I’ve mentioned a few things already that you might want to put on your Christmas list. Obviously, I want books! I think I’d like to share some of my favorite creativity books with all of you tonight. You may already have some, because they are classics. But I hope I can add a few to your TBR list.
Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird is one of the classics. Her words about “shitty first drafts” and “Radio Station KFKD” resonate with almost all of us. It holds a place of honor on my writers’ bookshelf. I go back to it on a regular basis when I get too discouraged to put words together.
Natalie Goldberg has a collection of which she can be proud. Writing Down the Bones, Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life, Living Color, The True Secret of Writing, and The Great Spring: Writing, Zen, and This Zigzag Life.
Then there’s the Creativity Queen Julia Cameron. The list of her books is too long to go into. The Artist’s Way, morning pages, and Artist’s Dates speak for themselves. Whether her approach works for you or not, it’s as pervasive as Alcoholics Anonymous in the field of recovery. She gets mad props from me.
Last but not least of the classics is Annie Dillard. I’m just learning more about her, but I have The Writing Life and The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New.
I’ll tell you tomorrow about some of the other, less well-known, creative teachers.
Finding Our Voices Together 