Creativity is a characteristic of someone or some process that forms something new and valuable. The created item may be intangible or a physical object.
Alex Grey is an American visual artist, author, teacher, and Vajrayana practitioner known for creating spiritual and psychedelic paintings. He works in multiple forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and painting. He is also on the board of advisors for the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, and is the Chair of Wisdom University's Sacred Art Department. He and his wife Allyson Grey are the co-founders of The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM), a non-profit organization in Wappingers Falls, New York.
Julia B. Cameron is an American teacher, author, artist, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, composer, and journalist. She is best known for her book The Artist's Way (1992). She also has written many other non-fiction works, short stories, and essays, as well as novels, plays, musicals, and screenplays.
Links between creativity and mental health have been extensively discussed and studied by psychologists and other researchers for centuries. Parallels can be drawn to connect creativity to major mental disorders including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, OCD and ADHD. For example, studies have demonstrated correlations between creative occupations and people living with mental illness. There are cases that support the idea that mental illness can aid in creativity, but it is also generally agreed that mental illness does not have to be present for creativity to exist.
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes or with various traditions of poetry and poetics. Due to the looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such as feature stories to be considered creative writing, even though it falls under journalism, because the content of features is specifically focused on narrative and character development. Both fictional and non-fictional works fall into this category, including such forms as novels, biographies, short stories, and poems. In the academic setting, creative writing is typically separated into fiction and poetry classes, with a focus on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating pre-existing genres such as crime or horror. Writing for the screen and stage—screenwriting and playwriting—are often taught separately, but fit under the creative writing category as well.
Eckhart Tolle is a German-born spiritual teacher and self-help author. His books include The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997), A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (2005) and the picture book Guardians of Being (2009).
James Allen was a British philosophical writer known for his inspirational books and poetry and as a pioneer of the self-help movement. His best known work, As a Man Thinketh, has been mass-produced since its publication in 1902. It has been a source of inspiration to motivational and self-help authors.
Final Exit is a 1991 book written by Derek Humphry, a British-born American journalist, author, and assisted suicide advocate who co-founded the now-defunct Hemlock Society in 1980 and co-founded the Final Exit Network in 2004. The book was first published in 1991 by the Hemlock Society US in hardback. The following year, its 2nd edition was published by Dell in trade paperback. The current updated edition was published in 2010.
A tortured artist is a stock character and stereotype who is in constant torment due to frustrations with art, other people, or the world in general. The trope is often associated with mental illness.
Inspiration is an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or visual art and other artistic endeavours. The concept has origins in both Hellenism and Hebraism. The Greeks believed that inspiration or "enthusiasm" came from the muses, as well as the gods Apollo and Dionysus. Similarly, in the Ancient Norse religions, inspiration derives from the gods, such as Odin. Inspiration is also a divine matter in Hebrew poetics. In the Book of Amos the prophet speaks of being overwhelmed by God's voice and compelled to speak. In Christianity, inspiration is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Antoinette Martignoni was an American artist who developed the "Inner Portrait" process that uses art as a self-help means to see hidden personal potential. Martignoni died in August 2018 at the age of 99.
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom is a self-help book by the author Don Miguel Ruiz. The book outlines a code of conduct based on ancient Toltec wisdom – advocating freedom from self-limiting beliefs which bring suffering and limitation to one's life.
Rob Walker is an American journalist, author and educator, whose primary interests include design, business, technology, consumer culture, and the arts.
Stuart Wilde was a British writer. Best known for his works on New Age, self-empowerment, and spirituality, he was also a lecturer, teacher, humorist, essayist, scriptwriter, lyricist, and music producer. He was the author of twenty books including the popular series The Taos Quintet: Miracles, The Force, Affirmations, The Quickening, and The Trick to Money is Having Some.
Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using print on demand technology. It may also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, games, video content, artwork, and zines. Web fiction is also a major medium for self-publishing.
The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life is a nonfiction book about the creative process that was written by Julia Cameron in the first person. The book includes the author's experiences of writing and also has exercises for the reader.
The Rencontres d'Arles is an annual summer photography festival founded in 1970 by the Arles photographer Lucien Clergue, the writer Michel Tournier and the historian Jean-Maurice Rouquette.
Victo Ngai is an American illustrator raised in Hong Kong. Her work has been described as being highly detailed and precise, referencing comic book drawings, classic children's book illustrations, the work of Japanese painters, and more. Illustrations created by the artist are often considered to contain compelling imagery and unique styling.
A hybrid press is a publishing house which can be broadly defined by its source of revenue. The revenue source of a traditional publisher is through the sale of books that they publish, while the revenue of hybrid publishers comes from both book sales and fees charged to the author for the execution of their publishing services.
Priya Kumar is an Indian motivational speaker and writer. She is an author of 12 books including novels and self-help books. Her works mainly deal with inspirational and spiritual themes. Her book License to Live (2010) was nominated for Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2010. In 2019, her novel I Will Go with You (2015) was adapted into web television series The Final Call, starring Arjun Rampal, Sakshi Tanwar, Javed Jaffrey.
