Here are 100 books that The Artist's Way fans have personally recommended if you like
The Artist's Way.
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Alongside writing, I’ve been running workshops, teaching and mentoring writers for nearly twenty years, helping people get unstuck and keep going. So I spend most of my working life thinking about creativity and writing—then suddenly I, too, couldn’t write the book I needed to write. Every book in this list is about not-writing for different reasons, in different circumstances, but between them they tell us so much about how we write, why we write, how we get writing to happen—and what’s happening when we can’t. These very different stories resonate with each other, and I hope some of them resonate with you.
First, because it’s incredibly funny. Geoff Dyer set out—he says—to write a sober, serious study of D. H. Lawrence, but life, travel arrangements, random people and his own inertia kept getting in the way. The story of his odyssey doesn’t just evoke all the things about writing that we’ve always suspected (that it’s hard; that it’s easy; that we often wonder why on earth we do it; that we never question that we want to do it). It also, by stealth, evokes and explains an amazing amount about Lawrence, and why he’s a writer that so many people love—or hate—so passionately.
Recounts the author's experiences visiting the places D.H. Lawrence lived while actively not working on a book about Lawrence and not writing his own novel.
I have been teaching personal and spiritual development courses and workshops for over 30 years. I am passionate about balancing the notion of spiritual connection and grounding it to help people see this aspect of our awareness as normal rather than weird or unreal. The books I have chosen reflect the fact that connecting to spirit sometimes requires hard work and dedication, but also, there are so many different aspects to explore and learn about that it is truly a lifetime quest for everyone on a conscious spiritual path–although I believe everyone is on a spiritual path, it's just that some people aren’t aware of it!
It is an old book that was popular when I first started training in crystal healing. The course I was on brought up many issues that I needed to work on, especially a particular fear of being the center of attention and appreciating my talents. It came into my life at a time where I could put into practice the concepts in the book.
It has become a classic to support people who are in the process of spiritual and personal development, as the two usually go hand in hand, and it is a book I still recommend to students.
Internationally renowned author, Susan Jeffers, has helped millions of people around the globe to overcome their fears and heal the pain in their lives. Such fears may include:
Public speaking; Asserting yourself; Making decisions; Intimacy; Changing jobs; Being alone; Ageing; Driving; Losing a loved one; Ending a relationship.
But whatever your anxieties, Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway will give you the insight and tools to vastly improve your ability to handle any given situation. You will learn to live your life the way you want - so you can move from a place of pain, paralysis and depression…
I’m just an ordinary person who’s struggled with their own habits and compulsions. My fear and anxiety led me to read many self-help books over the last thirty-something years, and a lot of them helped me to firmly believe that if you start your day in the best way you can, then there’s no limit to the things that you can achieve!
Each of the books I’ve recommended has given me simple tools to help me do just that. Ultimately, I know they inspired me to create the Bad Habit Kicker system. I truly believe they can all help others optimize their lives and become the best versions of themselves!
If you’ve ever felt the pull of resistance, and the frustration of knowing that there’s something that you really want to do, but then that little voice in your head steps up and stops you, then this book will 100% help you. It explains a very easy way of short-circuiting that discussion.
It’s another simple idea, which is what makes it so powerful and helpful. And if you enjoy listening to podcasts, Mel now has an excellent one, "The Mel Robbins Podcast," which you can find on all platforms.
How to enrich your life and destroy doubt in 5 seconds.
Throughout your life, you've had parents, coaches, teachers, friends and mentors who have pushed you to be better than your excuses and bigger than your fears. What if the secret to having the confidence and courage to enrich your life and work is simply knowing how to push yourself?
Using the science of habits, riveting stories and surprising facts from some of the most famous moments in history, art and business, Mel Robbins will explain the power of a "push moment."…
Alongside writing, I’ve been running workshops, teaching and mentoring writers for nearly twenty years, helping people get unstuck and keep going. So I spend most of my working life thinking about creativity and writing—then suddenly I, too, couldn’t write the book I needed to write. Every book in this list is about not-writing for different reasons, in different circumstances, but between them they tell us so much about how we write, why we write, how we get writing to happen—and what’s happening when we can’t. These very different stories resonate with each other, and I hope some of them resonate with you.
This was the book that had just sold to great acclaim when my own book was looking for a publisher. Like almost all of us, Stevens was desperate for peace, quiet and freedom from distractions so she could write her first novel. But she went further than most of us would dare: an uninhabited island off the Falklands. Yet on Bleaker Island every forward move she tried to make with the novel got tangled up in the impossibility of avoiding her self, her past, and how she got here. Writing does that—and it’s often also absurd, as Stevens knows too. I loved this book.
