Here are 100 books that The Creative Habit fans have personally recommended if you like
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I used to think of television as a third parent. As a child of immigrants, I learned a lot about being an American from the media. Soon, I realized there were limits to what I could learn because media and tech privilege profit over community. For 20 years, I have studied what happens when people decide to make media outside of corporations. I have interviewed hundreds of filmmakers, written hundreds of blogs and articles, curated festivals, juried awards, and ultimately founded my own platform, all resulting in four books. My greatest teachers have been artists, healers, and family—chosen and by blood—who have created spaces for honesty, vulnerability, and creative conflict.
This book helped me release shame after a colleague of mine told me my work wasn’t “science.”
Here’s the truth: to create a healing platform, I needed to tap into ways of thinking that academia sees as “woo woo” and “savage.” I looked to the stars. I meditated. I did rituals and read myths.
Dr. Kimmerer, trained as a traditional botanist, realized that the Indigenous myths and stories she was told as a child contained scientific knowledge passed down for generations by her tribe.
She realized there were scientific truths her community knew for millennia that traditional scientists only discovered within the last 100 years. This is the power of Ancestral Intelligence, disregarded by the same science that ultimately created AI.
What stories, fables, and myths have taught you valuable lessons about the world?
Called the work of "a mesmerizing storyteller with deep compassion and memorable prose" (Publishers Weekly) and the book that, "anyone interested in natural history, botany, protecting nature, or Native American culture will love," by Library Journal, Braiding Sweetgrass is poised to be a classic of nature writing. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces indigenous teachings that consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take "us on a journey that is…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I’ve passionately pursued the art of screenwriting for decades now, with all the ups and downs that go with that—from the peaks of Hollywood projects winning big awards (I was a writer-producer on HBO’s Band of Brothers), to scripts nobody wanted to read and when they read them, they didn’t want to do anything with them. And everything in between. It’s been my career my entire adult life—doing it, teaching it, and helping others understand the requirements of good screenwriting.
I’ve long been inspired by this manual for fiction writers on what makes good writing.
“Be a lion, a pirate when you write” is one of the chapter headings, dealing with the boldness a writer needs. It also gets into how detailed specificity on character and emotion taken from real-life observation makes a good piece of writing shine.
Originally published in 1938, this classic by Brenda Ueland is considered by many to be one of the best books ever written on how to be a writer. Part a lesson on writing and part a philosophy on life, Ueland believed that anyone could be a writer and everyone had something important to say. Heavily influenced by the ideas of William Blake, Ueland outlines 12 points to keep in mind while writing and encourages writers to find their true, authentic selves and write from there. Born in Minneapolis in 1891 to a progressive household, Ueland’s father was a lawyer and…
My tenure as editor-in-chief of Guitar magazine is well behind me now, but it always lights me up to create content for musicians, and to absorb it. These are my people, you see, a community of curious, empathic, chronically late daydreamers and night owls, good listeners all. I’m not qualified to comment on Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory or Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music, but neither do I want to talk about rock-star memoirs or fawning fictionalizations. No fanfare here, thank you. Instead, these are five books in which musicians may recognize some element of their creative self and come away with a little more fuel for the fire.
Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy really, really wants everyone to write a song, and I find it terribly endearing.
I picked up his handbook amid a COVID-era creative block, and with Jeff as my songwriting sherpa, I was eventually able to drop some baggage and make my way up. I had already known that music would pay me back for the effort, but Jeff (I think he’d want me to call him Jeff) patiently walks through directly applicable strategies such as word-laddering, stealing, and the Dadaist cut-up technique for lyric writing.
His encouraging nudge made it easier to leave self-judgment and even good sense behind.
'A guide to rediscovering the joys of creating that we all felt as children.' NEW YORK TIMES
One of the century's most feted singer-songwriters, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, digs deep into his own creative process to share his unique perspective about song-writing and offers a warm, accessible guide to writing your first song, championing the importance of making creativity part of your everyday life and experiencing the hope, inspiration and joy that accompanies it.
'Fascinating.' ROUGH TRADE 'Eloquent.' INDEPENDENT 'Nourishing.' PITCHFORK 'A proselytiser for the act of songcraft.' FINANCIAL TIMES 'A smart,…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I’ve been obsessed with studying the artistic process for over 25 years since I got my degree in Studio Art and Art History at Vanderbilt University. After getting my MFA in Creative Writing, I headed out to Hollywood to produce national television for over twenty years. I’ve worked with many of the greatest actors, filmmakers, and writers of our time and written my own bestselling novels about artists. I read as many books on the artistic process as possible. My mission has always been to ensure that every person knows that they, too, can be artists – creating art isn’t just for the “great”, it’s for everyone.
