I've been researching creativity and the Creative Process for 40 years. For 30 of those years, I’ve been leading a one-week workshop: “Developing Your Creative Potential.” It’s been a marvelous adventure, one that has inspired me, and possibly the thousands who have attended my workshops and lectures. The prime reason for this fractionation  has been my own creativity . . . my desire, drive, passion for coming up with ideas and turning them into something. On the way,  I've creating  festivals, launched newspapers and magazines, written articles, photographed the world’s great cities. founded three schools . . . including a conservatory for the wold's storytellers and image-makers: Rockport College and The Maine Photographic Workshops . . . now Maine Media (www.Mainemedia.edu). I’ve make films and documentaries, produced radio and television shows, and am in the process of raising my greatest creative endeavor, my two kids, Havana age 10 and Renaissance age 12.

There are over 75 books that deal directly or indirectly with creativity in my bookcase.  There are perhaps another 75 that could be there as well. New ones come out each year. The literature is full of works that deal in some way with creativity. I’m writing one:  The Creative Process . . . Making Ideas Real. Here is a review of the major books I consider helpful . . . there are others . . .

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (Inner Workbook)

Author:  Julia Cameron

An excellent work for anyone who is creative, or wants to be. I recommend it at every lecture, and have read it over and over myself. But Julia stops short of the pathway, and is not as  pragmatic as my book . . . . which provides a more detailed pathway for creative people who want to move their ideas to reality.

The Whole New Mind - Riverhead Books

Author: Daniel Pink

A timely look at six essential aptitudes that are in demand now: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning. Great, but not as practical as The Creative Process, nor as focused.

The Creative Habit, Learn It and Use It For Life  (Simon & Schuster)

Author : Twyla Tharp

A good read with lots of insight into the process a choreographer goes through as they imagine and create a dance. Well researched with valuable anecdotes. The Creative Process also uses antidotes and personal experience, but is more pragmatic in helping the reader through the steps.

The Courage to Create: Bantam Books

Author: Rollo May   

The first book on creativity that I read. It is old, but still a god read and I recommend it to my students, told by a Jungian psychiatrist who is also an artist and a very good writer. There has been a lot of new thinking and research on creativity since May wrote and that’s included in my book.

Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment   

Author: George Leonard   

Excellent book on the process of learning to master something. Another book I recommend and quote from. Where Leonard’s book ends, my book provides more practical steps  and examples in how to make something from an idea.

The Creative Age - Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life Avon Books

Author Dr. Gene D. Cohen

Great resource and inspiration for those over 65. Gene was a good friend and associate. He and I discussed creativity over dinner many times. He is perhaps the most respected authority on aging and keeping vibrant in the later years of life. His book is less a practical guide to creativity than a serious study of the subject, with examples. A good read for someone over 65.

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention     HarperCollins

Author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi   

Mihaly has written extensively about creativity, but from an academic POV. I touch on some of his research,  but delved much deeper in such areas as risk, and the transformational experience.

Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative Capstone (UK) Penguin Books
Author: Ken Robinson

Sir Ken is a festinating writer, but a bit academic. Like Mihaly, he studies creativity, and has created a series of well written books. My book, looks into how creative people make things, how they begin, do the research, find inspiration to keep going and eventually publish, preform and release their idea to the public.

The  Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Penguin Books

Author: Ken Robinson

(See above)

Drawing on the Artist Within: An Inspirational and Practical Guide to Increasing Your Creative Powers,

Author Betty Edwards

Betty wrote one of the early breakthrough books on process and creativity” Drawing On The Right Side.  Both her books provided an awakening for many people involved in art education. Her techniques are standard today, and still of value, but a newer look at the process is needed. That’s were The Creative Process comes in.

Creating Minds, An Anatomy of Creativity seen through the lives of . . . , Basic Books, a division of HarperCollins

Author Howard Gardner

A serious, academic study of some of the great creative minds of the last 100 years, but there is little practical help in moving one’s own ideas forward.

Art & Fear: Observations on The Perils and rewards of Art-making

Authors:  David Bayles and Ted Orland

Ted Orland, one of Ansel Adams’ darkroom assistants, taught summer workshops for me for ten years, while he as writing this book.  It covers important elements in the process, but never the process. For many artists, they are un-aware of the process in which they work, often too close to the forrest to see the trees.

How to get Ideas,  Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Author: Jack Foster

A good read that explains how the advertising world works, and how art and creative directors come up with ideas to solve their client’s goals. The Creative Process takes those ideas and moves them through the “process” that makes them real.

Letter to A Young Poet    : Random House

Author: Rainer Maria Rilke

The great photographer and mentor, Ernst Haas, gave me this book many years ago and it continues to provide insight into my creative work each year. Narrow in scope it lack a defined pathway

On Becoming a Novelist, Norton

Author: John Gardner

I quote from this book often in my lectures and in The Creative Process. Gardner is a writer and an educator, and while he  provides insight into the art-making process, any process for that matter, I embrace other muses and career paths, and provide more pragmatic pathways t reach the readers’s goals.