'Perfect' Lena Dunham 'This year's literary sensation' Evening Standard
How far would you travel to become a writer? 8000 miles from home 1085 calories a day 3 months to write the novel that would make her name
At least that was the plan. But when Nell Stevens travelled to Bleaker Island in the Falklands (official population: two) she didn't count on the isolation getting to her . . .
Hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a book about loneliness and creativity. It is about discovering who you are when there's no one else around. And it's about what to do when…
Alongside writing, I’ve been running workshops, teaching and mentoring writers for nearly twenty years, helping people get unstuck and keep going. So I spend most of my working life thinking about creativity and writing—then suddenly I, too, couldn’t write the book I needed to write. Every book in this list is about not-writing for different reasons, in different circumstances, but between them they tell us so much about how we write, why we write, how we get writing to happen—and what’s happening when we can’t. These very different stories resonate with each other, and I hope some of them resonate with you.
“What’s wrong with fiction, my best, most precious thing? What’s wrong with me?” asks novelist Jenn Ashworth. She set out on writing her fifth novel, then abruptly, excruciatingly, extendedly, found she couldn’t. Instead, in a broken and braided narrative which I found un-putdownable, she digs into the nightmares and strange waking states that PTSD and psychosis left her in, the stuffs and dreams of reading, writing and watching movies, and the painfully live legacies of a childhood caught between a violent father and an embattled religion. Writing is my best, most precious thing too: this is a disturbing, often bleakly comic and heartbreaking account of how illness and madness can be both the ruin and the making of art and an artist.
A genre-bending meditation on sickness, spirituality, creativity, and the redemptive powers of writing.
Notes Made While Falling is both a genre-bending memoir and a cultural study of traumatized and sickened selves in fiction and film. It offers a fresh, visceral, and idiosyncratic perspective on creativity, spirituality, illness, and the limits of fiction itself. At its heart is a story of a disastrously traumatic childbirth, its long aftermath, and the out-of-time roots of both trauma and creativity in an extraordinary childhood.
Moving from fairgrounds to Agatha Christie, from literary festivals to neuroscience and the Bible, from Chernobyl to King Lear, Ashworth…
Alongside writing, I’ve been running workshops, teaching and mentoring writers for nearly twenty years, helping people get unstuck and keep going. So I spend most of my working life thinking about creativity and writing—then suddenly I, too, couldn’t write the book I needed to write. Every book in this list is about not-writing for different reasons, in different circumstances, but between them they tell us so much about how we write, why we write, how we get writing to happen—and what’s happening when we can’t. These very different stories resonate with each other, and I hope some of them resonate with you.
After eight successful books, Marie Chaix was abruptly dropped by her publisher. An editor-in-chief of another publisher picked her up, helped her dust herself down, became her writing support, friend and best reader, and published her next book. Three months later, he went to bed and never woke up. Shattered, Chaix decided that she couldn’t—wouldn’t—just didn’t write, not for thirteen years. In finally breaking her silence, Chaix draws a strange, delicate self-portrait of a writer paradoxically both stubborn and profoundly unconfident. I’m not Chaix, and I don’t always like autofiction, but as she weaves in and around the causes and consequences of her decision, her story seems to be about all writers.
A meditation on the themes of separation and silence, The Summer of the Elder Tree was Marie Chaix's first book to appear in fourteen years, and deals with the reasons for her withdrawal from writing, as well as the events in her life since the death of her mother (as detailed in Silences, or a Woman's Life). With uncompromising sincerity, and in the same beautiful prose for which she is renowned, Marie Chaix here takes stock of her life as a woman and writer, as well as the crises that caused her to give up her work. The Summer of…
I’m just an ordinary person who’s struggled with their own habits and compulsions. My fear and anxiety led me to read many self-help books over the last thirty-something years, and a lot of them helped me to firmly believe that if you start your day in the best way you can, then there’s no limit to the things that you can achieve!
Each of the books I’ve recommended has given me simple tools to help me do just that. Ultimately, I know they inspired me to create the Bad Habit Kicker system. I truly believe they can all help others optimize their lives and become the best versions of themselves!
In 2016, after my Mum passed away suddenly from lung cancer, I was in desperate need of a reset in my life. Fortunately for me, that’s when I came across this book.
The thing that’s so wonderful about it is that it’s a really simple system, which encourages you to start your day by spending time on just six easy activities - which you can remember by using the acronym S.A.V.E.R.S. What I found when I started doing The Miracle Morning every day was that it helped me to knock so much of my anxiety on the head that it then allowed me to be creative every day.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough. There’s a really vibrant community on Facebook where people share hints and tips on how to keep their practice going long-term and share their successes!
