Creating: A practical guide to the creative process and how to use it to create anything - a work of art, a relationship, a career or a better life.

While some reviewers may have hoped for help on overcoming creative blocks, it seems they miss the point. Robert Fritz makes a big distinction between creating and creativity. To create, you have to care about bringing something into reality that doesn't exist. As Fritz says, "Creating is in the realm of the noninevitable." Creativity, in contrast, refers to the unusual and inventive, and Fritz argues that: "Creating sometimes includes creativity, but most often it does not. As you master the creative process, the unusual becomes usual, and so it will seem less creative. You may be creating, then, and not have creativity. Likewise, you can have creativity but not be creating." I had this discussion with a software engineer working on a major user interface introduction. Fritz would have him first determine what he loves enough to create, what are its qualities, and what is the "result" he wants to create. It's not about being infinitely creative, his engineers are already doing too much of that. It's about creating around a single design point versus maintaining too many open possibilities. Another part of the book I really liked was "First Person/Third Person." Fritz makes the distinction between people who see their creations as part of their identity (meaning they are apt to "advocate a specific position") and those who remain separate from, while still passionate about, their creations (people "more apt to seek accuracy") as they encounter reality. In "The Worldview," Fritz carries this theme further, quoting Robert Frost in saying: "The artist must not select a universal and then find particulars to fit it." In the end, Fritz argues for pure emotion ("you want what you want") along with a rigorous process ("the creative process is made up of many steps in a particular sequence"). He believes that if you're frustrated in creating something, it's nothing more than not knowing what you want and/or inexperience in the creation process!

This book sets out to demystify creating, to pragmatically assist the reader in learning ideas and processes that can be applied to creating works of art, craft, business, et cetera. It's well worth reading for that pragmatic purpose. The first chapter sample, available on "look inside" on this web site, gives a good sample of Fritz' approach, uncluttered by the flaws noted in later sections of the book. He emphasized some steps and aspects of process that I wasn't so starkly aware of. I've created effective cartoons, articles, essays, songs, clothing designs, gardens, et cetera, but this book could help in becoming much more productive.Some sections of the book launch into an attack on cultural assumptions. Bravo. Most of it was valid in supporting his approach to creating. However, I was uncomfortable with some of his extreme statements about certain disciplines and cultural traditions. He seemed to dismiss all of psychotherapy, and take some cheap shots, for instance, rather than limiting his comments to self-indulgent and deluded approaches. He overgeneralized and thus misrepresented other cultural traditions, ideas, and disciplines. For example:"While meditation and psychotherapy may have replaced tranquilizing and recreational drugs, all of them presume you are entitled to feel good, even if you need to dull your senses and color reality to find happiness, self-love and fulfillment." p122 Fawcett edition, 1991On the contrary, I would argue, going through a course of therapy based on Alice Miller's (sample title: Thou Shalt Not be Aware) views might allow and traumatized individual to function in life without enduring constant shaming, flashbacks, and emotional paralysis. It can be important to examine emotions, and feel good at times. Also the meditation I have personal experience of, mindfulness and insight meditation, as described by Chogyam Trungpa (sample title: Meditation in Action) and others are not about brainwashing oneself or dulling the senses. In fact, mindfulness meditation is likely to lead to some of the same insights and awareness Fritz describes in his discussion of the mind, separation, and so on. Fritz would do better if he didn't dismiss everyone else's work. Yes, it's true that people can get too focused on transient emotions and fixing the self. However, meditation and psychotherapy do still have something to offer, keeping in mind the 80/20 rule -- most of everything is crap, so buyer beware. Ironically, right after Fritz' section on the lack of necessity to choose a right worldview, he launches into what is obviously his worldview. Oh, he has a disclaimer, and he's not dogmatic at that particular moment, but still, throughout the book, he does argue for his views of how things work, what will be if you follow his process. My suggestion: just ignore his adamant, paternalistic ranting, see through it, and go for his basic ideas, which are useful even though he has an obnoxious personality and a bit o

I had to give it five stars because it did such a job stimulating me with its new ideas about creating. At times it's slow to pore over. You're excited at the stuff you're learning, but the prose feels a bit tedious, so it's like being chin-deep in water and wanting to race ashore for something great. But this book's concepts, about the structure of creating, are so mind-blowing to us "creatives" that it's a must to sit and take it a swallow at a time. Fritz's challenging ideas allowed me to expand my thinking about myself, to see myself not as a writer but as a creating person (one of whose creating modes is writing). My promotion of my written materials is an act of creating. So is the plan I'm putting together for my life. Wow!

I bought this book because creating always felt like a white-hot, hit or miss, lightning flash, that also felt dangerous and fearful, like having to step off a cliff into thin air. Author of The Path of Least Resistance, Robert Fritz, in Creating, says thin air is good. And -- gulp -- he's right. For Fritz, creating is an ordinary and understandable skill we can learn -- and we can, he says, learn to do it better and more often. He's right about that, too. He says creating is getting the results we want in any area of our lives -- work projects, art work, career, relationships, community. It is a process with form and shape. It's not problem-solving, or reaching for the unusual, or about inventiveness or "creative ability." Anyone can do it. And he outlines nine stages of the process, from conception to living with what you create. Creating ranges far, around and through the subject, offering practical approaches and even a warm-up guide, and he deals with hindrances like the discrepancies between "Ideal-Belief-Reality" that get in the way. If this book helps you surface what he calls "invisible beliefs" that get in the way of what you want in life, it's worth three times the price. Fritz argues creating is not discovery. Some people take his seminar to discover what really matters to them, but as he says, that idea "presumes that what matters somehow already exists (p. 118)." Creating brings into existence something that did not exist before, makes something from nothing. This book is broader and deeper than the typical how-to-create book -- it doesn't talk about brainstorming or problem-solving or creativity. It describes how to become aware of the process and some of its pitfalls, and how to do it in a way that helps you get the results you want. I have no problem with a point of view that our ideas can help or hinder us in getting what we want. For those who do, this book may open their eyes.