Standing at Water's Edge

For most people who seek to create - whether they are artists, writers, or business people - the daily process of losing themselves in the creative process is both a joy and profound challenge. Instead of stepping easily into the creative state, they experience chronic procrastination and torturous distraction. For some, these challenges prevent them from creating the art they know they are capable of. In "Standing at Water's Edge", psychologist Anne Paris brings her extensive experience in working with creative clients to explore the deep psychological fears that block us from creative immersion. Rather than relying on behavioural strategies such as "set aside a time and place each day for the artistic activity", Dr. Paris reaches to understand the deep hopes and fears that profoundly influence creative capacity.Paris argues that creative blocks and procrastination are actually the artist's attempts at self-preservation when facing the psychological challenges involved in creativity. She seeks to understand the artist in the context of his or her unique past, present, and future. She then helps them understand and reach for the kind of support they need in order to take the plunge into creativity. Rather than presenting art as a lonely, solitary endeavour, she shows how relationships with others are actually crucial to the creative process. Through her unique model of "heroes and twins," she describes the kinds of relationships that support creativity, how childhood experience plays an important role in the creative process, and how to psychologically navigate the creative process from start to finish.Throughout the book, Paris focuses on the part of the process that is often most difficult: entering a creative state. "The capacity to dive into creativity," she writes, "both in beginning a project and in 'starting' again every day, will determine our productivity as well as our sense of fulfilment and gratification." Paris' groundbreaking psychological approach is certain to give artists crucial new insight and understanding into their own creative process, unlocking their artistic potential, and allowing them to both start and finish their greatest creative projects.