books, books, books!

A creativity reading list

I’ve wanted to make a Reading List of books that celebrate art and creativity, for a long time.

If you see a book here, I most likely own it. I’ll mention if I don’t, but I have three big piles in front of me right now that I want to share with you, so I have many to share. I’ll add to these lists and rearrange as they grow, so you can find books on topics that inspire you.

Send me your suggestions and I’ll create a special list of your favourites.

Books about creativity

My Julia Cameron Collection

• I facilitate Artist’s Way courses, so naturally The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is #1 on my list. With exercises and gentle guidance over 12 weeks, blocks created throughout your life are examined and conquered.

• In 1996 she published a companion to The Artist’s Way, The Vein of Gold: A Journey into Your Creative Heart.

• Also on my shelves is The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life, a book I want to spend more time with.

• Letters to a Young Artist: Building a Life in Art answers many of the questions we pose to ourselves in The Artist’s Way, in the easy-reading format of letters from an experience artist.

• Floor Sample: A Creative Memoir and The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right Size are two more on my Julia Cameron shelf. While the latter is in my collection, I’ll confess that I picked it up because the front cover featured a favourite fountain pen, and that I have yet to do more than leaf through it. The idea of Culinary Artist’s Dates is appealing, though.

• Books that particularly resonate with me by Julia Cameron include her latest few: It's Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond because I see so many clients who are worried about how they’ll fill their time when the nest is empty, or they find their priorities are shifting without knowing what to do next. Drop me a line if you’d like to take this special approach to The Artist’s Way with me.

• 2021 was a tough year for so many, but was it the right year for me to discover The Listening Path: The Creative Art of Attention! The more I consciously slow down and notice the world around me, the more I want to create.

• Most recently (on my doorstep, freshly released this second week of January, 2024, is Living the Artist's Way: An Intuitive Path to Greater Creativity. This one is exciting, as it adds yet another writing tool to mine our thoughts.

There are many other flavours of Julia Cameron books: you can buy The Artist's Way Starter Kit, which includes a journal with The Artist’s Way. The Artist's Way Workbook is just that, with Tasks and Prompts ready for you. There’s The Artist's Way for Parents, The Artist's Way at Work, (hit me up if you’d like to run this at your company. I’d LOVE to do a corporate Artist’s Way!) and about a dozen more just in the Artist’s Way series, many of which are bestsellers. There’s something to this.

other authors on creativity

Reading about how creativity manifests itself is fascinating to me. What sparks it? Where does it come from for people? There are as many answers as there are creatives. Let me know what you think of these:

• I wish I’d seen this PBS series but I have my beloved aunt’s copy of the companion book: The Creative Spirit. I haven’t done much more than skim it, and I’m looking forward to spending more time with it.

• In 2001, Michele Cassou published Point Zero: Creativity without Limits, celebrating the creative quest and how to conquer the dragons that keep you from full expression. Another from my late aunt’s collection, there are newspaper clippings and colourful doodles of hers all through it, so I know she enjoyed it.

• Art and Fear asks many of the same questions that other books on creativity ask. I don’t know that you can think about these questions too much, and seeing them framed in new ways can be just the spark you need to answer some of them.

• Can we talk about books on creativity without mentioning Elizabeth Gilbert? I loved Big Magic and plan to reread it soon. I’ll put this one here, and her others will likely end up in Biographies, Autobiographies and other Life Stories.

• Confession time: I have yet to read The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. Shocking, I know, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ll report back when I’ve read it! Until then, if you’ve read it, I’d love to know.

• Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit is an ode to the discipline and consistency that she employed to become one of the world’s foremost choreographers.

I’ll be adding to my very small collection of books that are specific to language and writing, from the elements that make up a sentence to creating a new world in print. I’m fascinated by the ability to tell a compelling story and am on the hunt for more guides. I’m limiting myself to English, but I still have my set of Que-sais je? books if I feel like diving back into middle French grammar,

• Let’s start with the 1918 classic The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White (yes, Stuart Little’s author) was required reading in university, and is equally useful today.

• Lynne Truss introduced early 21st century students to the rigor of grammar with Eats Shoots and Leaves, inspiring jokes, cartoons and memes to this day.

• If you are looking for a history of quotation marks, ampersands, pilcrows and octothorpes (which date back to ancient Rome and are better known today as hashtags), then Keith Houston’s Shady Characters is a banquet for hardcore typography nerds like me.

• Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer, published in 1934, contains advice and exercises to aid in polishing literary skills.

Biographies, Autobiographies and other Life Stories

• This is where it feels right to put Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love. It’s here because of her search for a meaningful, creative life, and the lessons she and we can learn from it, but it’s primarily her story.

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