, this beloved book of immense value to new generations of creatives and to everyone who writes, paints, composes, or engages in any creative pursuit.
Carefully guiding readers through the stages of the creative process—nurturing the wish to create, choosing your next subject, starting to work, persisting in the work, completing the work, and showing the work—Dr. Maisel provides readers with a clear picture of what’s required as a creative and new hope for overcoming creative blocks, realizing artistic dreams, and succeeding in the arts.
As the author of more than twenty books for creatives, among them Affirmations for Artists and Coaching the Artist Within, as the founder of the profession of creativity coaching, and as a diplomat coach who trains coaches nationally and internationally, Dr. Maisel knows this territory—and shares his vast experience with new and seasoned creative alike.
With an understanding that could only be gained through decades of working with creatives in all the disciplines, and from his own experience as the author of more than fifty books, Dr. Maisel guides readers past the pitfalls that appear at each stage of the creative process. By engaging with Dr. Maisel’s exercises and following his suggestions and advice, readers will emerge with renewed hope and confidence and with the tools needed to start and complete their creative work, meet the challenges of the creative life, and live life as a fearless creator.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Eric Maisel, PhD, is the author of more than 50 books in the areas of creativity, psychology, coaching, mental health, and cultural trends. He is a psychotherapist and the founder of the creativity coach profession, regularly working with lawyers, doctors, scientists, writers, painters, businesspeople, and folks from every walk of life. They include folks settled in a profession as well as folks struggling to find an outlet for their intelligence and looking for work that will allow them to be as smart as they are. They include individuals who are successful in their careers and those who, because of the realities of the marketplace, struggle to achieve success. And through his books, they could include you.
Sought after as an expert in his field, Dr. Maisel regularly contributes to Mad in America, writes a monthly print column for Professional Artist Magazine, and writes the "Rethinking Mental Health" blog for Psychology Today. He has been the keynote speaker at many conferences and leads Deep Writing workshops worldwide.
Dr. Maisel currently resides in Walnut Creek, California. Visit him at www.ericmaisel.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From Chapter 2, Making Meaning
"Choosing Difficult Ideas"
You have a vivacious idea. But you also have a large doubt about the idea. You notice yourself saying, "No, this idea is just too difficult."
This "too difficult" can mean many things. It can mean that the idea feels too slippery, too dark, too ambitious, too dangerous, too self-revealing. It can also mean that the idea, even if splendidly realized, would have little or no chance in the marketplace, that it is "too difficult" for the average reader, collector, moviegoer, listener.
What has been your habit with respect to "difficult" ideas? Do you actually stop to analyze which "too difficult" it might be or whether it really is too difficult to tackle? Do you relegate the idea to the scrap heap and breathe a sigh of relief?
Or rather than reject the idea outright, do you alter it to make it easier, tacking on a happy ending, reducing its scope, turning it on its head, all in the course of a split second? Do you make this alteration right at the edge of conscious awareness, knowing what you are doing it but keeping the decision distant enough to spare yourself the sting of guilt?
Do stop this. We both know that a "difficult idea" in its original, unadulterated form is likely to be the idea worth pursuing. [...]
It is in the area of self-revelation especially that we often decide to reject an idea without really considering it. Blockage here is common. The creator receives the idea, dismisses it without daring to look at it, adamantly refuses to work on it, but also can't work on anything else, because that was the idea to pursue. The problem is not that he rejects it but that he rejects it blindly, fearfully, and out of hand, without giving it a fair chance.
Once he airs it, he may indeed want to reject it. […] If he rejects a difficult idea after honorably considering it, the artist will have rejected it righteously.
Deep creativity often means dangerous creativity. The idea that presents itself as you hush and hold arises from a place that knows nothing of safety. The top of your mind knows safety. There you know perfectly well that animal paintings sell, that adolescent boys and men are the market for action movies, that millions of women are insatiably hungry for romance novels. The top of your mind knows many such things.
But when you hold the desire to create deeply, you bypass the top of your mind, you bypass the safety net of formula, you bypass marketing considerations, and you travel to a region where truth resides. And what is the truth if not dangerous?
Will you choose to work on the idea that arises from that place? Will you choose to do the dangerous thing? For what the work based on a truthful idea reveals may not be pretty. It may not please your parents. It may not please the people you expose. It may not please you, when you stop and see that you had that inside you.
Why, then, do it? For the sake of truth and beauty and for the sake of authentic living. Period. But the decision to make such a choice remains a very hard one. On the debit side are a great many reasons not to proceed. On the credit side are only a few, although they're profound ones. And so, the creator vacillates.
Chapter 4, Creatures from the Sea
"Overcoming the Fear of Making Mistakes " (552 words)
A fear of making mistakes will translate into an inability to risk, to think, to start, to work. A fear of making mistakes leads to the making of only small investments, the making of a short story and not a novel, the making of a pencil sketch and not a mural, because a big mistake in a pencil sketch is not like a big mistake in a mural.
Certainly, the artist must make a short story if she must; but she must make a novel and not a short story if she is making short stories to avoid the sting that really big mistakes would bring.
As to the mistakes themselves, there are only two kinds: those that ruin the work and those that don't. There are mistakes that can be corrected, incorporated into the work, ignored, or even prized, and then there are mistakes that are killers. Handling the small-and medium-sized mistakes, the ones that fail to kill the work, involves courage, patience, and technique. This careful handling is nothing more or less than a major component of the artist's job description. She does not abandon the work, if it is worth saving; she instead loves it and corrects it.
But some mistakes are really big and ruinous. The writer who has chosen to write a novel which she mistakenly thought had at its heart a rich premise, and who discovers that the novel is really stone-cold dead, has made a "mistake" which can't be corrected. What will she do? She may deny that she has a problem and write on, until, three years later, she gives up, the novel now "completed" or abandoned. Or, just as unfortunately, she may determine to abandon it as soon as she is certain of its deadness, but so charge herself with the failure that her writing life is broken.
If she is luckier, she will put the work away, experience pain, recover, and write again. She will say to herself that that was one of her works that, as Thornton Wilder put it, "got thrown away halfway through because it failed to engross the whole of me." It will remain a product that provokes anxiety by its very existence; but every artist's closet is full of such skeletons!
Mistakes cause sadness and blockage. A novel that collapses or never comes to life is a sad affair and we need to mourn it ... and then move on. Cry for the mistakes you've made and the ones you still will make. Take a moment and shed salty tears.
What if three novels in a row die? A dozen poems? A score of paintings? Simply mourn each one and move on. Cry and move on.
But do not:
1. Ignore mistakes.
2. Defend mistakes.
3. Leave mistakes uncorrected.
4. Accept mistakes as your just due.
5. Punish yourself over mistakes.
Even a Mozart concerto in which no note is wrong (because he could not write a wrong note) may be stone-cold dead. All right! What is a Mozart to do? What are any of us to do? Abandon the work or complete it, learn from the experience, cry, forgive ourselves, and move on.
Please take a moment to shed bitter tears. So many mistakes, so much sadness! Now dry your eyes. There's work to be done.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherBooks That Save Lives
- Publication date2026
- ISBN 10 1684817773
- ISBN 13 9781684817771
- BindingPaperback
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages288
- Rating
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