The Creativity Book

As I've stated before, I'm a big fan of books. Mostly fiction, but also photography, and science. I also go through periods where I get into themes. Since I'm a procrastinator, every once in a while, I'll go crazy for organization books, like David Allens, "Getting Things Done".

Lately I've been on a creativity kick, partly inspired by Paul Lester's blog, partly because I always think I'm not creative enough. Browsing through the local bookstore, I came across Eric Maisel's, "The Creativity Book: a year's worth of inspiration and guidance". Leafing through it, I liked what I saw. Ten months of reading and exercises, with a two month creative project after.

I bought it, and then went to San Jose for two weeks. While I took the book, I didn't devote much time to it, the procrastinator remember? Now that I'm back, I need to pick it up again. The first part of the book is getting to know yourself better. You start off by writing a 2500 word autobiography. It's difficult and I'm still not done. There are always things in everyones life that are hard to put down in writing and I am no exception. Considering myself somewhat of an introvert, I have a hard time writing about myself, even in a private setting.

You go from there to listing creative blocks and trying to get yourself in a habit of making some time for your creative self. I don't think I'll make it in the year timeframe, but I am committed to finishing the whole book. I'll try to remember to leave notes once in a while how I'm doing.

To help in the organizing side of my life, I recently started using "Evernote". This is what is considered a "cloud" application. I can make notes from any of the computers I use, or even my phone and they are automatically synced up and stored on Evernote's servers. The service is free so far for the amount of data I'm using, but I may move to the pay version for some of the features available and to get rid of the ads. The ads though are not obnoxious, so they really don't bother my.

One of the reasons I bring up Evernote is that I have created a notebook within the application just for this yearly project. That way I can work on it whenever I want, no matter what computer I have with me. As a back up for those few times I don't seem to be around a computer, I'll use a notebook, one I carry with me regularly anyway.

At the moment, I'm not sure if this book can really help me be more creative or if it is some kind of placebo for insecurity. Hopefully I'll find out.