Hello friends,
My new book will be released in just 2 days!
The Art of You is a guidebook for creativity as a path to transformation. Creativity isn’y only about making art. It’s about returning to your nature and actualizing your highest purpose. And sometimes creativity is a cleanse which helps us excavate the inner world and purge stuck energy.
The main premise of The Art of You is the yin and yang of creativity. The first half of the book is yin (creative being), which covers topics like cultivating intuition, the power of intention, finding guides and inspiration, and overcoming the inner critic.
The second half is yang (creative doing) which covers topics like finding your style, experimentation, developing rituals, launching projects, making money, and creativity for social impact.
It’s about creative alignment. If you’re all yin and no yang, you might be inspired and in flow, but struggle to finish and launch projects. If you’re all yang and no yin, you might be productive, but your work will lack purpose and depth.
Filled with chapters, rituals, poems, illustrations, and memes, The Art of You is designed to provide insight and inspiration along the full spectrum of the creative process. Whatever form your creativity takes, this book is your new best friend.
Order now and unlock bonus gifts, including free access to my Meet The Artist event series, where I am chatting with some of my favorite writers and content creators.
Following is an excerpt from the book’s introduction:
Cultivating inner presence is the first step of creativity. But it’s not the last step. We must also take action to create, experiment with technique, edit our work, and find the courage to share it. Each of these stages requires a different approach. The open-minded, intuitive yin that inspires an idea is not necessarily the best mindset to drive that idea to fruition.
The creative process is similar to farming. First you must prepare the soil, gather and plant seeds, and nurture the sprouts with water and sunlight. These are yin activities. The soil represents the fertile subconscious. The seeds are the influences we feed ourselves: the books we read, the music we listen to, and the people we surround ourselves with. The soil of our subconscious mind will inevitably produce the fruits of the seeds we plant. These fruits are our thoughts and ideas.
Once the crops are grown, an entirely new set of actions is needed. We must harvest the crops, clean and store them, and eventually cook them into a meal that can be served and enjoyed. These are yang activities. The crops are our ideas. We clean and store them by choosing which ideas to develop. Cooking a meal is the art of creative execution, which requires time and patience to learn. And finally, we need to take our work public. After all, art, like food, is meant to be shared and enjoyed in order to provide nourishment and pleasure to others.
According to traditional Chinese medicine, when one aspect of the body is out of alignment, the entire body may suffer or break down as a result. The same is true of the creative process. Creativity is a living energy that flows through us. When the energy gets stuck in one place, the whole process breaks down.
Different people get stuck in different places. Some people have vivid imaginations but are unable to finish and launch projects. Others may be super productive, but their work is lacking the purpose and depth that comes from intuition. No matter where you are on your creative journey, this book is designed to help you return to alignment and flow.
I am guessing (well, I have checked) this book is not available on Amazon because the search is there (meaning others are searching too) but no results.
EDIT: ok, I see your link to the book on Amazon. But I tried the search again, and nothing comes up. You can try. As I start to type your name, the search is already there, and it's suggested to me ("james mcrae art of you"). I click on it and nothing.