What Books Helped me Write the book Take Up Space
How many books on creativity are in circulation? Many. Here is a short list to help you pursue creativity and your art as your take up space.
I read many books as I researched Take Up Space – Art as the Second Act. The books below inspired both the book and my lifelong love of writing and creating. Since I blog about the magic of TBR lists and bookshelf alchemy, I wanted to share some of the most influential books I encountered. This is not a definitive list, nor is it academic, nor very neutral. This is my list and I offer it up to you so you can start your own. If you are interested in starting your own personal annotative bibliography, do add personal, time-based information to each book entry. I found that a note about where and when I was when I read the book helped me better remember it.
Addonizio, Kim. Ordinary Genius
I discovered Ordinary Genius in Powells, me in exploring mode, my husband following with the basket of books determined to not lose sight of me. Addonizio focuses on poetry, but the book is more about art. The takeaway is to learn how to be, then sustain your creative work despite ambiguity and uncertainty. Confusion and questioning are part of the creative process for all writers, at all levels.
Imagine a sentence as a hall with a series of doors. Each door is a possible way to use what you’ve already written to generate new material.
Once you have an opening sentence (one you’ve borrowed from another writer, say, or an American Sentence of your own), you can open those doors and discover ways to go further.
Essentially, a door is a part of the sentence you can use as the basis for a repetition. Repetition and pattern make a poem both musical and memorable. If you’re stuck in a piece of writing, or feeling uninspired, you can use this technique not only to intensify the music, but also to move into new language and surprising territory.
Allen, Pat B. Art Is a Way of Knowing: A Guide to Self-Knowledge and Spiritual Fulfillment through Creativity
In her book Pat Allen focuses on image making, but not just beautiful images. Often they are raw and mysterious. They are not always comforting but can be exhilarating, challenging, provocative, even frightening at times.
Many people never attempt to make images, because what would they do with the product? Do I have toframe it? Sell it? Show it? Share it? Critique it? Develop it? Market it?
Make twelve more and go to an art fair? What if I like making images; do I have to quit my job and do this all the time? Do I have to call myself an artist? Can I? As a way of knowing, art doesn’t demand that you change your life any more than trying meditation demands that you shave your head and enter a monastery. How much you welcome your images and the stories they bring into your life is up to you.
Amen
Ackroyd, Peter. Albion. The Origins of the English Imagination
Turns out, the origins as well as the responses to imaginative works are varied. Which is no surprise. I read this to discover a blinding, crazy insight that there was a single unique inspiration that we have all based our imaginative work on. The well spring if you will. Spoiler Alert. Nope. The conclusion, everything everywhere can serve as our imaginations. And there we are.
Of the English imagination there is no certain description. It has been compared with a stream or river, in the same manner as English poetry. It may be a fountain perpetually fresh and perpetually renewed, as in the Marian hymn of the early sixteenth century: “Haill! fresh fontane that springs new …” It can also be seen in close affinity with the flow of English poetical cadence.
Badonsky, Jill. The Muse is In: An Owners Manual to Your Creativity.
Great book to dip into and out of when you need a positive boost to your creative work.
Badonsky supports our idea that age is not a barrier to the creative process.
Creativity has the potential to get better with age because of the life experiences you have to draw from, the inhibitions you give up, the inspiration that comes from acknowledging that life doesn’t go on forever up and the tendency to be enlightened as to what truly matters.
Bantock, Nick. The Trickster’s Hat. A Mischievous Apprenticeship in Creativity
From the author of the collage-like books the Griffin & Sabine cycle, Bantock encourages us to embrace our own Trickster and how to craft your trickster:
Write down the following questions and then your answers:
• Think of a friend or companion who has a twinkle in their eye and never lets you get away with telling yourself white lies.
• Which comedian makes you belly laugh?
• From fiction, think of your favorite foxy rascal, mischief maker, or slyboots, someone like Puck or the Artful Dodger.
• Supposing Alfred Hitchcock was your uncle, what sort of birthday party would he arrange for you? Morph these answers together, and you have your Trickster.
He’s a brilliant fool, and he’s there to make your journey anything but dull, but don’t try to slouch off -he won’t let you. Take a paragraph to describe what he looks like, how he dresses, and what he does to wake you up.
Basho, Matsuo. Travel Writings
Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) is arguably the greatest figure in the history of Japanese literature and the master of the haiku. I love this book of travel descriptions along with the Haiku the views inspired. This combination, now named Haibun, a prose preface with a Haiku response was invented by Basho.
Basho was well aware of his reputation and knew that the works he left behind with family and disciples would be published and eventually his travel writing would be read. Like now.
Off I went, on a trek of a thousand li, with not so much as food prepared for the journey. Beneath the moon, in the third watch of the night, I enter into the Land of Naught”—so said the sage, and his words were my staff as I left my ramshackle hut at riverside, in the Eighth Month of the year 1684, with the moaning wind blowing cold.
Bones bleaching in a field:
That’s what I feel in my heart
With each blast of wind
Beck, Martha. Beyond Anxiety
You may have encountered Beck in O Magazine. I had, but picked up this book anyway. Well written and interesting, Beck offers insight into creativity and using the right side of the brain.
The ability to apply learning in one area to a completely different enterprise means that everything we’ve ever experienced is material for our creative-genius minds. That’s why learning to draw a perfect circle really can help you be a better accountant, or songwriter, or deep-sea diver. When Josh Waitzkin became a martial arts champion, he made “far transfers” from chess that helped him strategize and think several steps ahead. Then he moved into investing, where he now applies skills from both chess and push hands to make a lot of money.
I’ve watched people make all sorts of far transfers, first inside their heads, then in their outward lives.