Other people kept recommending this book to me, but I kept putting it off. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t bring myself to read it. Once I did, the only thing I had to regret was that I hadn’t read it sooner. Now, I’ve returned to its pages time and time again to re-ignite my own love of creating and to remind me that it’s never too late to follow new creative dreams. This book makes me laugh and cry with the hope and pain of creating art, but the most important part of it to me is its relentless insistence that we all must ignore that annoying “You will never be an artist” putdown. Read this book and you will know, without a doubt, that you can be an artist if you want, no matter the obstacles.
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this memoir of one woman's later in life career change is "a smart, funny and compelling case for going after your heart's desires, no matter your age" (Essence).
Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school--in her sixties--to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how…
I’ve always loved movies. In my 20s, I went to film school – perhaps you can still find a couple of the short films I wrote with animator Matthew Hood on Vimeo (Hourglass and Metalstasis) – and I worked a little in the UK film industry reading scripts for Film4, among others. I’ve also interviewed filmmakers, including Nicolas Winding Refn, Christopher Hampton, Life of Brian producer John Goldstone and editor Anne V. Coates. And I’ve always found a romance, despite the seedy aspects, of Tinseltown being developed out in Hollywoodland, a place of orange groves and pepper trees where people from the Midwest went to retire in the sun.
Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard… Billy Wilder is my favourite filmmaker. I like the elegance of his storytelling and his bittersweet wit. In Wilder’s final years, Cameron Crowe conducted a series of interviews with the writer-director. From fleeing Nazi Germany to his admiration for Ernest Lubitsch, from the trials of working with Marilyn Monroe or Raymond Chandler to the joys of collaborating with Barbara Stanwyck, Jack Lemmon, and Charles Laughton, from his successes to his failures and on to the secret of what makes a good writing partner, Wilder needs little prodding to tell movie-making tales from Berlin to Paris to Hollywood.
In Conversations with Wilder, Hollywood's legendary and famously elusive director Billy Wilder agrees for the first time to talk extensively about his life and work.
Here, in an extraordinary book with more than 650 black-and-white photographs -- including film posters, stills, grabs, and never-before-seen pictures from Wilder's own collection -- the ninety-three-year-old icon talks to Cameron Crowe, one of today's best-known writer-directors, about thirty years at the very heart of Hollywood, and about screenwriting and camera work, set design and stars, his peers and their movies, the studio system and films today. In his distinct voice we hear Wilder's inside…
I’ve been obsessed with studying the artistic process for over 25 years since I got my degree in Studio Art and Art History at Vanderbilt University. After getting my MFA in Creative Writing, I headed out to Hollywood to produce national television for over twenty years. I’ve worked with many of the greatest actors, filmmakers, and writers of our time and written my own bestselling novels about artists. I read as many books on the artistic process as possible. My mission has always been to ensure that every person knows that they, too, can be artists – creating art isn’t just for the “great”, it’s for everyone.
This is probably the most challenging read here, but so worth the effort if you want to dive deep into one of the most unique artistic minds of our time. If you’re not a trained actor, you might not understand all of the nuances here – Mamet is a definite theater guy and doesn’t stop down to explain every detail here -- but any artist can learn Mamet’s biting, witty, shocking creative tips. I recommend just letting this one wash over you the first time, but if you give yourself to this text and to Mamet, it is sure to give you a new perspective on the way we all create art and hopefully inspire you to delve into some creative expression that you were always too scared to try.
The Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, director and teacher has written a blunt, unsparingly honest guide to acting. In True and False David Mamet overturns conventional opinion and tells aspiring actors what they really need to know. He leaves no aspect of acting untouched: how to judge the role, approach the part, work with the playwright; the right way to undertake auditions and the proper approach to agents and the business in general. True and False slaughters a wide range of sacred cows and yet offers an invaluable guide to the acting profession.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I blame my mother. She took us to the public library every week and let us check out as many books as we could carry. Consequently, reading was a joy rather than a burden. The writing came after I got over my false assumptions about English Lit and Modern Poetry. As a screenwriter, I craft silly stories to make audiences laugh. That’s why I watch movies after an exhausting week. As an author, I gravitate towards non-fiction–trying to reconcile my artistry with my faith. I’ve written about movies, music, video games, technology, and art–with an eye toward lifting our spirits and comforting our aching souls.
