Fearless Creating: A Step-by-Step Guide To Starting and Completing Your Work of Art

by Eric Maisel

For writers, painters, or performers in any field, new hope for overcoming creative blocks and finishing the art of their dreams.

The blank page, empty canvas, or uncarved stone will often fill artists with dread. But so may the thought of finishing, showing, or even selling their work. It is in this "artistic anxiety" that creative blocks begin.

With an understanding that could only be gained through years of experience in counseling artists, writers, and performers, Eric Maisel, Ph.D. discusses each stage of creation-wishing, choosing, starting, working, completing, selling--and the anxieties particular to each. He then shows how these inhibiting tensions can be turned to artistic advantages, how truth and beauty arrive in the work of art precisely because, and only when, anxiety has been understood, embraced, and resolved.

Fearless Creating guides the reader, whether an experienced artist or someone just starting out, past the pitfalls that appear in each stage of the process. By following Dr. Maisel's exercises related both to the world at hand and the ongoing struggles of artistic life, readers will emerge from this book with a completed work of art and a new perspective on their potential to be a fearless creator.

Genres: Art, Writing, Nonfiction, Psychology, Reference, Self Help

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 1995

About the author

Eric Maisel, Ph.D., is the author of more than 40 books in the areas of creativity, coaching, mental health, and cultural trends. He is a psychotherapist and creativity coach, and writes for Psychology Today and Professional Artist Magazine and presents workshops internationally.