Kick-Ass Creativity: An Energy Makeover for Artists, Explorers, and Creative Professionals

By Mary Beth Maziarz

Book Overview

"A lively and personable guide to higher creativity . . . that] will catalyze all levels and types of creativity. . . . a bright lantern on the creative trail." --Julia Cameron, national bestselling author of The Artist's Way

There are over forty million people who work in creative careers. You may be one of them. Or, perhaps, you would like to join their ranks. If either of these statements is true, this book is for you. Maziarz offers a concrete program for helping you tap into and develop your creative potential. In fact, if you incorporate these teachings into your life, you can be not only creative, but kick-ass creative. Maziarz provides a framework full of fun and practical tips for kick-starting the creative process. Included are: An examination of energy and what it has to do with art. How to connect with your deepest motivations, desires, and feelings. Concrete tips about time management. How to develop a support group. How to get rid of those flimsy excuses that block your creative output.

"Incorporating equal parts positivity, practicality and visualization, writer and workhorse songwriter Maziarz presents a guide to tapping and fostering creativity with broad appeal for button-down and artsy types alike. . . . Her] encouraging tone and practical, common-sense approach should resonate even with skeptics" --Publishers Weekly

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1571746218
• ISBN13: 9781571746214
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Totally Kick-Ass

Wow, can I just say, wow?! I am a writer who has been sitting in writer's block for about six months. When I saw this book I thought to myself, why not? I had read other books like Peter Elbow's `Writing with Power', and I tried to read Julia Cameron's `The Artist's Way'. I like Elbow's, he recommended just writing, write anything, write in a group, write for ten minutes non-stop every day to get yourself in the flow. I believe that Maziarz's book is up on par with these. Not only is this book engaging to read, but she has plenty of ideas and even challenges at the back of each chapter to do to find out what just might be wrong that's stopping you from creating. It backs up the words put to me by one of my favorite English teachers I reconnected with last year who is a gold mine of creativity. She said `how can we actually have writer's block? Is there truck driver's block? No, a person gets in a truck starts the engine and drives.' She, like Elbow recommends just sitting down and writing, about anything, your day, your list of things to do and just keep writing and your brain will eventually click on and into that frame of mind. But, also like Maziarz you need to find out if there is something psychologically blocking you - fear of failure, fear of success, not enough time, do I really want to do this? This leads to another sound piece of advice from an excellent author David Eddings. He said that either you're a writer or you're not. And for a while I thought I was not because of this drought of writing until I took Maziarz's book and sat down with my brother who has been blocked in his artwork and we did the little challenges in the back of the chapters and as I began to talk about it all my brother finally stopped me and said `you know, you're the happiest I've seen when you talk about the stories you've got going in your mind'. It was one of the biggest breakthroughs I've had. It took me a month to read this book from end to end but I stopped at each chapter, did the challenges then I let it `digest' before I moved on. This book isn't just for artists, writers, musicians, etc. This book can help just about anyone who feels `stuck' in their lives. Yeah, it's about creativity, but don't we all need some creativity back in our lives? I would recommend this to pretty much everyone.

This book has made a huge difference!

In the past, I've always been reluctant to let go and do EXACTLY what a self help book tells me to do, especially one that has "new agey" ideas and energy work. I decided that I would read this with an open mind and actually complete the exercises at the end of each chapter. I've been totally impressed with what's happened. I've created art for years, but the last three years or so, I've had a lot of difficulty creating and everything seemed like work instead of the way it used to feel...I would get lost in my art for hours. I thought I didn't have the time or the energy anymore to create, but I've found both, thanks to this book. It helped to pull me out of the rut I was in. I'd highly recommend this to anyone that feels blocked and that will aproach the techniques with an open mind, it really did work for me!

This book is a MUST HAVE for independent creative people.