I get frustrated by organizations and systems that are so devoted to metrics that they miss the creative opportunities at hand.
Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind flips the script on the AI-driven world we’re inheriting, insisting that the right-brained approach to creativity will unlock a brighter future for us all. I’ve found that his focus on story and design moves audiences far more than spreadsheets and PowerPoints.
Pink reminds us why empathy and playfulness are the kinds of superpowers we must rediscover amid so much machine learning.
This is a book that you have to read. A Whole New Mind is a groundbreaking look at how we should live our lives in a world turned upside down by rising affluence, the outsourcing of good jobs abroad, and the computerization of our lives a world fast shifting from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Lawyers. Accountants. Radiologists. Software engineers. That's what our parents encouraged us to be when we grew up. But Mum and Dad were wrong. The future belongs to a very different kind of person - a person with a very different kind of mind.…
I blame my mother. She took us to the public library every week and let us check out as many books as we could carry. Consequently, reading was a joy rather than a burden. The writing came after I got over my false assumptions about English Lit and Modern Poetry. As a screenwriter, I craft silly stories to make audiences laugh. That’s why I watch movies after an exhausting week. As an author, I gravitate towards non-fiction–trying to reconcile my artistry with my faith. I’ve written about movies, music, video games, technology, and art–with an eye toward lifting our spirits and comforting our aching souls.
As a young man who loved the violent films of Martin Scorsese and the soothing sounds of Gregorian chants, I wanted to reconcile these seemingly contradictory passions.
Madeleine L’Engle offers wise words of encouragement for integrating our faith and our art. While I’d enjoyed her science fiction novels like A Wrinkle in Time, I was surprised by the practical, down-to-earth aspects of Walking on Water. This book slowed me down, allowing child-like wonder to return. She challenged me to develop a daily creative practice because one day off ends up disconnecting us for three.
In this classic book,Madeleine L'Engle addresses the questions, What does it mean to be a Christian artist? and What is the relationship between faith and art? Through L'Engle's beautiful and insightful essay, readers will find themselves called to what the author views as the prime tasks of an artist: to listen, to remain aware, and to respond to creation through one's own art.
Creativity is a practical, problem-solving, risk-taking endeavor, something we all do, whether we claim it or not. After working for many years with groups of graduate business students, artists, writers, business professionals, women in recovery, men in prison, with those just discovering their creative ability—and with myself and my own creative journey, I realize the question isn’t “Am I creative?” The question is “Am I using it?” or “Am I continuing to grow?” Nothing is more exciting than watching others as they realize just how creative they are.
While not a book explicitly about creativity, it opened my eyes to how our brains work, how we can make them work better, and what we’re just going to have to live with. For instance, “multi-tasking” is really a myth—some brains just switch from one task to another faster and women are better at that than men, something rooted in our evolutionary development. And our brains are hardwired for movement, particularly walking. Developmental neurobiologist Medina offers plenty of food for creative brains.
Most of us have no idea what's really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know--like the need for physical activity to get your brain working its best. How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget--and so important to repeat new knowledge? Is it true that men and women have different brains? In Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I've been making messes with paint, string, and words, as well as in love, mothering, and in virtually every other way imaginable my whole life. Eventually, an expertise began to grow, and the confusion in my life began to make sense through my creations, while at the same time, the seemingly irrelevant words and textures I was making started to tell me something about my life. Eventually, my lived experience and training in the Expressive Arts Therapies have led me to the roles of teacher, educator, and contemplative artist. If we pay attention to what we express and how we express things, we can find our way through any mess we find ourselves in.
As an anxious mother, I struggled to understand how my creative practice could help me through this trying stage of life.
This book was the first key to help me unlock how my creative practice could support my healing and help me learn more about myself. But most importantly, it gave me permission to proclaim that I couldknow and understand the world through my intimate creative expressions.
Part memoir, part instruction, this book provided the road map for who I am today: a woman who welcomes her suffering into the creative realm and watches it transform into insight.
An expert in art therapy offers this “wonderful” guide “for anyone, artistic or not, who is interested in using art to know more about himself or herself” (Library Journal)
Making art—giving form to the images that arise in our mind's eye, our dreams, and our everyday lives—is a form of spiritual practice through which knowledge of ourselves can ripen into wisdom. This book offers encouragement for everyone to explore art-making in this spirit of self-discovery—plus practical instructions on material, methods, and activities, such as ways to:
• Discover a personal myth or story • Recognize patterns and themes in one's…