Start waking up to your full potential every single day with the updated and expanded edition of the groundbreaking book with more than 2 million copies sold.
Getting everything you want out of life isn't about doing more. It's about becoming more. Hal Elrod and The Miracle Morning have helped millions of people become the person they need to be to create the life they've always wanted. Now, it's your turn.
Hal's revolutionary S.A.V.E.R.S. method is a simple, effective step-by-step process to transform your life in as little as six minutes per day:
Silence: Reduce stress and…
I’m just an ordinary person who’s struggled with their own habits and compulsions. My fear and anxiety led me to read many self-help books over the last thirty-something years, and a lot of them helped me to firmly believe that if you start your day in the best way you can, then there’s no limit to the things that you can achieve!
Each of the books I’ve recommended has given me simple tools to help me do just that. Ultimately, I know they inspired me to create the Bad Habit Kicker system. I truly believe they can all help others optimize their lives and become the best versions of themselves!
This is an oldie but a classic in the self-help arena and a book that I’ve re-read many times. There are some real nuggets of gold in the book, including the author’s advice to live in "Day-tight compartments," and I absolutely love the 32 true-life examples that are included in the back.
It just goes to show that the simplest ideas are timeless—this book was originally published in 1948!
"""Let's not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember 'Life is too short to be little.'" An expert on interpersonal skills, Dale Carnegie gives his readers the facts of worry and techniques of dealing with it while focusing on the more important aspects of life. Drawing from high personal experience, he speaks of the golden rule for keeping your energy and spirits high. Ingrained with true stories to inspire readers in overcoming worry and moving on to success, this self-help book uses everyday nuances to help readers focus on keeping spirits high.""
I have been addicted to reverse engineering things since I was a kid. I wrote The Creative Curve to reverse engineer the science of creativity. What could academic research teach us about creativity? If we talked to some of the world’s leading creatives, what would they tell us? My goal is to help readers unlock the part of them (that, as I argue, we all have) that is creative. When I’m not writing, I invest in tech startups that I think will leverage the principles from my book. I live in New York City with my mischievous, but incredibly adorable corgi Maven.
In The Practice, Godin successfully does that “thing,” that he is so uniquely good at: sharing wisdom with panache and joy, not condescension or cliché. He artfully argues for the creative to better empathize with their audience, and in doing so, create better art. Since, creativity is nothing without impact.
From the bestselling author of Purple Cow and This is Marketing comes an elegant little book that will inspire artists, writers, and entrepreneurs to stretch and commit to putting their best work out into the world.
Creative work doesn't come with a guarantee. But there is a pattern to who succeeds and who doesn't. And engaging in the consistent practice of its pursuit is the best way forward.
Based on the breakthrough Akimbo workshop pioneered by legendary author Seth Godin, The Practice will help you get unstuck and find the courage to make and share creative work. Godin insists that…
Professionally, I’ve been a journalist, author, speaker, marketer, adjunct professor, consultant, startup founder, and more; but at my core, I’m a storyteller and a lifelong student. I read voraciously about creativity, writing, media, marketing, psychology, and design, and I’m fascinated by drawing connections between these things. (I’m still allowed to say “read” when I mostly consume audiobooks, right?) I’m currently focused on helping other creators and storytellers master their craft, refine their big ideas, and figure out their unique differentiators, through The Creator Kitchen, the mastermind program I run with fellow creator Jay Acunzo.
I’ve read a lot of books on creativity, and this one stands out for its more scientific and historical approach.
No surprise; it’s written by the NYT’s Science Reporter, and it comes with the sources, case studies, and expert insights you’d expect from someone who works for the country’s newspaper of record. It covered some of the biological and evolutionary support for creativity, which was something I haven’t seen much of elsewhere; and since biological writers are up against the mechanized ones, this will help you see your key advantages.
The audiobook was over 11 hours long, but it didn’t feel like it, and I found myself sitting in the car to continue listening after I’d arrived at my destination more than once.
The New York Times's Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter "unpacks the myths and mysteries of the creative process" (Salon)
How does creativity work? Where does inspiration come from? What are the secrets of our most revered creators? How can we maximize our creative potential?
Creativity defines the human experience. It sparks achievement and innovation in art, science, technology, business, sports, and virtually every activity. It has fueled human progress on a global level, but it equally is the source of profound personal satisfaction for individual creators. And yet the origins of creative inspiration and the methods by which great creators tap…
