The Van Gogh Blues


Book Description

Creative people will experience depression — that’s a given. It’s a given because they are regularly confronted by doubts about the meaningfulness of their efforts. Theirs is a kind of depression that does not respond to pharmaceutical treatment. What’s required is healing in the realm of meaning.In this groundbreaking book, Eric Maisel teaches creative people how to handle these recurrent crises of meaning and how to successfully manage the anxieties of the creative process. Using examples both from the lives of famous creators such as van Gogh and from his own creativity coaching practice, Maisel explains that despite their inevitable difficulties, creative people possess the ability to forge relationships, repair themselves, and find meaning in their work and their lives. Maisel presents a step-by-step plan to help creative people handle their special brand of depression and rediscover the reasons they are driven to create in the first place.




The Van Gogh Blues


Book Description

Creative people will experience depression--that's a given. It's a given because they are regularly confronted by doubts about the meaningfulness of their efforts. Theirs is a kind of depression that does not respond to pharmaceutical treatment. What's required is healing in the realm of meaning. In this groundbreaking book, Eric Maisel teaches creative people how to handle these recurrent crises of meaning and how to successfully manage the anxieties of the creative process. Using examples both from the lives of famous creators such as van Gogh and from his own creativity coaching practice, Maisel explains that despite their inevitable difficulties, creative people possess the ability to forge relationships, repair themselves, and find meaning in their work and their lives. Maisel presents a step-by-step plan to help creative people handle their special brand of depression and rediscover the reasons they are driven to create in the first place.




The Van Gogh Blues


Book Description

Using examples of famous (Vincent Van Gogh, Fyodor Dostoyevksy) and not so famous artists and creative people who have struggled with depression, Dr Maisel shows what lessons can be learned from them and how depression can be harnesed and put to creative use. His four-step, non-pharmaceutical treatment plan offers insights for anyone involved in the creative process and legitimizes for many creative people suffering from depression their own instinctive feeling that standard treatments are not the whole answer.




The Creativity Book


Book Description

Whatever you do, says Dr. Eric Maisel, creativity helps you do it better. Creativity encourages the artist to paint more frequently and authentically. It allows a busy executive to see her options more quickly, make changes more fluidly, and become more self-directing and confident. In this book, America's foremost expert on the psychological side of the creative process presents a complete one-year plan for increasing and unleashing your creativity. It includes two disucssions/exercises per week, and culminates in a guided project of your choice—from working on a current novel or symphony to planning a new home business or becoming a more effective supervisor.




Vincent's Colors


Book Description

Combines van Gogh's paintings with his own words, describing each work of art and introducing young readers to the concept of color.




The Art of the Book Proposal


Book Description

Here is an expert's guide through the elements of a nonfiction book proposal, including the outline, chapter summaries, marketing/publicity, book and chapter titles, and more. Filled with exercises designed to help a writer conceive and create a desirable proposal, and checklists to keep track of the project's progress, The Art of the Book Proposal provides the framework on which to build a great idea, as well as intelligent, empathetic instruction on how to produce a proposal that will capture the interest of an agent or editor. While most how-to writing books focus only on the nuts and bolts of putting a proposal together, Maisel, considered by many to be America's foremost expert on the psychological side of the creative process, also helps the writer overcome mental barriers to producing the best work possible. Using a holistic approach to the sometimes unglamorous work of designing a proposal, his guide enables a writer to transform an idea into a book.




Rethinking Depression


Book Description

Eric Maisel invites depression sufferers and their service providers to consider whether human sadness has been monetised into the disease of depression and asks readers to consider the personal implications of this 50 year cultural shift from human problem to medical ailment.




Mastering Creative Anxiety


Book Description

In his decades as a psychotherapist and creativity coach, Eric Maisel has found a common thread behind what often gets labeled "writer's block," "procrastination," or "stage fright." It's the particular anxiety that, paradoxically, keeps creators from doing, completing, or sharing the work they are driven toward. This "creative anxiety" can take the form of avoiding the work, declaring it not good enough, or failing to market it -- and it can cripple creators for decades, even lifetimes. But Maisel has learned what sets successful creators apart. He shares these strategies here, including artist-specific stress management; how to work despite bruised egos, day jobs, and other inevitable frustrations; and what not to do to deal with anxiety. Implementing these 24 lessons replaces the pain of not creating with the profound rewards of free artistic self-expression. * Practical insights and proven techniques for overcoming the challenges and fears that plague creators of every kind * Teaching tales that convey effective approaches to creating fearlessly and abundantly




Life Purpose Boot Camp


Book Description

A no-excuses, cut-to-the-chase program for defining, training for, and achieving your goals As life gets busier and more complicated we crave something larger and more meaningful than just ticking another item off our to-do list. In the past, we’ve looked to religion or outside guidance for that sense of purpose, but today fewer people are fulfilled by traditional approaches to meaning. Bestselling author, psychotherapist, and creativity coach Eric Maisel offers an alternative: an eight-week intensive that breaks through barriers and offers insights for living each day with purpose. Once you understand how meaning operates, how meaning and life purpose are related, and what concrete steps you can take toward fulfilling your purpose, you will never run out of meaning again. This program will develop self-awareness and self-confidence and give you what you need to fully live the best possible life.




All the Blues Come Through


Book Description

With her smart and playful writing, debut author Metra Farrari cleverly blends chick-lit with a dash of Greek mythology—the product a winning combination of smart-alecky wit, dreamy escapism, and a quirky yet lovable heroine. Ryan Bell is your typical millennial: surviving on a diet of wine and Netflix, woefully single enough to qualify for cat-lady membership, and renting from a seventy-something Tinder-swiping landlord-turned-bestie. But underneath her chipped-off manicure lies a green thumb that has created miraculous flowers capable of saving mankind from cataclysmic climate change. There's one problem: Only Ryan can grow them. An unusual audience comes to an unorthodox conclusion: Ryan is the heir of the Greek god Artemis. Although Ryan thinks these strange, toga-wearing folks are one kalamata olive short of a Greek salad, she reluctantly enters a hidden world where the Olympians are real and magic flows freely (plus a generous serving of Greek hunks). Talk about one epic identity crisis. Magical demigod or not, the fate of civilization—both mortal and godly—now rests on Ryan's shoulders.