Mary Beth Maziarz' new release, "Kick-Ass Creativity," is a book you can't afford NOT to buy if you're genuinely interested in pushing your creative game forward, particularly if you're accustomed to working in an independent and entrepreneurial way. If you've ever read Julia Cameron's "Artist Way" then you're very prepared for this book. Even if you haven't had an experience with artist-related guide books, "Kick Ass" is super approachable, and best of all, doesn't take itself too seriously. Maziarz has a wonderfully impish sense of humor that makes this book relatable and a joy to read -- even while it challenges you to get unstuck and get moving in all the essential ways an independent artist needs to. And it's the joy and winsome urgency behind the writing that truly sets this book apart. It's chocked full with great exercises, but even if you opt of out of some, every page poses at least one question or triggers a reflection about how we work as independent artists, what the pitfalls are -- and both encourages and offers maps for how to get past blockage. This is a book you can read through once and then just sit with by your beside. Moving through it again and again, making notes, thumbing down pages corners...there's a enough substance, insight, joy -- and guidance -- here to last anybody many many years on the road to creative fulfillment.

Kick-Ass Creativity Kicked Me into High Gear!

I finished Mary Beth Maziarz's book, Kick-Ass Creativity: An Energy Makeover for Artists, Explorers and Creative Professionals the other morning, and like all good books, I devoured it hungrily but at the same time wanted to savor it slowly because I didn't want it to end. My copy looks older than its years with lots of scribbles, underlines and smiley faces in the margins. There are plenty of motivational books out there, but Kick-Ass Creativity is written in Mary Beth's distinctive voice--such a lively tone that gets to the heart of all of our artist angst and silly foibles without sounding preachy. I found myself laughing throughout at the similarities in our procrastination techniques, and the wealth of creativity that we waste by imagining the most elaborate and fearful scenarios or repeating avoidance techniques that stymie us from pursuing the blissful state of our art. Get this book, Kick-Ass Creativity and kick your creativity into high gear!! It worked for me!

This book just works. Learn to harness energy in order to create.

The fact that I'm writing this review, or even attempting to write this review, is a testament to the power of Mary Beth Maziarz's book, "Kick-Ass Creativity: An Energy Makeover for Artists, Explorers, and Creative Professionals." As the title suggests, the book is about more than creativity - it's about charging your personal energy and connecting to an external, higher source of inspiration that will make your work happen. It's about using the spiritual laws of the universe to turn your current ideas into realities and to come up with new, potentially groundbreaking, ideas for future work. The book is essential for any open-minded creator who wants to take his productive, creative powers to another level. In the first half of "Kick-Ass Creativity," the author reviews the key concepts and principles of energy, such as discovering our motivational desires, maintaining positivity, manifesting wants, opening to receive, quieting the mind, developing focus, and entering flow/intuitive states, etc. These principles apply to all areas of life and really do work. In the second half of the book, she shows readers how to apply these principles to their creative endeavors - be it report writing for a corporate job or sculpting. Her combination of theory and advice for practical application is perfect. Read this book, do the exercises, amplify the energy that is already inside you, connect with the energy of the universe, and bring your ideas to life. My story - why this book worked for me: I am a PhD student who has been suffering from a severe case of writer's block - so severe, in fact, that I had to leave my home in Hawaii and spend five months in the mountains of Utah to overcome it. In 2005, after a successful first year in my doctoral program at the University of Hawaii, my mother (only 54 at the time) was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The toll that her year and a half of sickness and subsequent death took on my life is beyond words. My academic pursuits all but ceased. Prior to my mom's sickness, I was a well-spring of research ideas and theoretical insights and a powerhouse of implementation. Afterwards, it was as if my idea faucet turned off and my productive machinery broke down. Writing became practically impossible for me. I knew with all my heart that I was supposed to get my degree, but I was incapable of doing the most essential thing that graduate students do - write. When I moved to Utah this January, I began snowboarding - what "Kick-Ass Creativity" would call a flow activity. I had read "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and like Mary Beth and Mihaly would have predicted, this activity and my time away from my school work and worries about writing was very helpful to me. I couldn't totally explain why at the time, but I just knew that far from being a bum by heading to my mountain a few times a week, I was doing something good for myself by snowboarding and that it was going to help me make progress on my degr